feeling beachy

Even though people keep talking about how it's winter here, I don't believe them. Besides the chilly wind, I'm in full-on summer mode. Classes are over, the sun's out, and I've been hanging out at beaches. 

I spent the past couple weekends on the Wellington's rocky coast. It's not such a great spot for tea parties, because the wind blows the lettuce off your sandwiches and makes the tea go cold really quickly.

(Thank goodness chocolate's too heavy to blow away)

But it is a terrific spot for taking pictures...

and going on hikes to see the Red Rocks again...

saying hello to the South Island...

eating at nautical-themed cafés...

and climbing around on rocks.

If you take a short ferry trip across Wellington's harbor, you can even go hang out on a tiny island for the day.

 Provided you agree to some manual labor

and bring along a pair of fuzzy glittens.

But tomorrow I'm off to see some real beaches (by myself - eep! - because everybody else is busy taking finals or going to Australia with their parents).

I've booked a few bus tickets to go around the Northernmost tip of New Zealand - creatively dubbed Northland and supposedly the warmest, driest part of the country. I'm flying in to Auckland tomorrow and heading to Paihia, Raglan, and the Coromandel from there. My bag's all packed and ready to go - with a raincoat and a fuzzy hat shoved inside just in case.

part 4: Kepler Track

After Queenstown Lauren and I caught a bus further south to Te Anau, a little town at the edge of Fiordland National Park. We heaved our food-laden packs onto our backs. Then we set off into the wild. Sort of.

The Kepler is one of NZ's Great Walks - a manicured 40-mile trail up a mountain, along the ridge, and down through the bush. The trail is perfectly clear, and the alpine section even has stairs and handrails. The Department of Conservation offers 3 huts along the way with running water, mattresses, and gas stoves. It's not exactly roughing it.

We'd booked all the huts a few months in advance. But soon we realized that we probably could have done the whole track in three days instead of four. Each day we started at 9:00 and reached the next hut at around 2:00 with plenty of time to sit around and scratch our sandfly bites.

Still. That's not to say that the experience wasn't astoundingly beautiful.

We had amazing weather at the first hut, which sits up above the town of Te Anau.

We did some casual caving that night.

At this point, we realized we should've packed matches and hiking-friendly food. The fresh carrots and canned tuna seemed like such a good idea at the beginning. But they turned out to be really heavy and smelly. Thankfully our packs got lighter as we got down to eating. And there were lots of friendly Germans on the trail who were willing to share their matches.

We had a fantastic sunrise view the next morning. I took at least twenty thousand pictures of it.

Then we headed off to walk the alpine section in mystical fog.

I wore those compression tights for four days. Not a good idea.

The next two days were an easy downhill walk through the bush back to town.

The last hut was on the side of another ridiculously lovely NZ lake, where we attempted to wash some grime off ourselves.

And the next day we stumbled back into the civilized world (aka: where you can buy cake).

It was a pretty good time. 

Part 3: Queenstown

When you talk to other tourists in NZ, Queenstown is like a point on a pilgrimage road - some kind of Holy Land of outdoor activity that might hold Sir Edmund Hilary's ashes inside a quad helmet. Everyone's going to Queenstown. Or they're on their way home, and they're broke. 

Considering the hype, I was pleasantly surprised at how small it was. Downtown Queenstown is a half-mile grid of a few busy streets packed with cafés and outdoor shops snuggled up against sapphire-blue Lake Wakitipu. Sailboats and jetboats cavort around the harbor. There's a brick walkway full of street performers along the lakeside where tourists in hiking packs wander around with ice cream cones. At the edge of town there's a botanical garden on the peninsula with a limestone walking path that extends out to the airport. People are relaxed and smiling - even the tourist-harassed café workers and bike shop guys. It felt like a Colorado ski resort town without as many pretentious Americans. 

Gold and green mountains jut up around the city. Five minutes from downtown there's a network of pristine hiking trails so fantastic it's stupid (you can even get to the famous Routeburn track). Most of the hiking trails are mountain-bike-friendly, there's a freeride park hidden in the woods east of town, and a gondola that takes a bunch of smelly downhillers to the top of a big hill so they can show off their baggy shorts to tourists. Paragliders jump off the top of the gondola hill and float into town.

A couple hours' drive away are historic Arrowtown, Lake Wanaka, Mount Aspiring, and Fiordland National Park - home to some of New Zealand's most stunning scenery and awesome, accessible hiking.

I was smitten.

Lauren and I spent four days hanging there out to recover from the bus trip. We did a lot of eating. On the first day, we met up with our program advisor Jane - a Queenstown native - at a fantastic ice cream place on the water. We bought groceries at the supermarket and luxuriated in being able to use the hostel fridge. We sampled a more few cafés, went on a bar tour, and ate at the famous Fergburger.

Trevor and Lauren had something called the "Mr. Big Stuff" - a half pound of beef with bacon and cheese. My single-patty brie cheeseburger and its gluten free bun looked a little malnourished in comparison. 

I hadn't had a good burger in New Zealand. Their beef tends to taste a bit different, maybe because NZ cows eat cleaner grass. But I can attest that those burgers were pretty damn awesome. I also realize now that getting a diet Coke with a burger the size of my head was a pretty dumb idea. 

To offset all the eating and alcohol consumption, we walked up the hill by the gondola and watched grown men giggle to themselves on the luge track. 

I also ran around town every day. One of my favorite runs was the Queenstown Hill Time Track. 

It starts outside of town close to the hostel where we stayed. The track switches back and forth through the pines and opens up on a high point where the trees and hills cancel out the noises of the town.   A couple vagrant Merinos had been grazing in the grass when I ran up, but they'd moved on when Lauren and I hiked up later to take pictures. 

