blog.olya

well then! i found access from laptop for $3 per hour, unfortunately not only i am exhausted, but they will also close early (and i need a load of sleep as yesterday we woke up at 4:45 to take a hike). i doubt there will be more updates before i return to sydney.

i’m missing blogs for the past 4 days (as that’s abt the amount i’m behind), but i have long stories for all the dates behind that. almost no photographs have been processed, so take what you can :)

entries (picking up from where we last left off)

05 - rotorua - the fumes are chocking me
06 - rotorua to national park with stop at thermal wonderland
07 - whole day at national park
08 - national park to wellington
09 - trip to the south island
(coming soonish)
10 - kaikoura to geraldine
11 - the day hike that killed us
12 - sunrise over mountains
13 - penguins and internet (thusly, today)

photos

http://www.olya.org/newzealand/05/
http://www.olya.org/newzealand/06/
http://www.olya.org/newzealand/07/ (this has the most - basically a mishmash of photographs from the past few days)
edited photos from d70 (i started to shoot raw!)

the interislander

after an early waking up in our lovely hostel, and a superbly pleasant conversation with our hosts (and lots of petting of their HUGE bernese mountain dog, that is only bred in bern! what a coincidence), and giving them the thermometer with the penny, we departed towards our ferry.

the ferry is completely unlike any ferry i’ve seen before. for one, when we say ferry in toronto we mean this kinda tiny boat that houses maybe 300 people, the ferry that we took here is called the interislander, takes 3 hours to move between the islands, and has seating for at least 700 people + however many cars (we didn’t go into the car parking area). it is huge - the biggest boat i’ve ever been on - has like 7 levels, and tonnes of things - cafes, movie theatre, a few outside decks, workstations (with plugs for internet and electricity - unfortunately they were still in process of having broadband internet (o_O no idea how) and didn’t have any dial up either), shops and a lot of comfortably wide walkways. very spaced out ship in terms of seats and walkways - i’m sure it could actually handle more people than it takes. which is itself an interesting point as it seemed to be almost entirely empty. at no single point it felt like there were too many people around you.

we quickly got our south island car - a dark red mitsubishi lancer, in a far worse shape than the car we’ve had on the north island. so bad that the next day we’re stopping by christchurch (biggest city on the south island and thankfully on our way to where we need to go - also coincidentally the city out of which we’re flying out) avis to see if we can exchange it. we quickly departed towards kaikoura - the city in which oleg has booked a hostel for us.

cafe in the middle of nothing

on the long and picturesque drive along the coast two very pleasantly surprising stops awaited us. the first was a cafe, called “the store”, that was located precisely in the middle of nowhere. imagine a big, old, stylish looking barn - wooden walls, tall ceilings, and a lot of wine cellars around the place. wooden chairs and little round tables, with candles and salt/pepper shakers litter the left side of the room, and in front a huge open arch that gives you a few of perfectly turquoise ocean, crashing waves on black sharp rocks, and lush greenery in the courtyard.

the place is so particularly awesome because it has absolutely nothing for kilometres either way, except for the beach with polished rocks on it, and sharp cliffs cutting the turquoise water into white foam.

another reason why i loved it is cause they gave the hungry me a mindblowingly awesome carrot cake. it was the best carrot cake i’ve ever eaten in my life. moist, soft, with awesome sweet glaze and here’s the genius part - they cover the top entirely with raw sunflower and pumpkin seeds, and offer yogurt on the side. yum. i gotta learn how to make that.

while i was devouring that piece of art, oleg walked around the beach, and i snapped a few photos of him looking absolutely tiny compared to the nature. after the magnificent cake (okay okay i’m done with the cake now) i went down to the beach too and collected a few of the amazingly white (and grey and black) smooth round rocks that were lying around. the place is just surreal. the best i could describe it is … its like you’ve been moved into an hdtv show. its like outside of life.

anyway.

