Finally, Some Warm Weather

We were sad to leave lovely Waitomo but we needed to head north to stay on schedule. With only a week to spend looking around the North Island we had to spend a significant amount of time in the car each day. It wasn’t hard though! Part of what makes traveling through New Zealand so enjoyable is its varied landscape – you can spend 2-3 hours in the car and transition through about 3-4 types of countryside…green farmland, snow-capped mountains, low volcanic lands and forest to name just a few.

Carly's epic bruise from the cave tour!

We took a leisurely route to the Coromandel in our little rental! The coastline was gorgeous and we were so happy to have nice weather after 6 months of wind and rain in Wellington. We ended up in the township of Coromandel, a sleepy seaside community that clearly bustles in the summertime. Really tired from the day before, we found our hostel and set up camp. With the weather prediction favorable, Carly and I decided to camp on the lawn of the Tui Lodge. Lots of hostels in NZ will allow you to set up a tent on their property for a cheaper nightly rate. This was one of our favorite hostel experiences, to be honest! All the fun of staying in a tent but with a bathroom, hot showers and a kitchen just a few meters away.

On the agenda for the next day: a stop at Cathedral Cove and a drive through Rotorua to Lake Taupo for two nights. The cove was spectacular – a filming location for the second Narnia movie and I’m sure countless other ones. The weather was still perfect and of course we stopped for the obligatory ice cream at the local dairy!

Leaving Taupo we found our way to Rotorua for a quick stop to see the hot pools and steam vents in the middle of the smelly, sulfuric city. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to stay there but we were headed for Taupo and adventures there!

Skydiving! We both did it! We have no pictures to prove it because we didn’t want to dish out $180 for them so you’ll just have to take our word for it! Both of us were surprisingly calm as we jumped into some catsuits and got harnessed up. The people at Skydive Taupo were so insanely efficient that we really didn’t have time to be nervous! We climbed into the hot pink airplane and took a 20-minute flight up to 12,000 feet, our jumping altitude. The day was cloudless so we were able to see very far – all the way to Mount Taranaki a few hundred kilometers away. We could also see the volcanoes Ngarauhoe, Tongariro and Ruapehu that sit very close to the lake.

After our ascent we attached ourselves to our tandem skydiving guides and scooted our way to the back of the airplane – Carly went first! We both agreed that the craziest bit of the fall was hanging our legs outside the aircraft for the first time. The initial plunge was stomach-dropping but after falling for a few seconds we were having a complete blast. Both our chutes worked (yay!) and we floated for about 4 minutes down to the airfield just outside the skydive hanger and landed gently on our butts. It was an incredible experience that both of us can’t wait to repeat – next time at 15,000 feet!

The rest of the day we spent walking to Huka Falls upriver from Taupo. The day was a scorcher but we enjoyed the time in the surrounding bush. The falls is really more of a small bottleneck through which the river rages – the river is of course harnessed and provides around 15% of the North Island’s power – incredible! The day ended with Thai food on the lake and an early night. The next day we headed back to Wellington for a couple nights to organize and prepare for our Australia trip!

The North Island: Waitomo Caves

It’s finally time to update the long untouched blog – our apologies!

We’ll start with our incredible adventure under the Earth! On the 26^th of October Carly and I had our last day of work. We both had such an amazing time at our respective workplaces and will sincerely miss everyone who made our time their enjoyable – we are certainly leaving New Zealand with many new friendships. Additionally we could not have asked for better flatmates – Crina and Jess, know that you will be missed and that we had an excellent time living with you!

After moving out on Saturday and a brief stay with Gavin Howse we headed up to Te Kuiti/Waitomo in our rental car via some gorgeous farmland and green rolling hills. The weather was awful but luckily that was the only day of our week-long journey around the NI that was poor. We arrived in one piece after navigating the crazy Kiwi roads on the left side of the road and plopped down for the night to rest up for an insane next day.

