OK, this brings me up to what I've got ready to go, I have two more days to write up but my flight back home is in 11 hours and I want to go see a Maritime Museum, buy some Kiwi Chocolate, and try one more time to find some of the Dog cartoons that Dot asked me to find.
08/07/2010 Cape Rangitanga
Went up to the very tip of NZ, where we saw the Pacific Ocean meet the Tasmin Sea. The trip up was very beautiful. On the way we visited a Kauri forest preserve. These trees are coniferous natives of NZ that were voraciously harvested by the Europeans for pretty much anything that could be made out of wood. The wood was prized because apparently it had a very even grain, has very few knots as the lower branches fall off, and the trunk is very smooth and round. The problem is that each tree takes hundreds of years to mature, so the supply started to run out fairly quickly. The harvesting was only banned in the 1980s on crown land and in the 90s for all of NZ.
We also moved along a very long strip of coast called the 90 mile beach. It is actually more like 90 km, but the name was apparently made to beat the Aussies who have a beach called 80 mile. We were in a standard tour bus though with knobbly tiers, so the sand was impressively compact to permit the movement with ease. Then we went over to some dunes that we slid down on what were essentially glorified flutter boards. Kind of fun, but I think that I prefer snow over sand as it melts when it gets in your hair, nose, eyes and mouth.
On the trip back we stoped by the “ancient Kauri kingdom” a place that sells Kauri wood carvings and furniture. This may seem strange, what with the whole, “can’t chop down any Kauri trees” law, but they found a large number of giant trees that were blown down about 40-60 kyears bp (by radiocarbon) and preserved in a swamp. So now there is an industry of extracting timber from these ancient Kauri trees, hence the name. Some of the carvings were the usual boring stuff of bowls and plates which were particularly uninteresting because of the lack of knots in the wood. But others were more interesting tables and chairs. They even had a spiral staircase to get to the second level that was a hollowed out Kauri tree, you climbed through the middle to get up. Very neat. I ended up buying a small carved Kiwi bird that was 35$ to use my prize money from the fencing.
Finally we stopped off at a fish n chips shop that advertised itself as “world famous” but after the meal me and a British guy concluded that it was good but certainly not up to the hype. He said “well there’s a better chippy chop just up the road back home.”
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Auckland was really only a stop over to get to the northern tip of the island, which is just the way I like it because I really don't like the Hostel and the city is really just a boring metropolis.
07/07/2010 Trip to Pahia.
Left the base around 0730hrs to catch the Magic bus and off we went.
Upon arrival around 1300 I looked into the option to do SCUBA, turns out that it would cost 240$, so I nixed that idea. Instead I signed up for a “swim with dolphins” tour. Over the rest of the afternoon I went to the grounds of the Treaty of Waitaingi. There I got a tour of the grounds by one of the descendants of four of the chiefs that signed the original document. His views on things were very interesting, seemed like it was all about patience.
07/07/2010 Trip to Pahia.
Left the base around 0730hrs to catch the Magic bus and off we went.
Upon arrival around 1300 I looked into the option to do SCUBA, turns out that it would cost 240$, so I nixed that idea. Instead I signed up for a “swim with dolphins” tour. Over the rest of the afternoon I went to the grounds of the Treaty of Waitaingi. There I got a tour of the grounds by one of the descendants of four of the chiefs that signed the original document. His views on things were very interesting, seemed like it was all about patience.
06/07/2010 Trip to Auckland
06/07/2010 Trip to Auckland
It was fairly boring. We went back through Rotorua and Taupo, saw some nice scenery, mostly more of the rolling green fields with sprinklings of trees. There was also a nice sunrise. The trip was all hustle and bustle, and I didn’t have any proper food because I hadn’t bought any in Wellington. So I had the usual bus stop foods, a grilled cheese sandwich with ham, pineapple and cheese for lunch, and a sausage roll and brownie for dinner. This combined with a general lack of veggies at the fencing abode (food was generally English with roast meats and potatoes with minimal greens) had me craving a carrot when I got in. So I went out at 2100hrs and found a supermarket that I had seen coming in on the bus and bought some veggies.
It was fairly boring. We went back through Rotorua and Taupo, saw some nice scenery, mostly more of the rolling green fields with sprinklings of trees. There was also a nice sunrise. The trip was all hustle and bustle, and I didn’t have any proper food because I hadn’t bought any in Wellington. So I had the usual bus stop foods, a grilled cheese sandwich with ham, pineapple and cheese for lunch, and a sausage roll and brownie for dinner. This combined with a general lack of veggies at the fencing abode (food was generally English with roast meats and potatoes with minimal greens) had me craving a carrot when I got in. So I went out at 2100hrs and found a supermarket that I had seen coming in on the bus and bought some veggies.
05/07/2010 Te Papa and the Weta Cave
05/07/2010 Te Papa and the Weta Cave
Today I went downtown to check out the national museum Te Papa, something that was highly recommended by many people I talked to. I ended up going to the Weta Cave first. It is a small little museum of artifacts of items built by the weta workshops folks. It also doubles as a slightly larger place to sell replicas of weta props and sculptures. It took me about 45 min each way to get there because I was going by public transport and didn’t really know where I was going. I had seen that there were half day tours of various LOTR sites around Wellington, but thought that I would just check out the cave for free (minus bus tickets, but those were essentially free too as I had a 6$ day pass and each way from the home to downtown was 3$. It turns out that with all that time the tours would probably have been a better idea.
So then I got to Te Papa and started wondering around. It is a really big museum with 6 floors of varying surface area. The second has general stuff about plate tectonics as NZ is on the intersection of several plates, which I skipped, as well as info about native plants and animals. I went to that section mainly to see a giant squid that was on display. They also had some deep sea corals that are found around NZ on display and those were neat to look at.
This squid was bycatch caught in the Antarctic by a fishing vessel with NZ flags and scientists on board as it was trying to eat a fish that they had caught. It was then gifted to Te Papa for display as the only giant squid specimen on the *surface* of the Earth. (Obviously there are more below the surface.) So it was examined by biologist and whatnot with every non invasive scan know as well as that pipe camera thing who’s name escapes me, but its outer shape was preserved. They had 4 days to examine it before it started to decompose. Now it is on display, though disappointingly it has shrunk by quite a lot. In movies of its capture it looks like it is ~4m long, but now it is only ~2m.
The fourth floor had Maori history and wood and greenstone carving on display. The carvings were neat though the history was mostly review from my course. It also had a short discussion of the treaty of Waitangi, the agreement between the British Crown and every Maori group to get along nicely. Apparently the English translation was not the same as the official Maori version and so some problems quickly emerged that are still under resolution today as the Brits ran with the English version. It seems that the main difference is the idea of sovereignty, the Maori thought they were keeping it but the Queen thought otherwise.
The fourth floor also had a modern day Maori meeting house for all the tribes of new Zealand as well pakeha (white people) and other immigrants. It was a bit strange because of the pastel lighting and stylised Maori art.
The fifth floor had european and more modern art, most of the European stuff was landscape, kind of like how Canadian art is all landscape. The modern section contained the most recent kiwi contributions to the Venice Bienally, most of which seemed to contain little of artistic merit. The worst offender was a single black rectangle maybe half a square metre that contained a very thin orange cross going through its midlines. Apparently this was supposed to convey some sort of beauty of simplicity, but I thought it was stupid. Probably the most interesting bit took up a whole room and was a curvy and segmented white canvas with orange and black splotches and lines. It looked kind of like music sheets.
The sixth floor was very small and had some pottery by a New Zealand potter. Mostly they were wheel thrown teapots, mugs and urns with a few plates thrown in. Mostly they had earthen tones. I thought they looked quite nice.
I cant remember what was on the third floor, it must have had something, but I think I must be merging it into the others.
Those floors pretty much took up the rest of my day until 430 at which point I wondered around the city for a while taking photos of the parliament buildings, which are a strange mix of architectural styles before finding a bus stop to take me home. Fortunately I had a list of bus times because the bus that took me right back to the home ended services at 6pm.
Today I went downtown to check out the national museum Te Papa, something that was highly recommended by many people I talked to. I ended up going to the Weta Cave first. It is a small little museum of artifacts of items built by the weta workshops folks. It also doubles as a slightly larger place to sell replicas of weta props and sculptures. It took me about 45 min each way to get there because I was going by public transport and didn’t really know where I was going. I had seen that there were half day tours of various LOTR sites around Wellington, but thought that I would just check out the cave for free (minus bus tickets, but those were essentially free too as I had a 6$ day pass and each way from the home to downtown was 3$. It turns out that with all that time the tours would probably have been a better idea.
So then I got to Te Papa and started wondering around. It is a really big museum with 6 floors of varying surface area. The second has general stuff about plate tectonics as NZ is on the intersection of several plates, which I skipped, as well as info about native plants and animals. I went to that section mainly to see a giant squid that was on display. They also had some deep sea corals that are found around NZ on display and those were neat to look at.
