Thoughtfully acknowledging that my inflatable kayak wasn't necessarily satisfying my desire to get out on some multi-day kayak adventures, Andrea had the superb idea of getting me a kayak trip in Fiordland for my birthday (I think she secretly may have had some appetite for such a trip as well).
Some good advice from the lonely planet led us to choose Doubtful Sound as opposed to Milford Sound. After booking, and before the actual trip, we visited Milford Sound and were quite happy with our decision. Milford, while beautiful, felt a bit like a lineup at an amusement park. There were lines of busses waiting to board boats which left every thirty minutes - it felt far from the tranquil wilderness we were hoping to kayak through.
Anyway, the day arrives that we're to report for our trip. We head to the Fiordland Wilderness Experiences office in Te Anau for our safety briefing and equipment sizing. The rest of the group seems a bit quirky but fit enough to not be slowing us down too much :). There are to be eight of us on the trip all paddling two person sea kayaks, plus our guide who will paddle solo. The group consists of:
Thiery and Colline, from Belgium who speak French and a little English
Rob and Mel, from the UK, just married and on their honeymoon
Greg, from the Wales, a business lecturer on sabbatical
Tara, from Vancouver, taking a year off university between first and second year whose parents were actually Kayak guides for 10 years in my Uncle Jim's adventure travel company (Eco Summer)
Andrea and I
Will - a Maori Kiwi who has been guiding Kayak trips for over 10 years and who prefers the longer multi-day trips because it means he can spend more days in the wilderness and less days setting up.
The kayak company provides us with wet suits, polypropylene long sleeve shirts, a fleece jacket, a rain jacket, a spray skirt, dry bags for our personal gear, tents and therma rests. In addition to this, they had a few other surprises which they'd pull out on the trip.
Our first day we get up at 5am, its still dark out, and its incredibly chilly. We park, say goodbye to our trusty campervan (the fridge loaded with Ice as it doesn't like long stints withouth us driving), and pile into a van for a short trip to Manapouri. From Manapouri, we load our gear into a fairly large ferry, travel across Lake Manapouri, unload our gear from the ferry, get into our kayak getups, pile into ANOTHER van for a longer ride to doubtful sound. At the kayak launch point, we take the gear from the last of the vans and begin loading it into the boats - the sandflies, kind of like really big blackflies, are absolutely ravenous.
Once out on the sound, however, the flies, the gear transfers, the early morning, all fade away. The sound (which is actually a fiord we soon learn), is calm, the sky blue, and the temperature now quite comfortable.
The trip highlights included:
- Penguins: on the first day, we ran into two yellow finned penguins, which are a protected species who are typically quite shy, but who swam around the nose of our boat about three feet away Andrea.
- Dolphins: day two brought the dolphins. We woke up to a perfectly still fiord and could see the dolphins spraying water across the bay. We quickly rushed into our boats and paddled over nearby. The dolphins proceeded to swim with us for the next two hours, jumping beside us, playing, swimming underneath our boats, and seemingly putting on a show for us. The only thing that distracted us was the beautiful scenery, the mountains reflecting on the near perfectly still water (the only ripples coming from either our boats or the jumping dolphins), and the waterfalls tumbling down the kilometer-high sheer rock faces which plunged into the fiord.
- the shelter: one of the key surprises unfurled by Will was a bug shelter for us to dine in and generally take refuge from the sandflies (really, I'm from northern Ontario and these were some of the worst bugs I've ever seen). The shelter provided us with a great place to get to know the rest of the group, share some box wine (another surprise of Will's), and discuss the beauty of what we'd seen.
- the beach fire under a perfectly clear starry sky
- swimming in the fiord, the top layer of warmer freshwater mixing with the colder salt water underneath, and a seal coming to come visit me.
Overall, the trip was absolutely incredible and an amazing birthday gift. While the photos capture a few great moments, the trip truly was an experience which can't be captured in a few frames.
Thanks Andrea for the great birthday gift which is so far the highlight of the trip!
