I spent the spring semester of 2010 studying in New Zealand through the ISEP program. I used this blog to keep an account of my school experience and as a record of the adventures I found. Hopefully it can serve two purposes: to have kept my friends and family informed of my travels and experiences; as well as to serve as a reminder of how important the study abroad experience is, whether it's in New Zealand or not.

03 October 2010

My Final Adventures

As the semester comes to a close I can feel a sense of sort of impending doom. I remember when I headed back to the US from Ireland both times and how much I didn't want to leave then; and that was only after a few weeks. Four months is both a lifetime and a second to spend in a place away from home. I remember back when I applied to the program thinking I could go for a whole year, but four months really seemed like a lot. Think of all the things you'll need to pack and what you might miss while you're gone, not to mention everything that happens back home you'll miss. But once the time comes to an end, there's this sudden pressure to do everything. Something that is not helped by the approaching finals. Not to mention how difficult I know the finals will be. With all this in mind, I decided I needed to break up my final time studying with some exploration. So on a moderately good looking day Sabine and I head out in our rental car to Cape Pallisar. She has persuaded me to go for a chance to see seals by informing me that there is a LOTR film site nearby we can go to as well. So with me behind the wheel and her directing, we maneuver our way out to the cape and along the winding road. It becomes clear quickly that this is not the ideal travel day; the rain looks like it might hit at any second, the wind whips around, and the temperature is low. We wind our way down to the water where the cliffs along our side are breaking pieces off into the road that I have to avoid hitting. Eventually we make it to where the road starts to go down close to the water. Unfortunately this also marks the end of where we can drive. The road is flooded out and we have to turn around. Unable to see the seals we move on to find the film site. I have to assure Sabine she will see seals when she travels the south island in a few weeks. We park the care, take a look at the map and start out on the trail. But we're quickly foiled again. The river is too high from the recent rain and after a few attempts at crossing, we decide it's really safer to head back. Just then I notice a side path that's really more of a mud slide than a trail. In fact, we both think it's safe to assume very few or no people probably traveled up it. So we make our way up and through an area I find to look much like Bryce National Park back in the US, but with different colors. We explore for a while, deciding since it looks so much like the film site we were trying to find (the passage where Aragorn goes to call the king of the dead to fulfill their duty) that we'll just take pictures and tell people we got there (obviously something I have just decided I'm not following through with). After we satisfy ourselves that this was not a trip wasted, we make our way slowly back to campus and plan our next trip out. The next weekend Sabine, Nadja, and I pile back into our little rental car and take off in another direction (West) toward Mt. Taranaki. We arrive by midday, eat lunch, and figure out where we're going to hike. This is supposed to be one of the world's most perfectly formed volcanoes, but you can only see it like three days out of the year. So we pick our route and hope that if we go fast enough we might beat the rising clouds to get a good view. However, the clouds are either too thick or were already there and we never do get to see very far in front of us. But we have fun making our way up, across, and down anyway. After a very steep uphill, where there is still a clearly defined road (though it's horrendously steep and I can't imagine the toll it must take on the vehicles traveling it, not to mention it would scare me to death to attempt to drive down in a virtually straight line on an incline like that) used for maintenance, we start to hear a humming sound. Out of the fog we begin to see a pulsing light and a growing dark shadow. It's sort of eerie approaching, what we already know to be a radio tower, in the thick fog. It grows out of the fog and even when we're up-close and it becomes clearly defined, the fog surrounding us still makes it feel like either an alien or a horror movie, I have yet to decide which. Either way I can't say I'm sad to leave it behind us; even if I do want to keep an eye on it by checking over my shoulder now and again. We keep adjusting layers the whole time trying to account for how thick the fog is that it basically feels like rain. At one point we have to stop and try to locate the trail after it was washed out. Creepy moss hangs from trees along the way and there is a distinct sulfur smell at several points, but we just pretend we're in Lord of the Rings as we make our way down ladders and along ledges. When we eventually make it to the bottom we emerge from the clouds to find a bright, sunny afternoon. Our hostel is nice and we find a place for dinner and wander the town for a bit. I attempt to explain what a moose is only to hear them think they've got it and say something in German, to which I promptly respond: "No it's not an elk." They look at me having no idea how I could know what they're saying, but apparently the word for elk is the same in English and German even though our actual elk are somewhat different. We turn in for a what had planned to be a fairly early evening and ends up just being a late one. The next morning we have to find a place Sabine is determined to go to to take the exact picture she found in her guidebook. While we do manage to find the same spot, we of course can't get the same picture, because those stupid clouds remain hovered around the mountain. We just determine we'll have to swear there's a volcano behind those clouds. We get back to school and I settle in to study my butt off for the upcoming finals. Sandy and I settle ourselves in determined to make the common room in our pod feel like home. We bring out blankets, pillows, her heater, our computers, the single Ethernet cord we can plug in (do four people not live in this place? How did that design idea seem good), and all our study materials. We go through everything and answer (in endless detail) all of the previous exam questions for the past 4-6 years for each of our classes. The process takes all our time and we create study sheets for ourselves. I'm glad to have time between each test or I would never manage to get everything prepared. We order take away from Hell Pizza and watch Sortland Street as our rewards for working so hard. I'm glad it's freezing out because it makes me feel less guilty for not being outside. Lucky for us there's a new Shortland Street five days a week so we get a little treat every day. I'm glad for this time with Sandy