Land of the long white cloud

Dec 23

There are very few places I would volunteer to move to sight unseen, knowing nothing and nobody, but New Zealand has always been just such a place. From everything we’ve read and been told it is essentially Will and Coral heaven, bursting with mountain bike and running trails in the summer, beautiful mountains to ski in the winter and perfect waves to surf year-round. Not to mention the culture, safety, quality of life and so on. Needless to say, we were pretty excited to finally be making a pilgrimage to this storied land. With so much excitement and pre-destined love, we decided to dedicate a fair amount of time to our New Zealand exploration, spending about 5 weeks on the South Island, followed by a month on the North. Our port of entry was Queenstown and I can’t imagine a better welcoming committee than the snowcapped peaks out the window of our plane as we flew in. It has been 4 months since we left Colorado and I’m not sure any of us realized how much we missed the feeling of being surrounded by mountains; the energy, the beauty and the grounding force that they provide. Even though we were 7920 miles from Boulder, it felt a little like coming home. We only had a few days in Queenstown, just enough to explore a few hikes, take a couple dips into the lake and sample few of the seemingly endless delicious restaurants and cafes around town. It felt as if you took a European mountain-town, dropped it beside a giant, crystal-clear lake, and changed the first language to English. It’s easy to see how it has become such a mecca for adventure sports enthusiasts. With a promise to ourselves to return, after a few days we shoved our bags into a very small rental car and headed on to Wanaka, a spot we had a premonition we would enjoy thoroughly exploring. We had booked five nights at the Mahu Whenua, a homestead/eco-retreat nestled high in the hills in above town, followed by a week in a house in Wanaka proper where we could unpack our bags and settle in for a while to celebrate Christmas.

A year of travel is a very funny thing with the constant forward motion and the endless unknown of what the next stop will hold; what will the weather be like and what will we eat, where will we sleep and what adventures will each place offer. When I stop to think about it, I can’t quite believe how consistently game and tough the boys are, taking it all in stride as we bop from place to place to place. Some places you win, some places you lose, but each one brings its own beautiful adventure. Mahu Whenua was definitely a win. Nestled into the hills above Glendhu Bay on Lake Wanaka, it sits on 50,000 Hectares, an aggregate of four neighboring farms that were merged and turned into a homestead by ex-partners Shanaya Twain and Mutt Lange. After just a few years, their marriage dissolved and Mutt kept the Mahu Whenua, transforming it into a 5 room eco-retreat in 2019. The setting could not have been more stunning, with the lodge nestled atop a knoll surrounded by seemingly endless green hills dotted with horses and sheep and towering mountains, looking down on a turquoise, glacial river, all framing a view of Lake Wanaka with snowcapped peaks in the distance. First built as a home, it was cozy and intimate, but with just the right amount of privacy and luxury. Being there felt like a deep, whole-soul exhale. Not to mention the food which consisted of gorgeous feasts for breakfast, lunch and dinner, all using ingredients from neighboring farms and local shops. I think we each gained about 5 pounds in the 5 days we were there, especially since the chef fell in love with the boys and spoiled them rotten by making all their favorite foods, from blueberry pancakes and bacon each morning to handmade s’more kits in the evenings. We even managed to find a babysitter who was willing to drive up one day, allowing us to sneak out for some grownup-time (the first since Mimi had visited us in Byron Bay!). So we did what only our crazy-selves would do and found the biggest mountain around and endeavored to get to the top of it.

It turns out New Zealanders are very fond of ‘tramping’, essentially hiking through the bush without the clearest of trails, which miraculously you can do here as there are no poisonous snakes or spiders waiting to kill you. After 5 weeks in Australia this revelation was rather amazing. So we set off on a tramp, eying the mountain top and then bush whacking our way across the valley and up a nearly vertical ridgeline for several hours to get there, using an undergrowth of dense ferns as a springboard to walk along and clumps of grass as handholds to pull ourselves up and keep from sliding backwards till we reached the top. We were elated, exhausted and blissfully excited to soak in the 360 degrees of un-poisonous green around us. Just as we’re about to plop our tuckered bums down for a snack Will’s phone rings from the babysitter (who happens to be a nurse in Wanaka). Never a good sign. Apparently Holden had kicked the soccer ball on the deck and gotten 3 massive splinters deep in his foot. The pain was so bad it made him throw up (or, as she so sweetly said “he had a little bit of a vomit”) and she had managed to get one out, but the other two were so deep she was nervous to go in. When a nurse is nervous, it’s never a good sign. We freak out, realizing we’re at least 2 hours from the lodge with a very precarious route down ahead of us, so Will decides we should loop around the back of the mountain where we could eventually connect to a trail that we would be able to run along to then get picked up at the bottom, only a few minutes down the road from home, making it a “theoretically faster” route down. Hmmmm… Had I not been so oxygen deprived or tired from hauling by butt up the mountain I would have been smart enough to second guess him, but instead I blindly followed, slipping, sliding and half rolling down a very steep cliff face towards this “trail”. After about 40 minutes we were hopelessly stuck in a deep canyon without a clear way out. After a few silent tears, a few loud curse words and then a fit of uncontrollable laughter about the ridiculousness of our situation, we realize the only option is to continue sliding on our butts down to the riverbed at the bottom and follow it out to this ever-elusive trail. ‘Follow it’ meant walking in the river as there was no bank and only rock cliffs rising from either side, so down the river we went, squelch-squirch. Eventually there was a little relief in the canyon walls above and we were able to scramble up the side to another ridgeline where we got eyes on the trail and tramped our way over to it. We were so excited until we realized it wasn’t the most manicured of trails, with roots, rocks and washed-out sections making it very slow going. 5 miles down it we ran (well, hop/climbed/slid) until we finally popped out down the valley and into reception. We were finally able to call Emma, the babysitter, who sent one of the sweet women from the lodge to rescue our exhausted, overwhelmed, wet, dirty selves. We definitely weren’t any faster than had we simply retraced our steps down 🤣 🤦‍♀️. By the time we got back, Holden’s foot was propped up and they were feasting on sushi Chef Emily had made him for lunch, wholly unconcerned by the giant splinters in his feet. So glad we “rushed” back! We did have our work cut out for us after as we had to practically pin poor sweet Holden down and dig these awful splinters out of his foot while he screamed at the top of his lungs and hyperventilated from the pain, the other guests undoubtedly thinking there was something horribly wrong. Eventually we got them out and soothed it all with hot cocoa and the World Cup, a proven remedy to make everything better.

