Kayak on lagoon and travel to Fox.
We have 8:00 a.m. coffee and tea with Rich and Karen, lodge-mates from Madison, Wisconsin, who are going on the Okarito lagoon bird-watching kayak adventure with us at 8:45. As we prepare to leave, Karen shouts from the deck “Look at the rainbow.” Thick as the St. Louis arch and as close, it starts on our right out of our sight in the sea beyond the trees but sinks to our left directly into the forest not more than 500 meters away. Vivid bands of red, green, blue, yellow. Never seen one of such weight so close. Spectacular … an omen?
Adam Wade-Matthews, a transplanted 20-something Brit with spun-gold hair piled in a wrap on his head, instructs us on the skirts, life jackets, paddles, strokes and general itinerary and we’re into the lagoon in a group of three kayaks. The sky is gray now but patches of sunlight break through and illuminate the Franz Joseph and Fox glaciers far to our distant right. The lagoon’s tide is with us and we easily skirt the inland edge as we venture out, reaching a wide turn where a great white heron glides low over the water and perches on a log sticking out of the water about 100 yards distant. We paddle in a wide arc up-tide from it and let ourselves float by him … SEVEN FEET away. Majestic, watching us float by. We feel like we’ve caught the rainbow.
Onward to the next arc of the lagoon where another great white perches on the rocky point of a small island. In the near distance, a white-fronted turn dives from a hundred feet in the air straight into the water, its splash like a depth charge in a movie erupting from the water. We remember being told that cormorants have an extra plate above their beaks and a chest cavity that is honeycombed, making it light but able to withstand incredible pressures when it dives into the water for fish.
We paddle on and see our third great white … this at a time that herons finished mating months ago and should be long gone from this area. Glide our way in glass-calm waters with almost no sound and reeds of marsh grass motionless at the sides of an estuary (a river mouth in which salt and fresh water exchange places for some ways inland). We paddle deeper into the estuary, the sides closing in and the river turning that beautiful chocolate copper color from the tannins its tributaries pick up in the hills. After a short time, we reach the point where the water is totally fresh and running out to the lagoon and, eventually, the Tasman Sea. All of our kayaks occasionally scrape the the rocky bottom now and we paddle with care not to scrape our paddles on the river’s bottom. We glide with almost no effort.
We get to the end of the navigable river; a large tree has fallen into and across the river but the steep bank to our right — the river is so narrow here that we cannot turn our kayaks so we are nestled together in the deepest water next to the right bank — the steep bank is a solid, six-inch thick mass of moss dripping moisture into the river. Adam takes a drink of the river water — and David, being David, follows — telling us how pure it is. And it is. Sweet as the scent of manuka in the air. Gloriously cold and refreshing.
We back out carefully through some meanders for about 100 yards, turn, and paddle our way back to the lagoon, which now is wind blown with a steady chop and the tide coming straight at us. A large white-faced heron scuds low over the water across our bows. The wind throws spray from the chop straight in our faces and we have to paddle for all we’re worth to get back to the rocky beach where we launched about three hours ago. Shoulders screaming, faces stung with salt spray, careful not to steer the boats too much against the waves coming at a 45-degree angle, which could rock us enough to capsize us. Some hard yards as the saying goes. All good when we finally hit the beach.
A four-heron morning!
Thank-yous and good-byes back at the kayak office, quick showers and pack the car at the lodge, and we’re on the road, first for an hour-and-a-half walk to the edge of the Franz Joseph glacier we saw this morning, and then for a short drive onward to Fox glacier. At Franz Joseph, we walk about a two-kilometer path that was covered with glacier as late as 1967 but is now high moraine with two or three twisting branches of a river from the glacial run-off coursing through it. When we reach the end, we get a well-intentioned but fuddy gezzer to miss-take our photo several times and walk back with Theresa, a nubile German gal who’s been here cruising for nine months.
We drive on to Fox Glacier, the eponymous town not the actual glacier. The glacier, we learned from Theresa who had booked exactly the same heli-hike to the glacier that we have booked for 8:50 tomorrow morning, was closed the entire day today for reasons of visibility — the pilots can’t see where to land — and high winds. (She rebooked for tomorrow, late morning.)
Fox, the town, is inundated with Germans and Chinese (hopefully not the glacier trek tomorrow). We have dinner at the Cook Saddle Café and Saloon — calamari, ribs and a Caesar salad, all split; David drinks a Wolf Pale Ale, which is very much to his liking, slightly sweet, without the bitterness of many New Zealand IPAs — and we return to the Fox Glacier Lodge, the most expensive place we’ve stayed in New Zealand (bedroom upstairs in a pine-paneled loft, comes with four free chits worth a gig each for internet access).
And we pray for good-enough weather tomorrow to copter to the top of Fox.
Another busy, varied and really fulfilling day in Paradise.
Two Tramps 