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December 20, 2010

When my nomadic life took roots I planned on transitioning my blog into a scathing expose on the seedy underbelly of life in New Zealand. Stones would be over-turned. Muck would be raked. The whole world would know about the harsh realities of a first world country with no HDTV, expensive internet and a shockingly bland palate. Alas, it is difficult to write about life when it’s every day. Traveling made it easy because my life was naturally broken into events. Life, however, isn’t measured in discrete leaps or measurable moments. Rather it is a hike up a glacier; progress is measured by the view but if we stand too long and enjoy it the slow entropy of life will take away our advances.

I am still committed to the blog, but instead of the sprawling opus entries I am going to try to keep it to a few tight paragraphs. Hopefully it remains enjoyable.

Nearly five months of living in Wellington. The skies have turned from blustery, grey and frigid to clear, warm and beautiful with the occasional relapse. Overcoats disappeared and the sidewalk cafes are always full. Summer is coming. Or maybe it’s here. I can’t really tell with the seasons flipped for the Southern Hemisphere. Either way, even my particularly motivated co-workers are gone by 5:30—motivated to drink up the remaining 3 hours of daylight.

Six weeks ago I moved from my house up in the hills to one much closer to town. I lost my stunning view, but no longer does the bus schedule rule my life. My new place is a 5-bedroom, 2 bathroom house at the base of Mt. Victoria on the eastern edge of downtown. My commute to work is a 20 minute waterfront stroll and nearly everything I need from week to week is within a few blocks.

My roommates are all in their mid-20s, and quite social. On any given night it’s difficult to find more than 3 of us home. My room is large and the sun streams in through the curtains every morning making it impossible to sleep in. That is, when the neighboring college kids aren’t blasting house music and getting drunk at 6am during their summer vacation. Noisy neighbors aren’t a problem, even if their taste in music is atrocious. I like the lively feeling of Mt. Vic. One of the concentrations of Wellington bars is just down the street on Courtney Place and it’s at the crossroads of the wealthy waterfront and the gateway to the eastern suburbs. Parking mostly sucks so I leave my car in my old neighborhood and take the bus to it when I need to drive somewhere. It sounds like a much bigger hassle than it is. When the new year rolls around, I’ll make the effort to get a parking pass but with short time remaining, I can manage a few bus fares.

When I first started working, my social life consisted of going to the gym after work. 4 months on and I barely make it to the gym twice a week. I’m not nearly as stoked on my 3 year membership. In LA, the highlight of my social week was a coed beach flag football league. I have been trying to find the equivalent in Wellington. So far, I have joined coed touch rugby and men’s indoor soccer leagues. I’m hoping to take sailing lessons soon but it will probably have to wait until January. The boyfriend of one of my roommates plays in a Gaelic Football league. Not exactly sure how it’s played but I’ve been invited to join them. Summer also means cricket season. The guys in my office are excited about cricket season but that’s probably because they’re mostly small white and Asian guys who probably didn’t spend their high school years dominating rugby matches. We’ll see about cricket. I’m skeptical.

More soon. I promise.

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I tried to write this post four weeks ago but the words weren’t flowing. After three weeks of earthquake damage assessments in Christchurch it feels good to finally be back in Wellington. I was getting tired of living out of a suitcase. Dad laughed at that statement given that I lived out of a van for so long. Ironic, I suppose, but the difference is that Christchurch is a boring place and boredom is self-inflicted when mobility is at your disposal. It also wasn’t helping the cause that I’m just starting to put together a social life in Wellington. More on that another day.

My work in Christchurch, however, was very interesting. Some of the other structural engineers and I were sent down to Christchurch to perform damage assessments on behalf of a damage assessment firm that consults for insurance companies. That’s right, I was consulting for consultants—the hallmark of a modern economy. My assigned buildings ranged from single family homes to churches to moderately large commercial and industrial structures. I got to inspect wood, brick, concrete block, cast in-place concrete, tilt-up precast panels, steel and glu-lam portal frames and more than a 120 years of construction methodologies. Our job was to meet with an owner or tenant and walk through the scheduled structure with a critical eye. I would look for obvious and subtle signs of damage like cracked drywall, masonry or concrete; skewed doorways; slanted, spongy or bouncy floors; leaning chimneys or buttresses; cracked or buckled beams and columns; or loosened bracing members. The cumulative damage was considered and translated to a 2-page report to the client which provided a brief explanation of the repairs required to fix and strengthen the structure or if it should be written-off. That 2-page report represented tens—if not hundreds—of thousands of dollars in decision-making. The experience was invaluable and I’m really glad I got tabbed to take part.

Second, the NZ government was excellent. Amazing even. When the earthquake struck, the local civil defense volunteers jumped into action to establish lines of communication and sweep neighborhoods looking for people needing assistance. The Canterbury regional governments were quick to set up provisional rules for governing post-earthquake with the intention of getting life back to normal as quickly as possible. One of the homes I assessed was in the beach town of Brooklands, an area heavily affected by soil liquefaction. Driving down the main road, the sewer manholes were all sticking above the surface of the street by a foot for as far as one could see. The sewer line had become buoyant and popped to the surface like a giant game of whack-a-mole. Because sewer lines use gravity for flow and not pressure (like water), the angle of fall down the line is critical to keeping things moving. In becoming buoyant, the angle of fall is affected either between homes and the main line or down the line itself. Basically, the whole line was ruined and needs to be replaced. Residents could no longer flush their toilets and water down the drains was coming out of a broken pipe somewhere between the houses and the sewer line. In response, the regional government had portable toilets set up on every block. Damage to utility lines was common in neighborhoods where liquefaction was widespread, but in every case I was aware of the government was active in setting up temporary facilities and implementing a plan for repairs. This would be a daunting task in normal times but when the entire region is competing for resources it takes a balanced hand to care for all without neglecting individuals. The Canterbury regional governments were doing an impressive job of acting exactly like a government should.

Further up the government chain is the Earthquake Commission. The EQC is a government slush fund for natural disasters maintained by a small levy on property insurance. Surprisingly, the NZ government has been sitting on this money since the fund was established in 1945. Unlike the American government (in all of its forms), the NZ government has been responsible enough to maintain the fund integrity and invest it in fixed interest securities and conservative equity funds instead of raiding it like a piggy bank and leaving worthless IOUs.

The EQC serves many functions. The assessment wing does a quick check on any structure (insured or not) giving them a green, yellow or red sticker to signify safety and accessibility. Secondarily, for those with insurance, the EQC provides short term financial assistance to people displaced from their homes by red stickers. The third function is as disaster insurance. The commission designates up to NZ$100,000 per structure depending on damage and pre-disaster value. This fund is the primary payout and any private insurance claims are for damage beyond the initial NZ$100,000. Because of this, insurance rates for Kiwis are kept low. Most importantly, while an insurance company may fight paying out on a claim, the EQC has an expressed interest in paying out and seeks to facilitate the rebuilding of the community. We were hearing that EQC claims were being processed quickly and not once did I hear of anyone who felt screwed by it.

The government was becoming a victim of its own efficiency. During the last week I was in Christchurch, there were several reports of local towns complaining that their utilities hadn’t been restored fast enough. How quickly people lose perspective on the magnitude of the events that surround them.

Lastly, this event marks a new era of purely financial disasters. The death toll was zero. The notable casualties numbered 1. One. Uno. A guy had his foot smashed in falling debris in his home and it had to be partially amputated. That’s the extent of the human toll. When I arrived, it was two weeks after the initial event and the prevailing sentiment was of a community uniting as neighbors and by the fourth week people were bitching and moaning about the slow pace of water line repairs. It’s not that they stopped caring for their neighbors, but that everyone realized life would go on with very few changes from before. Most people will have to deal with a few temporary traffic detours, the loss of a café near their office or need some cracked drywall repaired. Those who suffered the most lost their homes. I don’t mean to belittle these losses because it would be emotional and sad and frustrating to be one of the unlucky few but no one in Canterbury is mourning the loss of family or friends. 220,000 died in Haiti and another 300,000 were injured and a million displaced. The Pakistani Floods earlier this year killed 2,000 and injured or displaced another 20 million. The Indonesian Earthquake and Tsunami of 2004 killed some 250,000 people, injured another 149,000 and displaced nearly 1.7 million people. These are just some of the terrible natural disasters that have devastated places in the past decade. We learned long ago that most natural disasters are unavoidable and unpredictable, but nearly a century of valuable scientific and engineering research have taught us how to manage the risks to minimize loss. In the case of the modern, western economy, people's lives have become so valuable that any death is unacceptable. Somewhere Adam Smith is screaming "I told you so" but in a funny Scottish accent. I feel weird admitting that my libertarian friends are right. But even they would extoll the performance of the NZ government in this situation.

Admittedly, this wasn't the greatest post but I was anxious to get it done. New adventures are forthcoming. Plus I need to start explaining my office, my (changing) home life and Kiwi culture. I will post more frequently. I promise.

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Busy times for a structural engineer, especially one with a focus on earthquake design. For those who care not for the Southern Hemisphere, on Saturday, September 4^th, Christchurch was rocked by an earthquake. While NZ is known for its proximity to the Ring of Fire and an active seismic history, this doesn’t normally apply to the whole country. Auckland and the Northlands and the East Coast of the South Island are low-seismic regions. Christchurch is squarely on the East Coast of the South Island and was caught off guard. It was the equivalent of the Haiti earthquake happening in Tempe, Arizona. Phoenix would be pretty torn up. So what happened, what does this mean, and how does this affect me? I’m glad you asked.

First, what happened. At 4:35am on a Saturday morning, a 40 second long earthquake magnitude 7.1 earthquake emanated from a previously unknown fault roughly 25 miles (40km) from Christchurch. Richter Scale projections give very little useful information to the scientific community but are a simple way of describing magnitude to laypeople. It is supposed to describe the total energy released in on an exponential scale (where a 7 is 10 times greater than a 6 and 100 times greater than a 5, etc.). In reality, it doesn’t accurately estimate energy and it says nothing for the truly destructive and highly measurable parameters that are better indicators for predicting damage. What engineers, geologists and seismologists look for is ground acceleration. The Christchurch earthquake (known internationally as the Canterbury Earthquake) had peak ground accelerations measured at 1.25g or 1.25 times the speed of gravity. That’s a lot. Especially lasting for 40 seconds. If that was purely vertical motion, the ground would move away faster than you could fall. An unanchored house would be picking up downward speed while the ground was coming back up at it. Think Wile E. Coyote. Not good. Even as horizontal motion, that’s like Bill Murray yanking out the table cloth in Ghostbusters.

