Hi all, After a couple days in Christchurch we decided to leave. We got back in the car and went back to a place called Akaroa. It's a tiny town 1.5hrs outside of Chch. Gay fell in love with it and so we wanted to spend some more time here. We found out about a web site (http://www.helpx.net) which connects people who need odd jobs done in exchange for room and board. So we hooked up with a couple people and made some arrangements and right now we staying in a beautiful home located on the bay and we're doing some gardening work. It's a temporary thing and Gay had to push me into doing it, but I'm glad we did, and now were both doing some work that isn't exactly our thing before we do work that is our thing. It's a lot of fun so far and we're both getting our hands dirty and learning a bit about gardening. We're going to take some pics and put it up, but right now I'm on dial-up so that won't happen until we move on to the next place. -Jon
Hey everyone, we got our car fixed and after almost 2months of traveling we've made it to Christchurch, the Garden City. We've spent the last couple of days looking around and trying to get a sense of the city. In all honesty, we're both not really feeling it. I don't know if it's because we've built it up so much during the trip and now that we're here it's not exactly what we've thought it was going to be. Or if it's because during the trip we've seen so many great places that a big city such as Christchurch doesn't have the charm. I've been doing some looking around on the job boards and it seems like getting a job here would be easier than any other part of the south island, so that's a big plus. We're staying in a great hostel right now which we have for another night. So we're going to do some more looking around and than make a descion on what to do. I kind of feel like, we have a lot of freedom right now, so why not take advantage of it and go somewhere we both like.
Pictures... Here are some pictures from our last couple of stops, enjoy.
Christchurch (on the gondola near Lyttleton and in the Anarctic Adventure museum) <--prev pic::::next pic-->
Inspired by the video taken by the skydiving guy.. Click here for a short video taken by Gay in Christchurch...This is now working, thanks mom.
To delay the inevitable task of settling down and finding jobs, we stopped by the tiny town of Hanmer Springs. The only attraction in this place are the hotpools consisting of about 8 different pools of varying temperature. We managed to stay in the water for about 4 hours, but you have to jump from one to another. After a while a pool which is about 36 degrees celcius becomes cold, then it's time for the 41 degree pool. It was freezing outside and raining the entire time but as long as you stay underwater (but not your head underwater for fear of getting meningitis) you're ok.
We woke up to snow the next morning. My favorite day of the year is the first day of snow so I was quite excited. However, the day proved to be slightly different than a winter wonderland. About and hour on the road on the way to Christchurch our car decided to seize up and spin onto the grass. Immediately someone stopped and helped us push it out. Another minute on the road and the same thing happened, the tires stopped moving and we were left stitting half on the road, half off. But once again, Kiwis to the rescue. A nice man stopped and drove me into town as Jon stayed with the car. Normally, I wouldn't just ride off with a stranger, my parents taught me better than that ( I don't take candy from them either), but he was a trustworthy guy and drove me around the tiny town for an hour trying to find someone to help us. He even gave us his phone number and address and told us to stop in for a coffee at his home in Christchurch. In the states it seems as if we are always afraid of each other, but here everyone helps one another and there are no alterior motives. To make a long story short, we got the car off the road and the station couldn't find the part that we needed (front differential, whatever that is) so we were stuck here for the night. Hopefully we will get out of here today. It's an omen that we shouldn't settle down quite yet and get jobs. I've gotten really used to not working.
After Dunedin we made a tiring 6hour drive north on the eastern coast and ended up in Akaroa which is a nice peninsula town about 1.5 hours from Christchurch. We liked Akaroa so much we decided to stay for 3 nights. After that we drove through Christchurch to a gorgeous town called Kaikora. The scenery is amazing here because you get snow capped mountains and ocean all in one view. We're about to leave Kaikora and drive a little inland to a placed called Hamner Springs. It's probably going to be our last stop before heading into Christchurch and starting Phase 2 of this grand scheme.
Dolphins.. My list of things to do before I die (see last post) has taken a beating these past couple of weeks. While in Akaroa, Gay and I were able to swim with dolphins! First off, it isn't exactly how I pictured it. I thought it was going to be dolphins swimming around you and playing with you. Maybe even butting you with their little snouts. This trip was a bit different. About 15 of us piled into a pretty big boat and set off for open water. Once we found a big pod of dolphins going in one direction, we would pass them and then they lowered the ladder and we jumped in. I don't know if you ever dropped yourself in open water, no where near shore, with nothing but a snorkel and a wet suit; but it scared the hell out of me. After I calmed myself down I waited for the dolphins to come and hangout. They didn't care they just swam right passed. We got back in the boat and headed up further and prepared to get back in. This time one of the guides came up to discreetly, handed me two little rocks and said.."hey mate, click these 2 rocks together, they really like that." wink. So I jumped in and now I was clicking rocks together, which, in a way was scaring me even more. Who knows what other animal is going to respond to clicks? On about the third try we got in with some dolphins and I was brave enough to click the rocks loud and continually. Finally one of the little guys broke from the pack and came right over to me. I dunked my head under and we looked at each other, he came within arms length of me, decided I was just some fool clicking rocks and swam off. All in all I have to say it was awesome when I actually got that close to the dolphin. Good experience, unfortunately I was the only one on the boat who got that experience as I was the only one with the rocks.
