A Year in Review

It was a wet, but balmy night in Auckland tonight. Having spent the last few months in the crisp, cold alpine environment of the South Island, it was a reminder that Spring has arrived bringing warmth and new life to the rolling hills of Aoteroa. 

By sheer luck and the fact that New Zealand really is a small country, we ran into our Aussie ski patrol friend Joel as we were perusing the busy main drag of Auckland today. We decided to grab dinner and a drink this evening--a much better send off than spending it alone in our little hostel dorm room.

As we walked down to the harbor we were trying to recall our last memory of the place--a bit difficult as it was almost a year ago when we were last here. How much we have done and seen to fill that year in-between is almost too much to fathom at once. A full year of memories, and places, and experiences, and people.

I can hardly believe how the time has flown by. I still remember that feeling of trepidation and excitement when we first landed that October morning--gathering up our belongings from the airport and starting our life here. It would be filled with the multitude of events and encounters that make life so exciting. It would test and elate us the way only travel and adventure can--taking us from a place of comfort to one of uncertainty--but then once again reminding us, when once again everything worked out--that we would be okay. That we could find comfort even in a place so foreign from our own experiences. That even thousands of miles away from everything we knew, a place at first so different could come to feel like home. And it did. 

Leaving now feels like leaving an old friend. One whom we get to know so well and spent so much time with; one that we are sad to leave so soon. But alas, as much as we would like to stay, that temptress adventure calls us to somewhere new. To continue our discovery of the world. 

Leaving, as always, is bittersweet as there are so many things and places and people we will miss.

As a reflection of this year, I would like to share a few things I am sad to leave behind.

I will miss New Zealand's capacity to reveal stunning landscape by simply driving from one place to the other. Rolling green hills interspersed with mountain ranges and lush forest, separated by flat grassland and rivers and lakes, bordered by beaches with neighboring rocky cliffs. It truly is one of the most beautiful countries in the world. 

(I won't however, miss those roads that wound and rose steeply between said stunning landscapes--detracting from the beauty due to the fact that you weren't concentrating on the outside but trying hard not to vomit).

I will miss the feeling of disappearing into the little remote pockets of the country, of surrounding yourself in nature and feeling like you could be the only person in the world. The pristine beauty of New Zealand's most remote places is truly special.

I will miss the people. The wonderful, kind-hearted, genuine Kiwi people whose hospitality is unrivaled so far and whose dry humor and ability to laugh at themselves is so wonderfully refreshing. There are not many places  in the world where you meet someone and on that same day or hour they invite you to their house for a barbeque. Or they give you their address and tell you to come stay with them if you ever pass through. Or they let you, a complete stranger, sleep on their floor when your car has broken down on their front lawn.  Just how much the people we've met here have enriched our experience is beyond measure. 

I will miss the spirit of New Zealand. A small island nation, yet proud and determined to be self-sufficient. Aware of the world beyond, but happy just to occupy their small corner. Wonderfully resilient and supportive and optimistic--even in the face of crisis. A nation that strives to retain it's important cultural heritage and incorporate it into modern culture and everyday life. That strives to strike a peaceful balance between the ones who were here before and those who are here now. Watching the All Blacks perform the Haka--the pride and reverence for New Zealand history that it evokes.

Also, I will miss the pizza. Yes, not simply the food--which was also pretty good--but more specifically the pizza. The US has not yet caught onto the fact that venison, barbeque sauce and onions; or garlic, feta, lamb, and cranberry sauce; or chicken, potato, caramelized onion, and plum sauce are all DELICIOUS on a pizza. Seriously, they are amazing.

Oh and L&P. . . . . . .. I'm REALLY going to miss L&P. 

Although I won't miss the exchange rate, or the petrol prices, or the very limited internet. Though in a way it was a good thing, not being SO connected to the outside world but rather enjoying what was there--the company of good friends, the calming presence of a beautiful view.

But, for all the cons and complaints peppered through my relay of our time here, it's not something I would ever give up or exchange for something different. 

As a favorite saying of mine goes, "If it's good, it's great, if it's bad it's experience." Overall, it was a fantastic experience and it was exactly what it was meant to be. 

After all, the more you travel the more you learn, the more you discover. And that's really the whole point. You get to experience something new--good or bad it doesn't matter--in a way you have to have both to make it complete.

And so as I sit here in the airport, polishing off my final thoughts about this past year, I am once again filled with that same trepidation and nervousness and excitement. Once again, heading somewhere completely new--and I wonder, in another year, what the experience will bring. 

But we will always have a soft spot for New Zealand. We have made lifelong ties here. I think I still find it a bit surreal when I look at a map that that is where I have been. Yet, I am also equally compelled when I look at a map by all the places I desire to go still. My appetite for travel and adventure is not yet satiated--though I hope it never will be. 

