Tomorrow morning I leave for the North. Our mid-semester break is next week, and I'm taking advantage of it by roadtripping around the South Island with two other Arcadia kids, Mitch and Noah. Tomorrow we're headed to Christchurch, and then on to the northern end of the South Island. We plan to spend some time up there in the sun, then work our way back down the West Coast, checking out the sights along the way and hopefully getting some tramping in as well. Due to the shortage of easily accessible, free internet in New Zealand, I will probably be out of contact for the next 10 days. My computer also crashed again -- I honestly cannot believe it -- on Tuesday, so I won't even have that with me if I did find internet.
Though I can't put up pictures easily from last weekend, I can write briefly about it. Andrew, Taylor and I drove out to Fiordland to meet up with Andrew's parents and sister. It was a different style of trip than we have taken, and the change was nice. It was certainly strange staying in a motel room and eating out for dinner, though. It reminded me of joining my family for trips at the end of a semester.
Because of the constraints imposed on us by the demographics of our party, we didn't do any terribly difficult outdoor activities. Over the course of the weekend we took three multi-hour hikes that were good exercise, but not particularly noteworthy. You just can't get very far three hours from the road. We did, however, take a cruise on the famous Milford Sound, which was really cool. Milford Sound is actually a fjord (misnamed by the English) on the northern edge of Fiordland. Our cruise was two hours long, out the fjord to the open ocean and then right back in. The scenery is dramatic -- 1600 meter mountains rising straight from the water, sometimes at an 80 degree, glacier-carved pitch. The end of the fjord gave me my first view of New Zealand's west coast as well. And we had a pod of dolphins surfing our bow wave for a good portion of the ride out, which was honestly one of the coolest parts. I had never seen it in person before, and I was standing right on the bow when they came over, meaning I was able to watch them roll about from about eight feet above.
Also this week, I've been trying to get my third paper of the semester done, and it has been a challenge. It's 3000 words, arguing for or against compulsory Maori language education in New Zealand schools. I have an about half-length rough draft at the moment which I hope to improve on over break (though it will have to be by hand). It's due the day school restarts, and hopefully will be done the day school restarts, given that I have another paper due the following Friday.
For now, though, it's time to go pack up for the roadtrip. I'll talk to everyone again in 10 days!
Reid
Friday, April 22, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Three Weeks of Tramping
I switched up the layout a little bit today for three reasons. First, I figured out how to put a proper picture in the background instead of just a blue screen; second, I am no longer in Canterbury so figured the title needed a makeover; and third, learned how to stitch together panoramas in Photoshop, so making my new header. I also hoped a change would get me writing again.
As you can infer from the title, I've escaped Dunedin the last three weekends, opting for the attractions of the great outdoors over those of the city. The weeks, though filled with good food and some times almost worth noting, are not exciting enough to earn space at this time, especially when my trips have compressed my schedule. I did spend the second half of last week writing my second of five papers this semester, which kept me rather busy and resulting in me rushing off to my most recent trip.
But before I get to that one, I have two others that more than deserve note. One involved the toughest walking I have ever done; the other some of the most spectacular views I have ever had. Caution: this post is extremely long, so I would suggest reading it one trip at a time. Given my posting pace, you probably have a while to get through it.
Fiordland
By the time the 26th of March rolled around, it had been nearly a month since I had been backpacking. While I had explored parts of New Zealand closer to the roads, Arthur's Pass had been the only time I had strapped on the boots for a real hike. Andrew and I resolved to change that.
We picked our route a day or two earlier than we had for Arthur's Pass, after consultation of both the web and the tramping club. It was to be the Green Lake/Lake Monowai circuit in Fiordland, New Zealand's largest, wildest, and wettest national park. It takes up the South Island's southwestern corner and is a place of dense forest, mountain lakes, mossy streams, and inaccessible fjords.
We drove out early Friday morning, as the trailhead was a four-hour drive from Dunedin (everything is a four-hour drive from Dunedin). At 1 PM we were on the trail, tramping through a very green forest, surrounded by ferns and moss-covered logs.
This was our long day. We ate our oatmeal in the misty rain, packed up the tent in a dry spell, and started walking. The track led through forest again, but, like many tracks in New Zealand, had little to distinguish it from a deer trail besides the regular orange markers tacked to trees. Andrew and I were soon soaked, due more to the trees and ferns than to the sky. After about an hour of walking I created a pack cover out of a black plastic garbage bag in an attempt to keep my gear dry.
The morning's walk was again about 5 hours, through the aforementioned forest, over a field of tall tussocky grass, and then through more forest. It was all marked trail, though the markers were few across the grass and fallen trees resulted in a couple of detours. About two o'clock we reached Monowai Hut, on the shores of Lake Monowai. The rain had dissipated, though the sky was still overcast and we were still wet. The hut was occupied by people who had come over by jet boat and were working on a game of Clue while we ate our lunch of crackers, cheese, salami, and apples.
Andrew working his way across a log bridge:
The grass field. Kind of like walking through tundra:
A well-delineated section of trail (note the orange triangle on the tree):
My track, or, more appropriately, lack of one:
For a sense of the density. The big orange thing is Andrew's pack cover:
Goin' through!
Lake Monowai, from the hills high above:
The tarn we camped by, the following morning:
The view from the visitor's center parking lot:
Taylor, looking over the glacier that sat between our path and the mountains on the other side:
Missed the track again. Big surprise:
The ridge we came up. Lunch is over the last bump visible:
Fog lying low over the fields in the morning:
According to my mates, the rock was schist, which is that flaky kind that basically turns into dirt when a thin strip gets wet:
Penzy working her way across some snow:
There was a fog river pouring off the glacier high in the mountains. It went on for hours, clouds just pouring down the mountainside then melting away:
We wanted to get back to the car at a reasonable hour, so we didn't sit on the top for too long. Going down we found a much easier route as we could now see where we were going. I couldn't help taking a picture of where we had gone up: it was above the darker, steep section you can see in this photo, just below where the rock actually becomes sheer. No one would ever, ever think to walk there if they could actually see where they were going. All part of the adventure, I guess.
Reid
As you can infer from the title, I've escaped Dunedin the last three weekends, opting for the attractions of the great outdoors over those of the city. The weeks, though filled with good food and some times almost worth noting, are not exciting enough to earn space at this time, especially when my trips have compressed my schedule. I did spend the second half of last week writing my second of five papers this semester, which kept me rather busy and resulting in me rushing off to my most recent trip.
But before I get to that one, I have two others that more than deserve note. One involved the toughest walking I have ever done; the other some of the most spectacular views I have ever had. Caution: this post is extremely long, so I would suggest reading it one trip at a time. Given my posting pace, you probably have a while to get through it.
Fiordland
By the time the 26th of March rolled around, it had been nearly a month since I had been backpacking. While I had explored parts of New Zealand closer to the roads, Arthur's Pass had been the only time I had strapped on the boots for a real hike. Andrew and I resolved to change that.
We picked our route a day or two earlier than we had for Arthur's Pass, after consultation of both the web and the tramping club. It was to be the Green Lake/Lake Monowai circuit in Fiordland, New Zealand's largest, wildest, and wettest national park. It takes up the South Island's southwestern corner and is a place of dense forest, mountain lakes, mossy streams, and inaccessible fjords.
We drove out early Friday morning, as the trailhead was a four-hour drive from Dunedin (everything is a four-hour drive from Dunedin). At 1 PM we were on the trail, tramping through a very green forest, surrounded by ferns and moss-covered logs.
Our first day's hike was about five hours, which included a 700-meter elevation gain to get over a low pass. We camped by the shores of Green Lake the first night, a great spot if one was inclined to ignore the sandflies (NZ's flying, biting insect of choice). A few spatters of rain got us into the tent around dusk, but the next morning dawned gray and drizzly.
The morning's walk was again about 5 hours, through the aforementioned forest, over a field of tall tussocky grass, and then through more forest. It was all marked trail, though the markers were few across the grass and fallen trees resulted in a couple of detours. About two o'clock we reached Monowai Hut, on the shores of Lake Monowai. The rain had dissipated, though the sky was still overcast and we were still wet. The hut was occupied by people who had come over by jet boat and were working on a game of Clue while we ate our lunch of crackers, cheese, salami, and apples.