because we've been so close the whole semester (living with some cultural difference difficulty with the two Chinese girls in our pod) and I know I have to leave just after finals. While I have struggled with my classes over the semester and the grades I have received, I enter each test feeling confident that I have studied as best I could. After the first final is over, I know my method of studying is working and I also know that if I cover enough of the past tests, all the same questions come up throughout the years and I will be prepared to answer them. So I also leave each test feeling pretty good about myself. In the end I just have to say that I have tried the best that I can and no matter what grade I get, I couldn't have done better. The grade doesn't matter, what does is that I learned all that I did. And boy, did I learn a lot. My brain feels just about ready to explode. I can understand why the advisor at the beginning of the year was reluctant to put me in four 300 level courses, but in the end I really showed her. With my last final over I have my last afternoon to pack everything before Jessica and I leave for Rotorua and then I take off for Auckland. After much debate I have decided to take a car from Palmy and, skipping my first flight, go directly to the Auckland airport. This allows for one last trip the morning before my flight. So Jessica and I finally make it out only to determine that we will not make it to Rotorua that night and we instead find a hostel in Taupo to stay at. We wake up fairly early the next day to hike around Taupo before going to Rotorua. We take a walk along the river where thermal springs feed in along the edges. Our goal is to make it to Huka Falls. This is the river leading out of Lake Taupo. A sign at Huka Falls informs us that the force of the falls is so strong that no fish can jump up it and there are therefore no fish in Lake Taupo. We make it back to the car, have a quick stop on the side of Lake Taupo and then start our way to Rotorua. Neither of us really know what we want to do in Rotorua other than to try not to spend too much money. So we go to one free little geothermal park to see the bubbling mudpools. We then decide it's worth it to pay to see something, so we locate Tewhakarewarewatangaoteopetauaawahiao, AKA Whakarewarewa AKA Whaka, the living geothermal village. We see a culture show and go on a tour where they tell us all about how they live there. They use the hot thermal springs to cook and to wash. One of the little thermal offshoots reaches 180*C (356*F for you Americans) regularly. The champagne pool bubbles most of the time and when a major natural disaster happens (such as the major Haiti quake) the water rises quickly, the pool cracks, and the water level drops. You cannot visit Rotorua without taking a soak in a thermal spring and lucky for me, my guidebook has a cheapo section telling me about a free thermal stream you can access off the main road. However, the name of the road is all wrong and it's nearly impossible to find, especially in the dark. However, we persevere and it pays off. Lucky for us another group of people arrives at the same time and we get to follow them out to the spot they clearly are familiar with. Neither of us managed to get a flashlight out to bring along. So we have no idea what anything looks like (upon reflection we both agree this is good since we aren't sure we want to know what colour the water we're sitting in is). We lie in the stream absorbing the heat and the rejuvenating chemicals. Considering I have nothing to shower with, I feel a little bad for whoever will have to sit next to me on the plane ride home the next day, since I'll reek like a rotten egg, but this turns out to not be the case. I drop Jessica off at the bus station later that night, where she'll barely have time to stop in Palmy before heading off for her south island trip. The next morning Sabine and I take off for our last adventure (notice how I'm getting some quality time with each of my friends before the very real possibility I never see them again gets super close to a reality). This is something I debated doing for a long time (i.e. since I knew I was going to NZ). It's super nerdy, but kinda cool; I know I want to, but then again do I really; and it costs money, but maybe not all that much. In the end I have a friend to go, the money to spend, and it really may be my only chance (though let's pray it's not). So we rush our way our to Matamata, where we manage to just miss our shuttle out, which means we get a private one. "Feel free to break out costumes if you have them. We employees are not allowed to by law, but that doesn't have to stop you." Our van driver informs us. Can you guess yet where I'm spending my last morning in New Zealand? One more hint: small, hairy footed, food lovers were found here for months and only the shells of their houses remain. The sign at the entrance welcomes us to Hobbiton and quite possibly the dorkiest thing I have ever done (besides arguing Star Wars politics in the halls of my high school). In the end, totally worth it. However I did have to sign a release saying I wouldn't talk publicly about what they tell you on the tour, so I'll have to leave it out here. I can say that I went at a good time; filming of the Hobbit starts in January 2011 so they're rebuilding. Several sheep posed quite perfectly for their fame shots (no sheep on the farm appeared in the film, while there are over 2,000 sheep on the farm, they flew in Suffolks rather than the local Romneys for the movie). Having satisfied my need to prove my LOTR love to my fellow nerds back home, I take Sabine back to Rotorua and begin my battle to locate the Auckland airport (which by the way, is not in Auckland, but way the heck out in the surrounding country). I return the car, walk about a mile with all my stuff to the airport, and check in for my flight home. All the way until I'm buckled in I debate missing the flight and having to stay in NZ. But I know this isn't a realistic option and I have to resolve to just return in the future. Thirteen hours later (and 1 hour ahead of schedule due to high winds which created unbearable turbulence even for someone who travels as much as I do for the first half hour the flight) I find myself in the San Fransisco airport, immediately welcomed by security I don't know what to do with and the overwhelmingly oppressive presence of American culture. In all my years of air travel I have always been happy to see California because it means vacation and my family. This is the first time I have ever been disappointed to land in SFO. I feel like a total alien in this country and find myself going into immediate denial that I have returned home. I spend my four hour layover thinking of how I can get back to NZ and focusing all my attention on getting through customs so I don't have to realize I'm not still there. I know immediately I will have to save an entry on my blog to write about the transition from NZ to the US, home, work, and school. It's just so hard to start all of it.

