new zealand – Page 2 – my personal timeline

17 – feb 4: fjords to queenstown

again, the biggest highlight of the first half of the day was the pretty drive from manapouri to queenstown. lots of mountains, lakes, crazy reflections, and beautiful turny, twisty roads.

the first impression you get upon arriving to queenstown is how mindblowingly crazy it is. most stores have something to do with extreme sports – flying horizontally, vertically, or preferably, both. skydiving, bungy jumping (this sport originated here), paragliding, racing of all kinds (water and earth), going down extreme waterfalls in extreme boats, etc. i think that if you want to do something crazy, this is the place to do it.

so, of course i did end up doing something crazy. but that’s another story.

today however, was a very uncrazy day. upon arrival (thankfully we had a booking – every hostel, hotel, motel and b&b was full), we simply went up the local hill to see some people do their bungy jump off a local attraction, and generally to enjoy the weather. my personal highlight has been finding 3 awesomely cute magnets to bring back to my parents. perhaps not the most prudent financially place to buy them, but then again i ended up not seeing those particular ones anywhere else, so i’m pretty happy in the end of it all.

evening was quiet – i booked my ‘crazy’ event, and got an hour of internet free, so that hour is of course now gone from my memory :) and of course i walked around in search of a payphone. the town is small, cute, and the constant screaming of another crazy soul deciding to jump off a bridge or a hill with some plastic behind their back accompanies whatever it is you’re doing.

16 – feb 3: full of doubtful sounds

after the exciting day of kayaking, the doubtful sound cruise began to look like a smarter proposition as i was entirely composed of pain. the cruise is composed of 3 parts – first we board a boat from manapouri harbor, which is all of 5 minutes away from our hostel, that boat takes us across the lake to doubtful sound, where we board a tour bus, which takes us across the mountains where we board another boat which takes us around the doubtful sound itself.

first off, we were the exactly last two people to board the boat at manapouri, so we were almost too late (which would have sucked as we don’t have the time to be late!). other than that it was a very pleasant, calm ride through the lake, with very pleasant scenery, but nothing out of usual at this point.

the bus ride was more exciting, with a trip to the hydro facility in the area, which was pretty interesting to visit, but i doubt that its interesting to read about. the only remarkable story to tell is when the bus driver said that “i have to turn this 11 meter bus in a 5 meter cave, and the company expects me to return with a 11 meter bus and leave the cave at 5 meters”.

i honestly preferred the sea kayaking to the cruise, but regardless, doubtful sound is an incredible place. we were basically in nature that has stayed on its own since 1700s. (sandflies included – a few days later both oleg and i had enough of the painful bites). we even saw dolphins swimming in the sound, which was awesome, but did not let me get a good enough of a photograph of them. argh! we also saw seals (of course), who were lounging around under the perfect sun.

oh yeah.

sun!

the west coast gets about 5 meters of rain per year, and doubtful sound, which lies behind a mountain and essentially is the coast of the tasmanian sea gets 7 meters of rain per year. however we have been blessed with perfect weather – blue sky, shining sun, and thus lots of photographs.

since the day ended with:

a rush drive to te anau to get something to eat

setting off the fire alarm while cooking together with

adam, a retiree from israel who is travelling around NZ on his own (to both experience the world and improve his english before starting up a personal business with his wife)

the fire alarm no one cared about – it took the managers like 10 minutes to come and turn it off, and tell us “it happens all the time”

15 – feb 2: sea kayaking

this day will remain as one of the most pleasant days we have spent in new zealand. not only it was full of excitement and danger (while being reasonably safe), but we also got to meet new, and awezome, people.

after a long period of trying to arrange of what could we do in the sounds, we decided to grab the offer to go sea kayaking with rosco’s milford sound sea kayaking company. we have spent most of yesterday trying to decide if we should go for the “peaceful” and “easy” morning sea kayaking experience, or try for the more “adventurous” afternoon trip. after a long period of weighting the pluses and minuses (the particular plus to the afternoon trip being that it takes you more into the sounds, as you go out by powerboat, and return by kayak), oleg had me convinced due to his argument that the word “adventurous” was used to deter overweight americans.

