Upsidedown Orion

It's a challenge to pick out only a few photos from our trip to New Zealand to post on this blog. We snapped about 900 of them (although about 200 were duplicates or didn’t turn out well). When you take that many, you're bound to get some decent ones, even if none of them do the actual sights justice. Anyway, check out our gallery to see some more of our favorites:

http://picasaweb.google.com/jrfinc/NewZealandFavorites

The bullet train that was our two-week trip rolled through the month of February and left us looking back with wind through our hair. Add in the pre- and post-trip crunches at work, and there's a large portion of the year gone before we even had the chance to get used to replacing 2007 with 2008 in applicable online entry fields (the modern day equivalent of forgetting to write the new year on checks).

In short, the trip was amazing. I won't type you through the complete itinerary. If you are interested, here's a copy of it from the tour company's website (although we did the loop in reverse). Yes, we took this trip with a tour group, which can sometimes be a bust, but I think it worked very well for us. For one thing, we saved so much time not having to plan where to sleep every night, where we would eat, what trail we'd hike, etc. They made the decisions--good decisions--for us. They also saved us from learning how to drive on the left side of the road and from getting lost constantly, which is what usually happens, at least when I'm in charge of navigation.

There were 16 people in our group, half of them were younger than 40, all of them were fit and active. We had some awesome guides as well that were very knowledgeable and basically catered to us 24 hours a day. They got us awake and moving at sunrise every morning and we kept busy until sunset. We'd spend a few hours traveling in the van here and there, but mostly we were outside hiking, biking, or kayaking. And they were good about taking us off the beaten track and avoiding hordes of tourists.

I'm not convinced there were hordes of tourists. The country is very much un-developed... and, discounting the sounds of the birds, strangely quiet. The biggest city on the south island, Christchurch, was not very big. The pristine lakes didn't have houses surrounding them; they rarely had boats or water-skiers on them either. Excluding the people in our group, with whom we quickly became close friends, we felt alone and secluded, and that's the best way to see the gorgeous scenery that dominates the land. The city of Queenstown was hopping, but by the time we got there it was a welcomed change. It made a night out on the town more fun.

R and I kept a travel journal during the trip. Here are a few adapted notes from there:

• There are 10 times as many sheep as there are people in NZ.



• You can drink the water directly from almost any river or creek in NZ... and it all tastes really good. We tested the theory and also added glacier water to it.



• The wine is good too. We drank some almost every night, including the nights during our three-day backpacking hike. On the other hand, the beer wasn't nearly as impressive.



• I was bit by an eel. We went swimming the first night of our three-day hike. R jumped in off the dock. Being less brave, I sat at the end and dangled my feet in the water for a few minutes... until I felt a nibble on my big toe. It didn't break the skin; I just assumed it was a fish. I mentioned it to one of the guides who was there with us and she pointed a flash light at the water. "It's just a trout," she told us. I wanted see this thing for myself, so I grabbed my glasses and came back. That's when I noticed the guide was lying to us, probably to keep R, still swimming out a ways from the dock, calm. It was an eel and it was about a meter long. "Whoa... that's a smaller trout than I expected," was my vocal response. The guide whispered to me about how eels have a way of biting down and not letting go. "R, why don't you come out of the water now…" We managed to get R out safely and then broke the news. That didn't stop our other guide from jumping in the water right over the eel. We kept on eye on the thing with our flashlights (it seemed drawn to the light)while the guide cooled off . A few minutes later it disappeared under the dock. We told the swimmer and--SPLASH!--he was out of the water quick. I did not make it into the water that night.



• I did go swimming the next afternoon in a mountain lake. I am claiming it was the coldest swim I've ever taken. My feet turned numb while attempting to get in. But both R and I did go under, however, and swam around for a little bit. It actually felt good after the day's arduous hike, and it was as close as we were going to get to a shower.



• It was hard to get a sense of scale around some of the massive mountains and wide open spaces. While kayaking, we had a waterfall in front of us that was three times the height of Niagara Falls. It didn't look it because of the enormity of the mountain behind it. There was another waterfall that we guessed was about a kilometer away. It turned out to be 9 kilometers away. Our photos are even less representative of the actual scale.



• We arrived home 30 hours later than scheduled. Our flight over the Pacific was turned around over an hour into it due to a weather radar problem. They weren't able to reschedule the flight until 22 hours later. The good side was that we got an extra half day to spend in Auckland, a city that was otherwise excluded from our tour. When we got on the rescheduled flight, the same problem was still occurring (at least it was noticed before took off this time), so we had to switch planes. The airline gave us $50 each to spend in the duty-free shops while we waited for the other 747 to be prepared. R let me use her voucher to buy a new set of ear buds with the combined amount. Thanks, R!



• I finished The Kite Runner a few days into the trip (R, being the speedy reader she is, finished well before me). It was an entertaining enough read, but it's far from classic literature and ultimately quite forgettable. I hesitate to write that because I know the novel is loved by so many people. Getting a peek into the harrowing state of affairs in Afghanistan was fascinating; I just think the author should have spent less effort creating unbelievable plot coincidences and more on adding dimension to his characters. Up next for the book club (for those of you following along at home): The Human Stain by Phillip Roth.

All right, let's wrap it up.

During regular life, R and I spend just about all of our energy on getting through the work week. When free time comes around, we need it just to recover. In New Zealand, we were able to focus our energy on having fun. There was something about the fresh air, the increased physical activity, and good nights of sleep that brought out our strength and renewed our enthusiasm for facing a new day. I can honestly say I went through entire days without thinking at all about my job. That's a remarkable feat... and the sign of a good vacation.