Christmas etc.

Okay, I know this blog has become pretty lame. The power cord for our laptop is short-circuiting so I can't charge it. So now, on top of one post every week or two, we have no pictures. I should be able to scam some off facebook for the time being.

Has Christmas really come and gone already? We hardly noticed it. Sure, there were get togethers and even some presents exchanged, but where are all the decorations and christmas music and shopping frenzy? Poor Steph was so disappointed that there were no Christmas sales at the few shops she has to choose from around here. The lack of Christmas cheer leading up to the big day nearly put her in a state of depression, but she perked up once she saw all the candy I got her as presents. We had a cookout on Christmas eve at our place which went well. It was the same crew as Thanksgiving (me, Steph, Simon, Alison, Sean, Garth, Stephen and Rachel) along with Fiona and Juliane, two girls from Ireland that Simon and Ali know who just arrived in Queenstown a few weeks back. Though it wasn't very Christmas-y, we had a good time sitting out on the balcony, talking, and even playing a round of Steph's famous "Know Your Bro" game.

Since it was technically past midnight by the time the cookout wrapped up, we decided to go ahead and open up the few presents we all had under the tree. Steph and I basically gave each other lots and lots of candy as well as a couple small gifts. I got Steph some lotion and an IOU for a necklace she's been looking at in town (classy, right? actually I did go to the shop and look for one but they didn't have anything good so we'll have to go back). Steph got me a nice journal for documenting and planning the rest of our travels. Christmas day we slept in a little, went to church, then over to Sean and Garth's for Christmas lunch. They made some sort of chicken roll thing which may or may not have been a traditional African dish but was really good nonetheless. A few of the other river guides came over, and we sat around and played party games and hanging out. Overall a completely different Christmas experience than we're used to but we're happy to experience it.

ever had Christmas lunch outside?

river guides (from left: me, ross, stephen, sean, simon, garth, guido, bjorn)

I do have some good news to report today: last night I caught my first fish in New Zealand!! Woohoo! I was pumped. Simon got a fishing pole for Christmas, so I was determined to catch a fish before he did. Last night (while he was at work) I went down there right as the sun was going behind the mountains (about 9:30). I guess it was right after 10, as I was about to call it a night, I was all of the sudden fighting something. Holy crap, a fish! I was terrified I'd lose another one, but fought him hard into shore and dragged him up on the rocks. I wish I could put a picture of it on here because I think it was a little bigger in my memory than reality, but I can say with some confidence that it was a good 14-15" long, maybe somewhere between 2 and 3 pounds, brown trout. I had been told that a sharp knock between the eyes would put a trout out of its misery, but either I wasn't hitting him hard enough or this trout had an extra thick skull because I couldn't kill the poor thing. I kept smacking him on the head and trading up for bigger rocks. I felt horrible. Then the camera dies as Steph was trying to take a picture of it, though we did get a couple good ones. Next I had to gut the thing on the counter (while Steph was gagging in the other room) - let's just say it didn't go well, but who cares? I finally got one! Yes, a proud day indeed.

Update from the river: still not guiding but I have been able to get some work "babysitting." Basically, we allow kids ages 8 and up to come down the river, but anybody under 12 gets their own personal guide. Even though I'm not certified to lead a group, I am able to be a personal guide. I guess because it's holiday season there are a lot of families in town, so I have been able to get a decent amount of babysitting trips under my belt. They are actually a lot of fun, especially if you get a good kid. Some kids are scared and cold and a general pain to take down, but most of them are happy and excited and a lot of fun. You get to tease them (this is where the crocodiles live) and talk to them a lot so I generally enjoy it. I've still only done 2 of my 5 assessments so it could still be a couple weeks before I'm doing any real guiding.

One of the big perks about working for an activity company is a thing called "famils" - short for familiar - which basically means I get to do most of the other activities in town for free. A lot of people coming down the river ask for suggestions of what else to do in town, so other companies let us come out for free so we can recommend them to tourists. Works out great for me of course. First a few of us went canyoning (the same company I had applied at when I first got here). There is this really cool little canyon about 15 minutes out of town, and we got all kitted up in wetsuits and helmets and stuff before doing ziplines across the canyon, rappelling down, riding down slides, jumping off cliffs, etc. It was a lot of fun but the water was super cold and there was a good bit of waiting around. About a week after that we went on the ziptrek, which is a brand new attraction in town. Basically you get a free ride up the gondola, then do a series of 4 big ziplines through the forest. The ziplines were pretty cool, but not that fast and there was a schpeal (sp?) on conservation and sustainability at every landing. So overall kind of boring compared to the other activities in town, but the view of town while hanging upside down was worth the trip (plus it was free!). Eventually we'll do some of the jetboats, bungee jumping, canyon swing, and whatever else we can do for free.

Well I hope everyone is having a good holiday season. It is finally warming up here so that is at least taking away any homesickness we are having over the holidays. Along with doing some of the activities in town, we'll hopefully start getting out more on hikes and maybe even break out the tent that we got 3 months ago and is still sitting in its box unopened. Stay tuned

Settled In

Sorry we haven't posted anything in a while. Quite frankly, we don't have that much going on. We've kind of settled into the day to day here (if you can call it that). Steph works, I don't. Pretty much the same as usual. That's right, I'm STILL not working on the river yet. It's getting ridiculous. All I have to do at this point is pass 5 assessments where I basically pretend I'm a guide for the whole trip while someone follows me and critiques me. I've only been able to do one to this point because there are about 5 other people fighting for a very limited number of slots. If I am guiding by January 1st I'll be happy. I think I said the same thing about December 1st though...

Otherwise we've just been enjoying our new place, especially when the weather is nice. We just got a grill so we're looking forward to many barbeques on the deck over the summer. The weather has been up and down. It's still not really all that warm - I don't think we've cracked 80 yet, but when the sun is out even 65 can feel quite hot. Steph says the ozone layer is thinner here, so the sun is more intense. It is supposed to be a high of about 52 tomorrow, so hopefully January will bring more consistently warm weather.

Steph has been enjoying getting ready for the holidays, even though it doesn't seem like Christmas time here. All the traditional things are the same - Santa and his reindeer in the snow, all the songs (why would anyone here sing 'I'm dreaming of a white Christmas'?), and even the Starbucks christmas coffee flavors - except instead of bundling up by the fire people are out wakeboarding on the lake and having barbeques. Our plan is to experience the best of both worlds - grill out on Christmas Eve and a traditional dinner on Christmas day. We're doing a "white elephant" type gift exchange at work and we're in a secret santa exchange with all our friends from Thanksgiving. Should be fun, but we miss everyone back home and maybe even miss the cold weather a little bit (just because it makes it feel like Christmas).

Well we're off to our typical Saturday activities - farmer's market, arts and crafts market, and frisbee golf. Hopefull we'll get around to another post before then, but if not Merry Christmas to everyone back home! Also congrats to my sister Taylor for getting engaged recently! Now we have 3 weddings to go to next summer! (Steph cheers)

Steph + Riverboarding = Fun? You sure?

Who would have thought Steph would be a natural at riverboarding? Simon and I took the girls out today for their first time on the river and they both did great! Steph was really worried about the cold water, then she was worried about drowning, then her neck hurt, then she was worried about the cold water again. We basically gave her no choice in the matter since she had committed to go about a week ago since nobody had to work today. Plus, the weather was absolutely perfect for it.

Steph and Alison ready to go

We made a day of it - drove out ourselves, had a little picnic lunch, while Simon and I alternated between scaring them with horror stories ("whatever you do, don't go there!") and then calming their fears. It worked out pretty good that there was a small group of clients so we all tagged along with them, so on top of the paid professionals leading them, Steph and Alison had their own personal guides in Simon and I. For the most part, we took it pretty easy on them - kept them away from the trouble spots and generally resisted the temptation to get them worked over by some of the bigger rapids (notice I said generally resisted). Steph really enjoyed it and didn't complain once about being cold or her hurt neck or drowning. Here are some more pics.

