A Bittersweet Blog (or, I Heart CHCH)

While I’ve been planning a happy, cheerful, very VERY belated blog covering the past 12 days from Auckland to Melbourne, today’s happiness has been largely sucked out by the 6.3 magnitude earthquake in Christchurch earlier this afternoon. It’s been absolutely devastating finding out just how horrible the damage has been; buildings I have pictures of no longer exist except for piles of rubble, friends from camp and my stays in hostels still haven’t been able to get online to alert everyone if they’re okay. The TV at the hostel has shown nothing but the news since my arrival at noon, just one hour after the initial quake. Melbourne is the closest I’ve been geographically to NZ since I left, and it’s simply frustrating to hear on the news that Australia is still in the process of beginning to assemble a search and rescue team six hours after the initial news, while the US has already also pledged aid. My heart goes out to the families of the 65 confirmed dead, and I so so hope that none of them are my friends, selfish as that may sound. The following portion of my blog is therefore dedicated to a hopeful attempt to distract myself from the news and the feeling of helplessness (as an international traveller, I can’t even donate blood, just money for the Queensland floods here and the Christchurch earthquake now).

On February 10 I flew out of the (now closed, and still somewhat derelict from the September quakes) Christchurch Airport for Auckland, and I discovered that domestic flights in countries other than the US are still civilized; at no point in flying to Auckland, or from Canberra to Melbourne today, were there mandatory shoe removals or body scanners, and the flights still offer delicious free snacks, friendly staff, and entertainment (even on flights just over an hour long). Upon landing in Auckland, I was reunited with Lauren and Arron and whisked away to their house, where I was introduced to Stella the bear-dog. Somehow I never remembered to take a photo of her, but she’s big, fluffy, looks like a wolf, and is very likely taller than me if she stood on her hind legs. While I intended to update my blog that following day while Lauren and Arron were at work, I got caught up with uploading most of those previously mentioned 600 photos.

That Friday evening Michael Johnston (GV ’07-’11, and probably beyond) came over following his time in Australia, having escaped the sketchy area his half-sister lived in. While the original plan was for us to go watch Lauren and Arron play soccer, minutes before we left I was informed that I would get to play as they were one woman short for their mixed team. Michael declined the offer to join, pointing to his flipflops for an excuse. I’m fairly certain I haven’t played soccer since middle school at the latest, so I spent most of the game standing in a corner, running straight at men twice my size (then often also running away quickly in fear), and kicking the ball in the right direction. However, we lost 0-5 (according to Lauren and Arron, they haven’t won often/at all, so I didn’t feel too horribly about my minimal participation).

After the game Lauren, Michael, and I had time to kill while Arron played in a second game, so Michael and I swapped advice on Australia and New Zealand, as he is currently travelling around NZ and has spent the majority of the past two months living in Melbourne. When Arron was done we picked up dinner from Hell’s Pizza (AMAZING!) and headed home, where we were greeted by Mike Parr (GV ’10). The five of us spent the remainder of the night eating pizza and hanging out with Lauren and Arron’s roommates.

Saturday morning we woke up early, dropped Michael off at the SkyTower to catch the exact same bus I took to Taupo to see Toni and Corban and Roman (I’m pretty sure this has become the standard route for anyone from camp travelling through NZ). At this point we began our 3 hour drive to the Coromandel Peninsula. Unfortunately, the day was very overcast, and upon arriving at Cathedral Cove, we found the path fenced off right at the very end due to trail damage from the previous week’s rainfall from one of the cyclones that largely hit Australia. We did make it to Gemstone Bay but decided against swimming around to Cathedral Cove due to the distance and the weather. At this point Lauren and I took the necessary “Just One” photos, then we all headed over to a town Lauren and Arron usually spend New Year’s at for lunch. Right next to the restaurant we were going to eat at, I found perhaps the best sign in the entire Coromandel area: “Jandals for the Mandels!” (“Jandals” is a Kiwi term for flip flops, since they were originally Japanese sandals, hence, jandals.) As Lauren was taking photos of me and the sign, a woman on the sidewalk walked by and commented that my eyes were “as big as saucers;” I think anybody’s would be if they found a sign with their less than common last name on it! Lunch consisted of a delicious and massive Kiwi burger (beef patty, egg, tomato, lettuce, tomato sauce, and beetroot). At this point I have completely accepted that all burgers in New Zealand are much bigger than anything in America (seriously, I couldn’t even get it in my mouth), and therefore any Kiwi that makes fun of the portions of American food is simply a hypocrite. During lunch it began to rain, so we walked around a bit in town before heading back to Auckland to go to one of Lauren’s co-worker’s birthday party. While sitting in the thermal area of the river in Taupo and seeing Milford Sound and Mt. Cook were amazing natural highlights of my trip, spending the evening at a bar overlooking the SkyTower was simply amazing, and I now regret leaving my camera at home that night.

