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| October 2009 | Page 1 Of 1 | |
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Wrong Turn on to the Central Otago Rail Trail
Posted On 2009-10-25 , 3:40 PM
After pledging to sharpen up and improve our fitness, and it wasn’t even New Year, my good friend Val and I had rushed off and bought nice shiny bright red Mountain Bikes from an enthusiastic bike shop owner in the small lake side town of Cromwell, in Central Otago, New Zealand. The owner operator was so caught up in our excitement and long term planning that he threw in water bottles, helmets and a free check up (on the bikes) in the next 4 weeks.
Our first expedition the following week, was to be a short ride alongside the Clutha River from Clyde to Alexandra, both small fruit growing townships in the arid countryside of Central Otago. We whizzed through the ankle deep autumn leaves along the riverside track stopping to watch fish jump, vowing to bring along fishing rods next time, after all we had been to fly fishing courses hadn’t we, and spent hours untangling our lines out of the willow trees.
Along the way we explored derelict gold mines and eventually stopped for some lunch, designer bread and a tin of sardines quickly thrown together. The sardine tin refused to open despite much verbal and physical abuse, so it was designer bread only, washed down with warm water. On we rode through the township of Alexandra and onto a section of the Otago Central Rail Trail that was to take us back to the vehicle we had left in Clyde Township - this last leg should have been an 8-10km ride.
The Central Otago Rail Trail had been set up when the train line from Dunedin, on the east coast of the South Island, to Cromwell became obsolete. It was picked up by an enterprising trust after the lines were sold off and the railway sleepers which were, and still are, very trendy garden accessories fetching great prices. This acquisition smoothed the way for a four day adventure bike ride through arid sun drenched countryside; gorges, tunnels, and passing many old hotels and pubs that were alive and well during the gold mining era in the 1860’s. These relics of the past have all been revamped, reinvented and provide great sleepover accommodation with delicious fresh local gourmet menus and excellent selections of Central Otago wines, which are world class. So what more does one need?
So off we rode, heads down chattering non stop, until after about an hour we stopped took a look around us, and voila - these weren’t the Clyde Hills as we knew them - we had gone blindly off in the wrong direction! The tin of sardines was still not opening, we were literally starving, but we found a laden apple tree and feasted off that whilst deciding which way to go, back or forward.
The decision was to ride on, as we must reach a pub or café soon so we rode on and on getting deeper and deeper into foreign country side. I was booked to go to the movies that evening with friends, so I called my husband (cell phone) to cancel the arrangements as we were lost on the Rail Trail. His comment was “How the $!!?/# do you get lost on a Railway line?” - Well you could, we did and we were.
So it was onto the next tree - the next corner - and yea! around the next corner there were buildings with red roofs. Falling off our bikes with excitement we could hardly walk to the counter of the Chatto Creek Tavern, I will love that place forever. After ordering cappuccinos and chicken wraps, the best we have ever tasted, we regaled the bar with our plight.
The general consensus was to go back the way we had come – but as we could barely make the counter from the bike seat we had to think of smarter options. Then the owner of the establishment came to the rescue. We could take her car the 15kms back to Clyde, collect our vehicle and come back to collect the bikes. Whew - forever grateful we fell into her ‘BRIGHT SHINY RED SPORTS CAR WITH THE ROOF DOWN’ - driving took on a new dimension; we vowed to exchange our boring grannies cars for one of these - after all our bikes would look pretty smart on the back of one of these numbers, with the designer sunglasses on of course - on second thoughts the bikes wouldn’t even fit on the back of one of these delicious little cars.
Back to Chatto Creek and a ‘few’ chardonnays later we departed for the journey home, best friends with everyone in the establishment and prepared to get plenty of ragging from our partners and family when we finally got home. They didn’t let us down!
A few weeks later I dropped into Chatto Creek with a team of organised cyclists, having biked for 2 days solid I couldn’t let them pass Chatto Creek Tavern without having one of their very delicious chicken wraps.
As I crossed the threshold a voice bellowed out “WHOEVER LET YOU OUT AGAIN”
And that’s another story.
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Buy Travel Insurance - To Do it or not To Do it?
Posted On 2009-10-13 , 6:51 PM
Zipping back and forth across the Tasman and popping up to Asia occasionally, we had never ventured out of the country with out Travel Insurance.
We always deliberated over the issue - could we risk avoiding buying Travel Insurance or alternatively should we be responsible and lash out and buy - lashing out always won. Then there was the pouring over pamphlets and latterly web sights to see who had the best deal, because that’s what we were after the very best deal available.
