So I finished finals 4 days ago, and my parents land in 9 hours. Which I guess means that I’m supposed to give this some closure with a last post. The thing is, I’ve been struggling with what to say, and how I feel about this entire trip. I’m having trouble finding a good way to give this trip and this blog some closure. So I decided that I will wait. When I am home and safe, I will have better hindsight, and perhaps some more insight to the real essence of this New Zealand adventure. So I will postpone this last post until some time in early December when I get home. I’m sure all of you will forget about it by then, but considering only like 4 people read it, it wont be too much of a hassle to remind you. Or maybe I myself will forget about it and this blog will be left floating on the internet forever unfinished. Only time will tell. I’m sure all of you are on the edges of your seats.

Tejas

So, with all my recent adventures well detailed, I guess all thats left is to tell you of what is to come.

I have one final tomorrow, and another one on november 16th. After my second final, I have 5 days of freedom and independence left until my parents and my brother arrive on november 21st. We’ll travel around New Zealand seeing things that I may have already seen for two weeks, and I return home on december 6th.

I think that study abroad is defined by the independence and adulthood you experience while in a new country by yourself. Which I guess means that my study abroad ends NOT when I leave the country on December 6th, but when my parents arrive on November 21st and my independence disappears. Which leaves me with just about 10 days of study abroad left, only 5 of which I have free.

Hopefully, I will have one last New Zealand adventure, and I will make one last post about it in a few days. And if not, I’m sure I will be full of self reflection worthy of one last post.

Until then,

Tejas

Ok, so to continue my series of catching up posts here is one about my recent trip to the south island.

For those of you who are unaware, Ill provide a bit of background. New Zealand is made up of two main islands, the north one and the south one. I live on the north one. The south one is regarded as even more beautiful and amazing than the north. Queenstown is a city about 3/4 of the way down the south island, and it is about a 4 hour drive from Te Anau, which is generally a jumping off point for any activities to be done in Fiordland national park. Fiordland is the biggest and from the ones i have seen, the best national park in New Zealand, and it is home to such wonders of the world as Milford sound, the Milford track (called the best walk in the world by the NY times), and two other “great walks”. The great walks are a list of 9 hikes compiled by the New Zealand DOC, and are regarded as some of the best walks in New Zealand. The Kepler track is one of these tracks. The Kepler track takes a total of 4 days. The great walks are in so much demand that to do the Milford (the one in greatest demand) it costs about $300 NZ for transport to and from the track, and for lodging at the huts on the way.

With that said, I flew down to Queenstown on November first and landed at about 1pm. I got picked up from the airport by my friend, and we immediately embarked on the drive to Te Anau where we spent the night in a hostel. The next morning we set off to the DOC hut, to pick up our passes to do the Kepler Track. They told us that because of an avalanche warning, it was not advisable to do a portion of the track. Specifically a short portion on the second day. We decided to go up, do the first day anyway, and if the snow came down, or if they decided to blow the snow up (which is what they were considering), then we could continue the second day. So we started walking, and for the first 5 hours or so, we saw nothing more than the forest around us and the terrible gradient of the track, and we were exhausted. Finally, 5 hours later and about 900 meters higher we broke free of the tree line, and were welcomed by views one only thinks exist in movies. It was, at the least, astounding and beautiful and just plain amazing. we decided that since we couldn’t finish the track, we would go as far as we could, see as many awe inspiring things as we could, sleep the first night as planned, and then retrace our steps down the second day. We reached the peak of Mt. Luxmore, an elevation of about 1500m, and were privy to amazingly beautiful things of the likes of which I have imagined possible.  In one direction lay lake Te Anau, and on it’s shores was the town of Te Anau. In another direction were the majestic Murchison mountains, across an inlet of the lake. In another direction lay plains that stretched almost to as far as the eye could see, until suddenly rising up into mountains at the edge of the horizon. It was actually the most amazing thing I have ever seen.

So the avalanche warning held and we descended down the next day. We decided to head out to the famed Milford Sound to fill the time we had planned on hiking. We reached the bottom at about 2 pm, lay on the beautiful beach along the lake for a bit to relax our sore muscles, and then got back in the car and started the drive to the Milford Sound. We stopped that night at a campsite in a valley between two mountain ranges alongside a meandering river. Its amazing the kind of beauty that is considered normal in Fiordland.

