Travel log of Eli and Anna Bendersky

Hi all,

We spent another day in the Wanaka area before heading north, doing the Rob Roy trek (4 hours) which climbs very close to the Rob Roy glacier in Mt. Aspiring national park.

It was a very beautiful day walk, though the road to it is pretty bad. 30 kilometres of it are unsealed (gravel) with some small fords to cross. It’s nice to have a rental car for cases like this

Then, we drove north along the west coast of the south island. Our first stop was at the Franz Josef glacier. We joined a guided 6-hour climb onto the glacier, which included the ride and all the gear (rain jacket, wool hat and gloves, rubber boots and crampons for ice climbing).

There was a guide and about 10 people. The guide had a huge ice axe with which he carved steps on the glacier to ease walking. In total, we spent 4 hours on the ice. It was pretty amazing - the ice has different colors depending on its depth and age, from blue to cyan to white. The guide also found some interesting ice tunnels and crevasses to squeeze through.

Altogether it was a great experience (there are more photos at the photo album). We also had luck with the weather, as it was neither raining nor too hot or cold. On the next day, as we began driving further north, it started pouring again and we felt lucky that it didn’t coincide with the glacier climb. When it pours here it gets really wet - very strong rain can go on for hours at a time. This is also why the west coast of the south island is a rainforest. It’s very interesting to emerge from a jungle right to a glacier.

We reached Greymouth, where we stayed for two nights in a very beautiful hostel. The hostel also gave out kayaks for free paddling in the nearby river, which we did. However, in contrast to the common NZ waterways which are usually crystal clear and ice cold, the Greymouth river wasn’t too cold but wasn’t too clean either (and Anna managed to fall into it when she climbed out of the kayak…)

Our next stop was Nelson, on the north coast of the south island and near the popular Abel Tasman national park. We spent a couple of days walking around Nelson which has a few nice day walks and beautiful parks, and then drove to Abel Tasman to begin our trek.

There are quite a few options for trekking there - one can go for any period from 1 to 5 days, walking, kayaking or both, and there is also a wide range of accomodation available. We decided to go for the all-water option, renting a kayak for two days (freedom rental, not guided) and spend the night on a backpackers boat hostel.

Our kayak was for 2 persons, quite big and very heavy, but after initial acclimatization we learned to control it pretty well and enjoyed the paddling very much.

It got quite windy and we had some fun trying to propel our kayak forward amidst big waves in a region called The Mad Mile.

We spent the night on Aquapackers, a hostel boat in Anchorage bay. The stay included dinner, breakfast and lunch sandwitches for the next day. We arrived early so we got a double bed, though it was located in a small room with 10 other travellers. They really know how to use up space efficiently on a boat…

The dinner was a barbeque, with nice steaks and horrible sausages, which the travellers were feeding to sea birds when the crew wasn’t looking . After that we played a very stupid card game with a bunch of people from Holland, two Americans, one German and a Kiwi crew girl. The loser of the game was supposed to jump naked to the water, a punishment proposed by the crew girl (it was after dark). Ironically, she lost. And jumped !

On the second day it was calmer and sunnier, and we had time to explore two lagoons along the coast, and two islands with seal colonies. There were also albatrosses, weird diving birds looking very much like penguins (but flying) and cute black birds with red beaks. On one of the islands the seals were just having their morning swim, and didn’t feel too embarassed by us floating just a couple of meters nearby.

We finished the trek wet, sunburned, very tired but happy and were taken back to our car in a water taxi. Then we headed south-east towards the Nelson lakes national park, stopping for a night in a pretty bad hostel in St. Arnaud. In the morning we did a short walk near lake Rotoiti, were badly bitten by sandflies (again !) and continued our journey towards the north-eastern tip of the south island.

Yesterday we stayed in Havelock, a small and relaxed fishing village between Nelson and Picton. In the evening we received a surprising bonus - the owner of the hostel took the guests for a hour-long walk to the forest to see glowworms. We walked with flashlights and stopped at some point, turning them off. It was amazing to see the worms glowing as “stars” all around us. In addition, we watched the owner feed eels in a creek (with sausage and ham !).

Today, after a short walk we drove to Picton, from where we have a ferry to Wellington (North island) on Tuesday.

That’s all for now. Love and kisses.
Anna & Eli

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