The Kunkel Clan Arrives in New Zealand!

New Zealand Family Adventure: Days 1-4

It starts months ago. First there are flights to buy. Then, when I buy a four-seater Suzuki Swift, there’s a five person rental car to reserve. Later, there are emails and phone calls and FaceTimes, accommodations to choose, activities to book, bikes to rent.

I have to find somewhere to park Little Suzi for 3 weeks. Day of, I convince the airport shuttle driver to drive me not to the airport but from the carpark to the car rental office (he probably thought I was abandoning my car). Then I drive the rental car (aka, the bus) back to where I’d parked Little Suzi so I can transfer my luggage and recently purchased groceries. Then I read my book for twenty minutes and pick up the crew from Christchurch Airport.

And somehow, all of that, feels effortless.

Because I’m in the car and my dad is sitting next to me in the passenger seat with a big smile and wide eyes and bouncing hair. And my mom is in the back seat, the memory of her arms around my shoulders bright and new, not faded with time.

Oh, and my aunt and uncle are here too… Kidding! Of course, they’re here, smiling and grinning and holding onto the edges of the front seats to lean forward and see me and see the view and see how I drive on the left side of the road. Dogs are spotted out the windows, sharp cries come from the back seat when I make turns because they think I’m in the wrong lane, Whittakers chocolate bars are opened, carrots are crunched. I miss my turn because I’m too happy to pay attention.

It’s all a dream.

Every moment of the drive. Every question called forward. Every comment about irrigators. Every “are we there yet?” I couldn’t care less if I had to drive for ten hours. Honestly, the three hour trek to Lake Tekapo passes before I know it. We stop by the Church and see the Dog Statue and pop into a restaurant for a late dinner. We’ve arrived late, but we’re also the last in the restaurant, closing the place down. The sunsets burns like a banked fire.

Our apartment for the night is small and cozy and we sit on the sofa and simply enjoy each other’s company. The travelers are exhausted, as they should be, but I lure my dad outside for a little bit of stargazing, standing in the middle of the road and finding Orion’s Belt and the Southern Cross–that exhausts my Southern Hemisphere constellations knowledge. (My Northern Hemisphere knowledge is hardly better–I only know the Big Dipper and Orion’s Belt).

The next morning I walk down to the lake with my mom, drink a chai latte with my mom, stroll along the lake with my mom while looking for my dad, who is texting really vague clues about his location… Everything is exactly how it should be. Except, I am getting two awful blisters on my heels from the brand new shoes my mom brought me since I walked my previous hiking boots to pieces… But even that pinch can’t dampen my spirits.

We cook up breakfast and, despite the lack of chairs on the deck, have to eat in the sun.

Then I take them up the Mount John Track for views of unreal blue water, which my colorblind father and uncle only barely see. It’s warm, it’s sunny, it’s an empty trail, just the five of us for most of the length of it. My mom spots a fox–I mean, a black cat. (Perhaps she’s the blind one?) And I revel in being able to sit close enough to my mom that our shoulders are touching while we swing our feet and look at the mountains. Everyone is impressed when I point out the top of Mount Cook just barely poking over the closer range before us.

We descend and climb back in the bus and set off for more views of The Cook-ie Cutter, as my uncle Mike dubs NZ’s tallest mountain. The views over Lake Pukaki don’t disappoint. We hike the Kettlehole Track to get close to some sheep for my aunt Sandee and more time with The Cook-ie Cutter. It’s here that I discover my new hiking shoes are also too narrow and are cutting off the circulation in my feet. Ah, what joy.

An unplanned stop is made in Twizel to climb on an old tractor and a brief fly-by at High Country Salmon adds a cold smoked salmon filet to the chilly bin (aka, cooler). Lunch is at Boots and Jandals in Omarama, then we buckle down to actually make it more than twenty minutes before stopping again. But we can’t pass up a fruit stall in Cromwell, so we eat sweet sweet cherries as I wind through the Kawarau Gorge. Of course, we make it all of ten minutes before stopping at the Roaring Meg Lookout. My dad takes out his binoculars and finds a goat on the hillside, so that stop takes a lot longer than it should.

We drive past Queenstown, though we’ll be back to explore it in a few days, and motor on down to Te Anau, arriving around 7:30pm.

My legs are stiff, my shoulders are tight, but my smile is wide. It’s cold after a bright blue day, but the pizza at the restaurant in town is delicious and it’s warm back at the AirBnB. My aunt Sandee proposes a solution to fix my too-narrow shoes so we fill ziplock bags with water, shove them into my new hiking shoes, and pop the whole thing in the freezer.

Unfortunately, the next day is rainy, but that can’t dampen my spirits. The ziplock bags in my shoes leaked, so I take my ice-coated soles from my shoes and hold them in front of the heater for half an hour, but then I’m ready to go again, praying that at least the narrow-ness of my shoes has been solved even if the blisters are still roaring their fiery.

We eat a big brekkie at the Sandfly Cafe, yours truly fighting through the crowds to find a table, and then we run the important errands–supermarket and liquor store. It’s the kind of day where you put on a rain coat, then you take it off, then you strip down to a T-shirt, then you put your long-sleeve back on and then you hurriedly zip your raincoat, only to do it all over again in thirty minute cycles.

We pick up pies for breakfast for the next day and walk down to the lake edge, strolling along, zip lining, and occasionally sheltering from the rain beneath massive trees. We go to the DOC visitor center to learn about the area and watch a very old film on Fiordland. When the twenty minute show is over, mom proudly proclaims that she fell asleep. Then we’re hungry, so we backtrack to The Moose Bar, guzzle some beers (them) and some water (me) and eat delicious nachos.

Backtracking, we continue around the lake edge, stopping at the wharf for some photos.