The next day we swallowed our feeling of superiority over ‘tourists’, and went on a very touristy Milford cruise, to see the beautiful sights of the sound. I could describe how beautiful it was all day, but it would just be words in the end, so I will simply say it was very beautiful.

The rest of our trip was mostly just odds and ends. We did part of the Routeburn track (another of the great walks), but it was too cloudy to really appreciate the beauty. We did a few other walks to see some waterfalls and things. We explored Queenstown extensively. Finally, we returned home. Which I guess is Auckland.

In summary, I guess there is little more to say than it was beautiful, tiring, certainly smelly in our tent, cold, hard to sleep (on the ground), rather wet at times, rather hungry at others, but in all it was amazing.

 

 

Alert/Important notice

Hey, so again I have been terrible at posting for an inordinate period of time. To make it up to all of you who have been missing me so much that your soul hurts (which I guess is only my mom and Nick Skaff), I will try to now post a comprehensive and detailed summary of everything exciting thats happened to me over the last month. It can be broken up into two main events, the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, and my trip to the south island. This post, as you may gather from the title, will cover the first.

The Tongariro Alpine Crossing is hailed widely as the “best day walk in New Zealand”, and New Zealand is hailed widely as one of the best places to go hiking. By the transitive property, does that make the alpine crossing the best day walk in the world? Regardless, it makes it really good. For those of you who care, Mt Ngauruhoe, one of the peaks we cross, was used as Mt Doom in Lord of the Rings. One weekend a few weeks ago, a friend and I made our way down to Tongariro National Park to do the crossing. We had planned to do the crossing the entire semester, but as winter conditions required the use of crampons and ice axes, we were forced to wait till the spring time.

To quote the DOC:

The Tongariro Alpine Crossing track passes over varied and spectacular volcanic terrain. In the presence of active volcanoes you can experience some of Tongariro National Park’s special gifts. A cold mountain spring, lava flows, an active crater, steam vents, emerald-coloured lakes and magnificent views combine to make this an enjoyable and memorable trip.

Recent heavy snowfalls have left significant snow and ice on trail, track users need to be prepared for alpine conditions.

The part of that quote that is particularly important is the Alert. It was blizzarding up there. The wind was blowing at over 50km/s, the visibility was less than 15m, and the snow/hail/ice was falling so fast and so hard, that if you looked into the wind, you were met immediately with the pain of hundreds of pieces of ice hitting your face. At one point the visibility was too poor for us to see the next trail marker, so we had to wander in the direction it seemed to be. We got lost. About 100m out we hit a flooding river, and had to turn back and make a new plan of action. We then heard some guys talking, and moved in that direction, and found some more hikers, and another marker. Relieved, we began to follow this path. The path we were on was extremely steep for a very long period of time, during which we were freezing and exhausted. I began to despair that we had accidental stumbled upon the path to the summit of the mountains, which was only to be tackled by experts (The crossing itself passes between two summits and reaches a height of 1850m, but the summit of Mt Ngauruhoe at about 2100m is a side trail that takes about 3 hours). I decided that if that was the case, I would just lie down and die at the top, because that would be much easier than coming all the way back. We climbed like 500 meters, we had to cross narrow passes no more than a few meters wide with hundred meter drops on either side, and we froze every extremity we had off. I was almost ready to just die when my friend turned to me and said “Do you remember the shire, Mr. TJ?”. That was a Lord of the Rings joke. In actuality, we reached the top, and found a sign telling us we were on the right path, and without taking a second to enjoy the feeling of being at the top of that terrible mountain we had climbed, we just continued on, thinking of nothing but our desire to reach the hut where we could rest for a bit. In the end, we made it with little more than a bit of frostnip and scarred souls, and came out with a story that my kids will probably get tired of hearing.

Now for the mothers in all of you (including my mother), who will read this and immediately want to make me come home, to be perfectly honest there was never great danger I was in. This hike while terribly exhausting, was more of a great mental battle than anything else. My fears, my exhaustion, and my cold fought my will to continue moving, and my desire not to have to get helicoptered out of there. But, the option of getting helicoptered out was always there, I had a phone with signal, and they knew that we were up there and expected us down a a certain time, so at any time on this hike little more was at stake than my pride.