Andrew working his way across a log bridge:
The track stopped at the hut, but we didn't. Little did we know what was to come as we tramped off down the beach at 2:45. The next two kilometers were off-track, mostly in the trees above the lake. The only problem was that the mountain that was also above the lake, meaning that the trees were growing on a substantial slope and we would be sidehilling. The first three-quarters of a kilometer wasn't bad -- we had an alternating marshy/sandy beach we could walk/wade through (our boots were long ago soaked through). The beach ran out when the shore turned, however, and our attempt to wade through the lake instead of through the brush was short-lived due to the deep water, bouldery bottom, and overhanging branches.
We were headed for Rough Point, about 1.25-1.5 kilometers from where we ran out of beach. It took us over an hour and a half. Off-track alone have been bad enough. We were walking around trees, ducking branches, and wading through waist to chest high ferns that blocked our view of whatever we were standing on. But then we had the sidehill. This meant that not only was our footing terrible (walking on one side of your foot constantly is a pain), but we'd regularly run into something that forced us up or down, which often meant up or down straight into trees. It could be an exposed boulder, it could be a sudden drop or extremely steep section or, worst of all, it could be a fallen 20-meter tree. Naturally, these all fell downhill, meaning that going around was not an easy proposition. Oftentimes we could find a way over, but other times the tree would be at just too tall to climb over, and the tangle of branches and ferns made going under impossible.
If that wasn't enough to make the walking hard, there was Fiordland. In Fiordland, it rains. A whole lot. One result is that moss covers everything. Another is that dead trees literally rot in place. This meant that most of the likely handholds would disintegrate -- actually disintegrate -- when you grabbed them. Any organic matter that was not alive was not solid. Branches inches in diameter fell off their trunks with a light tug. Logs six inches in diameter would cascade down the hill in a shower of peaty moss if you dared to pull yourself up by one. And there's nothing like stepping in the middle of a full-sized tree and having your foot sink in four inches. Don't try the edges.
Andrew working his way up the hill:
My track, or, more appropriately, lack of one:
We finally reached the stream just short of Rough Point between 4:30 and 5. I felt like we'd finally reached our goal. Of course, we hadn't. We quickly crossed the stream to get to the ridge on the other side. And that's when we started our 1000-meter climb.
It would have been pretty manageable if it had been the first thing we'd tackled. But it was the last. We'd already been going nearly 8 hours, had just finished two hours of exhausting bushwhacking, and were completely soaked through. Not making it up wasn't an option, though, as Sunday we had to drop down the other side and then hike out what we expected to be 4-5 hours to the car after that. We couldn't tack a climb onto that day. So up we went.
Thankfully, the walking was much easier. The trees were thinner than they had been on the sidehill and the brush almost non-existent (making me think we had been far too close to the lake for our sidehill). We found the ridge we were aiming up and had a defined ridgeline to walk up. But it was just a long way to climb, and quite steep -- the elevation gain came over a distance of less than 3, and probably closer to 2, kilometers.
I decided to take it slow and steady, to just keep walking as long as I could, no matter how slow it got. And as I neared the top, it got really, really slow. I had been tired at the bottom of the hill, but had climbed the first half or so pretty well. As we got to the upper reaches of the forest (tree line was about 1000 meters, or 300 below the summit), though, my legs were some combination of jelly and lead. Andrew had a cardio advantage and was still moving well, though not necessarily at high speed, while I struggled along, putting one exhausted foot in front of the other. I found the only two sticks in all of Fiordland that didn't break when you put some weight on them and used them like the canes of an old man to help pull myself along. When I had to put a knee on the ground, it took about three seconds to stand up again, as my brain would fire every other muscle in my body before I convinced it that, yes, it did have to fire the quads and hamstrings to stand up.
We finally made it above bush line (i.e. tree line), me at the point of a half-pause between every step and a few seconds every ten. The sight of open land, the lake below, and slightly flatter ground gave me a short burst of energy, and I managed to walk a few minutes at a slow, yet continuous pace, and found the energy to talk to Andrew in more than a few short, not-thought-out words. The climb wasn't quite over yet, though. There was a large tarn on the other side of the peak we where we planned to camp, as we had about an hour before dark set in. This required about 200 meters more of steep climbing. Going straight through whatever brush was in my way, no matter how poky it was, I made it to the top on a three-step, three-second rest plan. Andrew, meticulous in his time-keeping, informed me that we had turned uphill two hours before.
Then it was just a final drop to the tarn. This was almost harder than the uphill, as my legs had no power to brace me. I slipped once, but managed to do no worse than muddying my already soaked shorts. When we reached the tarn, we put up the tent as quickly as we could, as the light was fast disappearing. Both of us then stripped completely, toweled off our skin that wasn't any drier than the clothes we'd had on, and put on every layer of dry clothing we had. The rice and chicken on the camp stove had never tasted so good.
The view from bushline was almost worth the walk:
Lake Monowai, from the hills high above:
The tarn we camped by, the following morning:
Sunday morning was equally gray. We started by climbing back up to the ridgeline from the lake, then walked along it towards the track that started at bushline. The clouds closed in as we moved, reducing visibility to a couple of hundred meters. Heavy rain combined with wet grass soon had us just as wet as the day before. We found trail markers after a short while and started following them down through the tussocks. After about an hour we hit treeline and located the orange triangles posted on trunks.
Only problem was, the trail didn't seem to exist. We were well-used to barely visible trails, so we headed down the most likely looking path, expecting to pick it up a little down the mountain. To make a long story short, we never found it. Despite not seeing a trail, we headed down, figuring that was where we needed to go. After a little while and no sign of a better trail, we decided to separate a little and look for it. Andrew went right, I went left, shouting at each other every thirty seconds to make sure we were still within earshot.
This forest was about as dense as the sidehill the day before had been. It was a steep, heavily vegetated slope with all the same problems we'd had the day before: peaty, unstable footing, rotting logs that provided no support, and four-foot tall ferns that obscured the ground below. It was raining heavily the first portion of the hike and rather cold. I didn't want to pull more clothes out of my bag, knowing they would just get wet, so I kept walking in what I had.
We eventually got through the first part of dense forest and found ourselves on a nose with streams flowing through deep gullies on each side. Looking at our very damp map, we guessed we had crossed the trail without realizing it and were on the left side, where we wanted to be, so resolved to follow the stream down. The steep gullies posed a problem, though. We were able to get around the head of the first one, but as soon as we got around it we were faced with another. This time we were forced to climb down a steep moss-covered slope (thankfully it actually provided good holds) and up the far side, only to be confronted with the same situation again. The tops of the slopes were also tangled messes, as the ground was caving into the gully, leaving trees at odd angles for us to fight through. After about four sets of gullies and steep up and down climbing we finally cleared the river system and were able to walk on flatter ground.
For the next two hours we walked through what felt like unending forest, headed for a lake we couldn't see. The undergrowth had become almost exclusively ferns, interspersed with areas of moss-covered floor. We aimed for the moss as it was easier walking and, as Andrew pointed out, the first 100 ferns weren't really sharp, nor were the first 1000, but once we started getting beyond that they were doing a number on our legs. At least the rain had abated. Finally, four hours after we had left the top we emerged on the lakeshore, to our surprise a good half kilometer to the right of where the trail came down. Further examination of the map showed that the trail took a solid left from the top, and despite all our leftward tracking, we had never gotten close.
At least we knew where we were. A twenty minute walk through boggy lakeshore got us to Roger Inlet hut, where we had lunch. From there, it was a 6-hour hike to the car according to the DOC (Department of Conservation) sign. Usually Andrew and I can do about 75% of the DOC time, but we were wet and ready to be home and so resolved to go as fast as we possibly could. Three hours of fast walking with little regard for mud pits brought us to the parking lot, where we stripped for the second time in two days to put on our last remaining dry clothes (for me, this was wool long underwear bottoms and a fleece top - nothing else).
Upon our return to Dunedin after dark, my room transformed into a massive drying rack as I hung up just about everything I had brought. My boots would take four days (two in front of my space heater) to dry. The open sore I had given myself on my left hip during the last portion of the hike would take a week to heal, and climbing stairs felt way too difficult until Wednesday. Besides slightly battered bodies, Andrew's camera was a casualty of the hike -- it fell out of his waist belt pocket while we were contorting our bodies to get packs around trees and up slopes in the gullies. My camera had been buried in my pack since the morning to keep it from getting completely soaked, explaining the lack of pictures the second day.
