Kakadu National Park

6/30/2008

Darwin

What an incredible weekend. We’re now moved back into our hotel in Darwin after returning last evening via long bus ride from the watering holes we were swimming at. I got some amazing exposure to the aboriginal culture while we were away and feel like I understand much better their culture even though I’m sure I just got the tip of the iceberg.

Last week, after our second day of class, we took a tour of a liquid natural gas plant outside of town. A chemical engineer talked us through the plant, their gas recovery process, and the business side of things. The offshore gas field that they pull from produces a couple products, some of which are directly loaded on a tanker at the near the platform, and the rest comes through a pipe laying on the sea floor to the plant outside Darwin. The plant is owned mostly by ConocoPhillips, and contains a couple areas where their industry secrets lie. There are three big white boxes where the operators know what goes in and what goes out, but not what or how things work inside. In the presentation, it was obvious that the guy didn’t care for the “greenies,” the people making sure they didn’t have adverse effects on the environment. There was also an area on their property that was undeveloped, still forested, because there are still unexploded bombs and mines there from WWII. The LNG plant felt like it brought real industry to the Northern Territory, and was proud of its role in bringing money to the area. They have a LNG storage tank that got struck 300 times in one hour by lightning. And, bringing me back to my days at the chemical plant in Augusta, the record for climbing to the top of it was 48 seconds.

On Friday, we left Darwin and our first stop was a crocodile cruise, a chance to see some crocs up close. They had some big pythons that they brought out to the group before we boarded the bus, I was surprised to see how many people were afraid of them as well as how many had never touched snakes. We then got on the boat and had an awesome view of some huge living dinosaurs. What they did was drive down the river and look for some crocs that were interested in eating and the guys standing on an overhanging balcony would lower some buffalo meat on a string into the water to bring the animal closer to the boat. They had a no jump, no eat policy with the crocs, which meant when they would get close to the food, the guys would raise the meat above water and make the crocs do a tail stand in order to get the food. With the crocs just on the other side of the glass lunging out of the water, it was pretty incredible. It was a great way to not only be able to see the anatomy of them, but also to see them in their natural environment. I was curious how many tours this company ran a day, though, because I didn’t like the idea of crocs hanging around so they could get some food from a passing boat. As we went down the river, they started feeding some of the birds that were flying nearby. They would throw small bits of meat into the air and these birds would come swooping through and catch them with their talons. They were amazingly coordinated, and they are a rare species in that they eat their catch on the fly, so we could see, after they caught the food, the birds reaching down to pick the meat of the bone as they flew to shore. Very cool.

Next we stopped at the Ubirr Rock Art trailhead, where we learned a lot from our guides about the history of the paintings on the various rocks around. Kakadu is a unique park because it is a World Heritage site for both natural and cultural reasons. These paintings were similar in some ways to the petroglyphs I’ve seen out west. Most of the paintings were of animals and highlighted the fatty areas of the animal, I guess to show the best parts to eat. Some of the most interesting things about the culture: longest continually running form of communism in the world, the ‘sick areas’ that the people knew to stay away from were found to be those with high uranium deposits, they use controlled burning to clear the bush land helping to promote growth and encourage wildlife, they have distinct anatomical differences in skull shape from their supposed relatives in Africa. I was intrigued by the way they learned to live off the land, and many still do so to this day. The evidence of the presence of fire is everywhere in the countryside. Darwin and the surrounding country are supposedly the most lightning intensive places in the world, and I assume that the native people used controlled burning much in the same way that lightning would do naturally.

The camping setup was nice, lots of two man tents set up in a small field. The first night we had kangaroo, crocodile, and buffalo burgers for the meat portion of our meal. The kangaroo was a dark brown, tougher meat that was delicious. The crocodile was a softer white meat like chicken. We learned out to play didgeridoos around the campfire, had smores and listened to Johny Reed, our aboriginal guide, tell us about how his people use the plants and trees that we could see around us. He was hilarious. “Took me 20,000 years to get this tan!” They walk around bare foot with no sun screen or bug spray, having none of the problems that kept a lot of the kids uncomfortable in the camp ground.

The next morning we went to Mary’s Place, an aboriginal woman who’s an artist and opens her home up for people to see how things run. She showed us some pictures of her and her family gathering food in the traditional way. The most interesting one was that of her, her husband and kids gathering file snakes from the river. Apparently the snakes are harmless to humans and are usually fat and slow. So they go into the edge of the water and feel around with their hands and feet in the mud, exploring roots and holes to find the snakes. When they find them, they bring them up, stick the head of the snake into their mouth, bite down, and pull, killing the snake. Pretty hard core to see a woman grab a snake, put it in her mouth, kill it and move on. We got some more lessons on the didge while the girls made bracelets out of pandanas leaves. The kids who lived there were pretty amazing at the didgeridoo – the hardest part about the instrument is learning to do circular breathing. I started to catch on but moreso just learned to appreciate how good they are at it. Coincidentally, there was an installation team there finishing a hybrid solar/diesel electricity source. Our professor went to talk to them and found one of his previous students doing the install, so we got an impromptu walk-thru of the solar setup. It was interesting to hear Mary talk with such little fear about the three dogs they’ve lost to crocodiles in her back yard in the past year.

After leaving Mary’s, we went to a billabong (pond) where we ate fresh pineapple while learning about the geological history of the area. This was to kill some time before our tour started at Ranger Uranium mine. This is a really unique and controversial area because the uranium was found before the creation of the national park, so there’s actually a uranium mine inside a national park because the park was made around privately held land. That being said, it is one of the most environmentally monitored mine sites in the world because it operates in such close proximity to preciously protected wildlife. They mine 10% of the world’s uranium out of that mine and are halfway to the bottom of their pit. Learning about how they take the uranium in dirt form to 400 kg barrels that sell for $80,000 a piece was really amazing. It was most intriguing to learn that while those barrels are 99% pure uranium, only 5% of each barrel is used after enrichment in the fuel rods in a nuclear power plant because in our current design, we only use U₂₃₈ and most of what’s in the barrel is U₂₃₅ . I don’t know much about the specifics in nuclear degradation, but it seems like a ridiculous amount of effort to extract that small amount to make power. I understand that a lot of electricity results from that small percentage, but it’s crazy how much work it takes to get there. I’m skeptical as to the optimistic projections for how little they impact the environment, and how their profit of $50 million a year is giving back to the area at all. There are some interesting things about the place – the power for the facility is created by 5 huge diesel engines, burning 23,000 liters of diesel each day, all the water that leaves the facility does so by evaporating into the air through natural evaporation from their holding ponds, they have gamma ray scanners that determine each truck load’s uranium content, they have 16 of those colossal dump trucks running around the clock. Our tour guide seemed to have some holes in his logic but had interesting things to say about the role of his plant in the world’s energy future. He made a connection to the Bronze and Iron Age to today’s uranium use, saying that bronze and iron were first used to make weapons, then found to have useful purposes outside of weaponry. He countered that point with the fact that even after the finer uses of bronze and iron were found, weapons continued to be made out of those materials. Obviously both statements apply to uranium today. His viewpoint was that the Baby Boomers (him included) were the ones who created most of the problems we have now, but it’s our generation’s job to figure out how to fix it. After leaving the plant, we dropped by another billabong called the Yellow River area, a beautiful lake with teaming with wildlife. We saw a couple crocs in their natural habitat, some neat birds, and a beautiful sunset.

Yesterday, we drove a couple hours to Gunlom Falls, our last stop for the Kakadu trip. We hiked up the ‘escarpment’ (as they refer to the mesa-like mountains in the area) to some natural rock pools in the river. It was incredible – nice cool water on a hot day, natural smooth rock pools at the edge of a 200 ft. waterfall into a lower plunge pool, looking out across the valley under a cloudless sky. There were a couple water monitors (as in iguanas) there that were definitely the largest lizard like animals that I’ve ever seen in the wild. I could have easily spent all day there, but unfortunately we only had time for an hour or two. The upper pool, that I went to while the group was packing up, was fed through a passage that reminded me of pictures I’ve seen of the wind-carved sandstone caves in the American southwest. It was awesome to be swimming in a deep creek with narrow rock walls shading the sun, terminating with a waterfall that you could swim under. When we hiked back down the escarpment to swim in the lower, much larger plunge pool at the bottom of the falls, people got a little unnerved when our guide, Jacky, said that there are ‘freshies’ (freshwater crocs) in the place that we’ll be swimming in. She said generally they don’t bother people but she couldn’t guarantee anything. Then she jumped in and asked who wanted to come with her to the other side of the lake. With no apparent danger, just about everybody followed.

