Queenstown

Another great city, and surprisingly my favorite big city of the trip so far. You hear lots of negative things about Queenstown, especially that it's just a big party city and too expensive. While these things are true...it's still a lot of fun, lots to do and beautiful scenery. I spent 4 days there...walked around, did some shopping, went on the skyline gondola and watched a "haka" performance. I went to Arrowtown, a small old goldmining town 20 minutes from the city.

Saturday night I went out with my roommates (two girls from Long Island) and met up with some other girls from the UK. Such a fun night...did a little bar hopping...got into a little trouble. :)

The girls...

Winnie's Bar-It was their Halloween Party!

The roof opened up with hydraulic pumps!

After a few rum & cokes...

The girls catch me flirting with a cute Brit...

The "Remarkables" mountain range...

View from the top of the gondola...



I've left Queenstown and am now on another sheep farm for a little over a week until I head to Te Anau for the Milford Track.

Till the cows come home...

I feel like I’ve fallen so far behind in sharing my stories and photos. It’s just hard to find places to hook up my laptop at times….so….I’ll start with Abel Tasman, round two.



I had a beautiful weekend in Abel Tasman and the weather couldn’t have been more perfect. I arrived on a Thursday to Marahau and decided to stay at the Marahau Beach Camp for three nights. It was only $20 a night for a dorm bed so I thought it was a great deal, and they are right on the water. When I arrived, it was like a bit of a ghost town aside from a few other people staying in RVs. The hostel was a small one floor home. It had a dining and kitchen area, bathrooms, a living room with a TV and two large bunk rooms…one with six bunks, the other with five. I was the only one there. At first I was psyched to have the place to myself…but as the sun went down and unfamiliar noises crept around me, I realized that a little company would have been nice! It’s such a strange feeling to go to bed at night alone in a quiet house when you are used to sleeping with at least 4 people in the room with you. Anyway, the next morning I went out by boat to Torrent Bay, but first our skipper drove us up to the seal colony which was really cool. They were just lounging around on the rocks, mostly females with their pups. After being dropped off, I hiked the same route I did last weekend but this time went a bit further to Anchorage Bay. I crossed one inlet which is only possible during low tide. I’ve never walked across such an interesting landscape. I felt like I was in the desert, with nothing but flat barren land around me, except I kept crunching down on occasional spatterings of shells and sometimes my foot would sink into a sludgy section of sand. The coast at Abel Tasman is really neat because it’s shallow for what seems like miles.





At low tide, you can walk out pretty far. So once at Anchorage, I had two hours before the boat arrived so I walked around, took some photos (which I’ll post soon) and just relaxed on the beach. I stayed at the same hostel Friday night, but a couple had now occupied one of the rooms so it wasn’t so eerily quiet. My last night there, I decided to stay at a different hostel called The Barn, on the other side of the village. I wish I had stayed there the whole time because it was so charming. The owner had an adorable jack russell terrier named Doris, who sat at your feet with a ball in her mouth, looking up at you with pleading eyes. ☺

On the bus ride back to Nelson that Sunday, my mind was wandering about travel. It’s strange how when you wander, with no set plans, wherever you are feels like home. For a bizarre second, the bus felt like home. Maybe because I didn’t know where I was going to stay once I got back to Nelson and it was just a passing feeling of living in the moment. I’ve just finished reading a book called “The Global Soul” by Pico Iyer. It’s basically about multiculturalism and Pico’s travels to find “home” in a world that is getting smaller. The following is a quote from the book that I’d thought I’d share:

“Birds in flight, claims the architect Vincenzo Volentieri,
are not between places, they carry their places with them.
We never wonder where they live: they are at home in the
sky, in flight. Flight is their way of being in the world.”---- Paul Carter

Back in Nelson, I spent two nights at the YHA Then the next morning, I took a 5 hour bus ride to Punakaiki, which is on the west coast, in the heart of Paparoa National Park and home to Punakaiki Rocks and Blowholes. Punakaiki means “pancake” in Maori.





