Onwards and Outwards...

Tramping Barefoot

kristibetts — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 16:52:00 GMT

we just got back to Nelson after our 5 day adventure in the Abel tasman park. when we planned our trip 2 weeks ago and booked all the campsites we had decided we would take our time and sit on the beaches and only walk a few hours each day, but of course the only nice days were the first and the last ones. the two days in the middle it just poured with rain. we were pretty worried about our little ghetto tent, but it held out, no major leakages, but everything ended up damp, and smelly by the end. that aside the scenery was amazing, beautiful blue/green water nice sandy beaches, and tropical forest in between. at the place we stayed for the 3rd and fourth nights there was a really posh lodge with a restaurant/cafe about a half hour walk away, kind of like cathedral lakes, so we went and sat there out of the rain and drank really expensive coffee. all of the campsites where quite nice, most had cooking shelters so we didn't have to sit in the rain. one day when we were all huddling in the cooking shelter out of the rain, i got to talking to a lady there with her family and it turned out she was from calgary and had come to nz as a backpacker at 26 and never went home. i'm starting to see where all those stories come from, i could see living here. in all our planning of the trip, we didn't figure out how we were going to get back to marahau from the carpark at the end of the track, so we only went as far as the last water-taxi pick up point and took that back to the beginning, and missed out on the last campsite we had reserved. 5 days was more that enough though. on the water taxi on the way back we saw a penguin in the water which was pretty exciting, and sealions and pups sunning on the rocks. we met some people from christchurch on the water taxi who dropped us off in nelson on their way home, which was great, saved us $40 and having to figure out where and when to get the bus. i'm going to change the batteries on my camera so i can up load pictures now.

Happy New Year

kristibetts — Thu, 3 Jan 2008 07:44:00 GMT

happy new year all. i already wrote this all out once and i ran out of internet time so it logged me out and i lost it all. so new years in wellington was quite good, i didn't make any plans and ended up going bar hopping with 2 people from the hostel. we didn't stand in line once and only paid cover at one place (five dollars!!) so unlike vancouver. and the best part, we spent new years day on the beach sun tanning and eating ice cream soooo good. I took the ferry over to picton yesterday morning. the ferries here are so efficient, the operate more like an airline: you buy a ticket online, show up and check-in half an hour early, and check all your bags (huge bonus!) they give you a boarding pass which you present to get on the ferry, the only thing missing is the security. there was even a cinema on the ferry, so for 14 bucks you could spend most of the crossing watching a movie. the crossing was only 3 hours, which i spent in the sun on the top deck. the scenery coming into the south island was gorgeous, all these green hills and little islands, with little coves and beaches, nice blue water and a handful of houses, that look quite expensive. i'm staying in picton until saturday, while i wait for the german girl i met to catch up. i think this is the nicest place i've been so far, although the fact that its gorgeously sunny might have an impact on that opinion. its not much of a tourist destination, the whole town is pretty much centered around a little bay where the ferry terminal is. its a tiny town, cute litte shops and all that a nice park and little beach down by the water, with palm trees all along, and surrounded by green hills. surprisingly the traffic from the ferry doesn't seem to impact it much. there's a dive shop across the street from the backpackers that does wreck dives, i tried to get in for today or tommarrow, but their all booked up, bummer. all the backpackers are full as well, funny b/c it doesn't seem like there's many people around. definaly a good place to relax for a while, a good first impression of the south island for sure. there was a couple people in my room last night whining about how cold it was in queenstown, but they were all aussies, its 44 degrees in perth at the moment apparently!! guess where i'm going next...

Holy S***

kristibetts — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 12:31:00 GMT

just got back from skydiving. it was... awsome to say the least everyone should try it at least once. i actually did more swearing (apparently i don't scream) the first time i went bungee jumping. first of all the plane you go in is pretty much the smallest plane ever and there's like 12 or 15 people crammed into it on these two benches facing the back where theres a bay door. it takes like 15 minutes to get up to 12,000 feet, and after a while i'm looking out the window going wow that's a long way up and my "instructor" shows me his altemeter and we're only at 6000 ft. then you go up past the clouds. we were the 3rd people to go and you don't really have much of a chance to think about anything, you just shuffle forward on the bench until you're sitting on the floor at the back of the plane with your legs hanging over the edge and the guy was trying to get me to look at the camera so i could have my picture taken (kind of hard to focus with your legs dangling over the clouds) then you just go, do like a summersault over the edge, and your heart leaps, but you get over that pretty quick then its awsome flying through the clouds at several hundered km/h. can't beat the view from up there, too bad it was a cloudy day (although going through the clouds was cool too) then the instructor pulls the parachute and everything slows right down. apparently my instructor was having a slow day and thought it would be funny to loosen the harness a bit without telling me (they do this anyway after the parachute opens so its a bit more comfortable, but usually they warn you first) anyhow he did let me steer for a while so we did cicles over the shore and the feilds of clouds. after we had landed the girl standing taking video told us one of the guys that jumped with you (if you paid extra) and took video had, had his reserve parachute tangle with his other chute and not open, he ended up w/ a punctured lung and various other injuries, but lived to tell about it, and still worked there. glad i didn't hear that story until later. a mermorable christmas at any rate.