This squid was bycatch caught in the Antarctic by a fishing vessel with NZ flags and scientists on board as it was trying to eat a fish that they had caught. It was then gifted to Te Papa for display as the only giant squid specimen on the *surface* of the Earth. (Obviously there are more below the surface.) So it was examined by biologist and whatnot with every non invasive scan know as well as that pipe camera thing who’s name escapes me, but its outer shape was preserved. They had 4 days to examine it before it started to decompose. Now it is on display, though disappointingly it has shrunk by quite a lot. In movies of its capture it looks like it is ~4m long, but now it is only ~2m.
The fourth floor had Maori history and wood and greenstone carving on display. The carvings were neat though the history was mostly review from my course. It also had a short discussion of the treaty of Waitangi, the agreement between the British Crown and every Maori group to get along nicely. Apparently the English translation was not the same as the official Maori version and so some problems quickly emerged that are still under resolution today as the Brits ran with the English version. It seems that the main difference is the idea of sovereignty, the Maori thought they were keeping it but the Queen thought otherwise.
The fourth floor also had a modern day Maori meeting house for all the tribes of new Zealand as well pakeha (white people) and other immigrants. It was a bit strange because of the pastel lighting and stylised Maori art.
The fifth floor had european and more modern art, most of the European stuff was landscape, kind of like how Canadian art is all landscape. The modern section contained the most recent kiwi contributions to the Venice Bienally, most of which seemed to contain little of artistic merit. The worst offender was a single black rectangle maybe half a square metre that contained a very thin orange cross going through its midlines. Apparently this was supposed to convey some sort of beauty of simplicity, but I thought it was stupid. Probably the most interesting bit took up a whole room and was a curvy and segmented white canvas with orange and black splotches and lines. It looked kind of like music sheets.
The sixth floor was very small and had some pottery by a New Zealand potter. Mostly they were wheel thrown teapots, mugs and urns with a few plates thrown in. Mostly they had earthen tones. I thought they looked quite nice.
I cant remember what was on the third floor, it must have had something, but I think I must be merging it into the others.
Those floors pretty much took up the rest of my day until 430 at which point I wondered around the city for a while taking photos of the parliament buildings, which are a strange mix of architectural styles before finding a bus stop to take me home. Fortunately I had a list of bus times because the bus that took me right back to the home ended services at 6pm.
04/07/2010 Fencing tournament.
04/07/2010 Fencing tournament.
So I got the gear together and then fenced foil. That was entertaining. There were only 10 people in the tourney, so they prolonged the tourney with two rounds of pools which was nice because I ended up being able to fencing with almost everyone before getting to the DEs. That was fun, I ended up coming into the DEs 4th with 3 losses out of 8 boughts. Then it was into the breach, I got a buy to the round of 8. First up was a saberist, so clearly foilists were not particularly well represented. I took him down fairly easily, like all saberists he was parrying quite wide. Then it was on to a proper foist. He was much more of a challenge. He was actually up 14 to 10 thought good foil technique and knife fighting. Some how I was able to get him on a few knife fights as he tried to rush the end, and close the gap with some fleshes to 14 all. And then win it.
In the final I was fencing William, the lefty (epeeist) owner of my pants, blade, wire and jacket. (Mask was borrowed from the club.) So that was interesting, I was really starting to warm up and do well, then I beat William 15 10 I think. So that was a bit embarrassing because some crazy canuck won an historic tournament. But I got 35 NZ$ prize money too! Later on it seemed that NZ just doesn’t flesh as a whole because people were complimenting me on them when, while they were good for me, were certainly not as good as Matti’s or many other Vancouverites.
The rest of the day the folks drove me around Wellington stopping off at the various view points that are common tourists traps. I didn’t really expect that, but it was kind of them to do that.
So I got the gear together and then fenced foil. That was entertaining. There were only 10 people in the tourney, so they prolonged the tourney with two rounds of pools which was nice because I ended up being able to fencing with almost everyone before getting to the DEs. That was fun, I ended up coming into the DEs 4th with 3 losses out of 8 boughts. Then it was into the breach, I got a buy to the round of 8. First up was a saberist, so clearly foilists were not particularly well represented. I took him down fairly easily, like all saberists he was parrying quite wide. Then it was on to a proper foist. He was much more of a challenge. He was actually up 14 to 10 thought good foil technique and knife fighting. Some how I was able to get him on a few knife fights as he tried to rush the end, and close the gap with some fleshes to 14 all. And then win it.
In the final I was fencing William, the lefty (epeeist) owner of my pants, blade, wire and jacket. (Mask was borrowed from the club.) So that was interesting, I was really starting to warm up and do well, then I beat William 15 10 I think. So that was a bit embarrassing because some crazy canuck won an historic tournament. But I got 35 NZ$ prize money too! Later on it seemed that NZ just doesn’t flesh as a whole because people were complimenting me on them when, while they were good for me, were certainly not as good as Matti’s or many other Vancouverites.
The rest of the day the folks drove me around Wellington stopping off at the various view points that are common tourists traps. I didn’t really expect that, but it was kind of them to do that.
03/07/2010 End of Taupo+Fencing?
03/07/2010 End of Taupo+Fencing?
Went Bungeeing. Started off thinking that it didn’t look too bad, then I shuffled to the platform with this brace around my ankles. And looked all the way down. So that made me reconsider things a bit. Then I took a few deep breaths and followed the instructions of the assistant to look straight ahead. Then it was 3 2 1 bungee and leaned forward off the platform. Very scary for the first 5 seconds and then absolutely thrilling! Very strange. The lady was ready to push me off too, when I looked at some movies of the day’s jumps, she had pushed a Saudi girl off right before me, and had her hand on my back. Anyways, I came out at the end with a giant grin on my face wanting to do it again. Fortunately for my wallet and blood pressure, I had to walk back up the cliff and by then I had regained my senses I wasn’t so sure I wanted to do it again. Anyways, had to do it because I was in NZ.
Then it was time to get onto the bus to Wellington. We were late so there was no time to stop for a long dinner, so I grabbed a sausage roll some french fries, and apple and carrot cake with about 1 inch of icing from the truck stop and then we were off into the night watching Indiana Jones on the over head. When I finally got to Wellington I was picked up by Vicki, a fencing mom. She took me to a down town pub where the Victoria university fencing club was celebrating its 100th anniversary. Not really a continuous strip of time she told me, but apparently there was a bit of a pissing match between the local clubs about which was the longest and someone found a record of the club having a group of Female epeeists back in 1910. There I had some Kumera chips to top off the evening since everyone else was pretty much at the dessert stage. I was invited to partake in an open foil tournament (the epee tourney was this day) so I said sure why not, if you have the gear. It turns out that the son of the Fencing mom is a lefty epeeist, so I was able to use his old stuff (he was entering for fun too).
Went Bungeeing. Started off thinking that it didn’t look too bad, then I shuffled to the platform with this brace around my ankles. And looked all the way down. So that made me reconsider things a bit. Then I took a few deep breaths and followed the instructions of the assistant to look straight ahead. Then it was 3 2 1 bungee and leaned forward off the platform. Very scary for the first 5 seconds and then absolutely thrilling! Very strange. The lady was ready to push me off too, when I looked at some movies of the day’s jumps, she had pushed a Saudi girl off right before me, and had her hand on my back. Anyways, I came out at the end with a giant grin on my face wanting to do it again. Fortunately for my wallet and blood pressure, I had to walk back up the cliff and by then I had regained my senses I wasn’t so sure I wanted to do it again. Anyways, had to do it because I was in NZ.
Then it was time to get onto the bus to Wellington. We were late so there was no time to stop for a long dinner, so I grabbed a sausage roll some french fries, and apple and carrot cake with about 1 inch of icing from the truck stop and then we were off into the night watching Indiana Jones on the over head. When I finally got to Wellington I was picked up by Vicki, a fencing mom. She took me to a down town pub where the Victoria university fencing club was celebrating its 100th anniversary. Not really a continuous strip of time she told me, but apparently there was a bit of a pissing match between the local clubs about which was the longest and someone found a record of the club having a group of Female epeeists back in 1910. There I had some Kumera chips to top off the evening since everyone else was pretty much at the dessert stage. I was invited to partake in an open foil tournament (the epee tourney was this day) so I said sure why not, if you have the gear. It turns out that the son of the Fencing mom is a lefty epeeist, so I was able to use his old stuff (he was entering for fun too).
01/07/2010 Biking around Taupo
01/07/2010 Biking around Taupo
Rented bike and went to the craters of the moon and Huka falls. The falls weren’t all that impressive, there was a heck of a lot of water moving through a narrow gorge and then falling down 8m, but it really didn’t look like that much. The craters of the moon were a bit more interesting because of the steam flowing out of the ground and a whole bunch of holes. Anyways, it took me a while to get used to the different gear ratios to use in the mountain bike, generally much lower, but then I over shot and started to do whealies on steeper slopes. In the end it was a tiering day, all that spinning of legs wasn’t something I was used to anymore.
I got back a bit before dinner time so I went down to the Lake and watched the sun set, kind of pretty with a snow capped volcanic cone in the distance on the other side.
