So sorry for the lack of updates. I've had some crazy past few weeks. First my Dad came for a week and we kicked around ChCh and surrounding areas. That was a ton of fun! Pictures to come, I promise! Then, unfortunately overlapping with my visit with my Dad, exams came. Yick. Three exams in two days. That was horrid. By the end of that week, my brain was so fried I didn't even want to write in my journal. The words on the page made my eyes all fuzzy.
Now I'm on break until April 26th! No class, no nothing, just how it's supposed to be. I was pretty sedentary for the first few days of break. I kicked around ChCh for a bit and took some pictures. Got harassed by a Jesus-preachin' old bloke with an awesome Irish accent. You know, the usual :) After a few days of absolutely nothingness and feeling pretty useless, Geoff and Kelsey came back to ChCh with a plan to go to Nelson Lakes National Park. Yes!!!! Spontaneity and exercise! What more could a couch potato with cabin fever ask for!?
So, Tuesday morning the three of us packed up "Blue Thunder" (makes my old Subaru look like a Lamborghini...teehee) and set off for a 2-day tramp. Nelson Lakes is about a 4.5 hour drive away from ChCh (3.5 if Geoff is driving...eek!). Tuesday night we got there, set up Geoff's trusty tent, Frank, and had some delish camping food: Ramen, PB&Js, apples, trail mix. Then, of course, it started raining, so we packed up our gnash and snuggled in the tent for some Rummy and Crazy 8's by torchlight.
We were camped by the West Bay of Lake Rotoiti. It was a picturesque campsite. Since I'm always f-f-f-freezing when I go camping, I packed extra extra warm clothes. That night, I wore two pairs of wool socks, leggings, long johns, fleece pj pants, long john shirt, t-shirt, fleece hoodie, skiing jacket, and a hat. I'm bizarre. And I still was cold! I was on the corner of the tent, so in the morning, when the dew had super-saturated the tent, I got dripped on. Aweeesome. So I got up early, walked down to the lake, and started chillin' with the duckies. It was gorgeous. Absolutely phenomenal. Mt. Robert had this beautiful cloud half-way up its peak and the lake was so still, there was a perfect reflection. The ducks were adorable, too. Worse beggars than my pup! They know what's up :) They looked so cute, of course I was gonna give them some trail mix. I can't spoil my puppy, so ducks are the closest thing, right :)
We were up pretty early that day, so we headed to the Info Hut and figured out our tramp. The plan was to hike up Mt. Robert (1.5-2 hrs) walk along Robert Ridge (3ish hours) and then go down Speargrass Track to the hut for the night (1.5 hours). The next day was going to be easy (thank god) and just a 2.5 hr tramp back to the car park.
So we park, get our gear together, take a few asthma-nerdy-inhaler-puffs, and get on our way. It was a beautiful hike. First through the woods and then it opened up and there were super steep switchbacks the rest of the way up. Half way up, we met these two Canadians who had spent the past 5 months backpacking through South America. Pretty sweet.
At the top, you couldn't see Lake Rotoiti anymore, just these beautiful mountains for miles and miles and miles. It was phenomenal. Every time I get to a summit, I realize just how magnificent NZ actually is. No panorama looks the same. There are craggy mountains, bright green mountains, snow-capped mountains...beech trees, pine trees, fern trees....just fantastic.
We got to the top pretty quickly (about an hour or so) and so we kept our momentum and continued on the Robert Ridge. That was the scariest part. I literally felt like I was hiking up Mordor. It was steep and craggy and rocky. I kept looking back at Kelsey and saying, "I seriously feel like a mountain goat." Some parts of the track were just completely undistinguishable and we just crossed our fingers and kept on going. Sometimes the rocks were big and you felt perfectly confident in their ability to hold you. Other times, the rocks were smaller and you think, "Ok, just remember how many other people do this hike everyday...it's perfectly fine." And it was. There was like a party on Robert Ridge when we got there. I have never seen so many people on a track before. It was chilly, but not cold. Perfect hiking temperature, in my opinion. We had to go around the ridge of about 2/3 basins before we started heading down Speargrass Hut. At the 2nd basin we stopped at a picturesque spot of a small glacier lake, beautiful mountains, and craggy rocks and had some lunch. Mmm PB&J, carrots, and plums. Yum! I definitely had a "Nature Valley" moment. It was windy, chilly, beautiful, serene, completely isolated and I just felt amazing...wholly independent and proud of myself. Yes, I'm super lame, I know. But I was challenging myself with every step on that hike. I felt accomplished and ... fantastic! Haha, ok, I'm done. Enough of that.