Jacky is a brave woman. I talked to her a lot during this trip because I knew that she knew a lot more about the land than she cared to tell in the group setting and I wanted to see what more there was to learn. She was 30 and had been guiding up there for 6 years, has been adopted into an aboriginal family in a nearby area, studied environmental science, was a definite free spirit and traveled around the world for 3 years before she went to the ‘Uni’ (they refer to college as the university). Anyways, the reason I say she’s brave is because three years ago, on the UNSW trip, they were swimming at a different place called Jim Jim Falls when she spotted a snake in the water. It was swimming toward some tourists that weren’t part of her group but didn’t see the oncoming danger. So Jacky cuts off the snake from getting to the people, kind of trying to herd it off, staying about 15 feet away from it as people swim to shore behind her. Chaos I’m sure was breaking loose as she was trying to keep people calm but people on shore were yelling SNAKE!! As it swam closer, she grabbed it behind the head as it wrapped its tail around her arm. She wasn’t sure what kind it was but had a couple of guesses, hoping it was the non-poisonous guess. She grabbed just barely too far behind its head so it was able to reach back and bite her twice on the hand. She tried to remain calm and tell herself it wasn’t poisonous, the two bleeding fang marks on the area between her thumb and first finger said otherwise. She had to swim 50 meters back to shore with the snake and there here fellow guide identified the snake as a Western Brown snake, one of the most poisonous in the world. They immediately laid her down, bandaged her arm up and went for help. The helicopter arrived an hour later, taking her to the nearest town, Jabiru, which is the town that’s next to the Ranger uranium mine. There, she waited 5 hours until the medical evacuation helicopter arrived to take her to Darwin. While she was fine for the first couple of hours after the bite, she started having some difficulties in the coming hours. As the doctors in the medvac copter tested their general anti-venom on her, giving her 3 mls to start, she felt fine. They boosted the vaccine to 90 mls, accidentally pushing her over the edge and putting her into anti-fallactic shock. The next couple hours she was unconscious, with not a whole lot of options for treatment. Johnny Reed (who I mentioned earlier) is the traditional owner for Jim Jim Falls, and was really upset that this happened under his watch on his land. He was telling me around the fire that we were looking a living legend, the living dead. She did just the right things in order to be alive today, nearly losing it. She said there was some numbness for the next couple weeks in her arm but has otherwise recovered. The central nervous system is a delicate thing to mess with, and when a natural poison that goes straight for it gets in the mix, there’s not a whole lot you can do. I could tell Jacky was a little hesitant to tell the story again, as I’m sure she’s told it many times, but it was an incredible story. She’s definitely one of the coolest people I’ve ever met. I got some advice from her while we drove 5 hours back to Darwin for the rest of my travels in Australia. I think she’s convinced me to go to Tasmania on one of my free weekends in Sydney. She also was pushing the freedom of being on the road, not needing to be confined by tradition as far as getting out of school and getting a job immediately. Hm…I’ve got some ideas brewing but we shall see.

Maybe you’re asking yourself “Is this kid actually doing any school work while he’s there?” Well, the answer is yes and no. Class has been incredible so far, we’ve finished our time with our first lecturer and have been getting acquainted with our second, as he was on the weekend trip with us. Iain, our first lecturer, deals with energy policy foremost, trying to aid the people who make the big decisions in seeing all parts of the picture. It is an incredible challenge to be knowledgeable and understanding of all the different aspects that affect alternative and renewable energy. You first look at the infrastructure that we have now. Then you think of ways to change that or clean it up so the adverse effects are removed. The hard part is that doing so involves an incredibly complex economic system, a system of ethics that governs the need to protect our environment, provide electricity for those who don’t have it, the fairness in doing so, the psychology of the general population in changing a mindset to prevent further disaster, forecasting of resources and changes based on the use of them, etc. etc. etc. There are so many complicated and interdisciplinary issues that I would have to say that I think this is one of the most difficult problems that engineering could be associated with. Uncertainty in the numbers is such a huge question mark that we can’t sit around and wonder how accurate they are; it’s time to move. Unfortunately, changing a system that seems to work wonderfully is going to be hard work, and due to human nature, there’s not much chance to get everybody on board unless it somehow affects large numbers of people. It becomes quite obvious that we’ve got to change something when you realize how unsustainable the current system is. I guess you could use a simple analogy of a car: works wonderfully until it runs out of gas, at which point it is of no use. There are so many caveats and counter points to every issue, it is absolutely fascinating to discuss. I thought it was humorous that in the seasonal changes in the Top End (northern part of Australia), there is a period at the front of the rainy season where a type of cloud called ‘political clouds’ move in, bringing lots of promise but no results. Of course, that’s followed with two meters of rain in about a month’s time, but funny nonetheless. It is currently winter here in Darwin, a chilly 80 degrees F. In the summertime, it gets over 100 degrees with almost 100% humidity. They literally call that suicide season. Fortunately, we’ve come at the right time of the year because there’s still residual water left over from the last rain (in March), but it’s cool enough to actually do things. Anyways, back to the school part. We’ve got our first out of class assignment, a simple 300 word opinion paper. Otherwise, our classes consist of a four hour lecture that is both informative and introspective, helping us learn the background of the problem so we can be adequately prepared to learn about the technologies that are becoming part of the answer. Our professor for this week, Alistair, specializes in photovoltaics (solar panels) and energy efficiency. So we’ve gotten our base, now it’s time to build. One of our classes is going to be centered on what you can do in your house to cut energy use to bring the amount down to an amount that can be supplied by renewable energy. Definitely looking forward to that. Otherwise, I don’t feel like I’m in school much because I don’t really have homework, we don’t have any tests, our information is presented in slide form so we don’t have to read extensively, and our professors are curious about our personal interests to they can tailor their teaching towards those things. Certainly not used to any of those things, but I like it.

Our accommodation has been interesting, it suits me quite well because I have a mattress but there are vast differences between the setup in the types of rooms different people have. The kids of the entire summer program are situated in two different hotels, a couple minute walk apart. The smaller programs (imaging, wildlife) have a nice hotel where the rooms have washer and dryer, kitchen, living room, and multiple bedrooms. Our hotel, the other one, has two types of rooms: the one that I’ve been fortunate to get with a small kitchen setup, bunks and a bathroom, the other is room with bunks and a bathroom. So some people have to pay for laundry, some can’t cook in their rooms, some have ants, some have 5 to a room, others have 3. Everybody paid the same amount for the program, so I guess it’s just fortune whether or not you get the shaft (as some of the girls said). Overall, things are pretty organized but are casual enough to feel like they could have planned things out a little more. All's well here though!

Darwin (started in Christchurch)

Alright, It’s been a few days since I’ve been at the computer and it’s time to catch up. My second day in Christchurch was quite an exciting one and I’m ready to tell you about it. I woke up the next morning and I went to the information site to see if I could book the Maori experience, the dinner and performance show from the local community who told the story of the original inhabitants of NZ that had been recommended to me earlier in my trip, but it was not running for the night. Instead, I decided to book a trip to a less thorough experience but included some of the wildlife of the country in the tour, like the kiwi and the kea I had been reading about in the museums.

When I was in the information center booking my tour, I ran into the same kid, Nicholas, who I had given a ride a week beforehand on the other side of the country. I thought after dropping him off that we should exchange plans just in case we were in the same place at the same time, but it seemed to work out that we didn’t need to. We arranged to meet up later in the day to discuss our travel plans to the airport the next day, as my flight had been changed to be the same as his the following day. I toured the botanical gardens for the rest of the afternoon and did some critical packing for the upcoming journey to Sydney.

By chance, I was selected to be the ‘chief’ of our 50 person group for the night of our Maori experience, having to accept the warrior’s peace offering which allowed our group to enter their settlement for the time being. I had to stand tall with courage to fend off the warrior’s attempt at scaring our group away, and then I had to make friends with the chief by shaking hands while touching foreheads and noses. It was pretty funny when the chief of the Maori tribe assumed that the girl sitting next to me was my ‘mate’ until the leader of the guided tour had to inform him that we had just met on the bus on our way there. We learned a bit of the haka, which is the war dance intended to scare off neighboring tribes, and had plenty of stage time to make fools of ourselves (especially me, being the chief). After returning back to the city, I had the luxury of my first meal at a restaurant in a long time. With dinner only being $22, it raised my cost per day of food by a whole dollar.

I don’t want you to get the impression that I’m this ridiculously cheap person who doesn’t do anything because it all costs money. I certainly enjoy splurging on the things I feel are truly meaningful, and wish I had enough money to buy everyone what they want. I just wanted to preface my analytical breakdown of the finances on this trip. I only went to the grocery store two main times on my road trip, planning it just about perfectly to have nothing left but a little rice when it was time to turn the campervan back in. I broke it down and it turns out I spent just over $12/day on food. I spent $950 in gas in three weeks driving just over 4000 kilometers. Man…that’s a LOT of money to spend on something that you don’t get to keep. I do have some incredible memories and wonderful pictures from the places it allowed me to go, though. Fortunately, this trip was amazingly timed so that I’ve been able to save up all semester during my last co-op in Virginia to be adequately prepared for such costs, so I’m doing alright. I have to keep in mind two things while abroad: if I don’t do it now, I might not be back to give it a second thought, and secondly, I’m not going to have a steady income until I graduate from college so my money needs to last for the next year. Although these are conflicting thoughts, they help me to realize what’s important and what’s not.

