Hiking Queen Charlotte Sound pt 1

So we boarded the cat and set off thru the crystal clear waters of Queen Charlotte Sound. It was gorgeous, simply OMG mind-blowingly gorgeous … sunny skies with a few puffy clouds … we couldn't have asked for a better day.

On the way (it was a tour boat for some, transportation for others, and mail boat on the side), our captain, a fourth generation QCS boat captain, stopped for us to see some dusky dolphins swimming in the sound and pointed out a fish farm that raised salmon, up to 100,000 fish per pen I think he said. The fish farm had a problem with seals getting in and eating lots of their crop. They with the Dept of Ag arranged for the seals to be transported 200 KM south to Kaikoura (the place we had spent our first night in the camper van -- the Vanette), and re-located there. However, the very next day, the seals had returned to the fish farm! They swam the 200 KM to get back to the easy food in one day! And they somehow knew how to get back to the same place, isnt that wild?

On the boat there were about eight who were taking the tour boat part, an English woman named Ann -- more on her later, and a group of three guys and two gals from England who were mountain biking the entire 71 km of the track, one way. They were doing this in three days with the catamaran portering their belongings between their overnight stays. There are many different places to stay along the track, including tent sites, huts, and even resort hotels, some, like Forneuax Lodge probably rate 3 or so stars in Michelin. This, it seems, is how most people experience NZ's extensive system of well developed trails in their many, very large natural parks. They call it tramping. Now going by mountain bike seems like a good idea since they can travel over a long distance in a shorter time frame, except that (as Ann would later point out on the hike) they are going so fast and focusing just on the trail, they miss many of the wonderful details of the natural beauty that we were to notice.

After about an hour and a half sail, we arrived in Ship's Cove and our hike began. There is a memorial to Captain Cook who discovered New Zealand at the bottom at Ship's Cove. The hike started on a very steep uphill to a saddle in between Ship's Cove and Resolution Bay, then it wound around Resolution Bay and cut over to Endeavor Inlet, where we were picked up by the same catamaran at Fernaux Lodge, a total distance of about 15 KM. It was a good thing that it was a steep beginning as steep climbs help me get into good positioning with my back. Plus with the breakthrough in the pool in Thailand, when I concentrate I can feel myself utilizing the gluteous without using my hyperactive pirformis muscle, but it takes quite a bit of focus as my pirformis has been working for my gluts for so long. I also know that I am working properly as the pain decreases, and I can feel the correct stomach muscles working as well.


Anyway, the landscape is wonderfully beautiful -- stunning, easily matching or exceeding the stories of how insanely beautiful I have always heard New Zealand to be from others. There are large fern trees along with beech and evergreen as well as many other native species of tree I have never seen before. It is lush and very densely green, and the Sound as I mentioned before is clear, gorgeous green to aquamarine to brilliant blue water. (There will be TONS of pictures on picasa before too much longer!) And as I have noticed so far everywhere in New Zealand -- it is very scarcely populated. When it is rural here, it is very rural. For example there are homes -- little cabins, some of which are super nice – along the Sound, but not many. They are probably mostly if not entirely accessed by boat, sometimes they come in clusters of maybe six or twelve, sometimes they are solitary. There are whole “towns” that make the country map of New Zealand that consist of maybe a dozen or two homes and little else.

The track on this first bit is muddy and slippery -- a brown clay -- and it has been raining quite a bit, the previous few days. However, there are the footfalls of those who come before that make nice steps in the steep climb. Also the steepness underscores that I am at (or near) sea level as at home a trail up a mountain this steep would be about eight steps up followed by about a 30 second break just to breathe. Here however, I can just keep on trudging up to the top. Plus being at sea level, the landscape is obviously wet -- there are ferns and green moss over everything. And the smells, the air is humid and alive -- rich with oxygen with all the greenery around.