That brings us to the second major issue in this earthquake: soil stability. A foundation is only as good as the soil into which it is embedded. Hard bedrock is the best material for stability and clay is the worst, but silty sand is not much better than clay. In an earthquake, silty sand has the added detriment of liquefaction. In technical terms, the soil particles lose their shear strength. As the particles experience the pulses of energy from an earthquake, they dance and vibrate, turning an apparently dry material into a quivering jelly akin to quicksand. Imagine you’re standing at the beach down by the waterline. If you stand still there’s barely a footprint but if you wiggle your feet back and forth water draws to the surface and your feet begin to sink. Foundations in liquefied soil can sink or buckle, knocking a house off its foundation or sending cracks up the walls. This is also particularly damaging to utility lines and empty submerged tanks which become buoyant and can pop to the surface like balloons. Christchurch, unfortunately, was built on a giant alluvial fan of river washout, reclaimed salt marshes, tidal flats and coastal swampland—all silty sands and clays and highly susceptible to liquefaction.

The bad news for Christchurch does not stop there. Because the city is older, and was built in what was believed to be a low-seismic zone, there are tons of brick buildings and brick facades. Brick may have worked for the 3 Little Pigs but they were only worried about huffing and puffing. The weight of brick is great for resisting wind which is why they use it in tornado-prone areas like the Midwest. In an earthquake the mass of brick absorbs lots of energy but because of its brittle nature, it cannot dissipate it without failing. Brick is the single worst building material in earthquake regions. While wood houses shake, steel buildings sway and concrete tries to hold firm, brick peels like corn off the cob. Buildings in earthquake zones need to have a balance of strength and ductility, and the ability to resist tension and compression. If you have enough strength you don’t have to bend; if you have enough ductility, you can bend without breaking. The balance of tension and compression is more due to material properties. Timber and steel are good for tension but not as good with compression. This can be dealt with by the configuration of the structural members. Concrete and cinder block are good in compression but terrible in tension, which is why steel rebar is used. Brick is solid and therefore has no place to put rebar.

As you can tell, Christchurch is a bad place for an earthquake. Given the magnitude of the quake, the lack of casualties and relatively minimal damage is a testament to NZ building code, structural engineers and builders of the past. There were no deaths. Compare that to Haiti which had a similar earthquake but with mostly newer buildings and very little brick and they had 230,000 deaths and untold numbers injured and displaced. Cantabrians also banded together as neighbors and took care of each other and allowed the Civil Defense to maintain order. Some of the news media outlets tried to drum up stories about looting and rioting but everything went unconfirmed and was later recanted. The closest anyone could come to a shocking headline was that one man died of a heart attack close to the time of the earthquake but there’s no proof they were related. The government was measured in its response and aid providers were brought in only as they could be used. Senior engineers from my office were dispatched quickly, but only after damaged buildings could be catalogued and coordinated were mid-level engineers like myself sent in.

I was flown down last Wednesday to perform building investigations for an insurance assessor. It was very exciting. I have likened it to being a doctor but only getting to work on patients once a decade and then a whole bunch of patients all at once. I don’t mean to compare myself to doctors because they invented HMOs and those are the basest form of evil. My work is far, far more benevolent. Like Ghandi. But with more sex appeal. I’m headed back again this week to do more assessments and I’ll put together a big photo gallery. Here’s what I’ve got so far.

http://picasaweb.google.com/mfontanesi/ChristchurchEarthquake#

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“Everyone who builds a factory builds a temple” – Calvin Coolidge

I know it’s been almost a month but I’ve been busy and I had almost 2 weeks of computer trouble. After a fruitless week of chasing surf down the West coast of the North Island, I made it to Wellington. It wasn’t a wasted week, but it would have been nice to surf a little more. In Raglan I met up with Darlene and it was flat for three days. We drove to and from the beach and stood in the rain while staring at not-good surf. The last day we got in the water but it was cold and windy and barely worth the paddle around. In Taranaki, I stayed with the Dekens and got skunked again. The surf was bigger. Much bigger. But the wind was howling and onshore and the waves were unsurfable. And it rained. Oh well, it was nice revisiting that old feeling of being on the road.

I got to Wellington a week before work started. Aurecon put me up in the Ibis Hotel, a block from the office. This conveniently gave me a week to wander the prime business and shopping district in the city and to find a place to live. It didn’t take long. Even though I checked out almost 10 houses the very first one was exactly what I was looking for. More on the chosen one in a second.

The rejects were pretty spectacular. Each had some combination of bizarre roommates or unacceptable living conditions. I’ve mentioned before that many Kiwi homes are dilapidated and seem almost temporary. This is a product of the semi-transient national attitude. In Wellington, the homes are marginally more sturdy to keep out the Southern winds but really vary by neighborhood. I was looking in the beachy suburbs, like Lyall Bay, but was confronted by numerous dilapidated hovels. Most of them were two stories and small, with faded, peeling paint, squeezed into irregular lots with broken concrete sidewalks and driveways. One of the houses I checked out was a 5 bedroom, 1 bathroom pit that looked like the heroin den from Trainspotting. All I could hear was Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” playing quietly in my head. Another house looked pretty good from the front but it was occupied by 4 hippie girls and the room that was available was all glass (zero insulation) and the two girls who showed me around explained that they were “gluten-sensative” and a fire dancer, respectively. Not for me. I did find nicer homes a few kilometers away in Island Bay. Unfortunately, the houses that were nice were occupied by people that I didn’t necessarily want as roommates. Whether the college kids with zero furniture, the dorky drummer with the personality of wet cardboard or the Goth makeup artist with drawn on eyebrows that started somewhere in the middle of her forehead and circumnavigated her eyes to almost her cheek. I’m not saying they were bad people but personality conflicts were immediately apparent.

My new home is a fixed up, 1 story, 4 bed, 1 bath home high on the ridge between Island and Houghton bays. The street is quiet, narrow and winding. To the East is a view of the points of Lyall and Houghton Bays and a few well placed indicators of the surf quality. To the West sits the scattered suburb of Island Bay. It’s only a 15 minute bus ride to the heart of the most metropolitan town in the country, but Island Bay feels like a tiny beach town North of San Francisco. There’s an overpriced chain grocery store, a 2-screen movie theater, 2 fish and chip shops, a liquor store and 3 or 4 small restaurants and that’s about it. There’s one main road that forks at the waterfront where a half dozen fishing boats are moored idly. On cold, rainy, misty mornings (of which there have been a few already) it looks like the crew of Deadliest Catch has come ashore to re-supply. On clear days the snowy peaks of the Kaikoura Mountain Range can be seen on the South Island. But that’s on a clear day and clear days are not part of Wellington’s reputation. Because the icy southerly winds have no buffer they blast off of the ocean and funnel up the canyons and over the hills. Every night the fireplace whistles as the wind sucks at the chimney. This is why I needed to live in a decent house—I know weather is unavoidable but there’s no reason to suffer in one’s own bed. The L-shaped house has a small kitchen, a moderate bathroom with a terrible shower but my room is large without being cavernous and has built in closets and cabinets. Currently, I live with 3 roommates. Jason, 38, and Felicity, 20, have been dating for a few years—yes, you read that correctly—and moved here from Christchurch so she could attend a graphic arts program at one of the local Universities. Jason works at a music shop and teaches private guitar lessons. He’s quite fatherly and spends a lot of time cleaning while Felicity does homework on the couch. The third roommate is Sam, 31, who is an arborist and painter from England. He’s friendly and likeable, solitary but content. None of them would be make the starting 11 of my drinking buddies but they’re social, clean and respectful. It seems like a very stable and easy living environment. Beyond the snap judgments, I’ll write about them soon.

Wellington does offer a very good bus system. My house is less than a 100 meters from a bus stop. The ride into the city takes about 20 minutes and drops me off within a block of my office. This is essential as parking in the city is hard to find and quite expensive. 4 years of soul crushing Los Angeles traffic left me with no stomach for it. Plus, I have the flexibility of not needing to rely on Orange Whip.

Last, and perhaps most importantly, I’ve finished my first week of work. Aurecon is major global engineering consultancy. It’s also my first experience with a true corporate environment. Day 1 was a ton of HR paperwork, introductions, and computer learning modules to acclimate me to their intranet. The Wellington branch of Aurecon has about 75 employees, but the company has more than 500 in NZ. The main corporate office is in Melbourne, Australia, but there are a couple dozen offices scattered throughout Africa, Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. My department has about 15 guys, a third in their 20s, a third in their late 30s/early 40s and the rest are wise old men, and—surprisingly—there isn’t a female or non-white engineer in the lot. By Day 2 I was starting to get an idea of the projects that my department—and ultimately myself—are working on: hospitals, high rises, commercial and industrial facilities, and government buildings both domestic and abroad. On Wednesday I went to a site meeting on a local hospital that is going to become one of my primary projects. The hospital has already been designed but periodic inspections are needed to monitor construction and to help troubleshoot constructability issues. The hospital is particularly cool because it is base isolated. On my next site visit, I’ll take some photos and give a better explanation of why I find it so impressive. The rest of the week was quite busy. I was thrown in on a couple of small projects to get my feet wet but the real challenge was acclimating to the metric system. I’ll get into that in a later post. The important thing is that I found out that my bosses and coworkers are really nice, supportive and cooperative guys. The week ended with a 10 minute department meeting stretched into an hour while we all sat around and drank beer in the conference room. Hard to think of a better way to feel like part of the gang.

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“There are plenty of smart engineers. Very few of them know what they are doing. Get into construction management and learn how things are built. Then go be an engineer.” – Sara Loughead

That sage advice was given to me by a family friend, Sara—a working Civil Engineer—somewhere back in early June 2003. In every interview I have ever participated in, I quoted it. At first it was a platitude to make me sound wise beyond my experience. When I left construction management and got back into design engineering, the significance of the decision was not yet apparent. As years have passed, however, the comment has become axiomatic. I prided myself in understanding construction techniques and integrating them into my designs. Contractors were receptive and appreciative, and I felt justified. But it wasn’t that comment alone. Hours before my first day of work post-college, my grandfather called me with another great aphorism: “The difference between you and your bosses is their mistakes”.  The unspoken latter half to that advice is to learn from their mistakes instead of repeating them for myself. Seven years later, I sat in an interview with two highly successful senior Aurecon managing engineers and was able to share Sara’s advice. It was no longer the regurgitation of a clever saying but my design philosophy. They were suitably impressed, and perhaps it was because they had roughly 70 years of mistakes between them.