It was a trip I won't soon forget and ranks among the most intense of my outdoor experiences. At no point was I worried about my safety, but the climbs combined with the bushwhacking combined with the rain made it a much more challenging experience than I had been expecting. It is one of those trips where the enjoyment (and I did enjoy it) comes from knowing you will have done it, not necessarily the actual living it.
Aoraki/Mt Cook
The following weekend we were ready for more backpacking, though we hoped for something slightly lower on the intensity scale. Taylor returned to the group (she had gone to Arthur's Pass but had been in Queenstown for the Fiordland hike) and we went north, to the tallest mountain in New Zealand, which I will refer to as Aoraki for the same reason I call Denali Denali.
We again left Friday morning for the four hour drive. The day was stunning, as were the vistas. The last hour of the drive we watched Aoraki get closer and closer as we cruised along the western shore of a massive lake.
The view from the visitor's center parking lot:
We had planned for a two-night backpacking trip, but the visitor's center staff dashed our hopes. Unless we were ready for serious mountaineering, there weren't any mid-distance hikes in the area. Instead, we were pointed to a day hike in the direction of a hut and another hike up the next valley over that could be turned into an overnight. With plenty of daylight left, we drove over the campground we were going to stay at the first night, then headed up the hill. The views were spectacular:
The climb took about two hours and our stop at the summit was short lived due to the bitter wind blowing over the top. We quickly hiked down and set up camp. It had so happened that most of the other Arcadia kids had been planning a trip to the same place that weekend, so they showed up soon after we got down and we hung out in the public shelter making dinner and playing cards together. The night was notable for two reasons. First, the stars were as good as any I have ever seen. It was a cloudless, moonless night, hundreds of miles from any real population center. The sky absolutely glowed, and you could trace the Milky Way from one horizon to the other. Also, it was extremely cold, the coldest it's been since we've been here. I didn't wear enough clothes in my sleeping bag and had a chilly night, and the tent was rimed with ice in the morning.
We got up and out, however, and drove 20 kilometers to the next valley over, where there was the opportunity for a one-night hike. After packing everything to go backpacking, we were determined to do so. The sun hadn't cleared the peaks when we got to the trailhead and the air still had quite a chill, so we quickly changed into our hiking clothes and got moving (Andrew managed to break the driver's seat of the car while trying to wiggle out of his long underwear with the steering wheel in the way).
The day reminded us why you never let a little cold weather discourage you. By the time we reached Ball Shelter, where we were going to return to camp, the sun had risen and the day was hot. We passed by the hut and headed for the ridgeline behind it. For the second time in two weeks we missed the trail and found ourselves beating through alpine brush and clambering up scree to reach the ridge.
The valley we were hiking up:
Taylor, looking over the glacier that sat between our path and the mountains on the other side:
Missed the track again. Big surprise:
Steep scree slopes and incredibly sharp grass tufts started to discourage us, but we made it to the ridge where we found hints of an old trail. We could also see the back side of Aoraki and, mesmerized by its grandeur and slowed by the sun, we stopped for lunch in a spot that would be hard to beat. We ate our crackers, cheese and salami below a glacier-covered 10,000 foot peak, basking shirtless in bright sunlight, cooled by a light wind, and listening to the regular thunder of ice and rock falling down the face in front of us.
Andrew and I, intrepid explorers we are, decided to follow the ridge a little farther up to see if we could spot the trail and to check out views from higher up. The first few hundred yards were tough walking, skirting the base of rock outcrops and beating through more vegetation. As we were tiring of it, though, we found the elusive orange triangle marking the trail. From there, of course, we couldn't stop until we'd gotten to the top. We had left our packs and Taylor at the lunch site, so we were able to hike quickly up the trail and across the boulder fields to where the ridge flattened out. From there, the mountain was literally in our faces. We sat on large rocks overlooking the glacier between us and the face, listening to the now-constant sound of avalanching rock and snow and eating the two Snickers bars I had brought up (after Fiordland I vowed never to be short on chocolate).
If you have good eyes, you can spot Andrew on the rocks looking up at the mountain.
The ridge we came up. Lunch is over the last bump visible:
We made our way down on the trail, found where we had missed it (it was marked, but not obvious), and made our way back to Ball Shelter, where we set up camp and put on some warmer clothes to compensate for the disappearance of the sun. We had a good dinner and hot chocolate to go with it, then spent some quality time rolling boulders down the moraine wall onto the glacier. We got some pretty good ones going and could see the sparks they made as they struck other rocks in the half-darkness.
The next morning we had an easy two hour hike back to the car, allowing us to get back to Dunedin early.We didn't get back quite as early as expected, however, because about 40 km down the road we started hearing a strange flapping sound coming from the front left tire. Unable to identify it after pulling over, we continued to the next town, where we had to get gas. While we were filling up, Andrew took a closer look at the wheel and discovered the hanging strip of rubber and wire that had come off the inner edge of the tire. I solicited some advice from handy-looking older men filling up their trucks at the next pump over. They said they didn't think the tire would last long and pointed us towards a repair shop just down the street. We motored cautiously over and gave the owner a call at his after hours number. To our great relief, he said he'd be there in fifteen minutes (remember, this was a Sunday afternoon; the same problem we'd had in Invercargill). Sure enough, before we'd even finished a quick snack he had arrived, pulled on his work suit, and had the car jacked up. As he pulled out the lug nuts, I asked him how much distance we had left on the tire. "A few hundred meters," he replied.
The other tire had significant wear as well, so half an hour later we were out the door with two new front tires and 300 fewer dollars. We thanked Russell profusely for coming to work on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, then drove over to the pizza place he recommended ("Shawty's") and had the delicious pizza Andrew and I had been craving since we passed up Pizza Hut for terrible cheap chow mien the week before. With a once-again functional car, the rest of the drive to Dunedin went smoothly, and we arrived home on Castle Street to the unsurprising but always smile-inducing sight of Kiwis playing beer pong on the sidewalk.
Matukituki River
Andrew's family arrived in Dunedin for a visit last weekend, holding him in the city. Without my reliable tramping partner I was required to go a different route. Luckily, Otago has an active tramping club with trips going out just about every weekend. An email reply and an appearance at a meeting had me a spot on one going to the Matukituki River in Mt. Aspiring National Park.
We left Friday evening this time, not long before dark. The drive was, as you could have guessed, about four hours. Most of the route I had covered on the trip to Queenstown a few weeks back, but the last 50 km were along a dirt road, complete with unfenced pastures and stream fords. There were five of us: one other American girl, plus two New Zealanders and one Australian studying here. Two of the locals were graduate students -- Paul the Australian was doing a PhD in computer programming, and Jen the Australian (and trip leader) was doing a one-year graduate program related to wildlife biology.
Penzy, the driver, other New Zealander and a third-year, was telling us how another tramping club trip had hit a cow on this road a year or two before (I mentioned the unfenced pastures). Soon after we found ourselves in the middle of large herd of said cows. They were covering the road, showing little inclination to get out of the way of the car. Most would give us a good stare then slowly amble out of the way. Others were crossing the road behind us and all were making lots of noise. It was almost creepy, if it weren't rather funny.
Just down the road, however, a lone cow would cause more problems. It was standing on the right side of the road, and we were cruising on down the left at a very moderate pace -- about 30 kph. The cow starting walking beside us, then literally jumped right in front of the car. Penzy slammed on the brakes, but too late. We slammed into the cow, which rolled onto the hood and into the windshield before sliding off the front, jumping up, and sprinting away. After we got over our sudden shock, we got out to assess the damage: one shattered headlight, a side mirror hanging by wires, dents in the hood and side, and
a few stray cow hairs jammed into cracks. But the hood still opened, the car still ran, and with the help of some surgical tape the mirror was back on. While we were looking, the rancher drove by in his pickup. He seemed like the real deal: gruff but friendly, deliberate and slow movements and speech, carrying one of those massive spotlights, with a rifle barrel pointed out the front window. He checked we were all right, didn't seem concerned about the cow, and drove off down the road.
