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Adventure Guide: New Zealand's South Island
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We arrived at the Lodge at Blanket Bay, a resort of the type you might find on the outskirts of Aspen—if anybody there had any money. Each room was a separate stone-and-log minimansion (very American West in style), each complete with a fireplace, Jacuzzi, and wet bar. Unfortunately there wasn't much time to enjoy the luxury. We had a preposterous dinner cooked by a French chef, went to bed immediately, and rose early the next morning to catch a helicopter tour through the mountains. But this was a Kiwi helicopter tour, which meant we flew directly at mountain peaks, squeezed through crags that seemed smaller than the aircraft itself, rose straight up and fell off to the side in hammerhead turns, then flew out over Milford Sound and landed on the beach. There were supposed to be some yellow-eyed penguins about—the rarest on Earth—but all we saw were fur seals and waves crashing against huge sea stacks. The sand flies were fierce. We retreated back to the helicopter, which snaked up through canyons and landed precariously on a glacier so that we could throw snowballs at one another. Looking at the dubious parking job, I wondered whether the helicopter would hold on to the sloping snow or start a long slow slide down the mountain. "No worries," said the pilot. "She'll be 'roight."
And that afternoon, we headed out on fast New Zealand horses. Well, it was possible that they were fast. We didn't know. It started badly. A man and woman at the stables said that we should all walk into the barn and choose a hat.
Cool, I thought. They give you a cowboy hat. But no, the hats were equestrian helmets and the woman said, a bit too sternly I thought, "No hat, no horse." The gentleman said that we would walk the horses. "We've had steeplechase riders, professional jockeys, dressage champions," he said, "and everyone is content to walk the horses and enjoy the best scenery on Earth." It was lovely. We had great vistas of closely spaced green mountains, with shards of mist rising from the valleys. It was one of the places where Lord of the Rings was filmed, so I automatically hated it. I hate everything about the books (which I haven't read) and the movies (which I haven't seen). I apologize to those who have, but due to an early romantic relationship with a woman who loved the books more than me, I've developed a lifelong antipathy for hobbits. If ever I saw one on the road, I'd treat it like an opossum.
There were herds of domesticated red deer (they looked a bit like elk to me) penned in various pastures, and I asked how one herded deer. The man said he had two specially trained dogs. The "sight hound" stared down the deer until they moved and the "sound hound" kept them moving by baying at their heels.
We were all pretty good on horseback. Anyone who knew anything about horses could see it. Amanda asked if maybe, on the flats, we could run the horses, just a little bit. The woman gave her a sight-hound stare. "If you feel the need to run," she said severely (the sound-hound treatment), "you can go elsewhere."
Peter dropped back to where I was riding and said, "I don't think these folks got the memo on adrenaline."
The next morning we drove to a place called Makarora to catch a short flight in a single-prop plane to Siberia Valley, where we settled into a tramping hut. In New Zealand, hiking or backpacking is called "tramping," and one doesn't need to carry a ground pad or tent. There are huts all along the way, strategically placed. This one was large. There was a dining room with picnic tables and a stove that burned wood or coal. On each side were dorm-type rooms with bunk beds and Naugahyde mattresses where you can roll out your sleeping bag.
We slept the night and got an early start the following morning, walking across the golden tufted grasses of Siberia Valley, fording the shallow Siberia River, and making for the trail to Crucible Lake. We were in Mount Aspiring National Park, in what are called the Southern Alps, but our guide, Brendan Clarke, said the snow-clad mountain that blocked the end of the valley was called Mount Dreadful. And "the one to the right," said Brendan, "is Mount Awful."
No matter. The climb to Crucible Lake was sufficiently dreadful and awful for me. It was 3,800 feet (1,158 meters) in less than five miles (eight miles), a stiff climb in anyone's book, and the trail lacked switchbacks of any sort. "Why would you want to walk back and forth across a mountain when you only want to get to the top?" Brendan asked. This made the climb more of a scramble. The technique, Brendan showed me, was to grab hold of the vegetation in your face and pull yourself up. Sometimes there was a maze of closely spaced roots and you could use them like the rungs of a ladder. My legs were wobbly long before we reached the top, and I suddenly understood why a New Zealand beekeeper named Edmund Hillary was the first man to reach the top of Everest.
A sign at the bottom had said it would take two to three hours to reach Crucible Lake. In the United States, when I read such signs, I figure I'll make it in substantially less time. But on this one it took me two and a half hours, exactly, to reach the lake. Damn Kiwis!
The lake was set in a hanging valley under peaks festooned with glaciers. In the several acres of water, flat blocks of ice that had formed in the winter floated alongside huge icebergs that had calved from the glaciers above. There were over a hundred good-size bergs in the lake, which looked frigid and gray under pewter skies.
"Anyone for a swim?" Brendan asked. He was wearing short pants and the wind was driving a cold rain interspersed with a few snowflakes into our faces.
"He's what we call a 'feral,'" Amanda told me. "Lives out here. Probably comes into town once a month for supplies."
Back at the hut, we fired up the coal stove and cooked a quick vegetable curry. It was just after dark, but I said I thought I'd take a brief rest. I rested for nine straight hours, and when I woke up there was a loud drumming on the roof. "It's pissing," Brendan explained, by which he meant that it was raining pretty hard. "Change of plans."
We were scheduled to walk up over Gillespies Pass, which was more than 5,000 feet (1,524 meters) above us, and the trail, Brendan said, wasn't as good as the one to Crucible Lake. A low-pressure system was moving in from the Tasman Sea, and it was likely to rain and snow. It would be best to return down to the river and catch a jet boat back to Makarora. This sounded like a good plan. I don't like the idea of jet boats, but I wasn't prepared for snow and didn't want to freeze to death on a high pass. A jet boat seemed the lesser of two evils.
A sign at the camp said the walk down to the river below would take two to three hours. I decided that for once I was going to beat a Kiwi sign. I'd be at the river in less than two hours, and I took off, cursing the imperious wooden signs. It took me exactly one hour, 59 minutes, and eight seconds to reach the jet-boat landing. Take that, Kiwi sign! Two hours. Ha!
I had always considered jet boats mechanical joyrides, like something you might do at a fair. And that was pretty much it, except we were outside and the rain stung our faces as the driver pushed the small flat-bottomed boat to speeds of 25 miles (40 kilometers) an hour and more. The craft was powered by a 352 Chevy engine and used jet propulsion. The flat bottom and lack of a prop meant that the boat could navigate shallow waters easily. It could also do tricks. The driver powered so closely past rocks you could spit on them, headed directly to the bank, then took the boat into a couple of 360-degree spins, did another 180, and powered back down the river.
"I hate these things," I said to Peter.
"Me too," he said. "I want one."
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Adventure Guide: New Zealand's South Island
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