Stuff Kiwis like

Here I am in the remote wilderness of Fiordland accessing internet via satellite. Connection is slow/limited here, and this stunning location deserves lots and LOTS of pictures, so those will be coming later. For now, I just figured I'd break up the radio silence with a pictureless post about the food and phrases I've been getting acquainted with here in New Zealand.

"Sweet as": Sweet as what? No idea. But whatever it is must be pretty darn good because that's basically what this expression means. Substitute for "awesome" or "sounds great" and you're doing it right. Other acceptable forms: "cool as"

"Good on ya": Also seen as "Good on him" or "good on them". Basically the same as "good for you/him/them", but only really sounds cool with a Kiwi accent.

"Mate": I love this one. It just makes everyone seem like your friend. Again sounds not so cool in an American accent, but I may start using it nonetheless.

And for the food:

Kiwi pie: Not made of Kiwis, kiwi birds or kiwi fruit. Most common form is mincemeat in a gravy-like sauce all wrapped up in a snack-size, pie-shaped pastry dough and served steaming hot. Basically the New Zealand equivalent of a French crepe in terms of cost and accessibility. Even McDonalds and KFC serve them. (On another note, it's bizarre to me that those plus Subway are the American chains that I've seen most often over here.) Depending on where you get one, you could have options of steak filling, chicken, vegetables... the possibilities are endless and delicious.

Milo: At first I thought this was the equivalent of Nesquick. There is Milo flavored cereal and dried Milo powder to mix into milk, and "Milo" is supposedly enough to tell you what the flavor is. Upon further investigation, it's chocolate-ish, but made from malted barley, so it has a definite malted flavor. Also apparently made by Nestle.

Hokey Pokey: Another example of a term that you're just supposed to know the flavor it's indicating. In this case it was a very pleasant surprise. It's somewhere on the spectrum of caramel, honey, butterscotch and toffee, and so far has showed up in ice cream and candy bars. I hope I find this one often!

L&P: Stands for Lemon and Paeroa. "Good Lemonish Stuff" and "World Famous in New Zealand" according to the bottle. Wikipedia tells me that Paeroa is in the name because the drink is made with carbonated mineral water from the town of Paeroa... Fair enough. Kiwis may disagree, but it seems pretty similar to bottled Minute Maid lemonade, except when you get the Sour L&P ("Sour Lemonish Stuff"), which is, appropriately, much more sour.

Vegemite & Marmite: These legendary spreads are still uncharted territory for me. I just don't see the appeal. Both are made primarily of yeast and salt, but Marmite has more sugar. The advice I've gotten is that if you didn't grow up with it, you probably won't like it, and most people only like the one or the other that they did grow up with. If I do try it, spreading just a tiny bit of it over toast is supposed to be the way to go. I'll keep you updated.

Then there are a bunch of equivalent items with different names. Kumara = sweet potato. Sultana = grape. Tasty cheese = basic cheddar. Aubergine = eggplant. A bit confusing but easy enough to figure out.

Stay tuned for a pictureful post when I get out of the bush in about a week!

Whirlwind Queenstown

Now where was I before... oh yes, Queenstown is incredible! It's situated along Lake Wakatipu which was carved out and fed by glaciers. It apparently wasn't as green before a recent landslide, but I think the color is fantastic, and I'll be bombarding you with lots of pictures of it. Mountains jut straight up from the lake on all sides, so there was barely any flat ground for the airport!

Queenstown itself is definitely a tourist town. Every other storefront is representing some sort of adventure activity - skydiving, bungy jumping, jet boats, scenic cruises, ziplining, you name it. Realizing the extent of the commercialization has made me less enthusiastic about the city itself, but the scenery really can't be beat.

When I first got in, I couldn't check in to my hostel yet, so I dropped off my bags and took a walk along the lakeshore. After I'd unpacked a bit and reorganized, I took a hike up one of the peaks that started less than a five minute walk from my hostel. It happened to be a very commercialized one, so my trail crossed mountain biking paths and a zipline course, and then I saw the top of the gondola line and a "luge" course at the top, but of course lots of amazing views as well.