Steph's first plunge into the cold water - and still smiling!

Steph and Ali training up

okay, so I just wanted to show off a little

Plus some more just to make everyone jealous of where we live.

to be fair, this doesn't happen every night

Happy Turkey Day

Happy belated Thanksgiving to everyone back home. We've had a busy couple of days getting ready for the big day and teaching all the foreigners around here what Thanksgiving is all about (eating). Stephanie went all out as usual, with help from roomie Alison. You can't just go to the store and buy everything out of a can or pre-mixed here, you actually have to get raw ingredients and make stuff from scratch. Novel concept, I know. Much to my surprise, Steph was not at all daunted by the task, and boy did she pull it off. We had a big juicy turkey, cooked upside down but still turned out really good. For sweet potato casserole, Steph used orange kumara (same as sweet potato as far as we can tell), boiled it and mashed it up herself. They don't have mini marshmallows to put on top but it still turned out good as ever. We had green bean casserole, for which we were able to buy canned green beans and mushroom soup, but we had to fry up the little onion crisps ourselves. They don't have Jiffy mix so we had to find corn meal to make cornbread. Steph doesn't like the creamed corn they have here so she went ahead and made that too. Pumpkin pie was made using raw pumpkin, boiled and mashed up. They don't have whipped cream so the girls literally whipped some cream. You get the idea. It was a chore. Alison made stuffing Irish-style, some spiced rice stuff, plus a carrot cake. We did find a little jar of cranberry sauce, though Steph claims she would have made it herself if you could buy fresh cranberries. Steph made me some sweet tea as well as her grandma's apple cider. Simon and I oversaw the whole operation and put in just enough effort to say we did something. 

the feast

Believe or not, but you don't automatically get off work on Thanksgiving Day here (discrimination), so we had scheduling conflicts. This actually turned out great for me because we ended up having two feasts yesterday. The first was just the roomies since Alison had to work at 5.

Later some of the riversurfing crew came over. Stephen and his wife Rachel from the US were happy to get to celebrate Thanksgiving while abroad. Sean and Garth from Zimbabwe and South Africa weren't about to pass down an opportunity to eat until stuffed. Let's just say they are fans of Thanksgiving.

clockwise from left: steph, garth, sean, simon, adam, rachel, stephen

Also here are a couple pics from the new place. I couldn't get the panoramic function to work right on my camera or on the computer, but you get the idea.

Happy Holidays everybody. Hope everyone back home had a good Thankgiving and a good holiday season. We miss everybody. Wish you were here (not us there - this place is awesome!)

Long Time No See

Sorry we have been so absent lately. Things got a little busy around here, then we haven't had internet for a few days... so Steph has finally demanded that I do a blog post, so here I am at the internet cafe. Anyways, a lot has happened in the last month-ish, so lets get right to it.

We've moved! Yeah, so the dream apartment wasn't such a dream after all. Rent was killing us and the location turned out to be pretty crummy. It's a really long story that isn't all that interesting, so basically an we got a 2 bedroom place that we share with an Irish couple named Simon and Allison. Simon is a riverboarding trainee with me, and they were looking to move from their apartment, so we decided to find a place together. We ended up finding a great place really close to town, still near the water, with a great big deck looking over the mountains and lake. It's really awesome, plus it has a full-size fridge, TWO dishwashers, and a washing machine and dryer (all of which we didn't have in our old place). The best part about it is that we'll be paying about $100 less per week in rent. Actually the best part is that Alison works at a chocolate and ice cream shop called Patagonia and is always bringing home treats. Sweet as! (kiwi term)

Movember All the guys with Serious Fun Riversurfing (company I'll be working for), as well as seemingly most males in New Zealand, are growing moustaches for the whole month of November (get it? Movember?) to raise awareness for men's health issues like prostate cancer, depression, and what not. I'm actually not all that sure what it's for, I just know that I now have a sweet moustache that is driving all the ladies crazy. Not really of course, it is actually miserable-looking and kind of embarassing. I suppose we'll post some pics when we can.

Steph's wild night It wasn't that wild, but we had a pretty interesting night a couple days ago. As Steph was walking home from work (yes, we're close enough for her to walk now), she saw a dead person. It's pretty terrible actually. Two guys were either play fighting or actual fighting (heard different rumors) and one of them fell and busted their head open and died right there on the street. When Steph came by later she saw the guy's legs sticking out from under a sheet as the police investigated. Creepy. And really sad. Apparently the other guy is in jail. Then, at exactly 5:33 am that morning, Steph and I both awoke to find the whole room rumbling. Our first earthquake! It only lasted a few seconds, but it counts.

Miscellaneous Other than that, it's kind of more of the same. I think we are both enjoying it more and more as it gets warmer and warmer. Still not hot, 70 degrees would be a blazing day, but warm enough to sit out on our new balcony. The sunsets across the lake can be truly breathtaking. I've just finished my rescue training course, and have a first aid course over the next couple days. I have my 50 trips completed, so after that they will do an assessment on my riverboarding skills to see if I'm fit to be a guide. Once I pass that, I'm in! Can't wait. Steph has been working mainly nights and enjoying it more. She seems to like meeting the guests from all over the world, especially the Americans because they normally leave her a tip. I haven't reminder her about Black Friday coming up, but we are planning a big Thanksgiving dinner with our roomies and another American couple. We'll have to eat our on our deck in the warm sun New Zealand-style. Enjoy the cold back home! See ya!

Read any good books lately?

I am officially using this blog to plead for book suggestions. Steph and I joined the local library a while back and have been reading a decent amount. It all started when we only had two TV channels to chose from, then we went almost 2 weeks with no TV at all and the reading really picked up. Now we actually have like 10 channels, but we're already in reading mode so it ought to continue. Plus, it's a 40 minute drive each way for every riverboarding trip, so there's another good time to read for me. Anyways, there's simply a lot of books at the library and I have no idea how anybody chooses ones to read (I guess Steph somehow manages. She came back today with some "classic" called Jane Eyre as well as what appears to be a coffee table book called The Story of Archaeology in 50 Great Discoveries). Just so you know, I generally like fiction; the only non-fiction I'd generally read is adventure or travel-type stuff, but if you have any must-read's I'd be happy to hear them. Preferably no Bill Bryson (already read 2 of his). Leave a comment or shoot me an email or whatever. 'Preciate it.

Queenstown Hill

I guess you could consider this another installment of our virtual tour of Queenstown (which we'll hopefully finish someday), but another quasi-interesting thing to do in town is hike up Queenstown Hill. The hill is one of a few that hover over town, and this one has a nice, albeit quite steep, 3-hour return hike to the top. Nice day, nothing to do, so we finally decided to make the trek to the top. There's not really anything up there but a nice view, so we sat and enjoyed that for a while.

Lake Wakatipu looking towards Glenorchy. Fernhill is on the side of the hill on the right. Queenstown Gardens is in the lower left.

Lake Wakatipu looking towards Kingston. The cluster of houses you see is Kelvin Heights, on the other side of the Frankton Arm from us.

What else has been going on? Oh yes, Halloween. It is celebrated here, but didn't seem quite as big as in the US. Apparently the kids do trick-or-treat, but neither of us were here to see if anyone came by. They sure didn't sell hordes of candy at the grocery store like back home, which was of course disappointing to us. There are tons of backpackers in town, most of them younger than us, so dressing up and going out was certainly a popular thing to do. Steph had to work, and I went to a little barbeque by the lake with that guy Stephen from Buckhead (also, he went to Westminster, not Wesleyen). He had a couple high school buddies in town, one of them even went to Tech, so I got the chance to talk a little Yellow Jacket football which was nice. Also met a couple guys that live in town from LaGrange. That makes at least 6 people in town from the state of Georgia. Plus another one of the river boarding guys is from Aiken. I've yet to meet any Americans from outside a 200-mile radius of Atlanta.