Thank you for all of the congratulatory emails and Facebook comments. To clarify my new job, I have been hired on as an Intermediate Structural Engineer at Aurecon, a large multi-national engineering consultancy. The Wellington office specializes in Seismic and Structural Engineering, which is the crux of my education and experience. Their courtship was quick and generous. Less than a week after I sent them my resume I had an hour-long telephone interview and a round trip plane ticket to Wellington in my hand for a follow up. The interviews were professional and courteous and most of the time was spent selling me on their work instead of me tap dancing with my credentials. I felt like the prettiest girl at the ball! Particularly enticing was the repeat mentions of Seismic Base Isolation, a very progressive engineering concept where whole buildings sit on top of an array of rubber and steel pads. Conceptually, in an earthquake the foundation shakes but the base isolated structure moves a lot less so. I took a really interesting class in it while at UCLA and built up a healthy infatuation. In addition to base isolated structures, a couple of overseas projects were mentioned and some high rise buildings in New Zealand. My experience so far has been from the ground down (infrastructure at Playa Vista) and up to 3 stories (my last job working for Gordon Polon). The prospect of working on large commercial and industrial projects is really exciting. Have I mentioned that I’m a dork?

Wellington is about to be my new home, and, as I summarized in the blog a few months back, it reminds me of a smaller version of San Francisco. Geographically, the city is spackled onto the steep hills that wrap around the G-shaped bay. Because the North and South Islands are slightly skewed to each other, frigid southern winds can take the direct route from Antarctica. The city huddles for warmth in the crook of the bay, fostering a supposedly tight-knit and intermingling community that differs greatly from the independent, homogenous ethnic and cultural enclaves that make up Auckland. Spiraling out from the Central Business District (CBD) are a string of suburbs to give the area a respectable population base, not unlike the Bay Area supporting the meager 700,000 residents of San Francisco proper. The city has bustling music, art, culture, food and sports scenes. Although the surf isn’t particularly reputable, it does exist and I plan on making myself a fixture in the line up regardless of the temperature (I say that while sitting next to a space heater while wearing sweatpants and a hoodie). I already have a few friends in the area and they are active surfers, soccer players and sailors so the seeds of my new life are in the ground and ready to be watered. All I need now is an apartment, a bed (I can’t wait!), furniture and some work clothes. The prospect of a stable, adult life is surprisingly exciting.

Work starts on the 16^th of August and temporary housing has been set up for the week of the 8^th. In the mean time I have been sorting through Aurecon’s HR paperwork, immigration paperwork, NZ tax paperwork and checking the Wellington rental market online. On the 3^rd of August, Darlene Conolly—one of Chris’s surf buddies from high school—is coming through NZ to surf Raglan for a few days. I plan on joining her. Also roughly on my way from Auckland to Wellington is Taranaki and my friends Ton and Mary Deken. Might as well surf Taranaki too! That leaves the next week in Auckland to get my remainders sorted. If I can get it done quickly, and the surf and weather reports look favorable, I might jump north to the Northlands—the only remaining part of NZ I haven’t explored. However much I get around, my camera will follow and pictures will be posted. When I get to Wellington and my life starts to come together, I will reveal whatever nuances to my life that seem particularly or curiously interesting.

Thanks again, Sara. And thanks Grandpa. It was wonderful advice that shaped my life for the better.

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“’I don't see any connection with Vietnam, Walter’ ‘Well, there isn’t a literal connection.’” – The Dude and Walter, The Big Lebowski

Time for a flashback to travel. Way back on the first days of June I was in the doldrums of early winter on the West Coast of the South Island. Incessant rain coupled with loneliness was dragging me down. Tyler tossed me a lifeline with an invite to surf and camp in the cold and rain in Kaikoura. After that excellent weekend I was back in Nelson, the artsy city at the north end of the island. Despite its moniker as the Sunshine Capital of NZ, I saw nothing but rain in the few days I was there. This put me at a crossroads. To the west lay Abel Tasman, the crown jewel of NZ National Parks. To the east lay Picton and the ferry back to Wellington and the North Island. The prospect of hiking Abel Tasman in a near-freezing rain was not appealing but the idea of bailing on the South Island without a single multi-day hike was really disappointing. Weather forecasts were sketchy and contradictory but I decided to gamble and book a trip through the park. When I got to the departure town of Marahau, my fortunes hadn’t turned. It was gloomy and grey, the town was empty and ominous thunderheads were blooming overhead--hardly the welcome I was hoping for.  In the 3 minutes it took me to fill out paperwork, rain began to fall steadily. It was a fitful night with visions of hiking in soaked clothes and shivering myself to sleep. Instead, I woke to clearing skies and the placid, silent waters of the Tasman Bay at low tide--perfect weather for an expedition.

Abel Tasman National Park was the mooring place for the Dutch Explorer of the same name. He arrived in 1642 some 125 years before Captain Cook. Local Maori greeted his arrival by attacking them from a canoe, killing a couple of men. Tasman pulled up anchor and cruised off but not before naming the land Staten Landt. Later, some Dutch cartographers named it Nova Zeelandia after the Dutch province of Zeeland. That was anglicized when the British began colonizing the islands. What remains is the bigger question of why Tasman bailed after a couple of tattooed locals in grass skirts waving stone clubs paddled up to them in a wood canoe. Sure it was intimidating but the Maori were still living in the Stone Age and Tasman would have had such radically advanced tools as clothing, metal and gunpowder at his disposal. Plus, he was in paradise. Tasman and Golden Bays are calm, fertile waters sheltered from the harsh southern winds from Antarctica, populated by numerous fish, seals birds and frequented by migrating whales and dolphins. The rocky cliffs are broken up by numerous protected coves of coarse, white sand.

This natural beauty has not gone unnoticed by New Zealanders as it is the most popular National Park in the country. I was told that 90% of the park’s traffic is during January—the heart of summer for the Southern Hemisphere. The Lonely Planet Guide recommends attempting to book hut and campsite reservations at least 6 months in advance for the summer season and even then to be prepared for disappointment. In regard to overcrowding, I felt pretty safe venturing a day-of booking in the rainy gloom of June. And I was right. My plan was for a full-day guided kayak tour of the first third of the park, camping in the Anchorage Bay Hut overnight and then a full day hike to Onetahuti where a water taxi would bring me back to the start at Marahau. The guided kayak part of the tour was a lot of fun. Our group was about 16 people, inclusive of the guide. We were partnered up in tandem kayaks and I was gifted a completely useless Chinese girl who could not have confirmed more stereotypes. She spent a lot of time not paddling and taking pictures of herself and her friend. Luckily her English was terrible and the whole sight became a running joke between myself and the rest of the group. When we broke for lunch, the Chinese girl, her friend and a couple more pairs jumped on the water taxi and called it a day. I was left with our guide, Mark, 3 Scottish travelers and an Israeli. We spent the afternoon exploring and becoming fast friends. About an hour before sun down, Mark dropped us off at the Anchorage Bay Hut with a few handy tips and wished us luck.

Ryan and Julie and Brian are from Falkirk, Scotland somewhere between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Upon meeting them, I tipped my hand as a dork and asked about the Wheel of Falkirk—an engineering marvel. They laughed and admitted they had never seen it but were nice enough to keep talking to me anyway. Ryan and Julie are a young couple who were tired of quiet life in Scotland and were looking for a change. They came to NZ a few month before I did and settled into jobs and started saving for travel. Brian, their friend from home, was hitting those early 30s blues and decided to uproot for some change himself. Having spent some time in Australia working and fishing, he came across the Tasman Sea to visit his friends and never quite managed to leave. Having forgotten my camera, Julie generously offered to share her photos when the trip was through. Omri, the fifth in our group was in his early 20s and recently discharged from the Israeli Army. He was traveling the world alone, armed with endless energy and a chutzpa that was endearing and likeable. At the hut, we ran into 3 more Israeli travelers and the 8 of us sat around the cabin playing cards, chatting, rotating wet clothes in front of the heater and sharing dinner as dusk was replaced by candle light.

Around 8pm we set off down the beach under a clear and moonless night. Every footstep was punctuated by the dancing sparkles of bioluminescence in the sand. At the north end of Anchorage Bay was Elephant Rock and behind it were a couple of caves. Mark suggested we check them out after dark. We crawled around in the shadowy crevasse until the walls opened up around us. Dotting the ceiling and walls were glow worms. These strange larvae hang a thread of glowing snot out of their body to entice insects. Walking into a dark cave faint pinpricks of light hovered overhead. Brian decided to turn the flashlight on them and we were greeted with a cave full of giant crawling wetas, a cricket-like insect about the size of your hand. When surprised by them, they look to be the size of a pterodactyl…a harmless, non-stinging, non-poisonous pterodactyl. Eventually, we wandered back to the hut and resumed story sharing late into the night.

In the morning we set off on our hike. The Abel Tasman Track has 2 shortcuts, both of which are only available within hours of low tide and can cut several kilometers off the trek. Why anyone would want to shorten a walk through paradise is beyond me, but the time restrictions have consequences. Walking tidal flats is not normally a big deal but when the tide swings 4 vertical meters (12.5 ft), the ocean comes back in a hurry. We opted for the safer, longer route and managed the 20 or so kilometers in a couple of hours.

Unlike January park-goers, we were greeted with solitude. Maybe twice hikers passed us going the other way offering a smile and quick wave before disappearing into the undulating trail cocooned in tangled vines and lush overgrowth. The day was perfect. The sun beat down on our shoulders, casting cones of light through the sporadic gaps in foliage and illuminating the orange and black fungi, the turquoise waters of the bay and the brilliant greens of life all around us. When the trail would curve outward to a vantage point we would stand as a group, panting in silence, admiring the infinite views of pristine water and unscathed land. Onetahuti beach opened up before us not 10 minutes before our water taxi was due to arrive. We had put in 7 solid hours of hiking and I celebrated by walking barefoot in the frigid water. The day was perfect.

