Paul's Travel Notebook

Musings from Germany

2007-05-18T09:52:00.001-07:00

Got the opportunity to travel to Germany for NI. What fun! Here's an abbreviated list of observations from Munich. Also have some things from Aachen which I'll get up eventually.

1) Beer costs less than Coke here.
2) Germans don't like long drinking toasts. Gets in the way of drinking. Prost!
3) Germans love American music. To an unhealthy extent.
4) Most Germans known English. My theory: because of #3.
5) Ausfahrt means an exit on a road (like an interstate exit). I think it sounds like "Ass-fart". When I tell the Germans this, they find it hilarious, too.
6) Everyone here is at least bilingual, if not trilingual. Makes me feel undeveloped. Or American. I constantly tell the "if you speak one language, you're American" joke.
7) An old German man kept talking to me in German on the subway, after I told him I spoke English only. I just nodded and laughed at random intervals, and that kept the conversation going for 15 awkward minutes. I think he was talking about being fat (he kept gesturing at his gut).
8) There are very few fat Germans, but there aren't that many fit Germans either. Unlike America, where we tend toward extremes it seems.
9) Eating German food is like being at the state fair all the time. Tastes great, but definitely will kill you and it gets old after a while. This might be why everyone seems pretty young here.
10) You measure beer consumption in Liters. It's a brilliant system. 1 Liter of beer for dinner, 2 to get drunk, 3 is too much. Beats counting ounces.
11) German cabs are nicer than your car. Unless you drive something better than a new Mercedes with leather seats.
12) The German public transportation system, in a word, rocks.
13) Germans love karaoke, to a fault.
14) Germans made me do karaoke. To a fault (obviously).
15) The best way to do a German accent is to say it like you're mocking them. Then it actually sounds right.
16) If a German is talking loudly to you, it's very difficult to tell if he's telling a joke or about to kick your ass.
17) There are a LOT of bikes here. You are more likely to get run over by a bike than a car.
18) The autobahn does kick ass, if there's not traffic on it. I got the company car up to 185 km/hr (~115mph). Not bad for a diesel.
19) I think you can count the number of Blacks here on one hand.
20) Germans put weird shit on pizza. Prosciutto, Tuna, Olives, peppercinni, lettuce, salami, etc.
21) There's a Hard Rock Cafe here. I hate that place.
22) I found an all-you-can-eat sushi buffet. The waitress spoke perfect English, Thai, and German.
23) We went and saw some local German bands play. Surprisingly, not all German music sounds like Rammstein. It probably should.
24) Don't bring up the war.

More to come...

Back in the USA!

2005-06-26T18:41:00.000-07:00

Okay, if you have followed this at all or ever talked to me in the past two months, you'll know that I'm back in the states. Sorry I was too lazy to post it here.

My new adventure has been moving to Austin Texas. I'll cover these trials and tribulations at my normal blog:
Paul's Blog. Enjoy!

SCUBA diving on the reef

2005-03-18T20:57:00.000-08:00

Number of hours of continuous sleep: 2

Today is SCUBA diving day. Our 3-dive tour is scheduled to pick us up at 7:30AM. Getting up wasn’t too hard, because I’m used to being up at 8am for my early class for the past few weeks. Like I mentioned in the last post, drunk people kept waking me up last night, so I was a little tired. Hopefully, I can sleep on the boat a bit.

We arrive at the marina, which is loaded with very expensive boats that I should own one day. Our coach for the day turns out to be a 25 meter (82 feet) catamaran that appears to be fairly new. These guys are cut out for the high seas, thank goodness. A friendly crew greets us, about 15 or so young divers and ship mates. After a humorous debriefing by who appears to be the head SCUBA guy (bug the captain, don’t piss off the chef, etc), we lounge around for another half hour until we get to the reef.

The boat itself is a two-story twin turbo-diesel catamaran which moves quite quickly, about 30-35 knots from what I can tell. The lower deck is specially designed for diving and contains a recharge station for about 40 diving tanks and a special deck that lowers to water level to help a diver loaded with 50 lbs of gear to get out of the water relatively easily.

Our first dive was scheduled for 10AM. We were split into groups of four with an instructor/guide per group. Since noone in our group was certified, there was a brief lesson and limits as to what we could do in the water (“Do NOT push this button!”). Fortunately, our guide has a good sense of humor and liked to have a good time.

By this point on the trip, I now know my wetsuit size after wearing them 4 previous times. This is strange. We get geared up with a wetsuit (which we turned out to not really need because the water was warm), flippers, goggles, a weight belt, and of course, an air tank. I had forgotten the secret to getting goggles not to fog but was quickly reminded – hawk up a nice loogie and rub it around on your goggles before putting them on. Brilliant!

We hop in the water and we practice a few important SCUBA maneuvers, like recovering you regulator and getting water out of your face mask. After we get our basics down, our instructor does her trademark happy dance and we go for a swim. On one of the tanks we were using, you can last for about 20-30 minutes under water before having to surface. They were pumped up to about 3100 PSI. Lotta air in a little space.

This was my first time diving, and it was an incredible experience. Being under water for more than a minute is fascinating. You can’t hear anything, it’s like you’re in a dream world. Once I got the hang of only breathing through my mouth, it was natural and I almost forgot about my SCUBA gear. I was initially scared that my ears wouldn’t be able to handle the pressure, but once I mastered equalizing the pressure, it didn’t bother me at all. The ecosystems on the Australian Great Barrier Reef are nothing short of amazing.

Floating around down there is like visiting another planet in another dimension where you’re weightless and hearing isn’t a sense. The colors were absolutely amazing, and the pictures don’t often do justice to what we saw. Right away we saw some of the millions of corals, anemones, and other animals and plants that made up the reef. The size, shapes, and colors were like nothing seen on land. The variety of fish was nothing short of amazing, either. Between gigantic schools of little tiny fish to beasts the size of us, there was everything imaginable just in the small area that we were in.

Our instructor led us to a sandy spot and we found a sea slug the size of a football that you could toss around. She explained the creature’s anatomy to us by referencing her own—pointing to the slug’s mouth and then her mouth, the slug’s butt then her butt, etc. Laughing underwater can get you in trouble, so I had to resist.

We swam along, and basically went on the Finding Nemo tour. We saw a clownfish in its respective sea anemone Of course, we took a bunch of pictures. I was in a tough position seeing as I have a very itchy trigger finger and only had 27 exposures at my disposal. So, I was a little more judicious with the photos on this dive, and with 3 dives in all, that makes for 60 pictures… We’ll find out soon if they came out.

After 20-30 minutes of quality diving, our guide ushers us back – Clark managed to run low on air first and thus earned the title “Air Slut” well before any of us were getting close to the critical 50 bar (500-1000 PSI) range. Maybe he just had big lungs…

Surfacing was painless. You don’t have to clear your ears as you go up; the air just seeps out of them. We swam back to boat, climbed in, toweled off, and prepared for our next dive. I reloaded my underwater camera and prayed for it not to leak anymore.

The other two dives were more of the same, except we had more freedom since we didn’t have to go through a training session again. My camera seemed to leaking a little bit, but I hope the pictures still turned out (film is pretty tolerant of water). For some reason, I felt like I was a little too counterweighted and had problems sinking a little too much, so when my instructor wasn’t looking I put some more air in my vest (which they told us not to do). Oh well, it helped me out. Apparently, if you put too much air in your vest and you start rising, it expands and you rise faster and the next thing you know you’re on the surface with the bends and busted eardrums.

The trip back was uneventful and consisted of a combination of reading and sleeping. I managed to hop off the boat and leave my hat on, of course I don’t realize this until after I returned to the hostel.

From what I hear, 8 people a year die diving in Australia. Fortunately, no one on our trip became a statistic.

We call it an early night after eating a delicious AU$7 buffet (all-you-can-eat, hell yeah) at the hostel. We have to be up early for a 6:30AM depature on our deep sea fishing trip!

Cheers,
--P

Off to Cairns!

2005-03-17T04:13:00.000-08:00

Happy St. Patty’s day!

So I woke up this morning, did the class thing, and did my final errands before heading to the airport. While wandering around, buying film, and getting my daily Kebab (I’ve lost count now), I try taking a picture of a street artist only to find that I have indeed broken my digital camera.

A moment of silence for my fallen camera.

I compensate by buying more film for my underwater camera. With a week left, it should hold out. I did some math, and after 6800 pictures, and factoring the cost of the camera at $300, that’s $.05 a picture. I’m doing pretty well.

So anyway, the gameplan is to go to Cairns, get a little scuba diving in, some fishing, and possibly tool around on some ATVs to wrap up the weekend. With a majority of the people from our trip going on this little side trip, it should be pretty interesting.

Now, you might be asking yourself, “how do you pronounce ‘Cairns’”? I still ask that question. The Aussies say “Cans”, which would give the word not one but two silent letters. Aussies have a funny habit of moving around ‘r’s, adding them to some words and removing them from others. The most blatant example of this is when a Aussie says “No”. It comes out as “Nor!”, especially when they get agitated. Other examples:
• English: “Hello” – Aussie: “Hellor”
• “Melbourne” – “Melbon”

I get my stuff packed up, and head to the airport by myself. Since I buggered up my ticket that was booked with everyone else originally, I booked a different one through the local budget airline, JetStar. Brisbane has a train, akin to MARTA, that runs to the airport every few minutes. It’s pretty expensive - $11 a trip, but is cheaper than a cab I suppose.

Because I’m used to catching flights out of Atlanta, I get to the airport way too early. After getting through security (and having my umbrella examined and my pocket screwdriver confiscated), I kill some time by eating some shitty Aussie pizza (I have yet to find good pizza or hamburgers in this hemisphere) and devouring a Dan Brown novel.

A word about Jetstar airlines. This is by far the most cheaply run airline I’ve ever seen. They only fly low-end Boeing or Airbus planes. There are no assigned seats. Boarding is done by first-come-first serve. The gate doesn’t have a jetway—you have to walk on the tarmac to get into the plane. I was surprised that the pilot wasn’t outside throwing baggage onto the plane.

On board the plane, every seemed more or less like a normal airplane, except the stewardesses were charging for everything, even soft drinks! Disappointed (but not mad, you can’t ask much when you fly the Greyhound of the skies), I passed out and slept for most of the flight.

To Jetstar’s credit, however, they did have the most gorgeous stewardresses I’ve ever seen on an airplane.

The hostel that we picked out was nice enough to pick us up from the airport. After some confusion from 30 of us checking in at once, we get settled in and try to sleep for the night. Seeing as it was St. Patricks day, this proved to be more difficult than anticipated. Normally, I would have participated in the festivities, but after being up since 7AM and having our scuba trip departing early the following morning, I didn’t want to go out.

Being it was a hostel, I got put in a room with 5 other random people, who randomly turned out to be extremely drunk most of the night and coming in and out of the room at all hours of the night. They were never in there long enough for me to wake up to yell at them, but they sucked at life. At least the room has air conditioning – Cairns is quite humid and warm.

Long day tomorrow.

--P

The Prodigy, Live in Brisbane!

2005-03-08T22:22:00.000-08:00

TOUR SOME MORE: Our first of many architecture tours was today. We’re starting to feel the routine of it – but it’s still interesting. Brisbane, like every other Australian city, is a port city. It’s built inland on a river that is quite curvy. This makes the city hard to navigate if you try to reference your position by the river.

Unlike other Australian cities, timber is abundant here and thus most of the residential houses are built of wood unlike the common sandstone structures in Sydney. To avoid having to level land, most of the houses are on stilts too, much like you would see in a town on the east coast that regularly dodges hurricanes.

We do get to see a neat art museum. One piece that stands out is a sculpture that reminds people where the high water line is for floods – it’s the word “Flood” but it’s built to look like the cement is coming up over the sculpture. Of course, we climb on it and take pictures being the mature adults we are.

Josh and I get yelled out for talking on the bus while the professor is trying to lecture. Oh well.

When we get back from the tour, I take a nap, eat dinner, then go looking for someone to accompany me to the Prodigy concert that night. Tyler finally agrees to tag along, being a fan of the music.

PRODIGY!! The venue is called “The Arena Complex”, which to me sounded like a nice big place where there will be a huge crowd. Should be nice, I figured. When we arrive at the place, I was quite surprised to learn that the Arena was in fact, not an Arena by any stretch o the word, but a large bar capable of holding about 1500 people. For this kind of concert, this would be extremely cool.