24 July 2010

Easter Break - Sunday/Monday - 17-18/4/10

The next morning my dad and I are up early to send him off. We wake however to find that a volcano has erupted in Europe and flights are grounded across the world and everything keeps backing up. My father’s concerned this will keep him from getting home, but we check with the airline and everything appears in order. His ride to the airport arrives on time and I once again feel how much I don’t want him to leave. Once he’s gone I feel like I can’t manage to do anything so I settle on the couch to read Dune for some time. I figure I’ll get out at some point during the day. The little boy in the house comes over and plays for a while in front of me before deciding to engage me and I keep him entertained for nearly an hour and a half while his mother goes about her chores. She thanks me for watching him for so long before they head out to a dedication of a sign down the road. It’s some type of historical marker with information that they’re rather proud of.

I end up spending almost the entire day reading and manage to just make it out to the Japanese Garden to read for a while before the sun goes down. Then I myself must pack for my flight the next day.

The next morning I get some time to slowly get myself together before the shuttle comes to pick me up and whisk me off to the airport. The shuttle driver is quite nice and we pick up a young lady and her son who will both be on my flights to Palmy. The driver takes us the long way to the airport to give me the total view of Nelson. Once again, I’m shocked by the ease of flying within NZ. I simply show up and hand them my bag and tell them where it’s going. They require no ID and there is no security screening before I get on the plane. They hardly even glance at my ticket. It’s a fairly short flight to Christchurch, where I debate going out to look at the city before my next flight, but decide it’s not worth the risk of getting lost. Besides that, I remember coming over the hill and seeing the city for the first time and immediately thinking “this is not a place I want to be.” So I settle down to write out more blog entries which will not be entered online for quite some time as it turns out. I eventually make it back to Palmy where I can semi settle back in. While I still feel like I’m living out of a suitcase here, it’s slightly less bad than living out of the back of a car. At least here I get a closet and a kind of room (jail cell like though it may be) to spread my stuff out in.

23 June 2010

Easter Break - Saturday 17/4/10 - Kaikoura to Nelson

The next morning we wake up to one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. The mountains line the ocean and we discover that it had just snowed the day before, so those white caps up there wouldn’t have been there if we had showed up just one day earlier. We decide we’ll walk along the coast where there are supposed to be some seal colonies. Before we even get started on our walk, we’re greeted by a group of seals basking on the shore. We look back across the water to the mountains before heading off along the coast. Up we go to walk along the cliff edge next to the water. A sign greets us at the top indicating which mountains we can see from this vantage point. The shoreline below us is white and curving and the water is clear and blue. Along the way we can see seaweed lapping in the waves. We decide to venture down along the beach, but we have limited time and if we encounter a seal colony we’ll have to turn back. As luck would have it, we do run into a seal colony, but they’re far enough away we can make our way around them without turning back. They’re still close enough to keep us on our toes and give me a few good shots from where we stand. All I can think about at this point is the sing on the beach telling us not to try and roll the seals; which of course, is just about the stupidest suggestion I’ve ever heard. I think anyone who actually would think to roll a seal should get a little love bite from it. As we pass the seals a couple of them pick their heads up to get a better look at us. I get the sense that maybe one or two of them are males wondering if we’re going to take their women. All too soon it’s time for us to leave to get the car returned to Nelson. If I could do the trip over again, the only thing I would change is more time in Kaikoura. I could sit and stare at those mountains across the water for hours. At least as we leave we get to see the mountains for quite some time as we travel at their feet. Just as we’re leaving town, we get one more little surprise. Some people have stopped their car along the side of the road and are looking out to the ocean with a camera. Turning, we notice there are things out there jumping in the water. We decide to pull over ourselves, it’s not long before we realise those things are dolphins jumping way off the coast. There must be twenty of them out there, leaping high in the air. They seem like they’re playing, though they’re probably fishing. It’s amazing how high up they can jump. They’re too far out for me to get a really good picture, but I do end up with something of one jumping. We spend much of the day driving, ending in Nelson and then finding a nice little hostel with a very kind owner, and his wife and son, before dropping off the car. We debate going to the beer fest they’re having in town, but decide it’s too far to walk and we don’t really want to pay. Instead we walk into town and get ourselves some dinner. A great little pizza place, where they serve us some NZ beer and talk us into a dessert pizza. It’s nothing I would go for again and takes forever to get, but is still tasty. We end the night by watching the sunset from the steps of the church and then getting my dad packed for his early morning departure.

