travels.of.tara

Sometimes things go wrong when you travel. Sometimes you get sick and have to see a doctor, like I did in Sweden, or sometimes your train hits a truck, like mine did in New Mexico. And then sometimes you have to get choppered out of a small town because you are stranded by road closures in both directions for weeks. Needless to say, New Zealand has given me quite the rocky welcome. But let me back up.

Though it was bittersweet to leave Australia, a country that showed me such a great time, I was excited to explore a new country. And despite what now felt like chronic popping ear syndrome, I was looking forward to a chill, full day of travel, with two 3.5 hour flights that would have me land in Christchurch around midnight (there’s a two hour time difference, plus an hour due to Cairns not observing daylight savings time). The ear pain was pretty bad, despite having waited the suggested 12-24 hours since diving to fly. I also nearly missed my connecting flight because my phone didn’t adjust the time; I heard my name on a loudspeaker and ran over.

Now, the first thing that nearly went wrong in New Zealand was that I almost didn’t make it into the country. I had done my research early and knew I needed a visa travel authorization for Australia, which I applied and paid for months ago, but I saw that it was not required for New Zealand. Despite all my planning, I failed to take into account the New Zealand government’s decision to start requiring visa travel authorizations to enter the country beginning in October 2019. There was no warning when purchasing my plane tickets that this was coming, and no alert from the airline or any of my accommodations. When I was in Sydney, I was chatting with some fellow travelers and one casually mentioned getting her NZ visa, and I was like, hm, I should look into that. A few days later when I got to Melbourne I looked into it, and boy was I surprised. Fortunately I applied and was approved the next day, but it was just a week before my travels. A few days later I got an email about it from the airline, so it probably would have been ok, but wow was I glad I talked to that girl about it. Then again, maybe New Zealand was trying to tell me something.

Christchurch a major city on the South Island of New Zealand, and my plan was to explore some of the more remote and scenic areas on the West Coast for a few days before making my way up to the North Island. I arrived in Christchurch around midnight, and decided to walk to my hostel since I couldn’t figure out the phones for a shuttle yet. It was just about a 10 minute walk from the airport, and everything was dead quiet. The hostel was very modern, with “pods” that you can close shades on for privacy. I could have enjoyed that hostel for longer, but about 6 hours later I was up and off in my Uber to the Christchurch Railway Station for my train out West to Greymouth. The TranzAlpine train is supposed to be one of the most scenic trains in the world, and this did not disappoint. After about an hour of plains with cattle and sheep grazing, we entered the mountains and started to climb up and through, ears popping along the way. The train was really nice and modern, with a full café and an outdoor viewing car which was bracing. There were some headphones for commentary but I mostly didn’t listen. After going through some stunning mountain scenery, where it started raining, we climbed back down before arriving in the small town of Greymouth after about 5 hours. There, I transferred right onto a 3.5-hour bus down south to Franz Josef, a small town known for its glacier. The bus strangely made a 45-minute stop about a half hour in, in a small, grey and windy town called Hokitika, presumably because the driver needed an official break. As we continued on the rain intensified. At one point the driver slowed down aggressively, and out the window we saw what looked like a small river running through the road, which the driver went right over. Lots of twists and turns later I was dropped off right at my hostel in the small tourist town, called Glow Worm Accommodation.

 

