around the world in 180 days

Before we left Invercargill yesterday, we stopped by the DOC office and had a lovely conversation with an older lady who worked there. She told us that the Rees-Dart trek is her 2nd favorite, second to the Routeburn, which is one of the great walks and is completely booked. She also showed us a weather report, which said, in her words, that the air was turning to custard.
Apparently custard means rain in Kiwi-speak, because that’s exactly what it did, messing about with it in the afternoon, on again/off again, before settling in for a good long soak last night. The weather report looked terrible for the whole week.
Lucky for us, Rich, who we stayed with in  Wellington (thanks Beth!!), knew a very nice lady who lives in Te Anau, the gateway to the Milford Sound, one of the most beautiful and heavily visited areas of NZ. Her name is LIsa and she was kind enough to let us sleep in her spare bedroom. We’re staying at her house again tonight and, as it’s supposed to snow in the mountains and hail everywhere, we’re very grateful for her hospitality.
We spent today driving up to Milford Sound and doing day-hikes to the sides. We were ready for rain, since the air had turned to custard, but when we woke up, the sun was peeking through the clouds and there were large patches of blue sky. We took off from Lisa’s house as early as we could, determined to make the most of what little nice weather we had, expecting it to start raining at any moment.
It did rain, off and on, but for a region that gets 7 meters of rain annually (about 24 feet for us Americans) we didn’t do too bad. We made it up to Key Summit, which is a short piece along the Routeburn track, and had great mountain views in all directions. Once we were satisfied, we booked back down the hill and headed to Lake Marian, a glacial lake we could see in the distance. Two hours later, we stood on the shore, after a rough, rocky and very wet climb. The scenery was amazing, as beautiful as anything I’ve ever seen. In some ways, it reminds me of Alaska, but in some ways, it’s even more dramatic. The cliff faces are vertical in a lot of places–you can see tiny streams falling and falling down the face of the cliffs, tumbling from as high as you can see to below your feet. I tried to take some photos, but a camera can’t capture something that tremendously huge. I guess that parts of the Lord of the Rings trilogy were filmed somewhere around here, and the Southern Alps (the range we were hiking in today) was used for the Misty Mountains.
We felt pretty lucky to have such great weather after expecting to be hiking in rain. We covered two long day-hikes that we probably wouldn’t have even tried if it had been raining and we were rewarded with amazing views. Today kind of made up for that miserable hike up the Tongariro Crossing a while back. Hopefully the weather will clear for us and our trip along the Ress/Dart will be in good weather. Fingers crossed.

We hardly did anything today. We drove about 150 km,ending up in Invercargill, and saw a waterfall and a bog lake and went grocery shopping. Neither one of us slept well last night, as it was cold. Not MN cold, of course, but probably lower 40’s. Our bags are rated to 55 degrees, and they don’t really mummy up. Anna wore three shirts, long underwear, wool socks and her skirt. Today we bought her a $15 sleeping bag and me a $6 fleece blanket. We also got a cabin for tonight.
For the last few days, we’ve been trying to figure out what our other big NZ overnight trip is going to be. We realized that we only have 12 days left before we fly to SYD and lots left we want to do. A 4 day trip is 1/3 of that, a big commitment. Two trips of that length would mean missing a large area of the island.
Besides that, hiking is the bread and butter of NZ tourism and it’s priced as such. Huts on the great walks are $30 per person, per night, so for the 3 night trek we’re looking at, it’d cost us $180, plus transport costs. For hiking. The Great Walks are through some of the best scenery and have the best services–transport to and from the track, maps, etc–and are thus the most tempting. There are a few other tracks that are more difficult, both in terms of the hike itself and in terms of getting to the beginning and end and in between, but they’re not in the most prime locations and whatnot.
I think we’ve decided, though, to hike elsewhere. We’re looking at an alpine track called the Rees-Dart track, which follows the Ress river up, crosses Rees saddle at 1450 meters, and then comes down along the Dart river. It’s a 4 day trek, with day 2 having most of the ups and a good chunk of the downs. There’s 1000 meters of elevation gain, and a lady told us that after one of the uphill sections, you can’t see where you started because it’s so steep. There’s also knee deep mud if it’s been rainy and no available water on the alpine section (shich is mercifully brief). The plus is that, being more rugged, it is less used and just as beautiful as any of the great walks.
Wilderness in NZ (and probably much of the rest of the world) just isn’t enjoyed in solitude and, while we haven’t been overwhelmed with people, there are times when I just want to do a hike and not see anyone else for a half hour or so. With luck, this Rees-Dart track will give us that. Also with luck, we’ll actually be able to hike it.

