The following morning, we ventured out for another bike ride in Skippers Canyon. A very different ride from yesterday, the Mount Dewar track has a lot of climbing in the beginning and the end and a huge downhill in the middle. It is a classic cross country ride with a handful of hike-a-bike sections. Although on a 4 wheel drive track for most of the downhill we both concluded that it was probably one of the longest descents we had ever rode. The trail flattened out for a while as we rode high above the bright blue waters of the Shotover River before meeting up with the road again for our final ascent to the car. We have been up the same road a couple of times before, coming in from a different trail, but this time it seemed to take us twice as long. We were beat after four hour ride of ups and downs and arounds. But we weren’t nearly as tired as our friends Tim and Mary Lynn were this weekend. They completed an 18 hour race together in Fruita, Colorado . . . nice work you two!

Now it’s back to another week of work and wine in beautiful NZ . . . damn, we have it rough.

Here we are at day 9 of my visit to New Zealand and I can’t believe all that I have seen and done in the time that I have been here. I couldn’t ask for better guides and traveling companions than BJ and Lisa. Of course, I am a little prejudice –‘cause BJ is my son.

Today is a “layover day” which means that we are actually spending more than one night at one location. As I write this update, I am sitting in the upper level of a holiday home, looking out over the tree canopy at the Tasman Sea on the west coast of the south island of New Zealand. BJ and Lisa have gone for a walk and looking out at the rain falling, I expect that they will be coming back soaking wet.

The nonchalant attitude of the native New Zealanders and the pristine environment – seemingly unaffected by humans – is extremely addictive. From my first night in Christchurch where we were greeted by two giant Schnauzers and two Clydesdale horses, to the Albatrosses on the Otago Peninsula when we were staying in Dunedin, to the playful seal who raced to our cruise ship in Milford Sound so he could surf in the wake of the boat, to the friendly cats who hung out at the cottage in Arrowtown, to the Samoyed, Mike, in Wanaka , and finally here, Milly, the small black Labrador who earns her keep as a ski resort rescue dog – we have found “pets a plenty” during our travels. Even where we have been eating seems to have taken on an “animal” theme. Starting with the Three Cows in Christchurch, to the Fat Duck in Te Anau, to the Blue Duck at Milford Sound, and thought about eating at the Cow in Queenstown.

I have seen sheep, sheep, and more sheep, as well many deer farms. Just across the lake from where BJ and Lisa live is Deer Park Heights – an animal preserve of sorts and also the place where several scenes of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy were filmed. BJ and I enjoyed watching Lisa get mauled by the goats, thars, donkeys, and miniature horses as she was trying to feed them pellets out of her “little tin bucket”. As the goats were knocking her down, she was hollering, “BJ, did you get that” so expect some interesting animal interaction photos to be posted!

I have been fortunate to see in my brief time here, the Cathedral at Christchurch, Craft Market on the Square at Christchurch, the Moeraki Boulders along the east coast, the University at Dunedin (where BJ spent part of his junior year in college), the Otago Peninsula, the Farmer’s Market and Happy Hens in Portabella, the Larnach Castle, the bird wildlife park in Te Anau, watched the Milford Sound Movie, cruised the Milford Sound, and then a long layover of two days in Arrowtown.

BJ and Lisa had to catch up on work, so I browsed Arrowtown on my own during the days and we got together at night. I visited the local Museum, checked out the shops, and toured the Chinese Settlement. I did get to see where the kids live and met their flat mates. Their house was filled with flat mates’ mother and a new baby, thus the reason that I stayed in a great place in Arrowtown.

Then on to Wanaka where we went to the “chick flick” He’s Just Not That In to You with most of the teenage female population of the town. The movie theater was great. It was platform seating, but on each platform was a couch, a love seat or a recliner. Other seating options included regular turn of the century theater seats and a complete Volkswagen Buss Convertible. Apparently we didn’t’ think that I had spent enough time in airplane seats so we settled into our row of three airplane seats and watched the movie – complete with a twenty minute intermission. Time enough to have a pizza, ice cream, cookies or other meal items from the adjoining restaurant. I went from flying in an airplane watching movies on my trip over to NZ to watching a movie in an airplane seat while here.