Unfortunately for us, the show was sold out, so we came prepared with Aussie Bucks to look for some scalped tickets. After a few minutes of nagging people as they went by, two large, intimidating, drunk, jolly guys offer a ticket to us. After some brief haggling, I couldn’t get the guy under $100AU, so finally accepted his ticket. He promises to buy me a drink inside too, which was nice of him.

Now, it was time to get Tyler a ticket. We ask around for tickets for another 10 minutes, when someone finally directs us to a fellow standing down the street wearing a bookbag. We approach the guy, who was looking conspicuously nonchalant. I was instantly creeped out by this guy, because he talked in a low, monotone voice, made excessive eye contact, and made unnecessarily long pauses in the conversation. We finally get a ticket out of the guy, and we were set to go in.

The inside of the place was relatively tiny. The dancefloor was approximately 30 feet square, and an upper balcony ran around the room. The total floor area of the place wasn’t much larger than that of a basketball court. Now, imagine a sound system that stretched to the ceiling. By my educated estimates, it was at least a 50,000-watt system. Adam Freeland was the opening DJ, of whom I’m a big fan. This guy was real good, and he got the crowd going with some of his tunes. He randomly mixed in “Song 2” by Blur, which really got people excited. After he got us good and sweaty, he finished his set, and the stage hands clambored on stage to revel the Prodigy set behind the curtain.

First off, I wasn’t expecting much more than a pair of turntables and couple of MC’s jumping around yelling at us. I couldn’t be more wrong. As the curtain dropped away, I was stunned to see an entire setup more complicated than most rock bands. An elaborate drum set, two guitars, a bass, and some mic stands surround a futuristic console of 5 keyboards, 2 computers, and a bevy of miscellaneous equipment.

Apparently, you can play electronic music completely live. I did not know this.

A minute-long build up intro played to get every into the mood, and the band marched out on stage. The band itself dressed in usually wacky-musician with crazy hair attire.

But first, a word about Prodigy’s music. It is the definition of pure hard energy. A typical Prodigy song is like a workout—it warms you up, slams you into a constant frenzy, holds you there ‘till you’re exhausted, gives you a little break, then lays it on again. Liam Howlett, the man behind the music, manages to pull this off nearly every song without using the same song over again is beyond me.

So, knowing this, my expectations were quite high by this point after seeing the set. I wasn’t disappointed. As the first song rose to its crescendo and slammed into it’s full energy, it hit me like a freight train and I couldn’t do anything but dance. The sound was deafening but crystal at the same time, and the lights were blinding and in perfect sync to the music. The total package made the entire room explode into dancing/jumping/whatever you have it and was amazing. And this was the opening song.

Prodigy has high expectations of its fans, and we had to work hard to keep up with them. I was completely soaked by the fourth song, and exhausted by the time they wrapped up the set. They played songs off their new CD, as well as their classics – Firestarter, Breathe, Smack my Bitch Up, and more. At the end, I couldn’t handle anymore as I was exhausted, dehydrated, soaked, and every last bit of euphoria in me spent into the air. It had been only an hour and half. What a rush.

Simply put, this was and probably will be the best concert I have ever been to. It’s unfortunate this group doesn’t have plans to currently tour the states, but if you ever have the opportunity to see these guys live, don’t pass it up no matter how much it costs.

Afterwards, we mustered up some energy, got cleaned up, and went out for a bit. Nothing much came of that, but it was fun still.

Sorry I’m posting this out of order, but I had to get it down before I forgot it. The older entries are still coming, promise!

--P

Life at the end of a rubber band

2005-01-30T20:35:00.000-08:00

Pictures

Okay, now I’m actually writing this in march, when this happened over a month ago. But I have my numerous pictures to jog my memory!

Today is extreme bungy jumping day. Ian went out of his way to get us booked on AJ Hackett’s THRILLOGY bungy jumping tour, which includes 3 jumps from world-famous spots. On our way to the first jump, I notice the guy who drove our van to the canyon swinging place, where I conveniently lost my camera the previous day. On a hunch, I ask him if he found it, he says yes, and I have to restrain myself from jumping on and hugging me. I settle for jumping up and down like a little kid on Christmas, instead.

With my precious camera in hand, I’m ready to rock and roll and we head to the station to get weighed in and ready to go. We make a few practice jumps while waiting in line. I find out that I weighed in at 80kilos, or 176 lbs. Need to eat some more food.

BUNGY BACKGROUND: Before I continue, let me give you some bungy background. It was first popularized by AJ Hackett, one of your typical Kiwis with a complete disregard for personal wellbeing. I may have mentioned this before, but New Zealand is very conducive to extreme sports as it is near impossible to sue operators for negligence or injury should your dumb extreme-sports self meet up with the wrong side of the ground, shark, or failing parachute. In exchange for this limited liability, the Kiwi government will compensate you directly if you get injured/maimed/killed/castrated/etc.

Any, AJ Hackett somehow figured out it would be fun to jump off a bridge while tethered to giant homemade rubber band. I suppose the first site was over a river so if the cord was accidentally made too long, at least the water would break your fall. We definitely saw some videos of ancient Africans performing similar feats, but it seems that the Kiwis were to first to commercialize this business.

What disturbed me most was when I learned they still custom-make their bungy cords on-site for their jumps. I was assured by several different people that the cords would hold you even if they were severed more than halfway through, so this comforted me a bit

Anyway, back to the bungy.

KAWARAU STATS:

Height: 42 meters (137 feet)
Strung up by: Ankles, backup waist harness
Jumping from: A bridge

Once we get our forms sorted out, sign our life away again, and rummage through the souvenir shop (I refrain from buying anything until after I have completed the jumping alive), we hop on the van and head to our first site, Kawarau, coincidentally the world’s first Bungy site.

So this site uses the popular string-em-up-by-the-feet-hog-style method of attaching you to the cord, which is actually fairly primitive. It consists of a towel wrapped around your ankles, with a cord simply tying you to the main bungee cord. For backup, you’re clipped to a safety harness so that makes us feel a little better.

The dude at the site asked me how wet I wanted to get. I said “A light dusting”, and I see him let out the cord quite a bit. On second thought, I went ahead and took off my shirt just in case. Good thing, too. For maximum scariness, I decided to jump backwards off the platform. It was pretty extreme, if I do say so myself, and I did have pretty good form in the process too.

After my light dusting, which turned out to be a full torso dunking, replete with freezing water, they reel me in on the raft and untie me. That rope gets pretty damn tight on the ankles, but better to have no circulation than to let gravity take over!

Conclusion: Bungee jumping is extreme, my pulse definitely took a while to come down, and now I’m pumped for some more action. Good thing this was the beginner jump—bigger ‘n better things to come!

Our next stop was at the Nevis, one of the world’s tallest land-based bungee sites.

NEVIS STATS:

Height: 134 meters (440 feet)
Jumping from: High-tension cable-supported jump pop
Strung up by: Releasable ankles with full-body harness backup.

I thought I had gotten over the initial fear by going off the first jump, but this proved me wrong. Once I saw the jump pod suspended over the canyon, my knees definitely got a little weak. I wasn’t the only one who was nervous, some of the girls were practically flipping out (I won’t point out any names here to protect the (somewhat) innocent).

To get out to the pod, we had to take a cable car which was quite small and shaky. When they had us clip onto the safety line in the cable car, I knew this was going to be extreme.

This bungy site was far more advanced than the first one, with lots of winches, ropes, cables, buttons, pulleys, etc. I guess the workers wouldn’t have liked hauling up a 100-meter long rubber band by themselves. The worst part about this one was the little dentist chair they had you sit in as they strapped you onto the cord. This was mainly because you knew you couldn’t go back at this point.

Actually the worst part is stepping out to the edge with the cord pulling at your ankles and nothing but canyon underneath you.

Once you actually jump, the fear changes to exhilaration quickly and it is one extreme rush. This jump was so tall that once I rebounded, the second free-fall was still longer than the first bungy jump of the day. After the second or third rebound, you’re supposed to reach up to release your feet from the bungy cord, so you’re just hanging by the harness. This helps keep you from killing too many brain cells from the blood rushing to your brain. I must say though, it is rather unnerving to unhook part of yourself from a bungy cord, no matter what else is attached!

THE LEDGE BUNGY:

Height: Approx 50 meters
Strung up by: Full body harness, at the waist
Jumping From: Ledge extending from the side of the mountain

This bungy had us suspended from the waist. The advantage to this is we could jump off however we wanted. I elected to try the “running man” all the way down, and the results were fairly humorous. This one was by far the least scary of the three, but I still had a lot of fun doing it.

EXTREME STREET LUGE: A nice unexpected gem at this final bungy site was a downhill street luge course. The idea is simple; cost a souped-up-skateboard down a racetrack, ride up on a ski-lift, and do it again. The speeds were pretty damn fast, and we had a blast doing it. The experience reminded me of Mario Kart for humans. I knew it would be fun once I saw that helmets were required, but I was rather surprised when I didn’t have to fill out a won’t-sue-if-I-get-maimed-or-killed waiver. At $5 a run, it was a bargain.

CASINO: I was thrilled to learn that Queenstown had a casino. My logic was that I had survived all the extreme events thus far, so obviously my luck was good. Since I like playing streaks, it made perfect sense to hit up the casino. Sure enough, unlike the other nights, I came out a little bit ahead and was back even for the trip.

Once again, this weekend is packed, and we have to be up and at ‘em early to catch our flight back to Wellington. Being up since 7AM really takes the steam out of you.

--P

Canyoning, Swinging, Jetboating, oh my!

2005-01-29T20:05:00.000-08:00

Pictures

EARLY RISER: My morning began early, against my will, when the fire alarm convienently went off around 4AM. I was dead asleep, but it’s hard to sleep through an alarm when the siren is just feet from your head on the top bunk. It’s rather surreal being woken up in this matter, as it took me quite a few minutes to figure out exactly what was going on and if I was actually awake or not.

Of course, it turned out to be a false alarm, and the entire hostel grumbled back inside, cursing the unknown forces that set off the alarm, and we got a few more hours of treasured sleep. 7AM arrived much too quickly, and we were up and getting ready for extreme canyoning.

CANYONING: Now, if you’re like I was, you’re asking, what is canyoning? In a nutshell, it what’s you used to do in the neighborhood creek/river when you were a kid, but on an extreme level.

We were picked up by our canyon guides out front of our hostel. Our group added on two more people, a guy from California on the tail-end of his honeymoon (but the wife didn’t want to come), and a German backpacker girl. The two tour guides rode up front. The passenger passes back a waiver for us to sign, while the driver slams in a techno tape and we hit the road to the canyon site.

We don’t talk much until we get there, where we’re fitted up for wetsuits. This is the third time I’ve put on a wetsuit on this trip, so I now know I wear a size 4. At this point, I’m still not quite sure what we’re getting into, but as I strap on a climbing harness, I assume it will be fun. The guides introduce themselves as Swedes who have been doing this for quite some time. They apologize in advance for their “Swinglish” and tell us to make them repeat themselves if we don’t understand them.

Our outfits are capped off by helmets (another “extreme indicator”). Mine is labeled “Elvis”. One of the guides notices I got the Elvis helmet and says “You know, zee King?” as he thrusts his hips around. I laugh and confirm that yes, I am indeed familiar with Elvis.

The trip starts off with a little hike (all hikes are now little compared to our Mt. Doom trip). At the top, we encounter a zip-line. Excellent. Our guide gives us a quick rundown of what to do: “Just run as fast as you can down this hill”. Check. Being the intrepid soul that I am, I decide to go first. I clip on, start running, but apprehensively. After all, I am headed straight down a canyon. Fortunately, the zip line takes hold and carries me across the canyon, a good 80 feet in the air or so.

I come up a few feet short of the end, so the Swede on the other end has to pull me in, chastising me for not running fast enough. I feel a little bad until I see the rest of the group comes up shorter than I did on the line. Suckers.

Next up, we have to rappel into the canyon. Unlike the abseiling we did in the cave a few weeks ago, this was controlled by the guide. All we had to do was walk down the face of the canyon and he would control our descent. This went pretty smoothly, and the group assembled in the canyon.

The basic idea at this point was to simply traverse through the canyon. There was a moderate stream running through it that turned out not to be as cold as I expected. What made this extreme was that we would jump off and slide down everything we could in the process.

