[Author’s Note: Here I am, catching up again.]
18 to 22 February 2011
We can call it many things – fate, destiny, divine intervention, or just plain old dumb luck – that reason why we weren’t in Christchurch the afternoon of the earthquake. But in addition to any or all of those things, we can also call it the Banks Peninsula Track, the 4-day, 35 km trail we were tramping in the days preceding whose timing contributed to our safe harbour. The scenery of this Banks Pensinsula Track? Absolutely outstanding. Like the Grand Traverse (Greenstone/Routeburn) before it, we’d hike the Banks again, thereby endowing upon it our highest regard.
We weren’t so sure it was going to turn out that way. First, there were the gals we were tramping with who we haven’t mentioned, a group of twenty-something “lawyers and bankers” as they titled themselves that arrived at the start clad in sundresses, flip-flops, nail polish, and designer eyewear, draped in purses the size of my suitcase. These girls were here to party, the natural beauty around them just a pleasant backdrop for their afternoon bottles of sauvignon blanc chased by an evening shiraz (and merlot and cab sav and clink clink). “Good for them”, we thought, right after “Put some giddy up in your step there, Gina; we need to get to that cottage before the Spice Girls move in!”. We never did end up sharing a room with them, and a few in their group actually knew how to have a conversation with someone who wasn’t in their age demographic, but for the most part we all did our own thing; us, our octogenarian, and our ever-friendly Kiwis sharing meals and stories while the girls shared their bottles and business and beauty tips.
The weather was also a bit of a factor, working hard to dampen (literally) our spirits the first and last days of the trek, clouding our views of what we knew to be the glorious hills and valleys of the peninsula around us. But the scenery we could see – the native bush inhabited by inquisitive fantails, the open grasslands peppered with grazing sheep, the sheer and rocky coastline traversed by fur seals and penguins alike – was outstanding, as were the more often than not “super cute” cottages in which we stayed.
And if you’re looking for quirky? You’ll find it on the second day in the wee hamlet of Flea Bay, a not very endearing name for a coastal homestead with much to offer adventuring wildlife-lovers. Here you can kayak with a guide who will take you all the way out to the mouth of the seal-dotted bay, all the way out to its interface with the South Pacific Ocean, the big, rolling, wind-driven, kayak-swamping waves of the ever-unpredictable ocean. This is after you’ve risen from your morning depression following last night’s penguin education tour during which you visited several penguins housed in boxes scattered about your host’s yard, learning that this penguin “probably needs to be put down soon” and that penguin “was rescued with a bad eye and we don’t know if she’ll make it” and that other guy over there, the tall scraggly one that looks like he was just run through a Dyson hand dryer, well he “might actually make it” but you wonder if that means he’ll be living out his sunset years in the yard ’cause he sure doesn’t look seaworthy to me.
Yep, the Banks Track has it all, and then just a little bit more.