kiwi driver's licence

kristibetts — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 13:14:00 GMT

i've made it as far as wellington now and of course its windy and raining and i've decided to stay for a week, so hopefully the weather shapes up soon or i might be forced to take a tour of the parliment buildings.

i decided today that i was going to make the 15 block trek in the pouring rain to the driver's services center to see about getting myself a kiwi licence so i don't have to take my passport out with me. apparently citizens of select countries.. like canada.. have to take a written test and then they give you a full licence but don't have to do an actual road test. it cost me 80 bucks for the first attempt at the test and the licence fee, the guy bent the rules a bit (or a lot) for me and said i showed proof of address even though i don't have an address. i managed to get 31 out of 35 on my first attempt at the test, and you need 32 to pass, not bad for blind guessing, even the guy was impressed that i did that well without having read the book on the road rules. there was a lot of random questions i had no idea about: how many meters a load can stick out on front or behind the car, how far a towed thing can behind the car, how fast a car w/ a trailer can go, what yellow reflectors on the road mean, when the 2 second or 4 second rules apply ummm.... ? apparently i got all the hard ones right and managed to get the easy ones wrong... ah well so for another 30 bucks i got to try again and before the guy gave me the test he told me to come and see him if i had no idea what the awnser was and he'd work through it with me (read: he'd tell me the awnser so i didn't fail again) hehe but i managed to only get 2 wrong on my second attempt w/o help. so i now have a kiwi licence coming to me in the next couple weeks, which means my decision on where to go next has been made for me since the only place i could get it mailed was hamilton. so i guess i'll be in taupo at xmas and hamilton around new years then head straight back to welligton and over to the south island and back on the bus.

northland roadtrip

kristibetts — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 14:38:00 GMT

well the road trip has come to and end. we covered something close to 3000 kms in the last week. the weather sucked and we spent a lot of time in the car, but it was pretty fun in all. the scenery was awsome, but would of been even more so if it hadn't rained or been cloudy pretty much everyday. i'm starting to realize how randomly i packed for this trip: i brought dive gear, but not enough to really make a difference in price when going on a charter, i also brought camping gear, but not enough to actually camp, i also clearly brought more summer clothes than i should of and not enough winter clothes. ah well. so in the many hours in the car over the last week we spent a lot of time discussing (and mocking) the need to use a ton of traffic cones for absolutely everything, and the complete lack of logic when it comes to traffic laws here. clearly they credit their drivers with more common sense than we do in north america. there will be this dirt road with serious corners and it'll have a speed limit of 100, then you'll get to a stretch of straigh paved highway that will have a speed limit of 30 for some random reason like there's no lines on the side or something, then they'll have passing lanes on blind corners and one way bridges. it all is very mind boggleing when you come from north america. i did do some of the driving which was an interesting expierence, turns out its harder to get used to shifting with the other hand and using the turn signals than driving on the other side of the road. that being said i did make a right turn out of the gas station on to the right side of the road, but recovered quickly before oncoming traffic got too close. so much has happened in the last week i can't remember what to tell you. we made it all the way up to the top of the country, which would have been beautiful had the weather been co-operating. they have a 2 or 3 day hike/camp up there along the beaches, that i'm going to have to try and do. we did go sandboarding up there as well. we saw this sign on the side of the highway to rent sandboard so we went there and it turned out the guy was from edmonton and his brother and mom live in summerland... crazy. anyhow we got the canadian discount of half price. sandboarding was pretty fun, but got old fast when you had to keep hiking up the dunes, i have some video i'll get up eventually. that day we also drove up 90 mile beach where the "highway" goes right on the sand along the beach (and still of course has a speed limit of 100) there is a big thing in the guidebooks about how you shouldn't take your car on the sand because you will get stuck and they charge a ton to get pulled out, but that obviously didn't apply to the subaru since we had it going 100 km w/o a problem. we also walked through this forest that have these really old trees that are 5m in diameter, pretty cool, but the pictures didnt' turn out. for the one partially nice day we went back to raglan and sat on the beach which was awsome, then a bit south of there, there's a beach that has some sort of geothermal activity so you can dig a hole in the sand and it'll have hot water in it, like almost too hot to sit in, you can only do it within 2 hours on either side of low tide, but it was awsome, low tide was at 7 so we stayed until it go dark and there wasn't a single other person on the beach. yesterday we got to one of the national parks and did the tongariro crossing which involves climbing up the side of a volcano. we did it one way and stayed in a hut run by the parks department where you get a bunk and they supply stoves and gas for cooking for 20 bucks a night then we came back this morning, and the weather was completely miserable, it was super foggy so you couldn't see anything and it was rainy and windy, and we managed to get high enough up to find snow even though its summer here. we also saw one of the ski hills by accident, and they truely do have no trees on them, just rocks. its very strange. they have the shortest chair lift ever too, 15 chairs. anyhow i'm getting back on the bus tommarrow morning and heading for wellington for a few days then either take the ferry to the south island or go back up to hamilton for new years, i can't seem to decide.