I wanted to add a few of the peculiar happenings to the story here that aren’t in order chronologically, but for me were just crazy. My first night in Christchurch, I was cooking dinner before I wrote my blog and I saw a shadow outside and then stop at the door. I saw a guy knock on my window and I was like Uh oh. So I opened the sliding door to see what the guy wanted. He was on his bike and said as I was opening the door that he had seen me parked there for a couple hours and wanted to know if I’d like to come take a warm shower and get some tea in the morning at his place down the street. My first thought was of caution because I didn’t understand why he would make such a generous offer without some specific intent. I said I would be interested, and he showed me on the map where he lived. We chatted briefly (my attempt to understand his motives) and I was reading all the signs I could to see if this was a genuine offer or not. His hands were dirty when he was pointing at the map, he said he’d been on the road before and knew how good a warm shower could feel sometimes. So I told him I’d meet him at 10 the next day and he went on his way. For the rest of the night, I was kicking myself as I thought of some better questions that I could have asked that would have let me see a little more of where he was coming from. I was analyzing our whole conversation to try to convince myself one second, why I shouldn’t go, and the next second, why I should go. Why would a dirty guy offer a shower if he wasn’t clean himself? Why didn’t he give me an address instead of saying the fenced yard with a black Prelude outside? Since he offered without knowing who was in the car, would he have offered to anyone? All these thoughts were making me quite unsure about what I should do, how safe it would be, worse case scenario, etc. Especially since I just found a public bathroom with a shower for $3. So when I ran into Nicholas the next morning and told him about it, he encouraged me that if I felt uncomfortable, I could always leave. His experience hitchhiking across the country made him feel pretty safe among the Kiwis. So I went to the guy’s house and took many precautions to make sure I had a safe exit, my car was out of sight, no peep holes in the shower, etc. I was being ridiculously skeptical but figured it couldn’t hurt. After I got out, he offered food but I said I’d rather just talk for a few minutes without the grub. It sounded like he had changed locations a lot recently and was used to living outside, just renting a room in the house we were in and thought it’d be nice to offer a shower since it wasn’t really his house. Nice guy…we chatted for a few minutes and I went on my way.

When I was waiting in the city square for the shuttle to come for the Maori experience, the couple who camped next to me both nights in Queenstown happened to be walking by the place I was standing. We talked for a while what we had been doing the last couple days, and grabbed a drink to say farewell. They inspired me – they’ve been traveling for 18 months and have been living off their money until it runs out, upon which they get good paying jobs, save up, and travel some more.

I turned the campervan in the next morning without any hitches; I was glad to have my $5000 deposit put back into my account. A quick walk to the airport and I was off to Sydney. It was a bit of a hassle figuring out what I needed to do for the 12 hours I was going to be in town, so I just decided to find a place to sleep in the airport, and was very excited to find a shower for the morning. A quick four hour flight brought us to Darwin, where we settled in and went to the Mindil Beach markets – a fair like atmosphere on the beach with tons of food and shops.

Our program is through the University of New South Wales and consists of four programs who generally have the same itinerary for the course of the six weeks. Some parts of the trip have been substituted for others, but from what I can tell, we have the largest variety. With nine professors over the course of the program, we’ll be getting input from some leaders in the energy. I’ve been really excited about our first two days of class, my mind’s been brimming with ideas and questions, things that are very intriguing and important in today’s energy market. I think for the most part we’ll just be viewing issues from a broad perspective, but enough to get me thinking about some neat ways to invent something. I’ll get into more detail after we have a few more classes so it’s not such a vague description.

130 new friends, all eager to meet one another. I’ve met almost everybody already, lots of kids from Pennsylvania, U of M, Auburn, Georgia Tech, and a few more. It’s interesting to hear the different opinions of class, some people find the four hours of energy discussion a living hell, whereas I’m really enjoying our topics. I don’t have any sympathy for them because they would have had a tough time in my Spanish LBAT, 8 hours of intensive Spanish class with lots of homework. Anyways, I’m excited about the possibilities.

We’re leaving Friday morning for a national park nearby, Kakadu. We’ll be camping there for three days, getting to see a uranium mine and see some neat natural features. I’m excited to hike but am going to have to remember to take it easy so I don’t power hike past everybody like I’ve been doing for the last three weeks. Catch up with you next week!

In Darwin

Just wanted to leave a quick note to say to the few people who are keeping up with me that I have arrived safely in Australia. I'm in Darwin, on the north coast, getting acquainted with the other 130 some odd kids in our summer program. There are four programs over all: Film and Imaging, Wildlife, History, and Energy. Mostly guys in the Energy program, go figure.

I'm relishing the opportunity to be in an atmosphere again where there's lots of kids eager to meet one another, I think I've already met about 110 of them. I'll get back to you soon with a better update since I left Christchurch, there's been some funny things happen. Cheers mate!

Christchurch

6/19/2008

Christchurch

Having just capped my three week trip with the best couple of days back to back, I’m pretty elated as I write this. I drove to Christchurch this afternoon after leaving Mt. Hutt. Let me go back a little bit to start where I left off.

The next morning in Queenstown, I played a couple holes of disc golf until my disc broke when it hit a rock. It was a free 1 ½ rounds of disc golf until you include the one-time fee of the worthless disc I bought. Kept me entertained while it lasted anyways. I poked around town, checked out Salvation Army, and gassed up for my drive to Mt. Cook. I made the couple hour drive from Queenstown to Mt. Cook in the late afternoon, getting to see the vastly changing scenery in the afternoon light. I first passed some treeless hills that reminded me of some I’ve seen in Utah; then I came to some desolate plains where I began to see these really weird looking clouds. The color of the clouds was almost blue-green, much different than the very grey ones to the west of them. I was really intrigued by their color and was trying to figure out what the deal was. As I drove closer, I got to see a huge glacier fed lake that was a unique milky blue color, obviously reflecting its color up into the clouds. It was getting dark, and the thick cloud cover prevented me from seeing any of the mountains that I knew were looming around me. I arrived at the little town of Mt. Cook, at the base of the highest mountain in Australasia, at some 12, 300 ft, and got to learn a lot about the mountain and Sir Edmund Hillary, the town and country’s hero. He trained at this mountain for his ascent of Mt. Everest. I asked a kid that I met a couple days ago how he could have trained for a 29,000 ft. mountain by summiting a 12,000 ft. one, but now I know. Mt. Cook has a lot of glaciers and standing ice on it, of which Everest certainly has its share. Hillary was actually chosen by the British team because of his experience with ice, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to go. Anyways, it was really neat for me to have the time to watch multiple of the 45 minute videos in the museum because 1. I haven’t seen or watched a tv in a while, 2. I wasn’t getting bored with the information and 3. I didn’t have anything else to do. One of the videos featured a guy who summated Mt. Cook, and then skied down. You should have seen some of the ridiculously steep faces covered in ice that he skied across, he was out of his mind. Another video highlighted Hillary and his Sherpa’s lives after their summit, something that I didn’t know much about. But best of all, I got to see an IMAX style 3-D movie that showed aerial footage of the top and the views from that perspective. It was a great precursor to the next day’s hike.

I woke up and read for a while because it was nice and cloudy out. As I walked to the bathroom, I looked out the window of the hotel to see the clouds had cleared, and I was in awe of the surrounding mountains. I went to the bathroom only to return to a valley shrouded in clouds once again. Kind of bummed, I wondered how well the forecasters of the supposedly fine* weather knew what they were talking about. I picked out a hike that would take me as high up as I could go in a couple hours, and was very pleased to find that the clouds were actually just a fog that was only a couple hundred feet high. As I climbed out of the valley on a really steep trail, I got to see the clear sky above the peaks with clouds below me lining the valley floor. Once again, I could only smile at the magnificence. I reached my stopping point on the hike, which was an overlook to an absolutely stunning view. I saw pictures in the museum of the area at different times of the year, and I think I must have been pretty lucky to catch a warm day with little wind and no snow on the ground at this time in their winter.

*Fine is a word that brings me to another one of those funny kiwi definition differences. Throughout my trip, I’d seen weather forecasts as describing the weather as ‘fine.’ I thought this was a pretty in descript term to be using for weather, as there could be many variations on ‘fine weather.’ At one of the information centers, I finally asked some questions about this description of the weather patterns. I asked “what exactly does ‘fine’ mean with respect to the weather, and what is the opposite of fine? Bad?” I thought it would be hilarious to hear the weatherman just say that we’re going to have “bad” weather, but not tell us what kind. Her response to me was that “fine” in this sense doesn’t mean ‘good’ like it does when I hear it, it means clear.

