First Days in Tahiti

Papeete, Tahiti

So here I am on Easter Sunday trying to get caught up on Tahiti. Though I rarely post anything on this blog in a timely manner, I think it bears noting that I am about to follow through on blogging my entire trip without ever giving up. Easter is a little different when you’re on Discover Abroad. First of all, instead of starting your day with an Easter Egg Hunt and chowing down on some peeps and jellybeans, you start your day with two hours of class. So that’s been my days so far.

Anyway, backtracking a little bit as always, after I posted my blog in Christchurch, NZ, I waited all of 5 minutes before everyone else’s alarms went off and it was time to start our voyage to Tahiti. I showered and within 30 minutes, we were on a bus headed to the Christchurch Airport. Some people were a little too bright and cheery for my liking so I put my headphones in and tried to act asleep. We got to the airport in about 15 minutes and didn’t have too long to wait before boarding our connecting flight to Auckland. I still had an assignment that I needed to finish before our international flight, but I passed out with my pen in my hand and my notebook in my lap. I opened my eyes again right as we landed. So as soon as we landed and walked to the international terminal, I made it a point to crank out the assignment as fast I could. We boarded our plane for Papeete, Tahiti shortly thereafter and once again, I fell right asleep on the plane. I probably woke a few times, once to eat the lunch provided and drink a glass of wine to knock me right back out. I think I woke up for good about 30 minutes before landing, so when it was all said and done, I had probably slept for about 4 out the 5 hours on the plane. That compounded with the earlier flight gave me about 5 hours cumulative sleep for the day, which was certainly better than 0. We landed in the late afternoon and disembarked via stairs rather than a gate. The first thing I noticed was the heat and humidity. It felt pretty similar to August in Atlanta (which kind of makes sense because it’s the equivalent to September-October in the Southern Hemisphere and we’re much closer to the equator). In the non-air-conditioned airport, we had quite the line through customs. The whole process probably took about an hour. Finally, we met our transportation and headed to Foyer des Jeunes Files, which would be our accommodations for the next few nights. I’m not sure of the exact translation, but it was an all-girls boarding school and I think it means something along those lines. It was definitely nice to be driving on the right side of the road again, which will hopefully get me conditioned for coming home. We arrived and sort of waited around for a little bit, trying to understand what we were doing. No one spoke English and our professor and a few others didn’t arrive until about 30 minutes after us. Finally, once everyone arrived, we figured out what we were doing and were led to our room. Ours wasn’t that bad. It was all tiled with single beds, but it didn’t have air-conditioning. Luckily, however, there were fans and I had been traveling with one as well.  After getting settled, we ate dinner, which was pretty good, and walked across the street to the greenway that splits the main road and the coastline of the harbor. We had orientation for Tahiti for about 30 minutes and then went back and passed out.

The next day, we got up, had breakfast, and boarded a coach to the University of French Polynesia. We had a couple classes, one about the biodiversity of Tahiti and one about the socio-culture of Tahiti. Neither professor spoke great English, so it was a little interesting. Afterward, we had a luncheon with Tahitian students majoring in English. The school prepared an incredible lunch for us and we had a great time interacting with all of the students and hearing about life in Tahiti and telling them about our lives at the University of Georgia. After lunch, we had time to spend more time talking and they performed a cultural dance for us and taught one the dances. We all agreed it was a great afternoon. When we got back, we walked into the city of Papeete. There was a nice greenway that took us all the way to the city. Though it didn’t look exactly like the US, the city still had a developed feel. The street front looked very nice, but all the back street and alleys were a lot different than the nice front. We ended up sitting down outside at a restaurant (the temperature gets a lot better in the afternoon) and having drinks and dinner. After a few hours, we walked back. It felt like 11, but it was really 8, so we stayed up for a couple hours before going to bed.

The next day, we took our tour of the island. We really covered a lot of ground and saw a lot of places in the span of the day.

Tahiti Social History Museum- was our first stop, and I’m glad we got it out of the way because it was really boring. It wouldn’t have been that bad if we could have just gone through and look around for about 30 minutes, except our guide gave a long lecture at every exhibit. It was quite miserable actually. However, outside, there was a cool cultural festival going on with elementary school kids and we watched that for a little which was pretty neat.