Speaking of river boarding, it is going good. I'm up to just over 30 trips total now, so still a while to go. There are trips going pretty much every day now, sometimes two trips a day, so it should be pretty easy to complete my last 20 trips. I think I'm enjoying it more and more every time I go, so am really pumped for summer. Steph came out to watch a couple days ago and took some video of us going down the river. In the video below, we're going through the third named rapid on our run, called "Dead Cow" because there used to be a dead cow stuck on the rock. First I briefly "surf" on a small wave at the top, then go through a "squirt" called "Elevator to Hell". A squirt is caused by two currents of water crashing into each other, so a large flow of water is forced down to the bottom of the river. You put your board under and if you time it right, it will pull you underwater for up to 10 seconds or more. We do this for fun. The guy with the crazy accent yelling at me in the video is Sean, from Zimbabwe.

Milford Sound

So we're back from our trip to Milford Sound. What can we say? It definitely lived up to the hype. It was incredible. Easily the most amazing, mind-blowing scenery we have ever come across. Everything about it was cool - the cliffs, the waterfalls, the water, the history, the wildlife, even the rain! Let us start from the beginning though.

The town of Te Anau (pronounced tea ah-new) is sort of the gateway to Milford Sound and Fiordland National Park (in which Milford Sound is located), even though it is basically about the halfway point of the three hour drive from Queenstown to Milford. There is basically no where else to stay after there, so we too made it our basecamp. It was a holiday weekend (Labour Day - just spelling it how they do) and the town was relatively busy, so the first thing we did was find a hostel to stay at. We settled on the first place we found - Bob and Maxine's Backpackers. Nice enough place. Maxine was a textbook low-talker and Bob can only be described as whacky. They also have the fattest cat I have ever seen. We explored town a bit, did a little hike on the nearby Kepler Track, visited a wildlife sanctuary, and I even let Steph talk me into eating out! Quite the occasion! I believe it's the first time we've had dinner at a restaurant since we were in Auckland, so a good 2 months. That night everyone staying in the hostel sat around and chatted about everything from chocolate to governments. There was a guy from Israel who had an exhaustive (and very funny) story about trying to get a visa to visit the US, a girl from France whose accent was actually kind of charming, a reserved and polite girl from the UK, a hardcore hiker from Switzerland, and the most stereotypical German-Swiss guy sporting bleached-blonde hair parted in the middle and complete with Toblerone chocolate. I wonder if Steph and I are stereotypical Americans?

Despite every single person that I've met who has been to Milford Sound saying the weather was sunny and gorgeous when they visited, of course we had rain. Lots of it, in fact. It's not really surprising given that it rains an average of over 6 meters of rain there per year - that's 20 FEET! As you can see, we didn't get quite the same view as in the picture from my previous post.

We wanted to do a kayaking trip, but because of the foul weather we opted for a boat tour instead. Actually, the rain in Milford Sound is kind of a blessing in disguise, as it creates literally hundreds of new waterfalls. The misty ribbons of water flowing down the sides of the cliffs was worth getting wet for.

Since the lady that booked the trip for us had talked us into getting "the special", which included lunch and a visit to an underwater observatory, we spent our first 15 minutes aboard the Pride of Milford stuffing our faces with as much buffet food as we could. Like I said, we don't eat out much. After that, we joined the hordes of Japanese tourists out on the deck to soak (pun!) in the views. Another good thing about taking the boat tour was that the captain was constantly giving insight into the history, wildlife, and geology of the Sound. In fact (I told you I'd come back with lots of info), as I said before, it's not actually a sound. It's a fjord. A sound is created by rivers while a fjord is created by glaciers. I'm not sure why it originally came to be known as Milford Sound, but I guess the name was quickly too famous to change it. I do know that it was originally know as Milford Haven after the first european explorer discovered it when his ship was blown in by a storm. Captain Cook, who is credited with discovering many places in New Zealand, actually sailed by it twice thinking it was nothing more than a large bay. Also, the huge amounts of rainfall creates a freshwater layer over top the saltwater layer from the sea. The freshwater layer filters the light and causes the saltwater below it to be much darker than it normally would be at that depth. This means that deep water-dwelling creatures are tricked into living much closer to the surface than usual. At a depth of 8 meters in the underwater observatory, we got to see some of these creatures. Black coral, for example, is usually found at depths of 50-150 meters. Even more interesting, it's not even black!

The boat cruise took us surprisingly close to some of the cliffs and almost into some of the larger waterfalls. You really have to get up close to truly appreciate the size of these things. Many of the waterfalls are around 500 feet tall and some of the cliffs are upwards of 1500 feet straight out of the water. Check out how dwarfed a two-story tour boat looks compared to these cliffs here. We also got to see some of the unique wildlife that exists only in this region of the world. That's right, we saw our first wild penguins - the Fiordland Crested Penguin. We didn't get a good picture of them because we were quite far away and they are tiny little guys, but here is one from the web:

We also saw a colony of New Zealand fur seals:

Another native New Zealand creature that is quickly becoming one of my favorites is the Kea (pronounced like the car maker Kia). A Kea is an alpine parrot that lives in some of the harsher climates of New Zealand, especially Fiordland National Park. They are notorious for being somewhat of flying raccoons - they will steal your lunch, tear apart your hiking boots, or, most famously, destroy your car. Apparently they have a thing for the rubber on windshield wipers and around windows. We had seem some in cages at the wildlife sanctuary in Te Anau, and they have beautiful dark green feathers. The soggy ones we encountered near Milford Sound weren't quite as pretty, but they did live up to their reputation. Every parking lot had at least one of these things, swooping around looking for handouts from tourists. At one stop on the way out, there were two particularly daring little rascals. As one of them posed for pictures on the ground, I turned around to see the other one on the hood of my car, pecking at my windshield wipers. Nice try, but you'd have to get up pretty early....

There are days worth of side trips to see and do between Te Anau and Milford, but Steph can only stay happy for so long while wet and cold. Our 2-3 night trip quickly turned into a long one-night trip, and we headed back to Queenstown. It was a great experience though, and we can't wait to go back when somebody comes and visits. See all our pics HERE. Oh yes, one more thing. You have to go through a tunnel to get to and from Milford Sound. One unlucky bloke didn't quite make it:

Heading out

Just a quick post as we are about to leave to go to Milford Sound for the next 2 or 3 nights. Stephanie doesn't work again until Thursday, so we have some flexibility with how long we want to stay. The plan is to drive out there, find a place to stay, then figure out what to do. Not much of a plan, really. We're also hoping to stay one night on the Milford Track, but we haven't been able to figure out yet how that will work since you have to take a boat to get there. Should be able to get more info once we're out there. Here is a picture of Milford Sound that I stole off the internet. Hopefully we'll get some good weather like this.

Also, I had a bit of a "small world" moment the other day. There was another riverboarding training session a couple weeks after mine. This week I met a few of the guys that had taken that course. One guy is from Ireland, another from New Caledonia (island somewhere above NZ in the South Pacific), and another is from the US. "What part of the US?" "Atlanta" "I'm from Atlanta too" Turns out he grew up in Buckhead, went to Wesleyan, graduated same year as me, then went to school in Texas and has been there ever since. He and his wife are in New Zealand until February. Pretty cool to meet somebody from back home. Apparently there was another guy on the course from LaGrange, but he quit. Be back in a few days!