Thursday, 26 March 2009
Kayaking and Tramping
So it's been a while since we've updated the blog...reason being that we've been doing a lot of fun stuff! In the last week and a half, we've visited milford sound, hiked a few short hikes, kayaked for three days in Doubtful sound (which was out of this world amazing - we kayaked with dolphins!), and then we had one day in town (Te Anau), followed by a 3 day hike along the Kepler Track, one of New Zealands 'Great Walks'. All of this has been in Fiordland National Park, which is the biggest national park in New Zealand. The scenery is AMAZING - huge mountains that plummet down into super deep lakes and fiords. Gavin's going to write about the kayak trip, so I'll write a bit about the Kepler Track 'Tramp' that we did! In total, it was about 60 kms - and we split it about 15kms the first day up to Luxmore Hut (from Lake Te Anau up to the Alpine area of Mt Luxmore...a lot of up), then a night in the Luxmore 'hut', which was pretty cool. It slept about 55 hikers, and was full, a lot of different groups of people hiking the Kepler Track. Communal cooking area
(with gas stoves provided) and a few bunk rooms (where they suplied bunks and mattresses, and we brought our sleeping bags). Amazingly, they also had flush toilets and running water (absolute luxury). Day two we hiked another 15 kms, entirely through the alpine, up to the summit of Mt Luxmore (with gorgeous views), and then along the saddle / ridge, with a pretty steep decent through to the second hut (Iris Burn Hut) near the Iris Burn stream, back in the tree-line. That hut also slept 55, and it was roughly the same group as the night before. The sleeping arrangements were good, although it was a little bit tough sleeping in a bunk room with snoring old men, and people going to bed / getting up at different times, so we didn't get the best sleeps, but it was totally worth it for the hiking. The last day, we then hiked out (most people do the hike in 4 days, with the last day spent at another hut), but we hiked past it for a 32 km day, all of the way back into Te Anau...my legs were VERY sore at the end of it (and a few blisters later), but it felt great when we got back! We also managed to avoid the threatening rain, so managed to make it back nice and dry :) The views on the hike were gorgeous, and we hiked through a bunch of terrain that they actually used in filming lord of the rings! Moss-covered forests, rivers etc. it was magical :) It was also fun doing a hike where we carried all of our food / clothes / sleeping bags etc.- but it's amazing how accessible the huts make getting into the backcountry - not having to cart a tent and stove/gas was fantastic. It's really too bad that there isn't a network of huts like this in Canada...there are over 1000 of them in New Zealand scattered about the different national parks, creating a huge network of tracks. It's so nice! We're definitely planning on doing another multi-day hike (likely in the Abel Tasman National Park).
Now we're all dry, clothes washed, fed and happy, back in humanity, and about to head south to Invercargill, then the Catlins, then Dunedin. We'll post photos as soon as we can! Huge hugs!
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(with gas stoves provided) and a few bunk rooms (where they suplied bunks and mattresses, and we brought our sleeping bags). Amazingly, they also had flush toilets and running water (absolute luxury). Day two we hiked another 15 kms, entirely through the alpine, up to the summit of Mt Luxmore (with gorgeous views), and then along the saddle / ridge, with a pretty steep decent through to the second hut (Iris Burn Hut) near the Iris Burn stream, back in the tree-line. That hut also slept 55, and it was roughly the same group as the night before. The sleeping arrangements were good, although it was a little bit tough sleeping in a bunk room with snoring old men, and people going to bed / getting up at different times, so we didn't get the best sleeps, but it was totally worth it for the hiking. The last day, we then hiked out (most people do the hike in 4 days, with the last day spent at another hut), but we hiked past it for a 32 km day, all of the way back into Te Anau...my legs were VERY sore at the end of it (and a few blisters later), but it felt great when we got back! We also managed to avoid the threatening rain, so managed to make it back nice and dry :) The views on the hike were gorgeous, and we hiked through a bunch of terrain that they actually used in filming lord of the rings! Moss-covered forests, rivers etc. it was magical :) It was also fun doing a hike where we carried all of our food / clothes / sleeping bags etc.- but it's amazing how accessible the huts make getting into the backcountry - not having to cart a tent and stove/gas was fantastic. It's really too bad that there isn't a network of huts like this in Canada...there are over 1000 of them in New Zealand scattered about the different national parks, creating a huge network of tracks. It's so nice! We're definitely planning on doing another multi-day hike (likely in the Abel Tasman National Park).
Now we're all dry, clothes washed, fed and happy, back in humanity, and about to head south to Invercargill, then the Catlins, then Dunedin. We'll post photos as soon as we can! Huge hugs!
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