On Sunday Lauren and I went to the grocery store and ran errands (I needed non-traditional touristy gifts of a bottle of L&P for me, a shopping bag for my mom, and candy for the nephews; Lauren needed food for the week and a Valentine’s Day card for Arron; we also got meat pies for lunch), before her brother came over and we all went to Lauren’s family’s house in Shakespear (a distant suburb of Auckland, but apparently not the furthest of the suburbs) for a dinner of fish and chips (and more L&P for me). After dinner we hiked up a hill overlooking Shakespear and its bays and the cow pasture the observation tower was in, as well as the Auckland skyline in the distance. As there were cows and Lauren, Arron, and I have worked at GV, we naturally attempted to pet the calves, who it turned out weren’t very accepting of attention from anyone but their moms, who in turn didn’t approve of humans trying to touch their children).

Monday was Valentine’s Day and marked another day that Lauren and Arron had to work, so Lauren dropped me off in the city center to pick up the hop on-hop off bus. I visited the Michael Joseph Savage Memorial, as well as the Auckland Zoo and the Auckland Museum. The memorial, while beautiful, was a little boring after having to wait 30 minutes for the next bus. The Auckland Zoo, on the other hand, was amazing. I got there right in the middle of the giraffe feeding time, and I got to feed my first giraffe since I did Zoo Camp at Busch Gardens when I was little. The zoo was mostly full of school children on a field trip (less than two weeks into the school year!) and couples spending Valentine’s Day together (and trying to ignore the children everywhere). The zoo also had the full gamut of African animals (including lions that were actually awake for minutes at a time during the day), Asian animals (river otters, red pandas, tigers), Australian animals (wallabies, kangaroos, emus), and local animals. However, kiwi birds are either masters of disguise or don’t actually exist in captivity, as there was not a single kiwi bird to be seen in the nocturnal kiwi house. At this point I headed back to the Auckland Museum, which was almost as good as Te Papa in Wellington, but not free (unless you’re from Auckland). It was the first museum I’ve seen that has a full moa skeleton and a full size moa model (using emu feathers); those birds must have been terrifying when encountered in the wild before they were hunted to extinction. I headed back afterwards to the marina on the last of the buses and explored around for a while while I waited for Lauren to get out of work. At 7 I went out for a fish and chips dinner on the beach with Rick James and Judy Albers (GV ’08-’09) and swapped stories of GV ’10 and their lives post camp. After dinner I returned to Lauren and Arron’s, packed, and napped until my shuttle to the airport arrived just before 2 AM. (Turns out the check-ins at the Auckland airport don’t open until 4 AM, and you need a visa to visit Australia if you’re from the US.)

The flight to Sydney went well; I slept for half of the three hours and watched parts of Megamind and The Good Wife for the rest. In Sydney I stayed at The Original Backpackers’ Hostel in King’s Cross, which is still in the original building on that site and featured huge rooms, a courtyard, and individual bathrooms. That morning I met Jessica from Germany before heading out to explore the new and very massive Westfield shopping mall. The new mall not only consists of two five story buildings on opposite sides of a street, but one side also houses the base of the Sydney Tower (as warned by Paula, it did indeed pale in comparison to the Auckland Sky Tower). After that I backtracked to the hostel to get my Just One shirt before seeking out the Sydney Opera House and Harbor Bridge by way of the Botanical Gardens (which has bats!). It was surreal walking around the corner and seeing the Opera House appear out of nowhere. While there were still signs around the airport welcoming Oprah from her trip in December, here there were no signs of her visit, demonstrating perhaps Sydney’s ability to move too quickly and still offer its own signature style to visitors. And boy, do people in Sydney move quickly. I spent the first few days sharply homesick for NZ, where people walk at a normal pace, often barefoot, not speedwalking and gone in the next second. While being gloomy in the hostel later that night, I befriended Charlotte from England who also arrived that day and was in my room, who came over to Oz on a whim with her brother and his girlfriend. We went down to the kitchen together to make dinner and were quickly bonding over our shock at the speed of Sydney and bits of English culture. We found out later that she, Jessica, and I were the only short-term, non-working occupants of our room, a major change from my stays at YHAs and Base.