Gearing up for summer

The warm (-ish) spring weather we've been having around here has inspired us to get more active and get geared up for summer. One thing we've been looking to get for a while is bikes, so we checked out the classifieds of the local paper. We eventually bought one off some people having a moving sale - only $50 including a baby carrier! Sweet! It does run pretty good for its age (once I took the baby carrier off), so I think we got a good deal. Stephanie got her bike from the Warehouse (like a small walmart) on sale, so it was only about $125 new. Once we loaded up on all the necessary accessories - helmets, locks, a pump - we were ready to go. Our first trip was out to Lake Hayes, which is a nice little lake about 15 minutes away. I go by there all the time going to and from my riverboarding and had always wanted to check it out. There is a nice trail that goes around the lake and up on the side of an adjacent hill, providing good views of the lake and surrounding mountains. We also stopped by the lower Shotover River, walked around a bit, stopped to read, threw some rocks, and watched the jetboats go by.

Lake Hayes

We found a rope swing on the lake

Shotover River

A Jetboat on the Shotover River

Ideally as it gets warmer and warmer we'll be using the car less and our bikes more. We both should be able to bike to work, at least on occasion, plus we can bike to town and even to the grocery store (theoretically). I have my doubts on how much any of this will actually happen, but we shall see.

The other thing that I've been doing to get ready for summer is learning to fly fish. The local angler's club hosts an annual fly fishing course, which started last week. Over a total of four sessions, we'll cover everything from casting to picking out the right fly. So far we've had two sessions where we've gone over the equipment you need, the equipment you think you need, and the equipment you definitely don't need but must have anyways. We've also learned how to tie a few knots and started learning how to cast. I started out pretty rough, but after a couple accidental casts went farther than any cast I had made on purpose, I adjusted my "stroke" a little bit and am getting the hang of it. Whether I'll actually catch any fish is another story. After the course we can choose to go on an outing with the club to a hut they have set up somewhere in the backcountry, which should be fun.

Other than that, its business as usual. Steph joined a gym that is opening up about a mile away. They have a big pool too so we're planning to go over there for a swim sometime soon. I need to be going on more riverboarding trips to get to the magical 50 run number (I'm like 30 away), but the scheduling just isn't working out. They only have trips going on the occasional day that I have temp work, or the trip is too full to fit me on the bus (I literally got booted off the bus one time last week), or more recently I've had another stretch feeling a little sick and congested. Next week I'm hoping to make at least 3 or 4 trips (6 or 8 runs at two runs per trip). We are also hoping to get out of town for a night or two next weekend, probably to Milford Sound. We're hoping to do a little hiking on the Milford Track before it gets too busy, and of course see the sound, which is supposed to be amazing. Actually it is not a sound at all, but a fjord. And that's all the info I've got. I'll try to come back with something a little more than that.

A Tour of Queenstown - Part 1: Queenstown Gardens

Since we don't really have anything going on that is all too interesting (unless you'd like to hear about the spaghetti we had for dinner last night or the games of Yahtzee we've been playing), we thought we'd do a little virtual tour of Queenstown and some of the surrounding areas. Today we'll cover what is probably our favorite part of town - Queenstown Gardens. But first, the below map gives a little overview of the layout of Queenstown and some of the notable places around town.

As you can see, Queenstown Gardens covers a small peninsula just a short walk from downtown. It's called gardens but it is really a big park with lots of stuff to do. There is frisbee golf, a jogging/walking track, tennis courts, lawn bowling, croquet, a skate park, an indoor ice skating rink, plus the gardens of course. Everything is well landscaped and really nice. Since it is spring, the birds are chirping and some of the trees and flowers are starting to bloom. It's really quite lovely. We've had a run of nice weather recently, and on a warm spring day the park is packed with people lounging around on the grass, feeding the ducks in the pond, or playing frisbee golf. The only other thing worth a note is the pigeons. We're not talking about dirty, crumbing-eating pigeons you find in cities all over the world. I'm talking about wild, native pigeons, which are absolutely enormous. They swoop over your head making this weird clucking noise, but otherwise stick to the trees and aren't begging for scraps like their cousins. Thought everyone would like to hear about that.

Nice view of town from the park

Frisbee golf hole that I got a hole-in-one on. You are required to go through the big trees to get to the hole just to the right and behind them.

The rose garden is pruned and ready for spring flowers

Baby ducks

These trees are really strange. They are called "monkey puzzle" trees.

the weeping willows hanging over the pond are pretty

Click HERE for more pictures from Queenstown Gardens. Also, we'd like to give a shout out to Steph's cousin Emily and wish her a happy birthday. (This is a dangerous precedent, since I am notoriously bad at remembering birthdays). Oh and by the way, the spaghetti was good and I have been dominating at Yahtzee.

Snow Day!

I guess you could call me lucky, since just 2 days after my 4 days floating down a freezing cold river we got a cold front accompanied by a heavy snowfall. I don't think it would have made much of a difference, though. Once you're numb, you're numb. Anyways, we were happy to get some snow. It makes the mountains look a lot cooler, and supposedly it's good for the ski tourism, which I guess we care about. Most of it had melted by the afternoon, so while Steph worked I walked down to the lake to try my hand at some fishing. I had hooked a small fish the evening before, but it got off pretty quickly. This time after only 4 or 5 casts I hooked what seemed to be another small fish, since it wasn't putting up much fight. I was shocked when I reeled it in and saw a huge trout on the end of the line. I guess he was just toying with me, because once he saw the shore he turned around, took off, jumped out of the water, spat out the hook and was gone. I will be back though, and next time I'll bring a net and snag that sucker before he can escape again.

Kawarau River - where we go riverboarding

Like I mentioned above, I have completed my 4-day riverboarding training course, barely. It was really hard and tiring, but turned out to be a lot of fun. There were 4 other newbies with me - a girl from the UK and guys from Sweden, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. It was cool to meet and chat with all of them, especially the guys from Africa. They have some, let's say "interesting" stories about back home. Do not worry, though. I am still a long way from actually becoming a certified guide. I have to log about 35 more trips down the river, do a safety/rescue course in mid-November, and get my first aid certification. So, it'll be at least a month and half before I actually get paid to do this stuff, but hopefully I can be doing some more temp work here and there during that time. Plus, Steph is used to being the bread-winner. She's been working 4 or 5 days a week and generally enjoying it. She's realized she does not like the breakfast shift, which she has been getting a lot of, so once she requests not to work breakfasts she'll be happy.

Speaking of Steph, she managed to pull of an all-time classic the other day. Those that know her may know that she has a bit of an issue with car keys. She loses them every now and then, of course, but also has a tendancy to lock them in the car. She once locked them in the car while it was running. But all of that pares in comparison to what she did a couple days ago. She left home and drove over to the library, but by the time she got there the keys were gone. She had lost her keys while driving! I know, impossible right? Well our car is a bit older and the key can slide out of the ignition even when the car is on. But still, the keys would have to be in the car, right? She searched and searched but could not find them, eventually drove home to find them sitting on the floor in the garage. Somehow she managed to turn on the car, toss the keys out the open car door without noticing, and drive off. Classic Steph.

Otherwise, we've been taking it pretty easy since our last post. Our schedules have kind of conflicted, so we haven't had many free days at the same time. Plus, the weather hasn't been too good. We did have a little barbeque with the entire riverboarding crew once the training was complete at one of the guides' house. It was a good time - hung out and played some foosball, chatted about the 'dangers' of riverboarding (mainly panicking clients trying to drown you), and dominated everyone in Wii.

At the request of birthday-boy Rob Hollister (Steph's dad), we will actually do a top-10 list of places from our US road trip like I had promised.

