The Real Deal with Living in the Van

Little known fact:  Living in a van is not as easy and cheap as one would think.  Especially when you are cheap, want to do nothing but hike, and its almost winter.  We've gotten back to Earthwise Valley in Tuateawa almost a week ago now, and I feel like I can reflect and share about how life really is living in a van.

1. not so cheap - we paid for accommodation once ($14 each) and cooked almost every meal, did no paying tourist activities, bought no alcohol, and somehow we averaged about $200NZ a week each.  How? Gas. Ferry.  Those were our main expenses.  Paying for a van to go 5500 km in diesel turns out to be quite a bit.  We did do almost all our own cooking, but of course food adds up, especially with my appetite.  Then there was the transportation for the Routeburn and Caples tracks and our backcoutry hut passes coming in at $50 and $90 each.

2. cooking - best way to eat cheap, and well.  And we did manage to have a propane cooker and full kitchen stuff, so that worked out well.  It does get tiring though to cook every single night.  After a long day of hiking and it is 6pm, dark and about 45 degrees outside, we still have to find a discrete place to set up and cook and try to stay warm.  Good thing we had each other for this, cause all except for 3 nights at least one of us was motivated enough to whip something up.

3. the whole winter thing... - so 45 degrees might not sound too cold, but being in it all day and all night is a bit different than having a warm house and shower to retreat to at the end of the day.  I was basically bundled up as if I were going outside in 10 degree weather just to cook dinner, but thats whats needed to keep warm. It also would get dark at about 6 (or 5 if the weather was crappy).  Then with no electricity there is not a whole lot to do other than go to bed.  Finally towards the end I was getting a bit better at managing to stay up until about 10 or even 11; but overall, I have never gotten so much sleep in my life.  Consistently 9-10 hours a night.  I was unaware of how your legs could just hurt from spending too much time in bed!  I also got good at the whole wash cloth bath thing.  It is a bit of a shock to get discretely naked in a parking lot somewhere and then also be wet in that 45 degree weather.

Overall though, even with all that and the fact that we never slept in the same location for two nights in a row, it was great.  Nothing like being in sight of someone for 5 weeks in a row to create some new tensions, but Nico and I were able to work everything out and I even still like her, woohoo.

whats that? there's a pack rack for the card shark in the aardvark carpark.

Plus, we had the ability to go all over and see some really great stuff and do some amazing backpacking in the mountains.  Now, it is nice to have a home base again and a place to relax and get dressed without being bent over cause only a 5 year old could stand up straight in that van.  And I dont know if I'll ever have the ability to travel so freely with a home and kitchen on wheels ever again and I'm glad to have had the opportunity to do so.  I guess there are always RV's, but lets be real, I'm not going to be getting one of those while I can still go backpacking.

Okay enough for now and more later on how the beginnings of the winter program are going here at Earthwise.  But we did plant some trees today!

Nelson Lakes

More Pictures!
We have just gotten back out of the woods from one last big hike in Nelson Lakes National park.  This one is in the Northern part of the south Island, and probably one of the coolest hikes we've done.  Even though the mountains are quite a bit smaller than they are further south, we were in a really sweet area.  I think part of it is that we hiked up on top of a ridge for the entire first day.  It is interesting how all the main walks in most places kinda follow the same pattern: Hike through beech forest, go up and over some saddle and be in an alpine tussock area for a while, then drop back down low and hike along a river in a different valley.  It is a pretty great equation for an exciting walk, but after doing a whole bunch of those, it was really nice to do something a bit different.  The first day of the hike was up to the top of Mt. Robert and then along this Robert ridge all day.  We were quite exposed up there, so it was sweet that we had such a beautiful day.  As you can see, the scenery there was amazing.

We got a late start that first day, but it actually worked out beautifully well that the sun was setting as we were coming up to the last part of the hike before we got to Angelus hut.  The location of the hut was beautiful, surrounded by big mountains and right next to a big lake as calm as glass.

The next day we dropped into a valley and hiked around into another valley to get to the Hopeless Hut.  This was a tiny 6 bunk hut that we shared with some very strange hunter guy.  Arguably the weirdest guy we met so far who grunted a lot and did not seem to be all quite there.  It was a bit of a relief once we got going the next morning and I no longer had to worry about our safety.  That day was a chill one where we ended up at a hut right on a lake with a couple other hunters.  These guys were quite a bit more friendly and also they had a saw and axe so we got a raging fire going.  It is quite surprising what a fire does to lift your spirits, as we were all warm and sociable.  It was in fact probably the warmest night I've had since leaving the Coromandel, also with going to bed at about 11 one of the latest.  I think that it is amazingly possible to get far too much sleep as your legs actually hurt after lying down for about 10+ hours each night.  So going to bed at 11 and getting up at 7 actually felt really good.