My second day in Sydney led me to the Sydney Aquarium and the Sydney Tower, which were both part of a four-attraction ticket. Much thanks to Jacob for recommending the Sydney Aquarium! My favorite part was probably the dugong tank, as the dugongs look like a strange mix of the front half of a manatee and the back half of a whale, and the tank was also home to every major species of animal featured in Finding Nemo (minus the octopus and jellyfish…those were in other tanks). I very likely spent 20 minutes walking around mentally reciting lines from the movie, and there were at least 50 blue tangs (Dory) in this one tank alone, while in other aquariums I’ve been to they’re very rare. Sadly none of the blue tangs felt compelled to swim over towards the clownfish, but such is life. I had lunch at the aquarium café (a chicken sandwich with cranberry, brie, and alfalfa sprouts) before exploring Darling Harbor (and very nearly buying two dresses and a straw fedora). After going over most of Darling Harbor I decided to check out the Sydney Tower, which is not only shorter than the SkyTower, but also houses its smaller observation deck on the top of four levels and therefore has no glass floors. I hate to sound jaded, but the SkyTower was so much better and set the bar way too high. That night I had dinner with Charlotte again.

On my last day I took the ferry over to Manly to use one of my four tickets at Manly OceanWorld, which was very underwhelming after the Aquarium the day before, but it did have cuttlefish (normal sized and giant), which the Aquarium lacked.  I would have liked to have walked over to the actual beach at Manly, but I was short on time and didn’t have my bathing suit with me. The ferry ride back allowed for some great views of the opera house and bridge, and I took some great stop motion pictures of the rocking of the ferry and of the opera house from every side (because that’s pretty much the only setting that works well on my camera still). I then went straight back to Darling Harbor to go to the WildlifeWorld, armed with a voucher from the hostel for a free photo with a koala. This zoo was home to the top deadliest snakes in Australia/the entire world (they just happen to be Australian, and I’m now super paranoid about sticks on the ground after the safety of snake-free NZ). It also houses the world’s largest crocodile in captivity (15 feet long, and likely to grow to 21 feet). Unlike in Auckland, the nocturnal animals were very active, and each was more adorable than the next (here, opossums are fluffy and cute, not weird); however, the usually nocturnal wombat was passed out and would roll over every now and again. And wombats are massive! They’re about the same height as kiwis (15 inches or so), but very stout and solid, and as Michael testified, capable of attacking a tent at night and scaring you half to death. Before making it over to the koala, I wandered to the viewing platform overlooking the giant crocodile and talked with one of the trainers, who was shocked to find out that UF has wild alligators on campus. I then got to go “pat” and be photographed with Charlie the koala, who was very fuzzy and very sleepy. That night Charlotte and I went out to dinner at Darling Harbor, where I had amazing all-you-can-eat mussels cooked in a broth of bleu cheese and white wine. We also got drinks afterwards at the Harbor Bar between the Opera House and the Harbor Bridge – spectacular at night!

The next day I took a three hour bus ride to Canberra, where I was greeted at the bus station by Alinta (GV ’10) wearing some GV tie-dye. After missing New Zealand, seeing a very welcome face was so comforting. After dropping off my bags at her house and meeting her cat and dog, we hiked up the hill at the end of her house, where there just happen to be kangaroos. Turns out they’re something of a pest in Canberra and are pretty much everywhere. We also went to go feed her horse Nancy before returning home with kangaroo steaks to barbeque with her sister and her sister’s boyfriend. Kangaroo steak is delicious and tastes pretty similar to beef steak, but isn’t fatty. I’ll definitely be on the lookout for kangaroo meat when I get back home.

Saturday Alinta and I went back to the stables to feed her horse and let Alinta’s friend Emma (who will very likely be coming to GV with Alinta in 2012) do some jumps with Alinta’s horse. After that Alinta and I drove to the outskirts of Canberra, past some deep space satellites, and out to Brindbinbilla to see more kangaroos, koalas, black swans, a giant pelican, rock wallabies, and a platypus!  It began to rain (seems to be a trend for Saturdays/at least once in every place I’ve gone to except Wellington), so we picked up groceries for dinner, including TimTams and lambingtons (and I got a 2 liter bottle of Vanilla Coke…it actually comes in bottles here, not just cans…and they sell cans and bottles of it in vending machines!).

Sunday Alinta had to work all day, so I spent the day uploading the rest of my photos (Auckland through Canberra…pretty much the contents of this blog) and relaxing while catching up on American TV and chatting with people on Facebook. We went out to dinner at a nice little Italian restaurant once she was done giving lessons, then went to bed as it was late.

