New Zealand was always a bucket list destination. An LOTR destination :) . What I did not expect was how awesome it will be from a National Parks point of view. New Zealand great walks is something that amazed me instantaneously. Kanishka and I devoured countless hours on researching our travel plan. Two weeks before the trip, I had done so much research that I thought I had already visited the country. Our trip went from a 12 day trip to a 17 day trip because we were trying to pack in so many things. Yet, I knew if someone could pull it off, it could be only us.
New Zealand blog is going to be a three part blog post. In this post, I will share about the planning phase and the resulting plan. In the next one, I will cover our South Island trip followed by a post on the northern island.
Which Great walk to do?
Researching NZ, I came across their Department of Conservation(DoC) website, it is similar to the National Parks concept in US, and its notion of Great Walks. Great Walks are multi day hikes in New Zealand but the trails are fully marked and DoC has built huts along the way for hikers to spend the night. These huts have mattress, portable water, toilet facilities and the best part - a gas connection with lots of stoves for hikers to cook their own meal. There are a total of 10 great walks as of now. It is a fantastic concept and I knew I had to squeeze one of the great walks. The question was - which one?
Milford track was ranked the highest but it was already sold out. Great walks open in last week of Oct but the hut passes can be booked 6 months in advance. Milford track was sold out till December. We began the research on which one is the next best and finally settled on Routeburn track. Pointers -
1. https://jontynz.com/2016/05/01/new-zealand-great-walks-ranked-2/
2. http://www.themissingyear.com/archives/3299
Routeburn was available on all dates of our itinerary. Routeburn is not a circular trek and then posed question of - Should we go from Routeburn shelter to Divide or Divide to Routeburn shelter. We decided to go from Routeburn to Divide side.
Where to land in New Zealand?
Most common itineraries talk about landing in Auckland, doing some stuff in North island, then catch a flight to Christchurch/Queenstown and explore South. Most of the treks that we had wanted to do were in South, so we decided to land in South island. We wanted to get the long hikes out of the way first so that we can then enjoy touristy side of NZ. But as we got down to planning, it was walks and hikes everywhere that were looking so awesome that we decided that it will be a very nature biased trip. But we were afterall in God's second best country :)
So we decided to land in Queenstown and make our way to northern part and then finally depart from Auckland.
Which all walks to do?
The toughest question of all. I had assumed that picking the great walk will the most challenging decision. But I was wrong. Designing an itinerary that covers nice hiking trails is something that just took insane amount of time.
Hooker Valley track in Mt. Cook village was rated very high and I closed on it. But this meant that I will not be able to cover the Franz Joseph glacier and hence was a hard call. This also meant that we will drive via Christchurch to Picton. At Picton, there is this beautiful Queen's Charlotte track and I hoped that I will get some time to spend 4-5 hrs on this track.
On the Northern island side, Tongariro alpine crossing was closed as a day trek. It looked awesome, had the Mordor mountain of LOTR and was ranked as one of the best 10 day walks in the world. It had to be done. Then of course there was Coromandel cove walk.
Abel Tasman is a beach trek and was rated very high but I discarded it as I had just done some beach trekking in Gokarna and wanted to be closed to the mountains. Bay of islands, some 5 hrs north of Auckland also had to be discarded as I will not be able to fit it in my schedule. Tough decisions had to be taken.
A twist in the leg and hence the tale
After confirming that we will be doing the long hikes, Tongariro one is 19.6 km with an elevation change of close to 4000 ft., both Kanishka and I got to the business of training ourselves. I went up to 75 floors of steps - up and down. Walking to Hotel Dwarka in NR colony meant walking 13 kms and treating ourselves to the best Khali Dosa in town. As part of this, we did one 15km run/walk around Agara followed by some 50 floors of stairs on the next day. This was too much in too little time for Kanishka's feet and she developed lot of pain which the doctor later confirmed to be Fascicia and some tendonitis. The doctor strongly advised rest for 4 weeks but our trip was due in the same time. While the brutal pain went away in 1 week, it would resurface upon standing for long hours or walking few minutes.
Kanishka started applying the gel and doing heat massages twice everyday to get back. But two weeks before the trip, it was becoming difficult to figure out on whether she could handle the long distance walking or not. The hut passes were not cancellable two weeks prior to the stay date. Hence we had to make the call.
We decided to take it easy for her and I would do the trek alone. But then the itinerary had to be modified. Earlier, we were taking buses to reach the trek start point and the bus was our way back. With this, we decided to spend more time together and take a rental car. Earlier the plan was to do Routeburn in 3 nights, 4 days but now I cut it down by a day and decided to do it the other way. This would give us good time to enjoy the Milford cruise. We hired Trackhopper to arrange for a vehicle relocation from one end of the trek to another. It costed a good amount but it gave us some great flexibility in our planning.
The Visa
Amidst all this planning, I had already applied for Visa. Visa application was simple. But can we book flight tickets before getting Visa? Visa processing time was around 3 weeks and we had a total of 8 weeks before the departure date. One of my office colleagues advised that one should wait for visa. The ticket prices was increasing every day. Plus Oct-end, Nov is the start of season in NZ. Hence it was getting expensive. I took the risk and booked flight tickets before Visa was approved. The cheapest flight with luggage option meant that we had to go via Sydney and Australis also requires a transit visa. Damn!
We could not apply for Australian transit visa until we had confirmation that we can enter NZ, that is our NZ visa. Some anxious days were spent. One of my office colleagues applied a week after me but got his passport back before me. It drove me more anxious. But fortunately, everything was resolved in due time and it all worked out. NZ visa came in 4 weeks. I submitted my Austrailan transit visa the very next day and got it in 3 days. We were all set.
The final plan -
We will land in Queenstown on Oct 27th and stay there.
28th Oct - Drive to Milford and take the Milford cruise there. Do as many hikes in Milford as possible.
29th - 31st - I do the Routeburn hike and meet Kanishka at Glenorchy.
31st - We spend time in Glenorchy/Queenstown
1st - We drive down to Mt Cook and spend the night at Mt Cook village. It is a 3 hr drive so we have the morning free for other sightseeing and probably a Gondola ride in Queenstown.
1st night - We had booked the stargazing event at Mt. Cook Observatory.
2nd - We do the Hooker Valley track and then drive to Christchurch. Along the way, we may want to do something at Taupo
3rd - It was an open day. We had to drive to Picton which was a 4 hr drive. But other than that, we can explore ChristChurch/do something at Kaikoura/do some trails at Picton etc.
4th - We take the morning ferry from South island to North island. We will have the 4th evening to spend in Wellington
5th - We explore more in Wellington and in the evening, we drive to Tongariro national park.
6th - I do the Tongariro alpine crossing trek. Kanishka had the option to spend another day at Wellington on 5th and meet me at Tongariro on 6th.
7th - 8th - Rotorua needed two days to fully do justice to the geysers and amazing geo thermal activity here.
8th - Hobbiton - Yes, we had booked a tour and then drive down to Coromandel cove and do the walk.
9th - Explore more in Coromandel cove and then drive to Auckland
10 - Explore Auckland in morning and then take the flight.
Auckland became just a carrier destination in the end. I am sure the city needed more time. But we made a conscious call to spend more time with nature. The trip was intentionally biased towards driving. You have to go to the nature, not the other way round.
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