In all, it was probably the physically and mentally most challenging thing I have ever done, and even emotionally difficult at a point when we got into an argument about whether it would be better for us to eat while unprotected on that freezing summit, or continue on with empty stomachs.

I guess I could just say, it was really really hard.

With that said, I will soon post about my recent trip to the south island.

Hey, so sorry I’ve been terrible at posting. To be perfectly honest, there has not been much to post about. These last few weeks have been pretty boring, regular, USA type stuff like class and homework and chores. All stuff that didn’t qualify as New Zealand Adventure, as much as just New Zealand life. Since my last post, the only trip I’ve done of note is another hike in the Waitakere Ranges out west. The hike was pretty cool, the fog and rain were unbelievable, so it made for a different tramping experience. Also since then, yesterday I finally got a package from my parents full of things that had been stolen from me like a camera and a drivers licence and some bank cards. As my life of late has been for the most part unworthy of this magnificent blog, I instead will post about my plans for the future.

First allow me to draw a picture of my remaining time in New Zealand. School is drawing to a rapid end, with the last day of classes being on October 23, in 8 days. I have 4 exams on Oct. 29th, Oct 31st, Nov, 11th, and Nov 16th. My parents will arrive on Nov 20th. This leaves me a month and 5 days to fit in any last New Zealand adventures without the watchful eyes of parents. I plan to take advantage of my time.

This weekend I plan to hit up the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, “the best one day walk in New Zealand”. I say plan to instead of will because the crossing, as its name implies, is over alpine elevations. If the weather decides to make it so, it will become impassable for those of us who do not have the skill to wield an ice axe.  But if all goes according to plan, I will have topped an almost 2000m mountain.

Then, after my second exam on Oct. 31st, I’m heading south to the famed fiordland. I fly to Queenstown on Nov 1st, and will do the Kepler walk, one of the cheaper brother walks of the famous and approximately $200 Milford track. The walk might just be the highlight of my 5 months in New Zealand. I’m pretty excited. I return to Auckland on Nov 8th, just in time to study and ace my next two finals.

After the last of my finals on Nov 16th, until my parents arrive at 5:30 am on November 21st. My last five days of freedom. I haven’t planned them up yet, but I definitely have alot of things to choose between. I may hit up Wellington, the capital of NZ, or take a 3 day canoe trip down the Whanganui river, or go hiking in the Kauri forest north of here, or maybe I’ll just stick around and savor my last days in Auckland. I guess I’ll see how it goes.

With that said, I hope my many ambitious plans all come to fruition, I hope that I will look back on this last month as my best, and I hope that no one else steals anything from me.

Is that too much to hope for?

So I guess its been a while since my last post again. I’m getting lazy. Since my last post, I haven’t really done anything worth mentioning. I went on a field trip for my geography class, my flatmates and I conducted a large scale cleanup of the flat in preparation for our flat inspections, I’ve been buying or borrowing some of the stuff I lost in the theft, basically all things that filled my days, but wouldn’t be worth filling your days by recounting.

The only things worth talking about are my reflections on New Zealand. I know reflections on travel are generally something reserved for the flight back, so I guess I’m jumping the gun here but hey, it is what it is. (I’m uncomfortable with the number of expressions in that last sentence that I’ve taken from my dad). I came to New Zealand with little more knowledge than what Wikipedia and a few travel articles on NYTimes.com said about it, and what Lord of the Rings showed of it. When I got here what surprised me the most was that there was so little that surprised me. To be perfectly honest, Auckland reminds me of the US in more ways than I care to count. At first it softened the blow of being alone in a new country and I embraced it. Over the past few months though, its grown to make me hate how prevalent American culture is in the rest of the world. It’s not like American culture is that great. A lot of it sucks, and I would love to get away from it for at least 6 months of my life.

Also disappointing, is Auckland University. I feel like they make a science of just teaching and grading in roundabout ways. The end result is they really test students ability to understand the psychology of the teachers. By far the hardest part of my classes here is understanding first what I should be studying out of the muck of information that teachers basically throw up on us, and second, what teachers are asking me to do when they pose their ridiculous essay questions and assignment prompts. And then to make up for it, a 75% is an A-. This has been my experience, and I cannot extrapolate it at all to the rest of the classes in the university, or even to the rest of the students in the classes that I am in, and for all I know, everyone else loves how the system works. I speak for myself.