In the evening talked to a new German who was taking exchange program in Aussi, and a Swiss guy who came to NZ to learn some English. He had probably the best job I’ve heard yet. He was an apprentice at the Lint Chocolate Factory!!
Rented bike and went to the craters of the moon and Huka falls. The falls weren’t all that impressive, there was a heck of a lot of water moving through a narrow gorge and then falling down 8m, but it really didn’t look like that much. The craters of the moon were a bit more interesting because of the steam flowing out of the ground and a whole bunch of holes. Anyways, it took me a while to get used to the different gear ratios to use in the mountain bike, generally much lower, but then I over shot and started to do whealies on steeper slopes. In the end it was a tiering day, all that spinning of legs wasn’t something I was used to anymore.
I got back a bit before dinner time so I went down to the Lake and watched the sun set, kind of pretty with a snow capped volcanic cone in the distance on the other side.
In the evening talked to a new German who was taking exchange program in Aussi, and a Swiss guy who came to NZ to learn some English. He had probably the best job I’ve heard yet. He was an apprentice at the Lint Chocolate Factory!!
30/07/2010 Trip to Taupo
30/07/2010 Trip to Taupo
This happened in the middle of the day so that I got in around dinner time.\
When I got to Taupo I met some people who were doing the Magic tour together after meeting in Wellington. They had a German who was a professional chef and were cooking up a storm of nice smelling meat balls. Another of the guys had the interesting profession of fire engineer, a guy who looks at the blueprints of commercial buildings and makes sure that there are enough preventative measures, that exits are well situated, that materials are appropriate, that baffles built in the ceiling will keep the hot air from circulating etc.
This happened in the middle of the day so that I got in around dinner time.\
When I got to Taupo I met some people who were doing the Magic tour together after meeting in Wellington. They had a German who was a professional chef and were cooking up a storm of nice smelling meat balls. Another of the guys had the interesting profession of fire engineer, a guy who looks at the blueprints of commercial buildings and makes sure that there are enough preventative measures, that exits are well situated, that materials are appropriate, that baffles built in the ceiling will keep the hot air from circulating etc.
29/06/2010 Rotorua
Not sure what is going on with the dates in my note pad, I know I was here for 2 days, but w/e I'll sort that out later.
29/06/2010 Rotorua
Today had a leisurely time getting up as bus to Rotorua left at 11am so not enough time to get anywhere. I spent a bit of time hanging around the giftshop waiting. I ended up buying a fill in the blank post card which seemed to perfectly fit my desire to put little effort into communication.
Then it was on to a 2hr trim through ridiculously lush green rolling fields. Despite all that I ended up nodding off for about half a trip. Which seems to be some sort of problem I’ve picked up, I’ve fallen asleep in pretty much every bus I’ve gotten into .
Once in Rotorua I tried to set up my plans for the place. It is known for hot pools and thermal activity but those tend to get sillily expensive as the people there charge exorbitant rates just for looking at them. While I’m certainly willing to part with exorbitant sums of cash, see the 7hr extravaganza, but not so much for thermal springs that I’ve probably seen similar or better examples of in Yellowstone. So I was trying to focuses on the history and culture. Then I learnt that it had a tour of Hobbiton, so I had to jump at that. Apparently the set was mostly taken down by the movie compagny who had agreed to put the famer’s land back to it’s orgininal state. Then the rains came and so the people had to stop because of the mud. Then people came to ask about the set over the course of a year, so the farmers asked if they could keep the set. I also had to sign some sort of nondisclosure paper about not posting pictures on the internet, so I’m not going to go anyfurther with that on the blog.
And then I learnt that there was a Kiwi exhibit. Apparently this place had an eruption last time around 1820ish that resulted in the burial of a village.
Apparently this region was the first place to make a big tourism hit by having the pink and white terraces. Those were destroyed by the eruption. Then the place became a big hit when people were marketing it as a place with good waters for “hydropathy” apparently the mix of waters with both acid and base was a big draw.
29/06/2010 Rotorua
Today had a leisurely time getting up as bus to Rotorua left at 11am so not enough time to get anywhere. I spent a bit of time hanging around the giftshop waiting. I ended up buying a fill in the blank post card which seemed to perfectly fit my desire to put little effort into communication.
Then it was on to a 2hr trim through ridiculously lush green rolling fields. Despite all that I ended up nodding off for about half a trip. Which seems to be some sort of problem I’ve picked up, I’ve fallen asleep in pretty much every bus I’ve gotten into .
Once in Rotorua I tried to set up my plans for the place. It is known for hot pools and thermal activity but those tend to get sillily expensive as the people there charge exorbitant rates just for looking at them. While I’m certainly willing to part with exorbitant sums of cash, see the 7hr extravaganza, but not so much for thermal springs that I’ve probably seen similar or better examples of in Yellowstone. So I was trying to focuses on the history and culture. Then I learnt that it had a tour of Hobbiton, so I had to jump at that. Apparently the set was mostly taken down by the movie compagny who had agreed to put the famer’s land back to it’s orgininal state. Then the rains came and so the people had to stop because of the mud. Then people came to ask about the set over the course of a year, so the farmers asked if they could keep the set. I also had to sign some sort of nondisclosure paper about not posting pictures on the internet, so I’m not going to go anyfurther with that on the blog.
And then I learnt that there was a Kiwi exhibit. Apparently this place had an eruption last time around 1820ish that resulted in the burial of a village.
Apparently this region was the first place to make a big tourism hit by having the pink and white terraces. Those were destroyed by the eruption. Then the place became a big hit when people were marketing it as a place with good waters for “hydropathy” apparently the mix of waters with both acid and base was a big draw.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
28/06/2010: 7hr splunking extravigansa
OK, it never rains but it pours right? I've been saving up some posts because the last hostel didn't have internet.
28/06/2010: 7hr splunking extravigansa
Today I went on the trip that almost didn't happen because of insufficient bookings though it turned out that another group of 3 people signed up in the evening so it was a group of 5. The trip was advertised as 7hr trip into one of the caves in the area that started off with a abseil into the depths. This was seriously underestimating the trip.
We started off by going to a ex woolshead where we were given combined wetsuit leggings and toresoes and a wetsuit jacket to go overtop of that. There was also a neoprene belt to go around the upper waist that was apparently supposed to keep our kidneys warm. Then we got thin booties for our feet and rubber boots on top of that. Finally we got a harness for the abseil which would also be used several times as an attachment to some safety lines through the cave and an orange helmet with a light on.
We trudged down in our strange getup and lined up on platform next two ten thumb thick ropes that descended ~100 metres into a ravine with a river running through it, entering and exiting at either end through the cave. This cave was allegedly 5km long with this entry point about halfway.
After sliding down the ropes for about 15 min we got to the floor and had lunch. Then we entered the cave and were in water for pretty much the rest of the day. One of the neat thing about going down the ropes was seeing some sideways stalactites growing from the walls. Apparently they start off going straight down like normal but then curve out as moss grows on them and alters the direction of water flow.
We were going up against the flow of the river and that was a very good thing for safety. The force of the water would change frequently depending on the width of the cave, sometimes it was wide and shallow so that the top of our boots were dry and sometimes when the cave got very narrow or steep moving felt a bit like rockclimbing with gravity turned 90 degrees. We would not be able to touch the bottom, were quite buoyant in our wetsuits and the current was so strong that we had to pull our selfs along the cave wall. This whole experience was loads of fun. According to our guides the water was as high as it could be and still allow people through, infact it had been closed over the weekend because of that.
Occasionally we would leave the water to scramble over boulders or avoid having to climb up waterfalls or just for a change, sometimes we went through low gaps though I think that was more for the photo opp that it presented rather than necessity.
Perhaps surprisingly I was rarely cold, It was only when we stopped twice, once to get a silly shot of people emerging from a small waterfall and once to turn off the lights to look at glow worms near the end of the
At the end we went back to the sheep farm and were fed a small amount of steak and then some roast veggies and salad for dinner. Yum.
28/06/2010: 7hr splunking extravigansa
Today I went on the trip that almost didn't happen because of insufficient bookings though it turned out that another group of 3 people signed up in the evening so it was a group of 5. The trip was advertised as 7hr trip into one of the caves in the area that started off with a abseil into the depths. This was seriously underestimating the trip.
We started off by going to a ex woolshead where we were given combined wetsuit leggings and toresoes and a wetsuit jacket to go overtop of that. There was also a neoprene belt to go around the upper waist that was apparently supposed to keep our kidneys warm. Then we got thin booties for our feet and rubber boots on top of that. Finally we got a harness for the abseil which would also be used several times as an attachment to some safety lines through the cave and an orange helmet with a light on.
We trudged down in our strange getup and lined up on platform next two ten thumb thick ropes that descended ~100 metres into a ravine with a river running through it, entering and exiting at either end through the cave. This cave was allegedly 5km long with this entry point about halfway.
