For the Love of Ben G.

I Did Not Jump The Shark

Jumpin' the Bungy
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And that's a wrap, folks. Without exaggerating, I can safely say these past three weeks in New Zealand have changed my life for the better. I love this country, and I wonder if I don't have a little Kiwi blood in me—it just felt like home from Day One.

I'm heading back to California tonight, and so I wanted to share my crazy bungy jump photo (just incredible—two or three good arcs of pure weightlessness, with no jerk or yank at the bottom at all!) with you all. I cannot wait until I get to do another bungy jump! They're seriously addictive.

I'll leave you all with a few Very Important New Zealand Ratings:

Most Adorable Award:

New Zealand Lambs (they also receive the coveted Most Tasty Award).

Most Sweaty Place:

Franz Josef Glacier (no, really!)

Best Skiing:

Treble Cone, Wanaka

Best City:

Dunedin (love the architecture, the college town atmosphere, great music, and great cafés!)

Worst City:

Queenstown (total tourist trap; since they don't mine gold there any more, now they get their gold out of rich foreigners' pockets. Wanaka has pretty much everything Queenstown does, and does it better.)

Best Place to Stay:

Top Ten Holiday Parks. I stayed in these great, cheap little cabins all over the place.

Worst Place To Stay:

Amber Lodge in Queenstown. Ask me why sometime: I have photos. Ugh.

Most Scenic:

Bar none, driving the Haast Pass was the most stunning and emotional experience.

Best Seafood:

Kaikoura! I loved the roadside stand seafood barbecue where I had dinner. One of my favorite meals of the trip.

Best Day Trip:

I can't recommend strongly enough that everyone in Auckland take the day trip to Tiritiri Matangi Island, the endangered bird sanctuary.

Most Expensive Activity:

Internet access. Man, I can't believe how much they charge here to use your own laptop to get online! NZ$10/hour wasn't uncommon. Still, it was worth it to get all these photos to everyone.

Total Distance Driven:

4316 kilometers (2682 miles), an average of 216 km (134 miles) each day

Total Photos Taken:

2273 photos and 42 movies, a total of 6.1 gigabytes, or two DVDs

Well, it's about time for me to start getting ready for the 13 hour flight back to California. I'll be leaving Auckland at 7 pm Monday… and arriving in San Francisco seven hours earlier the same day. Isn't time travel fun?

Milford Sound and Homeward Bound

Mitre Peak in Milford Sound
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Alas, all good things must come to an end. And so I'm nearing the time to say goodbye to New Zealand, which will always hold a big meaty chunk of my heart. Some of it I'm pretty sure I left in the water under the Kawarau Bridge on the 134 foot bungy jump leap I took this morning. (Yes, I will post photos of that as soon as I can!)

I'm in the beautiful Scottish-style city of Dunedin now, on the southeast edge of the south island of New Zealand. Dunedin is probably the nicest city I've been to in New Zealand, with a great friendly feel, a huge drum-n-bass music culture, and great museums. The stonework in the churches and the famous train station is just beautiful.

Yesterday, I toured the beautiful fjord of Milford Sound by boat. The experience was, as usual, beautiful and awe-inspiring. It's getting to sound like a broken record, but I love the huge variety of ways nature has crafted New Zealand into a hundred million shapes and sizes. Tremendously cool.

The clock's ticking, and I only have two days left here in New Zealand. Time to make the best of it! See you all back in California soon. Make sure to check out my Flickr page for lots more photos of Milford Sound!

Ski Treble Cone. No, Seriously. Do It.

Treble Cone
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I'm not kidding when I say that if you're at all into skiing, you absolutely must make the pilgrimage to Treble Cone on the south island of New Zealand. Skiing Treble Cone left me at a loss for words: it's situated thousands of feet above glacial valleys and lakes below, with views of the majestic Southern New Zealand Alps all around you.

Treble Cone a few hours' drive from the adventure capital of Queenstown, so most of the tourists down there stay where they belong; the real pros from all around the world come here to the ski town of Wanaka to make the trip up the mountain. Since it's winter down here when it's summer in the rest of the world, North American and European skiiers all come down to the Mecca of skiing here in New Zealand.