Insurance had always conjured up images of tall concrete sky scrapers totally owned by ‘The Insurance Companies’ financed by my humble contributions. It’s called ‘Peace of Mind’ by some, whilst others referred to it as ‘The White Mans Plague’. I wanted to belong to the latter group but somehow my wanting to be in control of my life I always joined the “Peace of Mind” group.
After many years of buying and never using, which I must add, we were totally fortunate, ‘The Insurance Companies’ were certainly on the make here, I tried to resist on our last trip. The general plan when you go to distant shores is enjoy new climates and cultures and that you stay healthy, and you certainly work on this as the last thing you want is to end up in a foreign hospital out of control of your life.
You certainly don’t want to lose your luggage, your digital camera, notebook computer etc. not that we generally take anything of value but our whole life is on the computer all the family photos, I should imagine it would be totally inconvenient to have to replace your gear in a foreign country, even though you have the occasional flash of tossing the whole wardrobe and splashing out, it all gets too hard and takes valuable time.
Last trip we made a calculated decision not to buy Travel Insurance, and the very next day ABC television announced a really sad story of an Australian man who went to India minus insurance, which he no doubt cursed the day he made that decision, he fell down a bank whilst walking down a road and injured himself so badly he wound up a paraplegic. His medical bills to date were $35,000 and my bet is India isn’t the most expensive medical destination in the world. To fly him back to Australia it was going to cost him a cool $250,000. A really sad story, well presented on TV and lucky for him appealed to the Australian public and no doubt the airlines. The funds were quickly raised for him to return to his friends and family.
Then I recalled the horrendous time my niece had, contracting Malaria in Indonesia, she knowingly hopped a plane to Kuala Lumpur and ending up in Hospital there on renal dialysis and life support. My sister fronted up every morning at Administration to pay her daily NZ$1,000, which fortunately the Insurance Company reimbursed. They couldn’t have been more helpful, bringing in translators, supplying accommodation, support person and constantly checking on her and my niece’s progress.
Ah so this is where the money goes. I didn’t mind a bit of that although I would have preferred my niece not to have had the horrendous experience. Fortunately the story has a happy ending, and despite all odds Pip now participates in Iron woman competitions and runs marathons, etc.
I digress - so a quick turn around, we could not wander or explore and enjoy distant shores knowing we could be a liability to our family. So ‘Peace of Mind’ lured its lovely head yet again and off we ventured not a worry in the world knowing if anything happened we would be taken care of.
I do strongly recommend if you can’t afford Travel Insurance - stay at home - or lower your sights and aspirations and buy it, do the back packers and eat McDonalds - way to go, at least you get to go.
We do recommend Travel Insurance - it’s affordable, covers the field, and we know they do care when the chips are down.
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A Wet Trip on the Famous Routeburn Track
Posted On 2009-10-08 , 10:12 PM
 My friend from Brisbane, that I had met whilst we both were doing an 8 week contract at the Cooktown Hospital one winter, decided to come across to New Zealand and hike the famous Routeburn Track, of course I couldn’t let her do it alone.
We had had a great eight weeks together at Cooktown ‘Hash House Harriers’ where we plunged into the Australian bush, following pieces of toilet paper attached to trees, ending up at a fellow Harrier’s yard, whilst he/she stumbled off to rescue a pot of Cooktown stew and arrive back still jogging with it under his sweaty armpit.
We climbed Mt Cook, the highest Mountain in the region which saved me climbing ‘Mt Cook’ at home which is about 3300m higher than the Cooktown model. We hiked to isolated beaches, explored WW11 relics along the isolated coast line and enjoyed fun meals together.
We then planned to walk the Routeburn track together and established that Feb was the best time for weather, generally being settled at that time and warm enough for an Aussie to handle, me being a Kiwi I was used to diverse weather conditions. Her daughter and partner also decided to accompany her which was great, the only small problem being that these three delightful people didn’t eat anything that had been killed!!!!
Now here was a challenge, I was pretty excited about them coming to our lovely town and planned lots of sightseeing and fun places to explore before our 3 day 2 night hike. I sat in the sun and devoured vegan recipe books, jotted own menus, trialled vegan dishes on my carnivore shoot anything with 4 legs husband. In fact even the poor old shag that settled on a jetty pole above the lake in front of our house got plugged as they allegedly stole our fish. Wow - heavy stuff, it took a few years of convincing that the shags were more entitled to the fish than us.
Anyhow back to the Routeburn Track. Having walked it many times in soaring temperatures, snow, sleet, rain, and high winds, I launched into booking beds, coach trips to and from the track, organising dehydrated food and stocking my fridge with anything which was grain, pasta, had a root system or pips.