After sliding down the ropes for about 15 min we got to the floor and had lunch. Then we entered the cave and were in water for pretty much the rest of the day. One of the neat thing about going down the ropes was seeing some sideways stalactites growing from the walls. Apparently they start off going straight down like normal but then curve out as moss grows on them and alters the direction of water flow.
We were going up against the flow of the river and that was a very good thing for safety. The force of the water would change frequently depending on the width of the cave, sometimes it was wide and shallow so that the top of our boots were dry and sometimes when the cave got very narrow or steep moving felt a bit like rockclimbing with gravity turned 90 degrees. We would not be able to touch the bottom, were quite buoyant in our wetsuits and the current was so strong that we had to pull our selfs along the cave wall. This whole experience was loads of fun. According to our guides the water was as high as it could be and still allow people through, infact it had been closed over the weekend because of that.
Occasionally we would leave the water to scramble over boulders or avoid having to climb up waterfalls or just for a change, sometimes we went through low gaps though I think that was more for the photo opp that it presented rather than necessity.
Perhaps surprisingly I was rarely cold, It was only when we stopped twice, once to get a silly shot of people emerging from a small waterfall and once to turn off the lights to look at glow worms near the end of the
At the end we went back to the sheep farm and were fed a small amount of steak and then some roast veggies and salad for dinner. Yum.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
27/06/2010 Trip to Waitaimo.
So these entries have been written on my laptop and then copied over on my USB key because the Rotorua YHA charges by the minute, so it was way cheaper that way.
27/06/2010 Trip to Waitaimo.
I woke up early to catch a bus leaving at 0735 and to spend a bit of time rearranging the contents of my three food bags. They were in a minimum volume configuration but this meant that there was very little logical order to what was where and I wanted to have one bag with perishable stuff like cheese and another with lunch and snacks that could go in my daypack. We moved between nice sun and torrential downpour several times but I admired the brilliant greens of the grass on the rolling hills of the North Island. Very different scenery to the brown scrub or thick bush of the south. When we arrived I spent some time wandering around the i-site (the tourism info place throughout NZ, they will even book buses and trips for you without charging anything) reading the brochures. Waitaimo’s big draw is the limestone it sits on, or more specifically, the swiss cheese water has made of that limestone. The region has over 300 known and mapped caves of which 10-20 are commercially open to the public. I started off with going on two trips that could be covered in the afternoon, these were the really simple and safe ones, tiled floors and electric lighting. Kind of silly, and if I had thought things through a bit more I would probably have avoided them or gone for one of them in the morning I left. One of them had glow worms as it’s main draw, they were neat when we turned out the lights it was like looking at a bunch of green stars. Apparently the poo glows and attracts flying insects which are then caught in the sticky threads that hand from the worm. The worm itself isn’t really a worm but a larva of a creature that, when it matures, lives for only 4 days before dying to starvation because of a lack of a mouth.
The other one focussed more on just the cave formations. We weren't allowed to take photos in either for some reason (likely commercial). I call this method of charging for every little bit of extra on your trip, like photos, t-shirts etc "adventure capitalism."
When I got back to the i site to book my trips for the next day I learned that someone else wanted to book a trip that I had been unable to book earlier because I had been the only one at the time. However 2 was the min number, so I booked the next day on the 7 hour "lost world epic" which sounded fun, and was actually the best value for time underground, especially after you included the lunch and dinner they fed you.
So that will be my next blog post, maybe in the next 12hrs if the Taupo YHA has power for my laptop, maybe later.
27/06/2010 Trip to Waitaimo.
I woke up early to catch a bus leaving at 0735 and to spend a bit of time rearranging the contents of my three food bags. They were in a minimum volume configuration but this meant that there was very little logical order to what was where and I wanted to have one bag with perishable stuff like cheese and another with lunch and snacks that could go in my daypack. We moved between nice sun and torrential downpour several times but I admired the brilliant greens of the grass on the rolling hills of the North Island. Very different scenery to the brown scrub or thick bush of the south. When we arrived I spent some time wandering around the i-site (the tourism info place throughout NZ, they will even book buses and trips for you without charging anything) reading the brochures. Waitaimo’s big draw is the limestone it sits on, or more specifically, the swiss cheese water has made of that limestone. The region has over 300 known and mapped caves of which 10-20 are commercially open to the public. I started off with going on two trips that could be covered in the afternoon, these were the really simple and safe ones, tiled floors and electric lighting. Kind of silly, and if I had thought things through a bit more I would probably have avoided them or gone for one of them in the morning I left. One of them had glow worms as it’s main draw, they were neat when we turned out the lights it was like looking at a bunch of green stars. Apparently the poo glows and attracts flying insects which are then caught in the sticky threads that hand from the worm. The worm itself isn’t really a worm but a larva of a creature that, when it matures, lives for only 4 days before dying to starvation because of a lack of a mouth.
The other one focussed more on just the cave formations. We weren't allowed to take photos in either for some reason (likely commercial). I call this method of charging for every little bit of extra on your trip, like photos, t-shirts etc "adventure capitalism."
When I got back to the i site to book my trips for the next day I learned that someone else wanted to book a trip that I had been unable to book earlier because I had been the only one at the time. However 2 was the min number, so I booked the next day on the 7 hour "lost world epic" which sounded fun, and was actually the best value for time underground, especially after you included the lunch and dinner they fed you.
So that will be my next blog post, maybe in the next 12hrs if the Taupo YHA has power for my laptop, maybe later.
26/06/2010: Trip to Auckland
Hi folks, so after a long absence of not bloging, various folks have been bugging be about it and without the ability to easily upload photos due to variable connectivity to "teh intrawebz" I'm sticking to good old text.
Exams finished Thursday the 24th of June and now I'm touring the North Island for about 2 weeks. I've been to Waitaimo Caves and am currently in Rotorua with Taupo coming up this evening, Wellington on the 3rd and the northern tip of the island on the 7th I think. I've been taking notes at the end of each day on my little notebook and will try to find time to upload them as I move around.
26/06/2010: Trip to Auckland
I woke up at 1900hrs to do my sheets and vacume before heading out to take some photos of campus before leaving as requested by dad. My flight left at 1335, but I got there much earlier than the recommended hour before flight to make sure that my 3 bags were going to get on the plane. It turns out that ChCh airport has moved over to an almost entirely automated ticketing program with real people reserved for those with premium tickets. So I resigned myself to having to pay for the 2 extra bags despite the possibility of an amnesty on the bag because of my earlier ticket. But then their credit card reader refused to take my card (something to do with it having a chip in it rather than just the magnetic swipe) so I ended up talking to the premium people anyways and managed to get in with just one extra bag.
The airport itself was small but nice, they had an open air viewing deck where I could watch the planes take off in the drizzle before going through security. As I was in line (not much of a line though, only 2 people) I realised that I had forgotten to put my “dangerous” ditty bag in my stowage and had it in my carryon. It has such heinous items as toothpaste, shampoo, nail clippers and then there is the swis army knife. Now despite the fact that I think a full 1L nalgene water bottle could be just as dangerous as the finger length blade, that is clearly prohibited. So I was understandably a bit worried that they would confiscate my hijacking tool. However I just walked straight through and after a short moment of held breath, my bag rolled off the x-ray line just fine. So clearly they take things a bit less seriously in NZ. However I won’t be trying that again on the international leg! The flight over the Auckland was nice, though cloudy. We could occasionally see snow capped mountains and at the beginning could see the sunrise further west.
Coming into Auckland I was feeling tired and hungry and was feeling a bit culture shocked. Which was strange, because Auckland is quite similar to Vancouver in population, but after the very low population of the South Island and having a hostel in the middle of down town with 10 floors, the number of people around felt a bit oppressive. I spent a bit of time wandering around before the sun set and then went in to eat a quick dinner and get ready to go to bead.
Exams finished Thursday the 24th of June and now I'm touring the North Island for about 2 weeks. I've been to Waitaimo Caves and am currently in Rotorua with Taupo coming up this evening, Wellington on the 3rd and the northern tip of the island on the 7th I think. I've been taking notes at the end of each day on my little notebook and will try to find time to upload them as I move around.
26/06/2010: Trip to Auckland
I woke up at 1900hrs to do my sheets and vacume before heading out to take some photos of campus before leaving as requested by dad. My flight left at 1335, but I got there much earlier than the recommended hour before flight to make sure that my 3 bags were going to get on the plane. It turns out that ChCh airport has moved over to an almost entirely automated ticketing program with real people reserved for those with premium tickets. So I resigned myself to having to pay for the 2 extra bags despite the possibility of an amnesty on the bag because of my earlier ticket. But then their credit card reader refused to take my card (something to do with it having a chip in it rather than just the magnetic swipe) so I ended up talking to the premium people anyways and managed to get in with just one extra bag.