I actually came here on a lark: I was driving south from the beautiful Franz Josef Glacier, and after making my way through the "holy shit, it's so beautiful" Haast Pass, and I came to the tiny, adorable ski town of Wanaka, where I'm currently sipping a long black in an internet café. I saw all the ski bums and happy boarders hanging around town, and stayed in a little lodge with a bunch of backpackers, resolving to ski Treble Cone in the morning.

Choices, Choices…
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Bright and early, I woke up and drove my little orange Barina Holden up the zigzagging mountain road, with gasp-inducing views of Mount Aspiring and Lake Wanaka unfolding below me. I ran into a few fellow computer geeks on the ski lift who were way interested in VMware Fusion, and we rode together nearly to the peak mountain elevation of 1960m (6430 feet—yes, that's right). I'm no pro, so I took my time, enjoying my way down Upper High Street, a great blue square (intermediate) course down the mountain.

Treble Cone's claim to fame is that they have a huge variety of intermediate and advanced slopes, but even then, I didn't feel out of place at all among all the pros. Every slope was way steeper than anything I saw at Whakapapa or back home at Lake Tahoe, and every view of the lakes and glacial valleys below made my eyes pop out of my skull. I'm sore as hell now, but I'm still absolutely chuffed (to use a Kiwi expression) to have experienced the best in New Zealand skiing.

Cheeky Kea
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The most unique part of the Treble Cone experience is the Kea bird, which are one of the only alpine parrots in the world. The parrots literally hop around the slopes and nibble folks' food at the café when they're not looking; they're quite intelligent and very naughty! Kea are everywhere here, and their inquisitive, cheeky nature is most apparent when they jump up on your car and nibble at the rubber around your windshield. I have muddy parrot tracks all over the hood and roof of my car now!

As my New Zealand vacation draws to a close, I'm going to start the drive down to the beautiful Milford Sound in the Fiordland of the south island. I'm not sure how far I'll make it tonight, but that's the beauty of this trip: I've been playing it completely by ear, traveling as far as I like and staying wherever my fancy falls. And so far, it's worked terrifically. Oh, if only I could pull up my roots and stay in New Zealand forever. It's more than a little tempting!

The Hottest Glacier I've Ever Hiked

Franz Josef Glacier
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Today, I had two of the most moving experiences of my life: I took a helicopter ride up onto Franz Josef Glacier and hiked over the ice, and then I drove Haast Pass, past the awe-inspiring southern alps of New Zealand and countless alpine lakes and waterfalls. I can't begin to describe how emotionally moving these experiences were for me; the sense of scale (both time and space) here in the remote regions of the South Island is completely humbling, and I feel lucky to have experienced it.

Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers are two incredibly high ice flows that make their way, about 5 meters a day, down towards the ocean. They meet up with the temperate rain forests of the south island, creating a beautiful contrast that's unmatched just about anywhere else. I took a heli-hike trip up onto the ice of Franz Josef itself, which was a 10 minute helicopter ride each way combined with a two hour hike with an experienced guide. The hush of the ice all around me, as well as how I felt dwarfed by the miles and miles of blue and white environs, really made me reflect on how much more of the world I want to experience after visiting New Zealand—especially the world back home in California.

What amused me the most about the glacier hike was just how damned hot it got; we'd been told to wear 3 or 4 layers of clothes, so I really bundled up, but after an hour of hiking, I was dripping with sweat! It got up above 16º Celsius (above 60º Fahrenheit) on the mountain, and the ice started dripping and forming little rivers everywhere. Some of my sweat is now permanently part of Franz Josef Glacier, a fact I'm immensely proud of.

Lake Matheson Reflections
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The night before my heli-hike, I walked around the beautiful Lake Matheson, justly famed for its beautiful reflective views of huge Mount Cook/Aoraki and Mount Tasman above it. I caught it at sunset on a partly cloudy day, so my photos don't fully do the view justice, but with the fingers of sunset poking through the beautiful light rainforest around the lake, I got to experience a good chunk of the magic.