We spent that night on the concrete floor of a shelter at the trailhead. It was cold again, but my new inflatable pad made a surprisingly comfortable bed, and I had enough clothes on in my sleeping bag to stay plenty warm. We got up early the next morning and headed for the Matukituki. The hike started with a few miles of pasture walking before we entered the park itself. It was cold until the sun came up, but then it developed into another beautiful day. As usual, the scenery was stunning:
Fog lying low over the fields in the morning:
We hiked along a sun-dappled forest track for about three hours afterwards before coming out onto a river flat that was absolutely jaw-dropping. The crystal-clear Matukituki River braided its way through wide sandbars (some the first I've seen) between steep, forested mountains. At the head of the valley thundered a massive waterfall that we could hear from kilometers away. A rocky, snow-covered mountain crowned the entire vista. I could have died happily in the sun on one of the bars. It was hard to believe it was real. The pictures don't come close to capturing it, but they are something:
After lunch we had to move on, though. We walked up a side stream, walking on large rocks the entire way. After about an hour and a half of steady walking up that, we got above treeline and turned for the saddle we were aiming for. The up was steep, though not terribly hard. As we got higher, though, we were forced to walk sidehill, often along scree, as the land sloped away towards a stream. This walking got a little tougher, but I happen to really enjoy walking on scree and boulders (as long as they aren't too loose), so I had a good time with it. The sun had sunk behind the peaks around 2:30, unfortunately, so the walking was chillier than it had been in the valley bottom.
Aspiring Flat is visible in the background:
Rachel, the other American, wasn't in quite good enough shape to make it all the way to the saddle (the total climb from the flat was somewhere in the 1200 meter range), so we made camp a few hundred meters short, Paul, Penzy and I resolving to get up early and tackle Sisyphus, the mountain just past the saddle. After a big pasta dinner and some hot cocoa, we went to bed at 8 o'clock, our alarms set for 5.
We got up in the dark (really not that hard to get up at 5 when you go to bed at 8). Guided by headlamps, we took off for the saddle, guessing at the route as best we could based on what we remembered from the night before. We found ourselves on a steep sidehill with the same schist underfoot, some of which had incredibly slippery ice frozen on. Mixed in were patches of snow we had to punch across. Most of the time I had both hands on the rocks beside me as I took steps, as the slope dropped off steeply to my right, with a three meter bluff about 20 meters down (the bluff was why we were so high up the mountain wall -- we had to get around it). It was slow going, and at one point Paul took a quick break and set down the little pack he was carrying only to see it tumble down the slope and off the bluff, where it thankfully stopped on a flatter portion. He climbed down a manageable part of the bluff and luckily managed to find the pack after a ten minute search.
The going was extremely slow, as every foot fall needed to be tested and the short sections of snowfields required punching in foot holds.
Paul outlined against the slowly brightening sky:
Penzy working her way across some snow:
The walking eased up just before the saddle and we made it up just as it was getting bright enough to turn off our headlamps.We admired the view for a few minutes and looked down the other side of the saddle, which was impossibly steep. Then we headed for the peak of Sisyphus, which was only a little above us. We were up top twenty minutes later, watching the rays of the still hidden sun striking out from behind the mountains to our east, lighting up the mountains around us with an ever brighter pink:
There was a fog river pouring off the glacier high in the mountains. It went on for hours, clouds just pouring down the mountainside then melting away:
We wanted to get back to the car at a reasonable hour, so we didn't sit on the top for too long. Going down we found a much easier route as we could now see where we were going. I couldn't help taking a picture of where we had gone up: it was above the darker, steep section you can see in this photo, just below where the rock actually becomes sheer. No one would ever, ever think to walk there if they could actually see where they were going. All part of the adventure, I guess.
The walk out was uneventful. We followed the same route, first dropping down through the alpine grass, then down the creek and the river valley. The views were just as good as they had been the day before, and we even got some rainbows:
The drive home was similarly uneventful. I arrived in Dunedin just as my flatmates and Andrew's family were finished up their dinner of curry and naan, so I had a bite to supplement the Subway sandwich I'd gotten on the drive.
That completes my long summary of the last three weekends. I'm still hoping to write about other things, but these are by far the most exciting, and with my weeks functionally reduced to four days, time can be hard to come by, despite the shortage of schoolwork. Thanks for reading, and hopefully I'll be back before two weeks. Our mid-semester break is the last week of April, and I hope to get at least one more post in by then.
Reid
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Reality Sets In
After five weeks, the joyride finally ended. Last week I had my first serious assignment due, a 2500-word essay for my Maori language class. Naturally, I started it at the last possible minute and then spent the vast majority of Tuesday through Thursday nights writing it. After my weekend backpacking trip (which deserves its own post) I finished it up Monday afternoon, three hours before the due date.
After over a month of never having to worry about school, constant new experiences, and mainly just hanging out and doing fun things, it was something of a shock to transition to a regular school schedule. I didn't see the Arcadia kids not in my flat all week -- the first weeks here, we'd hang out about every night, if not more. I didn't go do things in the city in the afternoons and evenings, I didn't cook. It had been over three months since I'd needed that school focused mindset.
This week isn't as busy, though I do have two more papers I need to write before Easter break, which is the last week of April. The semester seems to be flying by -- we're already about a third of the way through classes, which is hard to believe. Of course, I can't complain too much about my work. I'm still free the entirety of every weekend, necessary to satisfy my travel bug. And the lack of other extracurriculars has allowed me to branch out and try some different things: I'm currently enrolled in hour-a-week singing and dancing lessons through the recreation center here, which are quite fun and, I'd say, definitely helpful. The singing is just super basic "Singing for Absolute Beginners;" the dancing is Ceroc, which is done to popular music and apparently quite popular in Britain. Both are fun, low-intensity, and only meet five times, so it's really easy to do. After spring break I'm already signed up for three more: Basic Bar Skills, Beginning Guitar, and salsa dancing. I'm considering Swedish massage as well. It's one of the great things of being abroad: with no other commitments, I'm able to do things that I would always like to do at Yale but tend to get pushed to the back of the queue.
Life has definitely settled down, though maybe too much. In the beginning of this whole experience, I had gotten used to never knowing what the next day would bring (a trip to the beach? exploring downtown? a group dinner? an earthquake?), going places and doing things on impulse, and generally always having some novelty to keep me entertained. Having a set schedule -- though not as set as at Yale, for sure -- and a routine has made life less exciting, and I'm into the ups and downs of a typical semester. On the other hand, I'm can only say I'm incredibly spoiled when I going on backpacking or adventure trips every weekend, strolling around Dunedin a few times a week, cooking at home, and taking singing and dancing classes make life seems less interesting. It's just less novel -- the high, extended as it was by the goings-on in Christchurch, has finally started to wear off. Reality has begun to set in, but it is my goal to make sure it doesn't move in permanently.
After over a month of never having to worry about school, constant new experiences, and mainly just hanging out and doing fun things, it was something of a shock to transition to a regular school schedule. I didn't see the Arcadia kids not in my flat all week -- the first weeks here, we'd hang out about every night, if not more. I didn't go do things in the city in the afternoons and evenings, I didn't cook. It had been over three months since I'd needed that school focused mindset.
This week isn't as busy, though I do have two more papers I need to write before Easter break, which is the last week of April. The semester seems to be flying by -- we're already about a third of the way through classes, which is hard to believe. Of course, I can't complain too much about my work. I'm still free the entirety of every weekend, necessary to satisfy my travel bug. And the lack of other extracurriculars has allowed me to branch out and try some different things: I'm currently enrolled in hour-a-week singing and dancing lessons through the recreation center here, which are quite fun and, I'd say, definitely helpful. The singing is just super basic "Singing for Absolute Beginners;" the dancing is Ceroc, which is done to popular music and apparently quite popular in Britain. Both are fun, low-intensity, and only meet five times, so it's really easy to do. After spring break I'm already signed up for three more: Basic Bar Skills, Beginning Guitar, and salsa dancing. I'm considering Swedish massage as well. It's one of the great things of being abroad: with no other commitments, I'm able to do things that I would always like to do at Yale but tend to get pushed to the back of the queue.
