After the ice, the beach. Justin and I decided to do a classic Kiwi great walk, but nothing too strenuous. We chose the 51km Abel Tasman Coast Track and took our sweet time (6 days instead of 4) to complete it. While Justin provided an in-depth account of our journey on foot, I just want to share what I thought was the most amazing phenomenon. The tides.

Living in San Francisco and being close to the Pacific Ocean, we of course are familiar with the concept of tides. But here, we could witness them in a major way. A whole inlet could be either completely full of water or completely empty in a few hours.

Here’s an example: Bark Bay. This is the view from the hut towards the bay (or inlet) at high tide around 2pm.

The same bay at around 4pm… half drained.

And the same bay at around 6pm, at low tide.

This full retraction and full flood of water happens twice a day. Locals say that the water rises between 1 and 2 meters every time, but can reach 4 to 5 meters at certain times of the year, depending on the moon position.

It blows my mind that the moon does this. Being mostly made of water, no wonder we sometimes feel agitated on a full moon!

A few days ago we were in glacier land in New Zealand and we decided to take a day-long guided hike on the Franz Josef Glacier. There’s a lot I could say about this hike, but right now, I’d like to focus on my fears.
The morning of the hike, the guide company showed us on a laminated print some features we’d be seeing during the day and how far up the glacier we were going.

Those of you who know me well, know that I have a tendency to be claustrophobic. I don’t like feeling stuck (literally and figuratively). At the time we signed up, I had no idea we would be going through tight crevasses and ice caves. The “cool” features. Eeeck! That immediately triggered an “Oh no! I don’t want to get stuck!” feeling in me.

All morning, we hiked “on” the glacier which was absolutely mind blowing (and we’ll post more photos about that). After lunch, that’s when we started going “in” the glacier.

I was then presented with this extremely cool but slightly intimidating crevasse we were going to walk through.

I kept my smile going into it…

Umm this is getting a little tight…

Whoa those walls are tall…

Ahh, get me outta here!

The axe! I can get out with the axe!

Bah don’t worry, this is just play. I really was nervous, but thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Being in a glacier crevasse is quite mind boggling, therefore totally worth it. In front of the coolness of this natural phenomenon, poof poof my fears went away.

Today is Halloween (and the spirit is not exactly Halloweeny in the rainforest of New-Zealand’s south island) but most importantly, five years ago, Justin and I kissed for the first time. Little did we know (he in his Halloween costume, me in my sweaty rehearsal clothes) that such a fantastic companionship awaited us.

The last 5 years have been full of love, surprises and laughter. We evolved in the same direction at the same time. And now, here we are, in New Zealand, after 2 months of travels already. He is the best adventure partner I could ever dream of.

Happy 5, my love!

One of my favorite photos of us. On the Cap Cleveland, in tune with who we are and where we want to be. Right then. Right there.

Queenstown is the adventure capital of the world… and rightfully so, you can do anything you could possibly imagine would get your blood pumpin’. From the original bungy jump to jetboating on river rapids to paragliding to “heli-hiking” to swinging over a gorge to skidiving, you name it. Of course all activities cost about $150 and up, so you could leave your entire wallet here very easily.

While we were in Queenstown, the weather was pretty moody, so we couldn’t really get into anything highly outdoorsy (or let’s say… we didn’t want to). To keep our spendings up, we did walk around town and find some good deals on Merino Wool shirts, which are a New Zealand pride and are supposed to be the wonder-garment for travelers… it doesn’t stink. So there, Queenstown, we still contributed to the economic well-being of the lovely alpine town that you are.

View of Lake Wakatipu from the Skyline Complex.

We did however take advantage of some blue sky patches to hike up to the Skyline Complex and ride the luge. It was the cheapest activity to do and as it turns out… it was a lot of fun!

Justin, ready to luge!

Down I go on the luge with the stunning scenery in the background. Justin was holding the camera with two fingers while handling the luge and with all the vibrations of the track, the camera stopped recording after a bit, but at least you can get a feel of the ride. Weeeee!

It’s been a little over a week we’re in the South Island and we’ve seen SO many things. I won’t list them all, but some highlights were Kaikoura and swimming with dolphins. Despite the moody weather and the insanely cold water, the experience of swimming and playing with wild dolphins was mesmerizing. Glacier water fed lake Tekapo and lake Pukaki also were sights we felt lucky to have witnessed.

I previously mentioned that Justin and I have not made any research before arriving to NZ. It was true except for the fact that once, I looked at Google maps and noticed that there was a Fjordland National Park on the South Island and that you could kayak in the fjords. That is the only thing I said to myself: we *have* to do this… and so we did.

We arranged a 4 hour kayak tour in Milford Sound. I want to take a quick second to explain that Milford sound is actually not a sound, it’s a fjord. What’s the difference, you ask? A fjord was carved out by a glacier, making a giant U-shaped valley and then is flooded by the ocean. On the other hand, a sound is created by a river and forms a V-shaped valley which is then flooded by the ocean. Milford sound was mis-named and they never really corrected it. However they tried to bring back some accuracy by naming the National Park “Fjordland“.

The towering mountains of Milford sound.

The result of the glacier carving and the ocean flooding means that the mountains surrounding the water are very high and abrupt, and the water way is comparatively relatively narrow. Also, this area is notorious for its rainfall, which means loads of waterfalls everywhere!

In our awesomely fashionable kayaking gear. Stripy thermals!

Another particularity of the fjord is that salt water meets fresh water. You’d think they would both blend and create a vaguely less salty water, but no. The salt water being denser, it sinks and stays at the bottom of the fjord, while the fresh water, which is very dark (described as if it were a layer of coffee over the salt water layer), floats atop. Because of this phenomenon, the salt water layer has very little light and attracts some deep sea fish species that think it’s way deeper than it really is because it’s so dark. Scientists love that area since it’s a rare opportunity to observe otherwise very hard to see deep sea animals.

A view from our kayak.

The kayaking experience made us feel “in” the fjord rather than observing it from the deck of a tour boat. It was spectacular and probably my favorite activity so far. We had the time to absorb the scenery and feel the scale of the surrounding mountains. The power of nature is really quite impressive.

We had a blast!

Just for fun, here’s a little old timey effect on the beautiful site.

This is a video I’ve been meaning to post, but never had enough internet bandwidth to do so (until today, yay!). The view we had inside our Cap Cleveland cabin gave us an up-close and personal sight of how the containers were being loaded. Fascinating!

This was in Savannah, and they were loading containers with over-sized tires (most likely for some kind of ginormous tractor) in the compartments below the main deck level. According to this video, it only takes about a minute to pick up, position and drop off a container on the ship. No wonder we didn’t have a lot of port time!