after that amazing stop, we continued on with the picturesque drive. so picturesque, that coming upon a viewing point in the road (its just a few meters of pavement to the side that let cars stop for a little, and maybe stairs to the beach) we decided to stop and take a few snapshots of the ocean.

well, turns out that the crazy kiwis don’t make stops for just ocean. apparently its a stop in the middle of the highway, where wild seals come to have babies and raise them (not sure about making them). we couldn’t go down to the water, but we did get an amazing view of about 40 seals, totally wild, swimming, with lots of tiny cute baby seals (OHMYGOSH THEY WERE SOOO ADORABLE!!!). they were playing, and fighting, and just lying in the sun, and it was generally again surreal that in the middle of the highway there is a huge seal colony.

planning for the future

upon arrival to our hostel we attempted to book stays for the next few nights, where we came upon a load of problems. essentially, everything comfortable in terms of location, quality, and price was full. after a lot of tinkering and a lot of phonecalls we have figured out a way to get to our next location - mnt cook, a superbly awesomely cool mountain, supposedly anyway - with the least damage on all fronts. note to ya’ll - book ahead as far as you can.

quiet evening

the evening at the hostel in kaikoura was very nice and quiet. oleg went out to the ocean again, while i did laundry and chatted on the phone. i also realized i lost the aforementioned scarf (see ‘whole day at national park’ entry) - forgot it in the awesome hostel we stayed the previous nights. they are so kind as to actually mail it back to canada (they have my address as you write it down upon registration), payment on delivery. w00t! i’ll seriously miss the scarf throughout the rest of this trip though.

for dinner we had shrimps with alfredo sauce and penne. the sauce was store bought, and superbly tasty for the price, quality, quantity and the amount of non work :D this is the 2nd excellent sauce experience in this kind of travel - i think we will have a lot more pasta + sauce nights, especially since oleg doesn’t eat rice.

we’ve also had a medium sized bottle of heineken, with the leftover cold shrimp, which made the entire day be very enjoyable. the first day on the south island of new zealand is thus declared a success.

departing national park

upon a fairly late waking up (9am), we checked out at 10, had breakfast in their kitchen anyway (more french toast and i even had oatmeal this time - ‘date delicious’. i mostly thought otherwise but finished the oatmeal anyway.), and departed for the very long drive to wellington and our highest rated hostel 25 minutes north of wellington.

the drive was as usually scenic and thus boring in terms of writing. pretty sky, pretty mountains, pretty ocean (actually tasman sea), pretty beach, pretty rocks, pretty hills, pretty trees, pretty sheep. we’ve seen a lot of constructions, and the road was very challenging as we were moving out of the mountains.

speaking of the mountains, mt. ruapehu decided to be kind and showed its magnificent height and face and ice covered peaks on the morning of our departure. it was a fantastic view and i’ve taken far too many photographs of it as usual.

guesthouse by the tasmanian sea

arrival to our hostel (highest rated backpackers hostel in new zealand - 96%) was fantastic. the place is a wooden house on the shore of the ocean, and our extra special room had the lookout onto the ocean. it was definitely worth the exta 5 dollars we’ve each paid, as the view was spectacular at all times. however while the house, being extremely pretty, and the room, being well cared for, and the view, all were awesome, what really made this hostel remarkable is the people.

the owners, john and helen, are a couple that seem to absolutely adore everyone that comes to visit them. it really does feel like you are visiting, as opposed to staying in their house - you feel like a guest, and that’s how they address you in their cute little signs around the place - “to all our guests, please leave the bathroom prepared for the next person”. its such a nice way imho to write signs.

the entire hostel is just mindblowingly high quality building. besides it being a super old 1940’s wooden house that is apparently a local historical landmark, the owners obviously put thought and love and money into all aspects of the stay. the kitchen has a 6 stove gas burner, and each toilet has its own mini sink. there is soap and shampoo (first hostel with that), and even hairdriers in each shower. the showers are amazing, with awesomely hot water, and the even the toilets have this kitchy cute “transparent plastic embedded with shells and sea stars” seats.