Arahurahu- was our next stop and we saw a “marae” which is a Tahitian temple (although no one in Tahiti still follows the ancient religion. Almost everyone accepts Christianity)

Faarumai Waterfalls- was our next stop. There were several really cool waterfalls that were huge and were a lot like pre-conceptions of Pacific islands. It was nice to see that those weren’t far off. We saw a huge lava tube as well that had filled with water, and we also saw a blowhole, which was unlike anything I have ever seen. You would stand next to this hole and every 40 seconds or so, a huge gust would come out and it would be quite startling. It managed to blow my hat off and knock my sunglasses off my face.

Venus Point- After a long, hot day, we made it to Matavai Bay where Captain Cook first landed in Tahiti. We spent about hour there on the black sand beach and swimming in the waves of warm water.

We made it back around dinnertime and walked into Papeete’s famous “moving market”, which are vans that show up and turn into kitchens at night. It was a lot like a food court at a mall. We stayed out a couple hours and went back. That night, we got a letter from the students at the University of French Polynesia, inviting us to afternoon party on the beach the following day. We called back and accepted the invitation and went to bed shortly, thereafter.

The next day (Wednesday, March 27), we had breakfast and went to College Anne-Marie Javouhey, a middle school. We spent the morning with kids, letting them practice their English. For the first part, I was with 3 kids, ages 13, 14, and 15 who had no interest in practicing English. I tried asking and acting out probably 50 questions, but did not get too much help. So that was a little bit of a bust. The next hour was great, though. A couple of us went to actual (air-conditioned) classroom with a full class and teacher, and 5 different groups made presentations to us in English. Afterward, we got up and gave a make-shift presentation about the US, GA, and Athens, and we taught them how to the Go Dawgs kickoff cheer, which was great. Our presentation pretty much brought the class to the bell, so I’m sure they were grateful for that. We left the school, and went to fruit market with the assignment of buying an exotic fruit that the rest of the class could try. I settled on some starfruits and spent the rest of the time walking around. That afternoon, we had our party with our new friends from the University of French Polynesia. We had a great time trying their food and just getting to know one another. We spent a good couple hours with them and were amazed at their generosity in coming to pick us up, cook for us, share with us, and take us home. It was definitely a blessing to really experience their culture in that way. We had to get back by 5 because that night, we had a social with the English teachers from the school we visited earlier. We went out for drinks at a local karaoke bar called “The Retro” and had a great time with them too. After a couple hours and couple drinks, we went back to the “Moving Market” for dinner and stayed there for a while before going to bed.

The next day was our departure day for Moorea (another island in French Polynesia), and if I’m being honest, I probably won’t post about it until I get home. It will be about our final destination for our final week. At this point, I have officially 3 nights left in Tahiti before our departure for the United States. It’s bittersweet knowing I’m going home, but at the same time, I’m excited to get back home and see family and friends and to experience springtime in Athens, the best time of year in the best place in the world.

Happy Easter!!!

Flying into Papeete

Nighttime view from the accomodations

Lava Tube

Hiking into the island

Sunset over the harbor

Faarumai Waterfall

Black sand beaches

Boardwalk along the harbor at Papeete

Papeete

"The Retro"

The "Moving Market"

The Greenway

Kaikoura

Thursday (March 21) morning, we had our drive to Kaikoura, which wasn’t all too bad. We got there in mid-afternoon and had a little time to hang out before having a lecture by a guest speaker to introduce us to Kaikoura. After the lecture, we had dinner and had a discussion afterwards before going back to our rooms to hang out for a little before going to bed.

Friday may have been the best day of the entire program. We got up, had breakfast, and hopped in the coach to go to Dolphin Encounter. We got to the building and were fitted into wetsuits (It was high 50s outside) and snorkeling gear. We then watched an intro/safety video and then got on another bus to take us out to our boat. It worked out really well because the capacity of a boat is 16 people and that’s how many of us there were so we had the whole boat to ourselves. We rode out for about 20 minutes before we arrived to a pod of 400+ Dusky Dolphins. The site of them alone was absolutely breathtaking. Fins moving up and down were visible everywhere and they were jumping and doing flips all over the place. They gave us some basic instructions and they we were allowed to hop in the water with them. Dolphins are curious animals so they are naturally inclined to come interact with humans. Word can’t describe how cool it was. They would approach and swim around and around. I had one of them swim in about 10 consecutive tight circles around me, only for another to come and do the same thing. We got to be in the water for about 20 minutes before we cruised over to another place to repeat the same process. All in all, is was an incredible once-in-a-lifetime type experience to be that close with wildlife.

