A Peak, Broken Glass, and Two Big Jumps

It's been a pretty eventful week and a half. I finally got the courage to leave the comfort of the city and hit the road for the country by myself. It was definitely a strange feeling. Both good and hard at the same time. Great to be seeing what New Zealand is best known for - it's beautiful mountains and scenery. Hard because it really isn't easy traveling alone, although it does begin to get more comfortable as time passes. So after leaving Christchurch I decided on taking a drive up to Arthur's Pass which is one of a few ways to get back and forth from East Coast to West Coast of the Island. It's a great drive through the country and once in the Pass it is all National Park land and has spectacular mountain views. I arrived around dinner time and the only plan I had was to spend the night in Ivan. I had to drive around a bit to find a place I could park the van but in decent time I had a place to set up camp. In the early evening hours of night is sand fly time and it was a bit brutal outside with them eating me alive. So shortly after parking I found myself in the van with the sun going down fast. It turned out to be a really early night but I was rewarded with a great night of sleep in the van. It is very comfortable and the drapes on the windows shut out the light perfectly. It did feel a little weird though since I was going to sleep so early and there wasn't anyone else around.
Next morning I decided to go up to the top of Avalanche Peak which would be about a six hour hike. The peak towers over the town of Arthur's pass over 1,000 meters high. The track starts straight up and never stops going up till the peak is reached. It was a pretty hard climb and there was a lot of stopping on the trail to catch my breath. The trail itself also calls for quite a bit of scrambling at times as there is quite a bit of boulders to climb up. I got lucky with the weather once again and it could not have been a better day to do the climb. It was warm, almost hot, with no wind, and not hardly a cloud in the sky. Throughout the climb the view just kept getting better and better. Here are a couple pictures of the climb and the view at the top:

It was such a beautiful day I spent almost an hour at the top just enjoying the view. It was definitely an accomplishment considering my fear of the heights. At certain times during the hike I kept thinking how crazy I am and how easily I could fall. I made it an while it was a hard day it was definitely worth it.
After another early night in the van and a little bit of loneliness setting in I decided to get out of the pass and was planning on it down to Dunedin, the college town of the south island, and spend a few days there. On the way out of the area I did stop at a place called the Cave Stream and did a quick hour hike through what the name implies. It was good running stream through a gorgeous cave. Thanks to Deb and Matt for recommending it! The trip to Dunedin is a two day affair and I arrived in small town to spend the night while moving on the next morning. I had planned on also meeting up with a kiwi student who I'd met on the ice. However, during this time I realized it was going to be Easter weekend and quickly changed my plans on the fear that nothing was going to be open in Dunedin. Most people got a 5 day weekend for the holiday and there was a good chance my friend wasn't going to be around to visit. Since I knew Queenstown would be operating pretty much as normal I figured it was the place to be for Easter.

I arrived on Friday, spent a couple nice quiet nights at backpacker, met and talked with some nice travelers, and went on a nice run along the lakehere. Chatting with other people was definitely something I was missing after leaving the family and so it was a good feeling to be around people again. I think because of how social the ice can be and how social it was traveling for a few weeks in New Zealand, those first days on my own were extremely hard on me. Looking back it was only two days but it certainly seemed a lot longer when experiencing those two days. I think now I'm craving being on my own again. Weird how that has all worked out. At first I was having the hardest time learning how to rough it and learn the art of the hippie. Now it seems like it would be a nice way to spend at least the next week.