Monday we woke up and went straight to the stables, where I finally got to ride (I rode Beavis [so named by his original owner because he was a bit of a butthead when he was young] and Alinta rode Buttercup). Back in May, Alinta promised me that I could ride a horse (at camp), but I never managed to make it out to the stables during pre-camp and never managed to win the horse ride lotteries. So I came to Canberra to see her and ride a horse. Apart from the scratches from being blindly led through some pine trees, it was a really wonderful trail ride and it was great to be back in the saddle, even if my hip popped and is somehow bruised today. After the trail ride, we went out to lunch, and I had another amazing sandwich (triple decker of chicken, cranberries, Swiss cheese, and avocado). We then walked around the government/main area of Canberra (it’s the capital of Australia), then drove by the U.S. Embassy (it’s massive and on the top of a hill overlooking all the other embassies, and it looks like the US part of Epcot…in other words, very, very American, and I was embarrassed by how large and American it is). We also drove up Red Hill and looked out over Canberra, then returned home, ate dinner, and played with Alinta’s cat, who had gone temporarily berserk and was highly entertaining.

This morning I flew from Canberra to Melbourne, and by the time I arrived at the hostel, got settled, got online, bought groceries, had lunch, and watched a good deal of news about the Christchurch earthquake, most of the touristy transportation means were closed, as was the nearest major attraction, the Victoria Markets (who closes a market at 2 PM, seriously?). Jacob (GV ’10-’11) called as well and worked out our plans for Thursday when he comes to collect me (going to go to the zoo here before taking the train to Jack River where he lives); it was really nice to hear a comforting camp voice after seeing the images from Christchurch where one of our friends lives and where some of our friends are travelling. I’m already looking forward to a massive hug from him, as the news has largely focused on Christchurch as I’ve written this over the past two hours and there is still little new information apart from calls from people trapped in buildings,  mentions of new aftershocks and a collapsed hostel (likely Base, as the building next to it collapsed and it was barely a functioning hostel two weeks ago), and the news that the death toll is higher (but no new number yet...). The hostel has just been inundated by an insane amount of children (aged 9-11?) who have been very noisy in the dining hall area for the past 90 minutes, and I’ve now begun to realize that all of those hostel horror stories of random large school groups of children during the non-peak seasons are actually true warnings. Well, time to pop back online, post this, and go eat some Easy Mac (living on a budget is horrible…I miss college!).

The Week of 600 Photos

Hello from Christchurch! Many apologies for having not written any sooner than now, but life’s been a bit hectic since arriving in Queenstown a week ago. 

Upon arriving in Queenstown on the evening of February 2, Carolyn (from Canada and the buses) and I made our way to the unhappy location that is the BASE hostel Queenstown, in which my room was packed full of eight girls’ belongings and an ever present stink of vomit (that turned out to be in the locker that would have been mine and was never cleaned out by housekeeping during the three days I was stuck there, despite complaints). The awfulness of my room and BASE in general aside, Queenstown proved to be rather interesting: imagine a full-blown college town (such as Gainesville) mixed with the scenery and layout of a ski town (like Telluride?), and you’ve got Queenstown, smack in the Remarkable Mountains. That night Carolyn and I got dinner at Ferg Burgers, further adding to the proof that New Zealand makes ginormous and delicious burgers. After having endured the hot bus for too many hours, we decided to follow up with some gelato and a walk up to the base of the gondola and around the old cemetery next to it. 

The next day Carolyn and I hung out and ran errands before she left to start her four day trip along the Milford Track. At this point I found out that my camera’s broken to the point where it needs to be sent in, but that requires staying in one location for at least 10 days, so for the time being I’ve accepted that I’ll just have lower quality photos as the current settings seem to be working somewhat better than before. I’ve also realized in the past day or so that I’ve taken nearly 600 pictures from my time in Queenstown through now, so from here on out my picture posting (which has been minimal at best), will be rather held up for quite some time (don’t worry, I won’t try to post all of them, just the choicest bits). It began to rain after Carolyn left, so I waited around a bit waiting for it to lighten up by enjoying the freedom of my Vodafone vodem (which is now nearly used up, thanks to rainy days and Facebook photos). Once the rain was reduced to a drizzle, I made a somewhat mad dash up the hill of steps to the gondola. As it had been raining, it was barely busy, and the rain had driven a small flock of sheep that normally graze below the gondola to hide under a rocky outcrop. I finally found a jade necklace I liked at the gondola gift shop, providing proof that while the view was less than perfect, it was meant to be. That said, the view of the surrounding mountains emerging out of the clouds, rain, and mist was phenomenal. After about an hour I reluctantly returned back to BASE to make dinner, before returning to my laptop and the lobby for the remainder of the evening. At least there was a cute German-speaking guy who had been there from before to keep psudeo-company with?