Afterwards, we had lunch provided by the dolphin place and got back on the coach to have a “cultural experience” with the Maori. A few Maori people spent the afternoon with us and shared all sorts of traditions with us from greetings to songs to games to stories. They also invited us into their home for an afternoon snack and taught how to weave flax grass. It was really cool to closely encounter their culture and humbling to be accepted and treated like one of their own. That night, we had catered fish and chips dinner, and had a great discussion with our field guide Dr. Pat Devlin who is apparently one of the most respected professors in all of New Zealand. Afterwards, it was a pretty unproductive night and we went to bed relatively early.

The next morning (Saturday), we got to sleep in a little and by sleep in, I mean had breakfast at 8. We had a really cool interpretive walk through the “foreshore” which is the land between high tide and low tide and Pat talked to us a lot about various things we encountered along the way. Perhaps the most intense part of it all was that we had to cross through a seal colony to get where we were trying to go. Although seals may come across as cute and cuddly, they can actually be territorial and aggressive. Many of them were sleeping, but we had to be careful not to startle them. A couple shot us some mean looks, but for the most part, we didn’t have too many problems. That afternoon, we had to work on preparing for a debate that we had that evening and that took most of the rest of the day. For dinner, I had taco cooking duty again and I cooked some pretty good taco meat if I do say so myself.

The debate after dinner ended up going pretty well and afterwards, I was unproductive again and went to bed relatively early.

Finally, this morning we didn’t have to go to breakfast until 9 which was great. We ate, cleaned up, and headed back to Christchuch. We had a pretty short drive which was nice and when we got back here around lunchtime, I had a workout in the gym of the YMCA Hostel where we’re staying again, and then, I spent all afternoon working. We went to dinner around 6, and since I got back at 9, I have been working non-stop. I didn’t finish until about 30 minutes ago (at 2:45 AM) and seeing as I have to get up at 4:30 for our flight to Tahiti anyway, I decided to cut my losses and work on this for a little. Since I’m going back a day when I cross the International Date Line today, not going to sleep tonight doesn’t matter right?

All in all, New Zealand has been amazing. By far, it is my favorite place I have visited and I am of the impression that it is the most beautiful country in the world. I am beyond blessed to have spent a month here and I hope that one day, I have a chance to come back.

In a little more than 12 hours from now, I will be in Tahiti and in 12 days, back in the United States. To anyone reading, thank you for keeping up with me and I will try to be more consistent with posts for the remainder of the trip.

Abel Tasman National Park

So we woke up the morning of Monday, March 18 and had a very long drive to Motueka. We made a couple good stop including one at Punakaki to see the Pancake Rocks and Blowholes which were really cool limestone formations right over the water that look like giant pancakes stacked on top of one another.  We stayed there about 15 minutes and got on our way. We finally rolled into Motueka around dinnertime and I was on cooking duty so we had to get to work right away. We made some pretty delicious tacos, which I was pretty proud about. After dinner, we hung out and little bit and went to bed pretty early.

The next day, we had an overnight camping adventure to Abel Tasman National Park (which isn’t accessible by car). Half of us kayaked and half of us hiked. I was in the kayaking group and the weather was amazing. We kayaked around islands on some beautiful water. We stopped on a beach around lunchtime, which was when the weather rolled in. For the second half of our kayaking adventure, it rained and during that time, we were no longer in the protection of the bay and instead out on the sea waters. We did a stretch known as the mad mile where giants swells of water and choppy waves tossed us around like a popcorn kernel. Finally, we made it to the campgrounds and met the other half of the group. Other than the fact that it was pouring, the campsite was pretty cool. We got all set up, but there was a little bit of commotion because one the girls in the hiking group was missing (big time code green). An hour or so later, our professor found her…turns out she took a wrong turn. Anyways, after having our tents set up, we set out to cook dinner. We mostly had bought food in groups to cook, but we only had a couple stoves, so we had to alternate. Apparently, there was a middle school field trip their too because the place was swimming with little kids. After we ate, the rain was really coming down and we sucked it up and ran from the shelter to our tent for an early night. There’s really not much you can do on a camping trip when it’s pouring rain. I probably laid down around at 8:30 and didn’t sleep the entire night. The mat was about half an inch thick and did nothing to form a pad between the ground and my back. Not to mention, the tent started getting wet from the rain.