On a lovely Monday we headed to Waitomo Adventures for a 7hr “Epic” trip down into the caves. We were so lucky as the only 2 on the trip with the best guides ever – Allan and Chris. They geared us up with some flattering wetsuits and harnesses for our abseil down into the cave – 100 meters! Carly handled it incredibly well though I have to say I laughed nervously all the way down…not looking good for our skydiving plans.

At the bottom we had a spot of lunch, met a friendly cave eel and then headed downstream for a few minutes into the cold cold rushing river. After surveying a few waterfalls we headed upstream – we would be fighting the water for the rest of the day!

Going over and under water/rocks/waterfalls we climbed our way out of the cave slowly, stopping in some places for some “choice bombs” (cannonballs) and awesome photo opportunities. Chris and Allan were excellent photographers, capturing our shenanigans in low light and even managing to get some great shots of the glowworms! Those are the main attractions in Waitomo and we were lucky to spend a half hour or so staring up at the cave ceiling towards the end of our slug. After six hours of fighting the current, Carly and I were stumbling all over the place and we definitely had some bumps and bruises to show for it.

Our guides treated us to a lovely BBQ dinner, Kiwi style  after returning from the caves – the perfect end to a wonderful day. Allan and Chris – if you’re reading this, thanks so much for the best cave adventure!

Some crazy cave locations along the underground river: The Cauldron, The Impassable Waterway, The Turbine, etc.

Windy...Rainy...Cold...Winter in June?

Ok, so Carly and I know that our updates are looooooooong overdue. We apologize for our inconsistency and would like to take this opportunity to share personal life updates seeing as we’re not together 24/7 anymore. I will bug THE HECK out of Carly for the next week so that she posts soon, too. (We all know who’s the slacker when it comes to correspondence, anyway…)

The Pinnacles!

Life in Wellington is starting to blossom as the weather gets poorer and poorer. I don’t know if it’s actually “winter” here yet, but I hope this is as cold as it gets. As I’ve told many of you already, Kiwis do not believe in central heating. Here we are, living in an hundred-year-old house (renovated, of course) freezing our little tushies off every morning we get up. Though we have space heaters in our rooms (lifesavers), I swear to you – I can see my breath every morning while I eat breakfast in the kitchen. However, I absolutely adore the place I live. Very comfortable and out of the city but still close enough to be convenient. Oh yeah – and this must be the Seattle of the Southern Hemisphere, or something. But Wellington on a nice day is heavenly!

Carly, Kate, Dave and myself!

The job! I feel like I haven’t given anyone a good explanation…I am sorry to have kept you in the dark! I work at the Ministry of Justice, which unfortunately is not related to the Ministry of Magic, though I do fancy myself a wizard every now and then.  Wooo for finding a government job! Haha! I work in Support Services, which basically exists to keep the building running and the people (around 1000 employees) happy. A few of my duties:

• -                     logging plumbing, electrical and general maintenance calls
• -                     refilling toner cartridges in the building’s printers (there are around 40 large machines)
• -                     ordering office supplies (some people can get really needy!)
• -                     setting up meeting rooms

I have to say, now that I’ve typed the list, it does sound pretty boring.  However, I really enjoy it because I am away from my desk half the day and get to interact with people in every department in the building, so I’m always talking! The work atmosphere is also fairly relaxed, and I love the ladies I work with. I do have one really cool task – taking a few mailbags over to Parliament twice a day. For those of you who have been here or know Wellington, that means going into the Beehive! How official is that?

On the friends front, Carly and I are still fighting the good fight. We hang out regularly (can anyone say weekly dinner/movie night?) with our good friend, fellow American, traveler and overall awesome person: Kate Schnippering. We met in Dunedin, where we thought we’d end up living, and managed to stay in contact. She has been living in Wellington for the last month or so but alas, she is headed to either New York or Southeast Asia in a few weeks time. We are hoping that she returns, though! Also, we were fortunate to meet Dave Pearce, the embodiment of dry British humor, during our time in Kaikoura when we were rain/clouded into our hostel for two days. It has been excellent keeping in touch with him, too! Carly and I have both made great Kiwi friends as well, and we are trying to develop those relationships as much as possible before we head back home. It’s going well!