Our first stop was a small rock slide, a few feet. The guide shows us how to go down, and once again I end up being the guinea pig. For this slide, I crossed my arms, sat down, and slide down backwards, head-first, into the pool below. This was rather disorienting, shocking, and fun at the same time as the cold water gave me a nice surprise. I was fortunate to be wearing the helmet as I slightly brushed a rock with my head on the way down.

We romped down a few more small slides like this and then came to our first big slide. This one was a good 3 meters or so tall (10 feet) and was a chute of water plunging into a pool below. It was rather intimidating, but the idea was simple: just keep your arms in and legs together and go! This was quite fun, as the slide terminated earlier than I expected and dumped me through the air the rest of the way.

Once we all went down that slide, it was time to learn how to jump from tall places into shallow water. Oh boy. We climbed up a rock face, and after quick instructions, jumped 9 feet (your typical high-dive height) into a 3-foot pool. Basically, you have to make as big of a splash as possible as to slow yourself down as quickly as possible. Seeing as none of us were crippled in the process, I assume we all did it correctly.

The rest of the trip was more of the same. I chickened out on one jump that was too high into too shallow water for my liking. (“If you don’t do this right, you’ll probably get hurt”). No thanks! Fortunately, most of the group chickened out as well so I didn’t feel too bad about it.

One pool we had to do a belly flop into to avoid hitting the bottom. I should have done it on my side as I banged up the boys a little bit as I hit the water. Oof.

We returned, got unsuited, and I laughed as Kun tries to get Dan out of his wetsuit.

JETBOAT: Our next extreme activity today will be Jetboating up the Shotover river. What is jetboating? Take a jetski, make it hold fifteen people and add horsepower to boot, and you have a jetboat. Throw in a clinically insane driver who likes to drive up a narrow river, and you have the Shotover Jetboat.

This was much more commercialized than I expected, with an intro video on the bus and processing that resembled that of a theme park. We meet our driver, who makes the expected “Unfortunately I’m your driver, this is my first day” jokes. I was rather disappointed by the lack of seatbelts on the boat, that meant there was little chance of us getting tossed out. The boat pulled away from the dock, we do some quick manuveurs for the camera, then speed up the river.

The river itself is absolutely beautiful, with the bright blue-green water we saw in the lakes on the way here. Much of the river is surrounded by canyon, which makes for an interesting time while speeding through it at 40mph.

The jetboat itself was quite interesting. It was powered by two supercharged engines, each putting out 250HP or so, giving the boat some 500HP. This sounds like a lot, but for a boat it isn’t all that impressive. The boat itself could operate in about 4 inches of water, which I found very interesting. This was also very useful in the very shallow parts of the river.

One of the trademarks of jetboats is doing the little hockey-stop maneuver where the driver cuts hard to one side and guns it, making the boat spin around in its wake. This is pretty fun the first few times, but gets old after a while.

The trip lasted for about 30 minutes or so, and we head back after that and get some history behind the river in the process.

All in all, the trip was fun but probably the least extreme activity we’ll be doing this weekend. I wish I could drive the boat, now that would be interesting.

CANYON SWING: Apparently, New Zealand has some bored people. There’s no other way they would come up with this stuff. Canyon swinging is our final stop of the day. What is Canyon Swinging? Well, apparently someone got drunk and decided it’d be fun to swing out on a 100-meter cable over a gigantic canyon. Brilliant!

It is basically a really really big version of the swings you rode in the playground as a kid.

We arrive there in one piece in a van that’s been retrofitted with racing-type seats for all of the seats. Whoever installed them was a bad welder and half of them barely held together. Extreme. The employees at this place remind me of aging California surfers.

A brief hike brought us to a interesting little canyon swinging compound, consisting of a few structures barely clinging to the side of the canyon and some interconnecting stairs. The place seemed like it was put together by a skilled craftsman without much engineering background. The cables spanning the canyon were impressive, and we contemplated how the heck they got them installed.

The canyon itself was huge, spanned a few hundred feet from cliff to cliff, and had a small river at the bottom. I didn’t appreciate the scope of the canyon until I saw a kayaker coming down, who was a small dot from where we were standing.

I was second to go in our group. The harness was fairly complicated, complete with shoulder, leg, and waist straps and a lot of buckles and clips. They got it on me quickly enough, and before I knew it I was teetering over the edge of the abyss below. While extreme, these guys had other people to “process” and wasted no time in getting me through. After some thought, I picked my fate as falling backwards off the platform. I can’t emphasize enough how scary this is. Gravity is fast. 9.8 meters/second^2 is very fast. You don’t realize this until you’re plummeting away from a platform, and you temporarily forget you have something to catch your fall.

The freefall was intense, lasted for a good second or two, and then the harness started pulling me in the huge sweeping arc across the canyon. From the platform, you can hear the whooshing noise of the unfortunate swinger (if it isn’t masked by screaming) as they careen across the gap. Once I was settled into the swing, the rest was pure fun once my adrenaline flattened out.

It was definitely a great way to kick off our extreme weekend.

On the ride back, we get out of the van, only for me to realize that I have left my camera behind somehow. I panicked, because that little thing is my lifeblood (if you haven’t noticed by now). There is a noticeable gap in the pictures that night, but hopefully I’ll find it tomorrow.

Cheers,

--P

Cruising to Queenstown in style

2005-01-28T19:30:00.000-08:00

Pictures

We turned in early last night, because we were up at the ass-crack of dawn today. We needed an early start so we could get to Queenstown on time. The Rental Van Crew (which I was drafted into) was unfortunate in that we had to get up an hour before the rest of the schmucks to go get our vans for the trip. Ah well.

The rentals this time were Toyota Previas or something to that tune. They were slightly smaller than the Hiaces we were used to renting, but had air conditioning and handled much better. These attributes would prove to be handy later on.

Our flightplan today included making a pit stop at Mt. Cook, a four-hour detour which looked like it would be interesting. Nobody was quite sure why were stopping there, or driving an extra four hours to do it, but nobody could think of a reason not to, so we went. Two vans of our group of three made the detour.

The drive up, at first, was rather bland until we reached the first of two phenomenal lakes. You have to see the pictures to truly appreciate what we saw. Blue. Everywhere. And not like the generic blue of the ocean, this was a shimmering almost glowing blue that was surreal. The water framed snow-capped mountains in the background, and made the perfect scene for pictures destined for postcards.

We stopped a few times for photo ops, and then continued onto a po-dunk town for lunch. I eventually settled on a little hole-in-the-wall café which turned out to be quite tasty.

We didn’t arrive into Queenstown until late that night, and we pretty much crashed once we checked into our hostel. The rooms were quite big – 8 people to a room, with little shower/bathroom pods for every two rooms. No air conditioning (grumble), but it was just barely cool enough to make the sleep bearable. It was too bad we had to be up at 8am the next morning, because we saw a lot of bustling activity around and wanted to check out some of the nightlife. Tomorrow is going to be EXTREME!

--P

Trip to Queenstown, stopover in Christchurch

2005-01-27T17:28:00.000-08:00

Pictures

Okay I’m getting behind on updating this thing. Good thing I take a metric asston of pictures to help remind me what to say.

I’ve earned several nicknames so far, best of which is “trigger”. You schmucks will thank me later!

Today marks our departure for Queenstown, the extreme sports capitol of the world. The entire goal for this weekend trip will be to do as much extreme stuff as possible.

A little background: New Zealand has very interesting laws when it comes to liability for extreme sports companies. In other words, it is nearly impossible for customers to sue the employees or companies for just about anything, even if its their fault. So, without America’s litigation-happy thundercloud looming over the heads of these companies, they go all out and offer some quite dangerous stuff. As well all know, danger is directly proportional to fun, so this translates into a smashing time!

We can’t fly directly to Queenstown for monetary reasons (their little bushwhacker airport is too expensive), so the plan is to fly into neighboring Christchurch and drive the rest of the way in rental cars.

Our flight is uneventful, except that we arrive at the airport way too early. That’s what you get for being used to American airports. Christchurch is an interesting city, obviously founded by Christians and the like – there is a large photogenic cathedral in the center of town, near the hostel we’re staying at. Since we’re leaving early in the morning for Queenstown, we only have a brief look around the city (hence the reduced quantity of photos today), before turning in at a relatively early hour.

At least our rental vans have air conditioning this time.

In our brief wandering around that night, Matt finds the All Blacks store (NZ’s famous Rugby Team’s sports shop), and gets a free ugly sock. Not sure exactly how this works but it did.

Long drive tomorrow.
--P

Jeff’s 21st B-day Smashtasticpart

2005-01-25T05:58:00.000-08:00

Pictures

Tuesday is party day.

Finally kicked the cold. I think.

More importantly, my colleague Jeff Levy is turning 21 today. We will have some fun with him.

CALL ON ME: We rounded up everyone for dinner, which turned into going to happy hour for a while. A few beer later, Jeff is up and dancing around to his theme song, “Call On Me” by Eric Prydz, which we know and love for solid dance beat and its raunchy music video. We had to request it a number of times before they played it in the middle of their ongoing set of moderate rock music, but eventually the bartended succumbed to our pressure and played it. He probably just wanted us to go away. Jeff proceeded to stand up and shout “My name is Jeff Levy and I LOVE THIS SONG!”

That was the point we all do the little hand-over-the-side-of-the-face-I-don’t-know-this-idiot move.

We eventually decided to relocate to a sushi joint before we continued our debauchery.

SUSHI: Our chosen target was a quaint place called “Catch”, a sushi-conveyer place. The premise is simple: make a lot of sushi, put it on a conveyer belt. When you see something you like, grab it, eat it, and pay for it. Brilliant. I ran up a $15 tab like usual (it’s so hard to stop eating sushi) and proceeded to try to get Amanda to eat some Sushi. After a series of funny faces and much protesting, I get her to choke down a chicken roll, and I even manage to get her to try a piece of raw tuna (without tell her it was raw of course), but I gave up after that.

Meanwhile, Jeff discovers he doesn’t like the taste of Sake.

Next stop: Big Kumara, where you can have a jug (small pitcher) of beer with some high quality wings for NZ$9.50. What a deal! We polish off a few of those, drink some more beer, and Jeff has his first stomach purging of the night. I think he drank a little too much beer too quickly.

Anyway, Jeff rallies and we move along to our final desination, Bodega, a bar famous (in my mind) for its lousy champagne and crappy DJ. At least it’s cheap, and that’s what we’re going for.

Nothing of too much note happens after that, except Jeff is running around hugging everything with boobs at this point, and we have to keep an eye on him. Regardless, he’s having a great time and that’s what we set up to do. A good 20-30 people from the program show up to help take care of the $3 champagne, and we all have a grand time.

Eventually, Jeff decides he’s had enough, and we hop in a cab and call it a night.

Another birthday with perfect execution. Man, we’re good.

--P

01-23 Breakin' it down

2005-01-23T17:35:00.000-08:00

Sunday

This damn cold is coming back a bit… No talking for me today.

Today there was some sort of X-games type of festival down in Wellington. Being the intrepid explorers that we were, we wandered downtown to check it out. The main draw for us was a breakdancing competition, but we were pleasantly surprised with everything else there as well.

They had a large stage set up and some local bands playing. I didn’t particularly care for any of them, as they did their best to sound American anyway. I saw a lot of punk teenagers running around (apparently they didn’t get the memo that Punk is out, hip hop is in). There was a large ramp set up for idiots to go off of and land in the water, although I think we missed that part.

BUST A MOVE: The break dancing competition itself was a sight to see. I have always enjoyed watching b-boys as they’re called put their moves out, battle style, to the other b-boys and girls. I was surprised to see a group of girls in the competition—they held their own but couldn’t touch the skill of some of the guys on the floor.

The format was interesting. If you’ve never seen a breakdancing battle before, it’s basically just like that episode of South Park, “You got served!” One dancer will go up to the other, maybe talk some shit, but he does most of his smack talking with his moves. They’ll do crazy spins, footwork, and freezes (where they pause in a contorted position for a second), and based on crowd response, that’s how good their moves are. Then the other person will respond in kind, usually trying to one-up the previous dancer.

What we saw was nothing short of amazing, but they weren’t the best breakers I’ve ever seen. The group that eventually won had some good talent on there, and provoked a lot of “Oh smack!” type comments from the crowd.

I felt crappy after that and wandered back, but it was a good time nonetheless.

