Coast to coast

Four days on the road have brought me from the west coast to the east, where I've finally landed near Christchurch. I’ll start from the beginning…

When I got back to Queenstown on Friday afternoon I was pretty stiff from the bus ride, and since the hill I climbed two weeks prior didn’t end up being the one I thought it was, I organized myself and decided to climb up Queenstown Hill. The trail was SO steep, but the views were totally worth it. The first plateau had a piece of artwork that was placed there in 2000 to symbolize a link between the past and the future. Another ten minutes of huffing and puffing got me to the true summit, and I was rewarded with clear 360 degree views.

Taking a break in the "Basket of Dreams"

On Saturday morning I got up early and headed to the Queenstown airport. My hosts at Martin’s Bay had told me about a service called TransferCar, which basically allows you to have a free car rental for a one-way trip. I’d gotten approved (based on very few criteria) to transfer a car from Queenstown to Christchurch, and a side trip to Franz Josef Glacier fit within the maximum allowed travel distance.

The drive north from Queenstown was like something out of a car commercial. The roads twisted around lakes and clung to the sides of mountains, and most cars sped along with all sorts of confidence. This major thoroughfare also had tons of one-lane bridges. There were no lights or signals, just a sign on each side of the bridge indicating which direction had priority, and everyone figured it out from there. Driving on the left side of the road was an easy adjustment, but being confident that I wasn’t going to fall off the road wasn’t as simple. I ended up skipping all of the roadside opportunities for walks and waterfall-viewing in favor of driving slowly and making it to Franz Josef in time for my scheduled glacier tour.

Surprise! One lane bridge.

One of the big differences between the “highways” here and at home is that all the towns and attractions are right on the road. The town of Franz Josef started at one end of a bridge and extended about four blocks along the main road and three blocks back. Tiny! But they’re well equipped for tourism with numerous hostels, restaurants and glacier-exploration services.

My tour took us in a helicopter (again!) up to the top of the nearby section of the glacier and dropped us at the flat section about half way up. From there we put on crampons and our guide took us on a walk around some photo-worthy spots and eventually for a close look at a waterfall before we headed back to the pickup spot. 

Craggy glacier top from the air

Blue ice cave

Our group trudging along

I wasn't very impressed with the guide, but I did manage to drag out of him an explanation for the formation of this glacier that I think I understand. Basically, the ingredients for a glacier are LOTS of snow and a location that stays pretty cold most of the time. The west coast of NZ gets 5-10 meters of rain per year, so in the mountains that turns into about 30-40 meters of snow per year. Check on the first ingredient! Up in a high basin in the mountains, that snow accumulates and eventually the snow at the bottom gets so compressed that it turns to ice, and as the oxygen gets squeezed out you start seeing blue ice. Then all of that gets so heavy that some of it starts getting forced out and down the mountain with gravity. Much like the cracks that appear when you bend a Swedish Fish, the top surface of the moving ice mass starts to crack as it bends over the slopes of the mountain, and you start to see all the beautiful ice formations appear. Of course, all of this depends on the second ingredient, because if it's not cold enough, the snow will melt before it accumulates enough to compress into ice and get so heavy that it forces some ice out from the bottom and down the mountain. It's normal for a glacier to retreat some during the summer (the melting proceeds faster than the accumulation) and advance in the winter (accumulation proceeds faster than melting) but with the climate change going on, they are seeing an overall trend of retreat at Franz Josef, and estimate it will be gone within the century. So even though I wasn't thrilled with the whole tour experience, I'm still so glad I got to see this amazing natural feature while it still exists.

I spent the night at a hostel in Franz Josef and drove on in the morning. I made a planned detour to Hokitika Gorge for the beautiful blue glacier water, and then drove through more stunning and scary mountain roads to the east coast. On the eastern side of the mountains, the scenery is noticeably less green, but empty and beautiful anyways.

Beautiful blue in Hokitika

Rockslide shelter and diverted waterfall on the mountain road

Headed east

I gladly returned the car in Christchurch and took a rest at my hostel before venturing into the city. I first took a walk into the botanical gardens and surrounding park, which were much more Europe-centric than the ones in Auckland. They were created for the first British settlers to help them feel more at home, so the theme makes sense, but they have added more NZ native plants since then.

Later that evening and the next day I walked around wherever I felt like. I had a map for the flower festival that was going on and branched out from there. After lunch I felt like I needed more information, and spent a few hours in the "Quake City" museum/info center. It has been almost exactly three years since the M7.1 earthquake hit Christchurch, and evidence of it is everywhere. There are tributes to the 185 lives lost, the cathedral that used to be a focal point of the city is still in ruins, and abandoned lots and roadblocks make the central city seem more like a ghost town. I watched nearly an hour of a looping film where people told their stories of that day, ranging from funny to tragic. I learned that as a result of the earthquake, nearly 70% of the buildings in the city will be demolished. The one good thing coming out of all this is the opportunity for a complete redesign of the city. During the initial cleanup, lots of businesses moved into the suburbs, making room for new green spaces and public areas. They've already created the Restart Mall, where shops are conducting business out of storage containers, and empty lots are becoming sites of gardens and public art. Much of this is probably temporary, but it is bringing lots of hope into the city in the meantime. It's a good reminder of how lucky I am to have grown up in a place where our big natural events usually just mean a day without power and an excuse to play in the snow.

Cathedral in shambles

Temporary cathedral made of cardboard tubes

Restart Mall

One of the flower festival arrangements

In the late afternoon I got picked up by my next HelpX hosts and have already been hard at work taking care of olive trees. Unfortunately I missed the lavender harvest and processing, but there are still some flowers on the plants that escaped the machines, and they smell wonderful. I'll put more on this position into another post.

As a final note, I'd like to give an appreciative shout-out to the public bathrooms of New Zealand. Plentiful, clean, free, and conveniently located. What a wonderful idea!