I woke up in Wanaka with a fever, so the trip from Wanaka to Franz Joseph was filled with my sneezing, coughing, and blowing my nose. We did stop at Fox Glacier to see ice floating in the river and to get up close and personal to a glacier, then spent the night at Franz Joseph. I was feeling a little better this morning and had high hopes of taking a small airplane ride to the top of one of the Glaciers for a snow landing”, but the weather didn’t’ cooperate with us. So no airplane ride. I will have to keep that one on my bucket list for a little while longer.

I have eaten some new and interesting meals. But the most fun I had was Sex on the Beach in Dunedin. I thought about having it with a Nutty Italian, but I thought that the one drink was enough for the night.

So, here we all sit watching the waves and enjoying the slight drizzle and planning our adventures for tomorrow. Might try to get in a little whale watching and/or penguin viewing before flying out in just 5 days!!

As I cleaned up the house and prepared a room for my mom and stepdad to arrive on Friday afternoon, my roommate Ali gave me a nervous smile and said “I may be in labor.” She had somewhat expected to be early (she was originally due March 17th on BJ’s birthday) but we couldn’t help but laugh about the timing with my parents showing up in just a few hours time. I was so excited for my mom and stepdad to come to town but realized I hadn’t warned them that there would possibly be 6 ½ in the house instead of just us 6.  When they arrived I could quickly see the excitement in my mom’s eyes and the slight look of terror in my stepdad’s. We quickly moved them into their room and I suggested that we head downtown for a beer and dinner to welcome them into town and to get out of Steve and Ali’s hair as they timed her contractions. During dinner at Fishbone, we got a text from Steve that they were heading to the hospital and just 4 “easy” hours later we got a second text that said they had given birth to a baby boy, Tyler Robert Thomas Hanrahan. We met Tyler two days later in the hospital . . . welcome to the world Tyler!

While BJ worked on Saturday, my mom, stepdad, and I explored Queenstown, the Saturday craft fair and my favorite coffee shop, Vudu. We returned home to pick him up for a little afternoon wine tasting at Peregrine and Gibbston Valley wineries, a quick visit to watch a few people bungee jump, followed by a film in the Arrowtown Cinema where we watched Man on Wire, a documentary on a French street performer who illegally rigs and walks across a wire spanning between the two towers of the World Trade Center. We returned home to what would become the norm for the week . . . a little more wine and a lot of conversation until way past my bedtime.

We triple checked the forecast before agreeing on a general plan for the week. Unfortunately it called for rain, cold temps and even snow! There is really only one place to look forward to in the rain . . . Milford Sound. We packed our rain jackets and warmth, made a quick visit to the hospital to see Ali, Steve and Tyler on the way out of town, and drove straight to Milford where we had reservations on a Mitre Peak Boat Cruise, one of the smallest boats that cruises the fiord. We checked in and found out that so far we were the only 4 that would be on the boat and that the company actually required at least 6 people to book in order to sail.  So we quickly got to work attempting to recruit two more people for our boat and luckily just 5 minutes before departure time we got the thumbs up and hopped aboard. It had been raining most of the day so far causing thousands of waterfalls to pour into the fiord, but just as we set out the rain stopped almost completely. It was just about perfect. Although we couldn’t see the tops of the mountains the clouds, mist and waterfalls were spectacular and easily made up for it. We ventured out into the opens waters of the Tasman Sea and had to hang on tightly as the boat bounced and crashed over waves, making for a very exciting few minutes laughing about the morbid thought of the captain falling overboard and being stuck out at sea. Just as we turned around to head back in the rain started up again and we spent the remainder of the trip, including a dunk under a massive waterfall, under a covered area on the boat. We experienced the best weather possible in Milford Sound and celebrated with a mandatory beer at the one and only bar in Milford.

