riverECHO

This was the first week, since we arrived in New Zealand two months ago, that I would classify as a “typical” week for us. We returned from a weekend away . . . in this scenario, hiking the Kepler Track. We’ve worked a regular schedule from Tuesday through Saturday . . . one day of which we spent in a very busy internet café in town as our house had its quarterly inspection. I spent two afternoons volunteering . . . in this case, tasting samples I had pulled last week and pulling new samples from lots that still need sulfur. We cooked at home every night . . . chicken tikki masala, pasta with garlic, mushrooms, and homemade rolls, pasta with recently killed venison from our roommate Steve, and grilled chicken salad. And yesterday afternoon, we went on our first ride on our new-to-us mountain bikes. I guess this last activity isn’t so “typical” for us down here, but because we spend so many summer afternoons at home in Victor biking, it is in fact very “typical.” The part about the ride that was atypical was that I took a huge digger within the first 20 minutes of the ride. Let’s hope taking diggers like that one do not become the norm for me.

Here’s a kiwi lesson for the week: Although they may drive on the left side of the road, they certainly don’t have any rules about walking to the left. BJ and I have tried to fit in by making a point of veering left while walking on a sidewalk or passing someone in the grocery store. In our efforts to act like the Kiwis and walk left, we have been faced with sidewalk standoffs and confusing moments. I wouldn’t say this really bothers me, since the solution is easy . . . veering right, but it confuses me. I’ll report back with findings for next week’s research project . . . walking right!

On another note . . . my dad and Fran just arrived in the country. They are travelling around the north island for a couple weeks before joining us in Queenstown. Welcome to New Zealand!

We were off to a slow start on Saturday afternoon and still had to drive two hours to Te Anau and then walk five hours to the Luxmore Hut along the Kepler Track. We had spent Friday evening in downtown Queenstown. Let’s just say the night started with BJ helping me with a bit of my “homework” (see the previous blog) in Queenstown Gardens and, after dinner and live music, we didn’t make it home until the wee hours of the morning. But we were still determined to get our hike on. And we had already reserved the two nights in huts along the track, so we didn’t really have a choice. We were walking it no matter what.

We started hiking mid afternoon and followed a very well maintained and flat trail around the south side of Lake Te Anau. It was a beautiful afternoon and almost on the verge of being too hot. After about two hours we began our ascent to the Luxmore Hut. Because this is considered one of the “Great Walks,” the ascent was nothing like the trails we have experienced over the past few weekends. This track was wide enough for two people to walk side by side and gradually ascended the mountain side. I was still sweating profusely but this was a breeze compared to the root and rock maneuvers we had battled the previous weekend. Just 30 minutes before we reached the hut, the track reached treeline and we were rewarded with views of the surrounding mountains and Lake Te Anau.

We arrived to a very full hut . . . 56 people sleeping in 56 bunks in the same room. Other than our 6 person hut last weekend, we had yet to experience the livelihood in a Great Walk hut. You really have to be prepared for a social evening and we met some really nice folks and even bumped into Klaus, our roomie from the previous weekend at the Liverpool Hut. The forecast was pretty grim and we awoke many times throughout the night to wind gusts banging the walls of the hut. It was raining pretty hard the following morning and we decided to wait it out until early afternoon, hoping that it would clear. There is a cave close to the hut where limestone deposits have formed a bunch of stalactites and stalagmites and we scurried up the 10 minute trail to take a peak. We didn’t make it too far inside the cave but apparently it goes on for about 2 kilometers. We returned to the hut completely drenched and spent the rest of the morning drying out, eating breakfast, playing cards, eating brunch, reading our books, eating lunch, and finally putting on our rain jackets and packs to start walking.

Perfect timing! It was still misting a bit but as we reached the summit of Mount Luxmore, the rain stopped and the clouds began to part. The track continued along a mountain ridge for the next couple of hours and although the track was pretty wide both sides of the ridge seemed to just fall away to the deep valleys below. We would get an occasional glimpse of the lake or a peak in the distance, but the most amazing part of the track was the movement of the fog over the ridgeline. The track followed the ridgeline until the end and then descended about a million “zig-zags” (what they call switchbacks) to the Iris Burn Valley and Hut. We took an evening stroll to an enormous waterfall and spent the rest of the evening indoors escaping the sandflies, eating dinner, playing cards, and laughing with our new funny friend, Collin, from Wales.

