Weekend adventures...

I have been very fortunate lately to have had the opportunity to travel for the past couple of weekends. I spent Easter weekend with a few friends in the Fiordland. We stayed in Te Anau, which is a small town that borders a lake. For two of the days, we hiked part of the Kepler Track and splurged for the other day to go sea kayaking in Milford Sound. After I recovered from the 6:45 am departure, the day went perfectly. For an area of the country known for insane amounts of rain (over 7m per year) we really lucked out and had a perfectly sunny day, not a cloud in site. The sea kayaking was a great way to see the sound (the other option being on a boat with hundreds of other people). Not only were there only 8 of us plus a guide, you really get a sense of the immense scale of things from paddling at the water level. At one point our guide pointed out a waterfall and asked us how far we thought it was. The guesses ranged from about 1 km to 3 km when in reality the waterfall was 9 km away. Our guide also pointed out that amusingly, Milford Sound is misnamed, for it is actually a fjord. In all fairness though, they did name the national park in which it resides Fiordland, but they spelt it wrong replacing the j with an i. On a scarier note, he also informed us that New Zealand, and more specifically the area we were kayaking in, was about 40 years over due for a massive earthquake (expected to be above an 8 on the Richter scale). Apparently the tension is building up in the Alpine Fault and an earthquake is just waiting to happen. Oh Joy. However, it didn’t really sink in for me and I merely focused upon soaking in the sun and the stunning view. Overall, I would highly recommend that anyone visiting the south island of NZ go to Milford Sound. The pictures really don’t do it justice.

After arriving back in Dunedin on Tuesday, I had only a few days to recover because the following weekend, some friends and I were signed up for a sailing course on the Otago harbor. Despite spending my childhood summers surrounded by water I have never had the opportunity to try sailing. It was awesome. The first day there was a rather gentle wind, which picked up slowly throughout the day as we gained confidence. However, Sunday morning was possibly the calmest day in Dunedin since I arrived here. We ended up all attaching to the instructor’s motorboat and he towed us down the harbor to another bay. Although it was beautifully sunny and very relaxing, it was not exactly exciting. Having said that, after lunch the wind picked up to about 15-18 knots (which I assume will mean nothing to most of you as it did for me, but essentially it meant that there were waves with white caps big enough to crash over the edge of my boat). I have never had an abs workout quite like that. I spent the afternoon hanging with most of my body outside my boat trying desperately not to capsize. At one point in the harbor there were wind gusts that exceeded 20 knots and it is at this point that I capsized. My boat actually managed to flip 180 degrees. So here I am standing on the bottom of my boat trying to pull up the dagger board so I can try and right my boat all the while I had a great big smile on my face, as I glance over at my friends and saw that they were in the same position. Exhausted, I managed to right my boat. I left that day worn out, but with a desire to go sailing again, which I suppose was the goal of the course.

The following weekend, Eve and I rented a car and with many last minute changes ended up with my flatmate, Charles, off to the west coast. With all out very last minute planning, we didn’t get out of the city till about 4:30 pm.

And then began the slightly non-legal shenanigans.

The car rental screwed up and gave us a manual car and because Eve and I are restricted to automatics, Charles ended up driving the entire way. We pushed the speed limit a bit on our way up to Christchurch. We arrived in Christchurch at about 9 pm and decided to stop for dinner. Upon returning to where we parked the car, we realized that there was a parking meter that we didn’t notice. For a heart stopping moment we thought the car had been towed until it dawned on us that we had parked a block down. So on we drove across the mountains to the west coast. Now there is some things that I must clarify about NZ highways (if you can call them that). NZ roads are:

- two lanes at the most and often go down to one lane just for fun
- most bridges are one lane. Essentially, one direction has the right of way, but for bridges that are also shared with trains they naturally have the right of way.
- Shoulders are non-existent (OK, well there is about 10 cm on either side)
- They are the windiest road and are constantly going up and down hills (imagine a never ending Groat Road)
- Because of the curviness of the road, the speed limit is often restricted to 55 km/h or 35 km/h there were even times when the speed dropped to 15 km/h (on their HIGHWAYS).
- At intersections the person turning right (across traffic) has the right of way

- Oh, and they drive on the LEFT side of the road!

So driving was a bit more stressful than it is back home. Charles was very calm about it (except for that one time we turned into oncoming traffic…). As things tend to go when Eve and I travel, we took a wrong turn. As a consequence, we added another 150 km to our already extremely long trip. Long story short, we got into our hostel at 4 am in the poring rain (after killing a few possums along the way) and were locked out.

I was not about to spend the night in the cramped car, and thus began the search for ways into a room. We checked under all the mats (it was a motel style hostel) hoping they may have left us a key - sadly they didn’t. After wandering around all the rooms, we discovered an empty room with two single beds in it. Desperate times call for desperate measures, right? Well, I thought so, and thus began the process of playing with the lock to the window. And voila, a couple of minutes later I officially committed breaking and entering, but was able to open the window so we could get in and get some sleep. At the time, I think my conscious was too tired to consider the consequences of my actions but I knew we had paid for three beds and so didn’t dwell upon it. The next morning we talked to the manager and walked away without any problems (I may have told her the window was open, but that’s just trivial details).

That day we drove down the beautiful costal highway and stopped in Punakaiki to take a look at the pancake rocks. Essentially, the water has eroded these rocks into stacked layers that look like - go figure - stacked pancakes. The blowholes were really unexpected. I was walking along the cliffs well above the water level and suddenly was being sprayed with ocean water.

That night we took a mini hike around Lake Matheson to get a view of Mount Cook & Mount Tasman. Sadly, the clouds covered the peaks for the most part, but we did get a beautiful sunset. The following day, we hiked up to the Franz Josef glacier. Here again, we kinda pushed the limits and continued on past the trail to the base of the glacier. There are ropes that attempt to prevent you from doing this, however, seeing how there were numerous tour guides about to climb the glacier doing the very same thing, I wasn’t too concerned. The warning signs were greatly amusing more than anything else. To finish off the weekend road trip, we drove home through the beautiful countryside for a total of over 1700 km in three days. Thankfully we had a rental car plan with unlimited km.

The best part of all this traveling is that I have also managed to stay on top of my schoolwork. I have completed a couple major assignments, one of which I actually had to get bound because the 50+ pages were too much to staple.

Anyways, I should really get back to my readings because Eve and I are off to Able Tasman for the next week! Hope you are all doing well and are just as satisfied with life as I am.

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