Finally, we end at the bird sanctuary where the takahe come out to prance and preen for us. Dinner is at the Black Dog Bar, where they serve delicious food along with some major shade from the head waitress.

We did nothing all day and I couldn’t have been happier. Just the feeling of being in the same place with people I love is incredible. Traveling alone is an awesome experience, and I always know that I have my people back home. But to have them with me…we could have been at home, stuck in a motel room, hiking the Te Araroa Trail, weathering a storm. It wouldn’t have mattered to me.

The next morning is an early one, loaded into the bus and ready to go by 6:15. We quickly grab some gas, praying that our international cards will work at the McKeown just outside of town as the other petrol stations don’t open until 7 and don’t accept international cards at the self-pay machine. (It worked, whew!) And we begin the drive to Milford Sound before the sun is up.

We make few stops on the way to make sure we didn’t miss our boat in Milford Sound, but the few stops we do make are stunners. I’ve been on the Milford Sound road several times and each time my breath still catches in my throat at a random peak I’m not sure I’ve consciously noticed before or a new waterfall tumbling down in a ribbon of white. Hopefully I didn’t build up the expectations too high, but I know I still found the Cleddau Valley awe-inspiring even on my third visit.

Though I’ve been to Milford Sound before, even hiking the Milford Track only nine days before, I’ve never done the quintessential Milford Sound Boat Cruise. I choose Mitre Peak Cruises because my research says that it is the tour company with the least amount of people crammed on the boat, and we pick the 8:50 departure because it is the first boat out on the water in the morning. So, at least for a little while, we get the Sound mostly to ourselves. And it is magnificent.

Smooth water cupped between sheer, soaring peaks. Leafy trees seeming to grow from vertical rock. Water falling in ribbons, sometimes undulating in the breeze like the northern lights. Stirling Falls roaring, roaring, roaring. The force of the water rippling our clothes like being in the center of a gale. White water, alive water. The sun rising, painting streaks through the sky, turning the distant mountains into imposing giants of uniform shadow.

Stunning, lively, magnificent, awesome, triumphant.

And all the while, I lean into my mom’s side to stay warm, borrow my dad’s binos to see the sandflies buzzing around a fur seal, smile when my uncle lifts his camera, line up at the bow with my aunt and smell the fresh air. When the skipper gets us right below Stirling Falls, it’s my parents I grin like a fool at and laugh at how soaked our pants are. I love traveling alone, but I love getting to share moments, big and small.

After getting off the boat, the boys disappear and it’s up the girls to track them down with no cell service. We share an apple and blueberry pie, gazing at the steep slopes and skinny summit of Mitre Peak, and then load into the van again. So much more to do and see. How lucky are we!

Photo stops are made and we take a brief walk at the Chasm where the bridges still haven’t been repaired, so the forest is far more stunning than trying to crane our necks around massive rocks to view the waterfall. (The Chasm would be so cool if they’d repair the bridges. Alas.)

After bidding Milford Sound farewell, we pass through the Homer Tunnel and arrive at the start of the Gertrude Saddle Track. I thought Milford Sound would be the highlight of the day, but as we stroll through the flat valley and I begin to imagine doing the whole track (not just the flat part, as I’d proposed to the crew earlier), I begin to get an inkling that the best may be yet to come.

The landscape is impressive: massive cliffs and waterfalls, and the flora is the unique wet-alpine flora I enjoyed in McKinnon Pass. Hardy yet well watered, which means plants with large circular leaves and spikey almost-succulent-like sunburst-shaped plants, all dotted with small white flowers like stars.

We pause for lunch at the end of the valley and my dad, who won’t stop on a hike unless physically restrained, gets us all to start the ascent. It’s steep and rocky, but we’re quickly rewarded with a beautiful waterfall. We cross the river and continue going up. The water cascades over the rocks, more beautiful from each angle we ascend.

Shortly, we reach a sign warning us not to step on wet sections of rock as people have slipped and died on this track. With a small gulp, I follow my dad. The trail here is merely cairns and the occasional orange pole as we traverse giant sheets of rock. Small streams run over them, but the rock is dry for the most part, so it’s not difficult to follow the directions on the sign. Steadily, we climb and climb and climb and climb some more. I check my NZTopo50 map but it feels like we’re not getting any closer to the end. The saddle seems close, but it’s an illusion and every time we get a little closer, another higher roll of ground appears behind the last.

My dad and I go ahead, dragging ourselves up the cable secured to the rock to reach Black Lake. The lake is simply a deep, vast depression in the sheet of rock, like a giant’s fist punching a sheet of metal.

And the trail continues.

We scramble up more massive sheets of rock, scrapped and formed centuries past by ancient glaciers and now worn smooth in places from the endless tread of shoes. It’s really steep and I wonder occasionally how I’m going to fare going down. Steep is always easier going up than down. But that’s a problem for another time, so I cast it from my mind.

Finally… FINALLY, my dad and I reach the top, crawling on hands and knees on the steep, sheer rock. A few more steps and we’re there, at the top of the saddle, the edge of the world. We can see into another glacially carved valley which, at the end, opens up into Milford Sound. We’re only at the saddle, literally the lowest point of all the peaks and dips around us and yet it feels like being on top of the world.

And, while that moment was striking in and of itself, these first four days reunited with my parents all felt like being on top of the world. Like a fantastic dream. Like the planets had aligned and I was the luckiest person alive. All was awash in golden glow and even though I had horrible blisters from wearing brand new shoes, nothing could bring me down.

Nothing could bring me down, except I did have to literally descend the Gertrude Saddle Track and get back in the car and drive the hour and half back to Te Anau so we could eat dinner and collapse into bed. But even then, I was climbing Gertrude Saddle in my dreams. And my parents were right there with me.