As I checked in after a long day of traveling, the hostel worker said something that I processed as “someone will drive you to get pizza at a bar at 7pm.” So after showering I joined about a dozen people for the excursion, all decked out in our raincoats and grungy clothes, as it was that kind of a place. By now it was pouring rain with some thunder. Then we see our vehicle, a white stretch hummer limo. So we climb in and get driven about 5-10 minutes to the bar, nearly door to door so we didn’t get wet in the rain. It was pretty hilarious. It was cheap pizza night at the bar, and it was really fun to be out and chat with lots of people including 3 Canadian girls traveling together, a Scottish couple bumming around for a few weeks (who were sleeping in their car and using the hostel amenities), and some new travel buddies from the Netherlands. We bonded over the bad weather, and learned that the road to the south was cut off by a rock slip they needed to clear. There’s just one road on the west coast, so it was a big impediment to a lot of people. Some folks were planning a 10-hour drive to the north (the way I had come in) to get out the next day and down to Queenstown. We also spoke to the guy from the hostel, who was delightful and bought us shots, and we found out was the hostel owner. Apparently the stretch limo owner is a dairy farmer, who also owns the bar/restaurant and has the largest generator in town, and for fun he just drives people around in his courtesy shuttle sometimes, for free. It was one of 4 of these vehicles in all of New Zealand, and it was brought over from Las Vegas and had its transmission changed. It was very bizarre and hilarious. We learned he wasn’t going to drive us back to the hostel, but when we looked at the map we found out we were literally half a block away. So we all sprinted back in the thunderstorm together. It made for a fun and memorable night.

 

The main activity that drew me to Franz Josef was the glacier, and a pricey “heli hike” tour that takes you up to the glacier on a helicopter and then guides you around an ice hike. I was ready for the possibility that weather could be a factor, and as the rain was still going strong in the morning it was canceled. I was a little sad but it was ok. The real problem was the news of the morning, that the road to the north had now been washed out, while the road to the south was still blocked. And thus began the great Franz Josef stranding of 2019.

 

At the beginning of this, I still wasn’t too concerned. After all, I was scheduled to leave on Monday (I arrived Friday night), and 2 days seemed like plenty of time to clear the south road. So I went for a beautiful and somewhat wet hike to a waterfall and walked through the tiny town (the rain mostly stopped during the day on Saturday). A nearby river was flowing insanely fast, and walking over the bridge was scary.

 

That afternoon I checked out the West Coast Wildlife Center, where they care for a super-endangered species of kiwi bird called the rowi, with about 500 left. There are 5 species and all are endangered. I got to see some babies and adults and they were so adorable! Kiwis don’t fly, and they can grow pretty big, up to your knees. They are endangered because of the introduction of mammals to New Zealand, who prey on the kiwis. So the wildlife centre workers find their eggs, incubate and hatch them, send the little ones to a practice island free of predators, and then bring them back home to release. The center gives them a 95% life success rate, compared to just 5% on their own in the wild!

 

Afterwards, I went to the Glacier Hot Pools, which was an inclusion I would have done with the heli hike. They were 3 man-made hot pools – like Jacuzzis without bubbles – set in a pretty rainforest setting with canopies covering them to protect somewhat from rain or sun. It was nice and relaxing, but there were too many noisy groups for me to fully enjoy it. Back at the hostel I did a load of laundry, and then joined folks for dinner as the hostel offers free veggie soup every night, plus some snacks I had bought from the small town supermarket earlier. At night a big group played Cards Against Humanity and we all seemed to be drinking our own supermarket-bought bottles of wine.

 

The next day it was still raining. I had booked a kayak trip around the nearby lake, and the weather made me really not want to do it, though I couldn’t cancel it or lose my money. Fortunately the company canceled it, and I was left with another day to fill. I decided to go with a new Canadian friend from the hostel to a woman’s farm workshop to carve our own gemstones. It was really fun; a really personal experience and very soothing in the rain. I made a jade (greenstone) necklace in a teardrop shape, and Mel made a leaf-shaped keychain out of unique bluestone. They both came out really nice!

 

So back to the hostel, some more walking around town and some more mini-hikes. As the day went on the news about the roads were coming in. And rather than getting better things were only getting worse. The massive amounts of rain had caused more “slips” and road closures in both directions. I rearranged things to stay another day, which was easy since no one was coming in or going out of town. The people in the hostel bonded a lot. We watched some movies (Jumanji and Kingmen) to kill time – many of the others had been planning to leave a few days ago and were stranded for a few days already.

