I finally made it to the zoo yesterday. It was a great deal of fun, but there are two things you should know.
1) they don't mess around with their signs.
At all.
2) I saw a Kiwi (the bird, not the person or fruit).
I've now accomplished everything I needed to while in New Zealand.
Despite being the title of the worst ride at Disneyland it is sometimes a fact that the world isn't that big. Today's example:
Karen, who's apartment in San Francisco was featured on the blog last year (the nice one next to the giant hole), has since passed through Wellington on her travels. Always nice to see a familiar face on the other side of the planet.
Fair warning: this post is long. It covers Boxing Day through the 10th of January. Good luck.
The hostel I stayed at in Picton on Christmas night was big on towel sculptures.
Boxing Day started with this sign. The plan was to hitchhike to Nelson. So I started walking with my thumb out.
After an early success in getting to Blenheim I found myself in the middle of wine country.
A few kilometers later I was picked up by a very nice family who said they could take my to Nelson, we would just have to stop for lunch first.
After a nice lunch we made it to Nelson. My friend Jay came and gave me a lift out to Motueka, which is a little way outside of Nelson. It looks about like this.
Jay showing off his impressive selfie taking ability.
Big beach outside of Motuika.
After about a day of relaxing on the beach it was time to proceed south again. Since the fortunes were ever in my favor I was able to catch a ride with Kirk (from iRide) and his friend Dylan south to Hokitika and then on to Wanaka. This would be a good chance to cover some distance and see the west coast of the South Island.
There are lots of mountains, rivers, glaciers, and other stuff like that.
Some grass.
More beach.
And lots of sun.
And since I couldn't resist: tourists taking pictures with their iPads.
Saw this a little outside of Wanaka. Not sure who Eric Corff is, but I'm still partial to the sticker.
On the shore of Lake Wanaka.
This area of the South Island is know for excellent hiking, so we had to get outside at least a little. New Year's Eve Gavin and I hiked up a hill a bit outside of town to get a better look at things.
A higher view of the lake.
The view from the top. More of the valley, with more lakes in the background.
Despite what it looks like Gavin is not taking sneaky pictures of lions. There are relatively few lions here it seems.
After a pretty long hike, we celebrated New Years right. Full meal including several veggies.
At the start of 2014 I wasn't exactly sure how to spend my last week of vacation. One of the people I met along the way mentioned heading out to Milford Sound, part of the fiordland of southwest New Zealand. So after a quick night in Queenstown I made my way to Milford. Which turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip.
It more or less looks like this. There are 4 permanent waterfalls along the sound.
They are quite large.
However on rainy days, including when I was there, about 1000 more spring up.
They are everywhere.
Everywhere!
At the end of the sound you get to the Tasman Sea (aka the ocean) and I was assured that Australia was only about 1800km out there. I've approximated it's location above.
Despite the cold and wet it was still all smiles amongst the tourists on the boat.
Afterwards I returned to Queenstown for a day of hiking another big hill. Rain would not stop me.
I had always thought the movie " a river runs through it" was about fishing. Apparently it was about this trail I was walking up.
Real wet.
And then it started snowing towards the top.
This hike was billed as "difficult but worth it for the views at the top". This was totally accurate. The view I got if the inside of that cloud was priceless.
Fortunatley the view a little farther down also included some more lake.
As I write this I'm in Christchurch the day before my flight back to Wellington.
The earthquake damage from 2010 and 2011 is still very much visible, but it seems like things are improving. Even if the construction is far from complete.
All of which can be viewed comfortably from atop your Segway.
Congrats if you've made it this far. I guess almost three weeks of vacation leads to a rather long post.
A larger post will follow once I get some more time and better internet. However I did go to the beach on Christmas Day.
Then a couple days later I was back!
Looking like I was stranded there.
I was able to get off of that beach and continue south. That tale will be told soon.
Yesterday was Saturday in this part of the world. The be exact it was Saturday December 14th. This was made great by the fact it looked like this:
That bottle you can see in the corner of the shot, that's SUNSCREEN! It was like a great San Diego day, warm, sunny, and breezy.
And with no shortage of meat. BBQ in December is grand.
The local booze hounds were hanging around outside of the brewery down the street from my house.
And nachos here are regularly made with Doritos.
Basically it was a great Saturday. I have high hopes of a few more of these before returning to springtime at home.
As we approach Christmas I realize I've not been doing a good job of keeping up with the blog. Not traveling around has lead to not too many pictures, I see the same thing quite often. However here are a few.
At one point I went to a downhill race.
This was a fun one from work. If you don't take care of your bike bad things can happen. This BB30 crank is no exception.
That's where the bearings were at one point.
I am soon to be featured in a short film about running. A bit of location scouting along a big log.
And found a stick bug in the process as well.
If I want to go home, there is a bus that will take me straight there from downtown Wellington.
Outside of the Nelson airport there is a bike stand to assemble your bike!
This is Gavin, who works at the cafe at iRide, accepting the best biking cafe award from the Wellington bike enthusiast people. There were also a nice variety of snacks at the awards.
But finally, the reason I really think it's almost Christmas is there was a 5 piece brass band from the Salvation Army playing Christmas carols at the grocery store. They must have lost their obnoxious little bells and had to improvise.
Now I'm off to buy some sunscreen for Christmas Day. Someone said it is supposed to be 25. I really hope that's Celsius.
People in Wellington do not mess around when it comes to the commute. Between wild wind and regular rain people are ready for anything. Which is really funny to see on a calm and sunny day like today.
If you are worried people can't see your vest because of the because you're wearing a backpack, here is a great solution. Just make sure to get that XXL vest if you've got a bigger pack.
Just because its not raining doesn't mean you shouldn't have your pack cover on just in case you get hit with a sprinkler. Double points if you color match to your ankle straps.
Just remember to always be prepared.