20 June 2010

Easter Break - Friday 16/4/10 - Timaru to Kaikoura

The day’s goal, other than to reach Kaikoura by night, is to see Akaroa. Along our way we pass through the town that is home to Lincoln University and I take the time to think of Sandy and get a look at where she first experienced New Zealand. Compared to Palmy, the place is almost nonexsistent. If she thinks Palmy’s got nothing going on, I can’t imagine what she must have thought about and done in this place. However, it’s a majorly agricultural school, so I’m sure she loved it and it’s not quite as far removed as Hampshire; I’m sure it’s a place I would have enjoyed. After a long windy way in we reach Akaroa, which is a French – English village (the only French settlement in New Zealand) some 85km from Christchurch. The town sits in an ancient volcano, which doesn’t seem to bother the people living there, though the last eruption was some half million years ago. The ocean has entered via channels made by stream erosion over the past years since the volcano became dormant. There is actually a second volcano that is the town of Lyttleton and together the two volcanoes make the Banks Peninsula (pronounced Peninshula by our wonderful Kiwi cousins). Akaroa is the larger of the two volcanoes, but the way we go, we end up driving through both of them; in Maori the name Akaroa means “Long Harbour.”

We drive a long and winding road to make our way to the small town, a place I’m told is a must see by my friend Winnie back home. When we finally crest the hill that leads into the village, we see a peaceful harbour filled with boats and a quaint French looking village at along the shore. While all appears peaceful today, the area was quite violent back in 1832 and lead to one of the most important events in New Zealand history. The Captain of the British ship Elizabeth, John Stewart, helped the North Island Ngāti Toa chief, Te Rauparaha, to capture the local Ngai Tahu chief, Te Maiharanui, his wife Te Whe and his young daughter, Roi Mata. The settlement of Takapuneke was sacked. Concern over the complicity of John Stewart, along with other lawlessness among Europeans in New Zealand, led to the appointment of an official British Resident James Busby to New Zealand in (1832). This was the first step in the British involvement that led to the Treaty of Waitangi.

While I take very few photographs of this part of the journey, it is still amazingly beautiful. All along the way are endless perfect beaches and sunny blue skies, quite the opposite of what we were experiencing down in the bottom of the south. We eventually wind our way along the ridges to Lyttleton, the smaller of the two volcanoes.

Just over the final pass we get our first view of Christchurch. This city is massive; it seems to stretch on and on forever. It’s an amazing shock to the system after all the farmland along the way, with almost no people anywhere. I can immediately tell I don’t want to spend time here and am somewhat thankful we didn’t make it to sleep there the night before. It takes us quite a while to make our way through the traffic lights and out the other side of the city after a quick petrol stop.

Our next journey is somewhat inland, with a peak here and there of the ocean, but there’s virtually no stopping all the way in to Kaikoura. We make it there just after the sun sets and get a general idea of the beauty of the place before darkness takes over and we find our hostel. We take a walk to the grocery store to get our last supply of food for the night and lunch the next day. I can’t believe my dad will only have one more day here and in two days I’ll be heading back to school. It’s gone by incredibly quickly and I want nothing more than to continue the experience. I joke with my dad that he doesn’t really need to go back and neither do I, we can just tramp around the north island next. This is of course not a real possibility, but we enjoy our last bits of time in NZ by soaking up the heat of the spa tub they have at the hostel. This one is quite nice in the sense that it’s like a little swimming pool and we have the whole outdoors to ourselves, but, as seems to be the Kiwi way, the water is only just at body temperature, which is not quite warm enough to massage away the aches of sitting in a car all day. We finally muster the courage to run through the cold back to our room before making dinner.

