The Southern Alps

Oh la la, after such a long time, we are back on the blog. And I have to say: Welcome to the North Island of New Zealand! Since yesterday, we are up here in Wellington but as we are so far behind with our stories on the blog, we'll take a journey back South to get you up to date!

Did I say that this country is incredible? Yeah, I guess I did and I wouldn't want to take it back, but we definitely have to add another two adjectives to that. This country is not only incredible, it is also very, very, very, very wet and very, very, very, very cold! Brrrr! I know I should not be complaining because we knew that New Zealand would be like that but heaven forbid we expected to live the worst spring in history here!!! I will not bore you with stories about all the things and hikes we couldn't do but just for the ones amongst you who know New Zealand a little bit better, we couldn't go an rent kayaks down in the Fiordland National Park (we would have frozen to the boats) and we couldn't do a single one of the great several day hikes, because Routeburn and Kepler were closed due to avalanche danger, snow and ice.

But of course, we never run out of ideas and so here we go with another couple of stories about the two of us exploring the Southern region of New Zealand's South Island (we are getting closer and closer to Antartica!!!). After Wanaka, we went on to the country's adrenaline capital Queenstown but as we are no too keen on Bungy jumping and spending ridiculous amounts of money, we went straight on to the less touristy region in the North of Queenstown's lake (Glenorchy). Our first day, we tried hiking up to a Glacier but the track was a litte ruined by bad weather, a lot of clouds, a continuous drizzle, and the worst winds ever. We were tough and continued to the very top to actually touch snow for the first time here but we could not really appreciate the experience and were a little frustrated.

The next day, however, surprised us with sun and a blue sky! Of course, I had to profit from the five minutes when I was not frozen and decided to go swimming in the lake next to our wild campground. The proof is here in picture and the idea was really great because I was back frozen in about 3 seconds! :) So if you feel like laughing about my position, try to swim in water with less than 10 degrees celcius and then we'll talk again.

After this refreshing morning bath, we were highly motivated to climb Mount Alfred, advertised by the tourist info as a "nice day hike". It said that the beginning would be a nice path with zig-zags (Serpentinen), then a rather unmarked route and that the end above the tree line would be rather steep and exposed (please take care of the farmer's sheep was our order!). Well, when we first started, we thought they had forgotten to put in the zig-zags because the nice path was so steep! However, when we got to the unmarked route, we found out that we actually had had zig-zags! Now, we were going right up the mountain in a straight line - or as straight as possible while trying to avoid huge mud pools, tree trunks, rocks,... We were actually getting a little worried about the rest of the hike but when we finally got to the tree line, we had to take a deep breath before continuing our track. Before us, there was knee-deep, wet and slippery grass, loose and slippery slate (Schieffer) and then - a high wall! Hmmm, exposed and steep! I would call that climbing but well! (The picture in David's text shows our route!!!)

Of course, having come that far, we couldn't juste turn around, so on we went and when we finally got to the top, we were rewarded with the most astonishing views. Every second of the the hard climb was worth-while the effort and we enjoyed the place while having our well-deserved lunch. Unfortunately, new clouds were building up rather fast and we were a little worried about our way back, so we didn't stop for too long. I'll spare you our journey back down, let's just say, I could feel my knees for the next couple of days!

After this nice experience we thought we should not try the weather-gods too much, be content with one beautiful day and move on. The mountains had caught our attention and we thought we might try and climb Ben Lomond near Queenstown and get another 400m higher than Mount Alfred. As you may imagine by now, we ended up being stranded in bad weather once more and only climbed the tiny Queenstown city hill from where we had a great view of Ben Lomond and plenty of time to think about where we could have been had it not been for the weather... it was a rather mean situation! However, we were partly compensated by the most wonderful campground imaginable - right in the middle of a sheep and cow paddock and next to a mirror lake. We loved the place even though we had to cook on the grass as there were no tables. But that's life in the wilderness and we had a lot of fun running after the little lambs.

Now David is telling me that our post is getting too long and that I have to start a new one - so here we go.