So thank you New Zealand for everything you have given us. Luckily we're not yet going very far--just to the land up and to the left!

I hope you all following along as we embark on John and Kristin's Aussie Adventures!

http://johnandkristinsaussieadventures.blogspot.com/

North Island, again

It was up early the next morning, after driving for 7 hours, to catch the ferry back to Wellington. It was an easy journey, made better by the on-board breakfast they had. 

We docked in Wellington, once again a bright sunny day and made our way out of town to our motel in the nearby seaside town of Plimmerton.

We knew we had arrived a bit earlier than our check-in time, but as we had been traveling for almost a day we figured we might as well see if the room was ready.

When we arrived at reception we were not so much greeted, but had an encounter with the old man behind the counter. He was old, crotchety, rude, slightly overweight and wore suspenders and big coke bottle glasses. His unpleasant appearance was reflected in his personality. He was quite short and rude to us at check-in, although luckily our room was indeed ready which meant we could relax a good while before we had to head to the game that night. The room we stayed in was quite nice--save for the mean old reception man.

That night we took the train in Wellington to attend our one and only Rugby World Cup match of US versus Australia! We knew it would be rather one sided, as, lefts face it, rugby is not our sport.

Surprisingly, though, there were a fair few American fans in the stadium--I think they actually outnumbered the Aussies. I suspect most of them were not actually American--though I did hear a good number of American accents around us--but Kiwis who were coming to the game any would root for anyone but Australia. They got all dresses up, though, and it created a nice, festive atmosphere at the game--even though we got absolutely thrashed 5-67 Australia. The first 10 minutes were pretty exciting and then after that--flat.

But the costumes enough were worth the entry--my favorite was a group of 5 young guys, possible actually American, who showed up in full suits, carrying American flags, and all wearing Obama masks. It was really funny and I had to take a picture:

The other exciting moment came at the end of the game, when we were waiting for the game to finish but there were two injured players on the field so all the action had stopped. Some silly bloke thought this would be an excellent time to go streaking! So everyone on my end on the stadium caught the white, bare behind of some crazy dude--who was promptly swarmed, tackled, and covered by the numerous security guards standing between him and the field. I reckon he ran about 10 feet. I hope that $5,000 fine was worth it!

Despite the outcome, it was still fun to go to a game. The next day, John and I decided to spend the morning relaxing as we had dinner reservations that night in Wellington for John's birthday. We got a rude phone call from, once again, the mean reception man at around 11:45 in the morning wondering when John and I were going to leave the room because it needed to be serviced. As John and I only had the one extra night he told the man we didn't need any cleaning done, but the man rudely insisted saying he also needed to make sure we didn't break anything. John assured him we didn't and that we had already paid for the room, but said we would be going out to lunch around noon time. At about 5 past noon when we were about to leave we got ANOTHER rude call from the man as we hadn't left yet. We were extremely annoyed at this point and I had half a mind to call the property manager and complain--but we headed out to lunch and decided we would leave a bad review.

Our dinner in Wellington that night was delicious. We went to a cool, jazzy, mediterranean-style tapas placed called Duke Carvell's right off the main drag in downtown Welly--Cuba street. We enjoyed a delicious meal and a nice wine on our last night in Wellington. 

The next morning we were meant to head to Tongariro and do the crossing the following day. But apparently, we didn't slaughter the proper sheep to appease the gods that cursed us with the Anti-Tongariro disease. Once again we had to cancel because there was still snow on the trail and they weren't doing any shuttles for independent trampers. You had to go with a guided group that had ice picks and crampons for the snow--and the cheapest tour was $155 per person--yeah, I don't think so. 

So, unfortunately our Tongariro curse was not lifted this time around, but someday, somehow, we will conqueror the Tongariro! 

So in it's place we made the short drive to Martinborough, the other wine area on the North Island to drink away our sorrows from losing the game and Tongariro. We only toured 4 wineries, but they were quite nice and we managed to leave with a nice bottle of Chardonnay. 

Our last stop on our travels was a small detour to a small hill hear the eastern North Island coast that happens to be the longest place name in the world! I'll let the photos do all the spelling:

In Maori, the name means, "The hill on which Tamatea, the chief of great physical stature and renown, played a lament on his flute to the memory of his brother."

Yeah, no one else knows how to pronounce the Maori spelling either. 

But it was a fun little stop on our way back to our old stomping grounds in Hawke's Bay!