Easter Break - Thursday 15/4/10 - Dunedin to Timaru

We start our morning with a trip downtown to the museum. We only have so many coins and so much time to get through the museum and pay for the meter. So we plan a short visit. I’m once again majorly impressed by the Kiwi ability to design a museum that never stops pulling you in. We both get majorly caught up and decide to put one more dollar in the meter. However, we end up separating and that causes us to leave the museum almost an hour after we originally planned. Now we’ll be pushing it to make it to Christchurch by night time and I have to cut out a visit to Sandy. However, we do have enough time for one quick stop to the steepest paved street. This is the kind of road you would never want to drive up or down, without the danger of your car falling down the hillside. We walk up and take a look around, admiring the work that must have gone into this road. But we only get so much time before we have to hit the road again. We get to drive though Palmerston on the way, which makes me think about Palmerston North and how soon I’ll have to be back there learning and working again. But it’s almost hard to imagine now with all the amazing things I’m seeing and doing. It’ll be the final semester push when I get back and I’ll have to be working nonstop to get it all done. Our next stop is to the lighthouse and boulders of Moeraki. Just before coming here I read a book by Keri Hulme called The Bone People it was about a woman who had a house built like a tower and Keri supposedly used the lighthouse as inspiration, so I figure it’s worth a visit, but I have no idea what I’m in for. First off, it’s way, way off the main road. But this proves to be quite worthwhile. We decide to walk out to the penguin hide, not so much because we believe we’ll see anything, but to look at the ocean. However, we’re surprised to find the rocks covered in seals. They’re stretching and looking quite happy, basking in the little bits of sun. Once in the penguin hide we look out to find another giant seal lying happily on the beach. After just a few minutes of looking we get another couple of visitors. Out of the ocean emerge several yellow eyed penguins. We watch a couple of them wander up the hillside together and one seems to take guard at the top. After a while several more come out of the water to join them. Eventually they all disappear into the bushes and we decide it’s time we took off, we took quite a detour getting here, but I think it’s very worthwhile since I’ve wanted to see penguins the whole time. I’ve seen them in a zoo before, but there really is something wonderful about seeing an animal just hanging out in its natural environment. Our final stop along the way is a little further down at the Moeraki boulders. These are fairly famous rocks, though we only manage to catch them when the tide is high, so there’s little to see. But the Maori legend tells of how they got to be there. Many years ago, when the first sons of the gods came to inhabit the islands, they came by boat with many eel baskets, calabashes, and kumara. A storm came and destroyed their ships. The backs of the ships became the Southern Alps and the food baskets became the boulders you see along the beach. What’s interesting geologically about these rocks is that they were formed like pearls. Meaning, the inside started first and they grew outward. They are hidden beneath the beach and are exposed with coastal erosion. They are also almost all entirely spherical, something quite alien to see along the beach. By the time we’ve seen it all we realize we’ll never make it to Christchurch before it’s just too late to want to keep driving so we decide we’ll make it to Timaru and stay there for the night. Once we’re there, we locate a hostel quickly and settle in for the night.

Easter Break - Wednesday 14/4/10 - Owaka to Dunedin

We’re now working against the clock, with the ultimate goal of getting to Kaikoura and then Nelson for the car return after that. Kaikoura is supposed to be one of the majorly beautiful places along the way, so we plan to see what we can before cutting away from there. So the goal for this day is to make it to Dunedin. And we’re greatly successful, the next day is supposed to be set aside for Christchurch, but we’ll leave that for later. The east coast has somewhat less to offer in the way of visual splendour, so we make our way along quite quickly. We do however stop for a walk out to a lighthouse where we get our first glimpse of some seals. They’re so far below us that really I can only see them by zooming in with my camera and looking at the pictures later. They even have babies playing around in the water, which is endlessly adorable.

The peninsula with the lighthouse on it appears to be a spectacularly popular seal colony home. While this has been a nice sighting, I’m hoping for a bit more; ones that I can perhaps wee without the aid of a camera and computer.

We end our day’s journey in Dunedin, a city with a major university for the south island. We search for quite a while to find somewhere to eat before finally settling on a nice looking little student place. Here is where I get my first taste of venison, in ravioli form. My dad goes for the lamb, to get a feel for where all those sheep on these islands get to. After a pleasant meal, we make our way back to our hostel and try to plan the next day. I want to get to see Sandy, but I know we’ll be pressed for time. We decide to stop in the Otago Museum before leaving town.

19 June 2010

Easter Break - Tuesday 13/4/10 - Te Anau to Owaka

Our next car ride proves to be less entirely visually stunning, but enjoyable none the less. We decide to stop for lunch along the road at the beach and as we’re driving out we come across some Scottish Highland bulls. And these guys are massive, I mean massive. The picture doesn’t do them justice. They were like the living relatives of the Woolly Mammoth. We jump around on the rocks for a while having watched some surfers paddle themselves out to the open ocean, standing on their surf boards with something like canoe paddles. Just as we get back in the car and start to make ourselves something to eat, the rain begins again. So we leave that spot behind and continue our way through Invercargill to Slope Point. Slope Point is the furthest point south in New Zealand without travelling to Stewart Island. We’re more than halfway to the South Pole from the Equator, the furthest south I think I’ll ever go without some serious snow gear. Slope Point is located way the heck out in the middle of nowhere on a private sheep farm, so it’s closed during lambing, which lucky for us is in the spring months of October/November. We hit the road again, hoping to make our way a little further than we do. But we make one spectacular stop along the way, we really make several, but this would be the one worth a mention and a photo. The sun is setting and we pull over to let someone go by and take a quick look at the ocean. What we come across is one of the most perfect beaches we’ve ever seen and a sunset worth remembering. Again, this is a place where words do not suffice, but the pictures do it a bit more justice. The hostel we end up staying in is one of nicest we ever get. The beds are far removed from the kitchen, though the place is small and there is only one other (German) guy staying there so noise isn’t really an issue. The shower is hot, but has the softest water of all time and I feel slick getting out. But the best thing of all is there are electric blankets on the beds. We turn ours on and snuggle in for the night.