Now as we realized that we are going to go over the amount of k's that we agreed to put on this vehicle, we've decided to start heading back to the Coromandel a couple days early.  This way we'll get a little bit of time to really relax and decompress before gearing up to prepare for the upcoming winter program at Earthwise Valley.

9 Days of Hiking

Not much time for internet on the road here, but we are finally back into civilization for a bit after 9 consecutive days of hiking.  It all started off in Mt. Aspiring national park outside Wanaka with a day trip to the Rob Roy glacier and then up the valley to get a glimpse of some huge mountains.  That was a full on 17 mile day, expecting to do a little hike out of Queenstown the following day.

a Kea!  "hmmm... can i eat your camera?"

So we get to DOC (department of conservation) in Queenstown at 9am the following day, to find out that there is some good weather for the next couple days before getting some more rain.  Well, gotta take advantage!  Plan a trip, get food, organize transportatin, get to the trail, pack up our stuff, and by 2pm we were on the trail on the Routeburn Track.  This is a 2-3 day Great Walk.  Since the end of the walk is about 300km (by car - crazy mountains) away from where you park your car, we decided to do the Caples track to get back closer to the van.  The Caples is another 2-3 day track but is not a great walk.  It comes out only about 40km from the start of the Routeburn.  Good thing we had previously organized that on the start day we had someone follow us to the end of the Caples track, dropped off our van, and then got a ride to the start of the Routeburn.

On the Caples everything was so green!

Then the day we finished the Caples we go back to DOC in Queenstown to find out that there is a couple more days of good weather before more rain is on its way.  Kepler track!  We go crazy again resupplying and making our way to Te Anau which is where the Kepler track is.  This is another Great walk that is generally 4 days.  Totally amazing scenery on all of these.  On the first night of this one we stayed in the Luxmore hut, which happens to be right near some caves.  It is sweet that anyone can go in and explore them.  It was defnintely quite the changeup of scenery.  Then on the third day, we knew it was supposed to rain later and the following day, and after 9 days without a shower, we decided that the 10 miles to the next hut was not enough and so we kept on another 5 miles or so to get to a road and then hitchhike the last few miles back to the van.  I also had a cold throughout the entire Kepler track, so i was okay not hiking through 5 more miles of beech forest next to a huge river (which is something that we have done quite a bit of in these 9 days)

Sweet mountains on the Kepler track

So yea, great walks are really cool in the scenery that you s ee, but they are really like great (side)walks.  The trails are all graded and dont go too steep and are really easy.  This was quite unexpected compared to many of the other trails we'd hiked so far.  The Caples was interesting in that we went  through boggy areas and up steeper stuff and had unbridges stream crossings and interesting things like that.  All 3 tracks were really amazing, and it was also awesome to have a hut with a wood burning stove at the end of each day.  Surprisingly there was about 10-40 people in each hut we stayed in, so it was cool to have some company.

Livin' large in the huts.

There has been so much amazing stuff we've seen, but i dont get too much internet time and I dont feel like writing about all of it... But, you can check out the pictures!
Mt. Aspiring day walk
Routeburn and Caples
Kepler
Okay, and off to Milford Sound for a few days of actual relaxation!

Heading South

Since last wednesday on the ferry, we have done a lot of driving and have ended up in Wanaka for now.  Wanaka is a small tourist town of 6000 permanent residents but swells immensly in the summer for hiking and the winter for skiing.  So nice to be around here now without the crowds. 

When getting off the ferry, we decided to make the most of the warmish weather that is left and head far south and work our way back north.  This meant passing beautiful weather in the Nelson and Marlborough regions.  We went straight to the glaciers on the west coast at just the wrong time.  Turns out that in the past week they had gotten about a meter of rain (yes, almost 40 inches in a week) and so none of the trails were hikeable because of crazy river crossings.  We did get to at least walk over to the base of the Franz Joseph glacier to take a look... although at the expense of getting drenched.  After seeing more rain in the forecast we decided to move on.  Pictures from We(s)tland.

On friday morning we got to Wanaka to only find out that you cannot even get to Mt. Aspiring National Park (where most of the hiking is around here) because there are river fords on the way there that are uncrossable.  At least the rain is finally stopping here and we got to do a little hike up rocky mountain which also happens to be the location of the “rugged country south of Rivendale” from Lord of the Rings. (that's the picture on the right!). More pictures from Diamond Lake and Rocky Mountain.