The rocks are stacked like (big surprise) pancakes and it’s a spectacular site. I stayed at a great hostel called Te Nikau Retreat, and it’s in an absolutely stunning setting. The west coast has a very different feel to it, in terms of landscape. It’s more rugged with the dramatic mountains and crags meeting the ocean. The beaches are rougher, the sand is darker (black in some spots) and the vegetation seems more like an ancient rainforest that you’d see back in the time of dinosaurs. The hostel is an 8 minute walk from a beautiful beach, with a waterfall, but you have to be careful as it’s a bit rugged. When they say, “Keep to the track” you don’t question them. It’s by no means a swimming beach due to the currents, strong rip tides and gigantic waves, but you can walk along the sand if you are brave enough to endure the sandflies! I thought I was going to be alone again that night, with the hostel to myself, but then arrived a sweet guy from Leeds in the UK. He invited me to join him in the morning to go to the Pancake Rocks (since he had a car). We got up around 10:00, and luckily the rain was holding off.



The rocks were beautiful and the blowholes quite a force of nature. After snapping lots of photos, we decided to go for a hike along a nearby river trail. The rain started to pick up and the guy at the info center said it would be a nice hike, just avoid crossing the river due to the heavy rain. Initially, we were confused about where the start of the trail was so we started driving down a gravel road and then realized we were actually driving on the trail! So we parked, got out and walked for a couple of hours. I was more engrossed in conversation than the scenery…It turns out that my new friend is touring New Zealand for 4 weeks and then he is headed to Australia to work for a year. We decided to turn around and head back for some lunch. It was only after we were driving back into town that we realized we were not even on the trail that we meant to be on! Nonetheless, it was fun. He offered to drop me off in Hokitika, my next stop, the following morning. He was off to the Franz Josef Glacier. On our way to Hokitika, we came across the most unusual thing. It was a single land bridge for cars, but it was also a rail track for trains. The thing was, there was no warning system in place to tell you if a train was coming. No lights, no bar….you’d have to drive up, and if there was a train coming, you’d have to back up really fast to get out of the way! It was unbelievable. It must be quite an attraction here because when I got to Hokitika they had postcards of these bridges!

Most recently I spent a week in the Waitaha Valley, not really a town….



just a community of farms, 40 minutes south of Hokitika. I worked on a dairy farm and it was an interesting experience. We started milking at 6:00 each morning and it usually takes 4 hours or so, then we have to do it again around 5:00 at night. It’s a very, very messy job. The milking machines are in a shed, in a line, and there are maybe 35-40 of them. The cattle are pushed in on either side and are lined up with their rear ends toward the middle and their heads on the outside. To keep them distracted, they eat molasses out of a trough. The milkers walk down in a sunken area in the middle where the machines are. I had to wear old work clothes, rubber boots, and a long rubber apron.




The process starts with Stu (the farmer) hosing down the cattle when they first come in. Then we have to clean off the teats with warm water. Once that’s done, we put on the milking machines. Initially, you can see the milk just flowing through a little glass bubble that indicates how much is coming out. When it’s done, you take it off and place it on the cow on the opposite row. Once the entire row is done, we spray the teats with antibacterial glycerine and then send them out. In total, we milk around 200 cows. We are constantly being pissed and crapped on. I don’t know if any of you have ever been around cow shit, but it’s not firm. It’s like a niagra of green goo. I’m constantly rinsing off my hands and arms. I had no idea that it would burn! We also feed baby calves. One day we had to pull a calf out of a cow. We had been watching her because she was long overdue and she was giving us signs that she was in labor. So we brought her into the yard and had to reach in, put a rope around the calves front feet and pull it out. It turned out to be a HUGE bull calf, but it died because the mother couldn’t push it out on her own. We also had several other incidents like a cow with milk fever (a dangerous fever that's caused by the lack of nutrients-they all go into the milk) and a couple of sick calves. So the team was Stu, Rina, a young woman from Japan who has been here for 6 months, and Ellie, a 19 year old from Germany.