Easter Break - Monday 12/4/10 - Milford Sound

We’re up bright and early to start out on our drive to Milford sound. We know there’s a long road in and out with no petrol along the way and many interesting stops. We also know there are boat rides out into the sound leaving from the end of the road regularly during the day and we’ve been told they’re quite worthwhile.

After a quick breakfast we head out on the road. There’s rain forecasted for the whole day, up to 500mm they’ve said. So we plan to be wet and layer on the clothing. Of course, with rain comes rainbows and I catch a glimpse of the first one in the rear-view mirror. We get a good look back up the valley as the mountains begin to close in on us, the clouds sink in for the day, and the rain starts up. Once we enter the narrow gap between mountains the clouds are thick above us and the water is falling steadily, but not yet very heavily. We see just a few waterfalls along the way before making our first stop. As we’re driving, we approach a bridge where a car is moving very slowly. So, naturally we do the same across the bridge to discover what it is they are looking at. As soon as we see it, we know we need to stop. So I make a quick U-y and go back across the bridge to turn in to a little parking spot. This is one of the most breathtakingly strong waterfalls either of us has ever seen. It’s so loud we can hardly hear what’s going on and it’s so beautifully placed, there’s just no looking away. That is until a car comes by and pushes us off the bridge. I do my best to manoeuvre my way around taking pictures without either dropping my camera into the swiftly (an understatement) moving river or allowing the rain to work its way into some important electronic piece.

We move on, stopping now and again for a photo op of the never ending waterfalls pouring down the mountain sides. The thing about Milford Sound is that there are really no words to describe it. Coming back from the trip, I had people ask me what my favourite thing was and I kept saying Milford Sound and Kaikoura (more on that later). They of course would ask me why Milford and I would be hard pressed to explain. It would go something like this: “Why was Milford Sound your favourite?” “It was so beautiful, there were just so many . . . waterfalls.” See? It just leaves so much to be desired in a description. Even now I don’t believe I have the words, so I’ll leave a lot of it up to the pictures, but in all honesty, it’s really one of those places you have to see to believe and understand. I could spend an entire day describing how you take one look and think there are three waterfalls on one cliff face, but then you look again and you see that there are thirty little ones feeding into and out of one big one. How the clouds hung in the air above us and made the mountains appear to go on and on up forever and all that water was just part of the mountain, no coming from somewhere else. How the road wound around and around with the same endless grey and water, but the view was always different. How it felt as though this must be some other strange world, one completely disconnected from the rest of New Zealand and certainly from the rest of the planet. How we seemed to have gone into some time trap of a place that had never evolved and never would, but would remain in its continuing majesty forever. And I would begin to do it some kind of justice, but there are still no words to describe how one feels looking at this stunning piece of nature and seeing something they have never encountered before.

Eventually we wind our way to the tunnel. This is something like the longest tunnel in NZ with the most alpine set of traffic lights and home to the ever curious Kea; a giant green parrot that has a particular liking of shoe chewing. Tourists love to drive by and then feed the parrots as they wait for the light to change to green allowing their passage through the tunnel, but these cheeky little guys will eat the rubber caulking around your windows and have been known to put nicks in the paintwork. While we see no Keas in our short wait, we do see a last patch of remaining snow at the bottom of the mountains, which has formed itself into a sort of tunnel. Once we get our green light we make our way into the tunnel of rock and find the whole thing slopes down and down and down. It seems to almost never end going down and I can only imagine how deep we are as the clouds covered the tops of the mountains above. We emerge into a giant ampetheatre of rock. It’s no wonder they had to build a tunnel through. The mountains have formed together, creating the world’s best defensive line. Any original Maoris coming in from the sound would have met this and had to turn back, there would be no way though and the rock face is too sheer to climb, especially with all the water coming down. At this point the road starts to wind downward, closely, in on itself and my dad starts to panic we’ll fall over the edge again. But with my trusty driving skills we make it to the bottom harm free. By now we’re practically at the water, just a short jaunt through more waterfall covered cliffs, but now they are moving further apart, letting the valley open up for us more.