After hiking Franz Josef, I started the drive towards the phenomenal Haast Pass. Nobody warned me how emotional the experience would be: it's about two and a half hours of towering alpine mountains with sapphire lakes nestled in between, with each turn more tremendous than the last. I only managed to get a few feeble photos out of the trip, but as I drove and listened to two of my favorite driving albums (Orbital 2 and Risotto), I really felt at peace with myself and with the land.

Rainbows over New Zealand
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I've settled down in the adorable mountain town of Wanaka for the evening, and I plan on skiing Treble Cone in the morning (a recommendation from a few fellow skiiers from Whakapapa and the glacier). The weather gods have been kind, and today and the next few days should all be fine weather. Alas, I'm soon back to Auckland on Sunday and then to California on Monday, but I'll never forget my experiences here in New Zealand.

Off the Deep End

Christchurch
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After skiing Whakapapa and exploring the Art Deco town of Napier, I flew to the south island of New Zealand. The population is sparse enough as it is on the north island, but the south island is heartbreakingly beautiful and empty in comparison, with most of the population spread between Christchurch and Dunedin in the south, and Nelson in the north. On Saturday, I flew into Christchurch, which is a beautiful English-style city with wonderful 1800s architecture and masonry everywhere. The Avon river runs through the middle of the city, and the buildings are sculpted exquisitely around it. Really very charming.

I spent the night at a cool backpackers in Christchurch (what you'd call a hostel elsewhere in the world). Hosteling isn't really that bad, provided you have a good pair of earplugs and eyeshades with you to keep the noise and light from your roommates manageable. I've stayed in a few hostels on my travels in New Zealand, and they definitely range in quality: some are just a few hikers staying in a cabin in the woods with (hopefully) a wall heater to keep warm. Others have a full pub, Internet access, and provide bedding. I was surprised to learn that the card games backpackers play are pretty much universal; I played Asshole for hours with a group of kiwi students last week, and was glad to see it was the same game I played at Boy Scout camp!

The Kaikoura Coast
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Today I'm in the coastal marine life town of Kaikoura (which means "meal of crayfish"). And yes, the seafood here is the best I've ever had, bar none. Last night, I went hiking around the rugged, rocky coast with fur seals resting on the rocks uncovered by low tide, and then stopped at a roadside barbecue for the best garlic scallops I'd ever had, and a little patty of egg and a fish called "whitebait". The fisherman who served my meal was friendly and outgoing, and we chatted along with another traveler from South Carolina about the world, fish, and recommendations for sights to see.

This morning, I woke up bright and early to swim with dolphins right in the ocean (again recommended by Ingrid, Terry's orca researcher friend), with the Dolphin Encounter tour group. There were literally hundreds of dusky dolphins leaping around the boat, almost as if they were dancing. Donning my wetsuit, flippers, and snorkel, I dove into the chilly water, and was immediately surrounded by curious dolphins. We sang to the cetaceans through our snorkels, dived down to look them right in the eye, and swam circles around each other playfully.

Dusky Dolphins Dancing
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Being so close to the dusky dolphins was incredibly moving; to see these intelligent mammals right up close and personal in the wild is truly a gift, as the dolphins weren't fed or coerced towards the boat in any way. They just wanted to be there. The only thing that wasn't quite so moving was the realization that dolphins do, in fact, pee and poo like any other animal, and that they were happily doing so right in the water around us. And I thought this was a civilized country! Geez. :)

Hopefully this afternoon I'll go on a helicopter tour to see whales off Kaikoura, but if that doesn't happen, I'll head west over New Zealand's Alps to the West Coast, and start making my way down towards Queenstown, the adventure capital of Kiwiland. I can't believe I only have a week left in this vacation paradise. I absolutely love it here, and I never want to leave!

