New Zealand 2018 – Welcome

There are a lot of pics here. My editing is maybe a bit too generous, but these galleries are as much for me to recall my trips, so more is good in my mind. I had 8 distinct hiking trips, ranging from a day hike to 7 days in wilderness. Each galleries represents 1 trip, plus any non hiking images that occurred between trips.

I will ask you no questions. I am not expecting anyone to actually look at these, but I am happy to share with anyone who might wish to take a look. So, feel no obligation, many pics, much bad writing. I did I believe, make it easy to browse thru quickly as the thumbnail images are reasonably large. All you need to do is click an image to see larger version. There is a more info link at top of each page with a more detailed explanation.

Writing is not one of my strong skills, some might say one among many, but it stands out in my mind. So please, if you do read the narrative, think kind thoughts. I tried to make sense, but I did a lot of switching from past to present tense, mangling my thoughts and the phrasing I used to try and convey what I experienced. I don’t want to spend another 2 years trying to smooth it out, partly because I am not sure I could manage it any better if I tried.

This was a fantastic trip. I don’t want to call it a lifetime trip, because I fully intend on going back. Because New Zealand is so much smaller than U.S., all this stuff is closer together, so in a sense it is more accessible, but these locations are also very imposing and remote. The Mt Richmond Forest Park for example, most of the trip I could see signs of civilization such as road, or Nelson, but I was way out there relatively speaking.

I have hiked a good bit in the U.S. and just about every trail I have been on, except some bits of trail in New Hampshire, when you head uphill, the trail will switchback to reduce the slope when it gets steep. That is not the case in New Zealand, when the trail pioneers (Those Maori I suppose) decided to go uphill, they took the most direct route, straight up the hill. My theory is that in the U.S. and other countries that have native mammals, most trails are somewhat based upon game trails, and in New Zealand, us stupid humans just forged straight up the hill.

I don’t think I would have considered this to be a huge difference, but it was. Some of this trip was the hardest hiking I have experienced, and I was well prepared. I mention the steepness of trails a bunch on gallery pages as it was a defining part of hike. I tried to convey in pics, but it is really hard to do that, especially when you are standing on trail, and at times I was standing on trail, also making sure to move carefully, as slipping or losing balance would have been suboptimal. As a result, very few of those pics made my generous cut.

I thought that during this trip I would hike and break up the hiking with winery visits, but that did not work out. I did drink a lot of New Zealand wine, probably too much, but I would just buy a nice bottle at grocery store. I also thought I would drink mainly sauvignon blanc, but ended up drinking mainly pinot noir. I did not visit any nice restaurants. I did eat GF pizza when I found it, and I at Eriks Fish and Chips a bunch once I found that place.

I had ideas and trips that I definitely wanted to take. The Queen Charlotte Track, Mt Richmond, Nelson Lakes, and the Matukituki Valley were on that list, but I did not figure out in any detail how to get to these places. The end was result was I decided on next hike, spent time getting there and buying supplies, hiked, then recovered and planned for next hike. I expected it to be a bit easier to get around with public transportation, but being there outside of the busy season, and the less traveled places I went made that pretty much impossible, leading to car rentals. The car worked out quite well.

Each gallery is self contained, but they are listed in order down the side column on this page, and also on each of the gallery pages at the bottom. My recollection is from 2 years ago, so I definitely messed up some of my facts, but that seems minor.