the kitchen is huge, and besides the stove has a freezer, a thoughtful stack of plastic boxes to put your food inside, and an insane amount of cutlery for all intents and purposes. there was even a 2 book edition of backpacker’s recips - 2 notebooks, one totally filled and one on the way there, with recipes from previous guests of the house for cheap/tasty/intersting (pick 2?) meals. i really wished we had time to stay and enjoy all this, and try cooking something.

i could go on about the hostel forever, but instead let me just say that the next morning we gave the owners one of our canadian souvenirs - a thermometer with a canadian penny - that they very happily and thankfully accepted. it was the first souvenir we gave. i’m 100% intent on coming back to this place, and hopefully meeting both of the owners again.

windy welly

when we were checking in, besides givng an interesting introduction to the house, the city in which it is located, and history of wellington (capital of NZ, and the nearby big city which most backpackers in this hostel aim to visit), john also asked us about our time constraints and drew up a nice walk in wellington that we had the time and energy to take. he highlighted interesting parts, recommended places to stop (free museum, pretty building, modern building, old building, super-ugly building :) ), with a sense of humor and understanding. after this nice introduction, oleg and i loaded our stuff into our room, and departed for the windy welly.

windy welly is the locals’ nickname for wellington as it is a very windy city. this proved to be true as we observed a girl struggle into marlyn monroe-sque poses in the battle with the wind. other than that, it wasn’t as bad as chicago (now THATS the windy city).

wellington felt in a way like a mix of ottawa and toronto, except … backwards. (since all the driving is still done on the lefthand side). ottawa because almost no one realizes wellingont is the capital and most people think that it is auckland (come to think of it - same thing with amsterdam and de haag. what do i have for countries with confusing capital locations?), and thus the downtown has mostly banks and government agencies. toronto because the people are very very stylish, the city is very modern looking, and general atmosphere of downtown reminded me of TO strongly.

we had coffee in a local cafe where the girl had blond hair and a proper mohawk. she was really cute and now i want to cut my hair like hers cause it was just AWESOME. yes, i’m still on a trip about my hair being so short :P you’d be too, its so awesome!

the walk was fun, but i got tired fairly soon as i caught a cold and generally felt very sick and tired. on the way back we filled up with gas and groceries, and evening was spent on awesome steak, awesome garlic mashed potatoes, and awesome wine (i totally spent almost all of the wine. as in, drank it.)

after dinner i watched some ocean waves, another firefly episode and finally some dreams.

waking up

after staying up late with the expectations that the weather would not cooperate, of course the weather cooperated and oleg had the dubious pleasure of witnessing what an enraged sleepy person can say in the first moments of the day. after a few uncomfortable moments (i think mostly for me as i was alone in the room at the time), and a breakfast of yet more french toast, we departed on a 2 hour return hike through the mountains, titled teranaki falls, as those are the waterfalls that we’d have the pleasure of seeing. besides generally enjoying mountains and wanting to hike a little, another cool thing about this mountain in particular is that it was playing the role of mordor in LOTR. can you recognize it? :D

hiking

the preparation for the hike deserves a specific mention on its own as we weren’t sure how fast the weather could turn, and how difficult the hike would end up being. thus i packed the following things:

backpack with:

• small light tripod (oleg’s)
• advil
• long sleeve shirt
• sweater
• scarf (that could multifunction as many other things)
• glasses + container for contacts prefilled with the solution for storage (in case i had to store one or both)
• compass + thermometer (that my dad gave me before i left)
• spare socks

what i ended up using out of the backpack?

i guess that was better then having to use any of the other stuff, that would imply problems. the sun was shining, and the dark rainy clouds of yesterday have moved away to open up a whole world of warmth, and pleasant trails. my running shoes were totally unsuited for hiking in general, but thankfully it was an easy trail and thus we had no problems.

weather and the rest of the day

amazingly enough we got perfectly lucky with the weather. as we were completing the hike, the rain started, and as we left the park to drive back to the hostel, the clouds parted just enough to show the beautiful peak of the snow covered ruapehu (which was used in LOTR for the snowy mountains scene) right as we arrived to the hostel. perfect!