Life has definitely settled down, though maybe too much. In the beginning of this whole experience, I had gotten used to never knowing what the next day would bring (a trip to the beach? exploring downtown? a group dinner? an earthquake?), going places and doing things on impulse, and generally always having some novelty to keep me entertained. Having a set schedule -- though not as set as at Yale, for sure -- and a routine has made life less exciting, and I'm into the ups and downs of a typical semester. On the other hand, I'm can only say I'm incredibly spoiled when I going on backpacking or adventure trips every weekend, strolling around Dunedin a few times a week, cooking at home, and taking singing and dancing classes make life seems less interesting. It's just less novel -- the high, extended as it was by the goings-on in Christchurch, has finally started to wear off. Reality has begun to set in, but it is my goal to make sure it doesn't move in permanently.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Another Week in Dunedin, Another Adventure
This post will be shorter than the previous one, and hopefully will be followed by more at relatively regular intervals throughout the semester. My computer is still at the repair shop, but I'm hoping it'll finally be ready in the next day or two. I've talked to them, and they're working on it. I realized today I haven't had reliable, personal computer/Internet access since before the earthquake. It's slowed down my usual pace of emails, skypes, and everything else. Anyway. We're supposed to have internet of our own in our flats on the 22nd too, which will be great (we're piggybacking off the neighbors right now).
Speaking of earthquakes, the Japanese quake makes ours look like child's play. My thoughts go out to anyone affected by it, and if any of you readers have friends or family there, I hope they made it through all right. It only makes me feel even luckier.
As I mentioned at the end of my last post, my flatmates and I bought a car last week. Not wanting to waste any time, we took it out last weekend for a trip to the southern coast of the south island. We didn't go backpacking this time, but instead did a two-night car camp between Dunedin and Invercargill, about 250 kilometers away. It was the great kind of road trip: slow, numerous stops, lots of little hikes, great views, small coastal highways, and dirt roads.
The area we visited is called the Catlins and has a human population of about 1200 (and a sheep population of many more). Over two days, we took about half a dozen short walks, from as short as 20 minutes to a few hours, including exploration. The coast was incredible. Think half CA highway 1, half Caribbean beaches. Half was tall, rocky headlands, perfect for lighthouses and shipwrecks, but the other half was half-moon bays with gently rolling turquoise waves and wide white-sand beaches. The vegetation was equally confused: half was windswept scrub, half miniature rainforest. I'll put up some pictures once my computer is in service. The weather was by and large beautiful, and Saturday was hot.
Highlights included the barely two-lane dirt roads that crisscrossed the area and gave our car (who is named Neil Patrick Harris, by the way) a little belly massage. Our first campground (at Purakanui Bay) we found rather blindly, following signs down such roads to a bay with the same name (it was there!). The campsite was on grass, overlooking one of those half-moon bays, with tall white-rock cliffs on the other side. The best hike of the second day was down to a set of caves on the beach, which we explored as thoroughly as we could given that our light sources were very sad "torches" on our phones and the flashes from our camera. Some were slot caverns that we didn't reach the end of -- a return trip is definitely called for. They are also only accessible at low tide, adding to the intrigue.
We also visited the southernmost point on mainland New Zealand, Slope Point (46 degrees, 40 minutes south, by far the farthest I've ever been and a full 113 degrees south of Kotzebue). Andrew and I clambered down the giant boulders below the high point and walked out as far as we could go without getting sprayed by the crashing rollers. Our second campsite was in Curio Bay, with a great view over Porpoise Bay. At night, Andrew did some fire-spinning, which involves spinning burning balls on the end of chains held in each hand, we practiced walking in straight lines with our eyes closed, and we laid out to look at the amazing stars, though the only constellations I could identify were Orion (I didn't know he would be visible down here) and the Southern Cross.
Our last day we drove the last bit to Invercargill, making a side trip to the port town of Bluff. Halfway between Bluff and Invercargill, however, the fan in Neil started clicking, then the display started flickering, then the speedometer starting jumping and died, followed by the tachometer, the power steering, and the gas (over the course of about five minutes). Taylor had plenty of time to get the car to the side of the road, but there we were, two days into our first trip, with a broken down car (my first time!). As I told Andrew, our trip hadn't been nearly adventuresome enough.
Our first (and correct) guess was a dead alternator: it had been having issues before we bought the car, and we had just had the battery replaced. Still, we weren't going anywhere with a dead battery and no alternator. After thinking for a few minutes, laughing at the whole situation (including the fact that we had no food except half a jar of peanut butter and a bottle of syrup, no water, and there were weird deer-like animals making constant, loud noise in a field bordering the road), we realized Taylor had a AAA card from back home, and we believed they had a deal with the AA in New Zealand (no, that stands for Automobile Association). So she called AAA in the states to get the NZ number, then called them. While she was working on it, we had one guy stop and offer a ride (it was a busy highway, so a lot more were passing by), and another lady stopped by after we had a guy from AA on his way (AAA did have a deal with them). We hung out on the grass in the sun for about half an hour before the guy showed up, only 40 minutes after we had broken down. He pulled out a few instruments and agreed that the alternator was shot. He gave our battery a boost and we started down the road in front of him. We only died once more on the 10 km drive into Invercargill, where we parked in the AA lot, where Brian put our battery on a charger for two hours while we ate lunch. At 3 o'clock, we returned, replaced the battery, and bought a new one from him, which we would stick in the car if the other died. Then it was straight to Dunedin. To our surprise, the battery made it the entire way, the charge light on the dash turning on just as we pulled up to our flat. Neil was in the garage the last day getting a new alternator (total cost of about $200), and we managed to return the unused spare battery to AA for a full refund. So not a bad deal, and hopefully NPH will be up and running the rest of the semester.
As Yale enters its second week of spring break, we're entering our third week of classes. I'll have a separate post about them soon, when I have room and time to expand a little. So far, they haven't been too difficult, though, and even rather fun. This weekend I'm actually staying in Dunedin, as Arcadia has both a rugby game and a surf lesson planned for us. The next weekend? Backcountry time.
Speaking of earthquakes, the Japanese quake makes ours look like child's play. My thoughts go out to anyone affected by it, and if any of you readers have friends or family there, I hope they made it through all right. It only makes me feel even luckier.
As I mentioned at the end of my last post, my flatmates and I bought a car last week. Not wanting to waste any time, we took it out last weekend for a trip to the southern coast of the south island. We didn't go backpacking this time, but instead did a two-night car camp between Dunedin and Invercargill, about 250 kilometers away. It was the great kind of road trip: slow, numerous stops, lots of little hikes, great views, small coastal highways, and dirt roads.
The area we visited is called the Catlins and has a human population of about 1200 (and a sheep population of many more). Over two days, we took about half a dozen short walks, from as short as 20 minutes to a few hours, including exploration. The coast was incredible. Think half CA highway 1, half Caribbean beaches. Half was tall, rocky headlands, perfect for lighthouses and shipwrecks, but the other half was half-moon bays with gently rolling turquoise waves and wide white-sand beaches. The vegetation was equally confused: half was windswept scrub, half miniature rainforest. I'll put up some pictures once my computer is in service. The weather was by and large beautiful, and Saturday was hot.
Highlights included the barely two-lane dirt roads that crisscrossed the area and gave our car (who is named Neil Patrick Harris, by the way) a little belly massage. Our first campground (at Purakanui Bay) we found rather blindly, following signs down such roads to a bay with the same name (it was there!). The campsite was on grass, overlooking one of those half-moon bays, with tall white-rock cliffs on the other side. The best hike of the second day was down to a set of caves on the beach, which we explored as thoroughly as we could given that our light sources were very sad "torches" on our phones and the flashes from our camera. Some were slot caverns that we didn't reach the end of -- a return trip is definitely called for. They are also only accessible at low tide, adding to the intrigue.
We also visited the southernmost point on mainland New Zealand, Slope Point (46 degrees, 40 minutes south, by far the farthest I've ever been and a full 113 degrees south of Kotzebue). Andrew and I clambered down the giant boulders below the high point and walked out as far as we could go without getting sprayed by the crashing rollers. Our second campsite was in Curio Bay, with a great view over Porpoise Bay. At night, Andrew did some fire-spinning, which involves spinning burning balls on the end of chains held in each hand, we practiced walking in straight lines with our eyes closed, and we laid out to look at the amazing stars, though the only constellations I could identify were Orion (I didn't know he would be visible down here) and the Southern Cross.
Our last day we drove the last bit to Invercargill, making a side trip to the port town of Bluff. Halfway between Bluff and Invercargill, however, the fan in Neil started clicking, then the display started flickering, then the speedometer starting jumping and died, followed by the tachometer, the power steering, and the gas (over the course of about five minutes). Taylor had plenty of time to get the car to the side of the road, but there we were, two days into our first trip, with a broken down car (my first time!). As I told Andrew, our trip hadn't been nearly adventuresome enough.
