Tag Archives: Takaka

Feb14

Relaxing at the Hangdog campground after the Abel Tasman

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This short and slightly low-key adventure stems off of my hike of the Abel Tasman Great Walk – See the entry about Walking the Abel Tasman to see the backstory

07 Feb 2012 through 08 Feb 2012

I had arrived at the Hangdog earlier in the day, thanks to the help of a very friendly German couple giving me a lift into town, and had quickly gotten bored of just sitting around the campground reading and writing up stories on my barely-charged laptop. And so, thanks to the very generous nature of the Hangdog staff, I borrowed one of the lender-bikes and headed into town to find myself some food, and possibly a bit of distraction.

The first order of business was the food, and so when I got into town I started wandering around looking for somewhere that could serve me up a good hamburger. I wasn’t able to find a particularly good hamburger unfortunately, but I was able to find a cheap hamburger… yet another one of the wonders of New Zealand Fish and Chip shops is that they serve a whole variety of horribly cheap and greasy foods, one of which was a nice plate of chips (french fries), a hamburger, and a nice big soda. Horribly bad for me I know, but after a whole week of actual good food I think its an acceptable lapse.

After quickly chowing down on my delicious grease-fest of a late lunch, I started wandering around the town looking for something to catch my eye. What I found was a whole series of really neat paintings done on the sides of buildings and used as street signs; for example, instead of having “slow down” traffic signs, they had a full painting of The Flash yelling “You’re going too damn fast!”. I loved it, and spent a good bit of time wandering around and taking pictures of pretty much anything that happened to catch my eye.

After a bit more wandering, and a quick visit to an internet cafe to catch up on email, I headed back into camp for a quick bite to eat before what I planned to be a quite strenuous evening of reading and chilling with some most excellent climbers. Unfortunately for me, the last part of that plan did not happen to be in the cards – instead of the campground being populated by awesome climbers like it had been on previous trips, it was instead populated almost entirely by a group of rather insular Germans who had no interest in talking to other people… or at least people who didn’t speak German.

Thankfully I had picked myself up a rather substantial dinner while I was in town earlier in the day, to supplement what I had remaining from the trail, and so I was feeling fairly full and sleepy quite soon after the sun went down that night. I found myself nodding off in my tent before 10:00 even hit, though I had quite the time actually falling asleep, thanks to the volume of the campfire songs being sung around the camp. Some were horrible country songs from the States (sung by the few Americans who knew enough German to join the group), but most were old-school-style German songs; the negligable amount of German that I know allowed me to understand just enough words to know that yes, in fact, they were singing in German, no matter how off-key it was.

The next morning dawned bright and early, though the amount of dew on my tent made it clear that it had rained during the night. Thanks to my early evening I was awake extremely early, even for my new sleep schedule, but I found myself falling back to sleep repeatedly. I think it was a combination of the most-excellent dreams I was having about flying a spaceship through an alien star-system and the fact that the horrid songs the night before had kept me up longer than they should have.

Either way, once I did finally get myself mobile I started into my chores for the day with a passion. I braved the bug-storm that erupted between the rain-fly of my tent an the inside (a downside of having a dry spot during a rainstorm, I guess) and cooked up some breakfast, took a shower, and even did my laundry. One of the things that I had made sure to pack with me when I left the States was a length of accessory cord which I turned into, this time, a clothes line outside of my tent. Hey, the New Zealand sun is quite intense, I may as well make use of it, right? Once everything was set up I headed out again, this time to the crag where I sat and edited pictures and wrote up stories for nearly four hours, eating bites of snack as I worked.

The rest of the day is a bit of a blur, since nothing particularly interesting happened. I chatted with a few new faces around the campsite, but everyone who was interested in talking seemed to be keeping a low profile. It’s a danger of campgrounds like that – if you get a good group, it can really end up overshadowing everyone else in the campground. And in this case, the “good group” was not accepting new membership. And so I relaxed and kept to myself, a good continuation from my solitude of the trail. I enjoyed it, and the day faded quickly into evening as I read about the adventures of a group of brave little Hobbits.

The third day at Hangdog started out early and with a lot of work, as it found me packing up all of my gear and setting out on the trail yet again. I got delayed for a bit chatting with one of the old-timer climbers, a guy named Jay who talked for ages about the advantaged of a raw vegan diet and how communes make the world a better place.

As strange as it is to say, I found the conversation interesting, since Jay actually had a strong background and knowledge-base that he was speaking from, instead of the usual dirty-hippy-blather that’s spouted around a campfire. I learned that Jay is a programmer who works on video games for children, and that he’s been working his way around New Zealand for months now; doing a bit of coding here and there and sending it back to the main office when he finishes a game. Interesting, and definitely a neat way to travel, since it lets you take advantage of good days, and get some work done when the weather turns against you.

I have to admit that I left fairly quickly once the topic turned to communes, and more people started joining into the conversation, turning it from a dialogue into a sounding booth for hippie ideals. As strange as it is, I cannot stand hippies who think that everyone should be organic and live life in a commune full of raw vegans. It’s not that I don’t like the ideas in small doses, but the self-righteousness grates on me. And so, with that fairwell, I headed back into Takaka to catch a bus back to Nelson.