We arrived in Dunedin yesterday, a town that reminds me of Duluth. As you come into town from the north, the road winds down a hill that overlooks the town and the harbor like 35 does coming down Thompson hill. We came to go to a rugby game, but we also ended up touring a brewery, visiting a museum and wandering through a couple of used book stores (which I enjoyed and Anna didn’t so much).
The rugby game was good fun. The home team (the Highlanders) won, so the crowd was in good spirits. The brewery tour was also fun, particularly the part where we drank some beer. It was Speight’s brewery, which is the beer down here, as far as regionals go. It was pretty tasty, for a large scale brewery beer.
Today, we took our time leaving town, planning on going back to the Otago Museum, as we didn’t have much time there yesterday. As we were leaving the hostel, the owner recommended we check out the farmer’s market, which we did, and we bought tons of vegetables, fruit and, oddly enough for an island with no natural mammals apart from bats, vension sausage.
Right now, we’re on our way to the Catlins, a hilly/foresty area at the very bottom of the south island. We’re driving down a bumpy gravel road to see a blowhole, if the tide isn’t too low. I’ll keep you posted on how things are. Stay tuned!

Read the rest of this entry »

Except for the weather, which was quite windy and a little rainy, yesterday was an all around great day. We stayed in the small town of Renwick, which is in New Zealand’s famous Marlbourough valley, the heart of NZ’s wine production. There are 105 vineyards in the Marlbourough area, and a good portion of them are within short biking distance of Renwick. The place we stayed at was kind enough to rent us bikes for $10 apiece; we’d checked elsewhere and the cheapest we’d found for the whole day was $50 per person–way too expensive.
Before we left to bike around and taste wine, we brought the car to the panel beaters (which is what Kiwis call auto body shops) to get an estimate on what it would cost to fix it. I’d taken the car to a place in Wellington before our ferry left and he quoted me $450–a damn fortune. We explained the situation to these guys and they went right to work, buffing out most of the mark and painting over the small area that couldn’t be buffed out. It isn’t perfect, but I bet that’s all the rental shop would have done, after charging us the full repainting price. I asked the guy what we owed him before we left and he said “no worries. Now you can tell people how nice Kiwis are.” Kiwis are very, very nice. As long as everything passes muster with the rental car people, we got the car fixed for free.
Touring the wineries was great as well. We visited about 10 over the course of the day, trying all their different varities and ending up feeling pretty good and biking a little wobbly by the end of the day. We bought a couple of bottles, nothing too expensive. We were looking (of course) for something inexpensive and good tasting. We tried many that were one or the other, but only a few that were both. I could go into depth about what kinds of wine are made here and how they differed from vineyard to vineyard, but I’m getting bored just thinking about writing it, so I won’t put you through anything like that.
Today, we drove and drove, about 2/3 of the way down the south island so we can go to a Rugby game tomorrow night in Dunedin, which is at the south of the south island. We stopped at a place that is famous for being a nesting site for a couple of different kinds of penguins. One, the yellow eyed penguin, is rare, and we saw a few of them. It was strange seeing penguins on a plain sand beach–my mind, at least, associates them with snow. I got a couple of halfway decent photos, and we might go out tomorrow morning to see if we can see them a little closer.

Yesterday was a very long day. We woke up beside the Whanganui river and slept in Wellington, which is about a 5 hour paddle and another 5 hour drive away. We’re staying with Rich, a friend of Beth’s, from Anna’s work, and we are very appreciative of the accomodations he’s offered us. It is from his computer that I am posting and it was on his floor that we slept last night, and very soundly, I might add.

Another beautiful day on the river today. We paddled through a few mild rapids, but mostly the river was slow today. We stopped for lunch at the “bridge to nowhere” which is a bridge they built after world war II, when the Crown was giving away land in this area and people were moving here in droves. Then, in the late 40’s, a depression hit NZ, the boom ended and most of the people who were here gave up and left, looking for land that was a bit easier to farm. Other than the fact that it was concrete bridge in the middle of the woods, there was nothing too remarkable about it. There was nothing too remarkable about the rest of our day, either. It was pleasant and relaxing and all of that, but we just paddled all day. Tomorrow we’re back to reality, pulling out the river and driving 5 hours to Wellington to catch our ferry to the south island on Tuesday. The hut warden at the place we stayed last night was nice enough to give us a few suggestions of places to check out, places that are a bit more off the beaten track, that might not be swarmed with people this time of year. It’s the best time to be in NZ, but unfortunately that isn’t much of a secret and 1/2 the world is here.