Finally, I will post a bit about our recent outing to the Pinnacles in the Putangirua Scenic Reserve. Carly, Kate, Dave and I borrowed a car and drove the 1.5 hours out of the city to the reserve on the Palliser coast. Our intent was to travel the Dimholt Road, aka the “Paths of the Dead,” that you see in the third LOTR movie. It’s not the little gap that looks all scary and everything, but it’s the part after that, just before Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli go in the hole in the mountain. It was very beautiful, just like the movie, and there were no tourists! A win on all fronts. It’s a bit unfortunate sometimes – I have visited a few of the filming locations and they look nothing like the movie, which is understandable, but in this case it could not have been closer to the film!

We wandered a bit, ate a great packed lunch, and headed out to Cape Palliser to check out the seal colony: stinky creatures! We managed to (inadvertently…promise!) scare a few smaller ones out of a bush and watched them furlumph their way back towards the water…classic! Otherwise we encountered some dead possums hanging over a fence and then a present of deer pelts and heads left along the side of the road by some prankster hunters…sorry for those of you who are squeamish.

Deer head...

...and pelts.

A very lovely day, indeed! Tomorrow we are going to check out Brave, the new Pixar movie! Other than that, Carly and I are ruminating about our travels in November/December. We may or may not hit up SE Asia, but are definitely going to finish our tour of New Zealand and make it to Australia for friends and fun! Until next time, folks! (We promise to be more diligent about this blog…)

Flattin' It Up Karori Style

Yay for finding a place to live! We are happily settled into our great new flat in Wellington with one Kiwi girl (Jess) and one Romanian/Kiwi mutt (Crina - she’d approve the usage of the word) in Karori, a sprawling suburb west of the CBD. It’s very sunny during the day, however it gets pretty chilly at night. Central heating isn’t a prevailing installation in New Zealand. Most people use small space heaters to heat bedrooms while “heat pumps” (fan forced heaters attached to the walls) are used predominantly in the living areas. In our case, we close off the rest of the house and stay in the living room and kitchen when we turn our heat pump on to save energy. We are both looking at purchasing small heaters for our rooms, though. It’s really cold when you wake up early!!!

Our lovely flat!

Karori is great. We are on an excellent bus route – the number 3 – which runs straight into the CBD, down all the popular streets, and out to a place called Lyall Bay which is the only place anywhere near Wellington to surf. Even then, we’re not so sure how great the waves are…

Our gorgeous kitchen - dishwasher included! Definitely a step up from our last one at Wake. Also, the great thing about moving in with people: we didn't have to provide any furniture or kitchen supplies. Sounds moochy, but we contribute to the flat in labour ;)

Lucky for us, the grocery store is only a 10-minute walk down the road. The library and the pharmacy are also in the same area, and there are some cute cafes (that we haven’t yet visited) a bit further down. Being the last/first bus stop, we’re always guaranteed a seat on the bus if we don’t feel like walking! While the buses are great, they do tend to get a bit expensive – it costs about $3.50 to get into town, so while we don’t have a car, we’re still paying a decent amount for transportation.

For you people suggesting we get bikes…pshaaaaaw. Wellington is super hilly and I doubt either one of us wants to ride uphill on our way home from town. We do see lots of serious cyclists riding from our seats on the bus, though ;)

Rachel's room - yes...the mattress is still on the floor. Working on it...

Rachel's again - two doors! Weird, but awesome. Also, plenty of space for the cat to run through.

Carly's room! The bed is actually up off of the ground! Woot.

We actually cleaned our rooms for the flat photo shoot...

The conservatory - how Clue!

And our post for next time – Crina’s new kitten! There has been an addition to the flat since we arrived: an energetic little kitten named Loki that’s as cute as ever! Pictures to come!

