Haast to Hokitika

February 4-6/2011:

Today we leave the “Haast” and head to Hokitika, home of the Wild Foods Festival in mid-March. Take note, when they say “wild foods” they don’t just mean a feral pig or two they mean grubs, eels, possum, weird bird eggs, unidentifiable sea creatures, and so on. Mmmm, I can smell the whitebait fritters already (immature river smelt scrambled into eggs….all those little eyes are just peering back at ya while you enjoy that lovely fritter!). On our journey up the wild west coast of the South Island of New Zealand we will get the chance to visit two glaciers, the Fox Glacier and the Franz Josef Glacier. We chose the Fox but I am not sure why since “Franz Josef” is a Hungarian name and wouldn’t it make sense for a pure-blooded Hungarian to visit a glacier named after one of the Hungarian kings? Apparently it was actually named after a geologist, but my keen Magyar sense tells me his parents must have had a touch of “hunky” in them.

The glacier was not quite as we expected. Having lived and traveled in Alaska, we have come across all manner of glacier, big and small. Most have a huge U-shaped valley containing said glacier, with a moraine terminus (big hunk of messy gravel pile mixed with ice) at the lowest point and a raging river pouring out of it. We had that here, minus terminal moraine. In fact, there was a huge ice cave at the headwater of the glacial river.

We read that the Fox Glacier is receding at the rate of 150-300 feet per year and there were signs as we approached the glacier indicating the dates that it was at that spot. The one noting 1910 was back over 3 miles from the location of the glacier today. We hiked to the end of the trail where there were signs with severe warnings indicating that only experienced mountaineers and guided tours were allowed to pass that point. 

We met this "guy's" wife and kid in Hokitika a day later!

The hilarious aspect of this was the “guided tours” filing past us. It was a fleet of tourists all wearing identical, vastly over-sized, Gore-tex shells (not a drop of rain fell but it was glumly gray) with the name of the tour concession on it and a monotonous parade of identical rental hiking boots (with the exception of a few rugged tourists who declined the added cost of the rental and went onward with their paper thin worn Jandals (Kiwi name for Japanese sandals or flip flops). Really folks it was pretty entertaining watching all the Germans, Americans, Dutch, French, Spaniards, Chinese, etc. walking by like sheep being herded in the appropriate “uniform” just so that they could walk out about 100 meters up onto the edge of the glacier. We just sat down at the end of the trail and enjoyed a great picnic lunch and watched our tourist spectacle unfold before us, for free (lunch show included!).

Alisa & Maia. Maia says, "do we have to walk any farther?"

Once we got our requisite glacier under our belts, we continued up the coast to Hokitika…under gray skies that looked ready to unload on us any minute. This part of the trip had few photographs due to the deeply overcast skies and occasional rain.

One of the few photo opportunities in the Wild West side; New Zealand Alps

Finally we arrived in Hokitika, a quaintly small town with a frontier feel about it. We found our rental house 4 km north of town, got settled in, and immediately went for a walk on the beach…more gray, but hey, we go to Seaside in the WINTER to surf and we’ve lived in Seattle AND Kodiak AND Spokane:) Regardless, after 5 hours in a car, ANY walk on ANY beach is welcome, and Maia could not agree more. 

At the beach at last!

Our only disappointment besides the gray was blown-out conditions for surf (apparently there is not really any surf in Hokitika, just huge flat beaches with mushy gnarly sneaker waves).

Blown out surf...drat!

There was a high point though. The rental house had an outdoor bathtub in the back of the house overlooking the ocean…an instant hit with Maia who nagged all through dinner that she wanted to “take a bath”, and “take a bath” she did!

Maia's favorite place after a romp on the beach:) It gets rid of all that beach sand that gets into EVERYWHERE!

The next day arrived with continued flat gray skies that looked as if they would unload truckloads of rain any minute. Alisa and I took off in the afternoon with the mini-van to the north in search of surf; BTW, the van has been renamed Chewbacca, or Chewwie for short, due to the CHU33 license plate;>

We found 3 surf spots but all were blown out by the wind being caused by the current weather system. Alas, we never got to get our toes wet…going on 10 days now without a surf session in New Zealand, “the horror” (yep, enjoy that “Apocalypse Now” fans, I did!); that just means I will really have some catching up to do when the time comes. We came back to the house and settled into an evening of light rain, wind and some good Sauvignon Blanc with dinner.