I've been in New Zealand four months and it's been quite the experience. One of my favorite places isn't one particular location, but several in combination along the Haast Highway up the west coast of the South Island. It's not long before you find small gems alongside the highway. Places like the Blue Pools, Roaring Billy Falls, Thunder Creek Falls, and any number of seemingly random waterfalls along the way. The landscape is vast and changing. Within a few short hours you'll travel from beach, to river, to glacier peaks - together painting dramatic scenes only found in New Zealand. Traveling with one of my best friends since my childhood, Chris and I toured across the South Island our first two weeks in New Zealand. This stretch of the trip was one of our most memorable.
We had the chance recently to retrace some of that trek with a new friend, Sophia. Having met only days before through a mutual friend. We spent three days racing up the west coast exploring. Sophia is an avid adventurer and works planing and leading gap year experiences abroad. Adventures Cross Country, or ARCC where she works, is based out of San Fransisco and leads programs all across the globe. Tramping with a professional was quite fun and made for some fantastic conversations.
We were already in the high travel months of summer with our trip landing within a Kiwi holiday. With the high season in full swing, the weather turned against us, raining buckets, as they say. Every campsite we'd hoped to claim as our own was either rained out or occupied. Hotels and hostels had no vacancies and the ground was much to wet to begin setting up camp anyway. So we did the next best thing, camping under an outdoor pavilion! We found a grill area near the beach which seemed like a nice escape from the torrential downpour, making due, we pressed on the next morning.
As the weather finally started to let up and the clouds began to separate, we set out to explore Franz Joseph Glacier. We hiked up and over glacier melt and hidden ice caverns covered in gravel to find ourselves surrounded, by tourist. I'd brought my tripod not knowing if we'd run into any DSLR shooters to snap our photo. It turned out that people really respect tripods. As soon as I began setting it up for a quick shot of the 3 of us, a large group of Asian tourist patiently waited, encircling me unbeknownst to myself. I snapped the shot and broke down my tripod to a crowd swarming to take a group photo. Chris offered to help them, taking a group shot for them as they thanked us for our friendliness. And we made our way back down to the glacier valley. It was beautiful even amongst all the tourist and helicopter rides over head.
We ended the day in Punakaiki where we found ourselves back at the Pancake Rocks. The rocks over time have been worn down by the ocean and rain, washing out sediment wearing the stone left behind. The natural formations are interesting and its easy to see where they get their name. We got to see the blow holes again as well, although we went at low tide when they weren't blowing as high. Our small adventure was fun and enhanced even more by the accompaniment of our new friend, Sophia.