After hiking at Mt. Cook, I got some information on the best ‘ski fields,’ as they call them here, to make sure I was heading in the right direction for my next adventure. I drove to the base of Mt. Hutt, the only ski field that has enough snow to be open right now. They had a 35 cm base with a whopping 1 cm fall the night before. I asked myself if that 1 cm counted the snow they made during the night, but decided it didn’t matter. I slept at the base of the mountain last night and had a go at snowboarding today. It was an awesome day, certainly felt good to be back on the snow after a 3 year absence. Most of the mountain wasn’t open for use, just the runs that they could blow snow onto, but, being a Thursday at the very front end of the season, there weren’t too many people out on the slopes. This icy underlayer took some getting used to, as I’ve been very spoiled in my past experiences in Utah. I met quite a few people on the lifts, certainly some of the nicest New Zealanders I’ve met yet. I only took a couple spills and am very happy to say that I skied and surfed in the same trip. I would give up a $100 bungy jumping experience every day of the week for a full day on the slopes.

I’ve just got tomorrow to explore Christchurch and I’m heading to Sydney on Saturday after I turn in my campervan. I’ll be sad to leave my travel companion, but I think it will welcome the cleaning… It’s too bad my flight got changed, New Zealand is playing England in rugby here in Christchurch on Saturday night, that would have been a fun game to go to. Well, here’s to a good time in New Zealand!

Routeburn Track

6/16/2008

Queenstown

I’m back to where I wrote my last blog update from, just a few campsites down from the previous one. I had an incredible 24 hours since I was last here, it started with a bang.

I’ve got a funny story to tell. In my last entry, I told you briefly about how stupid I felt when I locked my keys in the car and pained when it was a big hit to the wallet. At the time, I made a mental note to not go anywhere without having keys in my pocket. So let me give you the background of where the next story takes place. I finished here in Queenstown yesterday around 5:15 pm and drove an hour and half up the lake to the Routeburn Track trailhead. Past lots of farmland out to the parking lot where there wasn’t a soul for probably 10 miles, up in the foothills of some big mountains. The moon was really bright so it was neat to be able to see nearly everything by moonlight and not need to use my headlamp. I cooked dinner, read some, and packed for the next day’s adventure, as I was planning on starting my hike at sunrise. I made my bed, finished my dishes, and was ready for bed except for the bathroom. I had the campervan all locked up while I was inside it, so I had to unlock the sliding side door to exit, and when I got out, the door rolled shut so the click happened, even though the door wasn’t fully shut. I went to the bathroom, came back, tried the door and, to my disbelief, it was locked. I’m going to slow down with the story here to let you into my mental processes as the minutes progress. First off, I looked away from the car, pretended that didn’t happen, and tried the door again. Of course, it still didn’t open, and it was shut just enough for the lock to engage. As you probably thought when you first read that, I was saying to myself “WHAT AN IDIOT!” The second and third times I’ve ever locked my keys in the car come 12 hours apart. You can imagine the disbelief and disgust I had with myself at this point. When I realized the significance of this occurrence, I initially pulsed with fear of what the implications of being stuck outside my car with nobody around, just a t-shirt, fleece, and headlamp for the 40 degree night. I immediately tucked in my shirt and zipped up my jacket to conserve any heat that may soon become vital. My next thought was that I had to sleep in my bed, whatever that took. The last resort of breaking a window was my foremost thought. After a few minutes, my temper settled to allow me to think logically again. I never thought I’d say this, but needing the locksmith earlier in the day was a blessing in disguise. Fortunately, I was paying attention to what the guy was doing, so I knew the easiest way to get into the car (although he had a few special tools). I then decide to see if I can use the small monkey brain that I must have in there somewhere (that obviously doesn’t know how to carry keys around yet in this stage of evolution (haha, not that I support evolution fully)) to mimic his actions. As I laughed at myself in pity, I searched through the woods for a few minutes to find some appropriately shaped and sized sticks for my tools. Then I search for some rocks that could help as well. Earlier in the day, the locksmith attacked the car at the driver’s door, first using a crowbar to create a little space between the body of the car and the door at the top corner above the handle. Then he inserted an airbag, pumped it up to enlarge the gap between the door and the frame, and then inserted his metal wire to reach in and unlock the car. Thus, I use a stick to jack the door ajar, insert a rock to hold the gap. Adjust the jacking stick, pry, insert rock further. I managed to mimic his actions quite well, but the stick I had to reach in and unlock the door was too flimsy to do the job, although it teased me as if it would work for about 20 minutes. I started to rethink things a little bit as I was getting frustrated but closer and closer to success. Then I tried a stiffer stick that wouldn’t reach the lock, but was able to get to the handle that rolls down the window (manual, rotary handle). I was very fortunate that it was at the top of it’s rotation, so it was easy to push downwards. I nudged it far enough to get the window started, and it was downhill from there. Forty five minutes of work lead me to be able to get back in my bed, much more elated and thankful than when I last left it. If he hadn’t of shown me how to get back in, I may have had to deal with a much larger bill than $80. As I laughed at myself while hiking on the trail today, I was pretty proud of breaking into a car with a couple sticks and a couple rocks, but it’s obvious that I’m no genius, that’s for sure. I’m sure this doesn’t make Mom feel too comfortable with me driving around a country making such stupid mistakes, but Mom, it’s almost over.

Speaking of hiking, I walked for 7 ½ hours today on one of the best, if not the best, hikes I’ve ever been on. My curiosity made me lucky, following a side trail from the highest point on the main trail to take me to the top of Conical Hill. From this viewpoint, I could see in all directions, far above the tree line and amidst the remaining snow. The weather was absolutely incredible – not a cloud in the sky, little wind, warm enough for light pants and a t-shirt. I only saw 2 people on the trail, one which was at the top. He told me that a week prior, I wouldn’t have been able to make it anywhere near the top because of snow cover. He also said something along the lines that there were only 25 days a year that were like that, so I was lucky to be there. It was too bad I couldn’t spend more time up there, the view made me smile in awe. I’m really glad that I pushed my time limits a little to get all the way to the top, it was much better than it would’ve been otherwise.

Hopefully once I get to Australia, I’ll be able to upload more of my pictures so you can see a little more of my trip. I’ve got a ‘Best of NZ’ folder, so you won’t have to suffer through too many of them. Funny, speaking of Australia, I had a really coincidental experience tonight. I went to a bar to use a coupon that I found in the taxi in Auckland a couple weeks ago, just a two for one beer voucher ($6 for two drinks is even better than American prices!). Anyways, I forced myself to try to be social since it was only the third time I’ve been in a bar in NZ. I sat next to these girls in front of the fire, and found out that the girl across from me was from Indiana. She said she was studying abroad in Australia later too. After she found out we were doing the same program, she goes “Wait…is your name Andrew?” I was like what? No way? A couple days ago we(separately) got emails saying that our flight from Christchurch to Sydney had been canceled and we needed to decide on a new departure time. She said that in her email, the travel agent told her that another kid named Andrew was having the same problem and he wanted to know if we were traveling together. What are the chances? Anyways, she’s from Purdue and she’s doing the Tourism and Recreation part of the summer program that I’m a part of…crazy.

Queenstown

6/14/2008
Queenstown

I flipped a coin a few hours ago to see if I should come here today, and the kiwi bird on the ‘tails’ side said yes. I was in Wanaka earlier, poking around and trying to get a better idea of what I should do in the coming days before my flight out of Christchurch next Saturday. Two weeks already gone by, wow that was fast.

I left you last when I was outside Punakaiki to see the Pancake Rocks. Nicholas and I did the short hike to the seal colony during low tide, and had fun watching the seal pups chasing each other in circles in one of the tidal pools. The Pancake Rocks were the above-ground version of the limestone formations I had first seen at the Waitomo Caves. They were really interesting in the caves because you could see a stack of layers, the thicker ones about 3 or 4 inches thick, with a thin 1/2 inch layer in between them. In the caves, the ½ inch layer appeared to be in the process of being squeezed out. At the Pancake rocks, the 1/2 inch layer was eroded away, so they looked like individual sheets of rock stacked on top of one another. There was a blowhole in the course of our walk, but unfortunately the low tide wasn’t making it active. The postcard pictures I saw of the blowhole looked pretty neat, although we didn’t wait the six hours it would have taken to get the action shot we were looking for.

We continued down the coast to Greymouth under overcast skies; Nicholas feared that the mental image of a perpetually gray west coast would be true during his stay. He was every bit correct in that thought, at least for this week. It started raining when I dropped him off at his hostel, and I drove out on a pier to stop for lunch next to the local surfing spot. Having changed from earlier in the day, when there were picture perfect lines of waves coming in from the west, there wasn’t much surf but plenty of wind.