The airport itself was small but nice, they had an open air viewing deck where I could watch the planes take off in the drizzle before going through security. As I was in line (not much of a line though, only 2 people) I realised that I had forgotten to put my “dangerous” ditty bag in my stowage and had it in my carryon. It has such heinous items as toothpaste, shampoo, nail clippers and then there is the swis army knife. Now despite the fact that I think a full 1L nalgene water bottle could be just as dangerous as the finger length blade, that is clearly prohibited. So I was understandably a bit worried that they would confiscate my hijacking tool. However I just walked straight through and after a short moment of held breath, my bag rolled off the x-ray line just fine. So clearly they take things a bit less seriously in NZ. However I won’t be trying that again on the international leg! The flight over the Auckland was nice, though cloudy. We could occasionally see snow capped mountains and at the beginning could see the sunrise further west.
Coming into Auckland I was feeling tired and hungry and was feeling a bit culture shocked. Which was strange, because Auckland is quite similar to Vancouver in population, but after the very low population of the South Island and having a hostel in the middle of down town with 10 floors, the number of people around felt a bit oppressive. I spent a bit of time wandering around before the sun set and then went in to eat a quick dinner and get ready to go to bead.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Map Source!
As I was preparing for my latest blog on tramping with the CUTC I found a source for free topo maps of South NZ! Very exciting, though each section seems to be 70-90 MB, so that puts a bit of a damper on things.
But I thought I'd throw down a link for the Arthur's Pass and Mt Somers regions that I've talked about before.
You can download the Mt Somers map here (Click on the link on the right of the image to download) The down load is actually a topo map, don't be discouraged by the image displayed, which looks like it was taken by the Voyager spacecraft while in transit...
Arthurs Pass can be found here.
But I thought I'd throw down a link for the Arthur's Pass and Mt Somers regions that I've talked about before.
You can download the Mt Somers map here (Click on the link on the right of the image to download) The down load is actually a topo map, don't be discouraged by the image displayed, which looks like it was taken by the Voyager spacecraft while in transit...
Arthurs Pass can be found here.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Tramping with the UCTC
Last weekend, the 6th of March, was the first tramping trip run by the University of Canterbury Tramping Club (aka UCTC). This trip called Freshers is an epic, with most of the over 200 people who are part of the club partaking.
Fortunatly, the trip was split up into many smaller groups based upon difficutly so that we weren't all moving at once in the same spot, that would be horrible. This year's trip was to the Woolshed Creek Hut of Mt Sommers, a mountain that is right on the edge of the Canterbury plain, about 100km due West from Christchurch.
The whole gang left the university at 0830 in a mixture of buses and cars. The buses were probably the most disreputable vehicles I've been on in a long time, one was lavender and one was pink, and the inside appeared to held together with a few bolts and popcans.
Anyway, my group (the "hard" group) got to our start point at 1145 after missing our turning because we were following the pink bus to the "easy" start point. Our route involved taking the track up to the top of Mt Somers and then walking down the back along a ridge until we met up with the route taken by the "medium" group. Hiking up was as steep as going up Avalanch, with the added fun of mud in selected spots as it had rained a few days before. Unfortunatly I don't have any pics as in a group it was more about keeping moving. At one point, fortunately before we split from the "medium-hard" group one of our members realised that she wasn't cut out for the pace and vertical climb involved.
We took several breaks to enjoy the view, drink some water and eat gourp (which is called scrogin sp? in NZ) and could tell that, if there weren't so many clouds, the view from the top would be really nice. Then we got into the cloud and pushing forward became of more interest. The ground became quite unpleasant too, with loose rock and soil underfoot with just enough vegetation to keep it steep, but not enough to make it stable.
Eventually we got to the top around 1530, to find that, as expected, the view was entirely obstructed by cloud. Then we hung around waiting for our fearless leader Tom to catch up (he had hung back to escort another person who was caught unawares by the vertical gain). We left the Peak and marked trail at 1630 walking down a ridge.
Down the back was quite pretty, the clouds weren't crossing over and the land was all golden grass tufts and rock. One person quickly made the link to the terrain of Rohan of LotR, which was filmed in the region.
Eventually we got down to the camp around 1830, and unloaded our food for the execs (I was carrying a can of diced tomatos) who started making us all dinner. We had couscous with bits of tomato, parsely and green onions to keep things easy for the vegetarians. I think it would have been a bit better with some nuts as well, but it was still quite nice. Desert involved throwing pounds (literally) of butter and brown sugar into a pot and then adding some powdered digestive biscuits. This was then added to steamed apples and raisins. Very tasty.
The tent was borrowed from the club (for free!), and was quite cramped, I ended up going to bead early with earplugs, but others stayed up to consume the alcohol they had lugged around the countryside.
The next day I woke up at 0715, but we didn't end up leaving until 1030ish, so it was a very relaxed start with plenty of time to dry our fly on the sunward slope. We took a different route back out that started with a suspension bridge and then traveled along a lower ridge before returning to the carpark.
The weekend ended with a BBQ back at the carpark as we waited for our grumpy busdrivers to get there to take us back.
Fortunatly, the trip was split up into many smaller groups based upon difficutly so that we weren't all moving at once in the same spot, that would be horrible. This year's trip was to the Woolshed Creek Hut of Mt Sommers, a mountain that is right on the edge of the Canterbury plain, about 100km due West from Christchurch.
The whole gang left the university at 0830 in a mixture of buses and cars. The buses were probably the most disreputable vehicles I've been on in a long time, one was lavender and one was pink, and the inside appeared to held together with a few bolts and popcans.
Anyway, my group (the "hard" group) got to our start point at 1145 after missing our turning because we were following the pink bus to the "easy" start point. Our route involved taking the track up to the top of Mt Somers and then walking down the back along a ridge until we met up with the route taken by the "medium" group. Hiking up was as steep as going up Avalanch, with the added fun of mud in selected spots as it had rained a few days before. Unfortunatly I don't have any pics as in a group it was more about keeping moving. At one point, fortunately before we split from the "medium-hard" group one of our members realised that she wasn't cut out for the pace and vertical climb involved.
We took several breaks to enjoy the view, drink some water and eat gourp (which is called scrogin sp? in NZ) and could tell that, if there weren't so many clouds, the view from the top would be really nice. Then we got into the cloud and pushing forward became of more interest. The ground became quite unpleasant too, with loose rock and soil underfoot with just enough vegetation to keep it steep, but not enough to make it stable.
Eventually we got to the top around 1530, to find that, as expected, the view was entirely obstructed by cloud. Then we hung around waiting for our fearless leader Tom to catch up (he had hung back to escort another person who was caught unawares by the vertical gain). We left the Peak and marked trail at 1630 walking down a ridge.
Down the back was quite pretty, the clouds weren't crossing over and the land was all golden grass tufts and rock. One person quickly made the link to the terrain of Rohan of LotR, which was filmed in the region.
Eventually we got down to the camp around 1830, and unloaded our food for the execs (I was carrying a can of diced tomatos) who started making us all dinner. We had couscous with bits of tomato, parsely and green onions to keep things easy for the vegetarians. I think it would have been a bit better with some nuts as well, but it was still quite nice. Desert involved throwing pounds (literally) of butter and brown sugar into a pot and then adding some powdered digestive biscuits. This was then added to steamed apples and raisins. Very tasty.
The tent was borrowed from the club (for free!), and was quite cramped, I ended up going to bead early with earplugs, but others stayed up to consume the alcohol they had lugged around the countryside.
The next day I woke up at 0715, but we didn't end up leaving until 1030ish, so it was a very relaxed start with plenty of time to dry our fly on the sunward slope. We took a different route back out that started with a suspension bridge and then traveled along a lower ridge before returning to the carpark.
The weekend ended with a BBQ back at the carpark as we waited for our grumpy busdrivers to get there to take us back.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Cricket
Today I partook of New Zealand's summer sport, Cricket.
There is a club called 20/20 social cricket which I joined in a fit of enthusiasm and so I went out to the Ilam (pronounced "eye-lam") fields to see what was going on. There was a mix of roughly 50/50 local Kiwis who play regularly and exchange students from the US who are into baseball. I was clearly an odd one in the bunch. Especially as my view of cricket is the one invented by that madcap genius Douglas Adams in which it is an ancient version of a war where white clad robots batted explosive balls at the key to the universe's peace and prosperity, with its three pillars of technology culture and something else I can't remember off the top of my head. Look it up on google if you are curious.
So as you can probably tell, I had no idea what was going on. I had read a short summary of the rules ~1/2 hour before but hadn't even seen a game played.
So it turns out that 20/20 is an apparently very short version of cricket in which each team gets to bowl 20 "overs" or sets of bowls by one bowler at the batters from the other team. Although if one team makes all of the batting team out play might stop then. I'm not really sure about that still. It still took from 1430 to 1745 to finish.
Because we didn't have the necessary 22 people to form two teams of 11 we ended up fielding when we weren't batting and so for the quarter of the game I wasn't even sure which team I was on! Turns out I was on the batting team first and ended up batting 6th (this is about 2 hours in.) I hit the ball once to run back and forth once. Then the ball went wide a bunch of times. Then I hit the ball and it was caught in mid flight, so I was out.