boy, were we wrong (well, right, but more right than we knew!)

afternoon kayaking trip departed at 2:30pm from milford sound, which is about 2 hours from te anau, from which we were about 20 minutes away. of course oleg intended that we leave around 10:30-11, and my inability to wake up early led to us leaving at 11:30 – and we were still fairly early.

but all that happens, happens for a reason. on the way to milford sound (which is a town all of 100 people large), we saw a hitchhiker, and as usual i said “lets pick him up!” and for the first time oleg said “alright”. this is how we met mark, a very ambigously aged and definitely sporty looking hiker from uk. upon further conversation it turned out that he worked in the statistics department in a university, and was over 30 – neither one of us would give him a day over 26. he turned out to be a great person, and took great interest in us going sea kayaking, as he only had one day in milford sound and wanted to take some kind of non-touristy tour as well.

as fate would have it, one spot was left on our trip, which he promptly booked, and thus there were 7 of us going on this trip.

at 2:30 two rugged and adventurous looking guys, who turned out to be rosco and tex (rosco being the owner of the company, if you can call it that – i’d call it an experience or a party, company sounds too official), and tex would would be our guide for the day. they both immideately reflected an ownership of a great sense of humor, and had me worried with their statements of “its a rough looking day, so we’ll have ourselves an adventure” (or something to that effect). thankfully, i chickened out about bringing my d70 with me about 10 minutes earlier as i was looking at the water and the wind, so they couldn’t really convince me to take less with me at this point (i did take the sd500 with me, and i’m glad i did!). another point of interest is that i was the only girl amoung 7 guys – 1 being the guide, and the other 6 being 22 – 35 old guys. honestly, that kind of worried me, as i suddenly visualized currents, sea waves and dragons plunging out of the deep and me trying to defend myself with a paddle and my camera.

after that segue i realized that not a single travel agent was worried about my paddling ability, and more worried about my swimming ability. i knew that dry bags are provided for our stuff, so as long as i was reasonable about attaching the dry bag to something that wouldn’t sink, in worst case i’d get wet, and i can definitely live with that.

we got driven to the departure point, where we all got handed quick dry clothing. it was a pretty funny sight as all the guys had to wear these legging like things :) (me too, but i’m not as bothered as i had a long fleece covering me). we all got 2 layers of quick dry clothing, then a waterproof jacket, a life jacket, and a “skirt” for the kayak (its a rubber .. skirt .. that you pull over the hole in which you sit, essentially waterproofing the raft). upon dressing ourselves quite stylishly so, we got some quick instruction with how to hold and handle the paddle (oleg and i were the only ones who never were in a kayak before, and its not even that true for oleg who said he had been in one once previously. thus i was not only the weakest one, but also the most complete noob!), and off into the boat we went.

at this point, as all our stuff was inside the dry bag, the only thing i was worried about is how will i get from the boat into the kayak without killing myself and breaking both boats as well. but, again i put faith in the experience of the leader, figuring that he had to deal with clumsy cases like i before.

the boat ride out into the sound was … bumpy. and awesome fun. it also broke my found raybans (a screw got lost – i have both parts and will repair them as soon as i remember to just buy an eyeglass repair kit). the boat is very powerful, and so it bounced on the waves like there’s no tomorrow – making all of us bounce within it! it was just awesome, especially when i saw a waterfall and went “oh my god!” and pointed and the driver turned to look at me with a worried “oh shit its too fast for the girl” experession. i think they were both worried that i can’t handle it, but, geez, don’t they realize skydiving was more extreme than some boat ride? ;)

the part i was most worried about went seamlessly – mark and oleg went in one boat, and i went into the guide’s boat. i figure he might as well have to suffer my lack of skills, and generally it would be fun to meet more people on the trip.