The day after that the weather had cleared completely, which was great timing for the tour to Milford Sound I had booked the day before. One of the people waiting for the tour bus had also been on the bus to Queenstown with Carolyn and me, so Maarten from Holland and I sat together. On the way to Fjordlands National Park, the bus driver took his mandatory break in a town with a baker renowned for his venison meat pies, so nearly everyone on the bus got one. It may have been the large amount of gravy, but venison from deer farms tastes a whole lot like a mellower form of beef. Once we reached the park, we stopped several more times to take pictures of a field used to film one of the Lord of the Rings battle scenes, of the Mirror Lakes (which perfectly reflect the surrounding mountains and were filled with teenage ducklings and fish), the Chasm (an incredible waterfall), and Monkey Creek (where we filled up our water bottles with alpine spring water and I had to constantly remind myself that there probably wasn’t giardia present in it as it came from a steep hillside first). We also stopped once halfway through the park to pick up a hiker from Germany, who had just completed one of the hikes that ends in the park itself.

Rounding the bend at the docks, the very first sight is of Mitre Peak, the iconic mountain featured on every postcard of Milford Sound. (For those of you who didn’t attend Berkeley in middle school, a mitre is a bishop’s hat and is pointed and looks something like a mountain). I spent much of my time on the boat in the bow, along with Maarten, who unfortunately lost his sunglasses thanks to the massive amount of spray. There are few words to describe how wonderful Milford Sound actually is, especially the day after constant rain, and my photos unfortunately provide little justice either. While there are two or three permanent waterfalls, at any point there are hundreds of small temporary ones formed by rain runoff on the massive glacial mountains that form the fjord. The fjord itself is large enough to make full size cruise ships look like toys, and the water is too deep for any boat to anchor in. As we were riding out towards the Tasman Sea, a large cruise ship was coming in for a quick tour of the fjord. On the return trip back from the edge of the sea, all of the captains offer to nose their ships into one of the permanent falls and invite their more insane passengers to stand under the falls if they so desire. As my camera’s waterproof, I got in a few shots before the pressure of the initial bursts of water (and the dryness of my jeans) caused me and the one other girl out there with me to take refuge with everyone else. We also passed a clump of adolescent male seals sunning on the rocks before the cruise was completed. Although I was often looking all over the fjord, no sight was seen of Carolyn, who was by this point on her first day of hiking the Milford Track.

On Saturday morning I finally escaped BASE for good and boarded the Great Sights bus to Mount Cook. It turned out that not only do Great Sights buses provide a drop off at Mount Cook, but they all also double as a Japanese tour buses, complete with a female interpreter and a driver hired because he knows a few words of Japanese. Needless to say, this made for a very interesting bus ride, as did attempting to Skype with my mom from the bus so I could show her the scenery. We passed through Twizel for a second time and for a second time were treated to the story of Shrek the sheep, who hid in the mountains for two years before being discovered, made famous, and then shorn for his massive amount of wool. Since his discovery, he’s been shorn every two years up until 2010, when he was shorn for the last time before being “retired.”

Going from Milford Sound one day to Mount Cook the next is about as overstimulating as the time I crammed in all four Disney World parks before going to Islands of Adventure and the Wonderful World of Harry Potter the next day. Whereas Milford Sound was damp and humid, Mount Cook was dry and windy, but equally vast. While the mountains across the plain seemed quite close by, the tininess of the cars and campervans winding their way through the plain revealed the true scale of the place as they looked to be not much smaller than they do from an airplane. After a lunch of tomato soup and toasted ciabatta at the Old Mountaineer’s Lodge, I made a brief stop at the Sir Edmund Hilary Center and Hermitage (and got a “Just One” photo with his statue overlooking Mount Cook) and then hiked the hour-long path to Kea Point, which takes you to a point across the muddy glacial lake from the base of Mount Cook. Along the path I found at least two filming locations used in LOTR, which led to insane amounts of photo taking and general nerdiness (for the record, I found the hill shot of Fangorn forest in front of the snowy mountains on the way to Isengard, and I found the field and mountains that surround Minas Tirith). Had the weather not been promising to rain soon, I would have liked to do the Hooker Valley hike, but there was never time during the rest of my rainy stay at Mount Cook. 

