South Pacific Adventure

Talk Derby to me! Mom, have you sent the article to the Pulitzer committee yet? As a side note I hope everyone enjoys Derby 2001, oh whoops, that was just a flashback to the last time we had just Hunter and Petrick back for Derby. The countdown til Hunter makes everyone wait while he make his grand entrance is T minus 5 days! Wish I were there!

Enough call outs. Well, from Nelson I made my way down the "wet coast". The first stop was Punakaiki, a small hamlet pretty much half way between Nelson and Franz Josef. The town itself is smaller than Kilmihil, and pretty much consists of 2 hosTELS, a pub, and a tourism office. The main attraction in Punakaiki is the Pancake rocks, so named because due to the erosion and weathering of the rocks has drawn lines in the rock, which makes them look like a stack of flapjacks. If I'm not mistaken here's how they formed: the rocks themselves are limestone and were at one time undergorund. But due to tectonic activity the limestone rose out of the ground (similar to mountain formation). Now, there was also mudrock mixed in with the limestone, and that erodes more easily than the limestone, so the lines you see in the rock are the places where the mudrock was. I believe that process is called stylohedging (mike, feel free to post your own geologic blog on what I've said, but I will say that after all the stuff I learned there and at the glaciers, I can say I minored in geology). Anyway, the west coast is truly stunning. It gets about 5 metres of rain each year, and when it rains it really pours. So, you have this thick, dense tropical vegetation covering the mountainside, which is only about 50-100 metres in from the coast. I've never seen anything where you have a nice, long beach, then only 50 metres inland from that you have the towering alps with dense, tropical vegetation. I went on a walk through the forrest, and it wasn't any different than the one we walked through in costa rica, except there aren't really any snakes or as much wild life, although I was lucky enough to see 2 kiwis. Unfortunately, it rained heavily and constantly while I was there.
From Punakaiki, I made my way to Franz Josef Glacier. There are only 3 glaciers in the world that run into tropical forrest Franz Josef, Fox, and Perrito Moreno in Argentina (been there). I did a full day hike on the glacier that included about 5 hrs on the ice. Luckily, it was a nice, sunny day, so we didn't get wet and cold on the ice. We climbed through some crev-asses, as they say, and saw some waterfalls and unusual ice formations on the glacier. On the flip side, there was an extremely annoying pack of American girls on the expedition with me that fit the streotype of annoying, loud Americans to a T. They were so loud and practically competing with each other to see who could be more annoying. So, that puts Americans in second to last place on the hierarchy of nations, just above Switzerland. There wasn't much else to do in Franz, so I headed to Queenstown.
The drive down was very nice, with terrain similar to Montana.
Queenstown is ok. Not really thrilled with it. Location wise, it is set in this great area with mountains and hills on sides. The Remarkables, just north of town are v. similar to the Tetons and a good ski place. While there are a bunch of things to do, none of them really excite me that much. I did a day trip to Milford Sound, which was great, but I think I'll take off tomorrow to see Dunedin and then Christchurch/Arthur's Pass area. Only 9 short days left.

Happy Derby,
James

Greetings, well a lot has happened since my last blog, so I'll have to break my happenings up into 2 blogs. Right now I'm in Franz Josef and will do a glacier walk tomorrow. Hopefully the rain will take a day off.
The only thing going faster than the time has been the money, but hey, this is what I was savin' for when I was returning nachos because they didnt have chicken on them.
Windy Welly was a nice city with a well-defined town centre that had lots of shops and pedestrian walk-ways, with some good craic at night to boot. Unfortunately, my stay there was cut short since unbeknownst to me the Rolling Stones were coming to town so all the hosTELS (as they say down here) were booked up. The Stones hadnt been here since '67, but apparantly the were still putting on a good show. But, I was able to have a cheeky beer in Welly's own Molly Malone's and see the big and free! museum, Te Papa before I had to get the ferry over to Picton in the South Island. Te Papa accepted donations (none given) had a lot of Maori things and a Lord of the Rings Exhibtion going on.
Picton greeted me with an excellent sunny day. I did a walk around the town in the morn, and in the afternoon I got on the Mail Time Taxi, which is a catamaran that sails around the coves in the Queen Charlotte Sound. Some entrepreneur got the idea to make the route of the postman into a tourist activity, so about 20 of us boarded the boat and tagged along while the mailman delivered sacks of mail, food, beer or whatever to people in the distant parts of the Sound. It was a perfect day for the cruise, and we had one stop where there was a monument commemorating where Cptn Cook stopped 5 times on his journeys through the South Pacific. As a bonus, we also came upon a big group of bottle nosed dolphins. They were very playful and they were doing jumps out of the water and racing alongside the boat with us (not too much unlike Niall and Mody racing along Eastern Parkway, but in that case it would have been just 2 dolphins)
The next day I got the bus to Nelson, which is the hub for activiites into Abel Tasman Nat'l Park. I had been wanting to do some kind of water sport and hadn't really done anything yet, so I decided to do a 2 day kayak trip around the coast of Abel Tasman that included a night's stay on the floating backpacker (a boat, which was a bit cramped but served up a good feed for brekky and dinner). While on board, I met this Topper from Minnesota. She could one up anything you brought at her. It turns out she had 5 sisters, went to this really prestigious school, was guarnateed a job after grad, danced for the Vikings etc etc. She had this really hot friend with her, which was really weird because that's hardly happened so far. Kayaking was great, though. The first day, I ended up rowing with, Tilo, a nice enough guy, who was paranoid of the kayak tipping (highly unlikely). The second day I had Gabby, another German, who was more laid back than most i've met. We saw a family of seals, and the cubs were at the playful age where they wanted to jump on the kayak and meet the people. All in all, very nice. next blog coming soon about Punakaiki and Franz Joseph.