after figuring out that the kayak won’t tilt if i take a deep breath, we all gathered together and got our general and informative instructions from tex as to what to do in case he “falls asleep”, in case we overturn, and how to get into steady formation with the rafts in case of rough weather, and we headed off into the direction from which we just came.

the total distance back to the “camp” – aka point of our departure (we still had a 2 hour drive to manapuri, the town at which we were staying) – was 12-14 kms (tex said 15 in the start, and then 12 at the end, but i don’t know when did he sound more sure). after paddling 3 of those kms, we came to my personal highlight of the trip – huge, tall, fresh waterfall.

underneath which we actually went.

twice.

in a kayak.

i cannot transfer into words the amazingness of this experience. at first had to wait a bit while cruise ships went in, held for a few minutes to let tourists snap off photos, and then went out, while we were just hanging by the side. when there was a break in the cruise ships, tex asked me if i want to go underneath, and i just couldn’t believe the fact that it was possible. the way that the rock underneath the waterfall is formed, you can actually squeeze the boat into a small crevice right underneath, and the water just COVERS you. the noise, the power, the freshness (yup, the water is indeed chilly), and the sheer raw power of this experience is mindblowing.

the others quickly followed suit, entering the same crevice. i snapped off a bunch of photographs of oleg and mark coming up to the waterfall (see above), and one particular photograph came out awesome, in terms of reflecting how surreal the experience is (and another one shows how tiny the boats are compared to the waterfall). after i was done, tex suggested we go under again, this time from a different angle, and off we went.

the difficult thing about being in the front of the boat with the guide is that on one hand i’m supposed to be the navigator, but on the other its the freaking guide and instructor – it seems like he should know these waters like the back of his hand. anyway, after i mildly quiestioned if we are going in too far from the left (he said not to go from the left), we safely went underneath yet again – except this time it was impossible to get as close due to the sheer wall of air and water that prevents you from getting underneath it head-on.

the quickdry clothing proved to be quickdry, and the waterproof skirt and jacket proved to be indeed waterproof – even against a waterfall.

after that mindblowing experience, the next few kms of kayaking flew by in pleasant conversation with tex (who definitely leads an awesome and unique lifestyle that most people don’t even get the chance to hear about, let alone experience), and new views and experiences. we saw mirtre’s peak (a huge mountain in milford sound), an overhang off which some crazy girl did a base jump for a video once (can’t remember the name, but the overhang sticks out about 5 meters deep into the water – definitely impressive), had lunch with the local seagull, seymore (i’m still not sure if its even possible to have a local seagull, but it was indeed only one seagull who seemed pretty confident about landing on the kayaks), and generally enjoyed the surrounding areas – nature, right there. it was so much right there that not only we saw a seal sleeping on the shore (he ignored us quite successfully), but for a little while there was a seal swimming right behind oleg and mark’s raft (they thought i was joking when i said “uuhm, guys, you have a seal behind you”).

the second mindblowing part of the trip came when the waves picked up and we got to try out surfing with the kayaks. basically the idea is that you catch a wave with the kayak by catching up to a big wave, and once the speeds are equalized you can ride it for a while – sending a great arc of spray to all sounds – the bigger the wave, the longer and bigger the arc. tex was awesome in this area as i didn’t have the strength to paddle fast enough and he actually caught us up mostly on his own a few times. the first time we rode a wave it was just insane, because after the amazingness and excitement of the actual ride the boat slows down and sinks into the wave. as i saw the entire kayak going entirely underwater, i thought “alright, here we are going down”. as i could feel the raft starting to sink underneath me (at this point the camera was with oleg ;) ) and i prepared for the consequences, the wave moved on, the air in the raft pushed it out and we lifted back to the air. it was definitely a one of a kind moment. (to my defense, i wasn’t overreacting as tex admitted too that he thought we’ll overturn). unfortunately the strength of the wave messed up everything attached to the nose of the raft, so i had to kind figure out how to fix everything back in a way that wouldn’t kill me if i tried to paddle. i was semi successful.

pretty soon after catching the waves, we entered the river’s mouth and soon after that we arrived back to the departure point. after an exchange of emails, names, and urls with tex and mark we all went our seperate ways, but hopefully not for the last time.

this day was far more full of excitement and new experiences than this text can convey. i can only testify to the fact that my muscles hurt for the next 4 days, but that my memories will last a lifetime!