Rainbows and Random Thoughts

I was going to tell you all about my day skiing on the beautiful slopes of Mt. Ruapehu on the Whakapapa (pronounced "fuck a papa"—no, really) ski fields, but I realized my blog posts had become somewhat repetitive. Instead, I'll share some thoughts on New Zealand culture, language, and memories as I pass the halfway point of my trip.

Brew

New Zealand has some great locally brewed beer. Ales and lagers are both readily available, but my favorites so far are the Speights Porter and Monteiths Black (on tap, naturally). Best enjoyed in a local pub watching a rugby match with locals cheering on with colorful calls (I loved the "Mooloo" cheers, complete with ringing cowbells, for the Waikato rugby team).

Words

Helpful New Zealand terminology I've learned on my trip:

Dairy

A convenience store. Sells fresh sandwiches, cell phone recharge cards, and great New Zealand fruit. Oh, and milk.

Short black (or long black)

Espresso drinks. A short black is a single or double shot of espresso. A long black is an espresso with hot water added; not as much as a Café Americano, but easier to drink than straight espresso. (Bonus New Zealand coffee lingo: A fluffy is frothed milk, for the kids.)

A related term is the flat white, which is more or less a cappuccino with more milk and less froth. Espresso as a type of drink doesn't seem to be used here.

Toilet

The restroom. Don't ask for a bathroom or a restroom; although people will know what you mean (and I saw at least one restaurant with a room labeled "restroom"), it can cause confusion. Just ask where the toilet is.

JAFA

"Just Another Fucking Aucklander". Slang term used by everyone outside Auckland to refer to city folk.

Bach

Pronounced "batch". A beach rental house. Usually shoddily constructed of aluminum siding.

Tramping

Hiking. Unlike in the States, to tramp is not at all a bad thing.

Fully licensed

A restaurant or café that has a full liquor license. Unlike the States, tons of tiny restaurants have full hard liquor licenses; they probably don't cost nearly as much.

BYO

Bring Your Own (bottle). This means you can bring your own wine to a restaurant (but it doesn't mean the restaurant doesn't serve its own alcohol as well). A corkage fee is generally charged.

Thoughts

The weather in New Zealand really is temperamental. Long underwear was the best thing I brought, along with a rainproof, roll-up-able windbreaker. Since the rain starts and stops quite often, rainbows are not at all uncommon. People usually sleep with an electric blanket on during the winter; insulation and double-paned windows are pretty rare except in very new construction. Because it's so damp, even the most modest home has electric towel bars that warm and dry the towels as you hang them. (It's awesome to wake up to fresh, warm towels.)

Traveling by car is the only way to go in New Zealand. There are some trains, but they're few and far between. The roads are quite well maintained and clearly marked, though there are a lot of one-lane bridges, especially in the Northland. When you go to the grocery store, you'll usually get a coupon for an X cents off discount on gasoline, so make sure to stock up on food, then only fill your car when it's nearly empty, to maximize your coupon. Having an audiobook or three to listen to while driving is essential; the drives aren't terribly long, but there's a lot of them.

People are extremely frugal about power consumption in New Zealand. Every wall socket has a little switch on it that lets you turn each socket on or off immediately. This is great, especially because standard AC wall warts chew up power without you even realizing it. The wall switches are small and round, and very adorable. Oftentimes, the switch turns on when you flip it down, and off when you flip it up; such switches usually have a red line that only shows when you flip it downwards.

Phone numbers in New Zealand don't have a consistent number of digits. 0800 numbers, the "free dial" numbers, have six digits following the area code. Most, but not all, regular area codes use seven digits, but some use six. Mobile phones have their own area codes, but there appear to be about a dozen different area codes in use for mobiles. The general "information" number is 123 (like 411 in the states), and the emergency number is 111.

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OK. Now that I have those thoughts all out of my head, I'll return to posting gorgeous photos of volcanic ski slopes—in the morning. Now, I have a nice warm bath to which I shall attend.

Warming my Toes in Taupo

Hot River
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I'm in beautiful Taupo, New Zealand, staying with Charles, a great guy introduced to me by a mutual friend. (I owe you big-time, John!)