--P

01-22 Mountain Biking Bonanza

2005-01-22T17:15:00.000-08:00

Pictures

Saturday

As if we weren’t punished enough from walking several miles both up and across volcanic terrain, our itinerary included a nice romp down a mountain biking trail on Saturday. Having never been hard-core mountain biking before (unless you count jumping off of stacks of 2x4s in the front yard when I was 11), this would be an interesting trip.

I haven’t really kept up with the technology in mountain bikes, so I was rather impressed with the bikes we rented. They had the full deal – shock absorbers, disc brakes, and one-click shifters. Spiffy. Rolling around the parking lot, I notice my front brake is rather weak, so I tighten it up.

To make things interesting, New Zealand and the rest of the civilized world likes to switch the front brakes, i.e. the front brake is now on the right hand, back on the left, instead of the other way around like us Americans are used to. This is sure to make for some interesting times.

The trail we take is actually an old 4x4 trail that runs approximately 25km through the NZ countryside. Not knowing what to expect exactly, we thought we were only going to be going a few kilometers. The initial part of the ride was easy, although somewhat uphill. With cohorts Tim, Luke, Eddie, Jeff, and Eric, we were pedaling along at a good rate. Most of us were in decent shape, plus or minus a few fat cells here and there. Luke and Eric were more experienced, so they hung to the front of the pack.

Things got interesting once we finished our half-hour ascent and began our three-hour descent. Part of the deal was to have the rental guy pick us up from the bottom of the trail so we didn’t have to pedal all the way back up (which was conveniently at his house).

Luke, being the badass speed-demon that he is, flew down the trail, and we frequently came up upon a pile of bikes and bodies, the frequent participants being Luke and Eric as they kept eating dirt and running into each other. I think Luke eventually got tired of the facial (and groinal) punishment and slowed down a bit for the rest of the trail.

Earlier in the day Lisa was predicting I was going to kill myself, so I decided to be extra careful to prove her wrong. For the most part, I was successful, with a few teeterings and totterings here and there.

The trail itself was absolutely beautiful, as it snaked and hugged the mountains as we rolled down. Most of it was grassy and not gravelly, making for good traction and a smoother ride. There were parts where the drop-off was quite scary and would have been a major inconvenience should one of us have fallen off. Fortunately, this scenario didn’t come to pass and we arrived safely at the bottom.

At one point in the journey, a small herd of sheep wandered onto the trail, and of course ran as we approached from behind. For a good 5 minutes or so we herded the sheep down the trail, until they got smart (or more likely lucky) and turned off the trail into a neighboring pasture. Sheep are some of the dumbest animals I’ve come in contact with yet.

The last leg was the most difficult physically since a lot of it was either flat or slightly uphill, unlike the extremely long downhill route we took earlier. Jeff was struggling for a while until he learned how to shift gears right – I figured out pretty quickly that shifting properly saved a lot of extra effort.

In the end, we all made it there in one piece. While we waited for the rental guy to finish talking to the painters at his house, we played with his retriever, Ziggy, who was one of the coolest dogs I’ve met in a while.

At the end of the ride, I realized my camel-back was dry and I had consumed 3 liters of water, and I didn’t pee once. That’s a lotta sweat. The ride back was quiet as we were exhausted, outside of some small-talk with the Dutch rental guy who was trying to immigrate to New Zealand to continue running his hostel business and eventually move into livestock farming. Interesting fellow.

That afternoon, once the girls returned the van, we decided to pick up and head back. Once again, I ended up driving the diesel beastly Toyota Hiace Minibus. At one point, we ran over a hubcap or something and it knocked a hole in our exhaust somewhere, turning the purring minibus into a roaring sputtering machine from hell. Needless the say, the rest of the ride back was a bit more nerve-wracking.

We got there in one piece, and I didn’t drive on the right-hand side of the road once!

Until next time,

--P

My Precious...

2005-01-21T17:07:00.000-08:00

Friday (Pictures from Today)

Girls take so damn long to get ready. The manly men wanted to get going by 8am, but the girlies took until 8:30 to primp and prime for the hike today. To fend off any potential beatings, I'm slightly exaggerating. But we did wait on them.

Today's target is Mt. Ngauruhoe, better known as Mt. Doom from Lord of the Rings.

I top off my new Camelback (plastic bag with long straw attached) with 3 litres of water. I'm not sure if I'll need it all or not, but I reason that I can always dump out the extra later. I vacillate for a few minutes between putting on my hiking boots or my tennis shoes, but ultimately settle on the tennis shoes because they're more comfortable. We're going to be hiking 20+ km today, so any slight discomfort could turn into a huge pain in the foot later.

Once we arrive at the starting point, we unload and get going. At first, the hike is uneventful, as we trudge along on a gravel path through gently rolling hills. At this point I'm thinking it'll be a pretty easy day. But then the rocks and the real hills come. The nice pretty gravel path terminates abruputly to a little trail snaking upwards through some fairly steep rocks. This is more like it.

The landscape in the area is littered with igneous rocks ranging in size from baseball to volkswagon. After looking them for a few minutes, I realize that all of these rocks came flying out of the sky from the volcano that we will be soon climbing. We can't see the peak yet--it's still covered in clouds. Regardless, I would hate to be one of the unfortunate ones that was around when this thing went off.

When I was a kid, I remember being afraid of volanoes from what they told us in class. I never wanted to set foot in Hawaii, because you never know when those things are about to go off! But the reality is, they can detect eruptions weeks in advance now, so we're OK.

The trail continues to vary between rocky embarkments and man-made paths. The trail on a whole is well maintained, even with the occasional porta-john along the way. Once we pass the last porta-john, we start what we think is the real climbing.

At this point, the trail is fairly difficult, causing us to pause every 10 minutes or so to catch our breaths. There are no trees, and very little vegetation, so it feels like we're hiking in the desert. Fortunately it's fairly cool out, and it balances perfectly with the amount of heat we generate from hiking.

About 2.5 hours into the hike, we reach the base of Ngarahoe. We've already ascended a few thousand feet and travelled several kilometers to get to this point, but we have quite a hike ahead of us. We talk to someone who just got down from the mountain, and he says it takes about 2 hours from where we are to hit the peak.

We decide to eat some lunch before continuing. We are surprised with how much altitude we've covered when we see some of our snacks have puffed up from the lower air pressure. I only have a peanut butter sandwich and some random nuts and stuff, but it keeps me satisfied. A brief pow-wow reveals the girls aren't interested in climbing a mountain and they decide to conitnue on the easier trail to go see some lakes that are supposed to be interesting.

After lunch is done, we pack up, and head off into the clouds. The cloud cover is quite close to our position now, and we can see the streams of clouds breaking over the ridge off in the distance. The cover breaks for a moment, and we get our first glimpse of what we're about to tackle. My only impression was, "We're going to climb THAT?!" The slopes of the mountain are quite steep, from our current position it appears there is nothing less than 30-40 degrees or so.

The actual climb turned out to be quite difficult. After we get into the rhythm of the climb, our pace slows considerably to a few steps every minute. The beginning was fairly straightforward, it was easy to find footing on the rocks, but the terrain quickly turns into this soft mix of ash and cobble-stone sized rocks which are extremely difficult to find a firm place to step. Often, we would take a step only to slide back a half-step. It's fairly frustrating, and extremely tiring.

I was surprised with how much the terrain changed over the course of the climb. The colors of the rocks went from gray to red to black and all sorts of variations in between. After about an hour of climbing, we finally break the cloud line and for the first time my life I am peering above the clouds without being in an airplane. The view is spectacular, and we all pause for a few minutes to snap some photos, breathe, and enjoy it.

Luke remembers that we're climbing Mt. Doom and pulls out a bag of rice cakes, offering "Lambas Bread" to anyone who's interested.

Number of "My Precious" and other various Gollum quotes heard on the hike: 15

Breathing is notably less productive as we continue to gain altitude. I'm not gasping for oxygen, but I am definitely having to take more frequent breaks than I would at sea level. Now I understand why pro football teams don't like playing in Denver.

We summit shortly before 3PM. Ngauruhoe's peak lies at about 7,500 feet. Over a mile of vertical climbing. Not bad.

The top of the volcano is actually a huge crater that you can precariously walk around. It's quite intimidating, and it looks like something you don't want to be falling into. We're not alone at the top, there are a handful of other hikers who have made it up as well. We chat briefly with them, meeitng a girl from Sweden and a guy wearing a baseball cap made of straw from California.

We look down and find the aforementioned porta-john on the landscape. It is a tiny dot. We also see the path we walked to the base on--it looks like a thread. We are HIGH.

Enough dilly-dallying at the top, it's time to go down now. We had promised the girls we would meet them at four. Getting off this thing turned out to be quite interesting and fun. It was very hard to step down the slope without falling over. However, noting that the gravel/ash combo tended to slide down pretty easily, we discovered if you plant your feet just right, you slide down at a controlled pace.

One we got the technique down, we essentially surfed the rocks down to the bottom of the mountain. The only catch was that our shoes got filled to the brim with rocks and we had to stop several times to empty them out.

We eventually regroup with the girls and begin our long journey back. My legs are starting to get tired at this point--if I bend over the wrong way, I get cramps in my quads. I rustle through my backpack and find an extra bannana; I remember hearing something about potassium helping that out.

Fortunately, since the walk until this point had all be uphill, the walk back would all be downhill. It goes by much more quickly, and we reach our van around 6PM.

What a day.

Needless to say, we're starving by now, so we go and find a local pizzaria to eat at. Jeff and I split a "prawn pizza". We're suprised when this thing arrives as it has 3 steamed-with-heads-still-atttached prawns just sitting on top of the pizza. Regardless, it was quite tasty and fills the void in my stomach.

We all crash at 10PM from exhaustion. There's much mountain biking to be done tomorrow.

On the road again!

2005-01-20T23:43:00.000-08:00

Thursday 01-20

THE WEEKEND! Thursdsay is designated travel day. After beating the tar out of my econ test, stuffing down some lunch while studying for our biogeography midterm, and packing my backpack, we finally get some downtime.

This week's target: Tongariro National Park and Mt. Ngarahoe (approximately prounounced Nar-a-hoe-ee. You may be more familiar with its surname, "Mt. Doom" from Lord of the Rings).
There's a little mixup with the vans today, apparently the rental place doublebooked our phat ride with another subgroup on our trip. We realize this as they roll up in the van we were supposed to have.

After an hour or two they sort out the snafu, but we're left with an 11-person van instead of a 12-person one. But, it is still diesel.

DIESEL POWER: In New Zealand, Diesel vehicles make a HUGE difference. Not only do they average 10-20% better fuel economy of the comparable petrol (gas) versions, but Diesel here costs 30% less per litre as well. Gas tends to hover around NZ$1.10 a litre, which rougly works out to US$3.10 per gallon, whereas Diesel is about US$2 a gallon. Needless to say, you see way more Diesels than you would in the States. And, since the Kiwis don't have quite the gasoline-in-the-veins-lay-tread-and-burn-rubber attitude in the states, they don't mind the sluggishness of the vehicles as much.

Oddly enough though, Atlanta and LA have much stricter emissions laws than NZ. Go figure.

With the late start, we end up driving mostly at night. Factor in NZ's winding two-lane mountain roads and a half-full cab of antsy girls in the back, it made for a very interesting ride. Roads in NZ tend to wash out a lot because of the soil makeup, but often instead of fixing them right away, they just make the road one-lane and put up caution signs. You can't let your guard down here.

We make our favorite stop at the infamous Playground of Death and Litigation Paradise(tm), with a few more bruises but no major injuries still. I think we're pushing our luck with this one.

We find the hostel late that night. Thanks to good thinking by Tim earlier that day, he called ahead and got them to leave us a note for where our rooms were.

This hostel is quite a bit nicer than the other hostel we stayed in. I think they put us in a part with no other tennants that night which is good considering the amount of noise we made coming in and getting settled in.

We crash early--lots of hiking to do tomorrow.
--P

Just another Wednesday

2005-01-19T23:39:00.000-08:00

Wednesday

It seems like Wednesday is going to be the downtime day here. There's not much going on downtown, and we often have tests Thursday. Most of the younger students who aren't slackers yet usually "study". I tend to walk around disencouraging the practice. Yes, I'm that guy.

I eventually decide I should at least make a minor attempt to study for the econ test tomorrow, and poof, there goes the night.

Everything cool will happen tomorrow.
--P

To hell with being sick.

2005-01-18T01:34:00.000-08:00

Tuesday

Status: My nose is running like a track star. I think this cold is peaking today. Damn.