We book ourselves for a boat tour and then decide to take two short walks while we wait. The first one takes us along the waterside and onto the beach area. We poke around looking for living things in the water and find almost none. We then take a little hike upward for a few minutes to get a view out to the sound. After a quick break in the super heated cafe to dry our clothing just a little before the boat ride, we make our way along the covered walkway to the boat launch. We have a good sized boat, not one of the largest, but not the smallest either, so it’s quite comfortable and all the free coffee and tea you can drink. This boat ride beats any other I’ve ever taken. The views are breathtaking and the weather, while it doesn’t stop raining, it certainly cooperates enough to only drizzle a bit. One of our first major landmarks is Mitre Peak, a tall peak almost invisible in all of my pictures, but there none the less. We even manage to get a couple of fairly clear moments where we can make out the tops of the cliffs quite clearly. After a while, and everyone’s already wet, our captain decides to show off a bit and manoeuvres us under a waterfall so that the spray hits those of us brave enough to make our way onto the top observation deck with no roof. The blast is powerful and I can feel it pushing me backwards as we make our way under the water.

Eventually our captain gets bored and we back out and move our way closer to the open ocean. A sudden patch of warm air surprises us and is greatly welcome for the few minutes we get to enjoy it before the sudden blast of the Tasman Sea hits us with cold wet wind and freezes us again. Along our way we encounter a few fur seals sleeping on the rocks, their picture eludes me as the boat sways more strongly close to the rocks. However, they are cute and peaceful and quite close to the front of the boat. Our captain brings us under another waterfall just as my clothes were starting to dry out a bit from our few moments of warm air. Our final major landmark (or watermark if you prefer) is the largest (in the sense of volume) waterfall in New Zealand. The upside to being in this place when it’s raining is that everything is much more alive in the water world. The waterfalls are so much more vivid against the rock and they are so much more powerful.

After this we head to the car where we get the heat going to dry ourselves out and start our trip back to the hostel as it’ll be dark soon. We have one last stop along the way we want to check out, it’s called the Chasm. It’s a short walk into the woods before a dull rushing noise begins. The bottom of the falls can be seen rushing through a chasm of rock below our bridge, but it’s not until we make our next turn that the full on noise and power reach us. It’s a deafening boom and you know immediately that if you feel in you would be done for in seconds.

When we make it to the tunnel, we just miss the green light. However, after the red light ends, the light turns off all together, so we are left to fend for ourselves. Trusting that we’ve been through it once, there are pull off bays and it goes only upward, so affording a view up the entire tunnel virtually to the other entrance, we begin our way through. We don’t meet a sole going through and I figure, since no one lives out there, no one will be travelling in to Milford Sound tonight anyway. I’m proved wrong though as several cars pass us on our journey out. We spend the entire time from the end of the sound valley back to Te Anau in total darkness.

26 May 2010

Easter Break - Sunday 11/4/10 - Wanaka to Te Anau

Yet another day of driving. Luckily this country is small, so you can easily set goals of places to get to and make it there in a day with some nice stops along the way. For example: we wake up early enough, I pack up the room while my dad makes breakfast. Once we get the car all ready we head over to the grocery store to resupply our food stock before heading on to Te Anau. Just as we're finally leaving Wanaka, we run into a craft show. All this distance from home and they still follow me. We decide to take a look around, let my dad get a feel for the types of things people sell at crafts shows here. There are some nice things, and some not so nice ones, but worth the time to look. After this we head along the road making our first real stop at the top of highest paved pass in New Zealand, which was originally used to bring sheep through the Southern Alps. As we're coming down from here we encounter one of the first really huge sheep farms. Something about the amount of sheep in the small space of the first paddock catches my attention as we wind our way down the mountains. There really are an incredible amount of sheep here. I'm not sure I've said it before, but it's about 60,000,000. Reminder than there are only 4,000,000 New Zealanders. It's utterly ridiculous. We eventually make our way to Queenstown, about halfway from Wanaka to Te Anau. It turns out to be quite a nice little place. There are some small shops along the streets and it has quite a few pedestrian malls. Though, try as we might, we still struggle to find a coffee shop for a little hot drink to warm us up. The temperature is still declining the further south we go. We eat a scone and drink some coffee while sitting next to the lake, watching as some people load up onto a boat for some sightseeing. Try as I might, I cannot convince my dad to accompany me to the underwater observatory where you can watch the lake wildlife. All too soon it's time to hit the road if we want to make it to Te Anau by a decent time. We look through my handy guidebook for a place to stay, deciding on a hostel at a deer farm, a little removed from the main part of town. The place turns out to be a little more removed than we had thought and then they don't have anything open in the way of dorms, so we head back to town anyway. We end up in one place, but they can only give us the one night, so we make our way to another hostel to book a room for the next night. Once we've claimed our beds in the room we go to the DOC (Department of Conservation) to look for some local walks. We figure it's going to start raining sometime soon and we want to get a walk in before dark. We pick one, but then notice a warning on the wall. A predicted 400-500mm (15.7-19.7") of rain for the next two days. It's seems impossible, but we know this is a wet part of the country. We figure we'll just see how it all goes and do what we can when we can. We head out for the walk, making our way around the lake toward the damn and then off into the woods a bit. Along the way we stop to look at some birds in cages that are part of some type of nature reserve thing. It's my first, and only, encounter with a Kea. An amazing, green parrot that loves to eat shoes. They also love shiny things and tend to hang around places where people are to give them food and objects. They have been known to do some damage to cars, including ripping off the caulking around the windows. I don't care how badly they behave, seeing one chew on a shoe is still way cool. This is also the second encounter with the black plague looking thing that covers the trees and ground and smells disgusting. We stop for a while to examine the damn, how it works and admire the power of the water. Noting that the best idea here would be to not try to jump in for a swim. There is a Kiwi habitat warning sign, but I have little hope of actually spotting one. That is, until we're actually out there when it starts to get dark. Kiwis are nocturnal, so your best chance of spotting one in the wild will be at night. Apparently they make screeching/screaming sounds. It does just start to drizzle as we make our way back. After some dinner and talk with our new found roommate (also from the U.S.), we settle in for some reading and sleep.