Walking On Ice

After a scintillating 8-hour ride on a lovely, packed Newman’s coach, we arrived in Franz Josef just in time for the rain to fall. After all, NZ’s West Coast is dubbed the “Wet Coast.” The great thing? That was the only rain we saw in Franz Josef for three days…pretty unheard of taking into account that in 2011, FJ saw 265 days of rain and an annual rainfall of 12 meters. Whaaaaaaaat?

We stayed at the Rainforest Retreat, quite a lovely spot aptly named for its surroundings. Our hostel mates, however, were not so impressive. While we had great roommates each night, we learned that the major tour (aka party) buses many young foreigners use for transport dumped their hoards on our doorstep. This meant loud, drunken shouting at night and even louder, early mornings as people slammed doors and prepared for various activities…and that’s why we travel with earplugs.

Anyhoo, hooligans aside, we were not able to book the glacier walk the next day, so we did a lovely hour and a half walk along a nice trail and generally relaxed in the sunshine. Our walk took us through the rainforest to some old sluicing tunnels miners dug/blasted out in order to transport snow melt and glacier water to various places around FJ for gold panning. So fun!

The next day: our glacier walk adventure! Arriving at the glacier, we learned quite a bit about its formation and recent history. For instance, 100 years ago the glacier was visible from the sea, but due to changing weather patterns it is now 25km from the ocean…crazy! While this sounds like bad news, it is entirely possible that the glacier will advance in the future.

The glacier...named after the Austrian Franz Josef because it looked like his beard :)

Once on the ice, we were decked out with crampons – handy spikes that fit over our boots for walking on the ice without slipping/falling/dying. Our guide, Turtle, was 100% Kiwi and a total hoot. He safely maneuvered us through ice tunnels, around crevasses and holes of death while simultaneously keeping us entertained with his antics and foreign swear words he’d learned from other tourists. The day was fantastic! We had an excellent time, and the 6 hours we spent on the ice were some of the greatest we’ve had on our trip so far. Thanks so much to the Franz Josef Glacier Guides!

 

What is going on??? Oh you know, just a crevasse.

After a relaxing hour in the FJ hot pools (entrance fee included in our guiding cost) we treated ourselves to a lovely, large meal at a great café called Full of Beans, and later to a sticky toffee pudding and cider down the road at Alice May’s. Alas…exhaustion set in once again and we found ourselves in bed at 10:30.  

Queenstown: The Ben Lomond

Another beautiful day! We decided to extend our stay in Queenstown to St. Paddy’s Day! Saturday was supposed to have gorgeous weather, and who really wants to sit on a bus and waste completely perfect blue skies? After hearing great things about the Ben Lomond track from Kate and Craig, we decided it was for us. Post trauma on the Queen Charlotte, we’re only up for day walks until further notice.

What a walk though! At 6 hours and 20 minutes return, it was quite an adventure! The first three hours were solid uphill – past the gondola, through some amazing beech and pine forests, out onto the saddle and finally up the steep hour-long walk to the tippy top of the summit. These pictures we’ve posted? They don’t do the steepness of the track justice. Our downhill experience was lovely, however.

Huffing and puffing our way up the mountain!

Reaching the summit was amazing. We had a 360-degree view of Queenstown, Lake Wakatipu and the Southern Alps! Most Q-town visitors are offered a nice look at the city from the gondola platform…this was incredible and dwarfed that viewpoint. Definitely worth the climb. After a 10 minute rest, photo session and chocolate break, we headed back down to get meat pies for dinner as a reward. Coconut-curry chicken and lamb with kumara (sweet potato) finished off our evening! We attempted an obligatory St. Paddy’s Day visit into Q-town’s nightlife but were exhausted and sad to realize that everyone had already been drinking for hours and were past all points of polite, coherent conversation. Instead we turned in at 10:30pm like the college graduates we are.  

Our trail...doesn't look difficult, does it?

At the summit! Queenstown and Lake Wakatipu in the background.