I wake up early, eat some breakfast, then conk back out for a few more minutes. I wake up again, throw the finishing touches on my economics paper that’s due today, and proceed to drag my delirious ass to class, where I proceed to zone out/sleep through the class. I think the professor notes my lousy state and leaves me alone.

I try the sleep-all-day and drink tons of water approach. Biogeography falls victim to this as I sleep through it. Scouting reports indicate I didn’t miss anything important. Good.

Since the rest of the day is a moot point, let’s have a quick lesson on NZ culture.

RANDOM NZ STUFF: Some other things I’ve picked up along the trip:

“Thanks” is used like “Please.” As in, “That’ll be $10.00, Thanks!” This still catches me off guard – why are you thanking me when you have yet to receive payment?
After further investigation, “Bugger” is probably a borderline curse word. We don’t really care, and still find it funny to yell it out randomly in crowded places.
My American accent sticks out like a sore thumb. People pick up on it instantly. It’s very weird when all of a sudden, you’re in the minority. I’m trying to use a little more of the local dialect to try to fit in better, but I feel like an idiot doing it.
The metric system only has a loose hold on this country. McDonalds still has a “1/4 Pounder w/ Cheese”. Probably because “.113398 kilogramer w/ cheese” lacks the same zing to it.
The airplane industry still uses feet – I just recalled that we ascended to “15,000 feet” and not 4572 meters. I think this is more that English is a global standard in aviation.
Womens shirt sizes here are driving our girls crazy. If you’re a Size 0 in the states, you’re a Size 10 here. Haha, you’re fat now!
If women had anything to say about it, America would be on metric by now… instead of weighing 110lbs, they’d be 50 kg.

Someone's got a case of the Mondays!

2005-01-17T01:21:00.000-08:00

Monday

Current status:

Weather: windy and cool, sounds like the dorm is going to blow over
Cold: coughing lungs up, but dealing with it
Breakfast: Eggs over easy gelatinize when left in a heating pan for an hour. Yuck.
Laundry: 32% clean clothes left, almost time to do laundry.
No. of pictures taken: 2400.

SICK: This New Zealand bug is really starting to take a hold of me. Nothing is more frustrating than being sick on a trip like this. I’m only fortunate that it is such a long trip it won’t have a huge effect on my total enjoyment of the experience.

CLASS SUCKS: I drag my coughing, sneezing, pathetic self to econ so I don’t use up an absence, only to learn I got a 0 on a quiz in there. Nice. I find more comfort in that everyone but one person failed said quiz. Usually, you’d think the professor might take a hint and adjust teaching style… Oh no, she re-administers the SAME quiz again before handing back the previous failed one or even discussing it. Some of the students are pretty chapped, but my senior-induced apathy gets the better of me and I just laugh at the absurdity of the situation.

Afterwards, I amble back to my room and sit around feeling sorry for myself and reading. When you’re in a lousy condition, you don’t really want to interact with people because you don’t want them to see you in rough shape (and if you’re nice, you don’t want to get them sick). It also rules out my ultimate plan of meeting locals.

Still, I’m feeling well enough to keep going today with my routine, so I eat lunch and head off to biogeography. Much to my dismay, I arrive 5 minutes late to a pop-quiz-in-progress. I have resigned myself to failure at this point, until a comrade informs me the quiz doesn’t count for anything. Close call.

After class, I rouse enough energy to venture down to the internet café and upload some more pictures. This takes all of an hour or two, I come back, leaving one piece of business to take care of: calling mom and tell her that her son jumped out of the airplane. She takes the news surprisingly well, although I’m sure she’s just putting on an act to sound cool.

I go to bed early hoping to get an edge on this stupid cold.

--P

Last day of Taupo Field Trip

2005-01-16T22:21:00.000-08:00

Sunday

TOO EARLY! Once again, we’re up early at 7AM. I’m finally starting to get used to it, but then I realize my entire weekend has been wasted to early wake-up times. I’m getting a taste of the real world and I don’t like it.

LAST DAY: We make two stops before heading back to Wellington today. First, we visit the Waikato river, which isn’t that important geographically but is very nice to look at. The water is a crystal blue, almost turquoise, and rumbles down through a narrow cut in the land. I wonder aloud what rafting on it would be like, and our professor comments there is a dangerous undertow at the end of the rapid. Darn.

The river alone is responsible for 15% of New Zealand’s power generation, which is pretty impressive for a river. Since the country has a nuclear ban, it is now apparently on which forms of alternative energy generation they use.

WONDERLAND: Next, we stop at a park which has a whole slew of geothermal toys. The first attraction is the mud pits, which boil, churn, and bubble constantly. The high acid content of the steam coming from underneath dissolves the rock and keeps the area muddy. It’s quite impressive, as it reminds me of a hot tub full of mud. It also smells like hell because of the sulfur content. A handful of my peers (names carefully omitted), can’t handle the smell in conjunction with their hangovers and wander off into the woods to relieve their aching gastrointestinal tracts. Some are sneaky and we don’t find about it until later.

The final stop is at another conglomerate of geothermal attractions which were quite impressive in their own right. See the pictures for the highlights, but my particular favorites were the artist’s pallet and the devil’s pool.

After our romp in the Geothermal Wonderland, we load up and head home.

REDNECK CARNIVAL: One of the interesting rest stops we make is at a little place that seemed to located between two cities. I can best describe it as a redneck carnival – it had a little bit of everything but seemed to be run by a small group of people. It had a little restaurant, an ice cream shop, random chickens and peacocks running about, a maze, and even a jetboat track out back. Our bus driver claims their lamb burgers are good, but I decide not to wait in line for one.

When everyone is finally ushered back onto the bus, we make our now traditional last rest-stop at the Adventure Park in Levin, a cult favorite among us. We seem to beat the odds yet again with no major injuries.

After a long day, what more could one ask for than a Kebob? My 4^th met its demise shortly after we got back into town. Man those things are good!

--P

Jumping out of Airplanes for the hell of it

2005-01-15T14:59:00.000-08:00

Saturday

YAWN: We get up at the ass-crack of 7am today. The bus is leaving at 8am sharp, and we now know they mean business.

I was smart and grabbed some food yesterday, so I make myself a ham and cheese croissant before we go. This time, Vladik makes the bus.

We have a half-day planned today at the Waimangu Volcanic Valley. We see a lot of cool colorful bubbly steamy smelly things that are best described by the pictures from the day.

But, our minds are elsewhere, because we’ve scheduled a skydiving trip this afternoon.

The idea has been kicked around since we learned we were going to Taupo. New Zealand is known as the extreme sports capital of the world. The basic reason is NZ has laws making it nearly impossible to sue the companies that take clients out, short of extreme negligence on their part.

CHICKEN: By this afternoon, our skydiving group gelled into group of about 25. A handful of people chickened out at the last minute, and we give them crap. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t at least slightly nervous, but I put on my macho act and poke fun at the skydiving naysayers.

Erik starts making up statistics to scare the rest of the group, despite the fact he’s not even going. “You know, 3% of the parachutes don’t open, right? So that means if 26 of us go, that means one of us will die!” I think this is hilarious, but some the more borderline people do not. In reality, the statistic is more like 1 in 50,000. You’re worse off in a car driving around town.

The company that we picked, “Freefall”, delivers the total package. For a low price of several hundred dollars NZ, they’ll pick us up, strap us to another skydiver, toss us out of a plane, give us a video of the process, and drop us off. Thanks to some skillful negotiation by one of our group members, we get a sizable discount for bringing so many people.

LETS ROLL: We arrive at the hanger/staging area around 1pm. The airplane they use has a capacity for 18 jumpers. Since no-one in our group is licensed, we all have to go tandem (strapped to an experienced jumper). I don’t argue with this, as I don’t trust myself steering a parachute to a safe landing. This means the plane has the capacity to take 9 of us, plus tandem jumpers. They offer an option to send up another guy to take video of you doing the freefall, but this is expensive and I opt out.

The group is eventually split into 5 jumping groups. I end up in the second one. They show us a quick video, which is mainly just a promotion for ordering the free-fall video. Part of me wonders if/when they’ll give us instructions on what to actually do when diving.

The first group gets suited up fairly quickly, and I take the opportunity to snap some photos. There is definitely an air of uneasiness as one of the Kiwis working there straps harnesses onto people. The harnesses they use mean business. They resemble a climbing harness, with additional shoulder and chest straps. Once you get cinched into this thing, there is no way you’re coming out of it. I notice there is no parachute on these harnesses, apparently that is for your tandem guy to worry about.

STRAP UP: To complete the getup, they give you a little helmet that looks like the ones used in old-school football games and some plastic goggles to keep the wind out of your eyes. The costume is rather humorous and makes for some good photo ops. We rotate between impersonations of rugby players and World War I fighter pilots.

By now, the first group has started floating down and making their landings. The sheer exuberance on their faces is unreal. After their tandem pilots drive them in to safe landings, they unclip from their proverbial life boats and start jumping up and down and hugging everyone in sight. If I didn’t know better, I’d say all of them had just won the lottery.

It’s my turn. After I get strapped up in the harness, I meet my tandem jumper, Chris. Chris is a likeable guy from the states who has been living down here for a few years. He doesn’t talk a whole lot, so I bombard him with questions to keep conversation going. I’m sure he’s heard them all before. Turns out he’s jumped all over the world, and claims NZ is his favorite place to jump. I’m not sure if he’s being honest or using a marketing line on me.

LOAD UP: As we load up the plane, I notice that somehow I’ve ended up in the back of the line. No worries, until I realize the last people in the plane get to sit in the doorway of the airplane. This is the first (and probably last) time in my life that I’ve sat in a plane, taxiing down a runway, with my legs hanging out the side.

The plane we’re in is a single-prop airplane, reminiscent of an old-school WWII fighter plane (but hopefully newer). The door is located behind the wings, which means we’re less likely to smack something on the way out. The door itself is a roll-up type, with clear slats so you can see out. For our ascent to 15,000 feet, I will be pressed against this door, which is barely ½” thick.

RIDE UP: Needless to say, this is one of the scariest plane rides of my life. The whole thing is rather rickety, and there isn’t much between me and falling out. Oddly enough, I remain quite calm for the ride up, comforted in part by my confidence in that the people running this thing know what they’re doing. I’ve heard stories of jumpers with a sense of humor wearing fake harnesses and expressing mock shock as they rip them off before they jump. I secretly hope there aren’t any pranksters on this trip, and my wishes are granted.

Being the last into the plane means you’re the first out. Chris has me sit up and he straps me tight to him. What would normally be an uncomfortable slightly homosexual situation is damped by the whole extreme sports nature of the thing—I’ll swallow my pride as long as he gets me down safely.

DANGLING BY A THREAD: The next part is where it gets crazy. The magic red light comes on, meaning we’ve reached altitude. They roll up the door, and there is nothing between me and the ground 15,000 feet below except Chris, who is holding on behind me. He turns me around, and I am now hanging out the plane, arms and feet dangling in the 120mph wind from the airplane. The only thing keeping me from plunging into the abyss at this point are the four clips that attach my harness to Chris’s.

I sit in this position for a good 30 seconds or so, in a weird mix of fear, shock, elation, and awe. The fact that I knew what was coming next didn’t help at all, either. Chris chooses now as the time to give me instructions on what to do. “Hold on, lean your head back, and tuck your legs under the plane”. Easy enough. I steal one more glance at the ground below (I think the sadistic part of me wanted me to be as scared as possible for my money) before Chris propels us out of the airplane.

They say a sizeable portion of people don’t remember their first jumps. Maybe they pass out or something, but I remembered mine in crystal detail. Chris shoves us out of the plane, and we tumble head-over heels a few times. I see the airplane, the ground, the airplane again, then finally the ground once more. At this point, my stomach has slammed all around my chest cavity and the flood of adrenaline is starting to pulse through my veins.

FREEFALL: Chris tosses out the little trailer chute that will keep us facing the right direction for the rest of the freefall. As we level out, I am now face down, staring at the beautiful NZ countryside below, with the wind blasting me at terminal velocity, which works out to about 120mph. I had initially thought the entire freefall would feel like those Drop Zone type rides at theme parks, but after the initial drop and tumbling, it is strangely comfortable. It’s like you’re floating around in a giant cushion.