of course after that piece of luck we didn’t care about the weather anymore, thus it started pouring down and being generally windy and cold. i was feeling kind of sick, so the day was spent inside, enjoying my computer, quiet time, and hot tea.

thermal wonderland

after waking up earlier than oleg for the first time so far, i went and uploaded all the photographs that i had. hope you guys enjoyed them!
breakfast was some toasted bread with melted cheese and tomatoes. it all came out kinda half assed cause we were in a hurry, and the bread was totally wrong for toasting. note to ya’ll backpackers - don’t try to be creative. stick to the basics and you’ll be fine. :) sliced bread is a good idea. butter is good and useful and at some point you’ll need to buy salt and sugar (unless you stick to above 80% rated hostels, which at times might be impossible due to fullness or simply lack of such places).

regardless of the uninteresting breakfast we left for our thermal wonderland, which is a huge park full of various geothermal pools that were all created with one sole purpose - making olya choke. i sincerely believe that at some point i just stopped breathing air from the outside and just started using the reserves that saved up between my bones and such. regardless of the suffering (i swear, looking at some of the photos makes me smeel sulfur again, and as i’m writing this 3 days later i can still recall the smells effortlessly while writing about it), the beauty of the park did not disappoint.

what did disappoint was the high advertised geiser that erupts daily at 10:15 thanks to some chemical tinkering (pouring soap into it essentially makes it explode). when you come here avoid the geiser - i shot a video of the whole procedure and it was entirely boring. the uselessness of this experience was made up by us picking up a scottish guy whose ‘mates’ left him at the place and went to play golf as they’ve been to the wonderland before. he ended up needring a ride from the wonderland to the geiser (its about a 5 minute drive but too long of a walk). talking to him was an amusing experience as it reminded me of david, who lived on my floor in maastricht - he was scottish too.

the thermal wonderland was at times boring, at times very pretty, and at times just incredibly weird (think bright radioactive yellow green pool of something, that’s named devil’s ink bowl and looks absolutely deathly, about 2 meters away from you). however one thing was constantly present, is, well, the smell.

hanging out at taupo

after the wonder of the sulfur stench filling the air getting into mountains and lakes was a joy. for me at last, as i wasn’t driving - oleg had his share of fun twists and turns with the german made holden astra.

taupo itself is a “big” city, meaning that we managed to get lost in all 5 streets crossing the main one under my skillful navigation. after a bit of walking we found the take out pizza place we were looking for and found out that its closed before 5 (time was around 2:30pm). since everything else in sight on all 5 streets was faaar too expensive, we ended up eating pizza hut for lunch, under rain.

it is the rain that was the sign of trouble to come. the forecast unfortunately was that all day today, and all day tomorrow it will be raining, windy, gusty, dark, grey, gloomy and the exact opposite of the weather we needed to hike through the mountain range in national park.

arrival to national park

after a few more hours of driving, we arrived to the rainy, windy national park backpackers. this hostel is remarkable for its rock climbing hall, and the view of the 2 volcanoes off the front door step. except i felt tired and sick, and it was raining and cloudy, so i wasn’t up for climbing, and the volcanoes weren’t up for showing their faces.

oleg nevertheless persuaded me to take a lesson for the type of belay that they use (so now i know the ‘real world’ belay type, instead of the gri-gri which is almost fully automatic. this one is really easy and awesome and basic and requires full attention, but very effective, and cheap.), and climb with him. i did two (or three?) very easy climbs before my foot let me know i had enough. i belayed oleg for the next few climbs until he became exhausted, and then enjoyed an insane amount of firefly episodes.

we had a late dinner followed by more firefly and sleep, with hope for a better, sunnier tomorrow that would let us hike through the volcanoes. i was very sceptical about it, since i know that if i think that something will happen it usually won’t :)

lights out were late, around 12.