10. Los Angeles. Can't forget our final sendoff from the US. Sightseeing in Hollywood and hanging out with Betsy, Steve, Steph's brothers Robbie and Ryan, Uncle Bean and Sanita (sp?), and even my buddy Graham who happened to also be in town. Good stuff.

9.  Bryce Canyon National Park. I'm going to go ahead and say it is NOT the best 3-mile hike in the world, but hiking among the colorful hoodoos was still pretty cool.

8.  Estes Park, Colorado. Cool little town just outside Rocky Mountain NP. The outdoor seating area of the Starbucks right next to a little river was a highlight for Steph. I'm talking lifetime highlight here.

7.  Grand Teton National Park. We didn't spend enough time here, but the view of the Tetons from the shore of Jenny Lake was one of the best we've seen.

6.  Yosemite National Park. Arguably the most beautiful of our national parks. Luckily we weren't too exhausted when we reached the peak of Cloud's Rest to enjoy the amazing view.

5.  Rocky Mountain National Park. The hike to Sky Pond with Taylor was our first real introduction to the amazing backcountry of our national parks.

4.  Vegas. Not so much the casinos and typical Vegas stuff, but spending time with some of Steph's family that we don't see often was great. Seeing Seinfeld live didn't hurt.

3.  Grizzly bear encounter in Yellowstone. Seeing a wild bear less than 50 yards away from you while hiking is something you don't soon forget.

2. Angel's Landing in Zion National Park. Not only was the view from the top stunning, but the 2.5-mile hike to the top along thousand-foot cliffs made it that much more spectacular.

1.  Yellowstone National Park.  Truly a special place. Huge wilderness, volcanic activity, amazing wildlife, beautiful scenery. Our favorite moment was seeing the wolves on our last day. They kind of epitomize what makes Yellowstone so special.

Honorable mentions would be Grand Canyon and Sequoia National Parks. Grand Canyon was cool, but I think we'd have to spend more time there and hike down in it to truly appreciate it. Sequoia seemed great while it lasted, but the Jimmy ruined that experience pretty quickly. Good reasons to go back though.

Working Hard or Hardly Working?

Unfortunately its the former. Before I even got the chance to start my future career as secret shopper extraordinare, I got loaded down with work. First I got a couple days laboring work from my temp agency, then Steph's hotel called and needed help with a conference. Before I knew it, I had 6 straight days of work. I haven't played frisbee golf in over a week. It's horrible. Actually the work wasn't so bad. I had three days at Steph's hotel - two helping remove dirty dishes and other misc work during conferences, and another doing the same during breakfast. I'm not actually taking any orders or anything, which is a relief. Everyone there is pretty nice, and there are people from all over - Scotland, England, Israel, India, and even a couple Kiwis. I also had a half day helping a guy deliver furniture, and two days setting up this huge tent for a cherry blossom festival in nearby Alexandra. All pretty easy. I was actually kind of looking forward to taking Steph to the festival, since the cherry blossoms around here are blooming and really pretty, but I didn't see a single one in Alexandra. Not sure what's going on there. Anyways, Steph also had a busy week, working 5 days at the hotel. We got to work together during one of the conferences, which was a bit strange but altogether pretty good. I got to keep an eye on her when any guys started flirting with her. I swear I heard guys say "so where ya from?" to her at least 4 or 5 times. Nobody asked me once. Maybe it's the southern accent, but I have a feeling there was another reason...

Speaking of jobs, I think I've found my real gig for this summer: riverboarding guide. Riverboarding (aka sledging or river surfing) is where people willing pay money to jump in a raging river (freezing cold, I might add) with only a wetsuit and a boogey-board. It's quite strange but I've heard it was a lot of fun, so when I saw an add in the local paper looking for guides, I jumped on it. Today I started a 4 day course, which will be followed by many more trips on my own (tagging along with the guests), a safety rescue course in mid-November, after which I will be an official NZ riverboarding guide. I'm a bit nervous about people trusting me with their lives, but hopefully the courses will take care of that. We did a total of 5 runs today, and I have to be honest here, it wasn't that great. Did I mention the water is freezing? They said it was about 46 F. We had wetsuits of course, but still. This played a big part in it being not-so-fun, but also its pretty tough (and I am out of shape). The river is quite strong and you have to do a lot of kicking. Cramps and tired legs followed. I'm not looking forward to tomorrow. Regardless, I'm going to have to tough it out because it should be a great job come summer. Here is a link to a clip of what I'll be doing: (FYI the rapid in the clip is called "man-eater".)


Work has kept us pretty busy since our last post, so we haven't really done anything else of note. Everybody should be happy to hear that the recent flooding in Georgia has even made our news here in NZ! We saw a story about all the flooding, then another about the sinkhole that swallowed the car in Gwinnett county (they didn't mention Gwinnett by name though). Too bad they missed the part about how the car was broken into and its stereo stolen while in a sinkhole. Come on, that is funny. Steph also wants me to mention a hot news story around here - apparently some Auckland police entered a house with a search warrant. Since nobody was home, so they decided to take advantage and play the owner's Wii - for EIGHT hours. The owner had a hidden camera and it was all caught on tape. The video of a guy jumping up and down when he bowled a strike on Wii Sports was classic.

Hope everything is good in the states. Stay dry. Wish I could do the same...

Routeburn Track and...coffee

That's right, big news down here. Steph got a coffee maker. Not sure if we've covered this yet, and maybe it should be one of New Zealand's "quirks" (I've realized how lame that part of the blog is), but they don't really do normal coffee here. It's hard to even find a coffee maker in the stores, and when you do they are expensive. Apparently they used to have it, but once espresso machines got popular and came down in price, EVERYTHING switched to espresso. In fact, you can't even get regular coffee (they call it filtered coffee) at most coffee shops, except Starbucks of course. You can get different concoctions like the "long black" (shot of espresso and hot water), "short black" (just espresso), or "flat white" (espresso, hot water, steamed milk). And that all leads us to Steph getting a coffee maker off Trademe, which is the NZ equivalent of eBay. Of course she is very excited and insisted this news be the headliner to today's blog.

Steph is also enjoying her work so far. She works 4 days this week and 5 days next week. Mostly its dinner shifts but she does have a breakfast/lunch shift tomorrow and a conference or wedding every now and then. That has been good to keep her busy and provide a little cash flow for us, while I continue to sit on my butt unemployed. I have a couple of leads for lawn mowing services, and apparently a tortilla factory in town is looking for people. Now don't everybody flock to New Zealand at once, there's only so many of these "dream jobs" to go around and I don't need the competition. On another slightly embarrassing note, in my desperation to find something to do, I have officially signed up to be a secret shopper. While there aren't many opportunites around here, it does look like I'll get a free meal at McDonald's ("maccas") and some free gas ("petrol") from Shell. Things are looking up!

