My little sister has a blog...and it's pretty damn good

I'm going to start this post off by quoting my sister, Val:

"(We) grew up in a Christian household; born to a devout Catholic father and a Lutheran mother who eventually became the pastor of a Protestant church. The household wasn’t strict per se, but there was a standard in our behaviour which we were expected to live up to. You share, you thank, you participate, you try, you learn, you do, and under no circumstance should you ever, ever swear."

Even today, at 32, I refrain from "cussing" around my mother.  I censor myself quite a bit, both in person, and online for fear of offending mom and her position.

Val, on the other hand, has bravely gone a completely different route and gone so far as starting a blog all about the joys, wonders and versitilty of words of the swearing variety.

So check it out to get your fill of all the "Bad Talk" you can handle.  It's early days yet, but I have a feeling it's going to be fucking good (sorry mom!)



The awesome bitch behind the blog (sorry Val!)



Waiting for the snow

I never thought I’d be complaining about a warmer-than-average winter, but here I am, doing just that.

It’s now nearly three weeks into this New Zealand winter and there is zero snow on the ground.  This usually wouldn’t bother me, but my (very modest) livelihood depends on the white stuff for the next few months.

Treble Cone is supposed to open on Thursday, but that’s looking extremely unlikely at this point, which is very disappointing for a few reasons.  For one thing, it means I am going to be very broke very soon L. For another, after a few days of training, and having met my excellent colleagues, I’ve been looking forward to getting to work.

And of course, it will be fun to get out on the slopes – though after seeing the steepness of the mountain, my lack of experience and skills is rather worrying. Luckily, I get discounted lessons, and I intend to take advantage of that.

Other than training, I haven’t been very busy since I got back to Wanaka.  Before moving into my new home, (woot!) I spent a lot of time hanging out at a hostel watching movies, doing crossword puzzles and crocheting. I also did a bit of walking, trolled the op shops (second hand shops) for much-needed warm clothing, and watched a friend jump out of a plane (I was almost tempted to join him…almost).

I also went on an impromptu trip to Queenstown where I played Frisbee golf, ate a Furgburger, attempted to climb the very steep hill near town (gave up about a third of the way up), and earned a $25 drinks tab at a bar just for having a tattoo (woo hoo!).

Now I have two more days of training then hopefully I’ll start work.  Fingers crossed!

My new room.

My new lounge.

Beau lands after his skydive.

My drinks voucher.

I just threw a frisbee...you just can't see it.

Airline travel woes

Here is how the last 36 hours were supposed to go:

Sunday morning: wake up refreshed and spring out of bed.  Eat breakfast. Say tearful goodbyes to friends in Mount Manganui. Go toTauranga and attend mom and Roger's BBQ via Skype. 

Sunday afternoon: Take bus to Auckland and find way via shuttle to airport.

Sunday night: sleep in airport between 9:00 and 5:00 a.m.

Monday morning: take 7:00 a.m. flight to Queenstown, arrive by 9:00 then make my way to Wanaka via shuttle two hours later.

Monday afternoon.  Take nap,

Monday night: get organized for my first day of training (tomorrow)

Instead, this is what really happened

Sunday morning: Woke up groggy and sleep deprived after spending most of the night stressing about life in general. Eat breakfast. Say tearful goodbyes to friends in Mount Manganui. Go toTauranga and attend mom and Roger's BBQ via Skype.  (at least that part was good)

Sunday afternoon: Took bus to Manukau, spent two hours wandering around a mall with about 20 kg attached to my back, in desperation went to see a movie just to kill time.  On leaving the theatre, I discovered that I didn't know how to get to the shuttle pick up anymore (the mall halls were all blocked).  Luckily a nice couple saw me looking confused and offered to drive me -- all the way to the airport no less!  Nice!  At this point I thought my luck was running high.

Sunday night: slept in airport on and off between 1 and 4 a.m. Woke up groggy and ill tempered.

Monday morning:  checked into my flight at 5:30 a.m., went to gate, was told at 6:55 that said flight is cancelled.  Oh, and the next flight out is fully booked!  So I have to either wait until Tuesday to fly out (if the weather improves, of course) or take a flight to Christchurch and then be bused 8 hours to Queenstown.  I opted for the second option so I could make it to Wanaka in time for training at 9:00 tomorrow morning.  I was assured that I shoudl have no problems getting to Wanaka tonight cause the bus was going to go through Wanaka on its way to Queenstown.  "Great!"  I thought.
Flew to Christchurch. Found out that bus does not, in fact, go via Wanaka.  But at least there's a shuttle service.  "That;s fine!" I thought.