14 – feb 1: dunedin to fjordland

after oleg’s arrival from the mechanic at 10:30 am, we quickly had breakfast, loaded up our stuff into the car and departed towards the distant fjordland of new zealand – milford sound, doubtful sound, te anau (the local big city, meaning it has 3 streets) and manapouri (the local small city, meaning it has 1 street), in which we were staying. the drive was long and as far as i can remember uneventful, except for one small event.

i drove! on the left side of the road! it was not a long drive, and it was a rather empty stretch of the highway, so i tried driving for about 30 minutes. i did more or less okay, didn’t crash into anything or anyone, but its tough, everything is very BACKWARDS. i felt like alice in wonderland – everything became mirrored.

other than that, lots of

the whole day stands out only for oleg going to te anau by himself and thus i had a few hours to sit at the shore of the manapouri lake, watch the sun set over the mountains, just think to myself, play sudoku, and do absolutely nothing.

in the evening we met 3 very energetic ladies from germany, and kiwi guy, who is an artist, who was sorta travelling with them. it was a pleasant dinner around a table filled with people, which actually was nice after the alone meditative time.

13 – jan 31: all day bay to dunedin

the signs of “all guests must leave by 10am” in all day bay proved to be real, and they very politely kicked us out at 10:05. no other hostel has been this pressuring about this yet! (and i’m typing this 10 days later!)

swiftly on our way, our plan for the day began as a simple short drive to our hostel in dunedin, which should have been a nice town, and a stop over at the moeraki boulders. the boulders are these huge, round, very spherical rocks that are just on the shore. oleg for some reason was super excited to see them, where as i just expected … rocks.

moeraki boulders

however our eloquent plans ended up getting shuffled, as the car’s squeaking began to annoy oleg far too much. thus, the executive decision to contact avis’s division in dunedin (as they thankfully have one there), and see if we should be worried.

we still had to stop by the boulders, which while being fun to climb on, climb in, and jump off, were not as spectacular as oleg had imagined. i did however enjoy the beach, the low tide and the expanses of sand, and of course more BIRDS.

all those seagulls just APPEARED behind my back when i asked oleg to pass me some of our bread/cookies/crackers. to their luck oleg dropping a bunch of cookies a few minutes previously and thus they were treated to a lot of thrown free food, while i took lots of photographs.

dunedin

the city was very charming. it was actually the first city we spent some time walking around for the sheer reason of walking around it. i really liked it – especially cause we found a place where internet was $3 per hour FROM THE LAPTOP. so no messing around with usb keys and such!

of course after seeing that my desire to walk around has diminished :) but we still hung out for a while – all in all a lot of interesting architecture, and an AWESOME grocery store. i cannot believe how much i missed SELECTION in food and all those CHOICES. we even found honey roasted peanuts! and beer! mmmm.

after buying food, we rushed home … err, the hostel. definition of home has become a very relative, extendable word. home changes every other day if we’re lucky, and daily on a regular basis. anyway. at “home” i snacked on some stuff purchased earlier, and did some small prep for uploading blogs and such. in the end i decided not to kill myself typing up the 5 (at least) days that i was missing, and just go and upload what i did end up having.

i don’t MIND writing long entires. but i hope that all of you “faithful” “readers” ;) can appreciate that it takes a lot of time to write this stuff, and there is no easy way to find electricity to charge laptop (about 30% of the time we don’t have an outlet in the room at all, another 50% there will only be one outlet, which we still gotta share with camera charges and such). and it does take time.