When we switched around I bowled for one over, for the first few times I didn't even realise that I was supposed to be using a straight arm for the bowls. Then by sheer fluke I took out the Kiwi I was bowling against by hitting the wikket. There was much cheering, though I subsequently was unable to even get the ball on target for the remainder of the over.
So that was boring at times, hanging out as a fielder, strangely exciting when batting in a wierd combination of golf and baseball, and finally kind of fun when I finally had figured out how points were being scored.
The next game is next Wednesday, and I will remember to put on sunscreen.
There is a club called 20/20 social cricket which I joined in a fit of enthusiasm and so I went out to the Ilam (pronounced "eye-lam") fields to see what was going on. There was a mix of roughly 50/50 local Kiwis who play regularly and exchange students from the US who are into baseball. I was clearly an odd one in the bunch. Especially as my view of cricket is the one invented by that madcap genius Douglas Adams in which it is an ancient version of a war where white clad robots batted explosive balls at the key to the universe's peace and prosperity, with its three pillars of technology culture and something else I can't remember off the top of my head. Look it up on google if you are curious.
So as you can probably tell, I had no idea what was going on. I had read a short summary of the rules ~1/2 hour before but hadn't even seen a game played.
So it turns out that 20/20 is an apparently very short version of cricket in which each team gets to bowl 20 "overs" or sets of bowls by one bowler at the batters from the other team. Although if one team makes all of the batting team out play might stop then. I'm not really sure about that still. It still took from 1430 to 1745 to finish.
Because we didn't have the necessary 22 people to form two teams of 11 we ended up fielding when we weren't batting and so for the quarter of the game I wasn't even sure which team I was on! Turns out I was on the batting team first and ended up batting 6th (this is about 2 hours in.) I hit the ball once to run back and forth once. Then the ball went wide a bunch of times. Then I hit the ball and it was caught in mid flight, so I was out.
When we switched around I bowled for one over, for the first few times I didn't even realise that I was supposed to be using a straight arm for the bowls. Then by sheer fluke I took out the Kiwi I was bowling against by hitting the wikket. There was much cheering, though I subsequently was unable to even get the ball on target for the remainder of the over.
So that was boring at times, hanging out as a fielder, strangely exciting when batting in a wierd combination of golf and baseball, and finally kind of fun when I finally had figured out how points were being scored.
The next game is next Wednesday, and I will remember to put on sunscreen.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Where have I been this last Week?
Hi everyone!
Last weekend I went on a trip to Arthur’s Pass, a national park roughly 100 kms from Christchurch. I splurged and took the train there and back which turned out to be quite convenient because it leaves Chch (the local abbreviation for Christchurch) in the morning and arrives in Arthur’s Pass by 11am and the return trip leaves around 4pm. The bus route follows an opposite time frame so I managed to gain ~12 hours of time away from Chch by going by train! I took 452 images, of which I have done a quick pairing down of obviously out of focus/duplicates to a mere 366 locatable here. Over the next few days I will (hopefully) go through them to add captions like I have done for the rest of the images so far.
I spent most of the daylight time hiking (or tramping as its called in NZ) and stayed the nights in a bunk house at the local YHA But I’m getting a head of myself, there are probably 2-3 blog posts about my 3 days there.
So I’ll start off with the Train trips there and back and regurgitate some of the more interesting points that were mentioned by our driver over the intercom as we went. The Tranz Alpine train travels along the midland route which bisects the south island from Chch to Greymouth.
Here is a map of its route, found produced from a third party (took me ages to find a decent map too)
View Larger Map
(I'd recommend checking out the larger map link as you can play with what it shows you with the tick boxes on the left)
The line is very dramatic in terms of scenery, moving over many viaducts, through numerous tunnels and over the Waimakari river several times. It was finally finished with the completion of the 8.5km long Otira tunnel in 1923. Prior to then coaches would bridge the gap between the rail lines along Arthur’s Pass. The route was initially started because of a gold rush but that ended before the rail line was finished. Now the line’s main use is transport of relatively clean coal from the west coast to the deepwater port of Lyttelton where it is mostly exported to China for high grade steel production. In total 10 000kg of coal is moved per day over 7 train trips.
The Train departed the Christchurch station at 8:15 am on Friday the 19th, I got there by an easy bus ride from campus. I got my ticket, loaded my backpack into the luggage carriage and found my seat. This was all very civilised when compared to traveling by plane, no metal detectors, no xrays, barely even a boarding pass check. I spent the entire trip hanging out in the observation car.
For the first hour the train moved along the Canterbury plain which is almost entirely agricultural. There were many animals grazing, (according to one of the people I met in the hostel NZ has no factory farmed beasts) mostly sheep, but there were cows and horses too.
By the time we cruised through Sheffield (9:06am) the mountains had leaped into view filling more that 180 degrees of vision. According to our friendly conductor the average elevation was 83m above sea level while Chch is on average 2m abslvl. Arthur’s Pass is 737m abslvl, so there was clearly a lot of climbing coming up! The steepest part of the track I was on was 1:15, which our conductor assured us to be very steep for a train, and the steepest part overall is in the Otira tunnel which is 1:33!
By 9:37am we passed through the first of 16 tunnels and the viewing car was starting to fill with blokes with recording apparatus of diverse value. From then on we moved across 4 viaducts, the tallest of which was 240m above the river below before having the Waimakari river rose up to meet us for the last half hour of the trip to the pass station where I disembarked at 10:50 am. After that the train immediately enters the Otira tunnel and desends back down to the coast on the other side of the Southern Alps.
The return journey was similarly spectacular, leaving A’s P around 4pm and arriving around 6ish (I didn’t keep as accurate notes on the way back) except that this time I knew which sides of the car to stand to get the best pictures. At the end our conductor treated us some absolutely biting standup comedy about how the shopping malls of Chch were the bane of his existence and how teenagers would just hang out txting each other thinking they were having the time of their lives.
That’s all for now, I’ll try to get another post detailing what I actually did (besides standing on a train) tomorrow, though the pics I have up right now give a good teaser.
Last weekend I went on a trip to Arthur’s Pass, a national park roughly 100 kms from Christchurch. I splurged and took the train there and back which turned out to be quite convenient because it leaves Chch (the local abbreviation for Christchurch) in the morning and arrives in Arthur’s Pass by 11am and the return trip leaves around 4pm. The bus route follows an opposite time frame so I managed to gain ~12 hours of time away from Chch by going by train! I took 452 images, of which I have done a quick pairing down of obviously out of focus/duplicates to a mere 366 locatable here. Over the next few days I will (hopefully) go through them to add captions like I have done for the rest of the images so far.
I spent most of the daylight time hiking (or tramping as its called in NZ) and stayed the nights in a bunk house at the local YHA But I’m getting a head of myself, there are probably 2-3 blog posts about my 3 days there.
So I’ll start off with the Train trips there and back and regurgitate some of the more interesting points that were mentioned by our driver over the intercom as we went. The Tranz Alpine train travels along the midland route which bisects the south island from Chch to Greymouth.
Here is a map of its route, found produced from a third party (took me ages to find a decent map too)
View Larger Map
(I'd recommend checking out the larger map link as you can play with what it shows you with the tick boxes on the left)
The line is very dramatic in terms of scenery, moving over many viaducts, through numerous tunnels and over the Waimakari river several times. It was finally finished with the completion of the 8.5km long Otira tunnel in 1923. Prior to then coaches would bridge the gap between the rail lines along Arthur’s Pass. The route was initially started because of a gold rush but that ended before the rail line was finished. Now the line’s main use is transport of relatively clean coal from the west coast to the deepwater port of Lyttelton where it is mostly exported to China for high grade steel production. In total 10 000kg of coal is moved per day over 7 train trips.
The Train departed the Christchurch station at 8:15 am on Friday the 19th, I got there by an easy bus ride from campus. I got my ticket, loaded my backpack into the luggage carriage and found my seat. This was all very civilised when compared to traveling by plane, no metal detectors, no xrays, barely even a boarding pass check. I spent the entire trip hanging out in the observation car.
For the first hour the train moved along the Canterbury plain which is almost entirely agricultural. There were many animals grazing, (according to one of the people I met in the hostel NZ has no factory farmed beasts) mostly sheep, but there were cows and horses too.
By the time we cruised through Sheffield (9:06am) the mountains had leaped into view filling more that 180 degrees of vision. According to our friendly conductor the average elevation was 83m above sea level while Chch is on average 2m abslvl. Arthur’s Pass is 737m abslvl, so there was clearly a lot of climbing coming up! The steepest part of the track I was on was 1:15, which our conductor assured us to be very steep for a train, and the steepest part overall is in the Otira tunnel which is 1:33!
By 9:37am we passed through the first of 16 tunnels and the viewing car was starting to fill with blokes with recording apparatus of diverse value. From then on we moved across 4 viaducts, the tallest of which was 240m above the river below before having the Waimakari river rose up to meet us for the last half hour of the trip to the pass station where I disembarked at 10:50 am. After that the train immediately enters the Otira tunnel and desends back down to the coast on the other side of the Southern Alps.