Monday afternoon: Took 8-hour bus ride to Queenstown with an annoying tour group from China who ate smelly sushi, talked super loud, chewed with their mouths open and farted most of the way.  Found out on arrival that -- Surprise! -- no buses are running tonight! So not only am I stuck in Queenstown, I am operating on approximately 6 hours of sleep over the past 48, and I am also going to be missing my first day of training after all. I nearly started to cry when I found out.

I am sooooo mad.  I wish I'd just decided this morning to wait until tomorrow's flight and I could have had a relaxing day in Auckland (I think they were goign to put me up in a hotel had I stayed).  Instead I'm so tired that I am having trouble focusing on anything, I'm ultra bitchy, and all for nothing -- My next training day isn't until Friday, so there's really no reason for me to be here yet.

Sorry for the whine.  I just needed to vent and the tought of actually talking to a human being right now is awful.

Vacationing on the North Island

On the early morning of May 25^th, Christchurch shook some of its residents awake.  I had already gotten out of bed – I had a 7:00 a.m. bus to catch and had woken up early – but I didn’t feel a thing. Not sure why. Oh well. 

In any case, catch my bus I did and I was off to Blenheim.  There were five reasons for me to return there, and all of them were conveniently living under one roof: Hannah, Laura, Ben, Nathan and Kim.  Still in town awaiting the start of pruning, they’ve moved out of Koanui and into a house that they’ve furnished quite nicely. Though it had only been a few weeks since I’d seen them (and only a week and a half since I’d seen Hannah), it felt like much more. I was great to be with the gang again.

Two movies, one trip to the library, a somewhat disastrous attempt at making pizza (hint: “tomato sauce” in NZ means “ketchup”), one short night, and a yoga session later, I had to take my leave. It was hard to say goodbye, but I had a good reason to head out – Leah was waiting for me in Wellington!

Yet another ex-Koanuite, Leah is a Canadian Christian-hippy-outdoorswoman, and she’s awesome.  She’d left Blenheim a month ago to travel around South-East-Asia, and was back in NZ.  She had been staying with her sister in Wellington but was itching to head North to Tauranga and the kiwi orchards.  When she suggested I meet up with her in the capital city and travel up together, I jumped at the chance.  

Wellington's harbourfront has a strangely placed hopscotch thingy.  We played.  Leah won. :(

Over the course of three days, we made our way from Wellington to Tauranga via Taihape (a tiny spot on the map), Taupo and Rotorua.  It was a fun journey; we saw someone warming up to attempt a world record bike jump (he did it too!  Triple back flip http://www.biketaupo.org.nz/content/view/606/1/), splashed around in a hot spring, met a helicopter pilot who’s coworker was flying Peter Jackson around the Tongariro area (lucky!) and even saw some trout trying to spawn up a waterfall (cool!)

One tiny section of Okere Falls.  That's where we saw the fish spawning. 

Leah in the mists of a steaming Rotorua pool in the park.

One of the foot baths in the park.

Some dude doing a crazy flip.

Leah in Taupo's hot spring

 But the best part of the journey was the destination: the new home of six other friends from Blenheim. Aline, Andrea, Sinead, Joe/Adrienne, Hiroshi and Rob have set themselves up in a nice apartment (though condo is a more apt description) in gorgeous, beachy Mount Manganui (which is basically a suburb of Tauranga).  It’s très sweet here. 

The others (including Leah now) are all working on the kiwi orchards, picking now, pruning later.  I’ve been enjoying their company while their around, and enjoying my solitude while they aren’t.

Over the past two days I’ve walked at least 25km while exploring the town and searching out the best deal for a ski jacket ($159, as it turns out). I’ve also hiked up Mount Manganui again, and even gone for a (very short) dip in the ocean – which is great, considering June 1^st marks the first official day of winter here.  Crazy! And how did I celebrate?  By sunbathing on the beach J

Leah on the beach.

The beach from the top of Mount Manganui.

Perched precariously on a rock on top of Mount Manganui.

A quick visit to Post-Quake Christchurch

On May 22^ndI rolled into Christchurch.  Coincidently, it was the day of the predicted rapture and exactly three months to the day after this city was rocked by a huge quake. Though I paid no heed to the rapture talk, I was a little nervous to see what state Christchurch was in after two big quakes in less than six months. (If you remember, I was here in October and had expected to see rubble and mayhem then.  Luckily, for the most part, that was not the case.)

Once again, I was delightfully surprised that things weren’t as bad as I’d imagined. Don’t get me wrong, things aren’t great;  Big chunks of the central part of the city are still inaccessible, many buildings bear “Do not enter” signs, and heaps of businesses have yet to reopen. Hundreds of people lost their lives, and thousands others are still living with the effects of that quake, so I’m not diminishing the level of destruction or suffering that Christchurch has seen. I was just happy to see that life is indeed going on, most buildings are still standing and many businesses are up and running.  It was good to see.