anyway. internet was great, as usual. i feel like such a cripple without the ability to look up any question that occurs to me over the day … how were the moeraki boulders made? are the seagulls here different from north american ones? what’s cool in dunedin? what should i cook tonight if i have half a red pepper, and rosemary spice? and such. let alone reading general enterntainment – slashdot, fark, overheardinny, dooce, digg, boingboing… aaaaah.

what was funny is that the internet owner/manager guy picked up on how deeply i sink into the computer when i start using it, and in the end, when we stayed there like 30 minutes after store closing, he simply asked me (first, and oleg afterwards) on how much do i think i owe him. it totally took me by surprise, as my head was still in the wispy clouds of connection and information. i think i ended up overpaying him, but for the amount of time he spent helping me set up, and the fact i ended up sitting there for so long, its been worth it :D

after internet, came the hostel, and then sleep. oh yeah! and oleg called avis who just sent him to a local holden mechanic. so oleg had to wake up at like 7:30 am or so to get in time for his 8am appointment, and i slept in till 10. mmmm. sleeping in. till 10. when have i ever used that sentence before?

12 – jan 30: sunrise over mountains (twizel to all day bay)

it is very poetic that i have had the joy of seeing the sunset over the alps, and that now i have had the joy of seeing the sunrise over the highest austrasian mountain – mt. cook, in maori known as aoraki.

the legend

here i’ll quote from the guidebook – i thought its a cool story.

“aoraki was a young boy in the canoe Ta Waka a Aoraki, which was stranded on a reef and tilted to one side. Aoraki and his brothers climbed to the high side and sat on the wreckage. the south wind froze them and turned them into stone, creating the Southern Alps/Ka Tiritiri o te Moana.”

the mountains themselves are very picturesque. snow covered sharp peaks, bright blue sky… however i’m getting ahead of myself.

the hike there

as the hike the day before absolutely annihilated us, we decided to take the 4 hour hike early in the day. like, really early. as the ben, the bike rider, recommended leaving at 4:30, we decided to wake up at 4:45 and leave by 5:15 (sunrise as predicred by him is at 5:30am). suprisingly enough, with our preparations of breakfast and prepacked bags of the night before, this went successfully. on an interesting note, before the sun rises it is quite chilly, so we both ended up wearing far warmer things than we expected (but still taking the light change of clothes with us).

departing our allergy-inducing motel room so early let us see as the peaks of the mountains slowly turned into a light blue, then light pink color, until the snow shone brightly. the hike was fun – long, but fun – and sunrise ended up happening only around 6:30 (which is about 20 minutes after we started the hike – the town is about 45 minutes away from the mountains).

in one of the happier moments of the hike we stumbled onto a stream that was flowing in a most photogenic way among big rocks and kinda under aoraki (not really under, but aoraki was definitely on the background). dream come true! of course, everyone who comes this way has this photo, but i got the photograph before the sun shone on the water, which is how everyone else will get it. i’m not sure which one looks better – i could probably sit by that stream for weeks before getting a perfect photograph.

the hike back

i’m not entirely sure what “there” is – a lake with mini glaciers in it, surrounded by mountains? i guess its as good of a there as any other there in new zealand. we arrived there expecting to be first – alas, a 65 year old australian dude was there 30 minutes before us, and claimed he caught the perfect reflections in the afore mentioned lake. argh! i was not deterred by this, and managed to still get a few pretty photographs taken, before a magnificent moment when the sun rose over the eastern mountain, and started warming us up. we quickly changed into “summer” clothing, and proceeded to bounce rocks over the still water (by we, i mean oleg – i shot a bunch of short clips of him doing that) until the next person came along – a girl, about 15 minutes after we finished eating (yes, we were smart and took some powerbars with us :) ). on the hike back we actually met a lot of people (including the taiwanese students who studied with ben-the-dude-from-yesterday) going the other way (as expected). overall, a grand feeling of accomplishment rewarded us.