End of Roundhill

We left Tekapo on a beautiful, sunny afternoon. Spring had definitely made it's way to the South Island. It was bittersweet as we drove away, along the windy and dusty road, leaving behind the opal blue lake and snow capped mountains. It was going to be a long drive up to Picton where we were to catch the ferry the last morning.

Our last few days were quite slow, but fun as we enjoyed the remaining company of our fellow co-workers--some of who became good friends. We became quite close to one another, working so close 7 days a week. There were times when the Roundhill bubble became a bit too small and all you wanted to do was get away. But at the end of the day, I think we both enjoyed our time there and the friendships we made. As many of the people were international, it's always a nice feeling to know that you can go so many places in the world and that you will have a couch to crash on and a friend to catch up with. I definitely hope we will see many of them again. So to Lenka, Andrew, Natalie, Pete, Josef, Barbara, Johno, Joel, Thierry, Marius, and all the instructors--thanks for the good times! Hope to see you again.

And we couldn't have asked for nicer bosses and owners to work for--their ability to  create camaraderie with the staff, to have genuine discussions, and their willingness to buy us drinks a the pub--very memorable and wonderful people. So cheers to Simon, Kylie, Caroline, Oscar, and Christian--who will have to come visit me in the good ole' Deep South someday!

I'll leave this post with some remaining photos of our fond memories from Roundhill:

Aoraki/Mount Cook

Everyday from Roundhill you could look across to the Southern Alps and see a mountaintop sticking out above the rest. Mount Aoraki/Mount Cook is the highest mountain in New Zealand. 

John and I got a day off on one of our last weeks of work to make the short hour drive to Mount Cook village, at the top of Lake Punakaki, nestled in the heart of the alps.

It was meant to be a nice, clear day but relying on the weather service can be a huge mistake as predicting the maritime weather here is just short of impossible.

When we arrive Mount Cook was obscured by snow clouds and it started to snow in the village so we could barely see a thing. It was a bit of a disappointment, but the information center there was really nice so we just walked around and grabbed a coffee. 

We also went on a short walk to see the Tasman glacier. It didn't look at all like the glaciers of Fox and Franz Josef. It looked more like a wasteland--a pale green river with chunks of dirty iceberg floating on top. Like the other glaciers, it used to be much, much large and covered in snow--but it has been receding for the last few hundred years. I'll bet it looks better on a nicer, sunnier day.

Which we got the following day, along with a spontaneous and oddly-timed day off. It was a gorgeous, clear, sunny day but when I woke up in the morning and checked the status of the mountain we were closed. 

It was odd but I took advantage and made a short 45 minute drive back to the Mount Cook lookout that morning to get some nice pictures of the mountain that was finally in clear view. 

John and I also took advantage and explored the few remaining bits of Tekapo that we had yet to see. There is a small, normal-looking lake right in the township called Lake Alexandrina that we went to visit. Apparently it's small enough that it freezes over for a few weeks in the winter and you can go ice skating on it. When we went, however, it was most definitely not frozen as we had quite the mild winter.

We also decided to head up Mount John to get a look of the Mackenzie Country in the daylight. It was a short drive up the mountain and it was just as much a beautiful sight in the daylight as it was at night. You got a great 360* view and I was able to get a fantastic panorama over the whole area:

We had finally seen almost everything in Lake Tekapo, just as our time at Roundhill was coming to an end.

Snow, Skates, and Stars

While Lake Tekapo is a rather small town, it does have it's unique attractions. There is never a shortage of skiing, skating, and stargazing. John and I, in our dwindling time here, have been able to enjoy all three. 

One of the perks of working at the ski field is free skiing and snowboarding! Over the course of the season John and I have been able to improve on our skills. Both of us have now attempted both snowboarding and skiing. John reckons he was a better skier than me right out of the gate--but don't believe it! My parallel turns are way better. Anywho, we've captured some video to share (and there is even some of me trying to snowboard!)

We've also enjoyed a bit of ice hockey while in Tekapo (well I enjoyed watching it and seeing John fall :) ). There is a local hockey team here that practices at the hot pools park and they invited Roundhill to scrimmage with them one week. It was great fun but a lot of of our guys had barely ice skated before, let alone play hockey, but they were all good sports and enjoyed trying to play. In fact, a few of our ski instructors were pretty good!

The next week we decided to have a Roundhill staff only game, just to attract more people to play. It was great fun to watch and John even scored two goals! 

At the beginning, however, I was a bit too close to the rink during practice and one of the guys who wasn't great on skates swung around with the stick and I caught the end of it right next to my eye. The whole next week I was sporting a nice little shiner. 

