Not Last [August 2011]

Every time a climbing competition came to our gym in Florida, I seemed to be working. It was one aspect of climbing I always wanted, but never had a previous opportunity, to experience. That is until my weekend belaying the first round of the New Zealand National Climbing competition when it came to Wanaka back in March. I had a blast belaying for the comp and getting to watch all of the climbers, and was even asked if I would be around to belay for the finals in Christchurch in August. Of course, 5 months is a lot of advanced planning for a where-the-wind-blows traveler, so I made no commitments at the time, and we left it as "we'll contact you and just know that we'd love to have you!" My time in Wanaka flew by and before I knew it, I received the email asking if I would be available to help again. The climbing club members who intended to go began their training rituals, and I decided that I'd quite like to participate if I were to head all the way to Christchurch for the comp!

Although it was unfortunate timing as I was nursing a back injury and hadn't been climbing super hard for a while, I decided to say yes to belaying, register to compete, and make plans to get to Christchurch. I trained as much as I could, did a bit of research to better understand the competition rules and scoring, and took the weekend off of work.

The Post I Never Wanted to Write.

Well, the inevitable happened. Everyone will tell you that if you travel for long periods of time, there are a few things that are guaranteed to occur. What I think rates as number one is: you will get sick. Well, we addressed that one in my last post. When traveling alone, you will probably get lonely. And with extended travel, you will probably at some point be pretty tight with money. I have definitely touched on all of the above during the past year. The other thing is that, no matter how prudent you are, you will likely experience theft. This is why travelers are encouraged to wear those stupid body wallets under their clothes, why they sell all sorts of locks and chains and armoured gear, and why they tell you never to leave valuables in your car.

For most of my year, I got by with experiencing NZ as a relatively safe place. So much of the country is made up of farmland and small towns where you might not even have a key to your house. Yes, there are travelers everywhere so you do need to be careful, but for the most part I was fairly removed from feeling vulnerable or unsafe. I did have a couple food items stolen in one hostel, and a pair of trousers disappeared from my belongings at another, but I'd say two encounters with petty theft in a whole year is pretty darn good. I always kept my things packed away in my bag, even if I was staying in a hostel for more than a night. I preferred top bunks in busy hostels where I slept with a bag containing my laptop, wallet, and passport. On road trips I kept valuables with me - or, if necessary, hidden in the depths of my things. I lived by the notion of "out of sight, out of mind" and, near as I could tell, it worked. As they say, "opportunity creates a thief," so I made a good effort not to allow 'opportunity' to come knocking.

South Island Road Trip with Louise: Skydiving!

Like I said before, Lou and I had certain things on our list of activities to accomplish during our south island road trip. Aside from bouldering at Castle Hill and swimming with dolphins in Kaikoura, one of the items on the list with the highest priority was skydiving. I wanted to dive in Abel Tasman because the outline of the land has such a neat shape and I suspected you would see all the beautiful beaches in the national park, as well as the surrounding mountains and maybe even Nelson from afar (there are also rumors that on a really clear day you can see the north island!) Lou, on the other hand, had it in her mind that she wanted to do it in Taupo, on the north island (I’m sure also a beautiful place with its huge lake and stunning mountains nearby). Somehow she was able to wait to go with me (since that was the plan that didn’t work out for my birthday back in January) and we set ourselves up to do it in Abel Tasman.

Well, the weather decided otherwise and by the time we were together in Nelson it took a turn toward dark and dreary – nothing good for jumping out of a plane! We decided it wasn’t a good idea to wait around just to see if the weather happened to improve in the next couple days, and set off on our road trip instead. We decided to head towards Fox and Franz Joseph Glaciers and thought it would be a good compromise to do our skydive there. We chose Franz Joseph due to the elevation of the drop and when we realized we would be seeing Mt. Cook (one of Lou’s absolute favorite places in NZ) on the way down, excitement began to grow!

South Island Road Trip with Louise: Hitting the Road

There were so many times that Louise and I tried to plan our travels together around the South Island, but it never seemed to work out. She had some friends headed down that we were meant to meet up with for a bit of a road trip. We knew this months ago (she invited me along after our first adventures together back in December) but two of her friends were moving to the country and had to wait for their shipping container to arrive before they could embark on the road trip. The only dates set were for them to walk the Heaphy Track (one of NZ’s “great walks”) on the 15^th of February. Neither Lou or I were particularly keen on doing the Heaphy due to our numerous other walking adventures, so we decided to travel together while her friends were on the 4-6 day tramp.

Hitting the road in "Rocky" our well-loved car/home for the trip!

Unfortunately, that was the only plan we had. She came down to Nelson to meet me and couchsurfed where I was staying for a night. All other ideas were still up in the air. She hadn't booked her flight to Melbourne, we didn’t have a rental car, we didn’t know if we would be able to meet up with her friends, and I didn’t know how or where I was going to get back on the Flying Kiwi bus! To complicate the situation, we are two indecisive individuals who like to please other people and tend to only share opinions when we have a specific preference. Needless to say, planning, agreeing and deciding are difficult tasks for the two of us!

Playing with my camera while Lou battles the rain

A Picture Story... Road Trip!

I know, they are long awaited as I keep talking about all the wonderful things I'm doing in such beautiful places but you have yet to see what I mean! It's difficult to upload pictures with limited internet access, so I have omitted them for the most part so far. But, alas, I am going add some here from the road trip I took with Nate last weekend so you can finally have a taste the beauty I see every day :)

Here is our rental, at a look out along the major road (one lane each direction) that brought us up the Coromandel Peninsula. Looking at a map of the North Island, the Coromandel is the piece of land that sticks up in the middle, East of Auckland.

We arrived at Whitianga and found a backpackers (hostel) on the water where we ended up staying for two nights. Here are some awesome clouds from the beach the first night!