the ride to all-day-bay

we drove back to the hostel that kindly held over our bags (for safety), had a quick lunch there, and headed onwards down to the east coast. to continue the trend of the remarkable things that happened today, we actually met a pair from israel (nurit and avi), just married, and looking to get out of israel asap. very interesting – and i brushed up my hebrew too! :)

11 – jan 29: geraldine to twizel, the day hike that killed us

upon departing the friendly hostel with the unfriendly llamas, we headed towards the first big attraction on the south island – mountains. BIG mountains.

unfortunately we weren’t able to book a BBH hostel in the area, as:

a. we have had generally little luck with booking hostels at this time (most of our ideal locations were full – i.e. that is why we ended up staying in geraldine, which is fairly close to the mountains but implied a huge drive the day before)
b. there were few (if any – i can’t remember) BBH hostels in the area
c. few hostels at all
d. and most places were fairly expensive :\

by the way, BBH is the backpacker network that generally ensures that the hostels have some similar kind of quality in terms of accommodation and services provided. for example kitchens with cooking equipment, clean beds, all described through this guide that gives it a rating in %-age – like the wellington hostel.

thus we ended up staying in this fairly grimy motel, which provoked oleg’s allergies to a terrible extent. i was not left alone either as my allergies acted up terribly when we went into the mountains. oleg spoke to a local pharmacist who said that the super dry air could be provoking it too (as well as the unknown ingridients in the local air). indeed, the weather IS super dry.

anyway, the motel was not so terrible, but generally speaking i like the hostels more – we have had general luck in booking them, and they are all more .. cute. homely. you feel more comfortable in them. on the bright side we got a whole 4 outlets, which hostels often skimp on – now, 10 days later, having 2 outlets in a room is a bright piece of news to me. we both have laptops, and we both have 2 cameras, and oleg’s drebel has like 3 batteries, which makes for a lot of charging happening. generally speaking we don’t need to charge nightly, and the car adaptor helps, but gosh, its so nice to have 2 outlets at least!

we came, we saw, we left our stuff, we left towards the mountains as the sun was high up, and weather seemed to be kind and warm.

of course it is the warmness that caused us all the problems. this area has a few hikes that take a few hours (all of them free, which is a pleasant thing), and we decided to take up this 2 hour hike.

mistake one.

its a 2 hour hike from the distant parking lot, and really it manes 2 hours of energetic walking. we -should- have driven to the closer parking lot which would make it a shorter hike.

mistake two.

we only had 750ml of water for 2 of us.

mistake three.

midday sun means for a lot of warm. too much warm – the entire hike was underneath the blazing sun and we quickly tired out. matter of fact, about 20 minutes before our arrival to the outlook spot for which the hike aims, i got lightheaded and had to sit down in the nearest shade – a big rock did the trick. at this point we had very little water left, so after taking it easily towards the view (which was not even that good), we started walking back.

i took both bags and stopped at the first, closer, parking lot, where as oleg went with no bags and only the rest of the water towards the car. he said it was a terrible experience, and i believe him – he definitely looked like hell afterwards. i’m so glad we had the ability to leave me and the stuff at the parking lot – i would not be able to make it back without going crazy or something.

when i entered a little shed in the parking lot, i breathlessly asked some middle aged couple and some guy if there is water around here. the couple were entirely useless in terms of information, where as the guy just offered me his bottle which i gladly accepted.

while waiting for oleg further the guy (who offered me water a few more times, provoking my undying thanks to him to this day – i was feeling like hell, and water was exactly what i needed – and he offered it unasked too!) and i started talking. turned out he was a phys. ed. teacher from taiwan, here with a group of his students, who are touring the south island on bikes. we actually passed them by on the drive to the mountains earlier in the day – very noticeable as there are 15-20 young people, all biking very “professionally”. his name is ben, and as we later found out, he is an american who travelled around the world and decided to teach in taiwan. he had some eye problems and needed a ride to tekapo, a local big town. we were only going about halfway, to twizel, however twizel is on a direct big road to tekapo, and he gladly accepted my offer for us to give him a ride to that intersection.