After the worst night of sleep of my life, I was more than ready to get up. It was freezing outside, but I couldn’t decide what was worse: laying on the hard ground in my sleeping or standing up freezing cold. I decided to just be up and move around. I felt like I was still wet from the rain and feeling pretty miserable. Thank God the sun came up that morning. It ended up being a beautiful day and the kayakers and hikers switched. The hike was great and was really more of a walk through the woods than a hike and I got some incredible pictures out of it. When we got back to Motueka, I headed straight for the showers before dinner. After dinner, I had another late night of work because we had a module due in the morning, but I lived and finally got to go to bed around 1 AM.

Fox Glacier

Saturday, March 16 was not much of anything. We were on the bus almost all day, made a few stops, and arrived to the accommodation just before diner time. The hotel wasn’t bad. We had pretty big rooms, average Internet (for a price), and had to walk across a parking lot to go the bathrooms, but it could’ve been worse. I had cooking duty, so our group set out to prepare Mushroom Chicken Pasta for the whole group. It was quite the ordeal as we had only tiny pots and sub-par electric stoves. After about 2 hours, we finally completed the task and fed the whole group. That night, most of us chose to enjoy a night in which nothing was immediately due and went to bed fairly early.

The next morning, we had planned on waking up to watch the sunrise over Lake Matheson, which is a pretty famous sight in New Zealand, but the rain was bad, so we waited until later on to do our walk around the lake. It was still raining, but it had let up a little so we did the walk. It was beautiful, but I’m sure it would’ve been 10x better in pretty weather. We came back afterward, ate lunch, and got ready for our glacier hike.

The glacier was Fox Glacier and it’s famous because it is one of 2 glaciers left in New Zealand that went all the way out to sea. Though it is nothing like it once was, there is still a massive remnant of it. Seeing it from a distance is pretty amusing because it can be warm outside, yet there is just a massive block of ice out there. Anyway, we went to the outfitter and were given ski pants, a ski jacket, and another under layer. The hike out was fairly short, but it was raining really hard. My waterproof outer layer was letting a lot rain under it, so that was fun. When we got to the glacier, we put on crampons (big spikes that attach to your shoe) and headed onto the glacier. Every step taken required a big stomp so that you could have firm footing since we were walking on ice. I think I would have been fine going about 10 minutes and turning around, but we spent about an hour out there. For one thing it was pouring down rain, and the temperature was about 40 degree colder on the glacier. It makes sense, but it was weird to go from what is like late September for us to late January on ski slopes. We walked along a few tracks on the glacier, but my overall opinion was that once you’ve seen part of the glacier, you’ve seen the whole thing. Once we got off the glacier, it was nice to be warm again and we trudged back along the sketchy trail. Sketchy because the trail was susceptible to rock falls and avalanches. In fact, we could see them happening on the other side of the glacier river as we walked. Finally, we got back and the hot shower felt incredible. We then ate dinner, did a little work and got to bed. At the end of the day, walking on a glacier was a pretty cool and unique experience, but of all the things I’ve done, I don’t know that I would go on a glacier again.

Queenstown Part 2

We got to start the next morning (Thursday, March 14) with our 4^th and final Geography class. It was definitely the most miserable class we had yet as we looked at demographic characteristics of Australia for three hours. After class, we were given time off for most of the afternoon, but we all worked really hard during that time because we wanted to be done with all our work before the free day the next day and everything was due on Saturday. I got a lot done before we had our debate that we had been preparing for that evening. Fortunately, it only took 30 minutes, so that we could work more (a huge joy). Once we were done though, I decided I needed a little fresh air so another person and I walked into Queenstown and grabbed some ice cream and headed back. Of course, it was another late night and I knocked out geography essay, and I was finally down to one module left, but I decided to save it for the free day because by that time, it was almost 1 AM.