Taupo is a hotbed (literally!) of geothermic activity. There's geysers, hot springs, bubbling mud pools, and fumaroles everywhere. It's a bit touristy, but that's what I'm in New Zealand for!

So far, I've gone on a jet boat ride up to the Huka Falls, gone swimming in a hot spring, and hiked around the beautiful bubbling Orakei Korako geothermic area. It's beautiful here, and absolutely relaxing. It's fascinating to see how the subtropical scenery of the Northland gave way to a more temperate, almost sub-Alpine area as I get closer to the mountains of the North Island.

Lots more to post, but I had a long day hiking around Taupo, and I have a full belly of delicious Thai food. I've got tons more photos uploaded to my Flickr page, so just click the image to check them out.

New Zealand's Incredible Northland

I've fallen in love with New Zealand. This place is absolutely, positively, the best-kept vacation secret in the world, and I'm utterly shocked that there aren't a bazillion people here.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday went by in a blur. I drove up with the Hardies to their Northland weekend home in Matakohe on Thursday night, and woke up to the most beautiful rolling green paddocks gently sloping down to Kaipara Harbour, with cows and sheep peacefully munching the grass. I met the Hardies' neighbors, got to pet their adorable alpaca, sheep, and cows, and explored the Northland by car.

I have to say, getting the New Zealand GPS maps for my Garmin Nüvi was the best investment I made on this trip; I got to zoom around the unpaved country roads in the middle of nowhere without any fear of actually getting lost, as a push of a button took me to a café, gas station, or back home at any time. It's a terrific way to travel, and I highly recommend it. (I'll certainly always travel with a GPS from now on!)

Saturday morning I woke up before the sun had peeked over the horizon, about 5:30 am. I drove above valleys of fog nestled deep below the road to the sleepy town of Kerikeri for a tour of the northern tip of New Zealand, Cape Reinga, by fixed-wing prop plane. I kept gasping time and time again as we flew over yet another mind-blowingly beautiful vista; from the pearl-white 90 Mile Beach (really 60 miles long) to the crystal-clear azure waters off the eastern coast, I reveled in the fact that most folks never get to see the beautiful far north from above.

On a whim, I found a bed and breakfast called “At Our Place” in Paihia, an adorable little town nestled on the Bay of Islands. They had excellent reviews online, and the wonderful lady running the place treated me very well. Since it's winter in New Zealand, business is very slow for most places, so I had the inn and a great restaurant virtually all to myself. I woke up Sunday morning to the sound (and sight) of waves lapping at the shore outside my window. I went for a jog as the sun just started to rise over the bay, and ran 5 km to and from the Waitangi Treaty Grounds, just up the road from Paihia.

Storm clouds rolling in, I boarded a catamaran along with lots of expensively-dressed and coiffed Japanese tourists for a cruise around the Bay of Islands. We were extraordinarily lucky to meet up with not one, but two different pods of dolphins along the way! Seeing dolphins cavorting in the waves is always a magical sight, and it was incredible to see their playful nature up-close and personal. I was really glad I'd dressed up in lots of layers, as it started to rain pretty hard on the boat (sending the many well-coiffed Japanese tourists fleeing for cover). We circled round the impressive Hole in the Rock, then headed back to Paihia.

I'm planning on meeting up with a new friend, Charles, down in Taupo (about seven hours' drive south), so I headed back to the Hardies' place from Paihia. I took the very scenic route along the western coast of New Zealand, stopping along the way to gape and gasp at the beautiful sandstone cliffs of Arai te uru Recreation Reserve, which I can honestly say was the most beautiful view I'd ever seen in my life. I was literally left breathless by the contrast of the sandy cliffs dotted with tea tree plants, all draped against the aquamarine Tasman Sea. The scent of tea tree was everywhere, giving the whole scene a dreamy, hypnotic feel. Really, absolutely stunning.