(p.s. oleg says he later saw him with his group in queenstown, about a week later, so i think it all worked out for him. yay!)

after arriving back to the hostel, we have bought a lot of water, some more ice cream, more sun screen, and esentially “chilled” as much as we could. a problem was that the motel room heated up insanely while we were gone, so a lot of the “chilling” was happening outside in the shade, on the stairs leading to the building.

we have decided to take up a big hike the next day, and prepared all our things in advance – i made sandwiches for the road, we packed our bags, and i have made the tough decision of only taking one lens with me to cut down the weight. we got seriously well prepared for the next morning – i believe the most organized preparation yet, as we even arranged to leave our bags and food in the motel until we return. (lonely planet speaks that carjacking is most common in the cars that are left in the start of the trails – makes sense!) the food we left this night, and the bags we moved in the morning.

going to bed entirely too late (10:45pm instead of the intended 9:30pm) and setting our alarms for 4:45am, we were ready to take on those mountains on a fair scale.

10 – jan 28: kaikoura to geraldine – long drives and changing cars

after crossing over to the south island, the next plan was to head towards the southern alps. unfortunately the south alps happen to be a fair bit away, thus we decided to stop over in a middle of nothing, aka a town called geraldine.

as we were leaving kaikoura we were adviced to go to the beach and watch some seals, as the tide was low and we could actually hang out at the beach. this little experience turned out to be more than expected as the seals just kinda lay around the rocks and people walked around them. there was a sign saying that people should stay at least 10 meters away from the seals, but of course a few people didn’t really listen. generally speaking the seals didn’t care at all if you were at least 5 meters away from them (and we’re talking about wild seals just hanging out at the beach in low tide here, not some trained animals or anything), but one dude in particular poked a seal with a snorkel, and i juts wanted to choke him on the spot. not only those seals are HUGE and STRONG and have VERY SHARP TEETH, they also don’t have to come to this beach – there are plenty of other places to hang out. people like that just spoil all the fun.

regardless of that incident that happened as we were already leaving, it was a very fun experience. low tide left a lot of shallow pools of water, over which i proceeded to jump cartier-bresson style over them and forced oleg to take photos of me. we have photographs of both of us jumping over those pools. (here is oleg’s photo)

the drive from kaikoura to geraldine passes through christchurch – biggest city on the south island (as far as i know anyway), and definitely the most major one, with a fairly big international airport. an executive decision was made to stop there and try to exchange the lancer to another car (hopefully an astra, same as we had on the north island – its just a reallly nice car, even if i’m not driving) in the avis city location there. surprisingly enough the transfer went as smooth as hot knife through butter, as not only we got another car with no questions asked and with a very apologetic “could you hang out for 30 minutes in town – you can get some coffee or something?”, we got a cute silver holden astra (yay!). i like silver color on cars.

hanging out in christchurch was fun, as the city looks very cool – a lot of small, not chain stores, people hanging out at the sun, very loungy and relaxing. and cheap sushi! i’m highly intending on getting some when we come here on our last day. other notables in this town are weird advertising and great ice cream which i partook in.

after getting the car, we headed straight to geraldine – which still remained a fair drive away. this would be the longest day of driving on the south island – and we still arrived before sun down. this is the nicer thing about heading this far away from the equator – the sunset is around 9-10pm – thus it gives us plenty of time to do some food shopping, cooking, staring down the snobby llamas across from the road, and relaxing, which is all we did.

UPDATE #2 from Dunedin

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!)

09 – jan 27: trip to the south island

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.