Criminy. This place is awesome. 

In retrospect we didn't take advantage of Queenstown. We didn't go Bungy jumping, skydiving, canyoning, fish-feeding, zoo visiting, jetboating, golfing, horseback riding, whitewater rafting, or kayaking (I can do those for free at home). I never got around to doing any bike riding since nobody else was keen on going with me. 

But that's okay with me. I didn't end up broke, and Lauren and I were well-rested and well-fed on the fifth day when we got up at 5:30 to start our long walk on the Kepler Track. 

I do plan to go back to Queenstown sometime, provided it's not too snowy in June. In that case, maybe I'll rent some skis. 

this isn't real.

"No way. This isn't real. This is our life right now. This is too perfect."

"I know. We're so good at vacation."

Lauren and I had this exchange at least ten times a day over the past two weeks. Everything was absolutely, undeniably awesome. Even the things that weren't awesome are probably turning themselves around in my memory to become awesome.

Before I bombard the Internet with a thousand posts, here's some highlights:

Three of us slept in a hippie van in Nelson. We met some Irish guys with perpetual hangovers who had a rough time keeping it together on the windy mountain roads. And we met some awkward German friends who destroyed our English skills. We stepped on a glacier. There were bright blue kettle lakes and gold autumn leaves in the mountains. Lauren paid money to throw herself off a bridge. We consumed an obscene amount of wine, food, and chocolate in Queenstown. We ate ultimate dinners and giant burgers. Then we walked for four days on the Kepler, saw some amazing sunrises, realized you need matches to light stoves, and had wild and crazy 9:00 bedtimes. Our brains nearly exploded from the scenery at Milford Sound.

And I didn't even break my camera.

That was probably one of the best two weeks of my life. More updates later when I sort through my 900 photos.

Amazing Abel Tasman

Ok, I've given myself three solid days to recuperate and remember how to blog.

Like I mentioned in my previous post, last weekend our wonderful Arcadia guides took us on a trip to Abel Tasman National Park. Abel Tasman's an area on the tip of the South Island, near Nelson (a.k.a. NZ's sunshine capital). Maori used to live there, until some Dutch explorers came along and tried to conquer them so they could re-name the land after themselves. In the 1940's a progressive-minded lady campaigned for the area to be turned into a national park to preserve its natural beauty. She bullied the government into agreeing with her.

We'd catch a sea-shuttle out onto a point on the Abel Tasman Coast Track. Then we'd hike - ahem, tramp - a section on the first day. On Sunday, we'd do a guided kayak trip back to where we started. 

But before all that fun, we had to get an early start for our traveling day on Friday. We had to catch one of the the Interislander ferrys to get from Wellington to the South Island. 

The folks at Interislander seem to have a monopoly on the island to island transportation. But they do a darn good job. This was more like a cruise than a ferry ride. There was a full bar with fresh espresso (duh, because it's NZ), a food court, and a terrific motown band on deck 7. Check out their page. It's worth it.

Plus the scenery along the way was simply incredible.

The trip was pleasant enough. Something about being on a 3-hour ferry ride before 8:00 in the morning makes everything seem more mellow and slow. I chatted about tramping and rugby with a Kiwi guy sitting next to me. He was a scuba instructor with a passion for Arc'teryx jackets. He drank three beers before 10 and said "sweet as" at least twenty times. 

We landed (docked?) in Picton, a sunbathed little seaside town with a couple bakeries. We piled onto a tour bus and drove around the bay and through the hills to arrive in Marahau, a tiny beach town right next to the park. I'll spare you the pictures of roads and sheep.

Just kidding. I had to sneak one in. Sheep are too great.

We explored the area a bit. I went on an amazingly gorgeous run on the Abel Tasman track. Infinite jade water and white sand all around. I joined up with the rest of the group, and we hung out on a sandbar until it was time to consume massive quantities of carbs lovingly prepared by Mother Jane and Alex, our Arcadia support guy from Wellington.

We annihilated heaps and heaps of pasta and salad and dessert.This picture doesn't do it justice.

We spent a star-studded night in these adorable wooden huts and got up early the next morning to start the first leg of our hike. We caught another little boat that dropped us off further up the Coast Track.

I took at least fifteen pictures of the same water and trees. I had a hard time believing anything was real.

The ferry dumped us out on a beach and started pulling away before we could scoot off the gangplank.

The trail was easy - gently rolling, clean, and sandy. We had a leisurely hike, stopping for photos, lunch on a beach, and swingset breaks.

 

During this photo, the boys were busy looking at rocks. Typical.

Mother Jane at Cleopatra's Pool

Eventually we strolled to the sun-soaked bay where we'd spend the night in the hull of a boat.

It was cozy.

After we shoved all our stuff into our little beds, we found out that the roof of a katamaran is an excellent diving deck. 

Then the captain and crew grilled us a manly dinner. We went to bed sunburned, exhausted, and full of lamb. 

The next morning came around drizzly and gray. A great day to not get sun poisoning in a kayak. After we squished into the boats, we weren't dry for the next five hours. We paddled around the bay, stopping to look at fur seals hanging out with the seabirds.

Our guides acted like raft guides, telling lewd jokes and flexing their muscles under their lifejackets. Like all my friends at WV, they really got a kick out of telling me how small my arms are. I focused on looking bigger.

Success.

We paddled back to Marahau and realized that we had to go back to Wellington. There was another long ferry ride waiting for us.  We killed off most of the trip with card games and tried to pretend we weren't seasick. 

And now we're back in windy old Wellington, waiting out the rain until we can go on our next fantastic adventure. Unfortunately Arcadia won't be organizing anything else, so we'll have to pay for it all... and it probably won't be quite so seamless.