After lunch we realized we should probably pick up the pace. It was getting late and we didn't know how long it would take us to get down to Speargrass Hut. The summit of Mt. Robert is about 1400m and we reached another 1800m along the ridge. We had to get down somehow but at each turn of the track we just saw more up and windy paths, no downwards paths. So we trudged along until Geoff pointed at a steep, rocky, avalanche-heaven "path." He promised us this is where we go down. "It's not as steep as you think." He showed us on the map and pointed out a footprint coming up. Kelsey and I looked at each other, looked at the ... whatever it was ... and followed. It wasn't bad. It was just... ridiculous. And yes, it wasn't as steep as it looked either. We just walked sideways down this path and let the momentum of the falling stones bring us down. When we reached the bottom where it was smushy grass, our feet had no idea what to do. For the past three hours we had been tiptoe-ing over these jagged rocks and rolling down a rocky slide. It took a few steps for me to get used to the soft, squishy, mossy ground.
We had made it down, now what? We knew we had to follow a creek, so we found the creek, refilled our water with super fresh water and continued down. Ok, I'm supposed to be graceful right? Years and years of dance is supposed to have given me perfect balance. Nah. I have never fallen, slipped, slid, face planted, what have you, as much as I did on this track. Thank god I was in the back and my fellow trampers didn't have to see the ridiculous show I put on. It was like a Three Stooges episode. My legs ached from the hours of upwards movement and with each step I took, I could feel the lactic acid coursing through my veins. We hopped over rocks and the creek a handful of times (Nothing like Mt. Fyffe though. There was no wading through raging rapids, thankfully). When I slipped for the 100th time I was getting so frustrated and vechlempt that I had a little inward tantrum. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME! WHY WONT MY LEGS DO WHAT I TELL THEM TO!!!! Grrrr...
Then I realized after slip 101 that I should probably cool my jets and just chill out. There's no crying in baseball... nor hiking. I slowed my pace, relaxed, and started singing the soundtrack to RENT. I started from the opening scene and got to intermission. Every. Single. Word. I knew my Drama nerdiness would come in handy sometime. After "La Vie Boheme," we reached a path that was completely mud. I started stepping on the roots of the ferns and flax that bordered the track and then all of a sudden, the fern I was stepping on sank into the muddy abyss and so did I. I let out a squeal as I felt the mud squelch into my shoe. I quickly jumped up and sprayed mud all over myself and ran as fast as I could out of the nastiness. It was hilarious (in hindsight), but grosser than gross. Then about 20 minutes of squelchy tramping later (after La Vie Boheme Reprise :) ) We reached a bridge that said, "Car park 2.5 hours -->, Angelus Hut 3 hours ^, Speargrass Hut 5 minutes <--" YESS! We made it. Five minutes, my butt. Not a minute later we were kicking off our muddy clothes and starting the fire in the hut.
That night we had another delicious tramping dinner. I had brought some of NZ's finest canned tuna (seriously, it's delish) and stuck that in my ramen for some extra protein. Then we played another epic game of Rummy and then Kelsey taught me to play Uno. How did I never play this as a lil' nugget?? It's AWESOME! At 8pm we decided it was bedtime. We crawled into the bunks, snuggled onto the wonderful industrial-strength plastic mattresses and passed out. At about 7am, I woke up to a gorgeous sunrise over the mountains around Speargrass Hut and to a beautiful, glistening frost that covered everything outside. We were still at about 1000m up so it was chilly. Good thing we hadn't camped in Frank like we were planning. I would've gotten hypothermia knowing how freezing I always get.
We got an earlier start than expected. After a nutritious breakfast of dried peaches and Heart to Heart trail mix (There was no way I could stomach another PB&J...gag), we set off to get to the car park. We reached some nasty muddy trails again. My awesome purple shoes were a wonderful shade of brown now, so there was no turning back. We just trudged along trying not to get completely muddy and kept along the track. It was a beautiful hike back. Completely in the forest and a good mix of uphill and downhill. It wasn't too slippery (YAY!) and there were no craggy rocks for me to fall and bruise my booty on. At one point, I was huffing and puffing up these roots of a tree and lost the speed demons Kelsey and Geoff around a corner. I knew I was on the right path b/c the markers were still there, but I thought at every turn I would see Geoff's bright orange shirt or Kelsey's bright pack through the woods, but no such luck. I had a little panicky moment, but all of a sudden, I heard this chirping and looked over and saw a fan tail! They're everywhere, but I had never seen on this close. He was just chillin' on a knee-high branch and looking up at me. I looked at him and he started fanning his beautiful plumage and totally flirting with me. He thought I was the prettiest sheila in the bush (Ok, I'm not in Aussie yet, but it was fitting). Anyway, Francis, my new fantail friend, decided to keep me company for the rest of the tramp towards the car park. He would flit around my head and then fly away and I would find him on a low branch about 100m away. One point I walked right up to his perch and stuck out my finger and he jumped on! I let out a really quiet giggle for fear he'd get spooked and gouge my eyeballs out with his tiny beak, but he flew off instantly anyway. It was still awesome. Epic moment of the Nelson Lakes. Hiking alone is nice and you're totally one with nature, but I was still kind of nervous about being on the wrong path. Apparently I was heading off path because all of a sudden, Francis dive bombs my feet and I freak my shizzle. Omg, he's a killer fan tail. The NZ version of Monty Python's killer rabbit. I look up to give Francis a talking to, and I see he's perched on the next orange track marker. Holy crap on a cracker. This is the smartest bird ever.