We are spending tonight in one of NZ’s many Department of Conservation (DOC) huts. This particular hut is about 40 kms down the Whanganui River from where we started our journey this morning and about 50 kms from where we will finish it on Monday afternoon. The Whanganui River Journey is one of NZ’s Great Walks, which is sort of like a top ten list of NZ’s best hikes.

River canoeing is a lot different from lake canoeing. The Whanganui is pretty slow; there’s no rapids stronger than a class one, but lakes don’t have any rapids at all. All our stuff is sealed up in big waterproof barrels, so when we shoot a rapid and water comes in (and it does), it doesn’t really matter too much. Our outfitter, Mark, who knows this river well enough to draw a map from memory, told us to head for the inverted V in the river, as that’s there all the water is going, so every time we come up to rough water, that’s what we look for. It’s pretty satisfying to shoot through a rough rapid without getting too wet and pretty terrifying when you make a mistake and the canoe turns a bit too much. Our people curse is still going strong; we were going through a rapid today in front of a campsite where 30 or more people were staying and I almost dumped us in the drink. We’d just switched ends of the canoe, and I was still in paddle-without-thinking mode and we nearly tipped. Scared the crap out of me.

Other than that, the river is beautiful. There’s big, slow patches where the whole river is as smooth as glass and reflects the hillsides, which are steep, and it looks incredible. This was an expensive trip, but it goes. The whole point of the trip is to have fun, do things we’ve never done before. We’ll save money in India and SE Asia and if we don’t, well, I guess we’ll see you in June.

Ok, I haven’t written in a few days because we’ve been busy doing stuff about which to write, right? We rented a car, a tiny little toyota hatchback with a 1.3 litre engine, on Wednesday and left Auckland for good. We had planned on visiting the Coromandel peninsula, which isn’t far from Auckland, stopping in particular at a place called Cathedral Cove, and then we figured we’d make it down to Taupo for the night, which is about 200 km south of the Cove. As we learned, you can’t always judge travel time by distance, because sometimes the road goes through mountains and is super twisty and trecherous. We were also dealing with the whole driving on the wrong side of the road thing, which made the drive up to Cathedral Cove nerve-wracking. If it hadn’t been so scary, the drive would have been absolutely beautiful, as it wound through mountains covered in thick rainforest type vegetation.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the problems, as we’ve discovered, with hostel dorm rooms is that it only takes one person who snores, or one person who gets up super early, or one person who comes back super late and super drunk, or, as in our case, one person who stinks like a damn monkey. This guy is terrible. For those of you who remember him, this guy puts Stinky Kyle to shame and I’m talking by a long shot. He’s in a whole different league. He’s playing a different game. It’s disgusting. I’m glad we’re leaving tomorrow.

Ok, Justin, since you asked so politely, here is my fair-trade rant.

Picking coffee is hard work. We spend 1/2 day doing it and it was fun, but believe me, it was nice to be done and back at Bartola’s for a nice big lunch. We picked a relatively small plot of land and got bug bites, scratches and very tired. People who pick coffee for a living don’t get to stop at noon. Often, they don’t get to stop after 8 hours and they don’t get paid minimum wage, either. They pick and they pick and they pick, for 12 hours a day, every single day, for almost nothing, just so they can feed their kids. It’s a tough life, but what are they going to do? Starve to death?

Of course not. They work, just like you or I or anyone else. This is where fair trade coffee comes in. Fair trade coffee is coffee sold at a price that allows workers to stop working after 10 hours instead of 12 (I made the numbers up, but you get the idea). Fair trade allows coffee pickers to earn a living, spend some time with their family and enjoy their life.

Sure, there’s probably a million cold economists out there who will say that the free market has decided that a coffee picker’s labor is only worth so much and too frickin’ bad if that ain’t enough to raise a family. Don’t pick coffee, right? Well, that’s not a choice for a lot of people. It’s pick coffee for slave wages or starve.

So, at least to me, it’s worth a couple extra bucks a pound of coffee to know that I’m not exploiting some poor schmuck who’s been exploited all his life. In the US, $2 isn’t much, but in places like Guatemala, it’s a fortune. It’s your decision, but next time you reach for that can of folgers, THINK OF THE CHILDREN!! WHY WON’T YOU THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!!