I expected New Zealand to be similar to the Pacific Northwest or maybe like the mountains of colorado, but this part is nothing like home not dry nor dusty at all. There are many varieties of plants I have never seen before and even the evergreen trees have a different shape than the trees of the US -- they are more fuller, almost bushy here. About the only thing that is the same as the northwest is the amount of humidity in the air, and the emerald green quality of the flora. No, New Zealand is distinctly its own, and it is amazingly beautiful. So far, on a per square kilometer basis, this has to be the most beautiful country on the entire planet; i don't think i have passed thru any part of this country that does not have some strikingly beautiful natural characteristic.

And the sounds (not the water, but the noises) ... the landscape is quite vertical, so there is the sound of falling water every so often. And the bird calls are very melodious ... one sounds like a penny whistle as Genevieve calls it, and the variety of different bird song is amazing. The personal logs of the sailors under Cook's command noted that the songbirds here where most pleasing to the ear, and I have to say that I agree. (Quite unlike the screams of monkeys in Indonesia, or the constant cock-a-doodle-dos of roosters interrupting the peace of Tonga.)

I understand that there are no native mammals in New Zealand, so a lot of that eco-niche was filled with many species of exotic bird, and with introduced birds, the birdsong in the bush is naturally quite varied. If you see me in person, I am keeping (probably forever) a sample of the sounds from Ship's Cove on my digital voice recorder. Plus I took a video on the camera that captures some of the sounds.

The track itself is quite wide however, two people can easily walk side by side -- about as wide as a bicycle path in a park in the US eg the bike path from CB to Mt CB or the Rio Grande Trail in Aspen, the trail in Cole Park in Corpus, etc.

The topography of the Sound is very much like the mountains of home in terms of heights and vertical climb of mountains above sea level to heights and vertical climbs of mountains above the valley floors, except that here it meets the sea with dense, lush greenery – bush they call it -- not tropical, but very green. And the view into the distance is amazing, I am not sure if my pictures will capture the ridgeline after ridgeline after ridgeline that one can actually see while on this hike or cruising the Sound. For example from various vantages up this first hill (and there is a picture of it) one can see the North Island in the distance.

And the waters that I have seen so far are all so clear. The sea water is clear (we can see the dusky dolphins as they are swimming under water, under our boat), the boats look like they are floating on air versus water, it is that clear...one can easily see for dozens of meters into the sea. And the surface waters are soooo clear as well, streams look clean enough to drink, more so than in Colorado, or so it seems to me on this hike.

So we are given time estimates for how long to take on this hike, and we have found so far that unlike the US where time estimates on hikes are geared to the very slow pace of fat, lazy americans (I can pretty much do any hike in any US National Park in about half the time estimate), here it is geared to active, fit New Zealanders. So when they say, one hour, it takes me at least one hour. We are given five hours to hike this 15 KM bit of the track, and while we did lolly gag a little -- i took a bazillion pictures, for example, and with Ann -- still too come -- we did slow down and look at a lot of stuff, we ended up arriving about 25 minutes behind schedule. But we didnt take very many long breaks. Lunch was rather rushed, and after lunch we were always well behind the time frames in the rare sign.

So, I have mentioned Ann, and now I need to talk about her. On the boat, she is just one of the other passengers, however on the track, I started to walk with her somewhere in the Resolution Bay part or about a third or so into the hike. She is a conservationist from the southwest of England -- around Bath. Her job entails trying to convince governments that they should be conserving their natural resources -- an uphill and frustrating battle it seems. She explains that she is constantly having to connect it to economic terms. For example, flooding is an expensive proposition in terms of the loss of property values, the costs of re-building after floods, etc, as Katrina aptly demonstrates. However, maintaining and restoring natural wetlands are a natural form of flood control and are infinitely more cost-effective than building and maintaining dykes, dams or runoff structures, etc.