The temperature this morning and today was perfect for hiking and the track was mostly flat through beech forest and fern groves along the Iris Burn (burn actually means stream in German?). We came upon this sign that gave us a few laughs: It reads “Native Falcon nesting area close to track. Beware of low flying bird, wear a hat or hold a stick above your head.” After 5 hours on the track we had the option to pay $8 and get a shuttle or continue walking another 5 hours to Te Anau. Although it was a beautiful day, our feet were sore and, without thinking twice, we hopped on the shuttle back to town. The kiwis would refer to our tramping style (warm huts, food in a bag, shuttle buses, etc.) as “soft.” I don’t feel the least bit ashamed.

Jean handed me this book just before we left the country. It looked interesting but I didn’t realize how amazing of a story it would be. The synopsis: a true story of a transient, usually homeless, family told from the point of view of one of the daughters, now a successful journalist living in New York City. Jeannette’s living conditions would make most of us gawk in disapproval but they never seemed to phase her optimism nor joy as a child. She spent nights in a cardboard box, ate moldy stale bread when there was nothing else to eat and sometimes just didn’t eat, dug a huge hole in their backyard to throw trash so they didn’t have to pay the dump bill, and dealt with an abusive alcoholic father and a lackadaisical self pitying mother. But her dreams of what can be never falter and eventually lead her to a life very different from the one in which she grew up.

One mountain bike has arrived and we are waiting on another. Currently we can take turns on the one, but neither one of us has been motivated to leave the other person behind. The other bike will show up soon enough and we can’t wait. The bikes are exactly the same year and model . . . would you expect anything different from two people who dress alike and have the same of everything? Although they have a little less travel than the bikes we left at home, I don’t think we will be complaining too much once we are riding them. We already have a list of biking trails that we want to explore.

Meanwhile, I have taken up a bit of volunteer work at a local winery called Mount Edward. Kind of random I suppose, but I thought it would be fun to learn a little bit about how wine is made since it is such a big industry down here. I’ve only spent two afternoons there so far helping add sulfur to all the ba rrels of pinot noir. We also sampled some chardonnay yesterday (as this is their first year making chardonnay) to see how the lot was coming along in barrels where they had used different techniques. Don’t think I was drinking on the job though, we all spit it out after smelling it and swishing it around in our mouths. Duncan, my “boss,” is helping me in my ability to describe wine, a skill which seems to take either years of experience or some real bull$#!^ing. All I have been able to do so far is say what I like and what I don’t like. To help me learn, Duncan sent me away with a homework assignment . . . 3 bottles of pinot noir, all from different vintages (2005, 2006, and 2007) . . . hardly homework. I am supposed to come back next week with a short speech prepared on their differences. If only we had homework like this in college.

Our alarm went off at 5am this morning and as we watched Barack Obama become the 44th president, the sun slowly rose over New Zealand. We couldn’t help feeling a sense of relief and hope for the years that are and that will come with him in office. When we watch the evening news down here in New Zealand it actually surprises us how much international news they cover. Back in the states it feels like you would have to really search the pages of CNN.com to find out about an election in another country. Our roommates from the U.K. were even contemplating getting up with us at 5am, but alas we just filled them in on the details around 10am instead. This is a shorty (do I hear a sigh from the reader?) but we just wanted to share a bit of our patriotic excitement and new found pride.

By Saturday afternoon we had our car packed with food, backpacks, and warm clothing. Because the weather forecast was changing about every hour, we didn’t have any details planned other than we were going to start walking at the Raspberry Flats Carpark at the end of the Matukituki Valley outside of Wanaka and we needed to be back to the car by Monday evening. If it was pouring then we would stay in the Aspiring Hut for two nights, only a 2.5 hour walk from the car, and spend the layover day reading and playing cards. If it was sunny, we would travel further up the valley or up Cascade Saddle. But as we pulled into Wanaka Saturday evening, we were greeted with a huge crowd directing bicyclists and cars. Challenge Wanaka is an international Iron Man race that takes place every year and we had arrived just in time for the first racers to cross the finish line. We decided to postpone our hike and enjoy the festivities in Wanaka for the evening. That night we camped along the Matukituki River about half way to the trailhead.

On Sunday morning, we began hiking under partly cloudy skies with a chance of rain. We felt a few rain drops but no downpour like we were used to and decided to continue past the Aspiring Hut and further up the Matukituki Valley. The waterfalls were raging and as the sun started to come out we felt like we were in a rainforest paradise. Toward the end of the valley I had spotted a bright orange dot high up on the south side of the canyon. According to our map the orange dot was in fact the Liverpool Hut. It didn’t look too far away and our feet were only kind of damp. We continued up the valley, over a few swinging bridges and across a couple flats, to the turnoff. It was here that we read “Liverpool Bivy: 2 hours” followed by a sign that warned how steep, slippery, and exposed the track was, especially in wet or icy conditions. We weren’t really sure how a bivy differed from a hut but we were sure it would be cheaper than the $25/night they were asking at the Aspiring Hut.