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What luck. The job search and my bank account could not be going in opposite directions faster. Job leads and interviews have been lining up nicely. My van, however has decided to get very, very expensive. On Monday evening I was attempting to drive half way from Auckland to Hawke’s Bay to shorten my drive before an interview. It was just after dark and I was passing through the town of Tokoroa when my battery and water warning lights popped up on the dashboard. I put a call in to a mechanic buddy and he confirmed my fears that my alternator was most likely the problem. Driving through the mountains in winter in NZ is not the time or place to risk breaking down and getting stranded. Traffic is sparse and the temperature is below freezing for at least 12 hours every night. I wouldn’t starve and the elements wouldn’t get me before help arrived, but neither of these prospects was getting me to my interview. I went back through Tokoroa and pulled into the first motel I saw. The proprietors of the Carlton Motor Lodge, Neil and Andrea, were sympathetic to my predicament and offered me a discount on the room for the night and called a mechanic for the morning.

I got to the shop early and the mechanic promised my van would be back on the road in 24 hours but because my interview was in 6 hours this wasn’t exactly great news. A couple of phone calls later I secured a rental car and set off for Hawke’s Bay. That doesn’t sound difficult, but Tokoroa is a pass-through town with no tourist attractions and isn’t even mentioned in the Lonely Planet Guide. The fact that there was even a rental car agency is stunning. The owner/sole employee, Shon, explained that he made no money from the company as I stood in a packed lot of shiny, new Toyota Corollas. He said they pretty much wait for people to break down in the any of the surrounding towns and come to the rescue. 5 minutes after getting to Shon’s lot, I was on the road in a zippy red Corolla and less than 3 hours later I was in Hawke’s Bay.

The interview was fine, but not spectacular. Afterward I turned around and drove back to Tokoroa and checked back into the motel for the evening. In the morning, my van was up and running for a mere $450. The mechanic showed me the old, worn out alternator and explained that I had made the safe decision. I returned to Auckland but not before a detour to Mt. Maunganui for a much needed surf session. All told, it was an $800 interview. That’s only $780 more than my Monday interview cost me and I felt a lot better about that job.

On Thursday I was running errands, the most pressing of which was to renew the Warrant of Fitness (WOF) on the van. This is an annual safety check that all vehicles require and mine was set to expire at the end of the week. I’m sure you can guess where this is headed. English teachers call it foreshadowing. 2 hours after dropping off my van at a WOF station I was told that it needed about $1450 of repairs (windshield replacement, suspension repairs, 2 new tires and 1 new wheel bearing). The windshield was anticipated but the rest caught me off guard. I know there are a bevy of issues with the van but how bad they are can be a matter of interpretation. As Duncan Wu expressed so eloquently in broken English “Left eye no problem. Right eye no good”. I was hoping for some generous Left Eye treatment instead of a finger in my eye. The real stickler is that I can’t just unload the van. It’s illegal to sell a vehicle with an expired WOF. That and I still need it for at least a couple more weeks. So now I’m out more than $2000 on the week. So frustrating. Instead of taking the bus back from the mechanic, I walked back to Epsom stewing in my misfortune.

In my last post I mentioned The Grapes of Wrath. Part of the reason I enjoyed it so much was because of the resonance with my life. For those not up on their 9^th grade English lit, The Grapes of Wrath is the story of the poor share-cropping Joad family fleeing the dust bowl of Oklahoma in the Depression Era 1930s. They are pushed off their land after the bank evicts them. With only farming experience to fall back on, they follow some help wanted fliers to California in search of fruit picking work. With visions of white farm houses and fertile fruit trees as far as the eye can see, they ignore the growing signs that their dreams are little more than fairy tales. Their denial of the obvious was born from the desperation of poverty, starvation and a lack of options. To many readers, this story is the condemnation of Capitalism, a defense of Communism and a parable for the death of America as an agrarian society.

Two points stuck me in particular. The first is the fear of consequence that haunts the Joads. Their dire straights turn molehills into mountains. Despite their initiative and willingness to work hard, they lack the resources to see them calmly through the valleys of life. John Steinbeck paints a beautiful picture of Al, the horny, wayward teenage son, hugging the steering wheel of their Rambler 66 as they beat down miles on the perilous desert highways. His sensitivity heightened with fear, he feels for any sign that the truck is breaking down and will leave them stranded. I too spent many days trying to decode the automotive Morse Code being tapped through the steering wheel of Orange Whip. While I was never at risk of starving, I was often at risk of being stranded. That fear was ever present but really escalated the further from civilization I got. It sat like a bad meal, turning my stomach and clouding my thoughts. I can’t wait to sell this van and the emotional baggage riding shotgun.

My job search has tipped the other salient point in the book. What the Joads lacked was the resourcefulness to change. They were (barely) skilled labor with farming as a specialty. Pushed from their home and their lives, they struck out on the road for an identical life in a new part of the world. They sought a modest and honest living, but they failed to understand the forces behind their ousting. The advent and propagation of tractors made their hand work and horses unnecessary and slow, and their farming capacity far too small to produce at market rates. Their solution was to give up their local knowledge and hope that their skills were needed elsewhere. What the Joads and the other “Okies” failed to grasp was that the nature of their specialty had changed and they were reduced to unskilled labor. The decision to move west condemned them to their sorrowful fate. Had moved east, it would have signaled an admission of their inadequacy as farmers and they could have sought work in the factories and adapted to city life—work no more skilled but in growing demand.

So what does this have to do with me? I am feeling the beneficial effects of having a unique and progressive skill set. Within hours of posting my resume I had multiple recruiters calling, and within days I had a handful of interviews scheduled. 5 years ago I was trying to transition from construction management to design engineering and it wasn’t nearly as promising. I wasn’t getting my phone calls or emails returned, much less any interviews. Finally, a friend set one up with her firm. Afterward, I heard nothing. A week later it took several phone calls just to hear that I was rejected. What I really needed was to know why and what I could do about it. The interviewer said that her firm wouldn’t consider any candidate with an out of state education or anyone without a Masters Degree. It was honest advice, I took it to heart and less than 2 years later I had a Masters Degree from UCLA. Damn am I glad I have it. Not only are the interviews lining up, but I have noticed that they spend a lot more time trying to convince me that I should work for them instead of the other way around. I guess what I’m trying to say is: don’t be a Joad.

Since most of my past two weeks have been spent in the Epsom library sending out emails or in front of the tv watching crap, I don’t have any interesting pictures. Attached are maps of NZ with my path highlighted sequentially from red to violet. Each of the arrows is hyperlinked to the relevant blog posting. Hopefully it works.

Updated: I guess the hyperlinked metapages didn't work. I simplified it and attached pictures. The arrows are no longer linked to the appropriate posts but if you can follow along pretty easily if you open these pics in a different browser window. Thanks for the feedback.

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“I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain. I’ve sunny days that I never thought would never end. I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend, But I always thought that I’d see you again” – James Taylor, Fire and Rain

Happy belated 4^th of July. 5 months ago I quit my job to move to New Zealand and be a traveling hobo. Well, not exactly, but that is how it worked out. Last Friday I returned to Auckland having covered most of this beautiful country. I know there is some perfect aphorism to describe my adventure, some sage advice and scholarly wisdom from a man who has accumulated so many hours and miles and footsteps on the road, but it eludes me. All I know is that the 6 months before I left were difficult. I wasn’t happy. But today I am happy and I don’t regret even the tiniest fraction of my decision.

Instead of trying to be insightful and prolific, I’m going free-form:

$3300 for a 1989 Toyota TownAce with 221,000 km

12,000+ km traveled

$2300 on fuel

1 new engine ($2500)

2 new heater hoses ($178)

1 flat tire ($10)

115 nights on the road

39 nights spent sleeping in the van ($314 in camp fees)

43 nights spent in the homes of friends ($0)

33 nights spent in hostels ($759)

$60 for a heavy blanket, my second best purchase

$35 for imitation Ugg boots, my best purchase

16 books started

12 books finished

$1 for a paperback copy of The Grapes of Wrath, the book I most enjoyed

30 lbs of body weight lost

3 razorblade cartridges used

March was the month of fish and chips

April was the month of avocados and sausage

May was the month of meat pies

June was the month of mandarin oranges and trail mix

Castlepoint was my best surf session

Victory Bay was my scariest…and coldest

Marmite is not good. Neither is vegemite.

Kiwi wines are excellent. Kiwi beer is decent.

Rugby is cool, but not even close to football (or soccer). Cricket is a lame version of baseball.

I’ve been to 98 of the 104 pages on my NZ road map. The Northland is all that remains. It will be explored, but now it’s time to get a job and return to the world of responsible adulthood. I’m excited about my prospects in rebuilding a stable life: to living in a bed without wheels, to showering daily, wearing clean clothes, to after-work sports leagues, friends, dating and becoming a local at a surf spot.

I guess this is the inflection point for the blog. It isn’t much of a travel memoir if I’m not on the road. There will be stories but they will be fewer and further between. I will try to keep everyone updated on the major news, amusing anecdotes and quirks of being a Kiwi-transplant. If you just check the website to see if it has updated, this would be the time to subscribe. When I post, you’ll be notified. Until then, enjoy this youtube clip. It’s an Aussie’s take on Kiwi accents.

I'm Beached As, Bro!

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Almost done. The home stretch is in front of me. All that is left is Taranaki—the  unnaturally round peninsula at the elbow of the North Island—and the small stretch of land between Taranaki and Hamilton. What makes Taranaki unnatural is how perfectly round it is. On maps, it looks like it was drawn in by some lazy European cartographer who knew his work would never come under scrutiny. Driving into the region the key to the peninsula becomes obvious. Mt. Taranaki dominates the rolling green foothills around it. Standing like the platonic ideal of a snow-capped volcano, one can’t help but stare at it and take redundant photos. It looks like a child drew it, or rather, like a Hershey’s Kiss dipped in white chocolate. Also known as Mt. Egmont, the volcano stands 2,500 meters above sea level—high enough to influence local weather patterns. This, combined with the shape of the peninsula, guarantees that there is offshore wind at a surf break somewhere. To the south, Opunake is the surf hub. To the north is New Plymouth, the largest city in the region. In between is motorway 45, the “Surf Highway” which circumnavigates the peninsula half way between the volcano and the beach. Roads intersect the motorway like radiating spokes. Almost all of these narrow roads lead out to the coast and a handful of rocky reef and point breaks.

