So I recruited Haley, a
new-ish Bumbles gal, to join me in my quest do the Kepler. Weather
was not on our side, so about six hours before we were booked to set
off, we got bus tickets on Naked Bus to Wanaka instead, as there
seemed to be plenty of walking-related stuff to do there too.
We headed to a local
cafe to get the skinny on the walk in Mt Aspiring National Park that
we were planning to do from Raspberry Creek, as the locals usually
have a good idea about where to go and the weather was looking a
little more than iffy. Still, we were positive, and we greeted the
girl in the cafe with hopeful faces and backpacks in tow. She really
had a knack of delivering really quite bad news in a cheerful way. I
thought she would make an excellent doctor.
'Well, you could go up
to Liverpool Bivvy and spend the night there. Mind you, some people
have died falling off the edge up there.'
Erm?
We bid
our goodbyes just as brightly and wandered off to the DOC office to
get some official information.
A cheery ranger manning
the desk told us to forget our plans, and to illustrate the point,
showed us a live webcam stream of the really quite unfantastic
weather at the top of the mountain. We looked at each other blankly.
What now? We were here with our packs, our geeky walking trousers,
our dignity dangling by a single thread; we wanted to walk. To give
this guy his due, he had some good alternatives prepared for our long
faces – we could get ourselves over to Roy's Peak, a largeish
hill-almost-mountain just outside of central Wanaka, which was on the
way to another track we could tackle. This track was reachable by a
9k stretch of dirt road, where we could walk until we came to an 8k
section of official track, that would lead us to a hut belonging to
none other than Shania Twain. Yes, that's right, THE Shania Twain.
Apparently she owns tracts of land in New Zealand with her husband.
Who've thunk?
With this advice
ringing in our ears, and our lack of proper organisation and forward
planning proving slightly cumbersome, we decided to try and hitchhike
to the base of Roy's Peak, walk to the summit and then tackle the
path to Shania's, where we could bed down for the night, and maybe sing 'Man I Feel Like A Woman' until sunrise.
Time passed. Our thumbs
remained stuck out, with less enthusiasm for every passing minute.
It began to rain.
We got a taxi to the
base of Roy's Peak.
It looked like a fairly
gentle climb up to the top, so with newly renewed gusto, we grabbed
our packs and started the climb. About ten minutes in, the incline
increased quite forcibly, so we decided to transfer our water,
cameras and money to the stylish detachable bumbags we happened to
have on both our packs, and abandoned the main frames to a discreet
location on the side of the track. The scenery was pretty beautiful,
and we got some nice photos of rocky outcrops, views down to the
town, and the ridges meandering off of the Peak. But boy, was it
hard. I huffed and puffed my way up as Hayley slim-ly and nimbly
scampered ahead of me. 'Don't... hhhh.... feel like you....hhhhh....
have to wait for me...' I wheezed as my calf muscles complained with
the effort. Hayley was of course kind and polite throughout, and kept
pace as we talked about the treks we'd both done previously. Being
from Montana, she was pretty used to running up hills and was
generally a fair bit fitter (and younger!) than me. But after much
effort, we both made it, and got a few snaps at the top of us against
the backdrop of the town, and the reward of a 360 degree view from
the peak. The walk down, as always, was torturous, and we stopped a
few times to 'take in the view', ie: save our knees from spontaneous
combustion.
At the summit
From this point onwards
things went even less according to recently-hashed-together-plan. We
managed to hitch a lift from the base of the peak to the beginning of
the road leading to our next track. It was all dust and dirt and
although we tried to hitch with every passing vehicle (as the road
ended with the walking track and therefore pretty much everyone
driving down it must have been going that way), but to no avail. A
couple of kilometres down the road, laden with the heavy pack and
choking on dust, I cursed Shania's heathen name and turned to Hayley
with a new idea.
'So... would it be bad
if we sacked off this plan and went into town for the night? Would
you be really upset if we didn't spend the night in Shania Twain's
hut?'
Hayley wasn't averse to
this new plan, in fact she greeted the idea with something
approaching enthusiasm, so we hitched a ride with a friendly older
British couple back to Wanaka, where accommodation was sought and
beers were consumed. This was much better than stale water and half a
bar of Cadbury Energy for tea. We actually ended up in pretty plush
hostel accommodation, with a shower, and a lovely kitchen where they
grew (legal I might add) herbs you could help yourselves to.
The next morning, we
were to tackle the Rob Roy Glacier walk, which was meant to be
'moderate' but I suspected definitely less challenging than his Peak.
Once again our organisation failed us and we had to catch a minibus
to the carpark, which was about 40 min – 1 hour out of Wanaka.
Hitching probably could have happened but the weather was once again
closing in and I don't think we were up early enough to secure the
chance of a ride up there. We headed to one of the local mountain
sports shops where we'd heard we could pick up a shuttle bus ride to
the carpark we needed to get to. After a small, embarrassing incident
where the shop lady had to call back the shuttle bus so it could pick
us up (it was already on its way to the park), we all stood together
and chatted about the dangers of hitchhiking while we waited for the shuttle.