The other big attraction of Lake Tekapo is the night sky--which the town is trying to make a world heritage site. Being in the middle of nowhere New Zealand is great for stargazing at night as the sky is so clear and there is so little light pollution. The University of Canterbury has research telescopes at the top of Mount John right in town, but they also have one for the public and do nightly tours. We had a little deal with the local company that all employees would get a free day pass at Roundhill and in exchange we each got a free night tour. We had to call and cancel several times as New Zealand weather is so unpredictable we kept choosing not great nights to go. Finally, one Sunday it was a perfectly clear night and they had space for us so John and I went with two of our work friends, the Czech couple Pepe and Barbara. 

It was a really beautiful night and we got to wear these big puffy red coats from the US National Science Foundation that they used to use in Antarctica. They kept you really warm as it could get a bit chilly on the top of the mountain at night. 

The tour was really cool and we learned a lot about the constellations in the Southern Hemisphere. We got to look through one of the big observatory telescopes at a few different things in the sky--we got a really up close view of the moon and a star cluster that sits right at the edge of the Milky Way galaxy and is 13 billion years old! They were some of the first stars to form when the universe was created--the guy who was running the telescope was really nice and mentioned how looking at those starts--they were probably the oldest thing we will ever see in our lifetimes. 

The coolest part of the experience for me was that you got to do some astrophotography. The really nice guy that works there takes your SLR camera and puts it on a mount that moved ever so slightly with the rotation of the night sky and plugs in a remote so you can get some long, and really cool exposures of the stars. He also hooks the camera up to a telescope and gets an up close picture of the moon. It was really neat!

I'll leave with your with some of the cool pictures I got.

80s Day!

Last Saturday we had the annual 80s day at Ski Roundhill. It's tradition, and the whole staff, family and friends of the owners, and even many from the public come dressed in their best 80s gettup.

As staff, we have to go all-out of course, and the owners let us browse through their attic that was full of old 80s stuff. 

I managed to find some really tight spandex ski pants, a purple sparkly dress, and a pink satin jacket. John found a turtle neck and what I determined to be red swishy stripper pants as they completely unzipped and then unbuttoned from the sides. 

The night before, John and two of the other guys--Pete and Andrew--decided that they would go balls to the wall and cut their hair. Our friend Natalie went to hair dressing school in England so we all headed over to their place for a hair dressing party. She got the incriminating photos on her camera.

Natalie's boyfriend Pete got a mohawk, Andrew got a mullet, and John got a flat top with the side lines. They were fantastically bad. 

The next day it was hilarious to see everyone in their 80s costumes. Natalie and I ended up finding enough pink stuff that we decided to be the Pink Ladies from Grease. Yes, I know, as several people condescendingly pointed out, that the movie Grease takes place in the 50s. But the movie came out in the 80s and so it counts.

There is a group picture floating around (again on Natalie's camera I think) that I will have to find and post. However, here are some that I got in the meantime.

Another part of 80s day was a water jump competition. Every year they dig a small pool in the snow, cover it with a tarp and will it up with water. They build a small snow ramp right at the end and it's a competition to see who has the best jump. Very often, people don't make it across and fall in the frozen pool, or can't ski across it--so it's very funny to watch. John participated and so I got some good photos of his successful jump! 

At the end of the day a crazy townie guy, some local farmer, showed up in the car park--having towed with his old tractor an old, beat-up small SUV with no windshield sitting on a trailer--with some young guys and girls sitting on the roof. Not the safest thing in the world and apparently the owners know the guy and he is prone to such shenanigans. They were all completely wasted though, and had some weird mannequin sitting in the front. Last year he had just driven the SUV up and was told by the owners to never drive that up to their hill again (as obviously it wasn't safe). This newest concoction was his cheeky response. 

It was an accident waiting to happen and it didn't wait long. As the last van drove down at the end of the day we got to the bottom of the hill onto the flat road and looked ahead and saw that the van had completely turned on it's side on the side of the road and the tractor had lost it's tire. We immediately all got out to help and assess the situation. The mannequin freaked people out at first because it had been dressed in human clothing and was laying next to the car so it looked like a dead person. However, no one was killed (luckily--if they had turned over on the road down they all would have fallen down the cliff), but some of them were a bit banged up with bloody faces. Our van driver was a nice ski patrol guy named Johno and he was EMT certified so he automatically started helping the injured while I called the mountain manager, Simon. He flew down the road with the other two ski patrol/first aid guys and they all took care of the injured, shocked, and drunk of their ass people and eventually the other owners, Christian and Oscar,  fire trucks, ambulances, and the police came. It was probably the most exciting thing to happen in Lake Tekapo in quite a while. 

But let that be a lesson--don't drink and drive--even on a tractor--and especially down an unpaved mountain road. 

All in a days work at Ski Roundhill!