At the west end of the peninsula, down one of these roads is the most famous surf spot in the ‘Naki: Stent Road. I arrived on a Thursday afternoon, driving up to the de facto parking lot where a dozen or so cars were haphazardly arranged on a muddy plateau, facing the water. The surf was over head, ledgy and hollow at the take-off, and peeling quickly down the line in long, steep walls. The break looked like an abbreviated but punchier version of Swamis in Encinitas. I quickly suited up, danced over the shallow rocky bottom and paddled out. Not 30 seconds after reaching the outer peak I was confronted by a beefy Maori local who wanted to put me in my place. “Hey bro, where you goin’? Wait ya turn, son.” I gave him a cocky, but friendly laugh and waited through 2 sets. When the third set rolled through, I deferred the first wave to him and caught the second one. I made the drop, linked some nice turns and kicked out 100m down the line. On the paddle back out, I caught up to the guy and started chatting with him. His tough “locals only” demeanor softened quickly when it was clear that I wasn’t a kook and I respected the locals. We compared wetsuits and boards. Arriving back in the lineup with the enforcer probably placated the rest of the locals and I had no further issues.

I surfed until dark before retreating to the beach. It was my brother Chris’ birthday and I was determined to call him. The 9 hour time difference was accounted for, I just needed to find a cell phone signal. Instead of heading back south where I came from I drove north. 20 minutes later I was in Oakura. It was good to catch up with my brother. We haven’t seen each other in a year and the best case scenario for getting together is Thanksgiving. His ticket is booked for San Diego but my plans are still up in the air. It’s a question of time off from the job I don’t yet have.

After the phone call I was in a really good mood. The local pub across the street was crowded with young surfer types and I decided to treat myself to good meal. A Flintstone’s sized lamb chop, heaping dish of mashed potatoes, a handful of roasted veggies and a pint of beer and I was a happy camper. When dinner was done I stood up and prepared to leave when a warm couple started chatting with me. They asked where I came from, how I got to Oakura and where I was headed. We talked about travel for a few minutes before they offered me their guest house for the evening. I gladly accepted.

Ton (short for Antonius) and Mary Deken are a bright and gracious couple. Social and independent, they playfully push each others’ buttons with one hand while being exceptionally considerate with the other. They are in their 50s, and parents of 3 kids who are in various stages of leaving the nest. Mary often laughed and pointed out the similarities between her oldest son, Simon and myself. Beautiful, stylish and patient—Mary, not me—she was quick to invite me to dinner every night and always insisted that I eat a second helping. Ton is a barrel-chested man with boundless energy. He shared stories of his surf travels, tipped his local knowledge of the breaks and surf conditions and was happy to talk rugby with me while we watched the All Blacks matches on tv. They made it clear that the invitation to stay was indefinite and one night turned to a week before I extricated myself from the guest house. Their horse ranch offered incredible views of the mountain, the hills and the ocean. Every day was a sleepless combination of World Cup matches in the middle of the night, mid-day surf, afternoon internet access at the library and then dinner with Ton, Mary, their daughter Abbey or some of the neighbors. One night they roasted a whole lamb leg for the 3 of us. It easily could have fed 10. I tried to repay their generosity by making chicken fajitas and a fresh pico de gallo another night. Regardless of the meal we always enjoyed a few drinks and some lively conversation. They created such a warm and comfortable environment that by the second night they felt like old familiar friends. On the third night, Mary insisted that I was like family so I should just show up around 6 and expect dinner. The Deken Family join the Pantheon of wonderful families who have always opened their doors to me. Like the Wus, Learneds, Rajcics, Sheas, Craigs, Carlsons, Corvans and McKiels before them, it’s a great feeling to know that there’s always a place at their table for me.

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The violent origins of Lake Taupo were hardly an isolated incident. Rather the Land of the Long White Cloud was a fragment of the pre-historic supercontinent of Gondwana. Many millions of years ago it broke away, twisting, splitting and heaving as the Pacific Tectonic Plate and Indo-Australian Plate took it off into the blue yonder. But this was not a clean escape. Australia did not allow a drama free break up. The two plates are constantly pushing against each other forcing mountains skyward and turning weak spots in the rock crust into volcanic hot spots. The center of the North Island is populated with these weak spots. As I mentioned last post, Lake Taupo’s greatest eruption was the 1,100 cubic kilometer eruption some 26,500 years ago, but it has erupted several times since. While the volcano is considered dormant, there are numerous hot springs around the lake being fed by venting volcanic gasses. South of the crater lake are a trio of active volcanoes with active recent histories.

The trio of peaks, Mt. Ruapehu, Mt Ngauruhoe and Mt Tongariro stand above the central North Island plains like beacons signaling adventurous Kiwis and travelers. Mt. Ruapehu is the tallest of the three peaks topping out around 2,700m (~8000 ft) and home to one of the better ski fields on the North Island. To paraphrase Will Farrell in Elf, “It’s an angry volcano”. In 1945 it erupted sending a river of ash down the mountain where it eventually dammed a river. In what is known as the Tangiwai Disaster, the dam gave way and the lahar washed out a bridge as a train approached. The train was unable to stop in time and 6 rail cars fell into the river killing 35. Subsequent eruptions occurred in ‘95/96, ’06 and ’07 with almost annual increased seismic activity indicating high eruption risks. Mt. Ngauruhoe, the next closest and second tallest peak, is considered more volcanically active than Mt. Ruapehu. Technically a vent off Mt. Tongariro, Mt. Ngauruhoe erupted on a semi-regular basis until the late 1970s. If it looks familiar, that’s because the beautifully conical shape made it a good representation for Mt. Doom in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Mt. Tongariro is the third and lowest peak in the chain. But it is here, on the western slopes of Mt. Tongariro that one can find the jumping off point for arguably the greatest one day hike in NZ: The Tongariro Crossing. The 18 km hike obliquely ascends the mountain before following a ridge dotted with emerald blue crater lakes and descending back down to the ski and hiking village of Whakapapa. The crossing, unlike other hikes in NZ, is not painted a bevy of greens. Instead, it is clad in the reds, browns, grays and yellows of a volcanic wasteland. While this is a manageable one day hike for anyone of decent fitness, it still requires some cooperation from nature. Because of the topography’s propensity to find weather, and because of the exposed nature of a landscape devoid of plant life, there are narrow windows in which the hike can be undertaken. Even in the summer crampons and ice axes are required. The hike can be attempted solo but the technical expertise required is well beyond my skill set. Guided hikes are available from a couple of companies and this was my goal.

Ultimately, weather was my enemy. On the drive up from Palmerston North, I was forced to take the less scenic and more circuitous route past the mountains. The “Desert Road” through the wastelands--and the likely path of any eruptions--was too icy and windy to attempt in my van. Once in Taupo, I called a guide company and was told the soonest departure was 2 days away. On day 1, this was perfect because it made time for the US-England World Cup match. Every subsequent day I checked in and 4 days later the weather break was still 2 days away. In the down time I did the short hike from Taupo to the massive Huka falls on the mighty Waikato River. The Waikato River, for whatever reason, is always described as mighty so I feel an obligation to echo it. It is a large and significant river, starting at Lake Taupo, winding through Hamilton and finally emptying out into the Tasman Sea just south of Auckland. I mentioned it in my post about Hamilton sometime back in February. At the trail head for the hike, three days of cold rain and wind was showing signs of letting up. I started off in a heavy autumny drizzle but an hour later I was standing over the falls having shed many of my layers. The blazing sun was making me sweat and squint. Flashbacks of summer.

When I got sick of waiting around in Taupo I got back on the road. My destination of Wanganui took me back the way I came, past the volcanic siblings. I drove to the Whakapapa Department of Conservation visitor center hoping to get a more favorable weather report from half way up the side of Mt. Ruapehu, but they couldn’t offer much solace. As it was, snow was coating the ground with a thick, wet blanket of deterrent. The Tongariro Crossing was definitely out so I resorted to two short local hikes close to the visitor center. The first was above the snow line so I walked alone on a gravel path across an old lava field. It was me, red earth, black rocks, small shrubs and the silence of snow. The path meandered for hours but I stopped an hour in at the wispy Taranaki Falls. Perhaps there was irony in walking an hour in that weather to see a waterfall that was moving less water than the snow falling around me, but it was good to get out of the van and walk around. The second hike was a mere 5 minutes and took me below the snowline to the rushing Tawahi Falls. Swollen from snowmelt and rainfall over a massive watershed, I experienced springtime. Within 8 hours and 100 km, I managed to experience all 4 seasons. It was time to head south.

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“If you ever do want to kill yourself, but lack the courage, I think a visit to Palmerston North would will do the trick” – John Cleese

I’m still trying to catch up. The blog posts are about a week behind my actual location. Writing has been tough lately as there have been tons of distractions. I’ll get there though, just keep reading and I’ll get it all down.

After my surf excursion to Kaikoura, I returned to Nelson where it….rained! My last adventure on the South Island was to be a trip through Abel Tasman National Park. I was suitably doubtful that the weather would clear but I was blessed with 2 days of perfect weather. The morning of my departure I couldn’t find my camera. Luckily, there were 3 really cool Scottish travelers on the same itinerary and guided tour as me and they agreed to take pictures with me and email me later. As soon as I get the pics, I’ll write about the trip.

Mr. Cleese was being melodramatic when he delivered the anteceding quote, but Palmerston North has a terrible reputation. It’s the butt of jokes across the whole country and no one seems to have a nice word to say about it. When I left Wellington, I stayed for a night in the suburb of Porirua with my Kiwi buddies Jamie, Ben and Phil. They were the guys who very generously offered me some Solarez to patch my surfboard in Castlepoint way back on Easter Weekend. It’s a good feeling to know that I’m building a network of friends, especially smart, social and fun guys like them. Even the Jamie—the most polished and congenial of the gang—couldn’t come up with anything positive to say about “Palmy North”. I made it to town after a leisurely drive up the Kapiti Coast.

Palmy North is a growing farm town positioned where the Ruahine Range foothills flatten out to more suitable farmland. Driving through the city center on a cold Tuesday evening, an uncharacteristically large assortment of dining options presented themselves around the flat and grassy town domain. I grabbed a delicious bowl of chicken wontons and pho soup. The next morning I wandered around town and enjoyed a big breakfast at a bustling, trendy café before going to the surprisingly stylish and well outfitted library to get online. After catching up on my emailing, facebooking and blog posting I stocked up at one of the abundant and clean grocery stores, filled up at a reasonably priced gas station and picked up a well detailed local hike guide pamphlet and headed out to the hills. I must say that Palmy North has an unfair reputation; it doesn’t suck. It doesn’t have any obvious attractions like the great river of its neighbor Wanganui, the beaches of Tauranga, the Art Deco stylings and cinematic aspirations of Napier, the mountain of New Plymouth, the bays of Nelson, the culture of Wellington or the international flare of Auckland. In this sense, Palmy North is the nice boy who gets dumped because his girlfriend can’t figure out any way to brag about him to her friends. It’s not flashy or bold, but the essentials are there. Even though it is a landlocked city on an island, the location is still close to the East Coast, the Kapiti Coast, the mountains of Tongariro and Rauhupehu and the crater lake of Taupo. If it’s any consolation, they got retribution on John Cleese by naming the town trash dump after him: Mount Cleese.

