fjordland

Once again, nothing too crazy in this email.  Just some ridiculous scenery.  That's the thing about New Zealand.  Once you think you've seen the most mind-boggling lanscape in the world, then around the corner there's something that resets the bar.  I had to really pick and choose from my 75 photos per day.

I've been staying in backpacker hostels, which is totally the way to go.  I avoid staying in the dorms, but there are usually private rooms available so you can still hang out in the common areas but not have to deal with snorers and door-slammers.  Being a solo traveler, it's absolutely impossible not to meet people unless you lock yourself in a room.  So, I've hung out with the following people:

A Quebecoise girl whom I met on the trail (about Montreal, university studies, and career paths)

A Malaysian Chinese girl (about Malaysian and Singapore politics)

A French guy (about skiing, and also Lance Armstrong!)

A Dutch guy (about American gun laws)

An Irish guy (about the color of one's stool after drinking Guinness for several days)

...among others

I received word that I need to return to work in a couple of days, so I'll be making my way back north tomorrow.

Arriving in Te Anau. The next day I hiked up the mountain off my right hand.  It took about eight hours.  I left before daybreak and returned at dusk.  It was absolutely amazing but howling winds and rain meant that I couldn't take many pictures.

Top of the hike.  I was wet and cold.  That's a fjord behind me but the sun is so low and the land is so steep that everything is always in shadow.

The lakefront in the town of Te Anau.  It's a nice little town.  A few T-shirt shops, a big statue of a bird, and lots of wilderness next door.

On the road to Milford Sound

Riddle me this:

You've heard the saying "the photos don't do it justice".  Well, this time it's true.

Kea

Kea (kee-yuh) are mountain parrots, the unruly teenagers of the bird world.  They are mischievous and curious.  They really like to chew on things, especially shiny things attached to cars.  I watched this one methodically destroy this guy's windshield wipers.

When he was done, he (she?) trotted over to my car to see what he could mess with.  I actually had to remove my wiper blades while I went for a walk.  

one more... the oft-photographed Mitre Peak in Milford Sound.

break from the heat

Hello fellow skiers and ski-ettes.

My friend Ben and I went to Craigieburn today, it was a blast.  These club ski fields are something else.  The terrain is as ridiculous as you want it to be, the rope tows are a challenge in themselves, and the mountains are spectacular.  In interviews, Aaron Brill, the founder of Silverton, says he got the idea for that mountain after a trip to Craigieburn.  

This nutcracker tow is famous even in NZ because it goes around a corner.  That's my hand at the bottom.  Remember, this thing is hauling ass.  Get it wrong and you have your knuckles flattened.  Taking the photo was a pretty respectable feat.

That's an old Ford tractor in there powering the apparatus.

The goods:

touring Canterbury

Hopefully the number of pictures in this email doesn't blow up your computer.

My father and I have been kicking around Canterbury for the last week, seeing the sights in this part of New Zealand.  The weather has been really nice, which has been great for touring but bad for the ski area.  Winter has apparently been delayed so far, which means the ski area can't open yet.  Which means that I don't have any work yet.  There have been frosty temperatures overnight which has allowed some artificial snowmaking to take place, but that only covers a very small percentage of the ski area and isn't enough to keep the whole crew busy.  Hopefully Mother nature kicks it into gear soon and gives us some snow.

We had some people take us up in gliders, which was really neat.  A little wind-up rubber band plane tows the glider up to about 4000 feet, then detaches you.  It was a calm day, so it took maybe half an hour per flight.  On a windy day there isn't a limit on how long one can stay up.  I had a great view of the ski mountain and the surrounding hills and also the ocean.  My pilot did some stalls and loops, which was exciting but made me slightly queasy.  Great fun and nice people, though.  

We also did some mountain biking around a lake up in the hills.  It was really pretty, but everything was brown because it is wintertime here.  This was where they filmed some of the Lord of the Rings scenes.  There weren't any power lines or people or anything at all, really.  Just a huge mountain range in the distance and the wind.  One thing that's cool about New Zealand is that there are never any airplanes or contrails overhead.  I guess it's just not on the way to anywhere.  In the US the skies are always full.  

I fell into a patch of thorns.  I've still got some in my hands and I don't know how I'll get them out of my clothes.

We also visited a lake up the way, Lake Coleridge.  There was nobody here.  There was a cold, stiff wind.  I guess in the summer people might fish or windsurf up here, but it was pretty menacing that day.  The water in the lakes and rivers are all a turquoise blue.  It's because of eroded glacial "rock flour" in the water that reflects blue.  I looked that up.

My little town of Methven has about 1000 residents on a crowded day, and for shopping I drive about half and hour to the town of Ashburton, population 15,000 or so.  My dad and I went down so I could get my cell phone set up and we could rent some DVDs and such.  No on-line streaming of media here since internet is outrageously expensive.  While we were there, we experienced a fairly strong earthquake.  I was in the phone shop and the floor and walls started shaking.  I was standing there slack-jawed when a lady grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the building.  Outside everyone was on the street dialing on their cell phones.  The pavement was still roiling for a length of time after.  Feels like you are sickly drunk and woozy, since everything is moving around imperceptibly.   It turns out that the epicenter of the quake was in Christchurch.  This didn't help matters there at all, as I will describe later.  It was Steve's first earthquake.  We also experienced another in Christchurch a few days later.