Now Ann's expertise is on English natural forms and processes -- flora and fauna of England, but she is an intelligent and curious human being so she has naturally learned quite a bit about New Zealand's unique flora and fauna. She pointed out four different species of orchid for example (two of which I would have thought was just some grass -- both called "green-hooded" orchid), four or so species of fern (silver fern, the national fern of New Zealand -- the back side is silvery -- "ponga" or saithea taepotha (she knew the latin/scientific names) or, momuka or fekia something or another, with the black scales and the fronds all curled up like a shepard's crook, and bilmy ferns -- itty bitty ones, are one cell thick, so you could see your finger through them), two species of native tree -- long droopy leaves is a Remu, , and two species of beech. So tramping along with her was a delightful learning experience. And her enthusiasm for finding and pointing out these items was infectious, and made the hike so much more than simply enjoying the natural beauty. And she is a fellow swimmer, too.

We also had interesting conversations like the politics of Obama and the hope he represents for people all over the world. Again Obama so far has been universally desired by non-American citizens, even by the New Zealanders who just changed from Labour to a more conservative party simply because change is desired .... or the Lady at the campervan park in Picton who thought Obama will be an American President who can actually lead the world, as opposed to our current president whom did not seem to care a fig about what anyone else in the world thought....

ASIDE: Universally among non-Americans they dislike Bush and the Iraq War, and I have only come across one couple -- an American and his wife who had lived in the middle east, Iran under the shaw, who felt otherwise. They were on my flight to Tonga and they felt with some relevant experience that Bush's extreme reaction was necessary to keep the Arabs in line, and credited that with the fact that there has not been another major terrorist attack against America or Americans -- the other targets have been British -- the tube bombings in London, and Australians -- the nightclub in Bali.

She had taught in an Iranian school and somehow, the kids all got the same grade on the first several tests, all high As. How did they cheat like that? She wondered. And when she made it so that they couldn't cheat, she came under pressure from the school, from the parents, from the government to let the well connected students who actually failed get a passing grade. They both attached this scenario with other experiences they had living in Iran to a cultural trait of the arab world in general. That if you let them get away with shit, if you appease them too much (as they fear Obama will, but he seems like he would be hawkish enough to me) then the Arab world will take and take and take. So Bush at least slapped them hard enough to know that they better not screw around with us Americans because we will fuck you up! I don’t know many other people, with the notable exception of several close friends and business associates in Texas who think that W was a very good president at all. Perhaps or perhaps not.... it is all history now, and history will decide hindsight being 20/20 after all. As Stan Lee would say, 'Nuff Said, so... ASIDE OVER --

Back to Ann and I, we had conversations about the future of the world. She pointed out that the earth is expected to continue as a living planet for about another 4 and 1/2 billion years or so, but that we as a species are not likely to last very long considering a universal scale. Homo sapiens as a species after all is very, very young compared to other species on the planet, and we are in the midst of one of the largest extinction events the planet has ever seen. So it is not likely that we will last much longer. She agreed with my point of view that we will quickly make this planet uninhabitable for mammals, but then the insects will take over, and that is simply the natural order of things.

So in between her pointing out this or that plant or bird or whatever, we talked about how humans are currently fighting over oil, but soon we will be fighting over fresh water supplies, after that we will fight over clean productive farm land, and then we will fight about regular old land simply for space as there will be environmental refugees from rising sea levels, etc.. So she is predicting that the 21st century will be one of strife as everyone in the world (Asians, Africans) strive to obtain a western lifestyle.

So another interesting factoid is that these collection of Sounds known collectively as the Marlborough Sounds (all created by erosion versus glaciers) in this, the small northeast corner of the South Island, accounts for 20% of all the coastline of the entire country. This is because of how the shoreline is so convoluted, and there are many islands, etc. I bought a map, which i will take home, so anyone who sees me can look at that too.

At the overlook coming over the rise, our first look into Endeavour Inlet, we caught up with Genevieve, and after that the three of us continued on over the last 1/2 of the hike.

But now it is late and i am tired and must sleep before starting tomorrow's adventure.

So until next time,

Newo Out.