The Fern Burn hut on the Motatapu track

We have also done an overnight hike on the Motatapu track, which is not part of the national park.  We stayed in the Fern Burn hut, all by ourselves.  In the morning I went on a little adventure trying to get to the top of a ridge nearby.  I've really been wanting to get to the top of some mountains, so this was really nice.  I came upon some random wild billy goats on my way and had fun blazing my own trail through the tussock (quite easy as it was all above the treeline).  More pictures from the Motatapu track.

And so Monday it is supposed to rain a bit more, but hopefully by tuesday we can do some hiking up in the national park here before heading off to Queenstown and the Milford Track.

View from the top of my little adventure

Taranaki to Wellington

A few days back, Nico and I made our way to Mt. Taranaki.  Excited about our newly purchased backcountry hut pass, on saturday afternoon we hiked into the Maketawa Hut which is at the base of Mt. Taranaki.  It was a sweet shelter with great views of both the mountain and the farms below.  We also met 3 other Americans there who just came up from the South Island doing similar hiking and camping to what we are planning.  It was nice to know that there were going to be some other people on the mountain the next day.  Apparently getting to the top of this one is very weather dependent and there was no guarantee that we'd be able to get to the top.

Turns out the world was shining upon us, with a beautiful day.  The hike was about 3.2 miles with a mile of elevation gain.  This is like the steepest trail in the Adirondacks... with 3 times the length.  It turned out not to be that bad of a hike though.  We were kinda exposed the whole time, up until we got to the top where there was some shelter among the rocks, and we could just relax and have some lunch.

We also met this crazy guy who is planning on summiting the mountain 100 times this year.  He was on his way down as we were going up, and then we saw him heading up as we were going down!  Not sure what his motivation would be to climb the same mountain 100 times... but good luck to you.

View from the scoria fields.  It was amazing being above the clouds!

Then from there we headed down towards Wellington.  Both Nico and I decided that big cities really are not our thing, as we both were pretty uncomfortable for our day there.  We did get to meet up with Hannah from Earthwise and catch up.  We spent last night at the top of a hill that overlooks the city, which was actually a really nice spot close to the city to spend a night.  Now we are on the Ferry to Picton and the south island and really excited about getting back out to the wilderness!

I've got some more awesome picts from this hike posted at my picasa site

Onward HO!

Tonight is my last night here in Tuateawa where I've spent this whole year so far.  Nico and I leave tomorrow in the van to road trip all across New Zealand with the intent to get out into the wild and do as much hiking as possible.  We kinda started that yesterday with a trip to the Pinnacles.  I hiked there with everyone a little while ago, and since it was so amazing I was happy to do it again.  (see pictures here)  The weather wasn't quite as good, but it was still a great day.  It is also me finally being sure that my knee is no longer an issue.  It's still been hurting a bit, but if I feel good the day after that hike.. (which I do) then i am set.

Below is our ride for the next 6 weeks (and the dogs!):

We built the bedframe in a way that it is easy to take out and put back in so that it will always be an option for this van.  It actually took only 10 minutes to put it in or take it out.

Here to the left is the frame.  The four horizontal pieces are each individual units.  Then the three long bits are just cut to size and screwed in.  Then there are two plywood pieces that go on top and get screwed in.  The furthest horizontal bit is on an angle because the right side is the length of a sheet of plywood and the left is the length of the bed.  This gives us a nice shelf, and we have easy access to everything that is stored in the front.

Right now we have a double mattress in there fully sheeted with 4 wool blankets (we'll be comfy on those cold nights in the south island).  In the front we each have our own cloths bin and a box of stuff.  This is all easily accessed.  Then behind that is the toolbox with stuff for basic van maintenance.  There is also a bin full of camping stuff like cookware, tent, ice axes, poles, etc...  Next to that one is the bin with all the kitchen stuff; pots, plates, cookware, cutting board...  Stuffed on one side are our frame packs, and on the other side are a couple car jacks.  Then in the back from left to right is an extra 20L of fuel, the food bin, the chilly bin (cooler), dual burner gas cooker, and a can of propane.  So basically we'll have everything we need except a toilet and a shower.

I'm psyched to wander about wherever I choose to go for a while and see where we end up and who we meet.  There is also going to be no one saying what to do and when.

Although one consequence of this wandering will be a lack of internet... I'll try to write when I can, but I would guess that there wont be a lot in the next few weeks.