Something that I think my dad was impressed with is the state of chilliness everywhere, most of all in my little house.  It's a really quaint little cottage near the center of town, and it is one of the older houses on the street.  It doesn't have any insulation or central heating.  It had a fireplace but the chimney fell down in the September earthquake (onto my car), so the fireplace is out of commission.  Now to keep warm, one operates a combination of portable propane and electric heaters.  If you're going to be in a room for awhile, you turn the heater on there.  Then you turn it off when you leave to save electricity.  You can be as warm as you like, but you have to be willing to pay the electric bill.  At night you have to wear a hat to bed or your ears and nose will get frozen.  You also need to remember to pee before going to bed.  It saves a lot of heartache later when you have to get up in the middle of the night and go to the icy toilet.  Don't get me wrong, I love the place, it's got character.

The neighbors have some cats that are outside all the time and often hang out on the fence.  Everyone who walks by stops to pet them.  I guess it will suffice until I can be reunited with mine, who is on vacation at my parents' house for the summer.

I just now left Steve at an airport hotel.  An ash cloud from a Chilean volcano has been circumnavigating the southern hemisphere and disrupting NZ air travel.  Allegedly it has drifted offshore for a couple of days, so hopefully he gets out tomorrow.  

Much love,

Ray

Christchurch

We went to Christchurch today.  We had planned to go to a museum or two, but most of the things to see are downtown.  We decided to go down there to check it out.  I hadn't been there, and I had heard that some of the city center was closed off.  I figured there would still be shops and people outside the cordon, and that we could browse around a bit.  I had seen some chimneys down in the area around my town, and there is a church down the road that lost its steeple.  But that was really all I had seen of the damage and it didn't register that things were much worse.

I was really unprepared for the state of things in the city.  It seems like the earthquake went off directly underneath downtown.  The entire city center was closed off, empty, and eerie.  It was like the beating heart of the city had been surgically removed.

We parked on a side street near a fence that closed off a bridge over the river.  We walked around looking for the parking meter machine.  As we were about to put coins in, a lone lady from across the street yelled "don't bother, they haven't checked the meter since February."  

I figured there would be a place to get a coffee, but there wasn't anything open at all.  It seemed like every building had a red tag on it that meant that it was condemned.  I peeked in the window of a coffee shop and there were cups and plates on the tables, and a dusty newspaper dated Feb. 22, 2011 (the quake happened on Feb. 23).  It was like Pompeii.

We walked around the cordon, satisfying our morbid curiosity.  There is a big casino on the edge of the city center and it was open.  It was a bit of a shock to see some people milling about.  We asked if there was coffee inside, and indeed there was.  We went upstairs to the bar and ordered.  While standing there waiting for our order, there was a rumble and the ceiling shook.  Everyone looked up and halfheartedly moved toward the door.  Later I looked at the http://www.geonet.org.nz/ site (chock full of interesting geological info) which said that it was a 4.4 quake, 6km deep, and 10km from Christchurch.  That's really shallow, and really close.

I think we flatlanders have the impression that an earthquake is an isolated event.  But it's really a long process.  There's the initial shock, then as the force transmits down that fault and on to other faults, there are continuous aftershocks.  They decrease in intensity and frequency over time, but they've been going on nonstop in Christchurch since the February quake there (and since September along the fault in Darfield 30 miles away, which had the 7.2 quake last year).  There have been many thousands of aftershocks since those quakes.  

The twin shocks we felt in Ashburton were 5.5 and 6.2 magnitude.  The February quake was a 6.3.  What's troubling now is that the clock is reset for the aftershocks.  They will now decrease over time, but buildings that might have been saved before Monday are now beyond repair, and there's really no timeline on when the quakes will quit.  We saw some scaffolding that was mangled from falling walls.  It looked like crews had been trying to stabilize the structures when the big shock hit on Monday and stamped out any hope.

We walked the rest of the way around the city and I snapped some photos.  One striking sight was the Catholic church, which looks like it is barely standing.  Out in the large courtyard in front of the church, workers had carefully tagged and stacked stones that were recovered from the church.  I guess the intent was to restore the building and put the stones back into place. But looking at it, it seemed obvious to us that there was no hope at all.  Huge cracks ran up the facade, and the massive structure looked like it could come apart at any minute.  I imagine the Monday aftershock broke a lot of hearts.

Well, here are some grim pictures.

planet of the apes

The famous cathedral in the background.  Some of you have been there.

church organ

toilet and bathtub exposed to the street

the Catholic church

return to the s. pacific

My father and I arrived in Fiji a few days ago, and after a short visit of a few days, we're leaving for New Zealand tomorrow.  It's nice to get a little sunshine on this white body.  It's warm, as you would expect, but not brutally so.

