I'm so cool I'm glacial.

So I know I seem to be a binge and purge blogger, but I finally have decent internet and many glorious things to share with you wonderful people who (hopefully) pay at least a little attention to my rambling travel rambles.  

So today was a most glorious day because even though I only got a couple hours of sleep, it's hard to feel sleepy when climbing around on New Zealand's largest glacier.  But first, back to the boring stuff you've missed. and by boring I mean of course only slightly less thrilling than scampering around a giant moving block of ice with spikes tied to my feet.

For instance, we made a nice trip up to Arthur's Pass.  I am now officially the designated car reader and we have made our way through one Jack Vance and have started in on the sequel.  The weather at the lookout was...interesting.  But even with the fog the view was striking, rain agrees with New Zealand.

Then there were the Kea birds.  One of the world's only alpine parrots. Why there are any alpine parrots?  I must claim ignorance.  They are obnoxious yet hilarious.  Particularly good at whining and stealing food, they will eat everything from your lunch to your tires (they have a weird rubber thing, I think maybe that discovery channel show about the woman who eats comet should look into it).  Saying they weren't shy is an understatement so grand it's almost sarcasm.  Plus they would stare you down with a glint in their eye somewhat like they wonder what you'd taste like.

Dad wanted me to scare one so we could see the orange underside of their wing. Instead he scared me. That bird had a mean poker face. 

cool glacier stuff

So on to the cool glacier stuff.   I made the trip alone and did the all day hike.  We were dropped off about half an hour from the base of the glacier, and for some reason unknown to myself we took the hour and a half walk through the rain forest with about 800 uphill steps.  Sure we had some amazing views of Fox Glacier, and sure it's pretty damn cool to be able to say I hiked through a rain forest and came out and climbed right on to a glacier, not sure how many places you can do that in the world.  But after we made it all the way up the side of the valley we had to climb back down to the glacier.  So we strapped on our crampons, tried to fend off the exhaustion from climbing so high within an hour that my ears popped. multiple times, and made our way onto the ice.  

Fox Glacier

 Unlike the half day which spends most of it's time getting to and from the glacier and then staying on a precut path on the lower sliver of the glacier, we went off-roading, and actually made it higher than our guide had ever been.  We also found an ice cave we got to climb around inside, and get soaking wet from the melting glacier dripping on us from above, but luckily the glowing quality of the glass makes it feel a little less claustrophobic when you're squeezing through a passage barely wider than you.  

 Absolutely exhausted I don't think I'll be awake past 9:30 tonight, but it was so worth it getting to scramble around, crossing crevasses, climbing up ice faces, and getting our guide to take goofy pictures.  We also ended up with a gorgeous day in the middle of a week of rain and clouds.  Not a cloud in the sky and we had sunshine over the ice almost all day, not the usual for fall on the south island.  So this may have been my first experience with ice picks and crampons, but it shall not be my last, but now it is time for bed since tomorrow morning I'll be going to see the sunrise over Mount Tasman.

The Land Before Time

Ferm Gully. Jurassic Park. Middle Earth. Narnia. Whatever the name of that planet in Avatar was.  Basically it's agreed upon that New Zealand does not look like normal places, at least not in our era.  Sure sometimes we drive down a road and think oh! This looks just like the part of the Drive to Saint Joe's where we see all the turtles... if we made the drive 2 million years ago Fred Flinstone style in a car driven by foot power.  There's something about the mixture of flat plains next to jagged mountains covered in a strange mix of pines and palm trees, where you see parrots and some miles later a glacier that you have to walk through a rain forest to get to... it's just not 2011.

So as the story goes, after a couple (literally, just 2) days of class between out Napier trip and our trip south I was once again ready for some travel.  This time leaving even earlier (seriously, they picked me up at 6:30... the sun had barely come up) we headed to the ferry and after a few wrong turns (including an accidental booking on the ferry going the opposite direction) everything turned out fine and dandy.  It was a great ferry ride, though I had to spend a good part of it working on my religion paper I had put off...
We had nice weather on and off, but there started to be a trend to the off.  We made the best of it though, and the Villa Backpackers I stayed in my first time to Taupo was as adorable as ever.  We spent a quiet evening wandering the water front and made an excellent gourmet hamburger meal of our own.

The beach at Nelson

The next morning we set out in the rain on the topsy turvy road to Nelson. Along the way we happened upon Havelock, the Green Mussel Capitol of the world.  It was surprisingly hard to find mussels in the mussel capitol, but after driving on to a loading dock down by the water (where i'm pretty sure the "public" wasn't really allowed) dad managed to talk his way into a giant bag of mussels.  About 50. and Green lipped mussels aren't like the pathetic little mussels we have back home.  So that night we cooked them up with a glorious garlic butter sauce (how could it go wrong?) and somehow managed to actually eat all of them that had opened.  Nelson also had a pretty fantastic farmer's market, but the weather still was not fantastic so after a morning there we trooped back into the warm dry car to head down the coast.