23 May 2010

Easter Break - Saturday 10/4/10 - Fox Glacier to Wanaka via the Haast

This day expects to fill itself with much driving and sightseeing at 100km/hr. Though as we should all know by now, I cannot drive that fast due to my own nerves and especially my fathers, but also because our little tin can only goes about 20km/hr uphill. We're up early to beat the German kids to the kitchen and get a jump on our travels. However, we just barely make it out to the car before they do it seems. We keep heading south and take the turn off to Fox Glacier for an early morning walk. We choose a trail that leads to the face of the glacier to get an idea of the overall picture. My dad never got a chance to see Franz Joseph from the front, so this is his opportunity to stare down the moving end of a giant pile of ice. Next we head down the road a way in the car to take another, slightly longer walk. This one will take us to a front view on the other side of the glacial river. By now we're starting to get a little tired of the same old forest type, but it's still beautiful. We walk to the chalet lookout, stopping to look at what's left of the chalet (just a rock/concrete formation, probably once was a fireplace) along the way. The lookout is at the end of what used to be access road to the glacier and passes through a rata/kamahi. Along the way we cross a river at a point where a moraine was dumped by the glacier in 1750. The lookout itself used to look down on the glacier about 100 years ago, before the glacier retreated so far back. Back in 2008 both the Fox and Franz Joseph glaciers were growing, since then they have been retreating slightly each year. The catchpoint for both these glaciers is in the same location. Before getting back in the car, we take one last little track detour and get a final look back at the glacier. Once we're back on the road, we plan for very little stopping along the way in order to make it to Wanaka before night time. However, we're quickly sidetracked (as is so easily accomplished in this amazing country) by a beach not mentioned in any guidebook or any iSite. The beach must be a mile or longer, though it's hard to really get the full picture. But it goes on and on with this rock wall, presumably to keep water off the road, but people have come and built every imaginable cairn and statue with rocks and sea debris. It's hard to put into words how simply cool this beach was. There are rocks that look like they have gold in them and rocks that are completely round, smooth, and white and just some simple, gray rocks. (I'll put some of the pictures at the end of this post, but you'll have to wait for the facebook album for all of them). The only downside to this beach is that it is covered in sand flies and my hands (the only exposed skin besides my face) are eaten before my eyes in a matter of minutes. These bites will last not only through the end of the trip, but there is still a scar from one on my hand as I'm writing this today. For lunch we stop at an incredibly beautiful overlook along the ocean. As usual I try to spot animals, but only see the occasional bird. Not even a Tui shows its face and I really want my dad to meet one of these wonderful birds. They make the most amazing noises and can be quite entertaining for surprisingly long periods of time. Another short way up the road we decide to stop for a waterfall. It's in the shade and amazingly cold. The water has that distinct cold, glacial, blue colour I'm beginning to recognize more and more. We finally make it to the Haast Pass (named after that explorer mentioned in the last post), which is the lowest pass through the Southern Alps. We stop just after the one way bridge (note to all you lucky Americans back home, all bridges here are one way, or at least almost all of them) to get out and take a look around. This place is known as the "Gates of Haast"where enormous boulders and steep walls line the gorge. Schist is the common rock in these mountains and it often crumbles at the gorge, so the road collapses and is closed quite frequently. Suddenly we emerge on the other side of the Alps and wind our way along the lakes to the town of Wanaka, which itself has a lake. This is a ski town and really thrives during the winter, which has not quite happened yet. They are however, settling into fall and the temperature has dropped quite noticeably since Nelson and even Franz Joseph. We check into one of the only hostels with open space, which turns out to be quite nice. It's quite neat and organized, each person who checks in gets their own set of dishes in a big plastic container. We take a walk around town and along the lake before cooking our dinner and planning for the next day and finally turning in for the night.