The next day was our long awaited free day where we could explore the adventures of Queenstown. A lot of people went bungy jumping, some people went skydiving, others went horseback riding, and some people had to stay in and work on their essay. I myself woke up around 8 and went to a local gym with our professor and got a workout in. It was good to be active, but I was pretty exhausted. Anyway, since my time in Queenstown with my dad when I got to cross the bungy jump off my list, I had been really curious about these jet boat rides through rivers where there were ads for everywhere, so I booked one the day before so that I could see what it was all about. The company came and picked me up from the hotel at noon and took a group out to Skippers canyon, which is a pretty remote part of Queenstown. The ride through the canyon was all part of the adventure (although the road was on the edge of cliff, which is always a heartwarming feeling…). They took us down to the river where we were met by the jet boat. I was amazed by the thing. It only needed 4 inches of water to accelerate, so we could go on some extremely shallow parts of the riverbed and up fairly large rapids. The drive could operate it with extreme precision and we would fly past cliff edges within inches and do 360s around corners. It was pretty cool and I’m glad I did it. I got back to our hotel around 3 and was dying to get down to the beach to meet everyone else who was down there, so I did my best to write my module as fast as I could. Fortunately, it was an easy one and I had thinking the whole ride back about what I would write about. I knocked it out in about 30 minutes and headed to the beach. We all met up and hung out there for a few hours and came in for a little bit before going out to the bars. It was pretty fun out there, but we knew we had a pretty early morning ahead so most of us went in before midnight.

Deep Cove and Doubtful Sound

So we woke up for breakfast on Sunday, March 10, packed our stuff, and headed off in the coach. We had about a two-hour drive to Lake Manapouri where we hopped on a ferry with all of our stuff packed in route to Deep Cove. Mountains and fiords were visible from all directions as we rode across the freshwater lake. After about 45 minutes, we made it to the side where there was a power station that was notable for being built inside of a fiord. We had a little tour through the power station and got on our way to the Deep Cove Hostel, which would be our accommodation for the next 3 nights. After about a 45-minute coach ride through the mountains and fiords, we made it. “Simple” would be a great way of describing the accommodation. It was a quaint little place just above the water and really out in the middle of nowhere. It can only be reached by ferry across Lake Manapouri, so it was really remote. It was dorm-style and there were about 10 bedrooms, basically just enough for all of us, with a kitchen and common area. The place is special because it is so protected by the New Zealand government. Deep Cove flows out to Doubtful Sound and only 300 people are permitted to visit per day, and only 38 people can stay overnight because that is how many the hostel, the only accommodation across the lake, can sleep. The area definitely has the feel of a place that is untouched by people. (My one knock on the place is that the sandflies were miserable. If you’ve never been bit by one, imagine a mosquito bite and a booster shot at the same time and that’s about what one feels like). But anyway, after getting settled for a little bit, we had a 3-hour geography class with a UGA professor who had flown all the way to New Zealand for class. It wasn’t too bad, but not having class very often makes it all the more miserable when we actually do have class. After talking about maps for 3 hours, we had dinner. Later on, we had an introductory lesson about Fiordlands National Park (made up my Doubtful Sound and 11 others) and I tried to get a little work done before going to bed.

The next morning we had to wake up relatively early to be ready for our cruise through Deep Cove and Doubtful Sound. The cruise was absolutely amazing. We were surrounded by sheer beauty for 3 hours in one of the most pristine parts of the fiordlands. Though there was a large inside part of the boat, it was almost impossible to not stand outside the entire time looking at the mesmerizing scenery. We saw our fair share of New Zealand wildlife, as well. As we cruising out to the where the Sound runs into the sea, we saw a couple blue penguins and giant albatross that flew behind our boat for about 10 minutes. We made it to the seal colony, which was a planned part of the trip, but unplanned was a pod of dolphins as we made our way back in. It was the first time I had ever seen wild dolphins that close up before and a highlight was watching one jump vertically and do a flip about 6 whole feet out of the water and as we rode away, they would swim through the wake of the boat and do flips and barrel rolls…definitely one of the coolest things I have ever seen. When we got back around 1, we had lunch before going on a hike through the forest part of the fiordlands. The whole hike took about 3 hours and we saw some waterfalls, looked at some vegetation, and learned more about the ecology of the park. Afterwards, we hung out a little before dinner and then of course did some work.

The next morning (Tuesday), we had class first thing in the morning, but I guess it was kind of nice to get it over with. However, we were assigned a 5-page paper afterwards that did nothing but add to the large amount of stress that most of us were already feeling from schoolwork, so that was great. By the time class was over, it was about lunchtime, so we ate before going out on another hike. The hike was the most uphill hike I have ever done, which kind of makes sense if you see the fiords. They’re nearly vertical all the way up if you’re looking from the bottom. So basically, we used all form limbs to climb rocks and roots to make it to a vista that overlooked much of Deep Cove. I suppose it was tough, but it was really only 45 minutes to the top, so it wasn’t too bad, nothing like our hike in Queenstown at least. Up at the top, we listened to some stories about the Maori from our guide. I’m not going to lie though, I was so tired from staying up all the past nights that I passed out laying against the rock as I spoke, but at least it was a pretty nice catnap. We made back to the hostel a little before dinnertime and we hung around a little bit before having dinner. After dinner, we had another discussion and of course, I stayed up doing schoolwork late again. We had a debate in a couple days where we worked in teams to determine whether the visitor quota for Doubtful Sound should be raised and we had to plan out our argument. After our group meeting, I somehow stayed productive for a while and got some things done, but the consequence was another late night.