From there I continued down the coast through the rain to Franz Josef, the town that supports the large tourist draw to the glacier in town. The most interesting thing about ‘the township,’ as they called it, was the public bathroom. They were the most high tech bathroom I’ve ever seen, with a door that would only slide open or shut at the touch of a heat sensitive button. The sink was inset into the wall, with soap, water, and dryer all poking out of the top of the inset sink. The robotic voice informed the bathroom patron that the time limit was 10 minutes, and proceeded to play a song for your movement’s pleasure. I shaved in there once and while I was bending down trying to wash my face, the sensors got confused and were alternating water and hot air because I was activating too many of them at once. I also just barely went over the 10 minute limit, and got scared at what the thing was programmed to do once a patron overstayed his welcome. Anyways, I took the next morning quite slowly, knowing that it was pouring rain outside and there wasn’t a whole lot to do. I finished my first book of the summer, the Monkey Wrench Gang, a couple nights before and hadn’t moved on to my next yet. The book was pretty good – it was about a group of 4 people who become eco-terrorists in the American Southwest, trying to stop the progress of bridges, mines, forestry, and the like from further invading the beauty of the land. Even though it was a bit over the top, the author has an obvious wealth of knowledge about the southwest, Utah, and the activity therein. Thanks to Amira for the recommendation.

I got up and decided to brave the downpour to go see what I could of the glacier. From the end of the paved trail, you could just barely make out the bottom tip of the ice river through the clouds. The trail continued on through the riverbed, warning of sudden changes in flow and blockages of the path after heavy rainfall. The people I’ve met on my trip so far said that this glacier was super touristy and wasn’t as attractive as another nearby glacier because of all of people. That being said, it was kind of nice to be the only one there, although it was certainly wet and the river was raging. I hoped across the rocks of the small stream crossings on the way to the glacier terminus until a Department of Conservation guy (ranger, in our terms) told me that as of 10 minutes previous the valley was closed and he would advise I not go any further. It was pretty obvious the conditions were not ideal, as he said we’d already gotten 50 mm of rain and they were predicting another 300 mm over the next 48 hours. He said the ice caves had already collapsed and the glacier was highly unstable. Clear enough words to my ears to know that meant snap your last picture and turn around. There were lots of little waterfalls cascading down the sides of the sheer cliffs coming down to the river, making it quite evident how quickly the rainfall was being funneled downwards. I am pretty upset with my rain jacket; I wanted to see how it held up under such difficult circumstances and the thing lets the rain drip off of the hood, down the inside of the neckline just above the zipper. That’s great if all you want dry are your arms and back, but it succeeded in even getting my boxers wet. My feet remained reasonably dry, in my new, supposedly waterproof Keens, but they took another day and a half to dry out. I was glad to see, however, that after paying $80 for those shoes with help from my cousin Chelsea’s discount, they cost a whopping $270 over here. Ridiculous. I continued down the coast another 20 km to Fox Glacier, the less popular but supposedly equally stunning glacier. I wasn’t able to see much, as the cloud cover was thick and the valley there was closed for the same reason as the previous. These glaciers are unlike most others around the world in that they come very close to sea level. They also buck the trend of global warming because they respond so quickly to weather changes, they can actually advance when other glaciers are retreating. This happens because the glaciers formed in extremely steep valleys, allowing them to collect snowfall much more rapidly than others can. I would have stuck around to try to get a better try at seeing them, but the weather forecast said there would be more of the same for another three or four days. That meant, unfortunately, that the best parts of the west coast that I had some to see would be shrouded in clouds.

So I continued driving south, arriving in Haast at 6 pm to find that their only gas station was already closed. I parked at a picnic area near the river for the night and went to bed sticky as the whole campervan was damp. While it poured, though, and I realized how bad I wanted to rinse off, I decided to use the rain as a natural shower. It was chilly quick rinse, but I felt a lot better afterwards. In the morning, a guy pulled into the area who worked for one of the jet boating companies that drive tourists up the river. He was checking the river level on the supports for the bridge I was parked next to. I asked how much it had gone up since a couple days previous, and he said…2 meters! That’s a lot of rain. I had been cautious to look at the river level the night before to see if it would be endangering my parking spot at all, but fortunately that wasn’t a problem.

Today I spent $180 on gas - dagger in my heart. I think I’m going to bike to the grocery store when I move into my house in Atlanta. Just take my hiking backpack to the store and stuff it with all of my groceries and ride back down 10^th St. We’ve got to find a way around this crisis, our incomes certainly aren’t rising at the rate of our transportation costs.

To finish up the day’s activities, I drove most of the day southeast, through Wanaka, not down to Queenstown. The scenery changed a lot today, starting at the coast in a flat area, following a river upstream until reaching the divide where a different river flowed in the same direction of the road. Before Wanaka, I reached the southern lakes of the south island – a series of huge, glacier carved lakes surrounded by soaring peaks. These mountains, unlike the ones I’ve been around previous, have little vegetation and are really, really steep, most with a snow dusting on top. Much less snow than I was hoping for. Ski season opened last weekend in Queenstown, and closed today because of the warm weather and rain that washed away any hope for snow. I’ve still got one chance at snow skiing this summer later in the week when I go to Mt. Cook, a little higher elevation.

Ok, now for a few things I’ve been noting during my driving time. I’ll attack these one at a time:

You hear there are lots of sheep in New Zealand. That sure is the case, there are a lot of those buggers. But there’s got to be nearly as many cows here too. Another peculiar thing I’ve noticed is that some of the grazing lands have deer penned up on them. Weird for me to see since we don’t allow that in the US. Some have bucks but most pens have doe. I’m like dang, look at that rack, but he’s tame enough where you could touch him; you don’t have to sit in a tree stand for the early morning hours to catch a glimpse. Along those lines, I’ve been seeing the premium that it costs to get a shirt made of merino wool, even the ones made here in NZ. It costs nearly the same to buy the same shirt in the US. I wonder how much it would cost me to buy a merino wool sheep, shear it, spin the thread, and make my own clothing from him. I’d like to look into that.

Speaking of sheep and cows, I’d like to point something else out that I’ve come to appreciate. I drive for hours and hours and see the livestock doing the same thing every time: eating grass. How wonderful it is to not have a constant burden to eat grass for most of the day every day. Needless to say, we’d get a lot less done if that were the case. Or else we’d all have these personalized feed buckets that were part of our wardrobe, with a hay machine next to the water cooler.

I’ve been driving alone for a while now, and I’m getting used to it. It was nice to have Nicholas’ company for a night, but it’s also nice to just do what I feel like doing and not having to worry about anybody else. I know I’ve already talked about that, but the reason I mention it again is not to focus on being alone in the car, it’s about being alone on the road. The ‘towns’ that I pass through are very easy to miss, some consist of just a few houses. After dark, it looks like they are empty and nobody lives there. When living in downtown Atlanta for a couple years, I sometimes yearn for the woods. These people have taken a step back in time and I wonder where they get their groceries from. I heard a guy on the radio talking about how much he loves the town National Park, outside Tongariro National Park. I mentioned that town earlier, having 100 people, 5 bars, and no church. He said they even have sewers and 2 policemen! Holy cow, you guys really are a town! Lol, what a change. I like the solitude, to a point, but that kind of space is something I’m not used to. Something like 1/3 of NZ is protected in some sort of park space. It is really quite evident when you drive across the country how few people there really are here. They’ve got 4 million for the whole country and there are 5 million just in the metro Atlanta area. Crazy. The guy in charge of the roads must be a conservative man, as well as I can figure, because almost all of the roads here have a single dotted line in the middle of them. They don’t indicate passing spots explicitly, I guess they just did that to denote the lanes while saving paint. Also, the fastest speed limit they have is 100 km/hr, about 62 mph. I guess that’s a good thing for me because it helps to save on gas, but I’m glad the speed limit is higher in Georgia.

There are few things in this world that can create temporary desperation like having to go to the bathroom insanely bad. It makes you lower your inhibitions, forces you to consider doing things you’d normally deem crazy. Having a campervan that doesn’t have a bathroom and eating wonderfully cheap but terribly fibery oatmeal for breakfast every morning brings this desperation into light quite often, unfortunately.

One last point: Kiwis have some weird words. They use the word “jandals” to mean flip flops. Where that came from, I don’t know. Also, one of the phrases that you often hear from the young crowd is “sweet as,” supposedly meaning ‘oh cool’ or ‘right on.’ When you hear it with American ears, it sounds like that dude just told me I have a sweet as$. I said, “come again?” and he laughed and explained to me the saying. There are plenty of others, but those were the most humorous I could think of.

I became just another one of those stupid tourists this morning when I succeed in locking my keys in the car. It pains me to tell you that it cost me $80 for the locksmith’s precious four minutes it took to get into the car. I am very fortunate, though, that this didn’t happen a couple days ago when I was hours away from any help. After that, I walked around town a little bit, finally figured out how to use the phone card, and played a Frisbee golf in the gardens here. Awesome scenery around here. The lake that edges up against the town is quite cold – I found that out when I had to go fishing for my disc. It’s a really deep lake too, some 900 feet deep in the middle. There’s a strange phenomenon where the lake rises up to 12 cm every five minutes and then sinks back. They don’t know what causes it, some guess it’s because of the air pressure. Because of the depth of the lake, the water temperature doesn’t change much throughout the course of the year.

