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.

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.

22 May 2010

Easter Break - Friday 9/4/10 - Franz Joseph

We're up early the next morning and I put on my ice playing clothes while my dad makes me breakfast. We get to the Franz Joseph Glacier Guides office at 7AM, but it turns out only the helicopter tours are open until 7:30AM, so we wait around for a while. I'm figuring I've missed out on my chance since we didn't book in advance and I still can't make up my mind if I want to go or not. It's not that cheap, but as my dad keeps pointing out, when will I get another chance to walk around on a glacier? The woman tells us they put together a few extra tours since the night before because they had so many people asking for them. So I manage to get myself on an 8:30AM tour with almost no trouble. We go back to the hostel to wait until it's time for me to leave. I rethink all I have packed for the day and have no idea if I'll need any or all of it. But I end up taking it all anyway. At 8:15 we head back to the Glacier Guides office for me to check in. They start our half hour introduction/preparation before we leave for the glacier and my dad leaves just before they tell us we all have to take raincoats for the day, which sucks because I have a wind jacket in my bag and now I really don't want to carry it, but oh well. So we go through and get all the equipment they tell us we'll need, but I skip out on the over-pants. I thank myself for buying some nice new hiking boots that are waterproof so I don't have to put on their old, dirty, smelly, uncomfortable looking ones. Finally everyone has everything together and they put us out on a big red bus with our guides and we're off to meet the glacier. I'm not sure what to expect, given that I've only ever seen a glacier on TV. We have about a half hour walk in along a forest track until we reach the glacial river. Even then we have to walk a little ways before we see the glacier itself. It's actually quite an impressive sight. Here we are, sweating in the sunlight along a riverbed and there's this giant thing of ice and snow coming down from way up in the mountains. As we're walking they stop us now and again to adjust our layers and tell us a little about this incredible piece of nature. The glacier was given its first European name by the German explorer, Julius von Haast (who loved to name things after himself, such as the Haast pass and the town of Haast), however, perhaps because he was looking to score some brownie points, named the glacier after emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria. Before this, the glacier had to the Māori name Ka Roimata o Hinehukatere ('The tears of Hinehukatere'), arising from a local legend: Hinehukatere loved climbing in the mountains and persuaded her lover, Wawe, to climb with her. Wawe was a less experienced climber than Hinehukatere but loved to accompany her until an avalanche swept Wawe from the peaks to his death. Hinehukatere was broken hearted and her many, many tears flowed down the mountain and froze to form the glacier. Franz Joseph and Fox glacier are unique in the world (there are almost no others like them) in that they are extremely close to the ocean and are, depending on who you ask, in temperate or sub-tropical rain-forest. The glaciers have been retreating since 2008, which really just means the front is melting faster than the top can replace it. In fact, the glacier is melting on the surface at about 10cm/day. However, the catchpoint up in the mountains gets about 45meters (147.6ft) of snow/year. That is quite an incredible amount, no matter who you are. This amount of snow fall means that both the Fox and Franz glaciers are still moving quite quickly (for a glacier that is), about 10 times more quickly than most valley glaciers. We have to climb over a giant rock pile on top of ice that spewed out during the last major break in the glacier. Apparently it happened a few years before and they were doing tours at time. They found out far enough in advance that it was going to happen and they were able to get everyone helicoptered off the glacier before a big piece broke out of the middle and the a bunch of rock and water came spewing out. As I look down and across the glacier, I can see tons of little guides working away on different stairways and tracks. All I can think is: Oompa-loompas. We finally make it to the ice and attach our crampons (something I'm quite proficient at thanks to my OPRA training, and the guide is impressed). Our guide is a nice young woman, pretty fresh from college, who used to do this as a summer job, but now does it year round. I spend most of my time talking to a girl about my age from Devon England and a man a bit older than us from South America (Brazil?), who's been here for some time now, but is just getting ready to head home for the first time in four years (he's been traveling quite a bit to a lot of places I can't remember). Our guide brings us through a little hole in the ice, over a stream, which one girl promptly falls in. It turns out she's incredibly afraid of heights and who knows what all else, so a lot of time is spent getting her to move along with the rest of us. We break for lunch and our guide goes off to find one of the other guides. Once we think she's left us here for good, she appears and tells us about how the boy guides were making her cut stairs for them. It's time to turn back and head home. But we get one more adventure before the end. Down a steep staircase, along a flat plane, and toward a crevasse that includes a tunnel. We wait a while for several guides to create a staircase down for us. Those that don't want to go through the tunnel walk along the edge of the crevasse and wait at the other end. Our guide carries our bags for us if we want to go through, it's a slithering tunnel it's so narrow. We all pass through and work our way back to the giant rock pile that marked our way onto the glacier. Here we take off our crampons and start on our walk back to the bus. I've been so warm the whole time it's hard to believe I was on a glacier. And with all the melt that happens during the day, the staircases that were made on our way in are already almost gone. They have to make new ones every day, which explains why their arms are all so big. We take one last look back at the glacier just before we head back along the forest track to the bus. As we walk through the trees I see a cute little Fantail flitting around on the branches and point it out to the girl I'm walking with and the thing dive bombs my face, turning just before it hits me. Once back at the guide office we turn in our equipment and head our separate ways. I wait for forty-five minutes outside the office before deciding my dad has forgotten our plan to meet and heading back to the hostel. Just before I leave though, the man from New York we met in Able Tasman shows up. He had been on the bus since 7:30 that morning from Able Tasman and he got here at 5:30. A ridiculously long time for that trip to have taken. He's looking to get a guided tour and I give him all the advice I can before heading back to the hostel. My dad and I eat dinner, get settled in our new room. I read while he tests out the newly fixed hot tub and we both settle in for an early night. He spent the day taking an endless hike up the mountain alongside the glacier, only to get to the viewpoints when the clouds had decided to settle in, so he never got a very good view of the whole thing. But at least he managed to keep himself busy while I was flitting my way around the ice kingdom.

