jlaw

i had a week off while jeff was working in tuatapere so i decided to go on my first overnight hike by myself and do the 60km kepler track in fiordland national park. conveniently, most of the national parks in NZ have a good system of huts that you can book. the huts along the kepler track have flush toilets, potable water, bunk beds and gas stoves. this made it quite a bit easier, as i wouldn't have to carry things such as a tent, water filter, etc... i ended up just packing a daypack with my sleeping bag,4 days worth of food (locally dehydrated meals, biltong, instant oatmeal and granola bars), a minimal amount of clothing, and a headlamp. i left tuatapere on monday and drove north along the scenic highway to te anau( ~ ... read more

a beautiful drive down to tuatapere... day one: drove along the SH6 from westport to Haast left at 10:45 am...arrived 19:00pm jeff drove the entire way as i am still learning how to drive standard....(so far i can start from stop without stalling 50% of the time)... the first 100km of this drive is very beautiful and windy. lots of limesone cliffs and tropical palms along the west coast. the communities along this coast were established in the gold then coal -mining days. now they are largely tourism based. we stopped in punakaiki at the pancake rocks and blowholes... had lunch at a little cafe in greymouth...and then we headed south towards the glaciers. we took a short break to walk around franz josef glacier and then we continued onto the Fox glacier region. we heard ... read more

while we were in westport, we had a weekend off together, so we decided the inland pack track, which is a 2 day hike throughout limestone cliffs and river valleys in paparoa national park (about 45 minutes south of westport). we left early saturday morning and on the way down stopped in charleston, which is a small town that is known for its limestone caves and "glo-worms". interestingly, charleston (population 100), used to be a booming city during the gold rush. they even considered making it the capital of NZ at one point. now it is just a touristy spot along the coastal drive. we had heard from some friends about tubing in the caves...sounded interesting, so we stopped for a morning tubing/caving adventure. we learned a bit about caves and how long it takes for ... read more

instead of flying to our different placements, we decided to buy a car so we could see more of the country and make the most of our time off... on our way to westport, we took the inter-island ferry that goes from wellington to picton on the south island. this ferry takes about 3 hours. we then drove from picton to nelson where we stayed for the night. the road from picton was very windy and narrow; albeit, quite gorgeous views. picton is in the "marlborough" region which is very well known for its sauvignon blanc. nelson is a cute hippy-ish town which, interestingly, is very similar to nelson BC. we stopped at a "holiday park" for the night.. the owner was quite nice and let us leave all of our luggage there while we went ... read more

air new zealand offers free stopovers in a variety of polynesian islands, so we decided to take a little post-christmas/pre-work vacation in the cook islands. the main island is called Rarotonga. these islands are similar in longitudinal location to hawaii, except on the southern side of the equator. our flight route was from toronto to LA and then to the cook islands. upon arrival to rarotonga, we were greeted by a ukulele playing man in the airport at 6am local time. after collecting our luggage (6 checked in bags - because of heightened US security baggage rules/no carry-on luggage).... we headed off to our beach bungalow which jeff had extensively researched while we were working up north. we stayed at raina lagoon beach bungalows...and it was absolutely fabulous. we were directly on the beach and had ... read more