The New Year

Happy New Year to everyone.

It's been a crazy holiday week as we traversed the whole entire country in 10 days. But first to get up to date:

Ashley and I spent the month of December in Christchurch. I never succeeded in finding a job so I cleaned the hostel in exchange for accommodation and some other odd jobs including handing out fliers for a barber shop. The best however was two days spent collecting money for an organization similar to the SPCA which required me to stand outside of the supermarket dressed in a full body lizard/dragon costume. Actually, I picked the costume because I thought it would attract attention, which it did. I also played a lot of ultimate frisbee, which was a great way to meet people in the area, including a number of Americans.

Our friend Devin(my roommate senior year) arrived on December 23rd and after a quick tour of the city we headed west in a rental car. We drove across the mountains to Greymouth on the west coast and stayed in a fabulous backpackers for the night. The next morning we set off to explore the New Zealand underground. After being fitted with full body wetsuits and helmets we hopped in the back of a truck and rode out to the start of a 30 minute walk ending at the entrance to Dragon Cave. We spent two hours in the cave, crawling and climbing, sliding down a waterfall, and floating on tubes while looking at a ceiling covered in glow worms-which were awesome. After emerging from the cave we took turns sliding down a natural rock water slide. We followed the ride back with a glass of wine in the hot tub before hopping in the car and heading north up the coast. Along the way we stopped off at to look at the pancake rocks and a seal colony then headed East and drove back across the country to Blenheim.

Despite a rainy morning, the weather on Christmas was quite nice by the afternoon and allowed us to cook a great meal including some classics like rhubarb and pumpkin pie, turkey and stuffing, along with some not so typical foods like salsa and guacamole.

On Boxing day we went on a tour of the local wineries and although many of them were closed, enough were open to get a good sampling of Marlborough wines. On the 27th we packed up and drove to Picton where we caught the ferry across the Cook Strait to Wellington. Ashley and I pitched our tents at a backpackers and experienced first-hand why they call it windy Wellington. The tent stood up to the wind, but the noise eventually forced me to move to the car and encouraged us to buy a few extra ropes and stakes. We spent the morning at museums in Wellington and then drove north where we camped at a great site on the edge of a park with some great native forest and managed to keep a fire going despite the absence of dry wood. The next morning we drove a few miles down the road to the Mt. Bruce wildlife sanctuary where we saw a Tuatara and a kiwi in enclosures. Kiwis are nocturnal and so to give people a chance to see them, the Kiwi house simulates night and day at opposite their natural times. From there we drove to Palmerston North (making a stopover at the Tui beer brewery) where we had coffee with Rudyard, who we wwoofed with in September. A few more hours drive and we reached our campsite in the Tongariro National Park. The next morning we got up just before 5am, packed up our camp, and drove to the start of the Tongariro Crossing. The Crossing is billed as the best one day walk in New Zealand and this time of year has lots of people on it, so we got out early to beat the rush. Hopefully the pictures will give a good idea of the scenery. The crossing is incredible and goes over numerous different landscapes. We walked through scrub land, climbed over volcanic rocks, and walked across massive craters and still active volcanoes over the 7.5 hour trip. By the end we were pretty exhausted and sunburned in all the places we had missed or neglected, but we continued on, driving north through Taupo and up to Rotorua where we camped at a backpackers and Devin and I made good use of the heated pool.

First thing the next morning we zorbing(the second time for Ashley and I) then headed toward Auckland. In Auckland we drove to the house of Matt, a Knox graduate who the Knox Choir Director connected us with. We helped Matt shuck scallops they had picked up which we had for dinner last night. Matt has a group of friends that get together and perform art songs and they came over for New Year's Eve. I sang a Mozart piece and later in the evening Devin and I did a few of our standard repertoire. Right before midnight we walked up the hill to where we could see the fireworks launched from Auckland's sky tower. On New Year's Day we took a trip to the main Auckland Museum which featured an exhibit on Darwin, then dropped Devin off at the airport. It was quite a whirlwind visit. In ten days we drove over 2000 kilometres and saw a lot of the country.

Today we were planning on driving north, but we got an offer to join a friend of Matt's on he and Matt's 28 foot sailboat. We immediately accepted the offer and in no time we were cruising around the harbor. The wind stayed strong enough to keep us moving and we had a great sail.

So we'll head north tomorrow and hopefully get some pictures of us on some gorgeous beaches.