The return journey was similarly spectacular, leaving A’s P around 4pm and arriving around 6ish (I didn’t keep as accurate notes on the way back) except that this time I knew which sides of the car to stand to get the best pictures. At the end our conductor treated us some absolutely biting standup comedy about how the shopping malls of Chch were the bane of his existence and how teenagers would just hang out txting each other thinking they were having the time of their lives.
That’s all for now, I’ll try to get another post detailing what I actually did (besides standing on a train) tomorrow, though the pics I have up right now give a good teaser.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Orientation and Enrolement
This week has been a busy one as things finally start to feel like I’m at a university again. We started off the week with an orientation for international students on the 15th and 16th. It had been so long since I got here that I had almost forgotten that I was supposed to go somewhere! We went over the usual things, being safe, looking right not left before crossing the street, how to get medical exemptions from exams/assignments and what to expect during enrolemnt. We were also sent around campus on a sort of orienteering exercise where we had to get stamps from our department offices, the health center and the (archaic ;) procedure of looking up physical books in the library.
Today was enrolement for me, it was a fairly straightforward process that involved bringing my passport up to one desk, where they checked my visa and then gave me more paper. From then on I accumulated paper until the second last booth where I was able to divest myself of most of it and then pay for my international insurance. The whole process took only half an hour when I was expecting massive lineups and hours of waiting.
Then I had to get my student card and that took a while. It seems like every bank and IT store in the country had booths lining the queue so I came home with hectares of forest in a bag handed out at the start.
I’ve also been chewing through bandwidth (I pay by the byte) at a prodigious pace watching parts of the Vancouver Olympics. I have to tunnel through the UBC VPN to watch on CTV because they, like all networks I’ve tried, don’t let people outside of the country stream videos. I’ve seen the opening ceremonies up to the march of athletes, I liked the delegation from Bermuda in their shorts!
Today was enrolement for me, it was a fairly straightforward process that involved bringing my passport up to one desk, where they checked my visa and then gave me more paper. From then on I accumulated paper until the second last booth where I was able to divest myself of most of it and then pay for my international insurance. The whole process took only half an hour when I was expecting massive lineups and hours of waiting.
Then I had to get my student card and that took a while. It seems like every bank and IT store in the country had booths lining the queue so I came home with hectares of forest in a bag handed out at the start.
I’ve also been chewing through bandwidth (I pay by the byte) at a prodigious pace watching parts of the Vancouver Olympics. I have to tunnel through the UBC VPN to watch on CTV because they, like all networks I’ve tried, don’t let people outside of the country stream videos. I’ve seen the opening ceremonies up to the march of athletes, I liked the delegation from Bermuda in their shorts!
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Sun and Surf
On the 12th I went on another bike ride, this time to the Travise Wetland, Bottle Lake Park and Waimairi beach, North East of the city, about 1 hour's bike ride from the Ilam apartments.
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My first stop was at the wetland, or as it was also signposted, swamp. There were some birds hanging out, but it was really the wrong time of day (close to noon) and, according to an infomation booth, the wrong season too (it was molting season). But I strolled around and saw some neat birds anyways. I also think I saw some Canada Geese! I saw (and heard) what looked like some flying in the distance, but thought that that couldn't be right. Then I found a list of birds that might be seen, and they were mentioned, so there you go. I wonder if they migrate from Canada or if they just move up and down New Zealand?
After that I went just up the road to the beach. I had a good time just sitting and watching the waves come in for an hour and then I splashed about in the surf for about 15 minutes. I waited to dry off abit and then went home with slightly red cheeks from the sun.
Some people have been commenting about the sun in New Zealand and why the UV index seems to be higher in NZ than Canada.
There are a few reasons for this. First, because of the very limited industry, low population and distance from other population, the air around NZ is very clean. This means that fewer UV rays are intercepted by airosols and ground ozone.
Second, the Earth is actually closer to the sun during the southern hemisphere's summer, so it gets more energy per area in summer than the Northern hemisphere.
Finally there is the hole in the ozone layer. in the Southern Hemisphere the Ozone layer is a bit thinner. This is most pronounced in their spring (as the sun is just coming up to warm up a reaction that uses a catalyst that requires the very cold temperatures of the Antarctic winter) so currently is less of an issue.
View Larger Map
My first stop was at the wetland, or as it was also signposted, swamp. There were some birds hanging out, but it was really the wrong time of day (close to noon) and, according to an infomation booth, the wrong season too (it was molting season). But I strolled around and saw some neat birds anyways. I also think I saw some Canada Geese! I saw (and heard) what looked like some flying in the distance, but thought that that couldn't be right. Then I found a list of birds that might be seen, and they were mentioned, so there you go. I wonder if they migrate from Canada or if they just move up and down New Zealand?
After that I went just up the road to the beach. I had a good time just sitting and watching the waves come in for an hour and then I splashed about in the surf for about 15 minutes. I waited to dry off abit and then went home with slightly red cheeks from the sun.
Some people have been commenting about the sun in New Zealand and why the UV index seems to be higher in NZ than Canada.
There are a few reasons for this. First, because of the very limited industry, low population and distance from other population, the air around NZ is very clean. This means that fewer UV rays are intercepted by airosols and ground ozone.
Second, the Earth is actually closer to the sun during the southern hemisphere's summer, so it gets more energy per area in summer than the Northern hemisphere.
Finally there is the hole in the ozone layer. in the Southern Hemisphere the Ozone layer is a bit thinner. This is most pronounced in their spring (as the sun is just coming up to warm up a reaction that uses a catalyst that requires the very cold temperatures of the Antarctic winter) so currently is less of an issue.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Downtown
Yesterday I went down town to have a gander at the local tourist traps. I started off checking out the visitor's center to grab a bunch of pamphlets, and found several interesting options that will help me get further outside the city. Then I wandered around the Cathedral square for a while. It was quite busy, according to the fish and chips vendor who sold me my lunch a cruise ship hand just come in. There were many stalls selling touristy type jewelery and clothes, I passed on them for now but expect that I will probably have to go buy some things of that nature before coming back. Off to one side was a large chess board. It seems to be very popular with the locals as, over the course of eating my lunch and the wandering around some more, I saw three games played out back to back.
I think the most interesting part of the trip was visiting the old campus grounds which have been turned into a hub of arts and tourism. This is the university where Ernest Rutherford first experimented on the structure of the atom and they had a little exhibit set up that introduced his experiments and had some replicas of his apparatus. They had also preserved the cellar in which these experiments were done. It was very low with an A frame, apparently the main draw was the flat concrete floor which permitted greater accuracy than the wooden ones upstairs. As I am now getting emails from my advisers about thinking about what to do for my honours thesis project, seeing old experimentation was interesting. Unfortunately I was not allowed to take photos in the museum.
As I hinted, the rest of the campus is taken up with artistic endeavours. There are stone carving workshops, music studios, a wood turning shop, a live theater and a movie theater. There is also a candy shop that will run tours of its fudge production on Fridays, I may have to go back there at some point.
I also enjoyed the architecture of the campus, something about the stone and grass with courtyards on the outside and dark wood with tiles and stainglass on the inside appealed to me.
I think the most interesting part of the trip was visiting the old campus grounds which have been turned into a hub of arts and tourism. This is the university where Ernest Rutherford first experimented on the structure of the atom and they had a little exhibit set up that introduced his experiments and had some replicas of his apparatus. They had also preserved the cellar in which these experiments were done. It was very low with an A frame, apparently the main draw was the flat concrete floor which permitted greater accuracy than the wooden ones upstairs. As I am now getting emails from my advisers about thinking about what to do for my honours thesis project, seeing old experimentation was interesting. Unfortunately I was not allowed to take photos in the museum.
As I hinted, the rest of the campus is taken up with artistic endeavours. There are stone carving workshops, music studios, a wood turning shop, a live theater and a movie theater. There is also a candy shop that will run tours of its fudge production on Fridays, I may have to go back there at some point.
I also enjoyed the architecture of the campus, something about the stone and grass with courtyards on the outside and dark wood with tiles and stainglass on the inside appealed to me.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Cooking
Yesterday I managed to get my hands on a second hand bread machine through a Kiwi version of ebay for NZ$50. Today I gave it a whirl with mixed results. On the one hand, it worked, on the other hand the recipy that was supposed to go with that particular model (found on the internet because the seller lacked a book) produced a very small loaf, more of a large bun really.
It called for 2 1/4 c flour, 3/4c water, 1tbsp sugar, 1tsp salt, oil and 1 1/4 tsp of yeast. From my previous experience with bread makers at home that seemed like way too much yeast and not enough flour and water. Turns out I was pretty much right. So I'll try again later adlib.
The other interesting cooking experiment I went through today was making some cookies. Those of you who know anything about me know that I like to make cookies among other things, so you might understand how shocked I was to discover that the complex I'm living in has no oven. That isn't quite true, it has a combination oven/microwave that claims to be able to do the best of both. I was rightly skeptical of these claims.