The hills above Palmy North are the tendrils of the Ruahine Range, the middle third of the backbone of the North Island. The Raukumara-Maungaharuru-Ruahine-Tararua-Rimutaka ranges run from the East Cape all the way down to Wellington. Mid-Ruahine the hills are tight and choppy, and the valleys are patched together by tight, gravel roads and quiet sheep farms. I went for a couple of short hikes and drove way out to the head of a 3 hour hike where I realized I had a completely flat tire. It was 2 in the afternoon and that meant if I attempted the hike before changing the tire, I risked having to do it in the dark. If I changed the tire first, there wouldn’t be enough time to complete the hike and get north to my camping destination. Putting it in writing makes it sound silly but in the moment I had a course plotted out and time was a factor. I changed the tire and drove back to the motorway and toward my next destination of Lake Taupo.

Lake Taupo is a volcanic crater lake in the middle of the North Island. It is a beautiful reminder of the violent and chaotic origins of NZ. The volcanic eruption that created the crater ejected an estimated 1,100 cubic kilometers of material. To put that in perspective, Krakatoa in Indonesia erupted in 1883. The 21 cubic kilometer eruption created a 2 year long world-wide winter and the shock wave circled the globe 7 times. The sound of the eruption was noted as far away as Mauritius, Africa (5,000 kilometers away) and Perth (3,500 kilometers away). Trying to imagine an eruption strong enough to eject roughly 50 times as much material is mind boggling. At least it’s mind boggling to dorks like myself who entertain these ideas during idle times. Unfortunately, local home prices don’t seem to be affected. Maybe it’s that the lake and the tributary and effluent rivers are well stocked with rainbow and brown trout. I’m not really up on my fishing knowledge but multiple people have told me that it’s world class fishing. On the cloudy drive in, the shores were lined with fisherman so at least the rumor is well traveled.

My reasons for getting to Taupo were three-fold. First, I wanted to check out the great crater lake and the town. The town has the reputation of being the Queenstown of the North Island—filled with high adrenaline activities…and fishing. Second, the town is one of the jumping off points for the exploration of the active volcano Mt. Tongariro and the famous Tongariro Crossing. Most importantly, I had to find a place where I could watch the US-England World Cup match. It was due to air at 6:30 in the morning local time and the likelihood of finding a sports pub open that early meant I had to find a hostel with the required television coverage. That wasn’t going to happen in the tiny mountain towns of Ohakune, Waioru or National Park.

I checked into a central hostel and with a stroke of luck, one of the youth-oriented NZ bus tours was also staying there. Tours like Stray, Kiwi Experience and Magic Bus are fixed route bus tours that cater to the 18-23 crowd. Kids jump on an off as they please over a couple of weeks but are typically limited by time and the inability to back-track. The tours are good in that they hit a majority of the prime destinations but the journey between them is only experienced through bus windows or more likely the haze of hangovers and naps. It’s a good way to see the country while giving up the responsibility and accountability required to keep a schedule. I have talked to several groups of kids—in my infinite maturity I am referring to anyone younger than 24 as a kid—who were in the midst of the tours. They all enjoyed them and cited the costume party nights among the most entertaining parts of NZ. I can’t say that would rate for me but to each their own. As it was, the Stray Bus kids were sharing my hostel and more than half of them were from England.

Quite a bit of light banter went back and forth the night before the game. By banter I mean that the guys mocked me for calling it “soccer” and the girls were fascinated by my straight teeth (not making this up). I was confident enough in the US that I bet a couple rounds of beers with some of the more fun English guys. As I’m sure you all know the US played to a hard fought 1-1 draw and missed some good chances to win late in the game. I was ecstatic to watch it live and to rub it in the faces of a bunch of hung over Limeys. I didn’t win or loose any of my beer bets but there were some morning beers shared at 9:30am as a peace offering.

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Still trying to catch up on past events. I’m now back on the North Island. I spent a long weekend in Wellington with my friend Tiffany. She’s house sitting in the smallest, most dilapidated 2-storey, 2 bedroom mansion I’ve ever seen. Drafty and creaky and clad in peeling white paint and worn-through cream carpet, it sits at the end of an uneven walkway up a cracked concrete staircase at the dead end of a tiny street in the posh Mt. Victoria neighborhood. For 3 days she and I sat around and watched tv and enjoyed the space heater while the heavens opened up with more weather than I thought possible. When it let up for a few minutes we were blessed with exceptional views of the city from high upon the hill. That’s not to say we didn’t get out of the house. I sat in the grandstands, sheltered from the rain for nearly 3 hours during Tif’s club soccer match one day, we went out to a Belgian restaurant for  mussels and beer one night, and braved the hike down and back up the hill to the grocery store to make dinner another night. Wellington—as I mentioned a few months back—is a great city but the weather is horrendous. My list of places to settle down is up to 4: Mt. Maunganui/Tauranga, Wellington, Auckland and Nelson (in that order). Wellington would be higher but the weather is a huge detractor.  Lucky for all of you, I don’t have any pictures from the weekend. I thought I lost my camera in Nelson. I went so far as to tear apart my van twice, call the police, check all of the places I went after the last time I knew I had it and to start lost item claim with my travel insurance company before I found it wedged into a cubby under the passenger side of the dashboard.

What I do have is pictures from my return trip to Kaikoura. When I first departed from the West Coast of the South Island I made my way into Nelson. Nelson is an interesting, artsy city of 50,000 seated at the top of the South Island in the Tasman Bay. It was a beautiful 3 hour drive through misty green mountains from the dour and wet Westport. I escaped to more rain. If Westport was the nadir of being bummed out, Nelson was the trigger that brought me back up. It felt good to be back in a place with culture and society not based on hundred year old gold mining artifacts. I finally had dining options that not limited to 8 kinds of fried foods. The morning after I arrived, the skies were still overcast and dotted me with intermittent rain showers but the parking lot outside of the hostel was filled by a bustling Saturday morning farmer’s market. Locals were selling fresh produce, hand made clothing for people and pets, home-made sausages, meat pies, sauces, salsas, jams and desserts, kooky stone and glass jewelry, and other assorted trinkets. Smiling faces, curious children and crazy ladies looking at clothing for their pets gave it a very familiar feeling. It reminded me of the Wednesday farmer’s market in Santa Monica but without the random movie star sightings and not nearly as many smoking hot 30 year old women inexplicably wandering around in Pilates gear instead of work attire.

As I was talking to John, a vendor from Chicago who was selling his California-born wife’s fresh salsa, I got a text message from my buddy Tyler. He was inviting me to join him in Kaikoura for a pumping south swell. Kaikoura, if you remember, was that idyllic surf camp spot where Sally and I met Lauren. We spent 4 or 5 days camping on a cobble beach, surfing, hiking, catching paua and enjoying the backdrop of glacier tipped mountains looming over the rugged ocean. Tyler’s text was perfect timing: I was looking for a surf break and I needed to spend some time with a friend.

5 hours later he and I were on the rocky shores north of Kaikoura, watching sets filter around the Maungumanu Point while bone-chilling rain literally washed out any hopes for a camp fire. We spent the last 2 hours of sunlight catching sloppy—but fun—waves before retreating to many layers of damp clothes in a fruitless effort to get warm. The water was a balmy 12 degrees Celsius (~54 degrees Fahrenheit) with the air temperature around 8 (~45). As night fell the temperature dropped to the low single digits (high 30s in Fahrenheit) and the wind steadily picked up from gusty to howling. We parked our cars close together and tied up a tarp to make a shelter. We took inspiration from childhoods of stacked couch pillows and taut bed sheets, but with hints of Rem Koolhaas and Derelicte. It wasn’t water or wind proof but it was enough to get our gas cookers working and put together a nice dinner of chicken, couscous and veggies topped with a fresh tomato salsa and paired with a 2008 Sauvignon Blanc from the Serasin winery of Blenheim (it was one of the wineries I liked from my wine tour and I drove past it on my way down). We were so classy that we took some pictures to share.

In the morning we broke down camp and attempted to find some surf that wasn’t being torn up by the wind. We failed. But we did watch a flash flood take down a bunch of trees and turn one surf spot into a river of mud. Around midday we gave up the surf hunting and went on a short hike up the Ohau River to the waterfall. The parking lot is about 30 minutes north of the town of Kaikoura and would be unidentifiable without the plethora of cars surrounding a tiny green Department of Conservation sign. It’s only a 5 minute hike to the falls which means it’s only a 6 minute hike from the ocean to the falls. What makes this place remarkable are the scores of baby seals playing in the river and under the falls. On the Cute Scale of 1-10, this was a solid 13. The video file is too big to post here so I’m adding a youtube link:

Baby seals playing in the Ohau River Falls

That night we re-made camp minus the rain but with double the wind. It was nothing that a hearty pot of meaty pasta and a case of beer couldn’t fix. In the morning the air was still and the waves finally lined up a little bit. Tyler was in his wetsuit in the blink of an eye but I was quite reticent. In the 36 hours since I had surfed, there was no time or place to hang the wetsuit to dry. Then, in the low light of morning, I was holding a sopping wet wetsuit that was somewhere close to the ambient air temperature of 2 degrees Celsius (~36 degrees Fahrenheit). Wearing a wool beanie, synthetic mittens, Ugg boots and socks with sweat pants and a hoodie, it was an emotional and physical struggle to wrestle on my wetsuit. I would say the decision alone was on par with Truman deciding to drop the atomic bomb. There is no amount of peeing on one’s self that can overcome a wetsuit that cold. You can believe me, I tried. Not only was I shivering violently but it had the added curse of making my arms move in slow motion. This is not the ideal way to paddle out at a surf break called Meatworks which is known for eating feet and surfboard fins. The surf was overhead and grunty but there were quite a few rights and lefts to be had. Plus, Tyler and I had the whole spot to ourselves. After an hour and a half in which I never got warm, I was ready for some hot tea and Tyler was due back in Christchurch for a final exam review. We packed up, shook hands and set off in opposite directions. It was an excellent weekend.

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Sometimes all it takes is a little clarity. My feelings of frustration, impatience and aimlessness have begun to soften. A weekend of surfing in the blustery rain, a few days of hiking in the sunshine, and something resembling a plan have all contributed. I’ll get to those in the coming days but I want to recap my West Coast experience.