We drove back to Te Anau from Milford, my mom shooting photos around every bend, where we had reserved a room and a campsite for the night at a Holiday Park. As my mom and stepdad have toured the South Island, my mom found herself constantly rolling the window down and sticking her head and camera out to snap a quick shot of something beautiful. She took so many photos from the passenger seat of the car that she unintentionally began a collection called “Photos from the Road.” Each photo usually contains at least a portion of the car, window, pavement, or fence line along the road somewhat encroaching on, yet another, beautiful New Zealand scene. We checked in to the Holiday Park in Te Anau and while BJ and I set up out tent, my stepdad decided to turn on the small space heater in their very cold, very tiny cabin. We could smell the burning as we walked back over to meet them and come to find that the heater was burning a few small markings in the carpet. We put on our Good Samaritan hats and, instead of covering up the burn with a small carpet runner, we took the fried heater to the front office to tell them what happened. The front desk staff gave us a very disappointed look and told us they would assess the damages in the morning. Apparently they thought we burned the carpet on purpose and they were going to do their best to make us pay! We went to dinner, dismissed our frustration with the Holiday Park, and spent the rest of the evening in the communal kitchen playing many hands of Gin Rummy and keeping watch for the “Carpet Burner Killer,” aka the front desk staff.

We woke up in Te Anau to a cold bite in the air and snow capped peaks in all directions. We planned to dedicate much of the day to seeking out a few good fishing holes for my stepdad. First stop was on the river side of the Control Gates at Lake Te Anau. While he fished, my mom and I went on a short hike through the rainforest along the Kepler Track and BJ read his book in the sun. My stepdad had a couple bites but was quickly learning just how difficult fishing is in New Zealand. I suppose the country is world renowned as a fishing destination because of the challenge it poses . . . they don’t call it “catching” for a reason. We continued on down the road back to Queenstown, stopping in the town of Athol at Stu’s Orgasmic Fly Shop for a little advice, and hit up a number of different well known holes along the Mataura River. We could see the huge trout just hanging out below the surface and watched as my stepdad’s perfect cast floated a fly directly over the trout. But no bites . . . not even a little nibble. It’s as if they were laughing at us for even attempting to trick them. While my stepdad continued to test the trout, my mom, BJ and I kept ourselves thoroughly entertained by taking close up photos of flowers and bees, reading and building small cairns along the water’s edge.

We had contemplated spending a night in the Aspiring Hut up the Matukituki Valley the following night but the combination of the rainy forecast, lack of time, and a snoring habit helped us change our plans to just a day hike up to the Rob Roy Glacier. The first section of the walk is out in the open, along pasture land, and the sideways blowing rain had us drenched in no time. BJ and I were pretty willing to turn back to the car but my mom encouraged all of us to keep going. Once we crossed the river we thankfully found tree shelter along the track and continued up to the glacier. Since my mom and stepdad had only seen Franz Joseph Glacier from distance on the west coast, they were really excited when the trail ended just below the calving Rob Roy Glacier. It was completely worth the initial dousing of rain! Of course as we returned to the car the rain softened and the clouds lifted so that my mom and stepdad could get a feel for why the Matukituki Valley is one of BJs favorite places in New Zealand. That evening we dined at a small Thai restaurant in Wanaka where we happened to run into our friend Smiley, who we hadn’t seen since Brad and Gretchen were in town. He joined us while we ate and, being an avid fisherman himself, reassured my stepdad that the New Zealand trout are very smart fish. As we drove back over the Crown Range to Queenstown we encountered the worst of the forecast . . . It was actually snowing on top of the pass. There was barely a dusting of snow on the road and normally, like all winters in Jackson, we would have cruised on through at high speed, but I felt out of my element as if I had never even seen snow before. I quickly threw it into 1st gear, white-knuckled the steering wheel, and clenched my teeth as we inched over the pass in our two wheel drive family wagon. It’s funny to think about now.