The air is cool to my skin but not freezing, and as I look around I really start to take in the awesomeness of freefall. Chris, apparently bored, uses his hands like rudders and sends us into a fast spin to make things even more interesting. I get another surge of adrenaline from this. Every time I try to open my mouth to let out a “Whooo!!” the air blasts in, pulling my cheeks open, and its hard to get anything out.

The actual free-fall lasts for about a minute. In some ways, it seems a lot longer, in others a lot shorter. It’s difficult to pin down. Regardless, it was definitely the most thrilling minute of my life. I still get jittery when I watch the videos of people jumping out of the planes. But, as they say, all good things come to an end, and as we approach 5,000 feet, Chris pulls the chute. The jerk from slowing down from 120mph to 30mph isn’t as bad as I expected. Apparently it takes about 1,000 feet for a chute to properly deploy.

Should that chute fail, all modern chutes have backup chutes in them, and a special system called Cypres. Should a chute not be deployed by 2,000 feet, the system will automatically deploy the reserve chute for you. So, if for some reason you’re unconscious or simply forget to deploy on time, this system takes care of you. From what I’ve read it’s saved over 100 lives so far and is now standard.

CHUTING: Parachuting turns out to be almost as fun as the freefall itself. Two little handles pop out, and with that you can steer the chute. Pull the left one, you go left, pull the right… you get the idea. Pull both and you slow down. Chris steers us toward the landing site, then hands me the controls to play around with. If you pull one of them hard, you go into a tight spin which really throws some g-force on you. We do this for a few minutes, then Chris takes the controls back and steers us in for a picture perfect landing.

LANDING: If you land a parachute correctly, there is absolutely zero impact. If you do it wrong, you could break some legs or even be killed. In reading up about skydiving accidents afterwards, it seems most deaths come from experienced jumpers getting too crazy with their landings. Everyone else makes good landings, except for Seth, who somehow ends up on his ass. We laugh at him after we see he’s OK.

Once we unclip from our tandem partners, everyone in our group runs together and hugs each other (myself included), and we high five and handshake every person in sight. If you’re down, the perfect pick-me-up is skydiving. Most of us want to go again, but the slight issue of money and time prevent that, but we will be looking out for more opportunities on this trip.

If you’ve never been skydiving before, it’s definitely on the top 10 list of things you need to do before you die. The experience will stay with you for a lifetime.

Since we’re all pumped from skydiving, we go and find some food, then head downtown for another night of partying. We still have to be up early on Sunday, so we don’t stay out that late.

HELL PIZZA: For dinner, we eat at this fascinating chain called Hell Pizza. It is the single most effective marketing I’ve ever seen in a restaurant franchise. Everything’s centered around the Hell theme, and it’s done well. For example, all of the pizzas are named after sins (Gluttony, Lust, Greed, etc). Their bottled water is called “Holy Water”. One of their delivery vehicles is a converted Hearse. The pizza boxes fold up into little coffins to store leftovers. The cashiers are wearing goth makeup while the cooks sport shirts that proudly proclaim “Bitchin’ in the Kitchen!”

Oh, and the pizza’s pretty good too. I am definitely going to open one of these places smack dab in the middle of the Bible Belt, just to piss off people. And I’ll get rich in the process.

Cheers,

--P

The Buried Village and Geothermal Power Plant

2005-01-14T02:38:00.000-08:00

Visit to the Buried Village

RISE ‘N SHINE: There is nothing worse than having to get up early after a long night of partying. The bus is leaving today at 8:30AM sharp. Most of us didn’t get back until 2AMish last night.

Apparently I narrowly dodged a hangover, and the shower wakes me up enough to be coherent and realize we have about 14 minutes until we need to be on the bus. I quickly rouse the other two roommates, and we get going.

LEFT BEHIND: Once I get aboard the bus, I notice not everyone is there yet. Groggy students eventually file on board. With all but two people on board, the impatient bus driver pulls away. We look back to see poor Kevin hauling ass to try to catch the bus, but then he gives up. The bus driver, despite our gentle reminders “YOU’RE LEAVING KEVIN YOU MORON!”, finally pulls over after a few hundred meters, and somebody runs back to grab Kevin.

Now we’re minus one, but Vladik doesn’t make it. For the remainder of the trip, when they ask if we have everyone, someone will chip in, “Vladik’s not here!”

Our first stop is an overlook of the city of Taupo. Professor John gives a quick lecture, which boils down to “we’re sitting on a giant volcano”. If I was younger, I’d definitely be a little spooked, especially when he mentions they’re still “active.” Fortunately, “Active” means erupts every 20,000 years or so. He points out the different volcanoes we can see from the spot, all with complex Maori names that I can neither pronounce nor remember how to spell.

We hop back on the bus, confirm that we have everyone but Vladik, and continue to our next destination: the Buried Village.

The Buried Village is a village that got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time when a volcano erupted all over it. The interesting part is that hot lava didn’t destroy the place, but tons of ash did, effectively preserving the village. Despite the tragedy, it did manage to act as a huge time capsule and gives us a good insight to the past.

A well-stocked museum sits by the village, and we go in there first. We are greeted by Huru, a slightly overweight Maori who will be guiding us through the Musuem. This guy is definitely one of the most interesting people we’ve met on the trip so far. I’ve never seen anyone more passionate and enthusiastic about what they do than Huru. It turns out he’s a direct descendant of people who lived in the village, which helps explain why he loves what he does.

He tends to use “Ladies and Gentlemen” as an interjection and not just a greeting, and glues together sentences with the phrase. He also talks with his hands, waving them furiously as he gets excited about something, and frequently slapping the displays to make a point. Huru turned what would otherwise be a pretty boring walk through a museum into a fairly interesting topic.

Afterwards, we perform our well-rehearsed sunscreen ritual and head out to see the village itself. I was rather disappointed, most of the good stuff that was excavated was brought into the museum, so the main remnants consist mostly of old structures. The architecture of the time wasn’t particularly advanced—everything followed the “hut” theme or variations of it, but it was still cool to imagine that 100 years ago people were here, clueless they were about to be obliterated by a volcano.

The trail leads down to a very pretty waterfall, which makes for a good photo opportunity. Jeff wastes no time in slipping and falling knee-deep into some mud. I laugh. I later learned that Geoffrey does the same thing, in the same place just minutes later. I laugh at both of them.

SHEEP FUN: Lunch consisted of some mediocre Quiche with salad. I was really hungry, so it probably tasted better than it actually was. It probably wasn’t worth the NZ$10 they charged for it. I wander around and snap some more random pics. I noticed a sheep earlier on, and run back to take pictures of it, remembering that I had no good pictures of the most populous animal on the island. When we walk over to it, I “baaaaa”ed at it as a test. To our surprise, it looks up from its all-important meal of grass, gives a quizzical look, and “baaaaa”s straight back at us. Talk about fun! I try it again, but the sheep outwits us and figures out we’re just messing with it.

We load up, take a head count, confirm Vladik is indeed still missing, and continue to our next destination, the geothermal power plant.

I think my expectations were a little high for this. As we approach the site, all we see are tons of pipes, some terminating in the ground. This looks kind of neat from the bus, but I was hoping to get inside one of the turbine buildings or something. Turns out, all we do is look at the stuff from a hill.

THERMOLAND: The engineer talking to us is exactly what you would expect an old-weathered engineer to talk like. He speaks a little too loudly, and throws in engineering statistics much like an anchor on Sportscenter would. He assumes most of us have had a large background in geothermal energy conversion, and we are quickly lost as he rambles on. Having taken thermodynamics, I pick up bits here and there and find it quite interesting, but most of the younger people on the trip just roll up their sleeves and catch some sun while he talks.

NZ's geothermal plant is unique in that it's the first plant in the world to run directly off of steam coming out of the ground. Most other plants are "Dry steam" types which drop water down a hole with hot rocks at the bottom and the water is turned to steam there. This plant, a "wet steam" type, uses steam from water that is already underground. Amazing, this is enough to provide 330 megawatts of power. While only a fraction of NZ's power supply, it is a clean resource that hopefully doesn't need replentishing. Too bad not every country has a few tappable hot spots in their neighborhood.

At this point, we’re a quite a ways from Taupo and the drive back takes over an hour.

MUSSELS: We roll downtown to find something to eat, and a small group of us settle on a random café. According to the waiter, their New Zealand mussels are something to write home about, so I order the Surf ‘n Turf (steak ‘n mussels) to try them out. I’ve never had a mussel before, and they are rather intimidating to eat. They look like something out of fear factor. I grab one, fearlessly scoop it out and chow down, and man are they good! I love it when I get exposure to a new type of food.

We call it an early night, seeing as we have to be up at 7am the next morning. Some of the more intrepid party-goers make an expedition anyway, and I question their ability to get up in the morning. However, I have some faith; any seasoned party-goer can wake up anytime, anyplace if it’s important enough.

Roadtrip to Taupo

2005-01-13T15:39:00.000-08:00

BREAKFAST: Cold pancakes, sausage that’s probably from two days ago, and other assorted cold things. I think they lower our expectations so that when they do decide to serve us good food, we think it’s awesome. I long for the days for Brittain food.

We entertain ourselves briefly by trying Marmite, the local “spread” (think a salty/nasty version of jam), under the supervision of a local. We still don’t like it. Maybe we will by the end of the trip.

Class sucked today; the econ teacher sprung not one, not two, but three pop quizzes on us today. I call shenanigans on this move--it has to violate some sort of international treaty. We spectacularly fail most of them. She needs to adapt to the lackadaisical study abroad attitude.

The weather today is amazing. It’s breezy, clear, and cool. I just want to sit outside all day, but then I remember I’ll get burned to a crisp if I do that. Drat.

DUH-HUH: Elisha comes to me complaining her internet isn’t working, that I screwed up something on her computer when I configured AIM to work on Victoria’s network. After looking briefly, I politely inform her the internet works better when it’s plugged in. She curls up into the fetal position on her bed. And you wonder why we think women suck at electronics...

ROADTRIP!: Today kicks off our weekend excursion to Taupo, which will be the longest school-sanctioned field trip I’ve ever taken. Three pure days of non-stop Geothermal exuberance!

We load up the bus and meet our bus driver, and cranky old Kiwi who has no tolerance for being late as we’ll later learn. This trip takes the same road that we used to get to Rotorua last weekend, so most of us have seen the sights before. The bus driver plays tour guide on the way up, informing us of fun little facts about each city (“Old Kiwis retire at this city, they built this windmill to attract tourists to this city…”) and our geology professor fills in useful geological facts about where we’re driving (“this road used to be underwater 4 millions years ago!”), which is actually fairly interesting.

DIE: I’ve come to conclude about New Zealand that while there isn’t much here to be afraid of in terms of dying from small things—there are no land-based predators, diseases are relatively benign, and there aren’t any killer scorpions or iguanas like Australia—the island has a tendency to blow up sporadically every 20,000 years or so and wipe out whole areas. There’s always some fine print…

LITIGATION PARADISE: One of the rest stops we make is at a combination rest area/playground. In short, this is the most badass playground I have ever been on in my life. This alone defines the legal differences between NZ and America, because this playground wouldn’t last a day without someone getting sued for a kid killing themselves on it.

We’re talking zip lines, trampolines, giant hamster wheels, huge slides, and basically anything FUN that you can think of. We had a blast. Most of the small children there gave us quizzical looks as the mob of 20-22 year-olds swarmed the playground like 10-yearolds. They’ll understand when they get older and visit America’s super-padded pathetic playgrounds suitable for mental patients.

Four bruises, 50 pictures, and 10 minutes later, we escape the playground as the cranky bus driver honks impatiently at us. I suspect this might be the most fun part of our trip—we’ll see.

The rest of the trip is uneventful besides a few more rest stops.

NIGHTLIFE, GO: Once we get to Taupo, we’re immediately bored and go check out the nightlife. More of the same here—empty bars suddenly becoming packed when the group of rowdy Americans storm in and take over the place (We seem to be good at that) then dying again as we migrate on, sucking all the life of the bar with us. We eventually settle down at one place called the Holy Cow, which is a prime picture-taking spot I decide, and fire away.

Tomorrow, we have to be up at 7am, ready to roll at 8am. Not looking forward to that.

--P

Maori welcome ceremony

2005-01-12T14:45:00.000-08:00

Wed Jan 12

PAINTERS: I woke up this morning to some painters banging around outside my window. They have this large scaffolding set up. It’s rather disconcerting to look out your third story window to see a scrappy Kiwi peering in saying “G’day!” I smile and wave back and silently curse the cheerful painter.