I didn’t get up to much, other than wander the streets and take pictures of some of the hardest-hit areas (the ones I could get to, anyway).  I also delighted in visiting different supermarkets (I know, I know, Loser) and other shops, since Wanaka isn’t exactly teeming with stores.  Of course, the Botanical Gardens are as gorgeous as ever, so I spent a happy hour revisiting some of my favourite trees and watching the ducks play in the river.  When you’re broke and in a broken (but on the mend!) city, you make your fun where you can find it.

Christchurch has/had a lot of churches, and they seemed to be the buildings that suffered the worst damage.

Broken glass was still on the ground outside this office building.  No idea if it was from vandals or the quake.

As close as I could get to the heart of downtown. Cathedral Square is just beyond that white building, if I'm not mistaken.

I was glad to see that this archway is still standing.  It was one of the first things I photographed when I first got to NZ back in 2004.

Random destroyed apartment building.

Many areas downtown are cordonned off by chainlink fences, and of course many of these have become memorials.  Interestingly, this was the most colourful, elaborate and extensive one I saw.  It's outside the Arts Centre where the Dux Delux microbrewery and pub once stood.  They've left a bunch of duck-shaped papers with handy ties in a folder on the fence so people can add their own notes.  Inki had brought me to this pub back in October, and it was quite good, so I left a note myself (not picture here though).

The sidewalks were pretty bumpy in places.  You could see where it had likely roiled and waved up during the quake.  This is one of the most dramatic examples I saw.

Another shell of a church.

The pretty fountain in the Botanical Gardens was working just fine though. :)

A plan for my last four months...

I’m currently in Wanaka, my favourite town in the country, and I just found out yesterday that I got a job at one of the ski hills here, which I’m really excited about.  Apparently they had over 1200 applicants for only 100 positions, so I’m feeling pretty proud to have gotten it.  From the end of June ‘til the end of August, I’ll be selling tickets and working the gates – nothing too revolutionary, but it should be fun cause I’ll be working with people from all over the world, and I get a free season’s pass and heaps of discounts around town.  Yay!

After that, I’ll only have about a week or two left on my working holiday visa (where have eight months gone???), which kind of sucks.  I’m torn, cause the uncertainty of what I was doing was both exhilarating and terrifying.  To have the rest of my official time here mapped out is kind of comforting, yet sad.

As for beyond September, I have some decisions to make.  I can get a tourist visa which will allow me stay here another three months, but I won’t be able to work, so any money I have left, will be drained away, especially since the Rugby World Cup is taking place in NZ during September and October, and as a result, hostels will likely balloon from about $25 a night to nearly $60 a night (yikes!). 

Or, I could head home for a few months where I could maybe work and make some money in preparation for school here in January.  But that means two winters in a row…not a fun prospect.

And then there’s the question of what to do with the car.  Gandalf has been good to me, but as I’ve mentioned before, he needs a new timing belt which will likely cost me $800-$1000, and really, I don’t really need a car anymore if I’m staying in one place for the foreseeable future.  My options are to either sell Gandalf cheap now, or fix him up  and sell him at a better price later (people reckon that before the World Cup lots of tourists will be in the market for cheap cars).

So many things to think about.

For now though, I have two weeks to kill before training starts for work, and I’d rather not spend them here.  So, I think I’ll head back up north to visit some of the old Blenheim crew – some of them are up in Tauranga on the North Island and others are still in Blenheim.  I’m going to leave Gandalf parked here in Wanaka and make my way by share rides and buses (cheaper and less stressful than driving a car in need of a new timing belt), and maybe even fly back (how extravagant of me!).

The Routeburn Track in the sun and the rain and the snow

Those of you who know me would probably agree that I’m neither a girly-girl nor a great outdoorswoman.  I’m somewhere in between.  I enjoy the outdoors, but not encountering much of the creatures that reside there; I do my best to avoid mosquitoes, bears, coyotes, wolves and the like.  One of the many many things that I enjoy about New Zealand is that, other than the mosquitoes and the overly friendly sandflies, none of the creatures here are inclined to chomp down on human flesh.

Therefore, I explore the kiwi backcountry with much more gusto and vigour than I do in Canada (in other words, I do explore it here, whereas I don’t at home). It had been a while, but this past weekend I laced up my hiking shoes, shoved my sleeping bag, rain gear, camera, and a bunch of instant noodles into my backpack, and hit the trails.

It was all last minute.  A Canadian girl I’d met briefly last week in Franz Josef was at the same hostel as Hannah and I in Queenstown.  She and three other people she had just met were doing the Routeburn Track Friday through Sunday and she invited me along.  As Hannah was leaving on Friday, and I had nothing to do until Monday (when I had an interview with Treble Cone in Wanaka), I was happy to accept the invitation.