Being cooped up in the YHA hostel for the following day and a half was not only largely relaxing, but also highly interesting, as I got to know more about the middle-aged woman whose bunk was across from mine. Finding ourselves the only ones in the room at one point, she asked me at random if I was spiritual, at which I replied not really, but that I consider myself, at least culturally, to be Jewish and that I got a minor in religion. Nearly an hour later, I had been informed that she too was half Jewish, but “found the Lord” at the age of 26 and had since given her life over entirely to Jesus. At this point, I had to bite my tongue as to ask her why she hadn’t joined a convent if she was so devout, but was instead forced to explain why I have decided to be Jewish, like my father, rather than Christian, like my mother. After confessing to having renounced Christianity while at a Catholic convention with the Lacys when I was 15, my born-again bunkmate informed me that it didn’t matter that I had renounced “God” at that time (because apparently in Christianity “God” is actually Jesus, and not God himself, and the Holy Spirit wasn’t even mentioned once by her). She then immediately informed me that “in the end [of days] every knee will bow to Jesus.” At this point I excused myself to go check my email and walked quickly away with my laptop; however, I had forgotten my vodem and power adaptor. Returning to the room, I found her on her bunk reading the Bible, at which point she began to quote Acts to me, about how Jesus will come to help you if you evoke his name when in need because he is compassionate, and “Did you know that Jesus and all his disciples were Jewish?” Why, no, good woman, I never took religion classes ever (I told her the Last Supper was actually Passover, which she didn’t seem to hear) and did she know that she just lied?! (She quickly amended with, “Oh, except Timothy.” “Then not all. You said all.”) I informed her that in Buddhism the boddhisatva of compassion (Guanyin) may be similarly envoked by simply calling their name (good old sometimes male, sometimes female Guanyin), to which she replied, “Remember, Satan too was an angel of light, so don’t trust to false idols.” At this point I left without comment, but seriously considered removing the photo of a Buddha from the hallway and placing it next to my bed in protest. Apparently even in the middle of nowhere, attempting to explain why you don’t appreciate religions full of crazies who inform you why you’re going to Hell then try to convert you doesn’t work. At least the Gainesville crazy preachers didn’t try to befriend you constantly over 36 hours. 

Anyway, the remainder of my time at Mount Cook was actually quite amazing. Although it rained for most of it and hid the mountains, it was nice after so many busy days to kick back on a couch in a wooden hostel where the primary lighting sources were white paper lanterns and surf the Internet and Skype and load photos. My second night there some French guys played the first LOTR movie on the communal TV, which was rather surreal sitting where Mordor ought to be located and seeing locations I (and many of those present) had now seen for themselves.

On Monday the rain finally cleared, but as it was still very misty and quite cold and windy I waited inside until the Great Sights bus arrived. Again full of Japanese tourists, the bus stopped again at Lake Tekapo, this time in front of the Church of the Good Shepard and the statue honoring New Zealand’s sheepherding dogs. After this stop, our driver sang a song about the Irish outlaw Mackenzie and his dog, for whom the county/region is named after, even though both man and dog were kicked out of New Zealand. I slept through most of this bus ride and woke up to more rain and Christchurch. I’ve been staying at the YHA here again, and on my first night Jayne (the English girl from the Wellington YHA) tapped me on the shoulder. I knew she had mentioned coming down here, but I wasn’t sure if she’d still be around and was quite excited to see a familiar face after the horrors of BASE and the born-again Christian from Australia. While we were catching up an Israeli boy she had met here came over, at which point I said “Shalom!” and was unable to shake him off until sometime yesterday (apparently female American Jews of any incarnation are like catnip to Israeli guys…he asked me if I was single after 30 minutes!).

On Tuesday I went on another LOTR tour (this time with other people!) to see where they filmed Edoras and the location shot for Helm’s Deep. On the tour with me were Peter from Holland (lots of Dutch people here, besides all the Germans, French, Israelis, English, and Chinese on holiday for New Year’s) and Teresa from Tennessee. Listening to a Southern accent while driving around NZ is equal parts amazing and confusing, especially whenever she said “y’all.” Edoras looks exactly like it does in the movie, only without the sets and with the addition of a herd of black Angus cattle who roam about quite freely. We did the customary nerd photos with the swords and the flag of Rohan (all while nearly being blown off the mountain) before coming back down, back through the cows, to our lunch of sandwiches, homemade chocolate cake, and champagne. The old milking station-turned-base for this tour company was also home to many of the set chairs used for the actors, so I got a picture of me with Orlando Bloom’s Legolas chair (which now only reads “ego as” and sounds very Kiwi). It was really nice having other people there to nerd out with this time around, and Teresa and I kept tapping each other on the ride out and the ride back while we watched clips from the DVD extras whenever they showed Edoras. 