On Easter Sunday I decided I needed to get out of town and do a hike and there was a nice short one about 10 minutes out of town. I got in my van and was ready to go driving along the road west of town when a car passed my slow little van. It's pretty normal for Ivan to get passed on the hills. The car had just passed and everything was fine one second and then boom! All of a sudden the windshield was blasted by a rock and it was instantly shattered. Not just a crack or two. It looked as if frost had instantly appeared on the windshield as there were thousands of cracks at once. Scared out of my mind I got the van pulled over on the side of the rode and could hear the cracks getting worse. Soon the glass started caving into the car and I had no clue what to do. I was absolutely shocked that this was happening to me. I was going back and forth from shaking my head to putting my head in my hands trying to figure out what I was going to do. I started to leave the van to walk back to town but I had most of my stuff in the van and couldn't just leave it. I decided that I would try and flag down a car and get a ride back to town with all my stuff and leave the van. Thank god a nice kiwi man stopped on my first wave down and was going to give me a ride to town. As I was frantically pulling stuff out of the van the guy came over and suggested we knock out the window so I could drive it back to town. After putting a sheet down over the dash and steering wheel, which was already covered in glass from the part of the window already caved in we knocked the rest out and I was good for getting back to town. I still remember the looks I got going through the center of Queenstown with the window knocked out and with glass still everywhere inside the cab. I really couldn't help but smile at the luck of it and the situation. At least it happened close to a town. The timing was a little unfortunate because of the holiday and nothing was going to be open until Tuesday (yesterday here). I got the window fixed but because it wasn't an easy windshield to find it was a cost of 450 kiwi. It hurts to pay it but it sure could have been worse for me.
In the mean time, right before getting the windshield crashed I signed up to do two of the most adventurous things I've ever done in my life. I signed up for skydiving and for the 4th largest bungy jump in the world. Skydiving was set for Easter Monday and the bungy jump for Tuesday. It might have been a good thing the window got messed up shortly after booking it because it definitely distracted me from thinking about what I was going to do. Again, me and heights are not a good match and I've always wanted to conquer my fear of it. I've wanted to do skydiving for a long time but wanted to do it in a place that would be the most enjoyable. Over a corn field in Ohio just didn't have the same draw as the mountains and lakes in New Zealand. This was definitely on my list of things to do here since coming back. I've done a bungy jump before and at the time it was a major step in getting over my fear of heights. It was in Queenstown in 2005 with both Matt and Deb looking on. Unbelievable experience that I wanted to relive again and since the Nevus bungy is the biggest around it had to be done.
Monday was the skydive and it was absolutely one of the best experiences of my life. The staff were all extremely friendly and the people in my group were more nervous than me and so I was set at ease throughout the whole process. It was a quick process to get into the equipment for the tandem jump of 12,ooo feet. Since I was jumping with a professional it definitely helped. The fear level was high though as soon as we boarded the aircraft and started climbing. At 3,000 feet I was already thinking we were high enough. After the short 15 minute flight we got to altitude and were ready to go. Glad that there was a guy I was strapped to who did all the work he pushed us off from the plain and dropped. After a few seconds of spinning and tumbling we stabilized and instead of a feeling of falling it was like a feeling of flying. The mountains in the background were spectacular and the feeling was indescribable. It was fantastic. 45 seconds of free falling and the shoot opened up and allowed for a quick trip to the ground. I survived! And as soon as I got on the ground I wanted another jump. It was such a rush! I was definitely on a high for the rest of the day, and maybe that is why I was able to run 8 miles that evening with little problem. I will definitely be doing skydiving again. It's cheaper in the states so it will probably be there. I am glad I waited though to do it here. Just an amazing experience. I've got the DVD and pictures to remember it all.
As life in Queenstown is all about outdoor adventure, next up on the list was the bungy jump. I new that the bungy would be a harder thing to do since it was all up to me to take the jump. I didn't have the benefit of a skydiver pushing me off the plane and taking care of pulling the ripcord. I didn't sleep extremely well the night before because the dorm mates weren't the quietest and I was definitely feeling the nerves. On the way out of town to the bungy site I met some great people from the UK and our conversation distracted me from the jump to come. As soon as we started climbing the side of the mountain in the bus though thing got a lot more scary. Once at the site and looking out at the small structure suspended on cables over the gorge the fear level jumped again. After another quick briefing and getting the gear on it was on to the cable car and over to the jump site. The maximum level of fear was generated after the guy leading us over mentioned that the jump was 440 feet and 44 stores. That's when it all became serious. 134 meters is what the sign up sheet said and that really didn't register the magnitude of 440 feet in my mind. I really couldn't believe I was attempting this. It was outrageous and being in the structure I didn't want to look at anything but the wall. There was a clear panel on the bottom that allowed for you to view the bottom of the gorge and the other jumpers plummeting downward. I couldn't even walk over the clear platform without fear. After a number of jumpers were taking the dive off the platform it was finally my turn to go. I was able to psych myself up and get out there and do it. I got hooked up to the cord and soon found myself tip toeing to the ledge and was told to put my toes over the ledge. I got that far pretty easily and at that point I wasn't even really thinking about the fear. All that I thought about was following orders and it hadn't been for the women who threw my bungy cord over the edge and yelled go-go-go I might have stood there all day long. I jumped and took the dive and with an almost nice second free fall it was brilliant. At first I was in shock that I was falling. As the ground was approaching fast, and it was real fast, I definitely let out a scream half way through the fall. And then the greatest feeling in the world was the cord catching and being thrown back up into the air. I got pulled back up to the structure and what a change of feeling. From being scared to hell of looking around and down to enjoying everything around me and being able to look down without no fear. I don't know if it cured my fear of heights completely but it definitely did something to diminish it.
Here is a picture from the skydive and two from the bungy:



Ivan came back fixed today and I think it is about time I leave Queenstown. It has been fun and I've met a lot of fun people at the backpackers but it is about time I get on a hike somewhere. I've been itching to go and so if everything works out I may be leaving tomorrow. One of the things I was hoping to accomplish by staying in a backpackers was to meet some people and possible travel with them. While there have been a lot of nice people I've met in Queenstown, there hasn't been anyone who I think I could travel with. Hopefully, I'll meet someone on the great walk.

Loving New Zealand

I've got quite a lot to write about since my last post and little time to do it. I'm back in Christchurch for the time being but am about to leave again to get out of the city and do some van camping. Hopefully I'll get everything that has happened these last few weeks in one shot. If not I have a new strategy on getting my thoughts down quicker as they happen. I may continue to post at week or two long intervals but I plan on having a bit of a journal on the laptop or on paper during my traveling.

I'll try and start where my last post ended. I was in Christchurch waiting for some friends to arrive before heading out on a kayak trip. They got in after a three day delay for them and we hung out for a few more days in Christchurch. I think I ultimately spent six days in the city and that was enough since it is a place where money goes quickly. I got really lucky on the day we decided to leave and got this sweet little van. I hadn't had much luck at all in finding the van I would be using to travel with. Nothing I was finding at the car market or in some of the flyers around town were getting me really excited. I found the van I bought from a search on line. It was going to be tight timing for me though since the earliest I could look at it was the morning I was supposed to leave to go North. I was either going to buy this van or have to rent a car to take my friends up with me. I had a really good feeling about this van from the beginning and when it pulled up that morning with the previous owners it turned out to be perfect. The former owners were a young German couple who had traveled for about six weeks in the North and South Island. They were very helpful with the van and all the required paper work was there for me to look at. The van itself is a cool little red Nissan Vennette. The year is a little old ('84) but the mileage on it was low and the engine ran smooth on the test drive. I was sold on it from the start and bought it for a decent price of $2700 NZ. I probably could have talked the cost down a little more since he agreed to the price pretty quickly but I am certain if I need to resell it all get within $500 of the price and it will be well worth to spend over two months in the van. The van is all set up for a backpacker with a bed in back and curtains for the windows. With a little help from my friends the van is named little ivan or ivan terra van. Ivan the Terra bus is the big 56 passenger bus we drove on the ice.