The next day was departure day and we got up around 6:30 for breakfast so that we could pack and do all the necessary cleaning of the hostel. We got our coach ride around mid-morning, which to took us to our ferry ride, which took us back to our coach that took us back to Queenstown.  On the way, we stopped at Te Anau Wildlife Park and got to look at some endangered birds that are indigenous to New Zealand, all of which are pretty neat. New Zealand has cool birds because mammals are not indigenous to the islands (other than the seal) and therefore, birds were dominant and could really evolve. Now, introduced species compete with the birds for food (or eat them) and its caused problems for them. We made it to Queenstown and the same accommodation we were in before around mid-afternoon and decided to grab an early dinner before class at 6. Again, it definitely wasn’t the way I’d choose to spend 3 hours, but I suppose it wasn’t too bad. And as always, I stayed up late trying to get some work done.

Overall Deep Cove/Doubtful Sound was an amazing experience. It was really cool to see a beautiful landscape that was so pristine and unaltered by humans. It was eye-opening to think about how over-development could ruin a place a like Doubtful Sound.

Queenstown Part 1

The next morning (Friday, March 8), we hit the road pretty early to head to Queenstown. Along the way, we made some stops at some vistas, had some lectures, and ultimately arrived around mid-afternoon. We stayed at the Pinewood Lodge, which I think is known more for its value than luxury, but it wasn’t terrible. It was kind of like a dormitory with bunkrooms, a common area, and a communal bathroom. At least we had the cabin to ourselves. We were given a couple hours to roam around Queenstown, which was nice. I think I’ve all places I’ve visited so far, if I had to move to one of them, it would be Queenstown. It’s touristy, but it has cool feel to it. The town itself has a bunch of restaurants and bars and is situated on a beach on a lake and is nestled right in the Southern Alps of New Zealand. Obviously, there is a ton to do there with almost every adventure imaginable available. Every thing from sky diving, bungee jumping, jet boating, hiking, canyoning, rafting, off-roading, horseback riding, no surprise it’s known as the “Adventure Capital of the World”. Anyway, we had group dinner/discussion where I got assigned more work on top of pretty heavy load we had at the time. After dinner, we walked into Queenstown and a couple of us had a beer at an incredible spot on the water which hit the spot. We were in town for about an hour and then headed in. Most people including myself got pretty stressed out about our work, so I attempted to knock some work out. After not getting much done, I called it quits and went to bed.

The next day (Saturday) was a big one. We were hiking the Ben Lomand, which is a huge peak over Queenstown. We basically had to go through three mountains on the range to get to the summit, so we were told we would meet at the top of the first one at 9:30 AM. We were given the choice of riding a gondola up or hiking. Feeling up to the task, I chose to hike. A little more than half of us set out at 8:30 to knock out the first part. It was almost literally a vertical climb. In fact some parts were so steep that there were stairs. So after an hour and feeling exhausted already, we made it to the top and met up with the (lazy) gondola riders for our first lecture of the day (a lot of it was about plant species again). Anyway, we finally set out to conquer the rest of the mountain. It was probably a three-hour stretch and though we traversed a lot up the mountain, it was very uphill. Because a lot of people had a different pace, we spread out a lot along the trail, which was kind of nice because I have hard time stopping and starting a lot. We were to meet at the saddle of the final peak to have lunch and have another lecture. It was pretty amazing toward the top because we were essentially hiking right through clouds. It was actually almost a little discouraging at the time though because it felt like the mountain just kept going and going with a peak nowhere in sight. At one point very close to the top we were wondering if we were even going in the right direction or if we had taken a wrong turn, not being able to see anything, when all of sudden, a hole through the clouds broke, just big enough to reveal nothing but the summit, a pretty incredible sight. A few minutes later, we got to the top of the saddle and waited for about 30 minutes for everyone else to arrive and had lunch and a lecture. While we were up there, it was still very cloudy, but low cover and few peak were visible above the clouds. We were supposed to do a reflection exercise and draw what we could see. During those 13 minutes that we were silently looking at the mountains, the cloud cover completely evaporated before our eyes. Literally by the end, the sky was completely clear. It was on of the most unbelievable phenomena that I had ever witnessed. Anyway after the lecture, we were given the choice to summit the peak, which would take an additional hour to make it up or turn around. Feeling pretty good (and wanting to carpe diem), I went with the summit half of the group. If any of the other legs could be described as bad, this one could be described as miserable. I would imagine the angle would have been pretty close to 90 degrees. It was so steep that I almost couldn’t stop because I would lose my momentum. Some parts even required all four limbs. After the one hour grind, my legs feeling like jelly and my back feeling like it would lock up at any point due to my backpack, I made it to the summit and the view made it all worth it. For 360 degrees were mountains and lakes and Queenstown visible at the bottom (Hopefully I can figure out how to post video). After about 30 minutes of soaking in the accomplishment, we headed back down. Who would’ve thought going down would be worse than up? The entire trip down probably took three hours and I think I was in agony the entire time. Going straight down was so painful on my feet, knees, and lower back. By the time, I got back I almost felt sick to my stomach because my back hurt so bad. Once we got back, I laid down for half an hour and sucked it up, took a shower, and we went out to eat for a little in downtown Queenstown. We we’re out for a little bit, but we were all exhausted and went in relatively quickly and passed out.