After a talk with my friend Albert in Auckland to check in (my plan was to get south to Queenstown on Monday for 2 nights, then fly up to Auckland on Wednesday afternoon), I was getting passed some of my frayed nerves. But then I left the room and saw there was an update on the roads. To the north, the road was closed indefinitely, with an expectation it would take 4-6 WEEKS to clear. To the south, there were 20-30 slips and they were expecting to clear the roads by Friday at the earliest. This was when the panic really started setting in. The anxiety was getting really bad, and the other people feeling the same wasn’t helping. I even emailed the U.S. Consulate at one point, though they weren’t able to provide any help but reassured me they were monitoring things and would make sure I made my flight out of Auckland next week. A Swedish guy who was providing all the movies he had downloaded on his computer helped me calm down at one point—reminding me it could be worse since they were able to fly in supplies and we had power (though bad wifi was not helping).  I’m learning on this trip I’m a sucker for a good pep talk. We heard in the next glacier town over at Fox Glacier they didn’t have power, and we heard there were some evacuations. We also read some news articles now, saying there were 970 tourists stranded in Franz Josef.

Rumors were going around about people taking the scenic helicopters out of town, with prices as high as $4400 NZ (about $2800 US) to get south to Queenstown or north to Hokitika or Greymouth. It seemed really out of reach. I was thinking about rebooking a heli hike for Monday, since the weather was supposed to clear up. At the booking site, the woman told me another company in that building was offering flights out for close to the same price as the heli hike. Now I was starting to think about it, but by the time I went to inquire they were closed for the day.

So on Monday morning, my originally-scheduled departure date via the bus, I went to the scenic helicopter desk at 8:05am, and several people were already there. They had space available for $585 NZ ($375 US), and I just went for it. I figured it was worth it to calm my anxiety, which was growing worse by the minute. So I packed up my things, checked out of the hostel, and waited around for my 11:30 flight. I skipped the 9:30am town meeting on the crisis, but ran into the Canadians before I left and heard it wasn’t really helpful. They had a rental car which was making it even harder to get out.

As I waited I started rebooking things furiously. My flight was north to Hokitika (“Hoki”), so my goal was to get to Christchurch and get a flight to Auckland from there, within a day or two. I had abandoned Queenstown entirely at this point. I learned the buses weren’t running at all, but I called the info center in Hoki and an extremely helpful guy named Zach helped me set everything up. To make the 2pm train out of Greymouth that day, since there were no buses running, I would have to get driven the half hour from Hoki to Greymouth from a woman who does tours for $100. I was able to split it with 5 people so it was only about $20NZ. It was a tight timeline but I had a plan and a train ticket ($200 NZ).

So, at 11:30 five of us got driven to the helicopter field with our luggage. We waited for the helicopter to get back and didn’t leave til noon, making me anxious now about making the connections. We got a safety briefing, stuffed our luggage into a side compartment, and piled in, with me in the back row left side. The half hour flight was exhilarating! Helicopters are scary! It was a little windy at times and you could feel everything. But it was also really pretty and exciting. I was on the side to see the coastline vs the mountains, but the pilot pointed out the mountains that had caused all the road problems.

 

We made it to the small airport in Hoki, where I was trembling from the adrenaline. I had arranged through Zach for our driver Rachel to meet us there, and she was right there waiting and was super kind. We stopped in town to pay and I got to meet Zach, and it turned out there was plenty of time for us to make it to Greymouth (a half hour drive) for the train. I went with the German father and teen daughter from my helicopter and 2 other people. The 2 other girls on our flight were staying in Hoki and flying to Christchurch in the morning (Hoki airport is tiny and only seems to do flights to Christchurch). I was so happy as we reached Greymouth and started seeing chain restaurants. I was weirdly excited to eat lunch in McDonalds as we waited for the train. Finally on board the train back to Christchurch I was nearly crying in relief. As I’m writing this on the train, I’ve got some more planning to do and some more companies to fight with, but the goal now is to fly to Auckland tomorrow (Tuesday) after a stay in the airport hostel to recover a little.

I’m bummed I don’t have travel insurance now, though it’s not that common in the U.S. so I didn’t think to get it before I left. So I’m out a few hundred dollars extra, but sometimes that’s what you need for peace of mind. Thank goodness I’m not totally broke anymore.

I’m really counting on the North Island to show me a better time, and let me have some fun before I end my travels!