After decking out my friends with suitable beanies, gloves and thermals that are simply not on the list of what you need to wear in Brisbane, departure day arrived, up early and boarded a bus to the ‘Divide’ (502m) on the Milford Road, the start of the Routeburn Track walking West to East.
The weather forecast was grim and sadly it never reads wrong, despite what the cynics say. Unfolding ourselves out of the bus we tugged our wet weather gear on and disappeared into the thick beech forest on a steadily up hill climb to Key Summit 980m, at Key Summit the general rule of thumb is to lounge around for hours drenched in 180degree mountains snapping off more photos than you need, of course we saw nothing. I didn’t even want to describe what they were missing as that was like rubbing salt into a wound.
On we trundled, stopping Lake Howden for lunch, and to kill a few million sand flies, 3 hours later we arrived at Lake McKenzie Hut on the shores of Lake McKenzie. The first time I ever arrived at this hut was in the 1960s, a new one has since been built, although my memories of the old one linger and are probably grander than it was, the lake was a scum of soap suds, true everyone went down to the lake washed their bodies, hair and clothes, and a fine dirty scum covered the whole mountain lake which has a very small outlet.
Since those intrepid days Fiordland National Park and Mount Aspiring National Park have been formed and the Department of Conservation have management of the parks, plus people today are totally aware of the devastation of leaving that trail of human debris behind.
We fortunately got a view of the lake and walked a little way around it, the next morning when we scrambled over the rocks and rubble, and small waterfalls on the steep switch back track out of the valley and onto the Hollyford Face, we did get glimpses of the valley floor far below and it was spectacular, with clouds swirling around the Mountain peaks, photos were snapped in-between buckets full of rain falling.
The alpine flowers thriving in this environment and the mosses and ferns were alive and well. We wound our way around the Hollyford Face head first into the wind and rain, as the shelter on the top appeared so did our spirits – a hot cup-a-soup with crackers and some dried fruit and nuts which the chocolate had long been picked out – yum. We rested a bit, swapped stories with other trampers as they are called in New Zealand, whilst the young ones of the party strode off up Conical Hill (1515m) for that elusive view over the Fiordland Mountains, I personally saw no need to extend myself having been there before in dry weather.
Off we hiked over the Harris Saddle (1255m) and wound out way around Lake Harris, which I had to admit looked like a grey austere rather large puddle in the slate grey mountains. I have seen this Lake in it’s many moods, the one I like most is the sunny day where you can see a dragon fly buzz up the lake leaving a flies wake in its tracks. The smells of the sun warmed fell fields and the warm water trickling over the rocks into the lake have tempted us to swim in there strictly to cool off, but no Olympian strokes in those chilled waters.
The rocks were pretty slippery by now so we carefully picked our way to Routeburn Falls, aptly named after all the water that trickles or gushes down the mountain sides and gathers at the ‘Falls’ that spill over the hillside before dropping into the lower Routeburn Valley. The Routeburn was named in the early 1880s being the Route up the river and over the Mountains to the West Coast Greenstone or pounamu deposits that were used by the Maori people for making weapons and tools.
Routeburn Falls is a favourite place on a hot day where Mt Cook Lilies cling to the steep rocky sides of the falls and on a sunny day it is a favourite place to plunge into the chilly waters and cool off quickly. But not tonight, a quick glimpse and back to the shelter of the 40 bed hut as snow flakes were beginning to fall - this got the Aussies really excited.
The bunk room was pretty much full so we found a spot by the door, as 20 sweaty bodies in one long room can be claustrophobic. And I have an affinity with the door - first out if there is a fire - that’s me. The next morning the rain was relentless with small clearances we glimpsed the mountains around us with that summer dusting of snow, which looked pretty spectacular, more so if it didn’t happen to be February.
It was all down hill from here the forest was lush and green and the large beech trees sheltered us somewhat from the pelting rain. The Routeburn was roaring down the gorge pounding the huge rocks on its way out to the Dart valley far below. Three hours later we reached the end of the track on the Routeburn side, the new shelter which has been recently built was a welcoming sight.
We boarded a pre-arranged with our friend Pete, bus back to Queenstown, Pete operates an award winning Day Walks and Heli Hikes business out of Queenstown, known for his jokes, humour and knowledge he uplifted our spirits and certainly was a diversion from the sodden clothes we were silently enduring.
Pete filled us in on his new winter venture - ‘Snow Shoeing’ in the Mountains around Queenstown, there had been keen interest internationally and bookings were looking good so guess what, we are lined up for a shot at that, and fingers crossed for a bright sunny day. 
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| October 2009 | Page 1 Of 1 | | |
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