The West Coast has a conflicted past. Geographically, it’s a narrow stretch of flattened foothills fading into the rough ocean, penned in by the abrupt rise of the Southern Alps. As I mentioned before, life here is dominated by water. Rain falls constantly. The ocean, technically the Tasman Sea, is exposed to storms from Antarctica and is properly pounded by unfiltered storm surf that is both frequent and destructive. While I was there, one of the local newspapers had a three photo spread of a fireman trying to rescue someone from their home as a wave washed the whole house off the foundation. This must happen with some frequency if someone was able to capture it as a photo sequence. It doesn’t help that Kiwi homes are generally pre-fab temporary structures with marginally upgraded interior and exterior finishes, single pane windows and nary a stitch of insulation.

Maoris were mostly a warm weather people so the South Island was much less settled than the North Island. The Maori name for New Zealand, Aotearoa, is actually just the name for the North Island. Both islands and Stewart Island (south of the South Island) were well known and part of the earth creation myth but the Maori were a people dressed in woven flax skirts and coats with minimal fur so cold weather settlements were scarce. The West Coast was one of the few places they did settle on the South Island and it was done for the explicit purpose of finding pounamu—NZ jade. This greenstone was thought to have powerful spiritual energies and was prized by other Maori tribes. Unlike many other parts of the country, when European settlers came in the late 1800s, the Maori were quick to sell the land without conflict. Greenstone seeking was replaced with gold mining and strings of mining towns popped up along the West Coast foothills before they faded out between the turn of the century and World War II. First farmers and later artists and hippie types slowly repopulated the coast, although repopulated is possible too strong a term. For the 400 or so kilometeres of coastline, Greymouth is the largest town at 14,000 people with Westport a distant second at 5,000. Therein lays the beauty of the West Coast. Desolate stretches of green tie the mountains to the barren and idyllic beaches. Even where mining tore open the seal of impregnable forest, rain has brought back life in magnificent abundance.

Because my journey through the West Coast ended two weeks ago, I’m going to be brief with words and long on photos. The preamble hopefully gave some context to the area—picked as one of the Top 10 scenic drives in the world. It was certainly beautiful and scenic but it rained a ton and I was cold and lonely. I also skipped any gold mining attractions because my dad took us to way too many mining ghost towns as a kid; they’re all the same. The highlights, predictably, were my sunny day hiking the Franz Josef Glacier and my mostly-sunny day hiking the trail head of the Heaphy Track. I know there aren’t any pictures of me, but it’s hard to get self shots when there’s no one around and it’s always raining.

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“Once in a while you get shown the light, In the strangest of places if you look at it right” – Scarlet Begonias, Grateful Dead

For the past couple of weeks I’ve felt crappy. Not physically ill but emotionally drained. The unrelenting, cold wet weather is draining. I hate having cold feet but that seems to be every day and night even though I wear thick socks in my imitation Ugg boots. The clouds never part and the skies have opened up on this northwest corner of the South Island. This is not remarkable, or unpredictable weather. People here don’t seem to mind or notice it, but it’s rough for me. I have always been a bit of a weather whiner. Certainly it’s a product of my blessed San Diego upbringing and not a sign that I’m being a puss. Either way, I’m tired of the rain. Everywhere I go it is washing out hiking trails, making roads un-drivable and closing tourist-related companies like kayak rentals and hiking guides. More than a few of my recent days have been spent in the relative warmth of a tiny hostel in a blip of a town on the motorway. There are so many beautiful places I want to see and the weather is conspiring against me.

Compounding my issues is the spate of bad luck I have suffered lately. My laptop power cable blew a fuse so I was forced off course to Christchurch to fix it. It was under warranty and Dell took care of it quickly and for free, but I still had to drive 400 km away from my desired destination. A week and a half later, a couple of blown heater hoses to the radiator and I was confined to Westport for two days. Westport is a gateway city, hardly a destination. One of my big hopes for the West Coast was that I would get some decent surf. It had been more than a month since my last surf session and I was itching to get back in the water. Among Kiwis, the West Coast is legendary for its big and consistent surf. Even though the surf reports predicted good things and I checked every surf spot in the book between Okarito and Karamea, there was nothing of note. It was always blown out and never bigger than waist high. I got skunked.

But these are hardly problems of note. These are the pebbles on the road of life. In all of my downtime, made vulnerable by my discomfort, I had too much time to think. I was lonely. I didn’t understand it until after phone calls with Dad and my former travel companion Lauren, but it became clear and embarrassingly obvious. So many days on the road and I am craving some stability and predictability. I want to start re-building my life. I want friends and social circles and planned activities. I miss sharing meals with people I care about. There is more to see in NZ. There will always be more to see. It is impossible to see it all. I have always known that, but as I traveled and my nebulous plans came to fruition it was clear that my plans weren’t big enough. Three and a half months ago I arrived in NZ with the intention of traveling for about 2 months. Never did I think that I would have to make arrangements to be in a city where the US v England World Cup match will be broadcast in the middle of June. I just assumed that I would have settled into a more conventional life pattern by then.

At the moment I’m in Nelson, the largest city at the north end of the South Island. I was here 4 days ago after leaving the rain of the West Coast behind me. No one informed the beautiful city of Nelson, however and it has rained every day. I arrived on Friday evening and the following morning I was wandering the local farmer’s market when my buddy Tyler texted me with an invite to join him in Kaikoura for a weekend of surf. It was perfect timing. Even though I spent three days huddling for warmth, trying to ignore howling winds, lashing rain and near freezing temperatures I was doing it with a friend. It felt really good to have a shared experience again. Now that I’m back in Nelson, I have a few days to check out the Golden and Tasman Bay regions. I’ve already booked my ferry back to Wellington. There is a home stretch to my travels. I’m not on it yet, but I can see it coming.

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I started writing 3 different entries. It’s difficult to catch up and there’s a lot to say. I feel like I’ve been heavy on the nature entries and speaking very little of my state of affairs—of which there are new developments. My thoughts and photos for the following entry are the most clear so I’m posting it first. The rest will follow shortly. All in due time I guess.

The existence of the myriad of fascinating attractions in New Zealand can be directly attributed to the collage of microclimates. The intersection of ecological islands creates unique Ven-diagramatic overlaps seen almost nowhere else in the world. For example, it would not be surprising to see rainforest on a subtropical island. Nor would it be remarkable to see a string of glaciers along a mountain range. Where the temperate rainforests of the West Coast meet the skyward peaks of the Fiordlands, one can find the Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers. These glacial specimens are remarkable for being 2 of the 3 fastest moving and lowest altitude glaciers in the world (the third is in Argentina). At their termini, they are less than 1000’ above sea level where the local temperature is rarely below 45 degrees. With lengths ranging from 12-15 km and up to 3 km wide, they stand out among the neighboring valleys of tangled green foliage. The West Coast of the South Island is also known as the “Wet Coast”. It rains here. A lot. Constantly. I’ve been here for 8 days (more to come on the West Coast in another post) and only 2 days haven’t featured measurable rainfall. The Southern Alps mountain range juts out of the land almost within a stone’s throw of the ocean and rises several thousand feet. Hot air from Australia meets the Tasman Sea and picks up moisture by the bucketful. All of that saturated air slams into the Southern Alps, wringing out moisture out like from a sponge. The string of tiny towns along the main West Coast motorway all receive in the ballpark of 10’ of annual rainfall. In the foothills it’s easily 50% more. In the upper valleys the rainfall can average upward of 25’. In the highest valleys—like the one at the Franz Josef Glacier—precipitation is usually in the form of snow and that can measure 125’ every year. 125’ of snowfall, annually, is a remarkable amount of snow. As it accumulates, it compresses and entrapped air is forced out and the snow turns to ice. Hence, a glacier is fed. Being a steep valley, the accumulating snow and ice of the Franz Josef Glacier slides down the rock face, pushed down by the weight of even more frozen water above. Ever present pressure etches deeper and deeper chasms in the rock and grinds house-sized boulders into fine silt over thousands of years. The glacial bed beyond the lowest reaches of ice is traced by a single stream of milky runoff but the whole valley looks like a river bed immediately after a flash flood or the swath of destruction left by a pyroclastic flow. Boulders, rocks and pebbles are cemented into place by an ashen grey silty-sand.

Walking more than a mile and a half to the base of the glacier, not a single footprint was left in the sand even though everything looked wet and saturated. I was part of a guided group of 33 on an all day hike up and through the glacier. We marched in a line, 33 pairs of rented Gore-tex pants making identical zush zush zush sounds as we worked our way up the valley. Originally, I tried to sign up for ice climbing. Both the Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers are world heritage sites and protected areas owned by the government and leased to private companies for tour purposes. The glaciers are nearly identical and only 20 km apart so the prices to explore were very similar. Unfortunately for me, no else signed up for ice climbing at either spot so I was given the option the morning of to push back my reservation indefinitely until others signed up for the ice climb or to join the all day hike. Due to the impending storms, I chose the hike but it turned out to be a great decision.

At the foot of the glacier, our group of 33 young hikers (the oldest was probably 35 but most were in their early 20s) was split into 3 groups. I was quick to join the lead group as we were promised the most adventurous tour. Our guide, Ryan, was a nimble and diminutive English ginger of unknown age and boundless energy. Under his direction we affixed crampons—metal spikes—to our boots and transitioned from the rocky path to dirty ice.

The lower reaches of the glacier were smooth and easily passable like a rolling hill. The ice was covered with silt and grit and generally unremarkable to anyone who has been skiing or snowboarding. We had no fixed destination and due to the estimated 3-8’ of daily movement of the glacier, we couldn’t follow the path of the prior day’s tour. Ryan was only aiming for interesting sights and passable terrain. As we worked our way a couple hundred yards up the ice, the field began to show signs of stress. Small crevasses and ridges stood out in relief. No longer covered in dirt, the surface ice gleamed white in the midday sun and often was covered in adjacent dimples a couple of inches in diameter. Further up the slope, the ice buckled even more dramatically. Indeterminately deep fissures and precariously thin ridges dictated our route. We walked in the lowest available path to avoid the instability of the melting ridges but that also meant we were inundated by the petty drops and incessant trickles of melt water heeding gravity. It took no time at all to realize why we were all issued waterproof over-gear. The glacier seemed unconquerably huge and yet it was being attacked by the sun and undermined from below on a daily basis. On a clear day like ours, it was easy to see how the glacier could recede but seemed impossible to imagine its cyclical advances.

