the west coast

January 14^th

Today was a driving day. We left Queenstown, biding adieu to our 2-bedroom apartment. We stopped for lunch in a town called Wanaka about an hour north of Q’town. It was said to be a sort of mini-Queenstown—shouldering up to a huge lake, mountains within reach but the feel of the town was much less Aspen-like and more manageable. We stopped here to have a picnic lunch by the skate park. It seemed to me that the kids who were practicing on their bikes and skateboards on the half pipes and ramps were significantly less intense than the kids in the US that I’m used to watching. They were chatty and had some sort of turn-taking system that everyone respected. Of course, they can’t help that their lilting accents take away from their adolescent edge, but it was more than just the sounds of their voices. They were kind to each other. They seemed to be having genuine fun rather than working at self-conscious posturing. They were engaged with each other rather than separated by their own individual angst. It was odd to see, though I imagine they must be so much happier than the skaters I’m used to seeing. Gabe was so mesmerized, as he always is at skate parks, that we probably called him a dozen times before he broke out of his trance and ran to catch up with us.

We were all in great spirits and ready to take on the road after having a luxurious 3 nights in one place. It was on the west coast that I was most taken by how open this country is. They have not bulldozed or conquered or tamed very much of it at all. I’d love to see the stats on this: the proportion of untouched land to impacted land in the US compared to the south island of NZ. There were these tiny little towns of 1000 people, give or take a few hundred, separated on all sides by 50, 75, 100 kilometers or more of nature in her natural state. Of course, the US has uninhabited land, but most of it is either above 12,000 feet, or up to its knees in swamp, or laying low and flat in Iowa (no offense, Dean.) This land out here is gorgeous, very inhabitable, but it just isn’t. I spent a lot of time thinking that I might know a bit about what the natives and the pioneers encountered as they spread out across America hundreds and thousands of years ago.

As we moved further north, we entered the rain forest. The west coast of the south island is known for its torrential rain falls. That afternoon, it rained torrentially. And boy does that land wear it well. The rocks were leaking with waterfalls and I think if we’d have stopped and stood still for a few minutes we’d have heard the trees slurping. It also allowed us to cover a lot of ground because anytime the kids said they were bored, we just said, “Okay, let’s stop and get out here!” And they’d look out the window and find something else to do.

We arrived at our next hotel in Fox Glacier a bit road-worn for, as fabulous as it was to be in the thick of the forest in the rain, the narrow curves and steep ups and downs took their tolls on us both. Fox Glacier and Franz Joseph Glacier are two big spots for out-of-towners to get their hands and feet and eyes right on the glaciers, which we intended to visit the next morning. We arrived in the late afternoon and because the rain was still drenching the world outside, we hung out in our hotel room and played games and ate snacks for dinner.

But one can only hang out in a car and hotel room for so long when one is five or seven years old, no matter how hard it is raining. So…we put on all the waterproof clothing we could find and ventured out. The town was tiny so there wasn’t anything to do but walk around outside. We came upon a hiking trail just outside of town that brought us into the heart of a rain forest in the middle of a rain storm. It was dark and magical. Everything dripped. The little creek that ran through it was swollen and gushing. It felt like the tiny green things on the trees and ground were growing right before our eyes. And we got to run around. This was certainly the highlight of the day for all of us.

January 15th

We fell asleep with the rain and woke up to a blue sky. We got ourselves up and out and drove to the base of Fox Glacier. The sad thing is that the other night, when Gabe and Mark were learning all about rugby in the park in Queenstown, Gabe hurt his leg. At first we brushed it off as sore muscles but here it was three days later and he was limping. We thought he may have stretched a ligament so we decided that a big hike was not in the cards for the Goodmans on this day. (I can tell you now that Gabe’s leg has since healed so it was probably just a stretched ligament or muscle that needed some rest.) We got to a place where we could see the glacier but we didn’t quite touch it.

They are quite a sight, glaciers. I have been to St. Mary’s Glacier outside Idaho Springs and spent some time hiking around up there so the scene was not completely foreign to me. Nonetheless, this glacier was a monstrous, frozen, blue, chunky river taking up an enormous amount of space. They say it moves up to a foot a day either up or down but it looked pretty solid there to me.

The problem was the clouds. Though we woke up to a blue sky, there were a few clouds that hung up high in the sky. These clouds were so skilled at concealing their mountains that I wasn’t even sure they were there. I finally asked Mark how there could be glaciers at such low altitude with no mountains around. Mark said they were all there, just veiled.

We visited Franz Joseph glacier as well and took a very short walk to a lookout point. Same thing—a great river of ice in between two big clouds.

And they remained veiled the rest of the day. It felt like the clouds were like toddlers, hiding their favorite toys and refusing to show them to anyone. I felt a bit cheated. Right in front of me were glorious 9,000 foot, snow-covered peaks that I couldn’t see. I realized we were probably really lucky to have gotten such a good view of Mt. Cook when we visited there 10 days earlier. But I figured out the secret. If you get up really early in the morning to go for a run, the clouds will not be expecting you and you will be able to see the peaks. That’s what I did and it worked. By the time Mark was up and running, the clouds had already come in to hide their bounty.

We drove north to the town of Hokitika and were back on the coast. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before but if there is one word that could describe the entire south island of New Zealand it would be windy. Not that that is the most important characteristic but it is certainly the most consistent. Hokitika was no exception. We had a hotel right on the beach (which sounds much more exotic than it actually is in a town of 4000 people.) But because we were in a hotel right on the beach and because we hadn’t really seen the ocean since we were on Stewart Island, we wanted to go play there. But the wind made it pretty formidable so we went and walked around in their little town. Their claim to tourist fame was glass blowing and jade stone jewelry. But they close the town at about 5:00 so we missed most of it.

After dinner, the winds died down which is something to write home about. We bee-lined for the beach so the kids could play and Mark and I could talk. That seemed to be the way it was on the beach. This evening’s beach time was memorable because of the lighting. This was the latest we’d been out on a beach and we were now on the west coast. So the sun was low in the sky and just beginning to shed a pinkish glow on the sand and white ocean spray. It was beautiful. The kids were thrilled to be up on the little sand dunes digging tunnels to each other through the mounds of sand. I can’t say that they ever reached the other side of any of the hills but they were very happy trying.