Almost over.. We'll our traveling part of this little adventure is almost over. We have one more stop and then we're going to check out Christchurch and see what we can do over there. I have mixed feelings, I'm curious and excited to see what's going to happen and I'm going to be happy not living out of a bag anymore. On the otherhand the freedom of traveling with no time constraint has been liberating and relaxing. We spent some rainy days in hostels not doing anything but reading, watching movies or playing puzzles. That also is going to come to an end. But there will sure be more stuff to blog about, which I'm sure Les will appreciate.
Pictures (and hopefully more video) coming soon... -Jon
Hey folks, We're in a small, college city named Dunedin right now, home of Otago University. We just got finished with a tour of the Cadbury Chocolate company. It was interesting and Gay got more than her share of a chococlate fix. Later on tonight we'll do a tour of the Speights brewery which I hear is a good tour and afterwards you get to try a lot of beer. Yesterday we drove up to the worlds only inland colony of Albatross birds (second largest birds in the world). Unfortunately we didn't see any. We were also hopeful to see some yellow-eyed penguins but no luck there. We just got done with a couple of days in glacier country which is an area that has 2 of NZ's biggest glaciers; Franz Josef and Fox glacier.
Glaciers... Franz Josef was the first one we hit just because of how the geography works but we had decided before hand to do a guided hike on Fox glacier, which was about another ½ hour down the road from Franz. As we spent a whole day driving from Greymouth in torrential rain we decided to stay a night in Franz Josef and wait out the rain. What I didn't know at the time was that this area is NZ's wettest part of the country, which means it rains about 50% of the year. This little factoid was given to us by a British guy we met who had spent the last 6 days in the hostel because it hadnÂt stopped raining. This poor guy was so bored he figured out the codes on the TV remote to unlock the cable movie channels. Fortunately, we were able to break him away from the "tele" that night and we had a good conversation about politics, popular culture and Gary Coleman. Unfortunately, the conversation had to end because the movie "Old School" was coming on and heÂd been waiting all day for it. The next day the rain was still coming but we decided to move on to Fox anyway for fear of ending up like our friend. The next day we were scheduled for our hike and luckily it was just an overcast day with no rain at all during our outing and we had a great time. We spent pretty much the whole day walking on a huge slab of slow moving ice. I got to wear crampons, which was a big one for me. I pictured myself getting ready to climb Everest as I was gearing up. Anyway, we had a lot of fun and got some really nice shots. The pictures are below.
Another one bites the dust... You know how people have a list of things they would like to do before they die? Well here's some of my top items from the list:
-Ride my bike across the US
-Swim with a dolphin
-Jump out of a plane.
-Earn enough money to buy property on the Queen Charlotte Trail (recently added)
Ok, now push and look back at the list. Yes folks, that corny display of Dynamic HTML is tell you that I went skydiving!!!
I went Skydiving!! Yes, it's dangerous. Yes, it's expensive and yes, it's the cheesy, touristy thing to do. But, screw all that, I loved it. I loved every part of it. I loved the plane ride up to 12,000 feet in the rickety Cessna, I loved hanging off of the plane before the jump and looking straight down, I loved each second of the 45 second free fall, I loved going down slowly under the parachute and finally coming down on the grass. Freefalling was the coolest. After I hung out of plane's door and smiled nervously for the company's wing-based camera, I crossed my arms in front of me like a mummy and the professional I was hooked on to, jumped out of the plane. In midair he rolled us over so I could see the plane flying away then he rolled us again so I was facing the ground. As the wind hit me hard against my face I realized that I was, simply, falling, and it was the scariest, most raw and intense feeling. After 45 long seconds of some serious freaking out there was a slight tug on my back, I looked up and the parachute was open. My tandem partner told me to take in a deep breath and let out yell, which I did, feeling incredible like I had just cheated death. From then on I enjoyed the view as the objects on the ground grew bigger and bigger. After the jump the woman ringing me up asked what I was doing the rest of the day. I told her we were just going to start driving south. She said something along the lines that it sucked that I had to drive after my first skydive. I didn't understand what she meant until I was in the car about a good 2 hours later and I was still reeling from the flood of endorphins or serotonin or whatever it was that was making me feel good. I was allowed to my bring my camera on the dive, so I took some nice shots during the plane ride up and my tandem partner took some nice (and cheesy) ones after the parachute was opened..enjoy.