That’s all for Queenstown Part 1. Read about my four days at Deep Cove in my next one. 

Aoraki/Mount Cook

Well, after another extended gap between blog posts, here comes a couple to catch up. As I write right now, I am on a bus with the group on the way from Queenstown to Fox Glacier. Believe it or not, I have been swamped with schoolwork lately. In the past week, I’ve had to write a six page essay, three 250-word module essays, prepare for a debate, and I still have two more module essays and geography assignment due this week. It may not sound like much, but when you’re busy from 7 AM to 9 PM everyday, it can definitely feel like a lot. Of course, in the midst of all this schoolwork, I am still finding time to keep up with the Dawgs, Falcons, and Braves. I definitely love the Falcons’ free agency moves. It’s exciting to know we get to watch Tony G suit up for the birds for at least another year (maybe even two) and I’m excited to see what Steven Jackson will bring to the team. Down in Orlando, it seems like we’re going to have a lot to look forward to with the Bravos this year. If spring training is telling of how the Uptons and Teheran will perform this year, it could be a special year for the Braves. Anyway, since this is a blog about my trip and not a wannabe sports blog, I supposed I could get to the story that is my semester abroad.

So picking up where I left, not too much went on Wednesday night (March 6) as I predicted. The Alpine Lodge where we stayed was really cool though. Shockingly, it had a real lodge feel to it. It was made of timbers and nestled in a valley with Mount Cook towering in the distance. We shared rooms, but they had very comfortable beds and there was big common area with a living room space, a porch facing the mountain, and a kitchen where we did all of our own cooking for our time there. Once we got there, the cooking group for the evening (which I was not in) made dinner and we ate and went to bed fairly early.

The next morning, we woke up sort of early to do our hike before it got too hot. We met at the visitor center, had an introductory lecture from the park ranger for a couple hours, regrouped and set out for our hike. It was a pretty easy hike because we weren’t actually climbing the mountain. Mount Cook is 40% covered in glacier so to summit the mountain would be a whole different can of worms. The views were still unbelievable though and I made it out with some incredible pictures. The hike was just a basic back and forth, about 2 hours each way, but the destination was amazing. It was called Hooker Lake and it was created entirely by glacier run off, giving it a really milky color, and there were large pieces of the glacier floating around it, which was pretty neat. We had a mini-lecture there before heading to the lodge. Once we got back, it was about dinnertime and this time I was in the cooking group. We were having spaghetti, but we had leftover meat from the cookout the night before, so I was assigned to man the grill (which I thought was pretty sexist, but I got over it). After dinner, we had a species identification quiz over the plants we had been looking at all day, which I was better at than I thought. And afterwards, we had a group discussion and we’re given most of the night to relax and get work done (which no one did, but the relaxing was nice).  