Ok, I understand that he was probably just flying too low and I hopped up at the perfect moment so we collided. And he's also probably attracted to orange shiny things, like track markers, but I'd like to think he was telling me I was going off track and wanted to guide me. And keep me company b/c I was nervous about being alone :)
I had a super spiritual moment in that forest that morning. When I saw 10mins to car park, I jumped up and down and did a little jig with Francis and gave the track marker a huge smooch. I said a little prayer to Tane, the Maori Guardian of the World Tree:
Kia hora te marino, kia whakapapa pounamu te moana, kia tere ai te
karohirohi i mua tonu i o koutou huarahi
May the calm be widespread, may the sea be as the smooth surface of the
greenstone, and may the rays of sunshine forever dance along your pathway.
I made it! My buddy, Francis, kept me company until I reached the 10min marker and I had a second wind and ran all the way to the car to tell Kelsey and Geoff of my experience. The second I opened my mouth to tell them about Francis, I realized how stupid it sounded. "Did he tell you his name was Francis, b/c that would be cooler." Haha, no, it was between Francis and Frederick, but he was too flirtatious to be a Frederick. Duh. When I got back to Ilam and told Cody, he insisted I had eaten some wild mushrooms and had a little trippy moment, haha. Maybe the creek water had hallucinogenic properties.
To make my little solo-adventure even crazier, I couldn't get a good picture of Francis at all! It was like he didn't want anyone else to see him so he would fly away just as I would snap the pic. Cheeky lil' birdy.
Anyway, enough of my not-so-imaginary friend... We set for home immediately after we got back to the car park. We all gingerly took off our boots and hobbled around the car park munching on some lunch before we hit the road. Geoff drove home and I think we clocked it at 3.5 hours back. I was hanging on for dear life in the back seat while he whipped through the NZ roads. My coping mechanism was to pass out. So I fell asleep for the majority of the ride back... it wasn't too bad :)
These past few days have been back to my sedentary habits. Wake up, have a "traditional kiwi breakfast" of sausages, canned spaghetti and eggs. Don't knock it till you try it. It's like lumberjack food! You dont eat again until dinner b/c it's so filling...yuuuum. Then I just spend the day kicking around Ilam. I've been wandering the streets a lot, checking out potential houses for me to live in if I come back for Grad school. So far, I've picked a cute little house off of Waimari with a huge rose garden :) I had my camera, but I couldn't snipe photos b/c the owners were outside enjoying the sunshine. One of these days I'll take some.
Kelsey and I are going to Sydney and Cairns in 3 days!!! We're spending a few days in Sydney and staying with a buddy of mine from High School and then off to Cairns to go snorkeling and getting our tan on. I asked Sam, from AHS, if he could promise me a few things:
1.) a couch to sleep on....check!
2.) P. Sherman 42 Wallaby Way.....doesn't exist :( :( :(
3.) a Koala.....CHECK!
So 2 outta 3 isn't too bad. I'll just have to find Nemo on my own then.
I have to put up the pics from my Dad's visit, but here are the ones from Mt. Robert and Nelson Lakes. Some of my favorite shots so far :)
Frank being all cammo and a gorg. Mt. Robert
One of my many Lake Rotoiti shots
These ducks are pretty bold!
:)
Going up Mt. Robert
At the summit
Up and up and up...
What a way to wake up :)
Gorgeous
Frosty
...yum
Francis!
Should be an LL Bean ad :)
The next few weeks are gonna be amazing! Sydney for three days, Cairns for four, then my lovebug family is coming!!!! Aaand classes start (booo).
Hope you like the pics of Nelson Lakes!
Keep and eye out for photos from my Dad's visit...