The things that seem to make each place different are the people and their hospitality (and their food). For instance on the Queen Charlotte Track, the first “hostel” (more like an apartment under someone’s house) we stayed at, the nice lady brought us a fresh muffin for our afternoon tea as we arrived. She later gave us some fresh fish for dinner from her day on the water, cleaned, filleted and only two hours old. She treated us more as guests in her home than just passers-by for the night. The next night, we stayed at another hostel called Mahana Homestead. As we walked up, the people who own it were just arriving back from a vacation. They live in the house which acts as the reception, gave us some chocolate, and signed us up for dinner. We were told they were wonderful cooks and they offered meals so we opted for dinner. The house we stayed in was just behind theirs with incredible views of Queen Charlotte Sound. There was only one other person staying there so we pretty much had the place to ourselves. The next morning we kayaked a little right off the beach in front of the house to a cave where there were glowworms, but we didn’t have time to go in. I could have stayed at that place forever. Both of these hostels were really in the middle of nowhere, accessible mostly by boat, or a 2 hour, incredibly curvy road from Picton. Most of these people only go into town every week or so. Alas, the water taxi picked us up to go back to Picton, but instead of a straight ride back, we ended up going on somewhat of a dolphin watching tour. We were the only ones on the boat and the captain spotted some dolphins up ahead so he took a detour. Being the playful things they are, the dolphins swam along side and underneath us for a while. It was incredible and completely unexpected. It’s all those little things that the locals do for people like us because they are so proud of where they live and they know how lucky they are.
We’ve taken an unexpected hiatus from the road for a few days. We intended to only pass through Greymouth, on the west coast of the south island, overnight on our way to the glaciers. But we have ended up staying four nights. We found an amazing hostel called the Global Village. It’s quite possibly the coziest place on Earth. It’s decorated with mostly African art and painting. There are little nooks, a constant wood burning fire, huge kitchen, the most comfortable beds yet, a cat, and really nice people who run the place. But the kicker is that they bake chocolate chip muffins for everyone each night. The man who owns the place walks around and passes them out. It really feels like home here, except I don’t remember my mom making muffins every night. She usually said the “kitchen is closed” at some point during the evening. We spent yesterday just lounging around, partly due to bad weather. Although we did go on a brewery tour, including 10 minutes of complete open-bar, where you can pull yourself a pint. Jon enjoyed that one.
While trying to pass the time away from the coziest place on Earth, we went on a caving adventure today. Neither Jon nor I had ever done any caving, but it was something I have always wanted to do and Jon went along, leaving behind his claustrophobia. After pulling on layer after layer of insulating clothing and gear we looked like giant penguins, barely able to move. The trek to the cave was the most mud I have ever encountered but being so bundled up in clothing and a wetsuit which I was not responsible for cleaning, it was fun to slosh right through. The gist of caving is that your only light is the one on your helmet, but with 10 people, you could see pretty well. We climbed over rocks, through water, slid down a teeny tiny waterfall which I almost didn’t do because it was so small I thought I would smash myself against the rocks. At the end we floated in innertubes with our lights off so we could see the glowworms on the ceiling. There were so many it was like looking up at the stars. New Zealand is known for its glowworms that live in caves throughout both islands. On the way out we clawed our way through what was called the “Tunnel of Love.” It was physically challenging and for anyone larger than Jon, it would be impossible to contort your body to get through some of the holes. A good time had by all. Even Mr.Claustrophobic.
Sorry for the long time no blog.. We just finished two fantastic hikes in the south. One of which we would have missed completly if it hadn't been foor a wonderful Canadian lady we met @ a hostel.
Queen Charlotte Trail: This hike is amazing. We spent a lot of time taking in the views and saying things like: "wow" "oh my" "golly" This particular hike is the ultimate in backpacker decadence (or wimpy-ness depending on your view). The thing is, there are really posh hostels right on the trail. You literally hike right into your hostel, so you don't have to stay in a tent if you don't want to. We're not talking about dorm-type hostels either folks, these are really nice and really personal hostels. But here's the real kicker: you dont have to carry any of your bags, they're picked up and dropped off for you at every hostel you stay via a water taxi. It's amazing, our bags were right there waiting for us when we got to the hostel. We got some great pictures of the place which I'll upload when I'm on a better computer.
Abel Tasman Trail: This is one of New Zealand's Great Walks and in true NZ style, it was beautiful. We were only 2 days on this trail, we kayaked part of the trail and hiked another part of it. Unfortunatly the day we kayaked was pretty cold and cloudy but we still had a great time and got some great shots.
Right now we're in a small town called Greymouth and we're planning on going around the west coast of the south island before ending up in Christchurch. Hopefully I'll be able to get those pics up soon.. -Jon
