Dispatch from Haast: Sunday May 1

Haast is a little town of 262 souls according to our guidebook, but, like every little crossroads in this country, we found a great little “backpackers” hostel again. Plus it’s the only town for the next 150 kilometers in this rugged and lonely part of New Zealand. We’ve learned to check backpackers by their kitchens and bathrooms, not to mention the thickness of the toilet paper and the level of heat in the rooms, but you can’t have everything. We’ve grown tired of restaurant food, especially in little towns, and like to cook on our own, a familiar little bit of home. Many of the backpackers have surprisingly well-equipped kitchens, and it’s a good way to meet people as you negotiate over the pots and pans. Last night, laboring over chili, we got to know a young American student studying music at a university here for his “semester abroad”.
We spent the last couple of days traveling down the west coast of the south island. The coast road (highway 6) is a little like US 1 along the central California coast, except that the road hugs the coast almost all the way, twisting among rocky inlets and high on cliffs while the snow capped “southern Alps” loom in the east. Another big difference is that the road is always two lanes, and a lot narrower than most US roads, often literally cut out of the rain forest. The road never stretches more than a kilometer or two on the straight and level, and often there are long sections of twisting and turning road that remind us of a rollercoaster ride.
Along the way the road crosses innumerable rivers and steams that run from the mountains to the sea. We’ve discovered that the New Zealanders have a need to name everything—every bridge and trickle of a stream, even culverts, and about 90% of the bridges are one lane. At the beginning of the bridge there’s a sign that tells you whether you have the right of way or the car coming from the other direction. So every bridge means at least a major slow-down, if not a stop or a wait while the drivers figure out who got there first, which, on a long bridge, isn’t as easy as it seems. Some of the longer bridges have pull-outs half way across in case the either you or the other guy didn’t see each other at the bridgehead of both of the drivers are real buttheads and meet in the middle.
Last night we spent the night at great little log cabin on the Tasman Sea. After checking out of our cabin we walked along the beach into the little town of Hokitika, checked out a few jade stores, and watched a spectacular orange/red sunset over the Tasman Sea (between New Zealand and Australia), finally falling off to sleep with the sound the waves through the night.
Beaches on the western shore tend to be of two kinds, either rocky and inaccessible, or long stretches of black sand often filled with driftwood. I know that along Lake Michigan some people are driftwood fanatics, collecting interesting pieces for their yards. This is a driftwood paradise, with some beaches literally strewn with huge wildly twisted pieces of wood. I suppose the many rivers and streams carry dead trees down the sea where they are washed up on shore.
Today we’re headed south again to the Franz Josef glacier. Rain was predicted the night before, and we considered spending the day in Hokitika, but it was a clear bright day and we decided to set out while the sun shone. The road led along the coast again and then turned into the mountains. The western coast gets lots of rain, especially in winter, and sometimes as we drive along we could imagine ourselves in an Amazon rain forest, with moss hanging from trees, and ferns on steroids, as Jeanne says, growing to 12 feet right on the roadside. Now these are pretty much like the ferns we grow in our back yard at home, but here they have to be cut back to keep them from taking over the highway. The trees generally have a strange and wonderful look almost taking on human character, some with huge multiple trunks and others with branches like beckoning arms. I was reminded of the scene in the “Lord of the Rings” in which the trees of one forest take on human character and even talk to each other as they protect the endangered Hobbits. It’s obvious where the director got his ideas for this scene. Amazingly, the rain forest ferns and trees grow right up to the foot of the glaciers. So it’s like moving from the tropics to tundra in a few minutes. When I say tropics I should emphasize that it’s not balmy here. Most days it seldom gets over 60 f, and there’s frost some nights. Without the sun, we’re in our polartec and jackets. It is deep into autumn here, and in some areas the deciduous trees are changing color.
The Franz Josef glacier is easily accessible on foot-- just an hour’s easy walk from the parking lot to the foot of the glacier. Once there, you can see almost all the way to the top. The face of the glacier at the foot was probably 300 feet high, with deep vertical crevices. Being fall and near the end of the melting season, the glacier looks a bit like a South Bend snow pile in late February, rounded and dirty. On closer inspection what seems like dirt is actually the tiny and sometimes big rocks carved from the sides of the mountain by the glacier’s constant grinding action as it moves inexorably toward the sea.
We noticed there were some people high up at the top edge of the glacier’s face. After inspecting the walls of the canyon we detected a sort of path over the rocks to the top. So we ducked under the ropes and walked past the danger signs to hike up a twisting path of shale and rock to get to the top of the glacier’s face. At the top there was a group of a dozen or so people with official park guides putting on their crampons and getting last minute instructions before ascending the glacier itself. One of the guides took one look at us and sidled over to Jeanne and asked her whether we planned to go any further. He seemed relieved to hear that this was the extent of our ascent, and he let us go with a warning about how dangerous was to go any further on the face without a guide and “proper equipment.” Evidently our hiking poles and very nice boots weren’t very impressive.
It was a great hike and wonderful climb. We got so close to the glacier’s face that we could reach out and touch the ice, hear it crack as it melted, and see into the deep blue crevices on the surface.
Late this afternoon it was back in the car for the drive to Haast. The farther south we go the more it really feels like the wilderness it is. In fact, south of Hokitika and for about 200 miles there is only one road going east and west, and only one road along the whole western coast. And the farther south we went, the less traffic we saw. At one point we had to stop for a cattle drive that was taking one lane of the highway, waiting while a heard of huge bulls slowly walked by.