15 May 2010

Easter Break - Thursday 8/4/10 - Pounakaiki

We wake up to a cold wind from the ocean. We stroll along the beach and through a camp to make our way to the trails along the river. It's like we've wandered the wrong way and ended up in the rain forest, but oh wait, we haven't, there are rain forests here. I keep waiting for a dinosaur to pop out along the way or someone to come running the opposite direction yelling "Velociraptors!! Run for your lives!!" The blue-green of the water reflects the rock and mountains of the opposite bank, which remains beautiful as long as I don't seem some prehistoric reptile slithering around. The sign on the way in tells us to expect caves and crevasses, but we see one sort of hole along the way. We turn back when we hit a river that won't let us go any further. Before heading off to Franz Joseph we decide to walk further along the beach to see what we can see. We end up wandering to a rather popular spot that you can tell would be underwater when the tide comes in. There's a sign telling us about the penguins that live along the beach; we're not supposed to go down to the beach when the penguins are coming in. There are two enormous caves, one of which has a fresh water waterfall pouring over the edge. We poke around looking for sea anemones, but only find about two and maybe three starfish. We climb our way up some rocks to explore a little further out, but have to turn around quickly in order to not get caught out there by the tide. We struggle a bit climbing down, given the slipperiness of the rocks and our lack of climbing equipment. Pushing our luck a little more, we wander out onto a sort of island, having to jump over the incoming water. We stare out over the ocean and take in the air and the sun before our next hours in the car. We barely make it back across the water before the tide comes in. Once back in the car, we settle in for a long ride to Franz Joseph, knowing there will be little opportunity for stopping. We do get to stop along the way for lunch at a pull off where a sign says we can see Mt. Cook on good days. I know I see something out there, but I'm not sure if it's a mountain range or some strange clouds. We get into the Franz Joseph town after dark and decide to check in to hostel Chateau Franz. They offer free soup, but after we fill our bowls we realize it could quite possibly be the worst soup we've ever tasted. There is absolutely no flavour; feeling a little guilty, we go to pour out our soup in the sink, but soon see everyone else has done the same. The place is a total madhouse, with people running around everywhere. A giant bus of 60+ German teenagers pulls in and we're thankful we've already cooked dinner. There is only toilet and shower for the whole hallway we're staying on, which must be at least 20 people. Overall, not the nicest place I've ever stayed in and not a place I would recommend. We talk to several people and find out you can only get on the glacier with a guide and all the tours are full for the next day. We also hear that the only worth while tour is the full day. I'm still not convinced I want to go and I know my dad doesn't want to. We wander around the town for a little while, just to get a feel for the place and find out when the tour guide place opens the next morning. We get to bed fairly early so I can be at the guide place by 7 to see if they have anything open for a full day.