The description of the track wasn’t kidding about the steep and slippery climb. It was straight up the hillside and we used roots and rocks as handholds to assist us to the top. The bivy, despite the very faded orange paint job, was actually nicer than we were expecting. There was one window and the door was sized for a person half my height. Inside there was a small shelf where you could cook, two wooden stools, and a loft that divided the room vertically into two. Three people could sleep in the loft and three could fit under the loft with enough room to sit upright and not much more. We spent most of the afternoon and evening (except a brief stint of playing gin rummy inside when it rained) outside of the hut, staring out across the valley and waiting for Mt. Aspiring to reveal itself. At times we were able to see the very top, but never the whole thing until the following morning. Later in the afternoon we were joined by a German named Klaus. I am guessing he was probably in his late 50s and although he was tired from the hike up, he was in great shape. We spent a quiet but enjoyable evening with him and he convinced us to come to Munich, his home town, one day. At one point he sneezed and without thinking I said “ghezuntite,” what I always say after a sneeze. Klaus spun around and said, surprisingly, “That’s German.” All I could think of in response was “yes it is.”

The following morning we had a very loud wake up call (see video below) by a local kea who came screeching and flying right to the top of our bivy. He walked across the roof squawking until we came outside and paid him a little attention. About 15 minutes after our “alarm” went off, the clouds disappeared and Mt. Aspiring stood bright and clear. The kea apparently knew this was going to happen and thankfully woke us in time. We spent a relaxing morning sitting in front of the bivy, drinking coffee, reading, looking at the view, and talking with Klaus. Waving goodbye to Klaus, we began our steep descent and very hot valley walk back to the car. It was a short adventure but our feet were thankful for flip flops at the car and we were thankful for a cold beer back in Wanaka and, of course, another evening with Indian take-away.

I finished a wonderful book yesterday, that I would recommend to everyone, called The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I, of course, started the book during our vacation in Fiji but couldn’t find much time in New Zealand to finish it until now. It’s not that I haven’t had the time. It’s that every time I sit down to read, I remember something I really need to do at that moment. I can thank the fact that I am my mother’s daughter for that and for my need to stay busy with “projects.” Anyways, the book . . . Michael Pollan explores three ways that food gets from its natural state to our tables (corn, grass, and the forest). You would be amazed at how much corn (natural, processed, and really processed) takes up an American’s diet, especially an American who dines at McDonald’s. This was especially interesting to me after spontaneously visiting a corn processing plant with BJ’s family in southern Idaho before we left the states. Most of his mother’s side of the family, except for his mom, has spent their working careers working for Seneca a.k.a. Green Giant. Pollan explores the sustainability of eating organic versus local and in the end he goes through the trouble of creating a meal from ingredients that he gathered, hunted, or knew exactly where they came from in their raw state. I won’t describe the entire book, but in the end I felt inspired to pay a little more attention to what I buy and what I eat. In the end, if I have the choice between organic and local . . . I’ll choose local.

Yesterday evening, as BJ was wrapping up work, I got to work in the kitchen making dinner. My dinner creation wasn’t consciously inspired by the book I had just completed, but while we sat down to homemade pesto over homemade linguine with homemade bread with very un-homemade butter on the side, BJ made me reconsider how much the book had taken effect. In fact, my roommate Ali has been my inspiration for the homemade pasta and bread . . . especially with the help of a pastamaker and a breadmachine. The pesto was inspired by a cute little basil plant that we bought at the market the other day. The basil plant, full of leaves, was actually cheaper than buying fresh basil in a package – ha! With just a little water every couple of days I can make pesto any time I want. But I can’t take credit for knowing where all the ingredients in our meal came from like the flour, the yeast, the pine nuts, the garlic, the butter and olive oil . . . all I know is that I completed the final round of processing the food before we put it in our mouths.

It didn’t take long after our evening riding the downhill trails on Coronet Peak for BJ to find and bid on two mountain bikes on the Kiwi version of ebay. They have yet to arrive and we are very excited to start riding but, in the end, what may hold us up is the delivery of a box marked “Bike” that BJ’s mom just took to the post office in Victor. We left three ready-to-ship boxes in our closet at home, each marked appropriately . . . Bike, Ski, Climb. The big items like bikes and skis obviously didn’t fit very well in the boxes so we decided before we left that we would buy and then sell those items down here.