In hindsight, it might have been a good idea to put a bit more thought into logistics before agreeing to come along. 

You see, it’s mid-fall here, and “here” is pretty far South (which in this hemisphere means, it’s colder), and the Routeburn is in a mountainous area that has been known to get snow even in the height of summer. Do you see where I’m going with this?

And remember those hiking shoes I put in my bag? Yeah.  Shoes.  Not boots.  Not warm, and definitely not waterproof.  And that sleeping bag?  It cost me all of $40 and was meant for summer use, and even then its effectiveness at keeping me warm is less than optimal.  And the rain gear? Turns out much of the properties that at one time made it waterproof no longer apply (that was a nice surprise in Saturday’s downpour, let me tell you). And my camera?  Well, one hour into the first day, my batteries died. And my backup set?  Yeah, they were dead too.  Greeeeaaaat.

Nonetheless, I had a great time.  I was hiking with Aki and Lavilla from Canada, Rahki from England, and Eddie from Germany.  We also met Andrew from Oz, Dermud from Ireland, Nathalie from Switzerland, a dozen Americans doing an outdoor leadership course, and a bunch of other random people along the way.

The Routeburn is a 32 km, three-day hike and we slept two nights in huts spaced about four hours apart along the track. We climbed from about 700m to 1255m of altitude, then back down.  The entire way we were surrounded by majestic mountains and pristine waterfalls and beautiful forest. When the clouds broke, the views were stunning.  Unfortunately, for much of Saturday, when we were at the peak of the track, the mountains were shrouded in grey clouds and the rain rarely let up. We were all rather soaked and cold when we reached the hut that night.

And what about those huts?  Well, even in the summer, they’re basic (unsurprising, as they’re at the top of a flipping mountain).  In the fall and winter, they cross the line into positively rustic.  I won’t lie – I was rather uncomfortable at times.  It wasn’t the lack of light (the sun sets at 5:30 these days), or the fact that we had only a single outhouse (one didn’t even have TP) to be shared among 30+ trampers, or the cosy sleeping quarters – those were fine.  It was the cold that was killing me.  I really wasn’t prepared for that.  A few days ago, it was 20 degrees in nearby Queenstown and I was wearing a t-shirt and capris. Up on the Routeburn, even at noon we could see our breath indoors and all we had was a wood stove in a massive room to keep hypothermia at bay. I seriously considered hiking back down and try my hand at hitchhiking at one point. 

Luckily, the fire did its job and by sleeping directly next to the stove while wearing two pairs of thermal pants and socks, and about five layers on my upper body, I managed to not only get comfortable, but sleep soundly.  Phew!

Day three started off beautifully – the sun was shining and the snow-topped peaks around us were positively sparkling (the huts were all in these really stunning locations). By 1:30 though, the temperature plummeted and the pretty, light snow that had been falling all morning suddenly turned into that heavy, slushy stuff that sticks to everything and makes even the cheeriest of souls downtrodden. I only had to hike in it for an hour, so it wasn’t bad (and I had resorted to wearing plastic shopping bags over my socks which kept my feet somewhat dry – sexy).

I was so happy to get to the Divide: the end of the track and the pickup point for the bus.  Unfortunately, the moderate snow we were having on our (inland) side of the mountain range was evidently extremely heavy on the other (coastal) side, and that was the side the bus was coming from.  We spent a tense hour and 15 minutes waiting for said bus after hearing that the road was closed and that, if the weather didn’t break, it might not make it at all and we might have to camp out again.  Scary.

Fortunately, after a time, the snow plows did their job, and the bus did show up (I literally nearly hugged the driver).  So I was able to shower (oh my goodness did I ever need it), eat a hot, non-instant-noodle meal, enjoy a cold beer, and sleep in a warm room.  Double phew.

Now, I really wish I had a bunch of photos to share with you all, but I only managed to take a few in on my first day, and (after rearranging the batteries a few times) two on days two and three.  Luckily, I've managed to grab some pictures off of Aki and Lavilla.  Tripple Phew!

Lavailla, Rahki, me, Aki and Eddie

Mackenzie Hut, where we spent our second night.  This was the calm before the snow storm.

One of the many waterfalls along the track.

Andrew, me, Aki, Nathalie and Durmid trying to stay warm at Mackenzie Hut.

Before heading out on our last leg of the walk.



The drying station at Mackenzie.  There were 30+ pairs of boots and shoes and countless items of clothing drying here.  It wasn't the best smelling place in the world.



Mossy!

A less-than-perfect attempt at a self portrait.

The view from the Routeburn Falls hut, night one.

My sexy hiking atire on day three.