I had to make a painful decision today to cut out Milford Sound from my trip, the budget just isn’t going to allow me to make the $250-in-petrol jaunt out to Milford and back. I am, however, going to do a day hike tomorrow on the Routeburn Track, one of the trails that I heard a guy speak about at REI in Fairfax, VA.

Westport

6/11/08
Westport

Sitting in the parking lot after a wonderful pasta dinner, my newfound friend Nicholas and I are catching up on a few things. Nicholas and I were in the same group sea kayaking yesterday and found out that our plans coincided so we decided to ride together and share fuel costs. (I calculated a few things today, and after I was done I found out that my campervan gets about 20 mpg, and with gas at NZ$2.15/liter, the equivalent cost of petrol or gas per gallon is $8.13… and I thought we had something to complain about in the US)

Yesterday, I woke up in Nelson a bit late and skipped breakfast to see if I could make it to the kayaking place on time. I got there just in time to for them to add me to the day’s trip, and although it was a bit more expensive than I was hoping, it was a full day’s activity with lunch provided. There was one other American in our group, and we got paired to be in the two person kayak together. She was a couple years older than me and a New Yorker. She had a couple kayaks of her own so I was glad to find out that I wouldn’t be paddling her around all day with little help. Funny, actually, she was spending three months in NZ on holiday. Reason being, she worked in Elliot Spitzer’s law office before the scandal, and since she didn’t have a job anymore, decided to take the time to travel the world a bit. She talked pretty much the whole time, and since she was facing forward and I was busy paddling, I only heard half of it. She thought it was offensive when I laughed at her die-hard Boston Red Sox fan love of Fenway park, and asked if I had heard any recent news on the Braves. Of course I haven’t, and I told her that the only thing I’ve heard recently about the US is that Hillary dropped out of the presidential race. That sparked a whole political discussion and I felt like we were kind of boring the Irish and Kiwis present. Enough about the people though, kayaking was great. The weather was overcast, so the water wasn’t as brilliantly green as I’d seen in the pictures, but it was wonderfully clear and a pretty calm day. We got to see lots of Cormorants and seals (or gray furry sausages, as the guide called them…a true sausage party). Nicholas came with us for the whole day trip – he’s from Singapore, got out of his mandatory 2 year military duty, and is traveling for 3 months before heading back to study food science. He’s really nice and has lots of good information as he’s in the last two weeks of his trip. He didn’t mind being technical and splitting up the gas costs for his part of the ride, it worked out nicely.

After kayaking, I drove over a big mountain called Takaka Hill to get to Pupu springs (ironic), the clearest fresh water in the world. I stayed in the parking lot there and got up this morning to hike down to the springs. I didn’t think to take my polarized sun glasses, but the glare on the water made it difficult to see very much into the springs, but the water was indeed very clear. It was neat, though, because the springs pump out so much water there that they make a river in their wake. 14,000 liters a second, constantly makes for a nice river. It was cool to see, like the sign said, how deceptively deep the pools were. It looked like the water was maybe 2 meters deep at one point but it was actually like 6 meters deep. It looks so clear that it must be just right there, but it’s actually much further away. After the springs, I drove back to the top of the big mountain and went to a place called Harwood Hole. I drove for 30 minutes on a dirt road, across the top of the mountain, through many herds of sheep, to get to the trail head. Those sheep are funny, they ran like I was about to catch them for shearing, making it even funnier when they had so much wool that they look obese. It was also funny, one time, when I stopped after the road kind of cornered some of the against a fence, and rolled down the window to talk to them. They all stared intensely at me, I felt like I had an audience, but then after I spoke for a second, they all lost interest and went about their business. The two English guys in the parking lot were cleaning out their van and had a ton of crap in there. I had to hurry a little bit because I told Nicholas I’d pick him up from his hostel in town at 12, so I hiked my quick pace down to the hole through a really cool forest. I felt like a bunch of hobbits could pop out at any time. Very damp, dark, and cool with soft ground to walk over. I got to the hole, a 176 meter vertical shaft in the mountain, and was just in awe of its depth. Unfortunately I couldn’t see much into it from just the side, as there are just a bunch of boulders that the trail ends on and you’re at your own risk crawling around on them. I didn’t want to risk anything, but threw a couple rocks down to see how long it would take, and it was a pretty dang deep hole. I hiked(ran) up to the outlook, which I thought would be further above to hole, to see if I could see into it any further, but it was actually an outlook down the other side of the mountain. It was an incredible viewpoint because I was on a ledge on the ride looking down the other side of the mountain to the valley I was in the night before. A flat valley floor with mountains shooting out of the sides, just like in Switzerland. The marble rocks that I was standing on at the outlook were shaped unlike any I’ve ever seen before. They were like a microcosm of the surrounding mountains. They had ridges with groves cut out of them where you could see individual drops had taken away material, and they sloped downwards and branched out just like eroded mountains. They were hard to walk on because they were so pointy. I took a few pictures, then headed back to the car. When I got there, I noticed my neighbors, the guys in the van, had pulled everything out of their van and reassembled the seats. One of the things they pulled out of the car was their hamster cage, complete with an offshoot from the plastic box into some sphere wrapped in newspaper. I thought it was hilarious that, out of all of their crap, they thought it important enough to have a hamster to make their van feel like home. Different strokes for different folks, although I guess he could clean up the crumbs pretty well.

I thought of a few small revolutions I’d like to start:
-petition to get cell phone companies to change their voicemail setup so that the system doesn’t say anything like “press five to page this person” or any of that “after the beep, please leave your message.” I think it should just be like a home phone where the person’s message says what they want to say and then “beep.” None of this repeatedly wasting 30 seconds of my monthly minute usage on listening to the same thing I’ve heard a thousand times before. Besides, who wants to page anybody’s cell phone anyways?
-petition food making companies to package food in only a large enough container that their food is surrounded completely. For instance, what purpose does a potato chip bag that is 3 times larger than the quantity of chips its holds within? Not only is this wasting packing material, it’s a trick that doesn’t work on consumers, and it wastes shelving space in every store that that product is sold in. I understand that there is settling of the chips after they’ve been inserted, but if we petition to get them to shake the bag a bit when they fill it up, they’ll get the point.
-there are one or two more, but I’m not able to think of them at the moment…

I’ll get back to you after we hike to the seal colony and see the pancake rocks tomorrow. Have a great Wednesday (mine is almost over already)!

Nelson

6/9/2008
Nelson

I’m staying in an empty holiday park tonight, outside the northern city of Nelson. The girl at the reception desk said that there were 2000 people here on New Years, so I can feel the change of the time of the year quite drastically.

My second day in Wellington went well, toured the city a little more, found some amazing free, city-sponsored public showers, 10 minute walk from the campervan. It’s incredible how a little soap can make you feel so much different. Upon discovery, though, I didn’t use them because I was headed back out to Lyall Bay to see how the surf was. It was a lot bigger than the day before, so I went back out and caught the biggest wave I’ve ridden in a while. Dropping straight down a near vertical face is an invigorating experience that can pump your confidence dangerously high. I didn’t have too much to worry about after that one, though, as I just caught an hour’s worth of smaller waves and went to sell my board. It was nice to have my cash back, although I didn’t have quite the satisfaction that a 47% increase in investment in a week’s time should. It was probably because everybody I talked to said that I could sell the board for a lot more if I did it on my own. Didn’t have enough time in one location to make that happen, so I took what I could get. Although I did sell the board with the bag, I kept the leash and the roof rack straps for later use. I guess when you count those gains plus the extra $45, I didn’t end up too bad. Good lesson to not be greedy like I may have been when I start investing in the stock market in things other than 401Ks. Side note on selling the board: The girl in charge of the register went out of the store for 10 minutes so I had to wait to get my money. While waiting, I went down to the beach to wash my feel off, and this big guy with tattoos all over him, who I’d seen swimming with just a bathing suit on earlier in the freezing water, walks towards me as I get near the water. He sees the last bite of snickers I have in my hand and asks first if I’m American and then if he can have a bite. I laughed and said oh you want a bite? (of the ¾ of an inch of snickers I have left?) He said yeah I’ve gone poor and so I gave him the last bit and he smile and walked away. That’s not how homeless have typically interacted with me in the past, but it was funny that that’s all he needed to leave me alone.

