Summertime!

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

by Heidi

My employer, like many employers in New Zealand, shut down the office for the two weeks following Christmas and gave everyone the days off. We didn't have to use our annual leave hours or anything! Yet another reason I love living in this country.

I spent my summer vacation touring the South Island. First I flew into Christchurch, where I experienced two earthquakes in one night. The earthquakes weren't large (just aftershocks of that big one in September) but they affected a large area and further weakened some of the valley walls. (This becomes significant later. See "Storm" below.) The next day, I took the TransAlpine train across the mountains (the Southern Alps) to Greymouth.




I spent the night in Greymouth and was planning to head north the next day, but there was a huge storm that night that cut off all routes of escape from Greymouth. Landslides had buried the roads going both north and south, the rail line (headed east) was flooded so the train wasn't running, and the airport was on the other side of one of the landslides so it was inaccessible too. New Zealand is very crowded ("crowded" being a relative term) this time of year since all the Kiwis are off work and touring the country, plus overseas tourism is at its high point. Accommodation and transportation are booked several weeks in advance. I was concerned about the impact a day's delay would have on the rest of the trip.

At least for that first night, though, there wasn't going to be a problem finding accommodation: the fact that nobody could get out of town also meant that nobody else could get in. We all ended up back in the same hostels and hotels where we had spent the previous night. I changed my bus tickets and bought the very last ticket available for the northbound bus the next day. And I hoped really hard that the bus would run.

Here's a picture of the very swollen Grey River in Greymouth. The picture doesn't look as dramatic as the river looked in person, but you can see how close it was to the bridge and see the logs floating in it. The next day it was 5 METERS lower! That's 15 feet! In one day! And the picture also doesn't capture the pouring, pounding rain. I was completely drenched after being outside for about 30 seconds. (I didn't know yet that the buses weren't running and I'd have to stay an extra night, so I checked out of the hostel at 10, like I was supposed to, and still thought I'd be catching my bus at 1. I didn't want to miss seeing Greymouth, so I just resigned myself to being wet.)


My fellow travelers and I thought the storm was local, just in Greymouth and surrounding areas. We had no idea that this was a Storm of the New Century, which had basically shut down all of the South Island: no buses or trains were operating, landslides had blocked almost every major road, and travelers everywhere were stranded. There really wasn't any way to know this: in New Zealand, the local TV news services have a month-long hiatus from before Christmas until the end of January (I don't know why) so there wasn't any TV news available. The newspapers were still being printed, but Greymouth doesn't have a local paper and the one from Christchurch couldn't get there through the weather. I suppose the internet had news available, but when you're paying a premium for internet service while traveling, you mainly just use it for email instead of surfing news websites, right? So we were all a little surprised when we started calling around and canceling accommodation and the hostel owners were saying, "Yeah, we know you can't get into Picton (or Nelson or Westport or Blenheim) because the roads coming into town are closed and everyone here is stranded." The hostel owners were also surprised to find out that Greymouth had been cut off also. It was a couple of days before we found out how huge the storm really was. And the earthquakes didn't help anything; they just caused more landslides.

The next day was sunny and the crisis was over. At breakfast, we were greeted with the news that the train was running. An hour later we found out that the northbound bus was running (and I was heading north). Road crews had worked all night to clear a single lane, and at times it was a tight fit for the bus, but we managed it. Part of the bus route followed the South Island's West Coast, and the ocean looked like a washing machine.





These are the Pancake Rocks in Paparoa National Park.




Small sections where the road had slipped away. I wish I had gotten pictures of some of the bigger slips!




The big part of my trip was hiking the Queen Charlotte Trek, a 4-day, 71 km journey through the Queen Charlotte Sound at the top of the South Island. My original itinerary called for me to arrive in Picton in the afternoon, spend the night there, and then catch a water taxi to the beginning of the trek in the morning. But due to weather delays, my modified itinerary had me arriving in Picton in the afternoon, catching a water taxi immediately to start the trek, and hopefully finish Day 1 before dark. Everything went smoothly; Day 1 was relatively short anyway, and since the tiny town of Picton was bursting at the seams with tourists, I was glad I didn't have to spend much time there.

Here's the start of the Trek!





And here are a bunch of trek pictures. There aren't really very many stories to tell. Lots of walking and enjoying the scenery. I met tons of really cool people.





The trek went past a bunch of resorts, so there were plenty of activities along the way. I went kayaking for the first time and loved it!



And here I'm getting ready to go water skiing with my new friend Hannah. (I wasn't so good at water skiing, but I did stand up briefly. Hannah was great.)



Kilometer Marker 1! I made it!