Our first (and correct) guess was a dead alternator: it had been having issues before we bought the car, and we had just had the battery replaced. Still, we weren't going anywhere with a dead battery and no alternator. After thinking for a few minutes, laughing at the whole situation (including the fact that we had no food except half a jar of peanut butter and a bottle of syrup, no water, and there were weird deer-like animals making constant, loud noise in a field bordering the road), we realized Taylor had a AAA card from back home, and we believed they had a deal with the AA in New Zealand (no, that stands for Automobile Association). So she called AAA in the states to get the NZ number, then called them. While she was working on it, we had one guy stop and offer a ride (it was a busy highway, so a lot more were passing by), and another lady stopped by after we had a guy from AA on his way (AAA did have a deal with them). We hung out on the grass in the sun for about half an hour before the guy showed up, only 40 minutes after we had broken down. He pulled out a few instruments and agreed that the alternator was shot. He gave our battery a boost and we started down the road in front of him. We only died once more on the 10 km drive into Invercargill, where we parked in the AA lot, where Brian put our battery on a charger for two hours while we ate lunch. At 3 o'clock, we returned, replaced the battery, and bought a new one from him, which we would stick in the car if the other died. Then it was straight to Dunedin. To our surprise, the battery made it the entire way, the charge light on the dash turning on just as we pulled up to our flat. Neil was in the garage the last day getting a new alternator (total cost of about $200), and we managed to return the unused spare battery to AA for a full refund. So not a bad deal, and hopefully NPH will be up and running the rest of the semester.
As Yale enters its second week of spring break, we're entering our third week of classes. I'll have a separate post about them soon, when I have room and time to expand a little. So far, they haven't been too difficult, though, and even rather fun. This weekend I'm actually staying in Dunedin, as Arcadia has both a rugby game and a surf lesson planned for us. The next weekend? Backcountry time.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Learning to Live in the Moment
I know it has been a while, and for those of you I haven't talked to in the last week, a lot has gone on. To start with the end, I am typing this in the library of the University of Otago in Dunedin, about 400 km south of Christchurch. After the damage inflicted by the earthquake, it was unclear when the University of Canterbury was going to reopen. Worried that our credits would not transfer back to the states if opening was significantly delayed, Arcadia (my study abroad program) decided to transfer all 14 Canterbury students down here to Otago, where we could enroll and complete a regular semester. So we are all here now, four days into classes we did not expect to take, doing our best to soak up the southern New Zealand sun. For those of you who want more than a paragraph, the story follows, one of ups and downs, plans made, forgotten, and re-made and, most of all, of learning once again the importance of taking life as it comes.
I wrote my last update mere minutes before leaving Ilam Apartments in Christchurch to get our newly rented car. As I said, our flight to Dunedin last Thursday had been canceled, so instead of taking the later rebookings, Andrew, Taylor, two others (Carla and Sabine) and I rented a car from an airport rental spot with plans to drive to Dunedin then take a tour of the southern end of the island, as we knew Canterbury was closed for the next week. It was surprisingly cheap, about $75 a day for a spacious "family wagon" that easily fit the five of us. This was with under-25 drivers and 0-deductible insurance (I'll talk more about that happens in NZ later on). We had it for 8 days.
It didn't take long for us to adjust our plans the first time. Hoping the city buses were running at least reduced routes, we went to the regular bus stop and quickly came to the decision they weren't. Calling back to the flats, we got the number for the Super Shuttle to the airport. About an hour later (4 o'clock or so) the five of us and our backpacks were at Omega rentals, signing the papers and looking at maps when Andrew noticed that a town called Timaru was halfway between Christchurch and Dunedin. Exclaiming that he just remembered that he knew someone who lived there (her daughter was cousins with a friend of a friend of Andrew's brother or something like that) and had offered to take him in if he ever passed through. Given that Timaru was about two hours away and we didn't want to drive forever, we decided that stopping there for the night might not be such a bad idea.
We loaded into our vehicle and were soon on the road out of Christchurch, driver Andrew doing his best to stay on the left side of the road (it's only the turns that take some thinking). And out we rode, away from Canterbury, away from the earthquake and the destruction, away from the cooped up uncertainty and into the wide-open uncertainty. We got a hold of Andrew's friends in Timaru, a middle-aged couple with grown children, and they said they would be delighted to host the five of us. With a little guidance, we made our way to their house, large, modern, and set atop a green hill of fields, overlooking the ocean a mile or two to the east and the mountains of the Southern Alps farther off in the west. They were extremely friendly, feeding us, washing us (well, letting us taking showers) and housing us. Another family was staying there whose house had been badly damaged in the quake, so we talked with them as well about our story and our plans.
We got some advice on where to go after Dunedin, but the next morning we woke up to news that changed our plans for the first time. The update from Canterbury said that the school would not be open until at least the 14th of March, which meant we had not one, but two entire weeks to travel the South Island. We began tracing large loops around the south island, planning visits to the southern coast, Fiordland, Queenstown, and Mt Cook. We were all in a delightful mood: we had just had a great place to stay and we were completely free to travel and explore for over two weeks (our only requirement was to be in Queenstown on March 4 for the Arcadia adventure weekend).
We drove out on a dreary Friday morning for Dunedin, but our mood was such that the two hour drive took us nearly five. We stopped in a Pak'n'Save in Timaru (a grocery store) and got some snacks, which we proceeded to half-finish in the parking lot (Andrew had to eat too). Then we decided to take a spin around the town itself instead of breezing through on the highway, and at the first sign of the water Taylor jumped out of the car and ran down to the beach to touch the ocean for the first time. After getting back into the car (and eating more of the snacks) we made it nearly 200 yards before we found a playground with all those awesome games you can't ever find at home anymore, including a rope jungle gym and a wooden hamster wheel (pictures may follow in a later post). We played on these and explored the rest of the little park for a good while before finally puttering out of Timaru after about two hours, having gone about 5 miles.
We didn't stop on the way to Oamaru, the next sizeable town on the route. Following up on notes on our map that promised penguins, we stopped and found the visitor's center, where we learned that the penguins only came on land at dusk. Still, we shopped there, adding some New Zealand shot glasses, a beanie, and a guide to Southland tramping to our car. Our previous day and a half of driving had been completely lacking in music, something Andrew promised not to leave Oamaru without rectifying, so a trip to the Warehouse (think Walmart) got us a copy of NOW 34 and Beer Drinking Songs for Girls. We were set for the two hours to Dunedin.
With our music, everyone was loving life. To make things even better, drinking beer in the car is legal in New Zealand (the driver has to be dry, of course). We were going to crash with an Arcadia student in Dunedin for the night, check out the famed Otago peninsula, and then head out on our adventure across the south island. Halfway to Dunedin, however, Jane (the Arcadia in NZ coordinator) sent us all a text message that would change our plans for more than just the week.
Saying that she was currently in Dunedin, she asked if we could meet her at 5 o'clock at Otago as she had urgent news for us. I had about one guess: they were going to pull us out of Christchurch, as my flatmate had been a few days earlier. The elated mood disappeared, and a call to Jane once cell service returned (the highway had turned hilly) confirmed my fears: she had just gotten a message from a senior member of the Canterbury team that said they were strongly encouraging all study abroad students to transfer out of Canterbury due to their worries about reopening times. I told Jane we would be in Dunedin in an hour and would rather talk about it in person.
When we reached Dunedin, Jane clarified our options, or more appropriately, lack of them. Basically, she told us it would be totally foolish to stay in Christchurch. She said her contact would not be encouraging her to move her students unless he thought the university wouldn't be opened for some time to come -- basically, it would be a miracle if it opened on the 14th of March. If we moved to Dunedin, we would be able to start classes on time Monday and would be living either in flats or apartments, most likely with each other, though this wasn't completely clear. I was pretty calm, as I knew I wouldn't have any problems with credits if I transferred and wasn't taking any classes at Canterbury that I needed to graduate. Other Arcadia kids were having a much harder time, however, because they were taking required classes at Canterbury that Otago did not offer, and the three girls who had driven with Andrew and I were also concerned, as they weren't with Arcadia.