Heading south, I went through one of the last remnants of subtropical rainforest in New Zealand: the Waipoua Forest, filled with ancient kauri trees, incredibly huge ferns, and dripping with life everywhere. The highlight is a 2,000 year old tree named Tane Mahuta, and photos of that magnificent tree just don't do it justice. It has dozens of species living in and off its canopy alone; the best comparison (geeky, I know) is to the Tree of Mana from the Secret of Mana video game series. I'm not a religious person, but I could clearly feel that it was an extraordinarily holy place, and I felt awed to be in Tane Mahuta's presence.

The Hardies treated me to a home-cooked chicken soup meal (yum!) and we drove back to their place in Auckland. I'm in their cozy guest bed now, and plan to drive to Charles's place first thing in the morning. Goodbye, beautiful Northland. I'll never forget you. Central North Island, here I come!

Downtown Auckland and Tiritiri Matangi Island

With my whale-watching plans nixed, I made reservations for Thursday to go to Tiritiri Matangi Island in the Hauraki Gulf. Having a free day, I spent Wednesday exploring downtown Auckland. It's a tiny city, just a few kilometers on a side, and you can easily walk the interesting parts in a day. Some is touristy (the Victoria Park Market was filled with low-quality souvenir shops), some is bustling (Queen Street and Wellesley Street), and some is desolate and empty (the Waterfront area on the northern edge of the city during the day).

Definite highlights of my day were the city's museums: I loved the Auckland Art Gallery, and felt particularly blown away by the detailed, intricate Māori portraits by Gottfried Lindauer, as well as the sad, everyday tribal faces recorded by Charles Goldie. I also explored the grassy Auckland Domain, and visited the wonderful Auckland War Memorial Museum. They had a whole natural history museum inside, along with Māori art and sculpture, in addition to the war memorial museum on the third floor. Highly recommended!

Of course, after leaving the Art Gallery, I was confronted with lots and lots of naked people marching up Wellesley Street. Riding tanks. And motorocycles. There were thousands of gawkers for what turned out to be the Boobs on Bikes parade, with porn stars (male and female) proudly showing their stuff for the crowd. I had to ask two of the Kiwis near me if this was something that happened every day! I'd heard Kiwis were liberal, but this was awesome.

Oddly enough, when browsing through the art at the Auckland Gallery (remember, this is a city of one million people), I completely randomly ran into my friend from the States, Sean Castro. I knew he'd be in the country, but I hadn't heard he would even be in Auckland! Terry and I ended up meeting up with Sean and their friends Matt and Andy Wednesday evening, and had a delicious curry dinner (traditional Kiwi fare for sure!). I really loved meeting Matt and Andy—they were proper geeks, we definitely clicked right away.

Thursday I got up bright and early, braved the traffic to downtown Auckland, and got on a catamaran to Tiritiri Matangi Island. Tiritiri is really a miracle story: after the island was cleared of trees and brush for farming by the Europeans, a group of dedicated volunteers replanted the entire island in the mid-1970s with native trees, and got rid of the few introduced predators. They started repopulating the island with birds that had disappeared from the mainland, and 30 years later, the island's full of endangered and rare birds. It was truly a sight to behold, and it's completely built and maintained by unpaid volunteers.

The weather was calm and beautiful, although I was really glad I wore long underwear and lots of layers. Exploring the island, I felt like I was on the inside of a giant calliope, with 360º of birdcalls and song surrounding my head. I really felt blessed to be able to interact with and watch these beautiful animals, and moreso by the fact that they didn't exist anywhere else in the world—not even on the mainland of New Zealand.

After returning to the Hardies' place in the evening, we drove up to their weekend house in Matakohe, on the northern edge of Kaipara Harbour. I woke up to a glorious view of rolling hills, sheep, pukeko birds, and the fingers of the harbor water poking through the entire area. Really beautiful! From here, I'll be driving up north towards the Bay of Islands, and then touring the gorgeous Ninety Mile Beach (which is actually only sixty miles long). I don't know if I can properly handle this much beauty! I'm glad I can share it with everyone through this journal.

Bugger!

Whale watching was cancelled due to mechanical troubles on the boat. Time for Plan B: the Hauraki Gulf Islands!