We made it to Greymouth for the night, to stay at the colorful Duke backpackers.  Father got in over his head in a game of pool and thanks to an unknown New Zealand tradition had to drop trou since the other team got all their balls in before he made a single one.  Everyone cheered and he still loves hostel life, I was upstairs in bed at 8:30 with headphones in and a sleeping mask to block out all those kids and their raucous merrymaking.
On our way to Greymouth we stopped at a seal colony and the pancake rocks, both are much more interesting in picture form than in words, so here they are.

Long Lost Family

Reunited and it feels so good!  So this Thursday I got to see the parental units for the first time in about 2 and a half months.  All in good fun, they didn't find New Zealand to be as wonderfully taken with the country (and Wellington) as I knew they soon would be.  They came in on the worst day of weather we had yet in Wellington and even a good bowl of Pho couldn't fix.  Don't worry, even though they aren't city folk like me their opinion of the country has much improved from that first yucky day.
We spent two days in Wellington, I took them to my favorite places and we went to Te Papa, the National Museum of NZ, they got to meet my friends and  enjoy a much nicer day in Welly.  After that we had a very early start (at least in my book, though for some curious reason I was already on grown up time and waking up around 8 or 9 every morning without an alarm-gross) and made our way up the coast to Napier.  A nice coastal city with a big Art Deco thing, we got to see a lot of pretty buildings and put our feet in the Pacific.  Mother and I did some wine tastings, and I must say it was smart thinking to bring along our chauffeur, Charles.  We ended up spending an extra day and I skipped my Monday classes to take the bus back in the evening while they went on for a couple days in Taupo.
In Napier and Hawkes Bay we stayed at a very nice YHA hostel but due to a fluke of fate my cheap bed in the dorm room ended up being a queen in a nice corner room I had all to myself both nights while mom and dad got a prison cell with bunk beds.  Not that their room was bad, it was actually a really nice hostel right on the beach, with a little farmers market in a parking lot just a little walk away.  After our little farmer's market fix we headed to Hastings to the big farmer's market, one of the nicest I've ever been to.  There was everything from blueberry ice cream made right in front of you to wine tasting and gourmet honey.

We got some melt in your mouth herb cheese (a nice addition to all of our wine tastings in the afternoon, especially since we hadn't eaten much else) and some fantastic figs, not to mention all the other loot we came away with (it was a trip for the pallet).
Speaking of deliciousness, we ate Indonesian for the first time and it was amazing.  We had a tapas type meal called a Rjjenstolrdshjrasdkhjfe... or something of the sort. It came with a bunch of small dishes all of which were delicious and then for dessert I had something that translated to "bacon cake." Which was delicious, but sadly contained no bacon.

After a windy bus ride back where I saw one of the most beautiful sunsets of my life, I made it back to Welly for a couple days of class, then off for our South Island adventure! Stay tuned!

Jellyfish boppin' and dolphin watchin'

This past weekend was the fantastic experience of "adventure weekend."  While I was super bummed since the program's insurance decided they couldn't let us "swim in natural bodies of water" along with everything else fun meant we weren't able to swim with the dolphins like planned, but like last weekend with the rain everything actually ended up being for the best.  The dolphins we did see were the Hector's dolphins (actually an endangered species found only in New Zealand, apparently dying off because no prey would take them seriously due to their utter adorableness) which aren't usually playful and friendly but swam around our boat for 20 minutes putting on a show and playing with us.  Then the bottle nose dolphins we found had a baby less than 2 weeks old and they would be too protective for swimmers.  So even the people on our boat who were going to swim didn't end up getting to but it was pretty cold and we got a great show anyway.  I shall now bombard you with some dolphin pictures:

Hector's being frisky

d'awww

Bottle nose dolphins, they looked GIANT after the little Hector's 

Catalina and I champing.

Right, so after the dolphin extravaganza we had lunch and then were taken by bus away from Picton (the northern port on the South island where the ferry comes in and we stayed the 1st night) plopped in kayaks and told to get ourselves back to Picton.  So maybe we had a little help and a snack break/holding starfish time along the way.

The coolest thing (other than the starfish holding) was the JELLYFISH HOLDING! there were roughly a googol of jellyfish in Marlborough Sounds and they were adorable little moon jellies you could pick up and bop on the heads as you kayaked by.  I was frequently distracted by this game and Catalina would have to remind me to steer, not to mention paddle.

 The rest of the trip was spent with more gaping in awe of the beauty surrounding us and huffing and puffing for a completely uphill hike for 2 hours we were trying to go fast on so we could "see more."  I said well that don't make no sense so I took my time and grabbed a ton of gorgeous pictures.  It's funny how in some places it felt just like hiking in the Smokey Mountains and then all of a sudden there would be a look out into the sound which is like nothing else we have.

As of now I am super excited for the parentals to arrive and show them around my new home.  There will be much more to come in the next few weeks as we explore the south island in all it's glory.

Sunset on the Sounds