Even though I knew that things would work out for me, I was still feeling deflated and a little lost. I didn't want to leave Christchurch -- mere days earlier I had finally unpacked all my bags after a month, I had a great place to live and was getting to know people who lived there, I had started to find my way around the city, I had ideas for places to visit near the city, the weather had been beautiful, I was excited for my classes, and my first impression of Dunedin was not necessarily a good one. As we all knew, Dunedin was a huge college party town, and the piles of bottles on curbs, omnipresent broken glass on sidewalks and belligerently drunk boys dressed in rugby uniforms at 4 pm confirmed it (there was a game that night). It was also a cool night, much colder than Christchurch. All in all, I didn't want to leave the place I knew for somewhere that seemed less comfortable and less of what I wanted -- I had chosen Christchurch because I wanted that cosmopolitan city experience and did not want to spend the semester living on frat row. I also felt I was running away from the quake. Though I had only been in the city for a week, I had been there, and I felt a part of it. I wanted to stick it out with the city, live with the other people who had been affected, help rebuild, instead of run off to the south. At the same time, the quake finally sunk in for me: we had been affected so little at the university that the damage elsewhere seemed almost unreal. But now we had been touched by it too, though still not nearly as much as many less fortunate people.
I went with some Arcadia people to a sushi restaurant where we sat down to get our minds together again before deciding what we wanted to do. We all agreed that we would rather stay in Christchurch, but as I mentioned, it wasn't looking like an option. More Arcadia students were driving down that night (the plan had been to all meet in Dunedin), and we were waiting for them as well. When the next car of five arrived, we still had to find a place to stay, it being about 9 pm. We had the numbers of some Arcadia students who had originally come to Otago, so we called numbers until someone picked up and said nine of us could crash on her floor. Hilariously for our addled minds, we had parked our car that afternoon right in front of her house. It made moving in easy, though, and we talked with Cleo for a while about life in Dunedin, then went to bed with plans to call home to the states early the next morning to figure out our options from that end (the workday was over by the time we learned of the move). By now we had decided, or maybe defaulted, to the transfer option, so we also were planning to drive back to Christchurch the next day, Saturday, to pack up our apartments.
In the morning, I called Yale and confirmed that transferring to Otago wouldn't be a problem (it wouldn't). Andrew got further news from his study abroad advisor: Jane's boss in the US had said Arcadia was pulling its students out of Canterbury, regardless of our wishes. Even though it wasn't really what we wanted to do, it was a blessing, as the decision was made. Our lives had been turned every which way so many times in the last week that we were just grateful to have something to fix our minds on. About 8:30 five of us hopped back in the family wagon and made the four hour trip back to Christchurch.
It was very strange being back on campus: Ilam Village was almost deserted, as was the entire campus area (the campus itself was blocked off). On a beautiful Saturday afternoon, hot and sunny, nobody was outside tanning, kicking a ball, or tossing a frisbee. My flat had one person left, who was headed off to Queenstown the next day. We still couldn't drink the water, and downtown was still cordoned off. We made dinner together in Andrew's flat, and it was good to go the grocery store, which was buzzing as if life were normal. The campus was almost eerie in its silence, a reminder of everything that had gone on. We spent the night at Ilam after packing up rooms, checking mail (my 18+ card had thankfully arrived the day before the quake, meaning I didn't have to carry my passport to get into bars or buy beer anymore), and watching the Little Mermaid.
Sunday we drove straight back to Dunedin, another five hours, with just a single break at a great roadside spot with a cafe and fresh strawberries. Over the past day and a half, Jane had been sending us constant text messages with updates on our situation, so we knew a little more about housing. We were going to be moved into university flats together (as in Arcadia people would all be flatmates), but the flats had to first be found and set up, as it was much later than usual, so we had temporary housing at City College, which is a residential complex somewhat analagous to Yale's residential colleges. Word was the flats would be ready around the end of the week.
On the drive down, Andrew commented that it had been a week since he, Taylor and I had been waiting for our bus to Christchurch in Arthur's Pass. Usually those observations are fillers for long pauses in conversation, but this time it sunk in. While most weeks at school seem to disappear, this one seemed impossibly long. Arthur's Pass felt a lifetime removed: since then we had started classes at Canterbury, been through an earthquake, lived in a destroyed city for three days, had replanned our coming weeks more times than we could count, had slept in just as many different places, had driven five hours three times, and were about to move into yet another accomodation before registering, enrolling, and going to the first day of classes the second time on Monday.
To avoid this story from getting any longer, and to save my fingers, I will leave the rest for a post soon to come, with a few points adding what has happened since last Thursday, when I wrote the first half of this post.
Cheers!
I wrote my last update mere minutes before leaving Ilam Apartments in Christchurch to get our newly rented car. As I said, our flight to Dunedin last Thursday had been canceled, so instead of taking the later rebookings, Andrew, Taylor, two others (Carla and Sabine) and I rented a car from an airport rental spot with plans to drive to Dunedin then take a tour of the southern end of the island, as we knew Canterbury was closed for the next week. It was surprisingly cheap, about $75 a day for a spacious "family wagon" that easily fit the five of us. This was with under-25 drivers and 0-deductible insurance (I'll talk more about that happens in NZ later on). We had it for 8 days.
It didn't take long for us to adjust our plans the first time. Hoping the city buses were running at least reduced routes, we went to the regular bus stop and quickly came to the decision they weren't. Calling back to the flats, we got the number for the Super Shuttle to the airport. About an hour later (4 o'clock or so) the five of us and our backpacks were at Omega rentals, signing the papers and looking at maps when Andrew noticed that a town called Timaru was halfway between Christchurch and Dunedin. Exclaiming that he just remembered that he knew someone who lived there (her daughter was cousins with a friend of a friend of Andrew's brother or something like that) and had offered to take him in if he ever passed through. Given that Timaru was about two hours away and we didn't want to drive forever, we decided that stopping there for the night might not be such a bad idea.
We loaded into our vehicle and were soon on the road out of Christchurch, driver Andrew doing his best to stay on the left side of the road (it's only the turns that take some thinking). And out we rode, away from Canterbury, away from the earthquake and the destruction, away from the cooped up uncertainty and into the wide-open uncertainty. We got a hold of Andrew's friends in Timaru, a middle-aged couple with grown children, and they said they would be delighted to host the five of us. With a little guidance, we made our way to their house, large, modern, and set atop a green hill of fields, overlooking the ocean a mile or two to the east and the mountains of the Southern Alps farther off in the west. They were extremely friendly, feeding us, washing us (well, letting us taking showers) and housing us. Another family was staying there whose house had been badly damaged in the quake, so we talked with them as well about our story and our plans.
We got some advice on where to go after Dunedin, but the next morning we woke up to news that changed our plans for the first time. The update from Canterbury said that the school would not be open until at least the 14th of March, which meant we had not one, but two entire weeks to travel the South Island. We began tracing large loops around the south island, planning visits to the southern coast, Fiordland, Queenstown, and Mt Cook. We were all in a delightful mood: we had just had a great place to stay and we were completely free to travel and explore for over two weeks (our only requirement was to be in Queenstown on March 4 for the Arcadia adventure weekend).
We drove out on a dreary Friday morning for Dunedin, but our mood was such that the two hour drive took us nearly five. We stopped in a Pak'n'Save in Timaru (a grocery store) and got some snacks, which we proceeded to half-finish in the parking lot (Andrew had to eat too). Then we decided to take a spin around the town itself instead of breezing through on the highway, and at the first sign of the water Taylor jumped out of the car and ran down to the beach to touch the ocean for the first time. After getting back into the car (and eating more of the snacks) we made it nearly 200 yards before we found a playground with all those awesome games you can't ever find at home anymore, including a rope jungle gym and a wooden hamster wheel (pictures may follow in a later post). We played on these and explored the rest of the little park for a good while before finally puttering out of Timaru after about two hours, having gone about 5 miles.
We didn't stop on the way to Oamaru, the next sizeable town on the route. Following up on notes on our map that promised penguins, we stopped and found the visitor's center, where we learned that the penguins only came on land at dusk. Still, we shopped there, adding some New Zealand shot glasses, a beanie, and a guide to Southland tramping to our car. Our previous day and a half of driving had been completely lacking in music, something Andrew promised not to leave Oamaru without rectifying, so a trip to the Warehouse (think Walmart) got us a copy of NOW 34 and Beer Drinking Songs for Girls. We were set for the two hours to Dunedin.
