Sunny Monday

As you might have guessed from my not making a post soon after breakfast, the rain forest tour did take place beginning at 8:00 am.  But, as it turned out, it wasn't so much a rain forest hike, but rather a combination rain forest, beach walking/scrambling, seal watching, and cliff climbing adventure.  And what an adventure it was!  The sun did break through by 8:30, and we had a spectacular trip, led by Gerry, the owner of Wilderness Lodge, and since last December, its manager.  But, I'm getting ahead of myself......allow me to first catch up with our adventures yesterday.  And, by the way, I notice in looking at our blog after being published, it dates the blog on the day of the week in the US, not the day here.  We were 21 hours ahead of PST, but now that Daylight Saving Time has kicked in (thank you Dave and Kitty for mentioning it in your comment) we're now 20 hours ahead.   The other thing I'll mention at this point is that I'm not going to upload any images from here. They charge by the megabyte, and at the rate web pages download, it's a pretty slow bandwidth.  Probably satellite I would guess.

Now about yesterday (Sunday): We all loaded up the van in Wanaka after breakfast and drove along the shores of Lake Wanaka for some length of time heading West on Route 6. The weather was a little threatening with rain coming at intervals.  A few miles East of Haast Pass we stopped, and Scott, Pat, and Julian got on their bikes.  (Julian is the "sweep" and responsible that no one gets left behind.)  The rest of us stayed in the van and drove to the top of the pass. At that point it was not raining, and I decided that I wanted to ride the remaining 40 miles to Haast.  The descent starts pretty gentle, but soon gets quite steep, and with wet roads and occasional cattle guards, speed control was necessary.  I had to stop once just to rest my hands from clutching the brakes so constantly.  I was in and out of sunshine and showers (and sometimes both at the same time) for quite a few miles. The van passed me and we had lunch at a rest area.  Soon after that Scott, Pat, and Julian had caught up with me, and we all headed further down the road together.  Then the rain really got serious.  At some point Scott decided he had enough.  Simon stopped the van with 18 miles yet to go, and asked if I wanted to call it a day, but I was so soaked by then I decided I might as well keep going.  So Pat, Julian and I continued on thru a deluge of rain, but WE MADE IT!  We all felt like drowned rats, and probably looked like it as well!
After a brief rest at the Haast Visitor Center we all got in the van, and arrived at Wilderness Lodge a half hour or so later.  A hot shower and dry clothes never felt so good.

The Wilderness Lodge is a beautiful place just a few feet from the Maoraki River.  Susan and I had stayed here in 2001, and had fond memories of the place. In the meantime they have remodeled and built new rooms, and it is even more up to date and pleasant.  Any of you considering a NZ trip should plan on at least 2 nights here.  Soon after arriving, Gerry led us on a short walk to see the eels that inhabit this river.  The river, of course, is fresh water, but apparently these eels go all the way to the Solomon Islands as part of their life cycle.  Gerry explained that these were all females, and some were up to 4 feet long.  The males are much shorter.  I took lots of pictures and will try to include them in a future post.  After a super dinner of either lamb or salmon, we gathered out front and took a long walk along Route 6 (not a single car!) and looked for glow worms. There were quite a few, and their glow is very much like a dimmer version of our lightning bugs except they don't flash....they just glow. That was it for the day.

Now for today's nature walk: After an early breakfast we took a short van ride south along the coast, and got out at a wide spot in the road.  We walked maybe 3/4 of a mile through rain forest, and the first clue this was not your grandmother's nature walk was when we had to cross a fast flowing stream.....4 times!  Good by dry shoes, socks, and about a foot of pant leg.  The next challenge was climbing a bluff maybe 40 or 50 feet, using ropes to pull ourselves up.  A short distance later, we used ropes to descend about the same distance. If any of you are wondering if Susan was with us at this point, the answer is YES.  Before ascending the first cliff, she said to me "READ MY LIPS: ONCE IN A LIFETIME".  As it turned out that was not true.  When we left the beach later we went back a different way, and had to use ropes to climb the bluff, about 300 feet of it using ropes and another 300 feet of only slightly less slope.  When we finally exited the rain forest we walked out on a pristine beach, with waves from the Southern Ocean crashing against off-shore rocks, and waterfalls coming off the bluffs.  We continued down this beach about 2 miles, scrambling through boulder fields, running around points with the waves chasing us (and sometimes getting caught)

I've been interrupted 3 or 4 times in writing this posting, due to their internet system cutting me off and I lose everything I've typed since it was last saved.  It's just happened again, and it's too late to rebuild what I've lost.  I'll try to pick up the story as soon as I can.  We're off on the bikes tomorrow, heading for glacier country.   Jim