Getting Back in the Swing of Things

So Saturday, March 2^nd was my alone day. I ended up getting up a few hours after my dad left. My goal for the day was to catch up on rest and catch up on anything else I needed to do. The first thing I did was cook breakfast for myself in my little kitchenette. Once I was finished, I set out to be productive for a little bit. I re-packed by suitcase, worked on this blog, sent some emails, posted pictures on Facebook., and got caught up on a few TV shows. Surprisingly, these tasks took all of my morning and most of my afternoon. However, it was nice to just be inside taking it easy. During late afternoon, I walked into town (about a five minute walk), ordered Dominos pizza, picked up some laundry supplies, and rented a couple movies. I walked back and had my solo dinner while I did my laundry. Afterwards, I made some skype calls until I hit my data limit and then watched movie #1, Hunger Games (hate to say it, but I wasn’t impressed. I guess I need to read the books instead…). Thankfully, I had to tried and true movie, Hot Rod (which definitely brought me back to summer 2010 when we would fall asleep to that movie every night in the pit). Just like back then, I fell asleep in the middle of the movie, which kind of worked out because I watched it when I woke up the next morning.

So I woke up the next morning, watched Hot Rod, and cooked breakfast again. Fortunately, a girl on my trip who was in New Zealand already too was back in Christchurch, so I met her over at the Christchurch Botanical Gardens, which are supposedly world famous, and we walked around for a little and ate lunch. Since I sat around all day the day before, it was nice to do actually do something. After lunch, we went our separate ways and I headed back to my hotel for a little bit. We went back out a little later in search of a place to eat ice cream. We walked to area where we had lunch earlier only to find a ghost town, so we went back to the YMCA and asked where we should go. The lady made a few recommendations and casually suggested we stop by the “Lantern Festival” at the park. So we decided to stop by, not really expecting what to find. We were shocked to find what seemed like the entire town of Christchurch at the festival. There was live music (in English and in Chinese), a 100 yd stretch of food vendors (all Chinese food), lights, fireworks, and one ice cream place. We looked around for a couple hours and we’re amazed that we would’ve had no idea this was going on. Anyway, it was nice surprise and we headed our separate ways for the night.

The next day (Monday), I was reunited with the group at our accommodations, the Christchurch YMCA, and it was good to see everyone again, even though it was nice to have some alone time during spring break. We didn’t actually have anything on the schedule until late afternoon so we were able to spend some time in Christchuch during the day before having to do school stuff. At around 4:30, we finally had our first class. We got lecture on the “Bio-Geography of New Zealand”, had a pizza dinner, and had orientation for the New Zealand portion with our new professor Dr. Tarrant. Afterward, we all walked to the grocery store to buy lunch food for the next couple days, walked back, and went to bed (We were all pretty tired, especially everyone else who had a slightly crazier spring break than I did).

We had breakfast as a group the next morning and then had lecture with a local professor for an introduction to the socio-culture of New Zealand. After, we went into town to the to the Re:Start Quake City museum. In case you weren’t aware, in February of 2011, Christchuch had an enormous earthquake that basically damaged the entire downtown district. In fact, most of it is still damaged and you can’t even go in the part that are called the “Damage Red Zone”. The city center where the museum is borders the damage zone and its fenced off. It’s a weird feeling looking in on it. It feels kind of like looking into an open casket. Everything is still there as far as street signs, restaurant signs, etc. You can see a Subway, a Starbucks, but no one is there and it has a really lifeless aura. Anyway, we ate lunch after going to the museum and then went to another museum to see more about the history of New Zealand. Then we went to the Botanical Gardens to see the New Zealand representation in the garden and to learn a little about New Zealand’s ecology. We were turned loose afterward around 4:30, but didn’t really do much in the evening but eat dinner because all of us were pretty tired. I took advantage of the time to watch some more TV shows and then went to bed relatively early.

This morning (Wednesday), we woke up at the crack of dawn to hit the road early. Throughout the day, we have stopped at various beautiful sites along the drive to have mini lectures from our professor and made another stop at a farm to hear about some of New Zealand’s political-environmental issues from his perspective. (Side note: They shot a scene from LOTR Return of the King at the farm). Now, it is about 5 PM, and we are en route to Mt. Cook where we will be spending the evening at Alpine Lodge. Seeing as we’re in the middle of nowhere, there shouldn’t be too much else going on tonight. We’re definitely blessed to have a great few weeks ahead and to experience more of the beauty of God’s Creation.

 No pics yet, but I'll post some when I can connect to Internet on my phone. 

The Lantern Festival

The Surprise Fireworks

Re:Start Christchurch City Centre

Christchurch, NZ

Christchurch Botanical Gardens