It’s long hours and hard work…I dare say that was the toughest work I’ve had to do yet. We usually finished eating and cleaning up around 11:00 PM, then it was back up at 5:45 AM. The day I left the farm, I started to get sick. I had a fever for around 5 days or so with no other symptoms. The nurses I spoke to said it was a flu that's going around, and I'm starting to finally feel better, though still a bit tired. When I left the farm, I went to Franz Josef, site of the Franz Josef Glacier. I was so excited about being there, I went and booked a full day glacier hike for the following morning at 8:15. I should have rested for a few days...but oh well. The hike was amazing, although it poured the entire time. Franz Josef gets more rain in a day than some countries! So I didn't get any photos unfortunately...but there are lots of things online if you want to see what it looks like. They supplied us with all our gear such as coats, overtrousers, hats, mittens and crampons. It was like another world out there. At one point our guide decided to take us through a crevasse. It was so thin, you had to take off your pack and walk sideways. Our guide got stuck at one point. It was a tight squeeze for me! An Irish girl in our group got completely stuck and it took them about 15 minutes to get her out. It wasn't a nice place to be stuck. If you think about it, the ice could shift at any moment... It was great fun though. I was happy to get home and get into bed. :)

Currently I'm in Wanaka, an hour north of Queenstown and it's a beautiful town right beside a huge lake/mountains. I'm not sure how long I'll be here... I'm trying to decide what I'm doing next but I'll keep you posted! :)

Exciting news...

I'm hiking the Milford Track in November!!! I originally thought it was completely booked up but there were spaces available late October and mid-November. October and November is a bit of a dangerous time to hike it because of the risk of avalanches, but the DOC staff seem to keep everyone well informed, so I think it will be fine. The only thing is, if there is a track closure, you either need to be lifted around the danger by helicopter (!) or cancel the rest of the hike. The Milford Track is one of the "Great Walks" here in New Zealand. I'm doing it independently, although 40 people a day are allowed to begin. Bookings are essential due to the hut capacities. The hike is only accessible by boat.

Read about it here

A day in Abel Tasman...

I was so excited to get out to Abel Tasman National Park http://www.doc.govt.nz/templates/PlaceProfile.aspx?id=38455. I booked my ticket for this past Sunday. The whole track takes 3-4 days with stops in huts or campgrounds along the way. I'm not quite prepared as I didn't bring my sleeping bag or a tent so I just decided on a day trip. Hopped on the bus at 7:30 AM and headed an hour north to Kaiteriteri. The plan was to take a water taxi from Kaiteriteri, be dropped off in Torrent Bay, then hike up to Bark Bay, get picked up by the water taxi and brought back to Kaiteriteri. It was a great plan until the sky decided to open up. I stepped into a small shop while waiting for the taxi. A lady walked from out back and started chatting with me about what I was doing. She said, "It will be an interesting ride for you today!" For a split second I thought I should cancel it for the day and reschedule, but I was optimistic that the rain would subside. Several of you will scold me for this but I wasn't prepared as much as I should have been. I had my raincoat, but not my pants (just some hiking pants).

As we boarded the small motorboat (there were 4 others silly as me to attempt the walk), our driver handed us life jackets and said, "it's going to be rough out there today." I thought to myself, "it can't be that bad. I've been on choppy water before" I was so wrong. I've NEVER been on water like that before. It was terrifying and so much fun! The swells were enormous. We would climb to the top of a wave, be airborne for 2 seconds then KA-BOOM! slam back down onto the water, then up, up, up, KA-BOOM! Each time the boat came back down, it sounded as if it were going to split in half and the impact rattled our brains as we lunged forward. I was holding on to the bar in front of me with a white-knuckled grip. The waves were coming from all directions and the driver was constantly looking around us for waves that might come down over us. All the while I was trying to keep my eyes on the horizon towards land, but it was difficult. The boat would lean sideways while we were at the bottom of a swell, then I could feel the boat rise up, the land would appear but suddenly a giant wall of water would block it again, leaving us encircled. It was hard to get a sense of direction. We finally arrived at Torrent Bay. He pulled the boat up to the beach and we quickly hopped off. The rain was torrential and I was already hopelessly soaked and chilled. The scenery on Torrent Bay was stunning. I had my camera in my bag but was unable to take any photos obviously. I took time to appreciate the beach as much as I could, and then hurried to the trail where I could be under the cover of the trees. They didn't help much and the trail was a river of mud. At that point I began to wonder how I would survive two hours of this. I began to walk quickly, keeping in mind there was a hut with a fireplace at Bark Bay where I could eat my lunch and dry off. I took in as much as possible, I didn't want my time here to go to waste. The rain let up for a half hour period as I approached a huge swing bridge. It had a warning sign of a maximum of 5 people. It crossed a river which came down from the mountainside. Looking up there was a huge raging waterfall and down river it led to the sea. It was beautiful. I stood in the middle of the bridge for several moments, listening to the water and feeling the wind rock it back and forth. I noticed movement in the water below and saw that there were seals playing and fishing directly underneath me! It was so cool to see them pop up, sometimes leap up out of the water and carry fish along in their mouths. They looked up at me curiously. I did manage to snap a couple of photos of them. I then realized that my camera bag was soaked through. Time to keep moving!