To begin with, it is the size of a regular micorwave, meaning that it does not fit your average cooking pan. The smallest cookie tray I could find at the local supermarket was too large... so I returned it and have bought a browni tin instead. This has the disadvantage of only being able to cook six-eight cookies at once, and that is if you don't mind them running together. When I'm used to making 20+ cookies at once at home, this feels like a considerable drawback. Strike one.
Secondly, its interface is mindboggling. If I want to cook with it's convection feature (instead of grilling, which doesn't work very well anyway because the grill is so high up, or microwaving with won't cook my cookies) I have to first cycle through the other options to get to convection bake, and then tell the thing what temperature I want. It then proceades to warm up. So far so good. But then, when it is warm, it turns of!!! After reading the instruction booklet, I learned that, once it has warmed up, I have to cycle through all the options again, choose the same temperature, set a timer for the cooking duration, and then press start again! Strike two.
Finally, there seems to be something wrong with my understanding of the temperature, or New Zealand eggs and butter are heat proof. Normally I cook my cookies at 300-325 f on convection. This gets them done in about 8-10 minutes depending on if I'm using butter or margarine, have put more or less flour, have added milk, the size of the eggs etc. For this "oven" I started off at 150C. By 10 min the cookies looked like anemic pancakes, not like cookies. I had to turn the temperature up to 230 C (446 F according to my online converter) to get them done! Strike three.
Oh well, at least they have chocolate in them. But I had to grate Nestles (yes mum, the baby killers, no other brand else seems to make good chocolate in the Countdown superstore I currently frequent) cooking chocolate bars in because the NZ equivalent of chocolate chips, "choco drops" seem to be made out of Easter bunny chocolate, ie sugar and emulsifiers with dirt for colour. Actually that is a bit too harsh, I happily chomped through a hand full or two as I was biking the other day.
To end on a cheerful note, I figure that, since I've got a brownie tin, I'll be making a lot more of those in the future because cocoa is cocoa every where.
Finally, I just got back from some fencing, first time in several weeks, had loads of fun fencing the only other epéeist there (apparently the rest are still on vacation) and what is best, they let me use their storage lockers for my gear so I don't have to lug it all back and forth every day and stink up my meager living space!
It called for 2 1/4 c flour, 3/4c water, 1tbsp sugar, 1tsp salt, oil and 1 1/4 tsp of yeast. From my previous experience with bread makers at home that seemed like way too much yeast and not enough flour and water. Turns out I was pretty much right. So I'll try again later adlib.
The other interesting cooking experiment I went through today was making some cookies. Those of you who know anything about me know that I like to make cookies among other things, so you might understand how shocked I was to discover that the complex I'm living in has no oven. That isn't quite true, it has a combination oven/microwave that claims to be able to do the best of both. I was rightly skeptical of these claims.
To begin with, it is the size of a regular micorwave, meaning that it does not fit your average cooking pan. The smallest cookie tray I could find at the local supermarket was too large... so I returned it and have bought a browni tin instead. This has the disadvantage of only being able to cook six-eight cookies at once, and that is if you don't mind them running together. When I'm used to making 20+ cookies at once at home, this feels like a considerable drawback. Strike one.
Secondly, its interface is mindboggling. If I want to cook with it's convection feature (instead of grilling, which doesn't work very well anyway because the grill is so high up, or microwaving with won't cook my cookies) I have to first cycle through the other options to get to convection bake, and then tell the thing what temperature I want. It then proceades to warm up. So far so good. But then, when it is warm, it turns of!!! After reading the instruction booklet, I learned that, once it has warmed up, I have to cycle through all the options again, choose the same temperature, set a timer for the cooking duration, and then press start again! Strike two.
Finally, there seems to be something wrong with my understanding of the temperature, or New Zealand eggs and butter are heat proof. Normally I cook my cookies at 300-325 f on convection. This gets them done in about 8-10 minutes depending on if I'm using butter or margarine, have put more or less flour, have added milk, the size of the eggs etc. For this "oven" I started off at 150C. By 10 min the cookies looked like anemic pancakes, not like cookies. I had to turn the temperature up to 230 C (446 F according to my online converter) to get them done! Strike three.
Oh well, at least they have chocolate in them. But I had to grate Nestles (yes mum, the baby killers, no other brand else seems to make good chocolate in the Countdown superstore I currently frequent) cooking chocolate bars in because the NZ equivalent of chocolate chips, "choco drops" seem to be made out of Easter bunny chocolate, ie sugar and emulsifiers with dirt for colour. Actually that is a bit too harsh, I happily chomped through a hand full or two as I was biking the other day.
To end on a cheerful note, I figure that, since I've got a brownie tin, I'll be making a lot more of those in the future because cocoa is cocoa every where.
Finally, I just got back from some fencing, first time in several weeks, had loads of fun fencing the only other epéeist there (apparently the rest are still on vacation) and what is best, they let me use their storage lockers for my gear so I don't have to lug it all back and forth every day and stink up my meager living space!
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Going for a bike ride 2010/02/06
Hi again, today I went for a bike ride up Evans Pass and then along the Summit road:
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I took the bus from Campus to the foot of Evans Pass Road, that was about 45min not including waiting for the but. Fortunatly the Christchurch bus compangy just started putting bike racks on their buses in December of 2009, and my route is one of the ones that has them.
Evans Pass was predicably steep while the actual Summit road was rolling up and down. There were a surprising (to me) number of cyclists on the road with me, most of them were spandex clad roadsters but there were also some mountain bikers who were, I assume, enrout to the numerous trails that fell off of the road. Cars were also relatively common. I think the best analogy to compare the area is Grouse Mountain. It is close to the city and clearly used by tourists and locals alike but for slightly different purposes.
The cyclists on the road were all very friendly, most would give encouragement in the form of thumbs up if they were on the down hill and I was on the up hill, a practice I took up as well. One one long but gentle up hill a roadster pulled up beside me on my undersised mountain bike (see the photo if you haven't already) and commented on how nice the weather was now, apparently the rest of the summer was quite wet, and asked me which hill was the worst in my oppinion and comented on which was his nemasis (apparently the one we were on) before leaving me to eat his carbon fiber dust. (probably a carcinogen :P)
The worst part of the trip was getting back home after the down hill of Dyers Road. For some reason Christchurch has a habit of changing the names of most of its streets. Several times as I was going home I got disoriented as street signs changed from the ones I was expecting to different ones. Twice this changes happened three times in under 10 minutes! The main problem is that these changes are not reflected on my map of the bike routes so I'm not ready for them and then get confused.
View Larger Map
I took the bus from Campus to the foot of Evans Pass Road, that was about 45min not including waiting for the but. Fortunatly the Christchurch bus compangy just started putting bike racks on their buses in December of 2009, and my route is one of the ones that has them.
Evans Pass was predicably steep while the actual Summit road was rolling up and down. There were a surprising (to me) number of cyclists on the road with me, most of them were spandex clad roadsters but there were also some mountain bikers who were, I assume, enrout to the numerous trails that fell off of the road. Cars were also relatively common. I think the best analogy to compare the area is Grouse Mountain. It is close to the city and clearly used by tourists and locals alike but for slightly different purposes.
The cyclists on the road were all very friendly, most would give encouragement in the form of thumbs up if they were on the down hill and I was on the up hill, a practice I took up as well. One one long but gentle up hill a roadster pulled up beside me on my undersised mountain bike (see the photo if you haven't already) and commented on how nice the weather was now, apparently the rest of the summer was quite wet, and asked me which hill was the worst in my oppinion and comented on which was his nemasis (apparently the one we were on) before leaving me to eat his carbon fiber dust. (probably a carcinogen :P)
The worst part of the trip was getting back home after the down hill of Dyers Road. For some reason Christchurch has a habit of changing the names of most of its streets. Several times as I was going home I got disoriented as street signs changed from the ones I was expecting to different ones. Twice this changes happened three times in under 10 minutes! The main problem is that these changes are not reflected on my map of the bike routes so I'm not ready for them and then get confused.
What is all this about anyways?
Hi everyone! For those of you who don't know, I will be spending a term studying at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch New Zealand.
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The idea of this blog is to try to keep others up to date with what's going on. Fortunatly for me school doesn't start until the 22nd of February so I have a bit of time to explore before getting caught up in the whole rigmarole of studying .
While school is still out, most of my trip will be recorded in picture format at my Picasa Account. My thought is that pictures are generally more interesting that words and most people have broadband nowadays so a bunch of images shouldn't present any access problems. I've set the blog up so that if I ever get the urge to write up essays or provide other general info that doesn't really work in image captions I have a easier time of it.
View Larger Map
The idea of this blog is to try to keep others up to date with what's going on. Fortunatly for me school doesn't start until the 22nd of February so I have a bit of time to explore before getting caught up in the whole rigmarole of studying .
While school is still out, most of my trip will be recorded in picture format at my Picasa Account. My thought is that pictures are generally more interesting that words and most people have broadband nowadays so a bunch of images shouldn't present any access problems. I've set the blog up so that if I ever get the urge to write up essays or provide other general info that doesn't really work in image captions I have a easier time of it.
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