Dec4

Driving to and from Takaka in New Zealand

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This post just contains the driving that I did with Mike Cronin to and from Takaka, New Zealand, and not the whole story of my stay there. See the other two posts in this series for the rest of the details – “Climbing at Paynes Ford” and “A few days at Hangdog”

The ride in – 26th of November

I’m leaving Christchurch! Not forever, or really for a long time at all, but its still one of those things… leaving the town that you’ve been in for a while. Mike and I had been on the fence as to what to do for a while, but we finally decided that renting a car and driving up to a town called Takaka was the best decision. The best analogy to Takaka in the states, that I know of, is New Paltz or Fayettesville– its a small hippy-ish town thats based very near an amazing climbing spot. In this case, Paynes Ford.

So, climbing gear in hand (partially ours, partially comandeered from the climbing club) we woke up on the 26th and ate some breakfast. It was deliciousness of toast and jam, which I’m starting to notice is kinda a thing here in New Zealand… possibly since it seems like a rather British dish, and they WERE recently founded by the Brits. But after eating and relaxing for a bit we jumped in Mike’s car and headed for the airport to pick up our rental. Now, normally I wouldn’t go for a rental in this situation, since we’re only going 7 hours away, but Petrol (hehe… I called it Petrol) is exceptionally expensive here, and Mike’s car gets super-crap gas milage. Thus: efficient rental cars actually save us a significant amount of money.

The trip to get the rental went simply, if not quickly, and soon enough we had headed back to the flat, packed the gear into the car, and were on the road through the countryside. New Zealand is pretty, but I never really understood how pretty it was until we started hitting the huge expanses of cattle and sheep farms. See, unlike the US midwest New Zealand is positively covered in small but steep hills, so the vistas are constantly changing instead of being one endless field of grain. And dotting these hills are small outcroppings of rock, picturesque little farmhouses, and lazy flocks of sheep or herds of cattle. I’m fairly certain that we passed at least four places that were used in filming The Lord of the Rings.

Another holdovers from the British settlement of New Zealand seems to be hedgerows, which were used to separate different fields and flocks… but in this case they just make the landscape look even more bucolic and perfect. We drove for hours through this kind of landscape, finally getting a good long chance to catch up on old times. We talked about nearly everything that had happened in the last few years – I got Mike caught up on NUHOC and Boston happenings, and Mike got me up to speed with the latest New Zealand gossip… a key thing since he’d be leaving for the states shortly and I’d need to be up on the group of people he was leaving me with.

We stopped off a few times for gas and coffee (Pro-tip: New Zealand coffee is amazing. Get chips [Fries] with them for an excellent driving snack) but generally kept ourselves moving at a fair pace or 110 kph. Which sounds fast, but in actuality its rather slow, about 60 or so mph. Makes sense when you think about it though, since the roads that lead throughout the country are rather small and windy. I figure that most of the shipping done in New Zealand must be via ship (thanks to the relatively small size of the islands) instead of truck like the US.

The last challenge of the drive into Takaka was navigating the innacurately named Takaka hill. See… the rest of the landscape that we traveled through was hills. Takaka hill is a mountain. And a pretty big one at that. Not your white-capped sky-scraper for sure, but definitely something that I’d feel good about ascending if I was hiking. And to drive across it? Well… that’s just fun, heh. We went through more switchbacks in twenty kilometers than I’ve driven through in all of the east coast, though I have to admit that driving through Alpine back in Arizona did come pretty close. I’ll admit that I had a bit of fun driving up and heading down the mountain pass, though I had to pull over a few times to let the crazy townies pass me as they tore through the turns like Nascar drivers. Crazies.

After the hill the ride went smoothly, and soon enough Mikewas telling me to slow down and prep for the turn into the Hangdog campground – A place he had been raving about since we left Christchurch. From what Mike said it was just like Rogers Rocky Top Retreat at the New River Gorge; a small place run primarily by climbers and patronized by crazy hippy climbers. You know… just like Mike and I.

 

The drive home – 30th of November

The drive home started out pretty much the same as the drive in – heading into Takaka to check for hitchhikers and pick up gas, then hit the open road back to the hill. Mike was driving, since I had taken the job most of the time during the week, so I laid back in the passengers side and read my book. After we got over Takaka hill though, we pulled over to the side of the road to pick up a hitchhiker that we saw thumbing his way down the main road.

See… hitchhiking in New Zealand is much different than in the USA. Its actually a quite acceptable way to get around the country, and nothing is expected in return aside from politeness and a bit of conversation if it comes to it. I guess it has something to do with the “small country” thing that NZ has going on, where people don’t really fear other people the same way that we’re terrified of strangers in the United States.

Either way, we picked Richard up and headed back onto the road. We chatted and told each other our basic stories; Richard was a farmer who lives up on Takaka hill with four kids, three step-kids, and a whole mess of hunting dogs. Yep… New Zealand has farmer/mountain-folks too it seems, but the difference between NZ folks and your standard-issue US redneck turned up when he started explaining the eco-friendly sort of farming that he was doing, and how he would go into the woods with his dogs to hunt boars for dinner. Definitely a cool guy, and we talked for a while about how he trains the dogs, turns the fields, and everything that goes into making a small farm actually work and be productive.

The drive from Takaka to Christchurch took us nearly seven hours, but I honestly barely even noticed it thanks to taking pictures and talking with Mike and Richard. The conversations went back and forth with eco-friendly research and geology to peoples mentality and sociology studies, and we even talked a bit about creation mythology for the last few miles into town. Richard headed off on his own way at the first bus stop that we hit once entering the city itself, and soon Mike and I were back at the flat. We unpacked the car, cleaned it up, and got everything ready to sent it back to its home with the dealer after an amazing trip.