We spent another evening, with a movie at the Dorothy Brown’s cinema and dinner at a restaurant called The Stables, in Arrowtown on Tuesday. We just can’t seem to get enough of that place. The one detail we noticed this week while sitting in our enormous reclining theatre seats with a glass of wine and cheeseboard in hand, was that we were surrounded by more-than-double-by-age women. There’s just no classy way of saying it . . . middle-aged. But it was the realization that we were there enjoying the film with them that actually made us laugh. The film was Vicky Cristina Barcelona, a Woody Allen film that I thought had a somewhat disappointing ending until, over dinner, BJ pointed out the message about passion that it was trying to convey. I won’t spoil it for you.

On another note, yesterday my Aunt Kate sent me a link to a job she thought I should apply for . . . The Best Job in the World . . . which thoroughly distracted me for most of the day. If you are unemployed (actually even if you are employed), and looking for some quality time writing on the beach, this would be a great opportunity. I think the job requirements say “must be willing to snorkel, sail, or kayak as needed.” I know . . . really demanding.

A few years ago while spending a few weeks in El Salvador, I read another of A.C. Weisbecker’s books, In Search of Captain Zero.  I really enjoyed reading about the “real-life” adventures of Weisbecker as he searched for a long lost friend among the surf regions of Central America.  It is because of this, that I picked up Cosmic Banditos.

Although quite a romp through Mexico, mixed through Tequila infused Quantum Physics, I didn’t enjoy this book nearly as much as the first.  However, even Weisbecker himself has the following in his Author’s Note at the end of the book:

“It’s about as different from this book as it’s possible to be.  I bring this up in case you didn’t like this book.  See, if you didn’t like this book, you’re virtually guaranteed to like In Search of Captain Zero.  They’re that different.”

I’d have to agree!

We started our weekend on Saturday afternoon with a good session of rugby. The Rugby Sevens is a national tournament where all the national teams have a chance to play each other for only seven minute halves. This year the tournament was held in Queenstown and just happened to land on our roommate’s birthday. Ali and Steve were already with a crowd of friends at the rugby field and Steve was already well on his way to a good sunburn and hangover the following morning. Saturday was also Alan and Lily’s last night in Queenstown, and all of New Zealand, before flying to Australia. We met up with them at the entrance to the Rugby Sevens and spent the afternoon drinking Speights (which they only sold in 6-packs at the games), eating sausage rolls (a sausage served in a slice of regular sandwich bread), and trying to understand the rules of the game. For their final evening in town we went out to dinner at The Cow, a small pizza restaurant that we have become very fond of, and out for a mandatory-last-night-in-Queenstown-dessert at Patagonia Chocolates, another favorite. Thanks for spending the day with us Alan and Lily and have a great time in Australia. After saying goodbye to them, we made our way to Monty’s where we were supposed to meet Steve and Ali for the rest of the evening of birthday fun. There was no sign of them and we quickly found out that the birthday boy decided to call it a night a little early. We were bummed to have missed him but decided to enjoy some local beats by the band Pass the Sauce before making our way home.

We’ve spent the majority of our weekends and time off in New Zealand exploring the country’s trails by foot. This changed on Sunday afternoon. Coronet Peak, a local ski area, maintains a few downhill mountain biking trails with lift access and although neither one of us had ever been on an official downhill bike* (despite BJ’s very skilled past on a motorcross bike), we decided to rent downhill bikes and spend the evening playing on the trails. (For those who need a little explanation: a downhill bike differs from a cross-country bike (what we ride back in Idaho) in that the center of balance is slightly farther back, the shocks are much larger, and it is very difficult if not impossible to actually ride a downhill bike up a hill.) Although we’ve been relatively dedicated bikers for the last few summers, it took a couple runs of slowing down through the banked turns and rolling over the small jumps to really feel stable again. And then we couldn’t get enough of it . . . gaining speed in the turns, going fast, and jumping (well I only hit the small ones). By the final lap, our butts were sore and our hands and forearms were cramping. But damn it was fun. Still grinning and giddy, we met Steve and Ali in Arrowtown for dinner at the New Orleans Hotel. They had been graciously waiting for us for an hour and were excited to see us so we could all finally order. Once we returned home, BJ quickly hopped on the computer to check the latest bike listings on trademe.co.nz (basically an ebay for New Zealand) while the three of us watched a classic . . . The Lost Boys.

Today, Monday, was the perfect Sunday. We slept in (although it’s very unlike us, I am really starting to enjoy this habit), looked at more bikes online, went for a short hike that overlooks the Shotover River, and played some frisbee by the lake. The Shotover River (or as Gretchen likes to call it, the Shootover) is a hub for many adrenaline seeking visitors. We didn’t realize our hike would be overlooking some of these activities. We watched a handful of people doing a giant canyon swing and watched a jet boat do 360s through tight canyon walls . . . see for yourself.