Walking in the park at lake-level

View at the midpoint of the hike

Panorama at the top

This morning I got up early for my adventure of the day - hang gliding! It was not something I anticipated doing in Queenstown, but after looking at the options, I decided it would be really cool. A van took us from the storefront in town up to a nearby peak, and I got outfitted in a pretty intense harness. My instructor said all I had to do was follow his steps and he and the kite would do the rest. So I got strapped in, we positioned ourselves frighteningly close to the edge of the peak, and with probably less than five running steps we were airborne. I got to put my arms out and pretend to be a bird while he steered, and we did some exciting spirals and swoops over the 3 km long, 700m descent. Woohoo!

Getting suited up

Ready to go!

Practicing the flying position

Other fliers coming in for a landing

Later in the day I caught shuttle vans for the jet boat company and one of the bungy jumping companies to watch those happen. The jet boat is a very fast, very agile boat that whips down a river and through a canyon, and was in a very picturesque setting. The bungy jumping location was a bridge over a river where I could really get up and close to watch. I got to hear every scream and squeal and was very glad that it wasn't me doing the jump.

Jetboat spectator area

After dinner with some hostel friends, I took a walk in the Queenstown gardens, which lead to more beautiful scenery and more of an appreciation for the possibility of being a resident in the city.

Public lakefront area. Cold water.

Rose garden and slackliners

Tomorrow morning I'm off to Fiordland where I'll be doing my first work exchange. I'm catching a bus to Milton Sound and then getting a helicopter ride into my work location. I'll be serving as assistant staff in the Martin's Bay Lodge of the Hollyford Track touring company. The location is purposefully remote because it's one of the stops that hiking groups come to along their multi-day guided tours, and it's also used for business retreats where they want people to focus. I'll be helping out wherever they need me - cleaning rooms, making beds, cooking, getting rid of cobwebs, and gardening were a few of the possibilities they listed. I'll probably be off the grid for most of the next two weeks, but there is a possibility of email access. Otherwise, I'll be back in Queenstown on Feb 7. Until then!

Touristing on the central North Island

Hello from Queenstown! Queenstown is beautiful, but more about that later. This is a post about my three-day "camping" trip to Rotorua, Waitomo, and Raglan. I set out on Monday morning with three new friends through Amanda with the intention of touring the Waitomo Caves on Monday, hiking the Tongariro Crossing on Tuesday, and exploring Rotorua on Wednesday. After some traffic, quick thinking, rearranging and more traffic, we ended up in Rotorua on Monday afternoon.

Rotorua is a thermal hot spot, leading to geysers, bubbling and colored pools, and steaming vents from the bellows of the earth all over town. Some of them are gated off and commercialized, and others are just on the side of the road. The air is full of sulfur-scented steam no matter where you go. We headed pretty immediately to the bubbling mud pools, which were hilarious. Think "plop, splop, gurgle, belch, schlorp". I'm going to attempt to get a video within this post because it was just too much.

Lake Rotorua

Random steaming vents around town

After the mud pools we headed to Kerosene Creek, which is basically like a hot tub in river form. There were lots of people there just relaxing, drinking, or hanging out. What a cool thing to have in your back yard!

It poured on Monday night, so we had to pack up wet tents, but we were super excited to get to the "Worm Tube"! We were signed up for the Black Abyss tour of the Waitomo Caves, which are famous for the glowworms that live there. We knew that we were going to get to tube down an underwater river illuminated by the glowing worms, hence our name for it, but it ended up being so much better. After some training, we each rappelled down a 100+ ft hole in the ground, took a zip line off a cliff into a starry glowworm sky, jumped off another drop into the underwater river, paddled ourselves upstream and then floated back with the glowworms lighting the way, jumped off a waterfall, climbed through rocky and muddy passages around the caves, and finally reemerged into the sunny afternoon by free-climbing up two waterfalls. What an adventure! We even bought the photo package, so here are a few:

Getting ready to drop into the rappelling hole

A sampling of glow worms

In case you were wondering, the little glowing dots are just the end of the worm. They use that dot to attract food (mostly young insects). When the little bugs fly towards the light, they get stuck in the long, sticky worm part that is hanging down from the dot, and then somehow are eaten. The whole thing is a lot more magical until you come close to some of those wormy stringy things hanging down from the ceiling. 