I arrived at the hut where there were other people taking shelter, their clothes and boots hanging over the tiny gas stove, trying to soak up as much heat as they could. My hand were numb and my fingers barely able to function as I tried to eat my lunch. I had walked so fast that I now had three hours at the hut. The others arrived shortly after me. None of us had the will to explore anymore...we just wanted shelter. I took a nap after eating my lunch, as did everyone else. The rain wasn't letting up. People started to slowly clear out of the hut and head back out on the trail. The water taxi was picking us up from this beach so we just had to wait. At 3:00, the three of us left put our sopping wet gear back on and headed down to the beach. We had to jump on board quickly as the waves were crashing and it was quite dangerous for us and the boat. The ride back was just like the one in, except this time the driver was looking around much more cautiously, and several times he had to go full throttle to avoid waves chasing us down. Two of the ladies on the boat were supposed to be dropped of in the bay above Kaiteriteri but they had to come in with us because it was too dangerous in that bay. So we all breathed a sigh of relief as we pulled up to the shore. As we were handing our life jackets to the driver, he laughed and said "Thank god that's over."

I'm hoping to go back on a nice sunny day. There were so many moments that I wanted to pull out my camera but couldn't. Perhaps if Marmy and Jim come out to see me we can go there. You would love it. :) (hint, hint)

Tailing

Below are some photos that Adi took on tailing day. We drenched, vaccinated and tailed over 300 lambs! The photos below are not gory and they are not close ups, but if you don't want to see tailing, then skip the pics. :)

Vaccinating

I look a little too giddy with that needle in my hand

Me, Hayden (Adrian's son), Tom and Nicky

NEW PHOTOS!

I’ve posted photos! There are too many to post up here so please check out my Picasa site for the full set! The link is on the lower right side. Oh, Danny and Gram- regarding the photo of the fern…It’s actually a tree fern…either a ponga or a black tree fern.

With a heavy heart I left Totaranui. What an amazing place and a wonderful family! I hope that my experiences to come can rival it. Thanks Adi, Adrian & Keelan! I will miss you!

Wellington was a great city. I spent two days at the YHA…and to be honest it was a big retail therapy trip. I shopped, rode the old cable car up to the Botanical Gardens (which were beautiful). I’d say they are right up there with the Boboli Gardens in Florence. I had lunch at J.J. Murphy’s, an Irish pub. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to charge my camera battery before I left for Wellington so I didn’t get any photos. But I may go back.

Now I’m in Nelson. Adi and Adrianne dropped me off on en route to a ski trip they are taking. What a great little town. Nelson is THE sunniest place in the South Island (so they claim). It’s at the very top of the South Island right on the Golden Coast, just south of the Abel Tasman National Park. There’s lots of art and craftsmen, coffee shops, restaurants and galleries. The Nelson Market is held every Saturday, where artists sell their goods on the street. The night I arrived, I met a traveling nurse from the UK. We walked into town to get some wine and then headed back to the hostel where there was an acoustic guitar jam session in full swing. What a fun way to kick things off.

This morning I got up early, as I like to do when I’m in a new place. I like to get out and watch the town wake up….get a cup of coffee, see the shops put out their signs, and plan what I will do for the day. Most of the activity and buzz is on Hardy Street and around the cathedral. I visited the jeweler that created the rings for the movie “The Lord of the Rings”! They have several of them on display in various sizes because when they were filmed, they needed large and small sizes. It was actually quite interesting.

So my next step is to find a job! I’ll keep you posted…

Just thought I'd post a few quick pics from our walk the other day.....These were taken by Irma, a lady in the walking group:



Walking out to the trail from the farm...

On Sunday I'm flying out to Wellington for a few days! I'm excited to see the city. I don't have lots of time (only 1 full day) but I figured since I was up this way, I'd take the opportunity to check it out. Then I'm returning to Totaranui Farm for another week...This farm has been one of the highlights of my trip so far.