Skipped breakfast today. I’m sure I didn’t miss much.

Got my econ test back, scored above the average. This is what gets me in trouble in my classes, because now I am definitely not studying for the rest of the term. Here’s hoping.

Biology was interesting as always. There’s something about that class that just knocks us out cold though. I think it’s a combination of being right after lunch and having the lights dimmed for the projector.

MAORI: Today, we’re scheduled to go to a Maori welcome ceremony.

The Maori are the natives of the island. They are a fascinating group of people with a rich culture that has resisted the Westernization that has plagued the island. A Maori is hard to miss, they are dark-skinned Pacific Islanders, and as a whole they are big people—both tall and “big boned”. They have effectively cornered the market on bar bouncers, and with good reason. Even the most badass American wouldn’t mess with a 300+ pound Maori. But, as a whole they are quite friendly to us Americans

THE MARAE: One of their traditions is to welcome visitors to their island in a ceremony at the local Marae. The Marae is their version of a community center, comparable to a Jewish Hillel. Each local grouping of Maori has their central Marae; the one we visit is located on Victoria University’s campus. The facility is an elegant mixture of traditional Maori carvings and architecture and modern amenities like air conditioning and emergency exit signs. Here are some pictures of the Marae.

Before we go over, we’re given a primer on proper protocol and manners in the Marae. Most follow common manners – take your shoes off, don’t chew gum, sit on pillows (the butt shouldn’t go where the head goes, we’re told), pass food over people, etc. We practice our little song that we’re supposed to sing at one point in the ceremony. Here are the lyrics, for the interested/unenlightened:

Me he manu rere aue,
Kua rere ki to moenga,
Ki te awhi to tinana
Aue Aue
E—te tau tahuri mai

Roughly translated, it means “Thanks for having us over”.

The ceremony is unlike anything I’ve experienced before. It’s performed entirely in Maori, so we can’t understand a bit of it. There’s a lot of chanting, singing, shaking sticks, and other weird things that go against western customs. You’re not supposed to look the Maori in the eye while they’re talking during the ceremony, which goes completely against what we’re used to as Americans. The reasoning is your spirit might get sucked out or something like that. The people performing it are transformed into their roots, completely absorbed in the rituals. We are somewhat surprised afterwards when they speak to us in perfect English explaining what they just did.

After the ceremony, we are treated to a dinner, Maori style. The preferred cooking method would be suitable for a military camp. They take hundreds of meals, pack them into a giant cage, and drop them into a heated pit. Traditionally, this pit is in the ground so the flavor of the soil seeps in a little bit, but this modern Marae uses an above-ground concrete pit. Some of us help raise it out and remove the meals for serving. We eat, and help clean up the kitchen afterwards. As a parting gesture, we belt out a version of Ramblin Wreck for their enlightenment. I'm appalled to find some of the students on the trip don't know the lyrics, and chide them for their ignorance.

That night we hang out at the dorm, play cards, drink beer, and eat pizza. Tommorrow is going to be a long day of travelling.

--P

More birthday outings

2005-01-11T01:00:00.000-08:00

Monday was pretty much a routine day. Everyone’s tired from the weekend activities and class is boring as usual. ‘Bout the only thing I got done was make a huge batch upload of my pics at the local internet café. I pretend to study for my econ test, but as usual get distracted.

Tuesday, however, turned out to be more interesting. The econ test came and went—I’m really starting to dislike the class. I probably did just as well as most of the people who studied, according to my informal exit polls after the test.

Tonight was Saira’s birthday. We’re getting better at celebrating birthdays. Erik and I stroll downtown looking for restaurants to have dinner—sushi preferred. We finally settle on a place that is tucked away in a small shopping center but looks like it can handle our group of 10-15 people that will be going out later.

BYO: One common theme of NZ restaurants is many will allow you to bring your own wine for a small corking fee. Being the budget-savvy students that we were, we grabbed a few bottles of stuff that cost half of what they charged at the restaurant and probably tasted just as good.

The sushi itself was excellent and not too pricey. Many of us are used to the $1 menu at Rusan’s, but we survive. The selection is rather insignificant to Rusan’s menu, but what we order tastes very good and has great presentation. Elisha, despite my warnings, asks the waiter if he knows what Sake-bombs are, and of course get s a confused look in return.

For post-dinner celebrations, we work our way around a few bars, and eventually end up at one place that’s having a “Beats and Bubbles” night. They have a DJ playing some more obscure music (thank goodness), and serve champagne for real cheap until midnight. We’re all entertained. I snap off a few pictures for posterity’s sake, and we all have a great time.

WALKING HOME: As we are leaving, I end up in the last group trying to get a cab. There were five of us – me and four other girls. The cabbie informs us that he can only hold four, so being the gentleman I am I let the girls grab the cab and I fend for myself. I thought for a few minutes, decided I didn’t want to fork out for a cab by myself, so I hit up the walk back to Weir House. Problem is, Weir House is locate on a hill, and one thing I learned that night is you have to climb 186 steps to get to it. But, once you commit to the walk home, you gotta stick with it, and that I did.

--P

Journeys down the white water

2005-01-09T01:24:00.000-08:00

Sunday 1/9/05

Daily stats:
No. of pies consumed to date: 5
No. of pictures taken: ~1150
No. of hot New Zealanders spotted: 0

I’ve lost count of the number of days we’ve been here. So I’ll stick with just dates from now on.

We go through the same routine as yesterday for getting up: 5 alarm clocks go off in random order, and everyone fights the urge to stay asleep for another 10 minutes. Some were successful. A lot of us went out the night before, some longer than others, and we’re all pretty tired. Someone wakes up and accuses another (names withheld) of pissing out the window when they came back last night.

Today, we have a shuttle picking us up, so we can’t dilly-dally around too much. Apparently we will be making a breakfast stop too, so we don’t have to do the mad dash down to the local café for some more pies.

The trip over is uneventful, if not a little hazy as we spend most of it waking up. We’re delivered at the staging area for the rafting place, and lo and behold: more wetsuits. I figure that from now on, if I see a wetsuit, it means we’re going to be doing something fun. I won’t be disappointed.

RASTAKIWI: I put on my cool act, remembering my wet suit size from yesterday, but nobody seems impressed. The registration guy deserves a mention: he’s what could be classified as a RastaKiwi, a half-baked mix between Rastafarian and New Zealander. He is slightly odifierous, and it’s apparent his dreads haven’t been washed in weeks. He was probably high while we were talking to him, but with these types, you can never quite tell if they’re high or not since they’ve smoked so much. A large tattoo of what I think is the outline of New Zealand covers his left calf. Needless to say, this guy is quite cool in the Jimi Hendrix sense of cool, and makes for easy conversation.

SUIT UP: The wetsuits are similar to the day before, except no jacket this time. Instead, they hand us these fleeces which appear to be the last thing I would wear in the water. One of the rafting guys comments on it’s a miracle what you can do with recycled milk bottles. Looking closely at the fleece, I notice that in fact, while it feels like a standard cotton fleece, it is in fact plastic. It basically won’t wick up water and is more or less water proof. Brilliant!

We meet our raft guide, Nick, after suiting up. Your typical charismatic Kiwi, he seems a little less boisterous than the others we’ve met but has an air of confidence about him that is comforting. We have no idea what we’re in for on the river, just that we’re going rafting.

As we get to the river, we learn that today, we will be tackling class 4 and 5 rapids on the river. For reference, rapids only go up to class 6. And to think we’ll be taking a boat of beginners down this river, I suddenly become slightly concerned. Nick better be damn good!

THE RIVER: This river in itself is special as it was dammed up several years ago for power generation. Originally, it was going to be running at just a trickle, saving the flow for the power generation up stream. As it turns out, the rafting industry is a fairly powerful lobby in New Zealand, and they protested the drying up of this river. They eventually negotiated that the dam would open up 28 days each year (basically on the weekends in the summer), for recreational purposes.

There are 8 of us in the raft, with Nick and another guide-in-training in front, with myself and 5 others from the study abroad group taking up the rear. Somehow I end up in the back of the raft, which apparently gets the most action as far as getting flung out and getting wet. Lucky me.

After a quick lesson in commands to expect from Nick, we set off down the river. There are 3 other rafts in our group and some crazy guy hitting up the rapids in a canoe. It turns out that this guy is one of the best rafting guides in the area. After watching him navigate some rapids, I believe it. I can’t sit in still water in a canoe without capsizing it.

START OFF STRONG: We start off strong with a class 4 rapid to get our blood going. We are the last in the group to go, so we get to watch the other three rafts make it down one by one. The first raft isn’t very lucky—they end up going down the rapids sideways, and the last thing I see is one of the occupants getting jettisoned from the raft as it capsizes down the rapids. Our guide scurries off to help pull people out of the water, and we get a little concerned.

Fortunately, everyone in that raft is OK, if not a little bruised from being pounded against the rocks by the powerful current. Apparently, the wetsuits provide a decent amount of cushioning.

Nick returns after a few minutes, smiling, mentioning that the guide of that raft was trying to get certified today but probably failed. The problem with all these extreme sports activities is you can never tell when the guides are joking or being serious, but I think he’s being serious this time. I resist the urge to ask if Nick himself is certified, scared for what he might answer.

Nick appears to know what he’s doing, as he skillfully guides us down the killer rapid smoothly and quickly. One of the commands he taught us is “GET DOWN!” which basically means hop into the bottom of the raft and hold on for dear life. We learn very quickly the importance of this command as we plunge down the first rapid. Overall, it wasn’t too horrible, and the water is a bit warmer than the freezing water from caving yesterday.

After we make it to the bottom of the first rapid, I turn around, look, and saw we that we just went down a 4 or 5 foot water fall. Wow. If I had seen that before hand, I would have definitely protested the insane act of trying to go down the waterfall in our proverbial barrel, but Nick makes it easy.

CLASS 5: Needless to say, I am confident in Nick’s abilities now and look forward to the rest of the river, with a “BRING IT ON!” type attitude. We navigate several more class 4’s, then approach our first class 5. We park on the side and Nick gives us some instructions. One part of this rapid is called the Toaster. The rocks earn the name because they’re so close together that if the raft goes through it, it’s like a piece of toast going into a Toaster. Nick emphasizes the importance of getting down in this situation, should we encounter it. The thought of being wedged between a raft and two rocks is rather disturbing, so I hope we don’t end up in it.

As it turns out, we navigate it nearly flawlessly. As I turn back to look up the rapid, I am truly amazed what we just came down.

GOING SOLO: We do several more rapids, with cool names like “the Roller Coaster”. We get to one class 3 and park the raft. Nick tells us we can get out and swim this one if we want. I’m a little skeptical, but Nick’s advice hasn’t led us astray yet, so I figure it’s worth a shot. He instructs us to “Just make sure you take your breaths carefully, and keep your feet up.”

The reason for the feet up thing is so if your foot catches something, you don’t get slammed face first into the rapid by the current, where you will really be in trouble.

I hop out of the raft and start paddling. Swimming in a strong river current is truly scary. You can paddle like hell, but you barely go anywhere except where the river wants you to go. I’m swept away down the river. At first, it’s not so bad, even almost pleasant. That doesn’t last for long. As I enter the first rock, I get sucked under for a bit. When I resurface, I gasp in some air, but catch a little water in the process.

I get sucked under again. I struggle to keep my feet in front of me. There’s water, noise, and cold everywhere. To add to the confusion, I look behind me, and see another group’s raft bearing down on me. I think they’re probably laughing at me, but I’m worried I’m going to get plowed over by them and try to paddle out of the way.

Fortunately, the current keeps me ahead of them and I continue my water-logged journey down the rapid. One of the other guys floats up besides me gasping for breath – I help him keep his head up while he recovers from the combination of inhaling water and a too-tight life jacket.

Eventually, we make it to clear water again, and the nightmare is over. It is truly one of the scariest experiences I have had, and taught me real respect for the power of fast-moving water. In retrospect, there was a very low probability of me getting actually hurt, but the lessons learned are valuable.

The rest of the trip is more of the same. At one point, Nick turns control of the raft over to the guide-in-training. I can’t quite make out what he’s saying, so I just copy what everyone else is doing. The river has eased up a bit, so it doesn’t really matter what you do.

Overall, the experience was fantastic and I highly recommend it to anyone who even remotely likes extreme activities. It wasn’t horribly difficult, but it definitely wasn’t easy either.