After coming back from the tour, I went to go get groceries and got a text from Carolyn, who was about an hour away from the YHA on her way back from the Milford Track. By the time I’d finally fought my way through the Pac’n’Save three times (it only goes in one direction like IKEA and it starts with the produce), it had been nearly an hour, so Carolyn and I arrived at the YHA at the same time. I quickly introduced her to Jayne before we went to go make dinner, at which point Mr. Israel found us and entreated me to find him later that night. Carolyn thankfully vowed to keep me occupied all evening once he’d left off standing awkwardly by our table. We shared stories of all that had happened since she left Queenstown (lots of rain on the track for her, and all that I’ve just shared here from me), then we sat around watching videos on her laptop and sharing pictures from the past few days (when she went to Milford it was raining and ruined the proper effect of the Mirror Lakes). She left early the next morning for the coast, so we said good bye and invited each other to Vancouver Island and Tampa. 

Yesterday I didn’t do too much, apart from pack my bags for tonight’s flight (all my liquids are in one bag, and it gets checked for free!) and walk around Christchurch. After breakfast I went out around Cathedral Square and Victoria Square, before returning back to the YHA to make lunch. After lunch I headed out again past Cathedral Square to the Botanical Gardens, which were huge. Most of the trees there are at least 130 years old and absolutely massive. Even the flowers were gigantic, and only towards the end did I think to take any sort of scale shots- most of them were the size of my fist or bigger than my hand. In the middle of the park is a greenhouse style building that houses all of the tropical plants; the main room of which was warm and humid and felt just like Tampa. They even had a room full of cacti, complete with a painted backdrop of the American Southwest. Another room housed begonias that were all at least six inches in diameter! It was quite hard to leave the warmth and humidity and the palm trees and head back outside to cool and windy Christchurch, even if half of the buildings are neo-Gothic and beautiful (well, those not in ruins after the earthquakes back in September and October).

Today I’ve been stuck in the YHA with my baggage waiting for the 5 PM shuttle to the airport, as a large group of Asian tourists took over all of the storage lockers. Stu and Maggie were going to possibly make it down today, but I just got a text from them saying that they’re currently stuck in Greymouth with a broken car, just a few hours west of here on the other coast, annoying close and yet so far away. Jayne kept me company for most of the morning after finding out that her Fiji foot bite is finally on the mend for good. We met Rebecca from Switzerland, who appealed to us for advice on how to best travel around NZ, as today was only the third day of her four month stay; luckily Jayne had only ridden on the trains and ferry so far and I’d only ridden on buses and the ferry, so we were able to give her a really good picture of the forms of transport and what to expect from them and where they go. 

Well, as it’s now been an hour since I began writing and my shuttle comes in 45 minutes, it’s finally time to go online and post this beast of a blog and go back to reading Arabian Nights (I’ve since finished The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Around the World in Eighty Days since I began riding the buses and getting stuck in rainy weather). I’ll try and post again from Auckland, but if not, I’ll see you all in Australia!

P.S. Have since made it to Auckland and am hanging out with Lauren and Arron (GV '10). It's good to be back in Auckland...but now for laundry and bed.

There and Back Again

Greetings from Twizel, on the road between Christchurch and Queentown! As I’ve had to pay for internet lately and haven’t had much time, I’ve realized the necessity to start pre-writing blogs on the buses between places so as to keep everyone updated.