We woke up the following morning to dark clouds, a little rain, and snowcapped mountains around Lake Wakatipu. I cooked Breakfast Pie (bacon, mushrooms, onions, eggs, and cheese, all under puff pastry), we drank lots of coffee and even got in a group video Skype call in to my little sister Anni who was hard at work, like always, at UCSB. But this only delayed us until about noon when we finally decided to face the weather and get out of the house. We drove the winding lake road up to Glenorchy to fish the Caples, Diamond Creek, and Rees River. We, of course, started out the afternoon with a very necessary cappuccino at the Glenorchy Café and then made our way to the Caples Trailhead. We had assured my stepdad that it was just a 5 minute stroll to the bridge, but after 15 minutes, realized we had quite a ways to go yet. He backtracked towards the car to fish an area that had caught his eye while my mom, BJ and I ventured on a bit further to the bridge we had remembered. Thankfully we did not see as many fish as we had expected . . . my stepdad made a wise choice but still encountered the same smart trout of New Zealand. After a cold day (I was hiking in long johns, my puffy jacket, and a rain jacket), we returned to Queenstown for my parents last night in town and went straight to the Cow for a yummy warm pizza dinner. It was hard to believe our time together was coming to an end and we prolonged saying goodbye by spending another late night catching up on life, work, my stepdad’s partial retirement, and looking at photos from Fiji. As my mom and stepdad departed yesterday morning, I felt like they had just arrived but looking back over photos and remembering funny moments all over the southland it is clear that we really packed a lot in to their limited time in the country. We decided that if we aren’t back home in a year, they would come visit us again wherever we are. I plan to hold them to it!

On Sunday morning, we began hiking under partly cloudy skies with a chance of rain. We felt a few rain drops but no downpour like we were used to and decided to continue past the Aspiring Hut and further up the Matukituki Valley. The waterfalls were raging and as the sun started to come out we felt like we were in a rainforest paradise. Toward the end of the valley I had spotted a bright orange dot high up on the south side of the canyon. According to our map the orange dot was in fact the Liverpool Hut. It didn’t look too far away and our feet were only kind of damp. We continued up the valley, over a few swinging bridges and across a couple flats, to the turnoff. It was here that we read “Liverpool Bivy: 2 hours” followed by a sign that warned how steep, slippery, and exposed the track was, especially in wet or icy conditions. We weren’t really sure how a bivy differed from a hut but we were sure it would be cheaper than the $25/night they were asking at the Aspiring Hut.

The description of the track wasn’t kidding about the steep and slippery climb. It was straight up the hillside and we used roots and rocks as handholds to assist us to the top. The bivy, despite the very faded orange paint job, was actually nicer than we were expecting. There was one window and the door was sized for a person half my height. Inside there was a small shelf where you could cook, two wooden stools, and a loft that divided the room vertically into two. Three people could sleep in the loft and three could fit under the loft with enough room to sit upright and not much more. We spent most of the afternoon and evening (except a brief stint of playing gin rummy inside when it rained) outside of the hut, staring out across the valley and waiting for Mt. Aspiring to reveal itself. At times we were able to see the very top, but never the whole thing until the following morning. Later in the afternoon we were joined by a German named Klaus. I am guessing he was probably in his late 50s and although he was tired from the hike up, he was in great shape. We spent a quiet but enjoyable evening with him and he convinced us to come to Munich, his home town, one day. At one point he sneezed and without thinking I said “ghezuntite,” what I always say after a sneeze. Klaus spun around and said, surprisingly, “That’s German.” All I could think of in response was “yes it is.”

The following morning we had a very loud wake up call (see video below) by a local kea who came screeching and flying right to the top of our bivy. He walked across the roof squawking until we came outside and paid him a little attention. About 15 minutes after our “alarm” went off, the clouds disappeared and Mt. Aspiring stood bright and clear. The kea apparently knew this was going to happen and thankfully woke us in time. We spent a relaxing morning sitting in front of the bivy, drinking coffee, reading, looking at the view, and talking with Klaus. Waving goodbye to Klaus, we began our steep descent and very hot valley walk back to the car. It was a short adventure but our feet were thankful for flip flops at the car and we were thankful for a cold beer back in Wanaka and, of course, another evening with Indian take-away.