Afterwards, we carry the raft back up to the top of the hill, and we hang out for a while waiting for the other group to finish. We found a nice spot on a cliff to sit and watch the river for a while, and the view is quite pretty.

ZORBING: When the other group finishes, we load up the van and go off searching for a thing called “Zorbing.”

Zorbing is best defined as the thing everyone thought of as a kid but never bothered to put it together. The basic idea is you get inside a giant 10-foot diameter plastic ball filled with water and roll down a hill in it. You can load up two or three people in it to make it more interesting. It’s pretty wild, but pricey too - $40NZ for a 30-second ride. I decide to sit this one out and take pictures instead.

You really just need to look at the pictures to appreciate this one. When people exit the Zorb, it looks like the thing is giving birth. Our group went down a few times, and everyone was absolutely giddy when they pop out at the bottom. I get a little jealous, but we’ll have an opportunity to go again soon in Queenstown.

After Zorbing, we go take a quick spin through the Agrodome, a local attraction. The actual facility fell quite short of my expectations for the place; I had visions of a giant facility filled with all sorts of fun activities inside. Instead, the Agrodome is a collection of redneck sporting events that you might find in backwoods Georgia. To add insult to injury, they didn’t have a street luge that we were looking for.

FRIED GOODNESS: So, that brings us to our journey back. 6 hours of driving on NZ roads. Fun. The only thing of note here is we stopped at a Fish and Chips place aptly named “the Grand Central Fry.” We had read about in some tour guide. Imagine the Varsity, but with fish instead of burgers ‘n dogs.

I order a piece of some fish I don’t remember the name of, and some “garlic chips” aka fries drenched in garlic butter. I receive a neat little package of butcher paper that’s piping hot. I unwrap the bundle to a conflicting sight. Part of me is delighted, but at the same time I can feel my arteries trying to run away in protest. Unfortunately, arteries lost this battle and I demolished the fried pile of goodness. My stomach felt a little queasy afterwards, possibly from the injection of a quart of frying oil into my system, but I was satisfied as well.

I was surprised there wasn’t a coronary surgeon set up next door.

The drive back was a long 6 hour uneventful drive at night. The only interesting part was we weren’t quite sure where our dorm was located downtown, so we ended up guessing. By some crazy chance, we get it right. I think I’ve used up my luck for this week…

Until next time,

--P

Day 10: Cavin' Down Under

2005-01-08T03:28:00.000-08:00

Day 10: Saturday Jan 8, 2005

STINKY: When I wake up, I forget where I am temporarily until I inhale.

Rotorua stinks like rotten eggs, all the time. It’s because of the large amount of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) emissions from the nearby geothermal areas. If you’re lucky, the wind blows the right way and it doesn’t smell as bad.

WAKEUP: Waking up in a hostel is easier than one might think. Since we had 8 people in the room, and at least 6 of them set alarms for the butt-crack of 8AM, I had no trouble in grudgingly rolling out of bed bright and early for our expedition underground with the Black Water Rafting Co. We stroll down the street to grab a quick breakfast from a small cafe before we head out.

PIE!: I think I have finally figured out the official food of New Zealand: pies. I’m not talking about the typical fruity pies that we’re used to in States, but rather meat and cheese filled little pies that are really yummy. About the size of a small hamburger, these flaky pastries pack a punch in small package and are delicious. I down a bacon and egg pie, which of the available steak, mince, chicken, and other varieties seemed the most logical choice for a breakfast pie. I wash it down with a Coke.

COKE: Soft drink side note: Coke is damn expensive down here. Your typical 12-oz Coke, which is actually 330 mL, costs the equivalent of $1.50US. Ouch. Fortunately, there is no Pepsi here. The Kiwis have good taste. And, get this: no 2-Litre bottles that I’ve seen yet. 1.5L is the largest you can get. Still, I have to shake the soft drink habit before it breaks my wallet.

We load up our rental vans and kick off the 45-minute drive to the rafting headquarters. Nothing is physically close to anything around here. Once we get there, we perform the pre-game ritual of slopping on sunscreen, changing into bathing suits, and unloading valuables from pockets. The adventurous members of the group, which is most of us except for some pansy girls, opt for the Black Abyss tour, which we’re not quite sure what is involved but sounds cool and extreme. For $160NZ, it better be cool. They said it’d last a few hours so I figure I’d get my money’s worth.

They divide us up into groups of 8 and I end up in the second group. We kill time by playing some pool and I shoot off some random pictures. Pool down here is interesting, because the balls are much smaller and the tables bigger. I think it’s Snooker and not Billiards, but I’m not sure. Since there are still 15 balls on the table, we play it like Billiards.

THE GUIDES: Our group is finally called and we meet our tour guides. There’s a guy and a girl. I can’t remember their names but for simplicity we’ll call them Chris and Emily. Emily is the first to greet us. She looks like a typical Kiwi girl, not very attractive but witty, energetic, and fit. She’s carrying a cordless drill, revving it aimlessly while giving us the intro spiel. I can’t help but wonder if we’re going to be helping fix the cave on our expedition. Chris bounces up a minute later and the two jibe at each other for a bit. It’s obvious they worked together before. When we ask them how long they’ve been doing this, they answer “This is my first day!” like every other tour guide on the planet does to be funny. I let it slide, but I’ll be expecting better jokes from now on.

Chris's accent and mannerisms remind me of an uglier Steve Irwin, crocodile hunter. He seems to have a reckless appetite for fun, but enough confidence so that we’re not too scared. His Kiwi accent is fun to listen to, and his jokes are a bit funnier than Emily’s.

SUIT UP: The dynamic duo leads us down to a converted storage container that stores wetsuits. I knew we would be getting wet, but I wasn’t expecting a wetsuit. Having never worn a wetsuit before, I am intrigued. We spend a few minutes guessing sizes and selecting equipment. After 15 more minutes struggling, tugging, pulling, zipping, and adjustments, we’re transformed from Atlanta city boys and girls to grade-A divers armed with rappelling gear and helmets. I knew we would be doing some climbing and whatnot, but I definitely wasn’t expecting this.

The wet suits feel funny, since they hug every part of your skin. They work by holding a thin layer of water against your body, and using that as insulation against the colder water around you. Apparently, the water in the caves that we’re about to frolic in is a balmy 50 degrees F. Oof.

Emily cracks a joke about making sure everything fits right so “your love spuds” don’t get in a jam. I take her advice seriously, just in case. The helmets we put on are pretty nice; they have these cool little LED headlamps in them. Little did I know how much we would need them.

We’re bussed over to the obscure cave entrance which is a few minutes away from the suit-up facility. The cave itself is partially hidden behind some bushes, and if you didn’t know what to look for, you wouldn’t see it. There is a sign across a path saying “Caution: No Entry,” behind it which leads into darkness. Cool.

Abseiling, also known as rappelling, is doing a controlled descent down a rope using some specialized hardware around a climbing harness. We’re taught how to do this without killing ourselves. Chris tells us if we get in a bind to scream so they know we’re in trouble. Hmm. Once we get the hang of the technique, which boils down to tension the rope to stop, and let go to descend, we waddle over to the entrance and begin the descent.

DESCENT: There is a platform which goes about 10 feet into the brush and abruptly ends directly over a huge black hole of which you can’t see the bottom. There is a rope dangling down by the end of the platform. Chris clicks onto the rope and zooms to the bottom, making the descent look easy and to belay the rest of us in case we screw up. I’m second to last to go, but since I don’t hear any screams or loud thuds echoing up from the hole, I assume the descent isn’t terrifying and I look forward to it.

Emily clicks me onto the rope, double checks my harness, and sends me on my way. The descent is surprisingly slow, since the weight of the long rope (a good 30 meters or so) adds a good amount of tension to the braking device. I pretend I’m a movie star for a bit and do the hop off the side of the wall number, but I remember Emily telling us that might hurt our back so I don’t do it for long. The initial descent goes through a quite narrow hole that I just fit through without scraping on by. I don’t consider myself extremely claustrophobic, but once I was surrounded in a tunnel of rock hanging by a rope, I was getting a little uneasy.

A few more feet down, and I plunge into darkness. My headlamp is the only thing illuminating anything, but I’m still too high to see the bottom. Once I get past the initial narrow opening, the cave widens and I’m descending down a huge rock face. I relax again and continue down and make it to the bottom shortly after.

GLOWWORMS: Once I get down and unhooked, I make my way over to the group who is waiting. They tell me to turn off my headlamp and look up. In complete darkness, the ceiling of the cave is dotted in little points of bluish-green light. This cave is populated by glowworms, which are actually a type of fly as Chris will later explain. They are quite pretty, and as my eyes adjust I can see more of them. There are literally thousands in the small part we’re in, and we’re sure to see more as we go along.

ZIPPPPPP: We regroup and work our way to the next part of the cave. Chris and Emily shrug off questions as to what’s going on next. We get to another part of the cave and Chris drags Melissa, the only girl in our group, to the front. He takes her harness, clips it onto something, and tells us to turn off our lights. Then, he shoves her off the side of the platform we’re standing on, and it turns out to be a zipline running down into the pitch black darkness of the cave. Melissa’s screams bounce around and become progressively more faint until she hits the bottom of the zipline.

Going down a zipline is one thing, going down a zipline in absolute darkness and not knowing when you’re going to hit is another. It was exhilarating, and I couldn’t help but giggle a little (after “woooooooooo!”ing all the way down) as I hit the bottom. They unhook me and the rest of the group zips in one by one.

This part of the cave is much larger, and there are many more glowworms. They almost look like a blue-green starry night, except that we’re in a cave. I notice a pile of inner tubes sitting in the corner of the cave, I hear a riving running in the background, and I figure out where our wetsuits are going to come into play.

TUBIN': We each grab a tube, make our way over to the edge of a rock, and look down the 8-foot drop to the water below. One by one, we jump in, butt-first, and with a loud slap hit the cold water. When I go, I nearly flip over from rotating too much, but survive. The cold water is like a slap in the face, and stings for a few minutes until my body heat warms up the insulating layer in the wetsuit.

We paddle a few minutes up the underground river, and find some gunk on the walls of the cave that doubles as face paint. We all put some on, and as a result we look like some weird combination of miners and divers sitting butt-first in inner tubes.

We continue upstream for a while, where Chris explains the nature of the glowworm. To make a long story short, the glowworms are the larvae of flies that eat stuff that gets stuck in their snot, their shit glows, and they turn into flying gonads with only two days to live when they become flies. Fascinating.

We form a chain and float down the river while looking up at the top of the cave. By this point I’m fairly warm despite the 50 degree water thanks to the wetsuit. The glowworms are beautiful and the 5-10 minute float is very peaceful.

At this point, we ditch the inner tubes and begin the cave exploration part of the journey. This was the most fun part by far. We float down the river for a bit in just our wetsuits. The buoyancy of the wetsuit helps quite a bit with this. We have to keep our feet down so our butts don’t smack against the random rocks at the bottom of the shallow river.

EXPLORING: The rest of the trip consists of spelunking throughout the cave, gradually making our way to the top. We follow the river most of the time, at points climbing up underground water falls which looked flat out impossible to do. With some egging on from Chris and Emily, however, they proved to be manageable, and by the time I complete each one (There were three), I feel quite accomplished. I was first up for one of them, which is always scary in itself. At one point, we have to navigate under a rock face that is only inches above the water line, leaving just enough room for your head to stick up while crawling through on your belly. Some of the guys in the group don't like this at all.

At the final waterfall, Chris tells me to turn off my headlamp once I get to the top of the waterfall and try to feel my way out of the cave by following the stream. While not all that difficult, fumbling around in a completely dark cave proved to be quite eerie and I will admit I was a bit scared. Once I caught a glimpse of sunlight though, I knew we had reached the end and it was like crossing the finish line of a long race.

Part of me wanted to do it again right away, but I was pretty sore and tired from the whole ordeal and I was relieved when they provided us with hot showers and soup afterwards. I wish I could have taken pictures down there, but it was too dark for an underwater disposable (as Jeff found out first hand) and too hazardous for my precious digital camera.

The total experience was incredible and it really gave me a new perspective on extreme sports.
I am starting to understand why New Zealand is the extreme sports capital of the world.

When we get back, everyone's pretty worn out, but we hit up the bars for a little bit for good measure. Nothing too exciting to note from that, except the house beer at the Pig and Whistle sucks.

Tomorrow: Rafting!
--P