Since my last post on my last night in Taupo, I spent the remainder of January in Wellington (okay, so just two full days, an evening, and an early morning). On the way to Wellington sheep finally began to appear in about equal numbers to cows, while my pig and goat count finally began (at three each, plus the addition of one goat yesterday between Picton and Christchurch). While in Wellington I spent my first full day wandering around Te Papa Museum, which was absolutely amazing (and free!). I had my first meat pie and L&P there, and I might just be an L&P convert at the expense of Sprite. However, as I spent much of my day at Te Papa on that Sunday, I was unable to hunt down a camera store and try to fix my still partially broken camera, which turned out to be a bit of a costly error as I found out the next day on my Lord of the Rings guided tour. Yes, I went on a LOTR tour, and was the only person on it (no, not because nobody else is nerdy…just nobody apparently went that day after days of at least ten at a time, according to my guide Sam…I’m also just now aware of the irony of being led around on a LOTR tour by a guy named Sam, and I hope that doesn’t make me Frodo or Bill the Pony). The tour itself was amazing: I got to see/visit the quarry where they filmed Helm’s Deep and parts of Gondor, the park that stood in for the grounds of Isengard, the bit of river where Aragon gets saved by his horse, the bit of river where Faramir imagines seeing Boromir’s funeral boat, the forest where they built Rivendell (and dressed up like Legolas in front of the tree they used for a promotional poster…feel free to mock me for it, but I willingly did it), the forest of the Shire (where my camera decided to die, because overexposing pictures wasn’t annoying enough) that had these awesome wind-knotted pine trees (will Google these and put them up on Facebook to compensate for the lack of actual photos), ran into a drugstore and got a disposable camera after learning that the grocery store near Peter Jackson’s studio doesn’t actually sell disposable cameras, visited the Weta Cave (the only public area of the Weta Studios Workshop) that sadly didn’t have props from Black Sheep (sorry Lauren!), then on through the neighborhood where the cast lived and along the beach where the cast learned to surf. All in all, amazing day, even if I wanted to chuck my camera off a cliff by the end of it.

 I also met Jane, from the Lake Country area of England, who was in my room for the three nights I was at the YHA, and is now on her way to Christchurch hopefully, as she currently has a bum foot thanks to a nasty bite she got in Fiji. Thanks to Facebook, I’m going to try and meet up with her for coffee when I’m England.

Yesterday morning I took the ferry across Cook Straight between Wellington and Picton, and joyfully found out that so long as the boat is rocking I don’t get seasick; however, if old Japanese tourist women decide to stand directly between my view of the water and my seat, not so much. The three hour trip allowed me to work out many of the possible issues with my camera though, so there should be lots of photos up on Facebook soon hopefully. I’m still amazed at just how blue the water here can get, whether it be the pure blue in the straight or the turquoise rivers and lakes.

After a brief stop in Picton, I got on the bus headed to Christchurch and met my first large group of North Americans since my cruise on The Fearless. One of them was a guy from “upstate New York,” who then claimed to be from near Buffalo, but as any Buffalo relative knows, he’d be claiming to be from Western New York if he was truly from Buffalo and not somewhere else. However, he got off before I could chide him on his geographical errors, leaving behind Carolyn from Vancouver, who sat behind me yesterday and is in front of me on the bus today. We spent last night at the YHA in Christchurch City Central and are currently en route to the BASE X Queenstown (simply because it’s cheapest). Just before our first scheduled break on the way to Christchurch, the bus drove past a long stretch of shore that is home to a colony of fur seals, the first of which I’ve seen in the wild and not in captivity. Last night I had dinner with Carolyn, who it turns out got a BA in music (piano) and can also play the flute. We quickly began swapping music group stories and I told her about my favorite oboe player ever, Lauren Pollock.

So that sums of everything pretty much until today, which has found me sitting on a bus driving through the South Island and nearly blasting Lord of the Rings music on my headphones. This has resulted in me continually expecting to see a mass of men on horseback to come riding over the hills at any moment, since so much of the South Island looks like Edoras. We also stopped for lunch just next to the famous Church of the Good Shepard, which looks much smaller in person and isn’t at all as isolated as it appears in pictures once you realize there’s a strip mall behind it. There’s still snow on some of the mountains in the Southern Alps, and I really wish that some of the cooler air from up there could appear here in the bus, as it’s quite warm both inside and out and fairly windy.

That’s about all that’s happened today, so I may as well provide details of my plans for the two weeks I have left in NZ before heading over to Australia:

Today (Feb 2)-Feb 5: Queenstown; staying at the BASE hostel, hopefully going up on the gondola, possibly taking a trip out to Milford Sound?

Feb 5-Feb 7: Mt. Cook Village; staying at the YHA Mt. Cook, very likely visiting Mt. Cook National Park (Mt. Cook, by the way, is the highest point in NZ)

Feb 7-Feb 10: Back to Christchurch; not sure where I’ll stay yet, but there’s two YHA hostels and one hostel that used to be a jail, and Stu and Maggie will hopefully be meeting up with me there before I fly back to Auckland on the night of Feb 10

Feb 10 (night)-Feb 15 (early morning): Auckland to stay with Lauren and Arron, finding out if there’s any way to do a quick trip out to the Coromandel Peninsula, if only so I can get a picture with a sign and the “Just One” shirt (which is now falling apart and I have no clue how to get the edges of the letters to stick back on!)

Well, that’s the news from the South Island, and I’ll try and get in at least one more post before Sydney!

Love to you all,

Kayla