With our music, everyone was loving life. To make things even better, drinking beer in the car is legal in New Zealand (the driver has to be dry, of course). We were going to crash with an Arcadia student in Dunedin for the night, check out the famed Otago peninsula, and then head out on our adventure across the south island. Halfway to Dunedin, however, Jane (the Arcadia in NZ coordinator) sent us all a text message that would change our plans for more than just the week.
Saying that she was currently in Dunedin, she asked if we could meet her at 5 o'clock at Otago as she had urgent news for us. I had about one guess: they were going to pull us out of Christchurch, as my flatmate had been a few days earlier. The elated mood disappeared, and a call to Jane once cell service returned (the highway had turned hilly) confirmed my fears: she had just gotten a message from a senior member of the Canterbury team that said they were strongly encouraging all study abroad students to transfer out of Canterbury due to their worries about reopening times. I told Jane we would be in Dunedin in an hour and would rather talk about it in person.
When we reached Dunedin, Jane clarified our options, or more appropriately, lack of them. Basically, she told us it would be totally foolish to stay in Christchurch. She said her contact would not be encouraging her to move her students unless he thought the university wouldn't be opened for some time to come -- basically, it would be a miracle if it opened on the 14th of March. If we moved to Dunedin, we would be able to start classes on time Monday and would be living either in flats or apartments, most likely with each other, though this wasn't completely clear. I was pretty calm, as I knew I wouldn't have any problems with credits if I transferred and wasn't taking any classes at Canterbury that I needed to graduate. Other Arcadia kids were having a much harder time, however, because they were taking required classes at Canterbury that Otago did not offer, and the three girls who had driven with Andrew and I were also concerned, as they weren't with Arcadia.
Even though I knew that things would work out for me, I was still feeling deflated and a little lost. I didn't want to leave Christchurch -- mere days earlier I had finally unpacked all my bags after a month, I had a great place to live and was getting to know people who lived there, I had started to find my way around the city, I had ideas for places to visit near the city, the weather had been beautiful, I was excited for my classes, and my first impression of Dunedin was not necessarily a good one. As we all knew, Dunedin was a huge college party town, and the piles of bottles on curbs, omnipresent broken glass on sidewalks and belligerently drunk boys dressed in rugby uniforms at 4 pm confirmed it (there was a game that night). It was also a cool night, much colder than Christchurch. All in all, I didn't want to leave the place I knew for somewhere that seemed less comfortable and less of what I wanted -- I had chosen Christchurch because I wanted that cosmopolitan city experience and did not want to spend the semester living on frat row. I also felt I was running away from the quake. Though I had only been in the city for a week, I had been there, and I felt a part of it. I wanted to stick it out with the city, live with the other people who had been affected, help rebuild, instead of run off to the south. At the same time, the quake finally sunk in for me: we had been affected so little at the university that the damage elsewhere seemed almost unreal. But now we had been touched by it too, though still not nearly as much as many less fortunate people.
I went with some Arcadia people to a sushi restaurant where we sat down to get our minds together again before deciding what we wanted to do. We all agreed that we would rather stay in Christchurch, but as I mentioned, it wasn't looking like an option. More Arcadia students were driving down that night (the plan had been to all meet in Dunedin), and we were waiting for them as well. When the next car of five arrived, we still had to find a place to stay, it being about 9 pm. We had the numbers of some Arcadia students who had originally come to Otago, so we called numbers until someone picked up and said nine of us could crash on her floor. Hilariously for our addled minds, we had parked our car that afternoon right in front of her house. It made moving in easy, though, and we talked with Cleo for a while about life in Dunedin, then went to bed with plans to call home to the states early the next morning to figure out our options from that end (the workday was over by the time we learned of the move). By now we had decided, or maybe defaulted, to the transfer option, so we also were planning to drive back to Christchurch the next day, Saturday, to pack up our apartments.
In the morning, I called Yale and confirmed that transferring to Otago wouldn't be a problem (it wouldn't). Andrew got further news from his study abroad advisor: Jane's boss in the US had said Arcadia was pulling its students out of Canterbury, regardless of our wishes. Even though it wasn't really what we wanted to do, it was a blessing, as the decision was made. Our lives had been turned every which way so many times in the last week that we were just grateful to have something to fix our minds on. About 8:30 five of us hopped back in the family wagon and made the four hour trip back to Christchurch.
It was very strange being back on campus: Ilam Village was almost deserted, as was the entire campus area (the campus itself was blocked off). On a beautiful Saturday afternoon, hot and sunny, nobody was outside tanning, kicking a ball, or tossing a frisbee. My flat had one person left, who was headed off to Queenstown the next day. We still couldn't drink the water, and downtown was still cordoned off. We made dinner together in Andrew's flat, and it was good to go the grocery store, which was buzzing as if life were normal. The campus was almost eerie in its silence, a reminder of everything that had gone on. We spent the night at Ilam after packing up rooms, checking mail (my 18+ card had thankfully arrived the day before the quake, meaning I didn't have to carry my passport to get into bars or buy beer anymore), and watching the Little Mermaid.
Sunday we drove straight back to Dunedin, another five hours, with just a single break at a great roadside spot with a cafe and fresh strawberries. Over the past day and a half, Jane had been sending us constant text messages with updates on our situation, so we knew a little more about housing. We were going to be moved into university flats together (as in Arcadia people would all be flatmates), but the flats had to first be found and set up, as it was much later than usual, so we had temporary housing at City College, which is a residential complex somewhat analagous to Yale's residential colleges. Word was the flats would be ready around the end of the week.
On the drive down, Andrew commented that it had been a week since he, Taylor and I had been waiting for our bus to Christchurch in Arthur's Pass. Usually those observations are fillers for long pauses in conversation, but this time it sunk in. While most weeks at school seem to disappear, this one seemed impossibly long. Arthur's Pass felt a lifetime removed: since then we had started classes at Canterbury, been through an earthquake, lived in a destroyed city for three days, had replanned our coming weeks more times than we could count, had slept in just as many different places, had driven five hours three times, and were about to move into yet another accomodation before registering, enrolling, and going to the first day of classes the second time on Monday.
To avoid this story from getting any longer, and to save my fingers, I will leave the rest for a post soon to come, with a few points adding what has happened since last Thursday, when I wrote the first half of this post.
- We did indeed move into our flats Thursday afternoon, so I finally have a place to stay permanently, though I don't trust plans any more. It's quite a nice place, right on the central student party street. I'm living with three Arcadia students, Andrew, Olivia, and Katie, as well as Taylor. To all of our (but Andrew's in particular) delight, we have a full service kitchen and have been cooking delicious meals all week.
- We went to the adventure capital of the world, Queenstown, this weekend for our long-planned Arcadia adventure weekend. It was a great time and included going to bed at 10:30 both nights (all 50 of us college students!), a 17-mile hike on one of New Zealand's Great Walks tracks, a jet-boat and gondola ride, luging on a cement track, some great pizza, and the world's fourth highest bungee jump, at 134 meters.
- My computer fried. The tech guy says hard drive, so it is currently at the laptop repair shop and hopefully will be back in my hands by the end of this week. Really the last thing I needed to deal with right now, but that's how these last 10 days have been. So I'm still stuck using university computers and my iPhone for my internet needs. Just as I was about to catch up on everything, too. I haven't had reliable internet/computer access for weeks now, so I apologize if I haven't responded to something you've sent. I try to get the stuff requiring immediate response, but Horde is just so bad (you Yalies know what I mean)
- We (my flat) bought a car! As of about an hour ago (at least I assume so). It's a 94 Mazda Lantis, and it cost us $500 (about $380 US). It cost 500 because the maintenance guy says it needs serious work, so we're giving him $800 to fix it up to reliable, if not smooth, working condition. Still, we plan to have reliable transportation for about $1000 US, and it'll be resellable come June. Lots of hikes to do!
- Classes have not gotten very intense yet, so besides sorting through everything else (like the computer, car, lack of wireless or heat) life hasn't been so bad. I watched a movie after practising some water pong last night. That'd be Monday, for those of you keeping track. More details on this later too.
- The transfer to Dunedin was definitely the right thing to do. It was hard the first few days, but now that I have a house and am figuring things out I am getting to like it more (though I still would prefer undamaged Christchurch). Canterbury is doing a progressive restart of classes, with a few starting the 14th and most of the rest either the 21st or 28th. That wouldn't have been good for us. And downtown Christchruch is still blocked off, and won't even be pretending to be functional by June.
Cheers!
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