Christchurch & Dunedin

            Another two cities off the list! This past weekend I flew down to the South Island to meet up with some old friends who are going to school in the Scottish named city of Dunedin. Before I could get to see them though I had to pass through Christchurch.

Christchurch:  New Zealand's second largest city next to Auckland, was hit hard, both physically and emotionally by the earthquake this past February. The whole city center is cordoned off with gates, warning signs and military personnel. I got off the bus and was walking to my hostel without knowing where the cordoned off areas were but I found out quickly, as I walked through a gate only to be met by a uniformed guard who politely asked "are you lost?" I had the lucky fortune of good weather and very helpful locals the day I was in Christchurch to be able to see the city and some of the damage that had been done.

It was hard going because, as you can see in the map below the "Red Zone" takes up the balk of the city. I had to walk around the whole city center in order to get the views I wanted.



           Walking through the city was both sad and erie. Most people have left their homes and at night the streets are as quiet as a graveyard with no lights coming from the central part of the city. The guards sit in their tents playing cards, a cat runs across your path as you walk past multiple demolished buildings. While the city is nearly destroyed, the people are hopeful, grateful and very friendly. I had a lot of questions obviously and everyone was happy to answer them. One of my drivers informed me that the Canterbury region or the area around Christchurch gets between 3,000-5,000 earthquakes (Small-Big) a year. WOW! I had to fly out of the city to get back to Wellington and as I sat on a street corner I experienced a small tremor which told me it was a good time to leave.

Dunedin: Named by Scottish emigrants and rightly so because if I were to ever visit Scotland, I would imagine it looked a lot like the area. Rolling hills, cliffs next to the sea, cold, wet and windy. Dunedin is known for being a college town and you can definitely tell. The campus is placed right next to the city center and is filled with bars, restaurants and music life. While I was there I climbed the steepest street in New Zealand (not that tough at all), ate in an awesome Irish pub, hit up the city's farmers market (had a bacon buddy, which was amazing), attended a concert with 9 local bands, spent some quality time with a bunch of old friends and met some new ones as well!

     I got to see both the Otago Peninsula and tunnel beach which was a beach that was given to a wealthy mans daughter but in order for the young lady to get there dad had to carve a tunnel out of solid rock!

  I enjoyed my weekend away from Wellington immensely and I can't say how awesome it was to see my friends. As Alyexandersupertramp put it "happiness is only true when shared,"-Into the wild. I am so glad to share my experiences with newfound friends and of course with all of you lovely people!

April 20th, 2011

QUEST!

So this past weekend a few friends and I took a trip north to Mount Ngauruhoe at 2285 meters around 7,000 feet, to do the Tongariro crossing, which is a 8/9 hour hike over roughly 20 km or 13 miles. Mount Ngauruhoe was where Peter Jackson filmed Mount Doom. We decided to take same adventure as Frodo and Sam did and cast the ring back into the fires. (haha) We started our journey late Friday afternoon, we hopped in the car and grabbed some groceries for the weekend. We arrived late that night made some dinner (dinner of champions a pasta dish) had a few brews and played a few games of hearts.

The next morning we were up early (6:00 a.m. ) to catch the shuttle to the base of the mountain. We arrived at the base around 7:45a.m. and started our long trek up. It was a prefect and when I say perfect I mean PERFECT day to hike. Not a cloud in the sky, awesome temperatures the whole day, the sun was shining bright and hardly any wind at all. The first 1/3 of the hike was gradual uphill with a few flat areas. Once we were in the crossing we decided to take it up a level and go off trail to climb the summit. (which is not recommended for the faint of heart or on a windy day) No wind and four guys with nothing to lose we started our climb. It took the four of us 2 hours to reach the top. The views from the summit were amazing! You could see for miles in all directions. They did have a bit of snow at the top (rare for this time of year) which made for good sledding down the mountain. It took us, well me 40 minutes to make my way down the mountain (the others ran down it in 15 minutes) After out success we decided to take a lunch break (PB&J's)  before continuing on the 2/3's of trail we had left. The next 5 hours took us up, down, through mountain lakes, rainforest, volcanic caters and beautiful grasslands.

We had a shuttle to catch back to our hostel at 4:30 and I keep my watch on American time (to keep a sense of home with me) and not taking daylight savings into account we ran part of the way until a little old lady told us it was not 4:15 but actually 3:15. Needless to say I felt pretty bad, but only until we found the best waterfall/rest area we could possibly hope for and soaked our feet. Right off the tail and nobody but the four of us. It was a great ending to a long hard day's work. That night we met some MORE Penn State people (haha) and had the rest of our beers while conversing on the days events. I made homemade mac and cheese, everybody seemed to enjoy it!

This week is my last week of classes before break! I will be heading to the South Island for a few days to see some friends and then on to Aussie the week after. As always hope all is well stateside. New Zealand is awesome and I am enjoying every minute of my time here!

April 12th, 2011