Cheers,
James

Happy Easter!
Welcome back. Rotorua was great. My hostel, Hot Rocks, was a nice comfy 3 story hostel w/ 3 thermal pools. Only 1 was really good (the outdoors one) but they were nice to sit in at the end of the day. The first day there I went black water rafting in Waitomo, a small village 2 hrs west of Rotorua. It was definitely the most unique thing I've done so far. Black water rafting consists of floating down a river that flows through underground caves. You can repel into that cave, or enter at another site and just climb in. I was short on time, so I did the shorter version where you climb in. So I enter wearing a wet suit (river's colder than the Irish Sea), a helmet with a light on it, boots, and an inflatable donut-like raft. We climb in and turn on our lamps and walk thorugh the caves to where the water is deeper and we can actually float. We (there are roughly 12 of us) float down the river and look up at the ceiling ov the cave which varied in height from very tall to just a foot or so above our heads. There were stalagtites on the ceiling we avoided touching and for one part we formed an "eel" which is where you put your legs up on the raft in front of you and everyone floats down single file. While in eel formation, we turned off our lamps and the guides led us through while we looked up at the ceiling of the cave, which was illuminated by glow worms, which look like tiny, bright sequins on the cave roof. Glow worms look cooler than they are; they are actually maggots that have feces that glow in the dark to attract flies, which get caught in a web-like strings that they also produce. So, the whole trip lasted about 2 hours and was very good.
While in Rotorua, I also visited some geysers, went to a thermal spa-Greg, think Pucon, only my bag didn't get stolen- and did a bungy jump from 45 metres. It was pretty good. They have a photographer on the ground taking photos of you, which they try and sell you for $25. I didn't buy them, but there was one right when I jumped off and my facial expression was that of seeing a ghost.
I hitched a ride to Taupo, a city 1 hr south of Rotorua that offers plenty of extreme sports as well. Skydiving's very popular here since it's the cheapest place to do it in NZ. I had a place booked today, but weather didn't cooperate, so it was a slow day. Yesterday was great, though. I went on a fairly rigorous 17K walk through the Tongariro crossing, rated as the top day walk in NZ. It's not too tough a walk, although there are too tough climbs. You pass very close to Tongariro, the volcano used as Mordor in the Lord of the Rings movies, and see some emerald green lakes and other great scenery as well. I did most of the walk with a bloke from London, whose been travelling abroad for about 8 months now, and sees no end in sight. Guy has plans to go everywhere, and he's about as happy-go-lucky as you can be. Sleeps in his car and kind of smelled, but good fun nonetheless. The town of Taupo would normally be good for some craic, but it's Easter weekend and shops and Holy Cow bars have been closed or closed early. My roommates right now are 3 Brits, a Chinese, and a Brasilian, Marcel who snores instantly when he sleeps.
Tomorrow morning I'm off to "Windy Welly", where I'll spend 2 days then bid adios to the North Island.

Cheers,
James

Everything's going great here. A quick overview as I wait for my large cheese from Domino's: Talked to Ed in the airport about NZ, and this Kiwi overheard me and gave some good local knowledge (Dunedin, watchout). He even told me about a mate of his who runs tours in the town of Rotorua, where I just arrived today. So, I'll look him up tomorrow. Flew over on a 747, which luckily wasnt the Peugot of Boeing like i feared it might be. Had nice leg room and all sorts of tv shows and movies on demand. Got in no hitch and checked striaght into my hostel. Wasnt too tired so I walked around Auck. Nice city, similar i suppose to San Fran (hilly, large asian contingent, foggy, rainy in the AM) and went to bed early and slept off the jetlag. Had another day in Auck, then I got a bus north to Paihia, in the Bay of Islands. Nice area, my tour to swim w/ dolphins got rained out, but I still did some kayaking andsome hikes. Took off this morn for 9 hr bus ride to Rotorua, which offers a lot to do. Has strong sulphur smell. which I'll add to, due to thermal springs. Also great rafting,kayaking,ferry, and volcano tours available. So, it should be a fun couple of days here.
As for the hostels, sharing the room has been no problem. I've roomed w/2 scots (great); a couple canadians (not bad); germans (also good) and one swiss (terrible). No photos just yet. Greg, I have your camera (Elf). Seems to be working well, but I dont have the transfer cables so I'll have to put photos on cd's and upload that way, which will prolly take some time. Until next time.

Cheers,
James

Just two days until I head off for New Zealand. Got the tickets in hand and am ready to do this.

jboz