Our tour group after rinsing off most of the mud

Emerging from the caves

When we called the shuttle company at the Tongariro Crossing, we found out that the weather was looking bad enough for them to cancel shuttle service for the next day. It's too long to do as an out-and-back, so we made a quick decision to head towards the coast and ended up in Raglan for the night.

We got up in the morning and made the short walk to Bridal Veil Falls, which cascades 55 m down. It was pretty amazing that such a beautiful waterfall was so easily accessible, something I've thought of often around New Zealand.

View from the midpoint of the trail

At the bottom

Next we drove over to Ruapuke Beach, where we were hoping to see some surfers, but were pretty satisfied with the incredible black sand nonetheless. The color apparently comes from iron, so I was bummed I didn't have a magnet with me to test that out.

From the grassy dunes onto the beach

Stereotypical beach picture for the color contrast

On our way back in to the city, we stopped at the Auckland Botanic Gardens to have a look around. I learned about the plant that the Maoris use for weaving and get flax from, saw a bunch of sculptures, and lots of crazy flowers and trees.

Wednesday night I made a quick turnaround and was off to the airport at the crack of dawn on Thursday. Next post will be on Queenstown!

Weekend in Matarangi

Things I've learned about New Zealand:
-They drive on the left side of the road - I still flinch whenever we round a corner to an oncoming car in the "wrong" lane
-I am 18 hours ahead of the east coast of the US (I am posting this on Monday morning)
-There is a flavor of ice cream called Hokey Pokey, and everyone knows what it is
-The hole in the ozone over Australia extends over NZ as well, causing short burn times (thankfully only my feet have suffered so far)
-I will, almost without fail, pronounce place names wrong on the first try

We spent Friday hanging out around Amanda's house. We made colorful crepes for breakfast and took a quick trip to the beach near her house. It was beautiful to look at, but the wind was blowing steadily so it was too cold to go in.

A crepe in my likeness

The beach near Amanda's house

After lunch, we met up with one of Amanda's friends from high school, Nikki, and Nikki's friend from college, Natasha, to go to Natasha's family's beach house in Matarangi. It was a stunningly beautiful drive that hugged the edge of the coast and twisted up and down through the hills. I was glad I was a passenger and didn't have to worry about keeping the car on the road!

Representative view of the high point of the drive

Later that night, Natasha's sister and more of their friends arrived, and the rest of the weekend was like a mini spring break full of games, swimming, eating and lounging. I took several swims in the Pacific, learned how to play cricket, and met a lot of great Kiwis.

The group lounging on the back porch

Our little slice of beach in Matarangi

I also finished reading Between a Rock and a Hard Place, so here's another quote, this time from Goethe: "Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it."

I'm off on a three-day camping trip around central North Island, and then to Queenstown on Thursday, so I'll try to write again there.

Airplanes Forever

Seattle -> LAX : 2.5 hrs
LAX : 4 hrs
LAX -> Papeete, Tahiti : 8.5 hrs
Papeete : 2 hrs
Papeete -> AKL : 5 hrs
Customs in AKL : 1 hr
I am extremely glad that I don't need to get on a plane again for a while.

The plane rides were luckily uneventful and I managed to sleep for a good part of the longest one, putting me in a good position in terms of adjusting time zones. I had beautiful views of the sunset over the west coast as I flew down to LA, but unfortunately I didn't have a window seat for the other flights. Luckily we did end up having to get off the plane in Tahiti, so I got to experience some views and some 80+ degree tropical weather. Also, since Tahiti is part of French Polynesia, the announcements, signage and meals were all done in French, so that was pretty cool.

Sunset over the Pacific 

Tropical colors for Air Tahiti

Decorations to greet us off the runway

Goodmorning, Tahiti

After my last flight, I made my way through the multiple stages of customs. Luckily I have mostly new gear with me, because it turns out that "gear used in the outdoors" was one of the categories of items that needed to be declared. It will be interesting to figure out how to navigate that requirement on my way back. Amanda's family met me at the gate and I got my first views of Auckland as they drove me home. Amanda has such an itinerary planned out, I may not get to see it any more on this stage of the trip, though.