Since Steph had the day off yesterday, and I hadn't yet completed my secret shopper orientation, we decided to check out some of the supposedly great hiking we have nearby. The weather has actually been really good lately, and yesterday was no exception. It was calm and sunny and reasonably warm (when in the sun at least, the shade is a different story). So we decided to try out one of the "Great Walks", which are nine "premiere" hikes (called "tramps" here) all over New Zealand. We have 3 or 4 of these Great Walks within about a 2 hour drive of here, but the closest is the Routeburn Track, at only an hour and 15 minutes away. All of these walks are multi-day trips and have huts set up along the way for you to stay at. Steph wasn't that impressed with the weather and wasn't very keen on spending the night up there, so we decided on just a day trip. We only hiked to the first hut and back, which is, at 6.5 km each way, only 20% of the total hike. Because of this, we weren't really expecting too much, but were really impressed with what we did get to see. It had hardly rained in the last 2 weeks in Queenstown, yet the forest was damp and cold, with moss and ferns growing over everything not covered in gravel (i.e. the path). There were birds chirping and buzzing around, and poisonous traps periodically placed to kill the invasive stouts (ferret-like creatures). How lovely. We got to cross at least 3 or 4 swinging bridges, which were always fun to bounce around on and freak Steph out. A lot of the track was along the Route Burn river, which was astonishlingly clear. The entire time I could not get over how amazing clear the water was. We stopped for a snack at a little beach area next to the river with a huge pile of trees that had been left after a flood. It took me about two minutes before the branch I was balancing on broke and I fell in the frigid water, though luckily it was only my feet. Eventually we made it to the Routeburn Flats, which is a huge flat area (surprising I know) covered in tall grass with the calm river flowing through. This was the location of the first hut, which is similar to something you'd see at a summer camp. There were two big rooms filled with bunk beds and foam mats, a communal room, and a kitchen. Only two other groups were there at the time, and it appeared nobody was spending the night, but I imagine these could be pretty fun and lively in the summer. We had our lunch in the grass next to the river and headed back down to our car.

the start of the Routeburn Track

We were so impressed that we're planning on doing some more of these in the near future. Not only do we have the time (cough, cough), but its low season for the next month and a half and thus its much cheaper and less crowded. In the summer you usually have to make reservations and the cost is normally tripled. For the most famous and popular track, the Milford Track, you usually have to make reservations months in advance. In fact, we are probably going to make reservations here pretty soon to do the hike next April. So over the next month or so we'll try to check out some more Great Walks and maybe even stay in a hut or two...our heat pump is still broken so its probably warmer in those huts than it is here.

Steph on the first hanging bridge

Routeburn Flats

Update from Queenstown: Jackets Win!

In case you haven't heard, our beloved Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets beat Clemson today. It took a good deal of searching, but I was able to find streaming audio of the game from radio station in Savannah. When planning this trip to New Zealand, I was kind of thinking it would be good to take a little break from college football and other US sports that occupied a lot of my time and often led to a lot of grief (hear me Braves?). Once season started, though, I don't think I'll be able to stay away. I've been researching how I can watch the games I want to see, and its not looking good. If we sign up for the cable provider here, we'll get ESPN Australia, which shows some US sports including about one college football game per week. I have a feeling that won't be quite enough, so right now I'm looking into having my parents set up a device called a Slingbox that sends their tv programming to me over the internet. They haven't heard this plan yet. Anyways...that's about enough of that.

Steph has begun her training for her wait staff work, and has 3 or 4 shifts over the next week. Barista training went well, though it looks like she'll mostly just be waitressing. I interviewed for a job at the same hotel this morning, where I got the same reply as everywhere else: nothing until November. Looks like Steph will be the bread winner for a couple months. I may have to look into the professional frisbee golf league as an extra source of income - I got my first hole in one ever the other day. I jumped up in the air and squealed like a little schoolgirl. Steph seemed less impressed, especially when I double-bogeyed the next two holes. Being unemployed and all, I should have plenty of time to perfect my game in the coming weeks.

Other than that, we've basically just been settling into our new place. The heat pump appears to be broken given that it only blows cold air and the coils have frozen over. It took all my mechanical engineering skills to come to that conclusion. Hopefully we can get that fixed soon, since right now we're back to freezing our butts off. I was hoping to get a fishing pole and license to give me something to do, but apparently any new license is only good for the upcoming season beginning October 1st. I'd have to pay $55 just for the rest of this month. I'm way too unemployed for that.

We've moved all our pictures into separate folders, so click the link over to the right to check that out. All the pictures are uploaded, including some of our new place.

I've just looked it up and there is not professional frisbee golf league in New Zealand. Darn.

NZ Quirks

#3 - the letter z is pronounced "zed"

#4 - all the wall outlets have on/off switches

the road to Glenorchy

view from Queenstown Gardens of the Remarkables

our lounge and deck

Big Day Tomorrow

09-09-09 marks a big day for us tomorrow - Steph starts her new job at the Heritage hotel in Queenstown, and we move into our new place - a townhouse pretty similar to the one we had back in Atlanta except for one thing: location. Our new place is fully furnished, about 2 years old, really nice, and right on the shores of Lake Wakatipu. It was a bit more than we wanted to pay, and we're going to have to work at least probably 40 hours a week just to pay all our bills, but being right on the lake is going to be totally worth it. The guy who owns it said there is good
fishing and swimming right below our complex, so we're looking forward to that come summer. Its about 3 or 4 kilometers outside of Queenstown (maybe 2.5 miles), but there is a nice path along the lake that we'll be able to use to walk or bike into town.

As for Steph's job, she'll be working at the restaurant at the Heritage Hotel, which is about 1 minute drive ouside of downtown Queenstown, but on the other side from our place. It's probably an hour walk to get there, but we figure only about 10 or 15 minute bike ride. Tomorrow she has barista training, which she is very excited about. She's not really sure yet what she'll be doing or what kind of hours, but she said that they have a multi-national staff and that it seems like a pretty fun working environment. Her "trial run" at a country club near here didn't go so well - they basically just sent her out there without giving her a chance to look at the menu or anything - so she's happy that she won't have to be doing that.

As for me, well, I've kind of been a bum so far. I've applied for a lot of jobs, but it seems to be a pretty slow process since it really won't pick up around here for a couple months or so. Right now I'm hoping to hear back from a canyoning operation; they had a few jobs available but I'm hoping to get a chance at being a guide. Canyoning, for those not in the know, is basically climbing down waterfalls and swimming in ravines and what not. Kind of a strange "sport" but right up my alley so that would be a great gig. Otherwise I still think I could get a job at a golf course in a month or two when it gets a litte warmer. Until then, I'll be doing any temp work I can. I did 4 hours last weekend helping take down a conference at one of the local hotels. Basically carrying heavy and bulky tables and chairs and stuff up a huge hill to a truck. Exciting, exciting stuff. I've also been playing lots of frisbee golf, which is always good. Lets hope some of the more adventurous stuff comes through.

On another note, we should have good internet access at our new place, so I should be able to upload photos and blog more consitently. Until then, I leave you with another Quirks of New Zealand...

Quirk #2
Maybe it's because they don't actually have bears anywhere near here, but gummy bears are really hard to come by. Instead, they have gummy babies. That's right, little pieces of candy that look like chubby human babies. Actually the good ones are made by Starburst (no regular Starburst chews though) and they have some goo that squirts out the middle. They're called Crazy Babies. Strange.

Job Hunting and other Adventures

We've been in Queenstown for about 6 days now, and the job hunting is going pretty good. It started out pretty rough, with a lot of people telling us that they were either not hiring at all, or not until the summer season ramps up in 2 or 3 months. We persisted, though, and I've managed to score myself a sweet gig as a temp day laborer. This is the life! Tomorrow I have 4 or 5 hours taking down furniture from a conference at one of the hotels. Very glamourous. Steph has actually done much better, despite not applying at the organic grocer yet. Tomorrow she has a trial run waitressing at a big golf course/housing development outside of town. She hasn't done a lick of waitressing in about 5 years, and at this point it seems like they are going to just throw her in there and "see how it goes". We'll have to wait and see. She's pretty nervous about it and spent about an hour googling the different types of New Zealand wines to get ready. Not only that, but she had an interview for a waitressing job at one of the hotels in town. We've been applying at tons of places, and there are jobs out there, so we think we'll be able to get some work for the time being. Then, once summer rolls around, it shouldn't be difficult at all to get a job. There are 5 golf courses within 20 minutes or so, and all that I've talked to have said they'd have work, so I'm probably going to be doing more of this temp stuff until I can start at one of the courses.