After I left the beach I went back to use up the rest of the time on my parking stub at the spot next to the museum. While there, I found out that I could park in the lot next to that one for the evening and the next day for free, another lucky happening as it was Saturday night, and I spent $19 the night before on parking fees alone. I saw the museum, showered, and ate some wonderful pasta. I met up with Kushla, her brother and friend and went down the street to an Irish pub to watch the rugby game. Unfortunately the pub was full of foreigners just like me who didn’t know much about rugby and weren’t very passionate about the game, but it was nice to watch the game in the company of some newfound friends. We went to a couple dance places after that, one place didn’t let me in because I had my “runners” on. My black Salomon running shoes didn’t cut it apparently, so we just found a different place. I was ready for the comfort of my convertible bed, so I bid my friends ado, and got some needed sleep so I could meet my appointment the next morning to talk to my parents for the first time since leaving LA.
I was kinda rushed out of Wellington, I felt like there was a lot to do there that I didn’t get to. My friends said that Wellington was more of a place to live than to sightsee, but it was the first city in NZ that I’ve really taken a liking to. Most of the surrounding areas to downtown are houses in the hills overlooking an amazing harbour, with downtown accessible within 10 minutes by most. There are huge mountains that plunge into the sea, making hiking and mountain biking popular activities.

As I got out of my car on the ferry, these huge tattooed Maori guys from the motorhome behind me scared me just by looking at me. One guy had tattoos covering his face, leather vest sitting atop a 6’4” 400 lb frame. All of his buddies looked like bikers too, all way bigger than me. For some reason they did kind of scare me, in addition to a few other things. Local news has been talking about the location of the body of a Polish tourist who went tramping and didn’t come back. Just outside Wellington, tourists apparently get lost commonly on the hiking trails, don’t take appropriate clothing, food, or water, and bad things happen. The guy I talked to on Friday night at the bar, who’s on the search and rescue team, said that the weather and your preparedness are the two main obstacles to surviving in NZ. It’s nice not to have to worry about snakes, bears, or mountain lions as I hike about on my own like I did in Colorado. I was also a little uneasy about driving around the south island, as there are a lot less people around if something goes wrong. I think my assumptions are a little incorrect, as I normally think about the empty dirt roads in Wyoming where you don’t see people for hours on the road when I think of empty space. There are certainly more people around than that, it just seems different because there aren’t as many big dots on the map. I’ve mapped a course for the next couple weeks that should give me a look at some of the best hiking NZ has to offer. I’m looking forward to seeing a lot of free amazing sights.

The ferry ride was pretty awesome, it was cool to be on such a big boat. Standing on the bow while we crashed through the huge waves in the Cook Strait was memorable. When we hit land, I drove to Anakiwa where I’d be starting my morning with a walk on the Queen Charlotte Track. The sunshine brought light to some amazing scenery; the inlet with crystal blue-green water, mountains covered in dark greenery all around. I parked next to the local Outward Bound headquarters and went for a stroll. Sidenote here: I got word from a co-worker that hiking trails listed trail distances not in length measurements, but time measurements, and those time measurements were hardly makeable. So I timed my walk between points of interest to see how I compared. I think they must’ve changed the signs since he came here because a 1 hour distance took me 25 minutes, and that’s probably because I felt challenged to see how much I could beat it by…hahaha. It’s hard to tell if I could extrapolate that equality for larger times, but most of the hiking won’t depend on those kinds of calculations anyways.
Like I said, I’m in Nelson now, and I’ll be making my way to Abel Tasman National Park in the morning to hopefully participate in my first expensive tourist activity: sea kayaking! They won’t let you go by yourself, so I’m gonna try it out. Gotta be there by 8:30 am, so I better get some sleep. After that, I’m going to check out a couple local highlights, then make my way down the west coast to the southern part of the island.

Hope all is well back home!

Cold night writing

6/4/2008

Base of Mt. Tongariro

Bundled I sit, in a pitch black night with Milky Way shining brightly above. It’s freezing out here in the near desert, but I’m staged for a great hike in the morning on the Tongariro Crossing.

Things I’ve learned so far in New Zealand:

-The word ‘mate’ doesn’t have anything to do with a sexual partner

-Gas prices here must be decided nationally because they don’t change from station to station

-towns of population 100 are worthy of the third largest dot on the map

-the country is very well signed

-engine braking is not allowed when nearing houses

-few police are around, and those that are don’t seem to watch the traffic

-the word “Glen” in the name of a place doesn’t refer to the man Glen as much as it does neighborhood

-wineries are very private, with 30 ft. bushes grown around the vicinity to keep you from seeing how big their grapes are

-lots of people either road trip or picnic; there seems to be a picnic stop every 10 kms

- 60 degrees is cold to these people, I felt out of place in Auckland walking around in shorts and a t-shirt when everybody walking by me on the street had an overcoat with a scarf

I ventured back to Rotorua, and found surprisingly that a large amount of the geothermal activity there could be found in a park just next to the city center. The place was covered and grass and had nice little wooden fences to keep people out of the boiling mud pits and sulfur spewing holes. Much different than I had imagined, after previously comparing it to Yellowstone. I realized what more a spectacle Yellowstone is after this visit, so much diversity in one place. Anyway, I took an afternoon hike in the nearby redwood forest. Apparently in 1901 the forest service planted trees in a small area there to see which grew the best so they could use that tree all over the country to harvest. Although the redwood wasn’t the winner of the competition, it succeeded in making a nice stand of trees that is quiet, moist, and towering. I am jealous of the people I saw running and biking on the trails here, it must be quite nice to have such an awesome retreat just down the street. I drove up to the Blue and Green Lakes, but didn’t find much here. I did notice, however, after setting up my bed in my parking spot for the night, next to the redwood forest, that the kiwis have a sense of humor about them. Whenever I’m parked in sight of a road at dusk or dawn, people like to drive by tooting the horn to make sure you haven’t gotten too much sleep. I find this reminiscent of what they must be feeling with so many foreigners crawling around their country.

The quick drive from Rotorua to Taupo was nice, it was humorous to see my gas gauge be below the ¾ tank mark one minute and rise back up above it the next, just to make my emotions swing in the balance. I don’t like the cruel trick the car companies play when they make the gauge show full for so long and then the other ¾ of the tank only lasts a fraction of what that first quarter did. On my way into Taupo, I stopped at Huka Falls. The river that runs through these falls apparently provides NZ with 60% of its power through the 11 power stations along its course. Surprising that hydroelectricity is that commonly used (if I read correctly). The falls uniqueness here is that a huge volume of water is forced through a small slot canyon and is just raging beneath the bridge. Cool to see and hear the power of a large mass of water. On the way into town, I paused at an overlook to do some reading in my tour book. At 11:12 am, I found a coupon for bungy jumping for $88 before 11 am. It must’ve been an old coupon because the rate was now up to $95 before 11 and $109 thereafter. I watched some kids from Texas take the jump, and although tempted, decided that I’d like to spend $109 on some ski rentals and a lift ticket for some all-day fun rather than a 10 second pleasure. I would like to check it off of my list, but when I think back to sky diving on the North Shore Oahu for $120, I can see outside the tourist bubble.

I headed out of town to make some headway towards Tongariro National Park, not knowing what I might find before then. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much else on the way, so I just drove to National Park, NZ to see if any of the stores could help me figure out where the trail head was. I got some brochures from a ski rental place (apparently the volcano-side ski resort is a big attraction for those in the Northland), and went into a pub to see if there was anybody else I could talk to. The bar tender told me that they were barely a town, 100 people living there permanently; they did have a school, but no church. I saw on the map that this is where they drove the last stake into their railway. The only guys in the bar were some older men who appeared to all work as guides, running the ski resorts, etc. It felt pretty awkward to be the only tourist in town and be showing it off with my big white topped rental campervan. I wish I could squish the thing down when I’m not using it so I don’t give myself away so quickly. Oh well.

Hiking tomorrow, then down to the coast to see if I can catch some surf (if I’m really lucky, I just missed another swell), sell the board, and make my way to Wellington for my ferry to the South Island on Sunday. Talk to you then. Cheers, Mate!

First couple days in the campervan

Little Waihi 6/2/08

As I sit at the kitchen table in my campervan, drinking my complimentary New Zealand bottle of wine while listening to the sound of the ocean waves crash on the shore, I can’t help but realize that I’m living the life. While this trip will cost a pretty penny (road tripping for three weeks on the equivalent of $8 per gallon of gas), I don’t know when would be a better time to make the effort to see this beautiful country, even if it has to be a solo trip.

