Christmas!

Merry Christmas from Wanaka, New Zealand! Jen and I arrived here yesterday after 10 days of road tripping around the South Island. We started out in Christchurch after Jen got in on the 13th. We've been traveling around in a 1994 Subaru Legacy Wagon that I bought. It's got an extended roof ((by 4 or 5 inches) and we've been sleeping in a full sized bed that we've got in the back. It's actually a pretty comfortable accommodation, and we've found some great places to park our home on wheels along the Pacific ocean and the Tasman Sea and many forests in between. Since leaving Christchurch, we've actually only slept inside a building twice- once in Franz Joseph (known for a massive glacier that nearly reaches the ocean) on the west coast, and last night in Wanaka at the studio that we booked for Christmas.

We've done a little more than half of our planned counter clockwise circle of the South Island. We've been to Abel Tasman National Park, Paparoa National Park, Westland National Park, and most recently Mt. Aspiring National Park. Driving around New Zealand is like driving through state after state after state in the US, but at a much faster pace. In just a few days, it felt like we drove through Idaho, Southern California, Northern California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, and upstate New York. The area we were in in Mt. Aspiring National Park felt more like Alaska than any state in the continental US.

Mt. Aspiring National Park has been my favorite place in New Zealand so far. We did a three day backpacking trip in the Siberia Valley. To start, we had to take a jet boat down the Wilkin River to a trailhead where we then hiked up a steep drainage and into the valley, which is surrounded on all sides by steep mountians and glacier cirques up high with countless waterfalls down below. There are hundreds of waterfalls in the valley, many of which go on for thousands of vertical feet. We actually set up our tent right near the base of a very large waterfall.

I think the best part of the park is how rugged and remote it is. We started our trip at a DOC Visitors center where we asked the ranger about the different hiking tracks and their accessibility. We were informed that the area we were choosing would be “busy” with as many as 10 other people in the 20,000 acre corner of the park we would be in. There is a wonderful sense of remoteness there not found in any other national park I've ever been to. There are no bridges to cross the streams and rivers and there are long stretches of trail that go through boggy areas completely covered by water.

The morning of our third day we packed up camp and headed down river a ways to an area where we were met by a helicopter to fly us out. It was an amazing way to see the Southern Alps (this is the mountain area that was used in the Lord of the Rings series) and it was also an inexpensive way for us to avoid a 10 hour hike out and a chest deep river crossing. The 15 minute helicopter ride cost us only NZ $40 each (about $25 US) and was well worth every penny.

We are in Wanaka now, which is similar to Lake Tahoe except that it is such a small town- it is situated on a clear blue alpine lake surrounded by high mountains and numerous ski resorts.

The little bit of news we are getting from elsewhere in the world tells us that there are powerful winter storms and cold temperatures all over the US. Hope that everyone is having a good Christmas!

(The following photos are all from Mt Aspiring National Park except for the photo of the Tasman Sea and the west coast of the South Island. I am extremely annoyed over how it is impossible to upload horizontal images and blogger crops everything.)