New Zealand rewards walkers with beauty
Berni K. Moestafa, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness..... -- Henry David Thoreau's Walking.
A fine walk in wide open spaces usually opens up all our senses. Nowadays, a walk along Jakarta's main thoroughfares tends to have the opposite affect -- eyes squinting in a storm of dust, vehicle exhaust and blazing sunlight, ears deafened from the wail of honking cars. Breathing the air is done at one's own risk.
There is pleasure in walking if one can find the right place.
"You're alone all day with the wind in the trees, deep and distant views across mountains and valleys and just the bird's songs around you," said Geoff Chapple, a former journalist and a social entrepreneur in New Zealand.
Few places indulge walkers more than New Zealand. This part of the Earth exists to be discovered over and over again on foot: It's fairly isolated from the rest of the world, blessed with the most amazing variety of landscapes and so sparsely inhabited that more sheep than people live here.
And Chapple, of all New Zealanders, should know what makes his country a haven for walkers, or trampers as they call them here.
The former deputy editor of the local leading news magazine The Listener is blazing a trail in New Zealand's landscape to allow people to walk the country from top to bottom in one route.
"I thought a continuous walk through the country would be a good tourist attraction and a good chance for New Zealanders to walk their country," he said.
For a nation where walking has ascended to cultural status, the idea for Chapple's project Te Araroa, meaning The Long Path in the indigenous Maori language, was just waiting for someone to come up with it.
"New Zealanders get out onto the land fairly often. They're not metropolitan people like say, New Yorkers or whatever. As a result they're a fairly fit race, and the walking and tramping culture is very strong," Chapple explained.
Thus, about one-third of New Zealand's land is officially protected, which equals 89,685 square kilometers of unspoiled land that is as pristine as it was say thousands of years ago.
Wanderes also come to seek solitude. With an average of 14 people per square kilometer -- one-third of the total four million New Zealanders live in Auckland's metropolitan region -- there is a lot of ground to cover by oneself.
"It is rare to get away from people. In New Zealand you can do that, yet still remain reasonably safe even in storms because of the great system of huts -- shelters -- every 12 kilometers or so which have firewood, candles, and which you pay for by a coupon that only costs about NZ$4 a night," Chapple explained. (One New Zealand dollar equals about Rp 4,700.)
It is also assuring to know that New Zealand is free of dangerous animals. No bears roam the wild and there are no poisonous snakes, reptiles or insects to be found.
Throughout the country, the climate is relatively friendly and most routes are walkable year-round, except for trails that wind through snow-capped mountains.
But the real lure that gets trampers flocking to New Zealand is its varied landscapes, some of which change within a short distance.
Tropical beaches, snow-capped mountains, dunes, fjords, isthmuses, rain forests are all crammed into New Zealand, which is about twice the size of Java.
All in all, this country offers fantastic trails, from the so- called Kiwi tracks to the Great Walks.
The latter are, as their name suggests, also the most famous ones. Eight Great Walks adorn this country.
In the North Island, the Great Walks can be found at Tongariro National Park and at Lake Waikaremoana.
In the South Island, they are the Milford Track in Fiordland, the Routeburn Track, the Heaphy Track, the Abel Tasman Coastal Track, the Kepler, and at New Zealand's southernmost tip, Stewart Island.
The track at Lake Waikaremoana takes trampers around the lake in a four to five-day trip through the rain forest.
The Abel Tasman track leads trampers along strips of tropical white beaches and through deep green forests.
On the lower side of New Zealand's South Island, the Milford Track, described as one of the finest walks in the world, offers walkers views of Norway-like fjords as well as mountains, lakes, valleys and a waterfall encircled by a thick forest.
An entirely different range of experiences awaits trampers when they take the Tongariro Crossing. There, in the middle of North Island, lies a volcanic plateau, and the track runs through hardened lava landscapes, which, by the way, is Chapple's favorite route.
"Once you are on the flat top of the mountain, you walk past a blue lake, a green lake, past old lava flows that have erupted out of the surface, past steaming vents, which are still active. There are strong colors everywhere, a bit of ice, great views and I guess what I like about it is that its just a little bit dangerous."
New Zealand owes its baffling variety of landscapes to a particular combination of geographic elements.
Along the western side of the South Island, one will find the Southern Alps -- a chain of mountains that cuts off the western coast from the rest of the island.
As wind blows inland from the Tasman Sea, clouds almost always hit the wall of the Southern Alps, causing rain to fall entirely on just this side.
Thus, along the western side of the Alps the vegetation is lush and plentiful.
In contrast, the eastern side of the Alps, or around the center of the island, is mainly dry and the region at times suffers from drought.
New Zealand's miscellaneous landscapes naturally lend themselves to a variety of activities for nature lovers.
The country has numerous limestone caves that are accessible to the public. There is also swimming with dolphins, whale watching and bird watching as favorite activities as birds abound in the absence of natural predators.
It could be because New Zealand is a safe country that locals here have resorted to artificial thrills.
Should anybody need an adrenaline rush, a fix may be arranged in Queenstown, the adventure capital of the world.
After all, bungee jumping was invented here. But then again, New Zealand is bursting with extreme sport possibilities from mountain biking and kayaking to jetboating and scuba diving. For culturally minded trampers, there is the Maori cultural center in Rotoroa on the North Island, while the country's more than 200 vineyards in places such as the Marlborough-Nelson area at the top of the South Island, offer a fine selection of wine and food.
There is a little bit of everything for visitors to sample in New Zealand, but it starts with a whole lot of nature.
More tourist information about New Zealand can be found at www.purenz.com