As for housing, we've reserved a motel-type room at the Top 10 holiday park, which is basically the same as a KOA in the states, for $210 a week (about $150 US). It's about 10 minutes out of town, but you can't beat that deal. We were pretty excited about it until we realized how cold the room is. The dinky little wall heater they have in there is on a timer, so you have to reset the stupid thing every hour. Obviously this presents a problem when you are asleep, so despite getting up a couple times every night we still freeze our butts off at night. I don't know why I even bother getting up. In order to heat the place up as much as possible before going to bed, we've been resorting to all means possible. The room has a toaster and an electric kettle, which we are taking full advantage of. Every time we hear the "pop" of the toaster one of us gets up and turns it back on. I repeatedly fill up the kettle and once the water is boiling, pour it into a big dishwashing bucket to steam up the room. I hope you're visualizing a pretty sad little scenerio going on, because that's what it is. But sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Once we secure jobs we're going to look for an apartment or house to rent. Top criteria = warmth.

We've also had a chance to do a bit of exploring between job searches. We drove up to Glenorchy, which is about 45 minutes away along the lake. The drive was probably one of the most beautiful we have ever done. We did a little walk around the town, but hopefully when we get some time we'll go back and do some serious hiking. Many of the "Great Walks" (best hike in the country) start near here. Today I got my first swim in Lake Wakatipu - my first two swims, actually. The park in town has a frisbee golf course, so I bought a disc and off we went. By the 5th hole I had already been in the lake twice, up to my waist in freezing cold water. My underwear was soaked so once I put my jeans back on it looked like I had wet my pants. Still, went on to shoot a 4-over par, not bad for my first time plus a couple lake shots.

The computer is about to die so I've got to upload. Some new pics are up. Be back soon.

Arrived in Queenstown!

The morning of our last post, we did a short hike up to the top of a hill overlooking Lake Tekapo, which is also home to an observatory (remember that thing I said about clearest skies in the southern hemisphere?). The views from the observatory were amazing. The sun was out so the turquoise color of the lake really came out, and you could see the snow-capped mountains that surrounded the area. They also had some incredible pictures of the night sky that were taken using their telescopes. After enjoying the views for a while, we headed back down and made a stop at the Church of the Good Sheperd before leaving town. This is a beautiful little early 1900s church was built in memory of the pioneers of the area. It is situated right next to a lake and has an incredible view of the lake and mountains from the pews. Might be difficult to pay attention during a sermon with a view like that.

After leaving Tekapo, we had about 3 hours drive to the lake-side town of Wanaka. It's getting near the end of the ski season here, in fact they are just wrapping up the New Zealand winter games. They don't seem to have "ski villages" located at the base of the mountain like in the US, but towns like Wanaka and Queenstown are about a 20-45 minute drive from a couple mountains each. Either way, the town was packed with skiers and snowboarders relaxing and shopping after a day on the slopes. One of the more popular attractions in Wanaka is called "A Puzzling World", which has a big maze, all kinds of puzzles you can do, and a variety of illusions. It turned out to be really cool, especially this tilted room with illusions like a pool ball that seemed to roll uphill. Made you pretty dizzy though. It didn't help a headache that I had going, and by the end of the day I was feeling pretty sick, again. On account of that, we didn't really do much else besides sit in our room at the hostel and watch movies. By the next morning, though, I was feeling much better and ready to finally make it to Queenstown.

We were greeted in Queenstown with drizzling on and off rain, but that didn't really dampen our spirits. Despite its popularity, the size of the town really surprised us. The towns of Fernhill and Frankton strattle Queenstown on either side, and it really seems like on long city. Queenstown city center is right on the edge of Lake Wakatipu (notice a theme here with the lakes?) with The Remarkables mountain range running along the other side of the lake. I have to say that it really is prettier than I expected it to be. Most of the surrounding area that we had previously come through had mostly low-lying vegitation and few trees, but Queenstown has lots of trees and a large forest reserve on the hill above town. All the trees probably mean lots of rain, but I'll take it. We found a nice hotel room for cheaper than any private room in a hostel (didn't want to stay in a dorm room when I'm not feeling well), and we have a great view of the lake and mountains. During our 3 nights stay here its going to be almost entirely business. We need to find a house or apartment to rent and hopefully get some leads on jobs. There is an organic grocery store right in town, so maybe Steph's dream job of "cashier at an organic grocery store" will actually come true. Anyways, internet is expensive and we have some research to do. I'm going to finish with a new segment of the blog - Quirks of New Zealand. I've mentioned how Rice Krispies are called Rice Bubbles, but there are tons of other strange and quirky things that we've seen here, so I'll include one at the end of every blog.

Quirks of New Zealand #1

They are really into public service announcements here. There's "don't drink and drive", of course, but also "don't drink and fry"(in case you forget your cooking and burn your house down), "don't drive while sleepy", and a really creepy TV campaign about how intersections are dangerous. Good to know I guess.

Akaroa and Lake Tekapo

Our last full day in Christchurch we didn't have anything we had to do, and nothing planned, so we decided to take a day trip out to the town of Akaroa, 1.25 hours southeast. We didn't know much about Akaroa, except that it is French-themed and that you can see dolphins, seals, and penguins there. Any chance of seeing penguins is good enough for me, so off we went. On the way we got our first glimpses of one of the things New Zealand is famous for - sheep. Lots and lots of sheep. Since it is just about the start of spring here, there were lots of cute little lambs jumping around and playing or sticking to their mother's side. "Cute as can be" as Steph would say. We had to pull over a few times to try to get pictures and videos of the tiny little sheep on wobbly legs. any farmers that saw us must find it really odd that tourist are so fascinated by the sheep.

The town of Akaroa is situated on a harbor inside a big peninsula (the Bank's peninsula, to be exact). As you drive there, you climb up a hill and all of a sudden the entire harbor and town is sprawled out before you. It was really cool and notably different than anything we'd seen before. We took the "scenic route" into town and got plenty of great views of the sparkling blue waters and large rolling hills surrounding them. The french theme to the town was immediately evident as soon as we rolled in by the 'le Mini Golf" sign on the side of the road. Besides that, a lot of the street and business names were french, but not much else really came across as very french. Still, the town was really nice with little shops and cafes along the waterfront. The big draw here is the wildlife - you can swim with the smallest and rarest dolphin in the world, the hector dolphin. They also have harbour seals and a colony of little blue penguins. The cool and very windy weather put any swimming out of the question, and the penguin cruises all left too late in the day for us, so we just walked around and checked out some of the shops before heading back to Christchurch. We promised ourselves to make a trip back when it was warmer, so swimming with the dolphins and seeing penguins will have to wait for now.

Yesterday we checked out of our hostel in Christchurch and set off towards the mountains. You can see the snow capped peaks from certain spots in Christchurch, so we were really happy to get a closer look. The drive was through mostly farmlands (a lot more sheep) and the occasional view points of the mountains were beautiful. The only issue we had was the extreme wind. I don't think I've ever experienced wind quite like this. It was blowing our little station wagon all over the place - I can't imagine what the people in campervans and buses were dealing with. At one point (just past the town of Windwhistle) it lifted a cloud of rocks and dust over the road, and we now have about 4 or 5 little nicks in our windshield. Still, we made it into Lake Tekapo safely and were blown away by the turquoise color of the lake. It is one of those glacial-fed lakes where the glacier grinds up the surrounding rock into a powder, which becomes suspended in the lake and creates the turquoise color. Similar to the lakes up in Canada that you often see pics of. The other thing Lake Tekapo is known for is the night sky - it supposedly has the clearest night sky in the southern hemisphere. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see this since it started raining as soon as it got dark. One more excuse to come back I guess.

This morning we are going to take a little hike up to a nearby peak with good views of the lake. We have another 4 or 5 hours of driving ahead of us, as we have a hostel booked in the town of Wanaka for tonight. Wanaka is only an hour or two from Queenstown, so we are getting close! We are on the hostel's computer for now, so we don't have time to upload photos (no such thing as "free Internet" in New Zealand). Maybe we'll suck it up and buy a big chunk tonight at our hostel.