We arrived in Nadi, a medium-sized town on the western part of the biggest island.  Upon disembarking, we learned that we had no baggage.  My father wasn't too worried about it and said we'd get along just fine with toothbrushes.  I was more concerned, since I was carrying four months worth of winter sporting equipment.  It showed up the following day to our relief.  

We bummed around for the day, battling jetlag.  There are some big resorts nearby with gates and manicured lawns and boutique shopping.  That seemed to be where all the white folks hung out.  We checked that out for a bit, then went on a bus tour of the area because that seemed like a low-impact way to kill the afternoon.  On the tour we stopped at a village where people led a pretty mean existence.  Later we returned to our airport hotel, which was really quite fancy.  At night there were swarms of toads hopping about the grounds outside.

The following morning we found our bags at the airport, and shortly afterwards, a fellow came to drive us to the village where we spent the last couple of days.  I only grabbed a couple things out of my bag before putting them in hotel storage (no skis needed in Fiji villages).  Among the things I wished I had grabbed was my pocket camera.  I'm pretty good at taking sly photos with it.  I brought my big camera, but there are times when it's awkward or inappropriate to use it.  So unfortunately, there were lots of things I wish I had pictures of.  One good rule in photography is that in order to get the shot, you have to have a camera.

Our guide Isso, a mid-twenties man with big tattooed biceps, drove us about an hour and a half to his village.  He had an odd tic and seemed to nod off fairly often while navigating at 100 miles per hour along roads clogged with horses, dogs, and people.  Making small talk, I asked him what he did for fun.  I asked if he surfed.  Surfed?  No, he said, shaking his head.  I got the feeling that he thought surfing was for sallies.  I asked if he fished, and he said he liked to spearfish.  It sounded pretty badass to me, the idea of this dude swimming down into the reef and spearing sharks.

We arrived at the village, which was honestly a village.  It was pretty jungle-y and there were lots of folks hanging around.  They were very happy to see us.  Some old ladies wanted to talk to us and ask us where we were from.  Small children giggled and pointed, saying "Bula!  Bula!".  Some guys were hanging around digging holes for some project and they said hello.  They were all pretty well-muscled.  Apparently this village is known for its champion rugby squad.

Our hostess, Tupau (Isso's sister-in-law) asked us if we'd like to see the elementary school. We said sure and she took us over. In the sweltering schoolroom we had about 60 schoolkids gather around and touch our hands and smiling.  They were all wearing sarongs.  Then they sang three or four songs enthusiastically and formed a big line and danced. They asked is if we'd like to say something. I gave a little speech about how we were
from the USA and I am 36 years old but once upon a time I was six years old, same as them. Then Steve gave a speech about bronze bushings and bearings. He also did a weird trick with his shoulder blade. Being six years old, I think the kids were more interested in that than listening about American precision manufacturing.  It was any amazing experience.  The Fijians have been, without exception, incredibly friendly.  Everyone says "Bula!" in the street and has a big smile.

We were invited to dinner at Tupau's house later, so we hung around in our beach cabin for a bit.  The kids came out to the beach later and played some spirited volleyball.  After a bit, the volleyball screaming and giggling changed into some deeper manly shouts and grunts.  We went out to see what was going on and were shocked to see that all of the village men were doing rugby drills on the beach.  Seriously, they looked like an NFL team running forwards and backwards and tackling and passing.  After working their butts off until the sun went down, they all got together and sang a song of praise in a beautiful acapella.

Tupau made us dinner later which was a big extravaganza of chicken and lamb stir frys, rice, bananas, papayas, and strawberry Fanta.  Her husband Sake joined us.  He's in his mid-forties and has big muscles and cauliflower ears from playing rugby on the Fijian club circuit.  He was a super nice guy who seemed like he was probably pretty wild in his youth but settled down for the married life.  After dinner, I pulled out some Fijian tobacco I purchased at the market the day previously.  Sake's eyes lit up and he pounced on it, rolling up some cigars for us.  We shared cigars and he seemed really impressed that I brought the goods.  

After a night of ants biting the hell out of my arms and legs while I slept, we awoke to breakfast of fried banana cakes and more papaya.  Tupau then took us to the market in the nearby town of Sigatoka.  It was very busy with commerce.  Lots of spiny fruits, freshwater mussels, more tobacco, and jewelry.  Also, there was lots of kava being sold.  Kava is a sort of bushy plant that is pounded into powder and then strained through water to make a drink also called kava.  It's apparently a mild narcotic, and Fijians drink quite a bit of it.  In the market, there was an old toothless crone straining the stuff through a rag into small bowls.  Tupau asked if I'd like to try some, and I couldn't resist.  To my father's horror, I chugged two bowls of the stuff.  First it made my tongue tingle, then go numb.  Then the lower part of my face went numb, and I felt it working its way down my throat.  It didn't last too long, however.  Interesting stuff.

Tomorrow we're off to NZ.  I think it will be a little different.

big pretty plane 

SCD is a natural with the sarong

me modeling the sarong.  not bad!  the backdrop helps.

kids digging for clams on our beach

the loo at our establishment

hostess/guide Tupau and myself at the market