Since I now had my transportation taken care I headed out of town for a long 7 hour drive up to a town called Motueka and then on to the kayak trip the next day. With me for the trip was Jami and Audrey, also shuttle drivers, and two firefighter friends, Megan and Sean. We made a quick stop at the Antarctic office by the Airport to ship some things home and we were off. But not without a bit of trouble just outside of town. I was driving along for no more than a half hour out from the airport and people in the van are giving me compliments on how well I'm driving on the left side of the road and dealing with the turn abouts. Literally a minute later I look in the rearview mirror and I see flashing lights of a police car. That's right, it took me less than an hour of driving in New Zealand to get my first speeding ticket. Turns out I was still within the city limits of a little town and was going 62 in a 50. That's km/hr which means I was really only going 7 mph over the speed limit. I was hoping for a warning since I kindly explained I only bought the car an hour ago but to no avail.

The rest of the drive was a lot of fun with everyone really excited to be out of the city and into the countryside. We drove about half the length of the South Island to get up close to Abel Tasman National Park and it's amazing how quickly the landscape here changes. One hour your at sea level and the next your up in the mountain passes. It is such a beautiful country. I would definitely live here for the rest of my life if my family and friends weren't all back in the states.

After spending a night in Motueka we got up early and got some supplies for the kayak trip and made our way to the kayak rental place. At first I thought we didn't have a chance of fitting all the food we bought into the kayaks for a four night camping trip. We had tons of crap. Little did I know though is that the sea kayaks are basically like taking your car to a campground. It was car camping along the sea for the next 5 days and four nights. In all there were 10 of us on the trip and because of the flight delays we had to meet up with the rest of our group that had already started kayaking the day before. We went through a morning of training got into the water at about midday. At first it seemed like it was going to be a long day for me and Jami in out two person kayak since we couldn't stop going in circles in the damn thing. Turns out the reason why was because of the black flags on bamboo sticks Jami grabbed from the ice that we were to use as pirate flags on the boat. They were making my rudder get stuck and cause us to keep turning right. Once that was figured out I was ready to get on our way and get to out campsite for the night. Being lunchtime the rest of the group was hungry and there was this little cafe right next to the boat launch. So we are not even in the water for 30 minutes before we get out and have some food and beer. I can only imagine what the instructor thought of our group. She had to be worried about us.

Once we were refreshed we started kayaking. Unfortunately the weather wasn't quite with us and we were kayaking into a really strong wind. A trip to the campsite that usually will take a couple hours of strong kayaking took us a total of four to do. It was extremely exhausting and exceptionally beautiful at the same time. There are cliffs and small islands all around and these great sand beaches intermixed with the cliffs. When we got to the campsite in the early evening we were definitely happy to be on land again. We met up with the rest of our group and got camp set up for a splendid night underneath the starts. This was really the first night a bunch of us realized how amazing the night sky in New Zealand is outside of the cities. Just a spectacular amount of stars to be seen at night.

Over the next few days we camped, kayaked, played a bit of football, hiked, and tossed the frisbee around on the beach. It really was like living in a postcard. Each day of kayaking was hard since the weather was never with us. We were always kayaking into the wind. We also lost a day to a torrential downpour that started early one morning and didn't break until 8 in the evening. It was an awesome trip and the people I was with made it that much better. I didn't know half the group all that well but got to know them fast and I miss each and every one of the people I kayaked with.

Once done with the kayak trip I headed back the same route and made it once again to Christchurch for a night and to meet up with my parents who had just arrived the day before. It was great to see them and my sis and bro in law. We headed out to Wanaka, which is a mountain town with great skiing areas in the winter and a pretty central location in New Zealand. Mom and Dad put up some money to get us all a nice little house to stay at for four days and it was just the perfect little house for all of us. We took a couple trips outside of Wanaka while we there and another day when the weather forecast wasn't great just spent a lazy day around town. One of those day trips was a hike up the Rob Roy Glacier. We had to drive about 70 km out of town to Mt Aspiring National Park and I'm doing the driving and thinking it would be a short little hour or so drive. Not so much. Turns out 30 KM out of town the road turns to a dirt road and little ivan did not like this road much at all. The best we could do was about 20 km/hr or the thing was going to vibrate apart. So after a bit of a drive we got to the hike. The hike climbs a little and it was straight off going to be a challenge for my mom who hasn't done much hiking in the past. We hiked through the forest and up a good deal before arriving at the base of the mountain with the glacier towering overhead. As it is still fall hear the melt from it created a bunch of beautiful waterfalls cascading down the mountain. Again, just another beautiful place to be in New Zealand.

