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.