My weekend in Auckland was great, a nice chance to relax and see a bit of the largest city in NZ. My body clock still hasn’t quite adjusted, I’m getting tired and ready for bed at 7 pm and ready to start my days at 5 am. I am a full 16 hours ahead of Georgia time here, enough to make me forget that mom and dad are still on yesterday when I think about calling. On the way to Auckland, I met a kiwi my a little older than me who was sitting next to me on the plane. He was returning home after working in Florida because his visa was expiring. We talked a little (he was very soft spoken and I had trouble hearing him because of the drone of the airplane engines), and once he found out that I was just planning on finding a hostel once in town, he offered to have me stay at his place and take me surfing at Piha after we caught up on some sleep. I was pretty excited by this offer but decided to talk to him a little more before accepting, just to make sure he wasn’t being overly friendly. I decided to take him up and we walked through customs together and made our way to the baggage claim, where he was lucky enough to get his bag first off the line. Mine, on the other hand, took another 20 minutes to show up. Since I didn’t have any of his contact information other than his first name, I was pretty much out of luck when I left the biosecurity gates and didn’t see him anywhere. I was bummed that I lost my sweet connection, but quickly learned a lesson I will need a lot during three weeks of solo travel: enjoy the time you have with newfound friends, but don’t sulk in their parting. I realized that I was back to where I planned on being, just making my way downtown and exploring on my own. Then I was fortunate to meet Tosha and Joy, two American girls who’d already done their research on how to get downtown and happened to buddy up before hopping on the shuttle. I decided to join them since I didn’t have any other plans. Joy already had reservations somewhere, but Tosha was looking for the cheapest place possible just like me.

By some interesting fortune, we ended up taking a three hour trip on this shuttle back out to the airport (by accident) but the German girl sitting next to me on the bus told me of a cheap place to stay and some inside secrets on places for free internet, etc. So we rode the shuttle back downtown and Tosha and I decided to split a room with separate beds so we wouldn’t have to worry about our stuff in a dorm-style room. After getting settled, we went over to the building where there was supposedly free internet (a student organization whom we had just gotten a heads up on). While I was emailing the fam there, this lady walks in with a surfboard and is talking to the receptionist about how to get rid of it. She says that she bought a car and the board came with it; straps, board bag, and 6’10” Gunther Rohn thruster(style board) stashed on top. She said some guys told her that she could sell the board for $200 but she said “how could I sell it for that much when I don’t know anything about it?” So I get the idea to offer her a really low price just to get it off of her hands, and see if she’ll take. So I ended up getting a surfboard, padded car straps, and bag for $95 with instant potential for moneymaking even if I don’t use the board. She sold me probably $350 worth of stuff, and I’m looking forward to the smile that will result in getting my money doubled in a week’s time.

After picking up the campervan, I headed towards Raglan to surf for the afternoon, a place called Manu Bay there has a right hander that was filmed in “Endless Summer.” I got there about 2:30 pm and had just enough time to rent a wetsuit and head out on my new board in time to turn the wetsuit back in by five. It was by far the most difficult entry I’ve had off the beach; big rocks covered in seaweed are what you have to walk across to get to the breaking waves. I succeeded in looking like a newbie, slipping and sliding with my board in hand to the knee deep water before I could start paddling. I also immediately felt my time away from San Diego coming back to bite me, as my shoulders started to give out even before I got to a decent resting place. The sets would come in really big and there were some guys ripping the waves – they’d make sure to let you know who’s boss by riding the wave as close as possible to you and spraying you with water. This break is cool because it wraps around a corner and makes the possibility of riding a wave for hundreds of yards possible. Unfortunately for me, this means that those same guys ripping it would be able to ride the wave from where they caught it all the way through my zone and take claim of most of the decent waves. I was feeling pretty rusty, new place, new board, messy waves, and all kinds of other excuses for my poor showing in New Zealand surf. It felt good to be sore from being out, though, and I look forward to more time in Australia to kick my shoulders back into paddling shape and being confident during the near vertical drop in that makes it all worthwhile. When I turned in my wetsuit, I asked the kid working there if he could give me and idea of what the board would sell for (since it was by an Australian shaper and I didn’t know the quality), and he said that they wouldn’t be able to take it for more than $200, but I could definitely make more than that on my own. He also said that the guy who could talk to me about that, Flash, wouldn’t be in until 10 am tomorrow, because there was a national holiday. After thinking how ridiculous a name like ‘Flash’ is and wondering if the guy is really as BA as his name implies, I asked what the holiday was. He promptly responded, “Well, it’s the Queen’s birthday weekend” in an extremely NZ accent, looking at me like I’m stupid. Trying hard not to laugh, I said something nonchalant and took my board and left.

Since it gets dark a little earlier here than I’m used to, I decided to cook dinner in the back of the van real quick and make some headway to my next destination: Waitomo Caves. About an hour and a half south of Raglan, nearing the caves, I found one of the little interesting picnic stops the kiwis have planned on the side of many of the country roads. This particular picnic stop already had a campervan parked in it so I felt some sort of shelter. I didn’t like the fact that, upon pickup of my van, they showed me a map of all of the top best ‘holiday’ parks in NZ, each of which cost $20 a night for you to plug your electrical cord into their socket. Now, an adult with some RV experience might have realized that when figuring costs into a road trip in another country. I, on the other hand, had not. Thus, picnic stops with other freeloading campervan users became a godsend.

It rained furiously at different points in the night, making me appreciate the elevated roof of the campervan as opposed to the terribly thin rainfly of a tent. Somehow, United Campervans realized how cold it would be at night and supplied wonderfully warm bedding for the converted double bed I will be calling my home for the next couple weeks. I’m realizing how a space heater, clothes to bed, sleeping bad, as well as warm bedding may be necessary when I’m at the bottom end of the South Island, one of the nearest land masses to Antarctica. We’ll see how much winter has set in when I get that far down.

In the morning, I at breakfast while reading the plaque next to the car, marking the spot where the first Maori king of NZ was crowed by his elders. I continued on to the caves, not knowing if they would be open on such a respected holiday. Fortunately, whoever holds the rights to these caves thought it appropriate for them to be open. I was one of three guests escorted through the caves (Waitomo is Maori meaning ‘where water passes underground’). We were the first tour of the day and were privileged enough to go where many other groups can’t go because of CO2 buildups throughout the course of the day. Our guide said we were lucky as our tour group of 3 people would be much more personable than the common groups of 300. Because of our small number (the others two young people from Vancouver), we were able to lay down on the boat at the end of the tour, and get the full experience of seeing the glow worms on the ceiling above us mimic the starry night, attracting the bugs to their sticky threads. Incredible underground formations, discovered by taking a boat upstream into the hillside to see the underground that the local people had previously associated with death. Another cave nearby was discovered when a local was hunting and the pig ran into a hole in the ground, which sparked the discovery of the second of some 300 local caves in the unique NZ limestone. Our guide spoke with respect about Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, making me want to add it to my “List of things to do as a Southerner.” I hiked at another nearby cave site to see a natural tunnel that a river carved out of the hillside, making it that much cooler that I could hike on my own and not have to pay $35 to walk through some caves. The forest in this area is incredibly dense, moist, and very much like a rain forest. The temperature was cool, but I couldn’t believe how much I felt like I must be in the middle of Costa Rica, sans the multitude of bugs. Not at all what I expected of NZ, but I am intrigued by its diversity.

I made a difficult decision to cut out the Coromandel Peninsula out of my schedule because it was just going to be too much driving. I would have included it but the swell at Raglan called for a change in schedule. After seeing the caves, I made my way to Rotorua a little ahead of schedule, where I decided to drive past the city and make my way to Maketu, a little city on the Pacific side of the North island (west, as opposed to Raglan on the east, Tasman Sea side from the day before). After driving through the egg smelling Rotorua (much like the smell of the sulfur in Yellowstone), I was excited to see a break in the clouds as I neared the east coast. I’ve seen more rainbows here in two days than I have in the last two years at home. I think it’s because of the sporadic mix of rain clouds and shining sun, but I like their presence. Somehow it reminds me of the mix of science and nature, a connection that gets spread too far oftentimes in my surroundings. One of the songs I listened to while driving spoke of the spirals in a sea shell, how there were a certain number of clockwise spirals and a certain number of anti-clockwise spirals. Can you imagine how exciting it must have been for the guy who discovered that the number pi was directly related to the spirals in a shell? Man…that must have been a moment where God was displaying his genius in the most scientific/mathematic way possible.

Here concludes my first entry of my summer (their winter) in the southern hemisphere. Is it fair to have two winters in one year? If you can spend them at the beach and hiking, I would say no. I realize how incredible this experience would be to have with another close friend, but will not be missing a second of that while on my own, recounting to you all of the most meaningful happenings while traveling south in the big white van, smiling, shifting with my left hand, into the horizon.

Side note on the driving situation. I’m fortunate to have a quickly adapting brain. Stepping into the driver’s seat of the van, after unsuccessfully getting in the left side of the car into the passenger’s seat, I understood what a challenge I was up for. Driving somewhere you have minimal directions to, on the opposite side of the street, shifting manually with the opposite hand you’re used to, turning the windshield wipers on when trying to hit the turn signal, and trying to pretend you know what’s going on in a vehicle you CANNOT get in an accident in. Needless to say, it’s a bit of challenge. When driving on open road this afternoon, I was deep in thought and found myself driving on the right hand side of the road. Whoops.