Farewell!

Christchurch, New Zealand

Flying domestically in New Zealand is a breeze - and I mean that both literally and figuratively. Now take this however you want, but we didn't have to show our ID's ONCE when flying from Auckland to Christchurch yesterday. If we hadn't had a couple extra bags to check, we might not have had to talk to another human. You check in at a little kiosk, weigh your bags yourself, put the tags on yourself, and load them onto the converyor belt. When you go through security, you don't have to take off your shoes, hat, or belt. They don't even make you take your computer out of your bag. Everything was going nice and smoothly...that is, until our approach to Christchurch. Just as we were chatting with the Kiwi sitting next to us about the beautiful scenery out of our window, the plane suddently dropped and started bouncing around pretty violently. "Oh yes," he said, "there's the winds." Apparently this was a common thing, but that didn't do much to comfort Steph. She spent the rest of the flight in the fetal position and had to sit in the terminal for a good 15-20 minutes to recover afterwards. After she started feeling better, it was my turn to hyperventilate - we were about to rent a car and thus drive on the left for my first time ever. Yikes. It seems very daunting. It had taken us all of our stay in Auckland to even somewhat get the hang of looking the right way when crossing the street. How was I going to do this? Despite how intimidating it seemed, it truly is a lot easier than it looks. We opted for the maximum insurance, which took a little of the pressure off. We cruised through the country just north of Christchurch in our little Nissan Sunny until I got the hang of it. Steph still has to remind me"stay to the left" every now and then, but I think I got the hang of it...

And I better, because we bought a car last night. There is a car auction place here in town that we'd heard was a good place to buy a car, so we went last night "just to check it out." That turned into "just test driving" a few, which eventually turned into buying a 1996 Subaru Legacy for $2400 (about $1500 USD). Turns out, car auctions are a lot of fun - and then you actually buy one and the panic sets in. What the heck were we doing? We don't know, but we think we got a good deal and the car drove pretty good, so we're just going to cross our fingers and hope for the best. We pick her up in about an hour. Until then, Steph has to learn to drive on the left - and neither of us is all to excited about it. Luckily it's not a big city and there's plenty of country roads nearby with light traffic. Wish us luck...

In other news, we now have cell phones. We went for the prepaid phones on the Telecom network - which is basically the AT&T of New Zealand. In fact, we witnessed our first strike while in Auckland - Telecom workers complaining about low pay or something. This was actually right before we were going to go in to get our phones, and for a while Steph refused because "what if the strikers see us in there?" After they had been gone for a while we went and got our phones. My number is 027 818 0970 and Steph's is 027 818 0971. We get incoming calls for free, so if you have Skype or some other way to call us that doesn't cost you much, feel free to give us a call. Just check the time difference - we are 16 hours ahead of eastern time. Also, we have a mailing address:

Adam Brown

#5278

Nomads Fat Camel Travel Desk

38 Fort Street

Auckland City

New Zealand

Basically they collect our mail and forward it to wherever we are. Care packages with candy or Chick-fil-a sandwiches are welcome. Anyways, we have gotta go pick up our new car!

Weeping willow tree in Christchurch park

Exploring Auckland

We've spent the past couple days exploring Auckland and getting used to life in New Zealand. At first, Auckland seemed new and exciting. Since we have yet to really explore much more than the city center (or centre, as they'd spell it here), it really has turned into your average big city. There are lots of people, shops, Starbucks, the usual. In fact, you really wouldn't know you're in a different country with all the American influences around (the driving on the left thing might tip you off though). There is American television, news, movies, music, food and drink. With regards to the food, everything is a bit different than back home. Rice Krispies are Rice Bubbles, and even though Froot Loops are still Froot Loops, they are a little bigger than normal and taste just a little different. Believe it or not, but Steph has yet to have Starbucks yet, so we'll see if that's any different soon. (We've been using a different coffee shop that has free internet - don't think she's ditched coffee altogether). Despite the abundance of produce that comes from New Zealand, the orange juice is terrible. I couldn't find any without pulp either - blast. Not only that, but the food is expensive here. Powerade bottles - maybe a little more than 20 oz (haven't quite figured out the mL conversion yet) - are like $4.50 (~$3 US). Skittles are $2 ($1.30 US) at the internet cafe I'm at. (Don't you like how my "food" examples are Powerade and Skittles? They're just examples, people). There wasn't a whole lot of choice either, at least not at the grocery store we went to. There was only about a quarter of an aisle of cereal choices, compared to a solid three-quarters back home. For shame. Maybe when we get out in more rural areas or visit different grocery stores it'll be different. We will see.

Back to Auckland. Like I said before, we have successfully opened our bank account here, so we've mostly converted to New Zealand dollars. I say mostly because we only have an debit card, which you can't run as credit over here, so we can't use it online. For now all our online bookings (plane tickets, hotel rooms, etc.) will have to be in good ol' US dollars, which seem to be tanking at the moment, but that's for a whole other blog. Currently we are debating what kind of cell phone plan to get. Let me tell you, this is no easy decision. Evaluating cell phone plans here is like going back 10 years in the States. I guess they don't talk on the phone much, because most plans only include like 30-50 minutes per month. Of course, they are only about $30 ($20 US) per month. We have no idea how much we'll be using our phones, so we may go the prepaid route. It's not really that big of a deal, but we're having a tough time making the decision. Gonna put if off for a few days. Oh, and we have to buy our phones too. Adds to the dilemma.

Today we switched to tourist mode and explored the city a bit. This morning we checked out a couple weekly markets they have around the city - bought some fruit (NZ Jazz apples are my new favorite - they have them at Whole Foods in the US), crepes from the "French-style" market, and sampled some of the often strange concoctions people had cooked up. It seems there are a lot of different ethnicities here in the city - there are a LOT of asians, plus a lot of Kebab stands, and seemingly a lot of Turkish food. It's a melting pot, if you will. Afterwards we went to the Auckland Domain, which is a huge park in the middle of city which also is the site of the Auckland Museum. We wanted to visit the museum to learn more about New Zealand and its past - especially the native Maori people. If you're playing along at home, I believe it's pronounced "Maudree" - "mau" rhymes with "now". Don't hold me to that. Anyways, we saw some really cool artifacts from the Maori and other Polynesian peoples as well as learned about the natural and cultural history of New Zealand. It was really cool, and since a couple hours in any museum is getting a bit much, at least we were smack in the middle of a big park. We took a little break afterwards and sat on a big green hill (eating our NZ Jazz apples) and watched a cricket game. For the life of me I can't figure out that game. It's a strange one. Speaking of games that I don't understand, there is a HUGE rugby game tonight - between the New Zealand All Blacks and the Australian Wallabies. You can imagine this is a big deal around here, and it's all you hear about on the news. Steph and I are hoping to catch the game at one of the many pubs around here, where hopefully someone can explain to us what is going on. Anyways...GO ALL BLACKS!

The plan from here is to spend two more days in Auckland before flying down to Christchurch in the South Island. The idea there is that it will be a good place to buy a cheap car and hopefully a lot easier place to learn to drive it. There are too many strange turning lanes and rules around here to add to the confusion of driving on the left side. Then we'll do a mini-tour of the South Island before heading to Queenstown, where we plan to settle down and get jobs. In the meantime, we'll explore Auckland a bit more. It's a pretty big city with lots of options for day trips, so we'll do a bit of research and find something fun to do, at least before we go off and get lame part-time jobs in some beautiful mountainside resort town...it's horrible I know. We'll get by.

Sky Tower at dusk from our balcony

Maori statues

Cricket game in Auckland Domain