The pleasant older
lady's expression clouded over when she recounted a tale about a
friend of hers who was threatened by a crazy hitchhiker. Apparently
this hitcher wouldn't get out of the cab of her friend's lorry until
he was taken to the destination he wanted to get to. Somewhat taken
aback by this hitcher's lack of awareness surrounding the principles
of hitching (you get a lift as far as you can towards your
destination but only within the intended route of the driver who
picks you up), her friend politely insisted that he wasn't going
where the hitcher wanted to go, in fact, he was headed in pretty much
the opposite direction, so perhaps the hitcher ought to get out of
the cab and wait for another lift? This hitcher got upset and
petulant and refused to get out, so the driver had
to physically remove him from the lorry and report him to the police.
With this story ringing in our ears, along with the advice from the
friendly yet morbid shop assistant of the day before ('people have
died...'), we were picked up by a nice safe bus and taken towards
Mt Aspiring National Park.
Anyway, the walk itself
was beautiful, not a lot different from the Routeburn, with scenic
cascading waterfalls and beautiful silver ferns lining the paths. We
eventually hit the top of the walk without really realising it. A
majestic glacier stood, gravely staring down anyone who hung around
at the top of the path. We had it to ourselves for about five minutes
before the hoards descended, and decided to celebrate by opening
Hayley's tin of lemon pepper tuna and eating it on crackers.
On our way out of the
park we had an 'only in New Zealand' moment when we met the older
couple who had given us the lift to Wanaka after our abortive attempt
to get to Shania's hut. We took a couple of photos with them and
congratulated them on their stamina – I'm only 27 and felt pretty
old when I'd finished our previous day's walking, never mind this
one. We said our goodbyes and left them our email addresses on their
car so that they could send us their photos.
Our final epic
adventure moment was our lift home to Queenstown. We grabbed our
packs with heavy hearts and stood at what looked like a prime
location to nab a lift straight there; at the entrance to the Crown
Range Highway. After waiting about twenty minutes with our thumbs
stuck out and walking trouser legs rolled up in a coquettish but
really rather unsexy attempt to try and speed up the process, two
American guys pulled over. I can't recall their names (Hayley?) but
they were biblical, and from Durango, Colorado, which happened to be
somewhere we had camped on the America portion of the trip. The only
way I can describe them is 'Wayne's World', which ended up being
their new name as I couldn't remember their real ones. Fortunately,
Hayley, being young, cool and American to boot, managed to keep the
chat going as I sat in the corner making the odd remark which sounded
out of context and quite middle-aged in comparison. Smooth.
We made it home safely
despite some Wayne's World-Worthy driving along mountain passes with
small fences and long drops on one side, and even got dropped off at
our door. Oddly enough, I bumped into both of them again about a week
later (only in New Zealand), suited and booted, as they walked into
the Christmas dinner service at Heritage. It was only slightly
embarrassing approaching them with a tray of cheap fizzy plonk and a
Santa hat balanced precariously on my head.
This brings me nicely
onto Christmas Day, and my first Christmas out of England, let alone
away from family. However, being as most of us were in that
situation, we became each other's surrogate family for the festive
period, exchanging gifts (Daisy even went to the trouble of wrapping
all hers up individually and putting them in stockings...), eating a
roast we all cooked together with others in the hostel and even
having a dip in freezing Lake Wakatipu, where the temperature stays
the same pretty much year-round; horrendously cold. It was definitely
a bracing dip, fortunately we had freak weather somewhere in the '40s
so it was a good preparation for working the night in aforementioned
Santa hat. I managed to psyche myself up for the cold by repeatedly
shouting 'This is SPARTAAAA!', thus giving other lakegoers the
impression that we were either a group of Roman-era battle
re-enactment geeks in bikinis or an outing from the local psychiatric
ward on their Christmas 'treat'.
As for work, dinner
service went by without ever really getting horribly busy, I got
tipped handsomely and we all got to pick at the buffet afterwards
which meant I had two enormous Christmas dinners in one day –
pretty much just like home then. Post-work, fellow colleagues Max,
Nicole, Kirsten and Connor joined me for a night of drunken revelry
at Tardis, which was packed and about the only place open, even
though most people in Queenstown work in hospitality and it might
have made sense to open a few more bars.... I'll never fathom that
one out.
The rest of that week
was spent getting ready to, well, leave Queenstown. The unthinkable,
after such a comparatively long time there. However, I felt ready to
leave, and I don't really enjoy drawn-out goodbyes so I won't go into
all that. Suffice to say, I packed my belongings, spent New Year's
Eve wandering about town finding people, saying quick goodbyes
(except for the hour or so spent at the bar in Heritage, sipping on
cocktail leftovers and trying not to cry), eating fish and chips as
comfort food and watching Queenstown's 'spectacular' firework display
through the window of a Jucy van while it rained cats and dogs
outside. The next morning, it rained heavily (pathetic fallacy be
damned!) and Daisy swung by in the Jucy van on her airport pickup
stint to give me a lift to my flight. Sophie, badly hungover and
having to work at her cleaning job on New Year's Day, got a lift with
us too and it was all a bit depressing saying goodbye to my roommates
and fellow cleaners at once. We had, after all, pretty much shared
the ins and outs of each other's lives for the past few months and
got to know each other well.
I was sniffling in the
corner of the airport waiting for my flight to Auckland to be called
when I heard a familiar voice, and a mug of swirling, hot tea was
thrust in my face.
'Cup of tea, mate?'. It
was Daisy, and a touching final farewell for my last hour in
Queenstown.
Hope to see you again
someday, South Island.
