Team A2
Adrian & Angelique Joined: September 29th 2009
Logged in: November 25th 2011
Logged in: November 25th 2011
Travel Blog Posts
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After nearly six months on the road we are heading home. Today we will drive from Rotorua to Auckland and catch our 12-hour (direct!) flight back to San Francisco. We love that we leave Auckland at 7:30pm and arrive in SF at 11:45am - on the same day. Tallying up the numbers, we've: - Been on the road 163 days, just under six months - Visited 10 countries: Japan, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Burma, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand - Taken 20 flights, with Burma taking the prize for most flights/country. We had a lot of amazing experiences (riding elephants in Laos, being blessed by an 83-year old Buddhist monk in a region bombed heavily by the CIA, watching the sun rise over ancient temples in Burma and Cambodia, hiking in New Zealand's magnificent national ... read more
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We decided to end our New Zealand odyssey on a high note. We both love the outdoors and hiking is one of our favorite activites. Today we hiked in the northern reaches of Abel Tasman National Park. It was one of the best hikes that we've ever done - period. Despite being the smallest of the national parks in New Zealand, Abel Tasman is arguably the most stunning - a wonderful mixture of lush rainforest and pristine white sand beaches. Tourists and locals alike flood Abel Tasman during the busy summer months (December through February) but in March the number of visitors declines despite the mild fall weather. One of the best things about Abel Tasman NP is that the park is extremely accessible - no hiking for days into a remote wilderness with GPS units ... read more
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One of the main reasons that we are touring New Zealand for three months is to determine if we might want to live here someday. We definitely want to live outside the U.S. at least once, preferably two or more times, before we kick the bucket. Right now, New Zealand is a top contender. Perhaps it is the similarities between New Zealand and California - we can't help comparing the two. Both locations can claim plenty of sun, sand, wine, and mountains. Both places are populated with outdoor enthusiasts. Both places also are centers for alternative lifestyles, from hippies (current or ex) to Libertarians who just want to be left alone, dammit! Of all of the regions of New Zealand, the one that feels most familiar, most like small-town California, is the northern part of the ... read more
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Keas are mountain parrots, found only in New Zealand (in fact, they're the only parrot in the world which lives in an alpine environment). Here's why they're fun: they're very, very smart. And very cheeky (translation: bold, irreverent). We first came across keas during our Milford Sound trek, three years ago. On the last morning of the hike, we woke up to find a kea trying to get into the bunkhouse. He was determined to do it, inspired perhaps by visions of lining his nest with the softest synthetic REI sleeping bag filler material - or maybe he just wanted our PowerBars. We were effectively hostages, trapped in our bunkhouse prison (keas have long, sharp claws and are not to be messed with). When Adrian approached the door, with 18 other people looking on in awe/slight ... read more
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There is something about being around danger (bungy jumping, sky diving, paraglding, etc) that makes you crave a martini. Fortunately, The Bunker, a hip little bar in Queenstown, makes an excellent lychee martini (one of Angelique's favorite memories of SE Asia) and quite a good Manhattan (Adrian's signature drink). Our three weeks in the Queenstown/Fiordland area have been simply amazing, some of the best weeks of our entire trip. In our fantasy world we'd spend a month or two here every year (during the summer or fall only; Angelique is a terrible skier and Adrian doesn't exactly love snow either). Who knows, maybe we can make that fantasy a reality when we are a bit older. The hiking opportunities here are unparalled. We've spent most of our time since arriving in Queenstown on trails. We've had ... read more
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Our New Zealand word of the day is once again . . . "REMOTE". And with good reason. Here is yet another entry about just how away-from-it-all you can get in this country. If you have been to New Zealand, then you already know that Milford Sound is one of the top tourist attractions. It is located in Fiordland National Park, a 4-5 hour drive from Queenstown. As the park's name implies, Milford Sound is actually a fiord and not a sound (a fiord is a valley carved by a glacier that is filled with water from the sea; a sound is the same but carved by a river). Here is what to expect on your visit to Milford Sound. It will look like a big pretty lake with glimmering blue waters surrounded by tall rocky ... read more
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Our good friend Sarah has joined us for a week in Queenstown. True to form, in just over one week, Sarah managed to see half of the North Island and a good part of the South Island before zooming into Queenstown to meet up with us. One evening last July, Sarah stopped by our house in San Francisco. We drank wine, ate pizza and talked about New Zealand. She said she was very interested in visiting New Zealand while we in residence and, since we all love hiking, quickly agreed to do a tramping (trekking) trip with us. We arbitrarily picked a date in February (typically the month with the best weather on the South Island) and made reservations for the popular Routeburn Track, one of the nine "Great Walks" of New Zealand. A word about ... read more
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Queenstown is on nearly every New Zealand visitor's itinerary and for good reason: bungy jumping was invented in Queenstown and the town bills itself as the "Adventure Capital of the World". When we visited New Zealand in 2007 we weren't interested in hurling ourselves off bridges attached to fortified rubber bands, or maiming (or just terrifying) ourselves in other ways, so Queenstown was only allotted one day in our itinerary. Before we rolled into town in 2007 we thought Queenstown would probably be an ugly town crammed with tacky souvenir shops and dive bars advertising wet T-shirt contests. How wrong we were. Yes, Queenstown has loads of bars and plenty of shops selling sheep keychains and possum fur nipple warmers (don't ask) but it is also a positively stunning little town (population around 10,000). Queenstown is ... read more
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Aoraki is the Maori name for Mt. Cook. Mt. Cook is the tallest mountain in New Zealand, at 12,316 feet, and one of the places where Sir Edmund Hillary (then just "Ed") began his illustrious mountaineering career. Mt. Cook is snow-capped year round and is flanked by two large glaciers (named Tasman and Hooker). Mt. Cook is part of the Southern Alps, a long mountain range on the South Island that generally runs north-south. Local Maori tribes see Mt Cook as the physical manifestation of the most sacred of ancestors which provides the iwi (tribe) with its sense of communal identity, solidarity and purpose. As such, Aoraki is the link between the supernatural and the natural world. It is said (in New Zealand) that you never forget the first time you see Mt. Cook. For us, ... read more
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We have a new addition to our travel party: Angelique's mom, Nancy Regan (yes, that's her real name). It's Nancy's first trip to New Zealand and, in fact, her first trip outside the United States. With all of her passport stamps in order, she's joined us for our last two days in Wellington and will be with us for the next week. Nancy's visit coincides with one of our roadtrips and so we'll be able to show her quite a lot of the South Island. As we've mentioned before, our master plan for New Zealand is to base out of four cities. Queenstown is our next base but it is several hundred kilometers south of Wellington and so we've planned a very fun four-day roadtrip to get there. We left Wellington early on the morning of ... read more