Now I know it seems to anyone who has read up to here, that my study abroad just sucks, but it doesn’t. The disappointments of Auckland aside, the rest of New Zealand is great. There is nothing I have grown to love more than heading out on state highway 1 in a rented car on a Saturday morning. Just “listening to some Johnny Cash, having a good time”. I love the country around Auckland. I love the hiking through forest and mountains. I love the kayaking, and the rafting, and the seeing of beautiful things.

I guess the conclusion of this post is that I love New Zealand. Auckland, not so much. But also, I have another 2 months to change that opinion, so I guess we’ll see how it goes.

peace out

Sorry its been a while, I was going to post as soon as I got back from my northland adventure, but I had three tests the next week (last week), so I was pretty busy working on those and I didnt get the chance to post.

In recap of my last two weeks, Northland was awesome, and this last week of tests sucked. The highlights of Northland would probably be driving down 90 mile beach, exploring abbey caves, playing on giant (by which I mean like 10 story high) sand dunes, and hitting up the tip of the north island, one of the most beautiful places ever. Our last few days were plagued with bad weather, so we didnt get to enjoy some things as much as we would have liked, but on the whole it was a great trip. I would go into more detail, but I have more pressing concerns.

So after that, I had 3 tests this last week. They were ok, but I have been getting really frustrated with how they teach us more slowly here, and the tests are easier, but I would get worse grades because they just grade everything ridiculously hard. Then, I found out that a 75% is an A- in science classes at Auckland, and I was immediately much less frustrated. An 85 is an A+,  so I’ve been getting straight A+’s.

Yesterday, I went out to the beach with some friends and when we got back to the car, it had been broken in. I lost my wallet, my shoes, my camera, my jeans, my belt, my towel, my water bottle, and my backpack which it was all in. My friend lost his back pack  full of stuff too, and two other friends in another car that was also broken in lost a wallet and two iPhones collectively. They were kind enough to leave my shirt, which was sitting in the middle of the otherwise empty trunk. However i guess that they decided that my sandals  looked particularly appealing because while my shoes were stolen, both other pairs of sandals in the car were left. Maybe they also had big feet. So I was there, left on the beach, without shoes, a towel or clothes (except for my shirt) shivering cold, when we found out that one of the stolen iPhones could be tracked by GPS. Immediately envisioning all types of exquisite and elaborate scenarios involving the recovery of our stolen stuff, ranging from car chases to shoot outs, we ran to the nearest computer, and found out that our thieves were hanging out in west Auckland.

We phoned up the police, who were ecstatic at the chance to finally catch these guys, and we also piled into the car of the surfshop owner, who was also eager to get a piece of these guys who have been targeting his customers, and drove out there. On the way we mainly sat in anticipation, and listened to the surfshop guy talk about things like the nature of crime, the organization or lack thereof of the police departments, and what he would do if he had a taser (which was tase everybody). Not to make it seem like he was crazy or a bad guy, he was really very helpful and nice, and his statements in context were nothing more than funny jokes or mildly interesting observations. During our drive over to the place, we got a call from home base telling us that the iPhone had been turned off, and we no longer knew exactly where they were. We still continued on our drive over, met up with the police who, while eager to catch these guys, were really too restricted by the law to do more than sit in their cars and look menacing, and hope that we got a new gps location for the guys. We then went to the places that it seemed like they had stopped while we still had gps, and we looked around in the trash cans to see if they chucked the things like my jeans or towel which had no value to them. We talked to people who were sitting around there, and then we went to the liquor store to see if anyone suspicious had been by. We found nothing, and all that adrenaline from the car ride over just made us antsy and upset as we got back into the car and sadly drove back.

Today, I have to file a report at the police department, go to the bank and get a new debit card, keep pulling up my pants because I dont have a belt, and I guess get on with my life. I estimate that I lost about $500, and will have to pay another 100 or so to get a new drivers license, keys, student ID, ect. Sucks but hey, to quote everyone’s mom, at least I still have my health.

So now, after my Rarotongan adventure, my second week of my mid-semester break will be spent driving through and admiring the many wonders of Northland. Northland is basically all of the north island that is north of Auckland. Go check a map. Three other Americans (Josh, Rachel, and Zack), and I have booked a car for 5 days, and from tomorrow till Saturday we will be on the road.