Our short hike to the Rob Roy Glacier was shaded by thick beech trees so we had no idea how close we were to the glacier until we were standing directly before it. Rob Roy is a hanging glacier which means that the giant ice wall at the glacier’s toe ends at a tall cliff. We didn’t witness any calving but the endless waterfalls and snowfalls to the valley floor captured our attention. We returned to Wanaka and found that Brad and Smiles had already made plans for us for the evening. We met them at a local winery called Maude, where the wine master was throwing a small barby, or BBQ, and party while the wine owners were out of town. We hung out in a giant warehouse-type-room filled with wine barrels and casks with just enough room for a ping pong table and cricket court. Although small it’s the biggest social event we have been to yet and it was a nice change to meet a few locals.

The following day, our Monday, BJ and I drove up towards Haast Pass in Mt Aspiring National Park to hike up the Makarora River. The river actually follows the main road over the pass for a while but is fed from a side canyon that has such steep walls you can only access it by climbing over a ridge from the next canyon. This was not a typical one-foot-in-front-of-the-other walk. The track either led straight up over roots and rocks covered with moss or straight down stream beds and slippery mud or just straight through the rivers and bogs themselves. After carefully removing our shoes to cross two rivers within the first 20 minutes, we gave in and tried to enjoy our soggy water logged feet for the rest of the hike. When we reached the ridge, we could immediately hear the raging waters of the Makarora below us. We quickly descended the track to meet the river and had lunch at the water’s edge in a very steep gorge. The white river gurgled and bubbled at our feet and we were careful to watch where we stepped because a simple slip into the icy water led to . . . well we couldn’t see where it led to because the water seemed to just drop through a rock chute at the end of the gorge. It was clear now why the trail could not follow the water’s edge until now. We continued up the canyon a ways until the valley widened, the river became calm, and we could see another 10 km back to a distant ridge. It was one of the warmest days we have had so far in New Zealand and we found a perfectly protected swimming hole that seemed to be calling our names for a very quick and chilly dip. We didn’t see a soul the entire day. BJ votes for the Rob Roy Glacier, but the Makarora gets my vote, without a doubt, as our best hike so far. Two days . . . two classic (in New Zealand is sounds like they are saying “clessic”) hikes.

Lonely Planet says that the west coast “will remind Californians of Big Sur.” The tiny highway, violent waves, sudden drop off to the ocean, and the beauty are all very similar to Cali’s coast. Just take away the hoards of people and the tall redwood forests and replace them with a coastal rainforest so dense that you couldn’t machete your way through. Add a few pastures here and there between the road and the ocean, something you would never see along either US coast, and place a few enormous snow capped mountain ranges just a few kilometers inland from the road. Oh, and throw a few glaciers and brilliant icy blue rivers in there as well. This is the New Zealand we have been waiting for. Don’t get me wrong, we have been thoroughly enjoying ourselves down here. But something about seeing mountains again, and big ones to say the least, has lit a fire under our eagerness to explore such stunning landscapes.

Saturday afternoon we stopped for a beer and some fish and chips at the Revingtons Hotel in Greymouth (Tim, we had a Montieth’s beer but the brewery itself was very closed) and then fell asleep to the sound of waves crashing at a small campground in a very small coastal town called Okarito. With many more hours to go on the road to Queenstown today, we briefly visited Franz Joseph and Fox Glaciers as well as Mount Aspiring National Park in hopes that we will return with family early next year.

We now find ourselves in Queenstown. It has become a Mecca for outdoor extreme sports as the signs for bungee jumping and rafting will tell you. But there is a reason it is so popular. It sits directly above the huge Lake Wakatipu and is surrounded by mountains on all sides. Although its busy-ness and bungee-craze may get old after a while, we find ourselves drawn to the area as we were both drawn to Jackson, Wyoming. Nothing like travelling across the Pacific to find ourselves in a place just like home.