After Wanaka we headed back in the direction of Christchurch to lead up to hiking the Banks Peninsula. The Peninsula is an area that was once an island before being claimed by the mainland some thousands of years ago. The Peninsula is the result of a large volcano that shaped the area with a bunch of beautiful bays, mountains, and cliffs all around graze land. The land is all privately owned and the owners set up the trails and the huts to stay at each night. Only 12 people can hike in one direction at any given time. We had a total of 11 for out trip.5 of which was our group was 5. Randomly there was a couple from the ice who were on the hike, 2 people from Nepal, and a couple in they're 70's from New Zealand. All of them were really nice people. We also really lucked out with the weather for the whole 5 days. Virtually no rain the whole time and a mix of cloudy and sunny days. The first day of the hike isn't much of a day at all. We were picked up in the evening and driven to the start of the hike for a nights stay at one of the huts. At this particular place you have the option in staying in the house or out in these small two person stargazer huts. I chose the stargazer huts. They are super small and you have to crawl in them but they have a clear glass or plastic panel to them that allows you to look up at the stars while your in bed. It was a great experience. I only wish I could have stayed awake longer to stare some more at the starts. The first day of hiking on the banks is the toughest of the actual 4 days of walking. It climbs right from the start and doesn't stop until you reach the 670 m summit. This was going to be even harder for Mom since the trail is pretty steep from the start and doesn't let up. There is nothing gradual about the climb. We took our time and made it up to the peak as a group. Up at the top there is a great view of the surrounding area, the ocean, and the different bays. After a decent back to sea level we made it to the second night hut. Nothing special here but a nice place to stay at. In the morning we did a bit of sea kayaking and got to see a bunch of seals hanging around the bay we were in. We were in double kayaks and I got to kayak mom around a bit. She did much better than I thought she would even though she didn't seem to want to paddle much at all. The day of hiking to the third night was an easy one and Matt and I broke off from the rest of the group in order to try and secure us a good place to stay. The third night is at what they describe as hobbitville and there are a bunch of little cabins that house different numbers of people and we wanted to make sure we got the good ones. We made it to the little campground in good time and it was definitely the best camp spot of all the nights. There is a tree shower, and awesome swing, an outside bathtub heated with a wood fire. We got lucky and got the main cabin because the size of our group. The third day of hiking was the easiest yet and the hut at the end of the day was nice, but nothing like the night before. On the last day Matt and I once again took off from Mom, Dad, and Debbie in order to allow me to get out at a decent time. We ate up the trail and made 11 km steep hike and decent in 2 1/2 hours. Turns out there wasn't much of a hurry for me to get out and once again said goodbye to the parents and made my way out of town.

In general we ate great each night thanks to Deb and Matt's planning of the food and Matt's cooking. At night we would play cards and chat with the other members of our group. It was nice for my dad to have a group of people he could talk with. He was such a social butterfly the entire time. Once you get him talking it is impossible to get him to stop. He made good friends with the older Kiwi couple and I'm glad that both Mom and Dad had a great experience on the trip. It was great to see them and hang out with them for a little while. I think they had a wonderful time in New Zealand and I think now they know why I love this country so much.

So now I'm on my own. It's both exciting and a little bit sad at the same time. It has been a long time without someone I know well around to talk and hang out with. I know I'll get out and meet a bunch of new people and that is the exciting part. I'm scheduled to stay in New Zealand until May 16 now and will do as much hiking around in these next few months as I can fit in. I still can't believe how lucky and fortunate I am to be doing this. Life right now just can't seem to be better than this.

I have to figure out a better way to post photos or have a link to them but here are just a few from the last few weeks.