December 4

Leaving Knoxville

I began my trip to New Zealand with a short flight on Delta from Knoxville to Atlanta at 1:45 PM. It was a clear, warm afternoon. As we flew over the Smokies, Look Rock and Gregory's Bald were visible below, as was the section of the Appalachian Trail above Cades Cove. We crossed Fontana Lake and the Joyce Kilmer Forest, where I did my last backpacking trip on an unusually cold (down to 15 degrees F) weekend a month ago.

I started to plan my trip. I hadn't had much time to read my Lonely Planet books, both the general one and the tramping guide. I knew I would be walking the Milford and Routeburn tracks, and had made reservations for them a couple months ago with the nice lady at the Te Anau DOC Great Walks Booking Desk. Those were both near the beginning of my trip. Now I started to think about what else I would do with my six weeks in New Zealand.

I made note of a number of interesting walks, including the one to Mueller Hut in Mount Cook National Park, and a route, said to be very difficult, over Cascade Saddle in Mt. Aspiring National Park. I had already decided to visit the Abel Tasman Coastal Track at some point, since this was highly recommended by a friend who had visited New Zealand a few years earlier. The Tongariro Circuit on the North Island looked interesting too.

In addition to walks, I thought the West Coast of New Zealand looked interesting, with the glaciers and interesting wildlife, including seals and penguins. I thought it would be really nice to find penguins, though finding them might be difficult, especially if I were traveling by bus, as I intended. I would also visit Kaikoura for the whale watching, since my friend enjoyed this as well and said it was a beautiful location. I thought I might try to do this just after arriving in Christchurch, before heading down to Te Anau to begin the Milford Track.

In Atlanta, I caught a 3:32 PM flight to Los Angeles. The movie was Operation Dumbo Drop, a Disney film about an army mission to drop an elephant to a South Vietnamese village, to make up for one that had been killed in the war. The dinner was pasta. The sun set over the desert on the way. The floor of the cabin was freezing cold, even through my wooly socks. I was beginning to wish I had worn my hiking boots instead of sandals.

We arrived in Los Angeles at 5:30 PM in time to see the streams of rush hour traffic radiating out toward home through the grid of lights below. It was beautiful from above, but it must be hell to live in such a place. At the airport, no one seemed to know where Air New Zealand was. None of the employees there knew anything, or really cared very much. They directed me to the old International Terminal. After wandering around there with my bags and not finding them, I waited in line at the information desk, and asked again. This time I was sent to Terminal 2. By now I had walked half way around LA Airport.

There was a long line to check in. I boarded the flight to Aukland, and left LA at 8:15 PM, beginning a twelve hour overnight flight. We were served dinner again: this time shrimp. The second dinner was welcome because both were tiny. Air New Zealand is essentially indistinguishable from any of the American domestic carriers, with cramped seats and small meals. A couple of movies were shown. At least they were free, unlike on Delta. I slept through the first, but watched the second, Waterworld, the most expensive movie ever made, starring Kevin Costner.

I thought about my plans some more, and realized that Te Anau, my base for the Milford Track, was too far from the start of the Glenorchy end of the Routeburn Track to make a good base for both, probably. I would have to move to Queenstown on one of the two days I had scheduled between treks. I also decided that instead of going to Kaikoura first, I would probably go to Mt. Cook National Park on the way to Te Anau, and visit Mueller Hut then. That would save some backtracking later. I slept some more. Almost the whole flight was in darkness. The moon over the cloudy Pacific was full.

Copyright Scott A. Yost, 1996. All rights reserved.