11 – jan 29: geraldine to twizel, the day hike that killed us

upon departing the friendly hostel with the unfriendly llamas, we headed towards the first big attraction on the south island – mountains. BIG mountains.

unfortunately we weren’t able to book a BBH hostel in the area, as:

a. we have had generally little luck with booking hostels at this time (most of our ideal locations were full – i.e. that is why we ended up staying in geraldine, which is fairly close to the mountains but implied a huge drive the day before)
b. there were few (if any – i can’t remember) BBH hostels in the area
c. few hostels at all
d. and most places were fairly expensive :\

by the way, BBH is the backpacker network that generally ensures that the hostels have some similar kind of quality in terms of accommodation and services provided. for example kitchens with cooking equipment, clean beds, all described through this guide that gives it a rating in %-age – like the wellington hostel.

thus we ended up staying in this fairly grimy motel, which provoked oleg’s allergies to a terrible extent. i was not left alone either as my allergies acted up terribly when we went into the mountains. oleg spoke to a local pharmacist who said that the super dry air could be provoking it too (as well as the unknown ingridients in the local air). indeed, the weather IS super dry.

anyway, the motel was not so terrible, but generally speaking i like the hostels more – we have had general luck in booking them, and they are all more .. cute. homely. you feel more comfortable in them. on the bright side we got a whole 4 outlets, which hostels often skimp on – now, 10 days later, having 2 outlets in a room is a bright piece of news to me. we both have laptops, and we both have 2 cameras, and oleg’s drebel has like 3 batteries, which makes for a lot of charging happening. generally speaking we don’t need to charge nightly, and the car adaptor helps, but gosh, its so nice to have 2 outlets at least!

we came, we saw, we left our stuff, we left towards the mountains as the sun was high up, and weather seemed to be kind and warm.

of course it is the warmness that caused us all the problems. this area has a few hikes that take a few hours (all of them free, which is a pleasant thing), and we decided to take up this 2 hour hike.

mistake one.

its a 2 hour hike from the distant parking lot, and really it manes 2 hours of energetic walking. we -should- have driven to the closer parking lot which would make it a shorter hike.

mistake two.

we only had 750ml of water for 2 of us.

mistake three.

midday sun means for a lot of warm. too much warm – the entire hike was underneath the blazing sun and we quickly tired out. matter of fact, about 20 minutes before our arrival to the outlook spot for which the hike aims, i got lightheaded and had to sit down in the nearest shade – a big rock did the trick. at this point we had very little water left, so after taking it easily towards the view (which was not even that good), we started walking back.

i took both bags and stopped at the first, closer, parking lot, where as oleg went with no bags and only the rest of the water towards the car. he said it was a terrible experience, and i believe him – he definitely looked like hell afterwards. i’m so glad we had the ability to leave me and the stuff at the parking lot – i would not be able to make it back without going crazy or something.

when i entered a little shed in the parking lot, i breathlessly asked some middle aged couple and some guy if there is water around here. the couple were entirely useless in terms of information, where as the guy just offered me his bottle which i gladly accepted.

while waiting for oleg further the guy (who offered me water a few more times, provoking my undying thanks to him to this day – i was feeling like hell, and water was exactly what i needed – and he offered it unasked too!) and i started talking. turned out he was a phys. ed. teacher from taiwan, here with a group of his students, who are touring the south island on bikes. we actually passed them by on the drive to the mountains earlier in the day – very noticeable as there are 15-20 young people, all biking very “professionally”. his name is ben, and as we later found out, he is an american who travelled around the world and decided to teach in taiwan. he had some eye problems and needed a ride to tekapo, a local big town. we were only going about halfway, to twizel, however twizel is on a direct big road to tekapo, and he gladly accepted my offer for us to give him a ride to that intersection.

(p.s. oleg says he later saw him with his group in queenstown, about a week later, so i think it all worked out for him. yay!)

after arriving back to the hostel, we have bought a lot of water, some more ice cream, more sun screen, and esentially “chilled” as much as we could. a problem was that the motel room heated up insanely while we were gone, so a lot of the “chilling” was happening outside in the shade, on the stairs leading to the building.

we have decided to take up a big hike the next day, and prepared all our things in advance – i made sandwiches for the road, we packed our bags, and i have made the tough decision of only taking one lens with me to cut down the weight. we got seriously well prepared for the next morning – i believe the most organized preparation yet, as we even arranged to leave our bags and food in the motel until we return. (lonely planet speaks that carjacking is most common in the cars that are left in the start of the trails – makes sense!) the food we left this night, and the bags we moved in the morning.

going to bed entirely too late (10:45pm instead of the intended 9:30pm) and setting our alarms for 4:45am, we were ready to take on those mountains on a fair scale.