Ryan’s lead was marked by excited chirps and deft swings of a pick axe used to cut rudimentary steps into shelves so we all scrambled up single file. We wedged through narrow canyons tens of feet deep but only a few inches wide. Through many of them we had to shuffle step, unable to face our hips forward or wear backpacks on both shoulders. He also managed to find us a few tight caves to crawl through. One of which was so small that dropping in feet first, I couldn’t get past my thighs. The adventurous girls and smaller guys managed to get in but required a hand to pull them out of the even tighter exit. This was not an experience for the claustrophobic, the fat or the fat and claustrophobic.

Everywhere around us was ice but it was hardly uniform. Pockets of hail-like ice balls were sandwiched next to layers of perfectly clear ice and next to that might be a sliver of void. In the deeper recesses we encountered beautiful blue ice—nature’s stained glass window. Sunlight diffused through the ice such that illumination was everywhere but seemed to have no source. The scenery was brilliant and intoxicating and even looking away from the ice we were treated to shear rock faces thousands of feet tall, striped with minor waterfalls.

We hiked and climbed for almost 6 hours but it wasn’t until we were off the glacier that we finally felt fatigue. At one point, on our way back down the glacier, we spotted a half day ice climbing excursion working on some of the 30’ vertical faces. It looked fun, but not nearly as much fun as the hike we had just finished. I got lucky that no one else wanted to do the ice climb, and 5 minutes after getting back to the bus, it started pouring rain again and didn’t let up for 4 days.

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“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” – Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

I was just looking for a quote from A Tale of Two Cities to look clever. My travels took me through Queenstown and Wanaka, a pair of cities whose activities and attributes garnered their own chapter in my indispensible Lonely Planet Guide. Beautiful and lakeside, they sit in the midlands of the South Island—not really in the Fiordlands, nor the Southlands, nor the Otago or Canterbury Plains. Somehow, they have carved a niche as a couple of the must-see locations of NZ.

Queenstown sits at the elbow of Lake Wakatipu, in the shadows of the Richardson Mountains. It bills itself as the adrenaline capital of the world. This is where bungee jumping was invented. And canyon swinging. You can also skydiving, white water rafting, white water surfing (boogie boarding, let’s not kid ourselves), canyoning, jet boating, hang gliding, paragliding, skiing, snowboarding, mountain biking or off-roading on ATVs. The town packs itself with 22 year olds from all over the world, kids just looking to get drunk 5 nights a week while they work a crappy minimum wage job and sleep in a tiny, drafty house they share with half a dozen others. They do this until their Holiday Working Visa runs out (12 months) and they move on. This cycle repeats itself like sea turtles returning to nest on the beach where they were born. Something otherworldly is attracting white kids with dreadlocks to this place. And yet, the streets are always packed with the 50+ crowd. Despite the pandemonium after 10pm, the daylight hours are owned by Asian, UK and Australian adults (for lack of a better word) as they stroll the numerous upscale shops, sign up for lake cruises and kayak tours, ride the gondola to the viewing station, depart for wine tours and generally enjoy a peaceful lake ringed by towering mountains. I don’t understand why it works but how is blatantly obvious.

Having one foot in each world (not broke but no longer able to party like a 22 year old), I wore my cleanest hooded sweatshirt and made no bones about leaving the bars 3 hours before they closed. As for my adrenaline fix, I chose whitewater rafting. The downside is that any activity where you are guaranteed to get soaked is also an activity where you are sans pictures so I’m going to do my wordy best to describe the highlights of the day. On the bus ride from the rafting headquarters to the launch point we had to travel the old gold mining road. Queenstown was originally founded in the late 1800s during the 1870s gold rush. There is no easy way to access this part of the country because there are criss-crossing mountain ranges in every direction and rivers were often impossible to navigable due to wildly varying water levels and dramatic changes in width. Miners were forced to pack in equipment with horses and mules from hundreds of miles away. Once in the gold mining valleys, they built most of the equipment they needed—meaning their existence was sparse and most likely miserable. The roads were no exception. Our gravel access road was known as the most dangerous road in NZ and prominently featured numerous signs forbidding almost every type of transportation you could think of and yet somehow we 24 or so rafters were allowed to ride in a painted up bus that looked like it was straight from the 1940s. The narrow dirt and gravel road was supposedly two-way but we were not far from scraping one side of the bus on the mountain walls while the other side flirted with the precipitous drop. The bus driver—a 20-something with an overgrown mop of dyed black hair and a couple of gaping ornamental piercings mauling his ears was silent and focused. Our other river guide was a gregarious American ginger who looked like Alexi Lalas. He would alternate safety instructions with jokes that would crack himself up, filling the bus with his booming, staccato stoner laugh. He mocked the terrified English girl who was white knuckling the seat back through a particularly harrowing section and opened the bus door and hung out when we went through a straight section so narrow that I couldn’t see the road or the cliff below us, only the river a hundred feet below. It was the most exciting bus ride since the movie Speed.  Once safely down to the river banks we split into groups of 6 and loaded into rafts. Being solo, I got lumped in with 2 UK couples and an Irish guy who were completely incompetent and mostly terrified of the moderate rapids. They were mostly incapable of following the instructions of our guide. I was situated at the front of the raft on one side and my fellow pace-setter was a hulking English fellow who had no sense of rhythm and would put every ounce of energy into every stroke, using his entire body to rock forward and wrench back, except he would cock the paddle early and pull no water. He did manage to spend the hour and a half soaking his girlfriend with every errant stroke. She was not happy being splashed by 40 degree glacial runoff. Our guide spent the first 45 minutes trying to correct his form before just giving up and telling me to paddle at half power. We did manage to find some fun rapids—and survive—but it was a little more tame than I was hoping for. The scenery was spectacular, however. It felt like the whole ride was built at DisneyLand. The icy, milky blue water of the Shotover River has been carving a narrow channel into the valley for eons. The valley walls were made of mica shist sandwiched layers buckled and cleaved into impossible patterns. Sandbars and river banks were covered in striated shist and jade cobble. Littering the valley and the waterway were old rusted mining equipment, dumped or left behind when active mining ceased more than half a century ago. It’s strange that some place so authentic could remind me of some place so fake, but I guess that’s the power of Disney.

I spent 3 nights in Queenstown, partying for 2. On my last night, I got to have dinner with some friends. Natalie Rizzo is a friend from Los Angeles. One of her younger sisters, Michela, is doing a semester abroad at the University of Otago. I stayed with her a few weeks back in Dunedin. The rest of the Rizzo clan decided to make the trip out to NZ to visit Michela and they made it to Queenstown the night before I left. They graciously invited me to dinner. It was great to catch up with a friend and have some normal, non-traveler conversations. Thanks again to the Rizzos.

The next morning I bounced for Wanaka. As high energy as Queenstown is, Wanaka is zen-like in its calmness. About half of the adrenaline activities are also offered in Wanaka, but that is more an overflow from Queenstown than anything else. Wanaka is hiking country and gateway to the glaciers. Bars don’t bustle at night, 22 year olds don’t prowl the streets looking for jobs and the average age in my hostel jumped by at least 15 years. I managed my biggest hike to date: Mt Roy. Two of the kids in my hostel room were also interested in the hike so I drove the three of us 15 minutes outside of town to the trail head. 10 minutes into the hike, Corina—a young German girl who’s idea of hiking gear was a scarf, tight jeans and worn out Adidas trainers—realized that it was going to be more than she could handle and turned around. Richard—a 22 year old English lad who was traveling around NZ on a bicycle—and I were left to conquer the mountain on our own. It was quite a task as the trail never deviated from the steady upward switch-backs leading to the peak. It was a hard 3 hour hike to the top and another 2 hours back to the bottom. My thighs, calves, and feet ached from the strenuous hike. This was the first hike that I’ve done where there was no reprieve. Normally, the trail will have sections of uphill and downhill even if the outbound progress is uphill. Not so for Mt Roy. This path was for the singular purpose of getting to the top of a mountain. In my nerdy engineering ways, I took the opportunity to play with the metric system. As I have mentioned to many, my biggest concern about getting back into engineering is re-learning all of my intuition in metric. A lifetime of pounds, feet and inches has to be augmented with kilograms, meters and centimeters. Obviously, those are easy to convert in my head but compound units like pressure (pounds per square inch) have to become newtons per centimeter squared and even more complicated units that are engineering specific and descriptive as the property of a shape like 2^nd Moment of Inertia is described in inches to the fourth power (in^4). How I am going to translate that into millimeters to the fourth power (mm^4), I don’t know. So what to do on a steadily upward hike other than enjoy the views and calculate the walking distance based on elevation differences and slope. Yes, I know I’m a dork, but these are the games I play when your hiking companion likes house music and thinks competitive cycling is a sport.

We walked roughly 10 kilometers each direction.

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I’m taking a few liberties with the date. It’s actually May 18^th but I need to catch up on a few entries. My laptop needed a quick repair so I had to drive 400km out of my way to Christchurch—an actual city—to find a technician. I could have continued to post on the blog, but I would have been unable to upload pictures in my current manner.

After the trip to Doubtful Sound, I was fired up. I was all prepared to find my inner Bear Grylls on one of the many famous multi-day hikes in the Fiordland area. Before you ask, yes, New Zealand has famous hikes. When I got back to Te Anau I went to the Fiordlands Visitor Center. It’s the jumping off point for the hikes; before embarking, hikers are supposed to check the trail and weather conditions, register their plans, and then check back in when they finish. When hikers don’t keep to their schedule, a Department of Conservation team will go searching for them. The message board in front of the visitor center had some bad news. Bridges on the Dusky Track and Routeburn Tracks had bridges washed out by flash floods and the Milford and Kepler Tracks featured extensive flooding and would require wading in waist deep water for long distances. This was more than I prepared for. As a solo hiker with limited overnight experience, there’s only so much confidence and knowledge to be gained from watching Survivorman and Man vs Wild. It was probably the right choice as there hasn’t been more than 2 consecutive days since without rain.

I did however decide to make the 240 km round trip drive to the Milford Sound. As I mentioned in the previous post, the Milford Sound is the smaller but more famous brother to Doubtful Sound. The drive took me up a narrowing valley of overlapping mountain ranges with gushing rivers, tranquil lakes, magnificently carved glacial amphitheaters and a 1-lane tunnel almost a mile long. I’ll let the photos do the talking. And I’ll try to have a longer post about Queenstown and Wanaka tomorrow.

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