Our itinerary starts with snorkeling at the goat island marine reserve, and from there moves on to include swimming with dolphins, kayaking through mangroves, surfing, kayaking through sea caves, hiking through kauri forest, tobogganing down sand dunes, driving on the beach, exploring some glowworm caves, and some more stuff that isn’t quite exciting enough to mention. I’ll fill you in on the dirty details when I get back.

Since I got back from Rarotonga, I’ve really done little more than run around and prepare for this trip which involved many phone calls, a few meetings with people who have already done the trip, and hours on google maps. Hours on google maps meaning hours waiting for google maps to load, and a few minutes using google maps. In between all of that I managed to squeeze in a viewing of Ghostbusters the movie, and subsequently I managed to squeeze in many playings of the ghostbusters theme song on youtube.

(ghost)BUSTING MAKES ME FEEEEEL GOOD!!

On that note, I’m gonna sign off for another 5 days now. I’ll post about my many (hopefully) great Northland adventures on Sunday.

Peace

Tejas

I’m back, more experienced, well traveled, and a bit braver. My trip to Rarotonga (the capital of the cook islands) was simply put, amazing.

Rarotonga has a population of about 10,000 (no one really seems to know for sure), and is 35 kilometers in circumference. It is surrounded by a coral reef, making the ocean around it transition from a light blueish turquoise to a deep purple-blue. My trip began with a visit to a local market where I bought a croissant (traditional rarotongan food) and a coconut to drink out of. Among the other wares were black pearls, native to the cook islands, many colorful sarong type dresses, multitudes of shells, and alot of T-shirts all of which were really just a famous logo, like coco-cola, replaced by something referencing the cook islands.

We then went to a farm where we learned to plant taro (which some of you may recognize as a bubble tea flavor), and then learned how to open a coconut to get to the coconut milk which I have grown to love over these past few days. After that we headed back to the hostel and I enjoyed the first of many cold showers. The hostel had solar panels for their hot water, so with over 20 people vying for one tank of solar heated water, there was not much going around. Also that day, we learned a cook island version of the famous New Zealand hakka dance, we made some sarongs of our own, and we made the plates that we used for our home cooked meals out of leaves. Rarotonga is not particularly friendly towards vegetarians, so I had many meals consisting of mainly taro, bananas and papaya, but luckily there was a 24 hour place near by with a decent veggie burger.

The rest of our trip progressed similarly with days jam packed with workshops, lectures about the islands, and beach visits, so I’ll just list a few highlights here.

Definitely on the top of my list was a Cross island hike with pa, a wizened old native who had done the walk almost five thousand times in his  seventy plus years. He has been featured on a BBC documentary, and his vast knowledge of the area coupled with his mild old-man creepiness made the hike one of the best parts of the trip.

Second on the list is probably snorkeling around the island. Among the much amazing sea life spotted by my group were a sea turtle and an octopus, both of which I missed, but I definitely enjoyed the many different species of fish swarming the coral reefs.

The third and last highlight would be our progressive dinner led by Dan, a local. We first went to Dan’s house where he took us on a tour of his backyard. He had coconut trees, many spices, alot of fruits, and as always, some taro, all distributed around a winding path from the back of his house to the front of the forest behind it. It was honestly the most amazing yard I have ever seen, including some royal grounds in France and Spain, and it was made all the more amazing by the simplicity of the garden. After the tour of his yard, he brought us back to his porch where we had appetizers and set out for dinner at his son-in-law’s house. There, and then later at another house, we had dinner and desert respectively, both delicious, and both made all the more amazing by great gracious hosts.

The trip on the whole was just one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. From my new found ability to calmly pick up a lizard off my thigh and throw it into the bush, to my now amazing tolerance for cold showers, to my new rudimentary ukulele skills, and to much more, I gained more from this trip than I had thought possible, and I had a great time while I did it.

As of yesterday it is officially my spring break. My back is on a fast path to recovery, my bags are packed, and I’m getting a ride to the airport in 30 minutes. I’m not going to get internet till my return next week, so this is my last post for a bit.

I think I may have forgotten to pack my towel, so I’m gonna go do that.

Talk to you in a week,

Tejas