The rest of our time at the Mahu Whenua was downright boring in comparison, in the best way possible! It rained at some point each day, but in a lovely, delicate, on-again-off-again-style which invites you to curl up with board games and good books, but in which you can still venture out for little excursions when energy levels get too high (when Monopoly turns into a physical game, we realize it’s time for an outside romp!). We fed the horses and took long walks, tramped our way down to the river to skip stones and sail paper boats, ate a lot, read a lot (side note: perhaps the most incredible thing to come out of this trip so far is the love of reading that has infected both boys–they are absolutely obsessed, picking up their books at every opportunity possible and forgoing shows and books on tape in favor of reading. We added it up and in the last 6 weeks Holden has finished nearly 4000 pages and Huxley is close to 1500. It’s incredible),and relished a total decompression. I think if we could have moved into the Mahu Whenua we would have stayed for the next month, but the perpetual forward motion of this year long trip was carrying us on to our next locale…a night in Milford Sound.

When you’re planning this much travel, most of it well in advance and from afar, you’re bound to make a couple of mistakes and we’ve definitely had a few; a night where we had to scramble for somewhere to stay, a night where we paid for 2 different places to stay, and, in the case of Milford Sound, not having an adequate understanding of just how far away and remote a location it was and planning to dip in for one night between our stay at Mahu Whenua and Wanaka. A few days before we were due to head there, we googled to discover that it was a 5.5-6 hour drive to Milford Sound from Wanaka, which means we were signing up for 11-12 hours in the car for one night…Not quite ideal. Worst of all, with only one night it meant we wouldn’t have time to really explore the area, which made it feel like such a sad waste to travel that far. We were scheming what we should do over a bottle of wine when we saw a pamphlet for Milford Sound helicopter tours laying on the table…hmmmmm…. It turns out it is quite common to take a helicopter from Wanaka (they even land right on the lawn in front of the Mahu Whenua) to view the Fiordlands from above, seeing the scale and scope of such an incredible natural phenomenon and even stopping on a glacial snowfield along the way. In other words, in 45 minutes we could get to Milford Sound, have the most incredible vantage of this awe-inspiring country, and get to stop for a snowball fight along the way… Sounds like Christmas to me! Maybe it was the wine, or maybe it was the desire to give the boys a taste of snow, or maybe it was the fact that neither of us could face 11 hours in a car in two days, but we decided it was the perfect solution. And I couldn’t be more grateful that we did.

I have only ever been in a helicopter one other time, and never in mountains like these. I couldn’t have imagined how agile and nimble they are, dipping in and out of canyons and valleys, flying up toward waterfalls and barely skimming the tops of giant, snowy mountain peaks. The pilot at one point circled around on a dime, putting us barely feet away from two deer hopping along a knife-edge ridgeline, looking right in the windshield at us. We stopped and played briefly in the glacial snow, laughing at the complete absurdity of throwing snowballs in the middle of summer. The vantage of the Fiordlands from above, the changing of the vegetation, the birds and animals you could see out the window; it was magic. Not to mention we were in Milford Sound by 10 am with plenty of time to take the water taxi to Sandfly Point (aptly named as I have never experienced such a prolific population of bugs, buzzing and biting any time you stopped moving) and embark on a small portion of the Milford Track (one of NZ’s famous ‘Great Walks’). We spent the night at the Milford Sound lodge, a collection of little cabins dotted along the ice-cold Cleddau River and spent the next morning rock-hoping and exploring the river, stopping for glacial Wim Hoff dips, before popping back to Wanaka at noon the next day, landing just before thick clouds and rain set in. With the weather building took a southerly, lower-lying route back, experiencing entirely different scenery and flying over Queenstown, getting to see even more of this magnificent country. It was absurd, it was surreal, and it was one of the coolest things we’ve done.