When I was still in Seattle, Natalie and I stopped by a used book store, and one of the books I picked up was "Between a Rock and a Hard Place", which is a biography of Aron Ralston centering around the accident in which he got his arm stuck between a fallen boulder and a canyon wall. He spends a good part of it telling tales of his close calls with bears, lightening and avalanches in the years leading up to the entrapment, so he ends up acknowledging that his history of risk taking and poor planning basically caught up with him. In any case, the fact that he had the mental gumption to rescue himself in the way that he did is impressive, and the book is filled with lots of quotes about the wilderness and adventure. One of the ones that I read on the plane ride came originally from Chris McCandless:

"So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun."
While it seems a bit of a hyperbole of my situation, this is a quote that will stay with me as I explore this new country.

First stop: Seattle

My awesome family dropped me off at the airport early on Saturday morning. While I endured the most turbulent planeride of my life, they got to go see the Frozen Four, so they probably got the better end of the deal. Once I recovered, though, I grabbed the train into Seattle and met up with Ben.

There were a bunch of Seahawks fans on the train, and as we were riding in there was actually a rainbow over the stadium. It looked like it was going to be nice out, but things quickly changed and Ben and I went on a "rainier than usual" walk through their neighborhood and then down to a bar to watch the game. Go Seahawks (says my temporary location-based alliance)!

My awesome hosts, Natalie and Ben!

When Natalie got off work there was a wonderful reunion, and she and I spent her weekend of Sun-Mon going on much less rainy walks all over the city. We saw the Space Needle and the fountains and art around Seattle Center that were built for the 1962 World's Fair. We went to a used book store. We saw fish-throwing and the "original" Starbucks at Pike Place Market. On Monday afternoon we took a long walk up into the hills to see some really nice houses, and when we got to Volunteer Park, the sky opened up enough to see the skyline and some of the sunset. It was a beautiful way to end our long hike! Besides sightseeing, food was a focus of our weekend, which we topped off by cooking a luxurious dinner of Ahi Tuna. Yum!

I could almost see some mountains in the background, but Mt Rainier stayed hidden.

Natalie and Ben were both off to work on Tuesday, but luckily my friend Zach was free, so we spent the morning walking along Puget Sound, looking at the sculptures in Olympic Sculpture park, and reminiscing about our days in the Brown Band.

In other news, I've finished knitting my first hat! The shape is a little bit funny, but for a first try (or maybe fifth, for the approximate number of times I had to restart) I'm pretty impressed with myself. Many thanks to Eric and his mom for their help!

Please excuse the mirror selfie

One more shameless self promotion before I go. Early this fall I heard of a new website that was meant to be like a Kickstarter for traveling - Trevolta. I quickly signed up and very slowly created a profile. One form of procrastination lead to another, and my page on the site only just went live. So check it out if you're interested and want to increase my pageviews, but please know that I'll send you a postcard just for being my friend.

Time to repack and make my way to SeaTac. Hopefully I'll have internet access from here on out. Talk to you again from the other side of the world!

A New Adventure

Hello all!
I'm just hours away from leaving home for almost five months. For this adventure I'm flying to the other side of the world to explore New Zealand and Australia. This will definitely be the furthest I've ever been away from home  - my first time in the southern hemisphere and a nearly 12-hour time difference. I'm glad I got to experience some of winter here in Maine because I'm skipping straight to my first summer of 2014.
I'll be literally backpacking through New Zealand doing work exchange on various farms through the HelpX network. All of my things for 5 months are currently sitting in a backpack by the door. What's even more frightening than the small amount of clothing and accessories I'll be subsisting on during this trip is how much I'm leaving behind - I could probably outfit another few people to join me if only I could carry them on my back too.
I've got my fingers crossed that internet will be reliable while I'm traveling, because I'm going to try to post here on Blogspot and to my new Instagram (#thanksKirsten). It turns out that my cell service will allow me to use data while I'm abroad, too, so hit me up on Facebook messenger and Snapchat. Just don't try to text or call me because you'll probably get hit with a whopper of a fee.
I'm getting ahead of myself, though. The easiest way to New Zealand is to fly west, and by flying west I have to pass Seattle, so I'll be spending the first few days of my trip visiting my wonderful friends Natalie and Ben. I can't wait!
To anyone reading, I'm going to try to keep things concise and up-to-date so that my posts don't deteriorate like in my last blogging attempt. So I'll leave it here for now and write you again from another time zone.
Courtney