backpacker bus - leg 1

kristibetts — Sat, 8 Dec 2007 17:33:00 GMT

well i've made it as far as rotarua now. first stop on the trip was raglan, a surf town near hamilton, didn't really do much there and we stayed in backpackers way out of town. from there we went for a "cultural expeirence" we had a hungi which is a traditional maori meal and then had a concert of dance and song, and had a big sleep over with all 35 of us sleeping on the floor in the hall. the next day I started on the east coast loop which was a 3 day trip with only 8 people in a van, it was awsome. the beaches on the east cape were beautiful, its unfortunate it rained pretty much the whole time. the tour guide/driver was super helpful booked everyones accomidation for where ever you wanted to stay, booked you on the bus when you wanted to be picked up, organized whatever activities you wanted to do and wrangled a discount. mostly we just toured the beaches, the highways out there would give any bc mountain road a run for its money, crazy windy and full of one lane bridges. it was nice being in such a small group b/c anytime we saw something we wanted to take pictures of the driver would pull over and let us do it. each day had a supermarket stop as well so we all pitched in a made group meals, one place had a bbq so we did that one night. we went out to this natural waterslide yesterday and you could rent these boogy boards to ride down them, pretty fun stuff. on the way back from there the bus driver ran over a pig. they were going to take it for dinner... but in the end took it up to the farm house and left it out front... there is apparently shark diving in gisborne which i think i might have to do when i go back on the east cape loop. and for todays random useless fact, gisborne is the first city in the world to see the sun each day. also for those complaining about gas prices in canada: gas is 1.75/L here, and a girl from the neatherlands told me gas is 1.6 EUROS/L there! crazy stuff. went white water rafting this afternoon which was pretty awsome, apparently they have the world highest commercially raftable waterfall - 7m. our driver came with us on this day off and they gave him a free cd of the pictures which we all ripped on his laptop, but for some reason i can't upload them on to facebook from this computer. anyhow my friend is coming down from hamilton with his girlfriend tonight or tommarrow to go luging so that should be fun, apparently you take the gondala up to the top of some hill and go down. the plans for the next few weeks have sort of changed, i met a guy from calgary here on a university exchange studying medicine, and he's doing a bunch of travelling around before he goes home for the spring semester and he's heading up to the top of the north island which you can't get a bus up to most beaches are only dirt road access so i might join up w/ him and split petrol costs so i can see 90 mile beach, he also dives so a trip to poor knights islands is probably in the cards. i'll possibly go back to hamilton for the holdiays or new years at least then join up w/ the bus again and head down to the south island. thats about all i can think of for now, pictures will come when i get to hamilton next.

on the road again

kristibetts — Sun, 2 Dec 2007 17:44:00 GMT

well i'm finally leaving hamilton tommarrow. I got myself set up with one of the backpacker buses which I paid through the nose for, but i'm expecting it to be a lot of fun. I believe the next stop is raglan, although i'm not entirely sure which part of the route i'm being picked up on. not really sure it matters since i want to go everywhere. not too far down the route (next week maybe) are taupo and routaroa so there is some skydiving, blackwater rafting, sledging and possibly some zorbing in the near future. you'll have to google zorbing, it looks rediculous, but really fun. anyhow, won't have free interenet access anymore so in order to try and stretch my funds out the best i can i probably won't be emailingn as much.

beach time

kristibetts — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 15:25:00 GMT

so it was actually really nice out today so we made the half hour trek to the beach which was gorgeous, green rolling hills and black sand. we also went out to some waterfall and had a swim at the bottom of it (which was freezing) but the water fall was pretty awsome 55m high apparently, but i didn't bring my camera so no pictures.. oh, and i saw sheep and gave everyone a good laugh at how excited i was about that. i was complaining that i hadn't seen any sheep earlier. anyhow we rented this kiwi movie last night about sheep that go crazy and start killing people, it was a terrible movie actually. i had my first expeirence w/ the nightlife last night. apparently i'm the only one anyone knows that's ever got into the bar w/ flip flops on. a canadian passport and a skirt on the shorter side probably helped. not sure why they're so picky. i went to buy some beer earlier that night and got ID'd so I pulled out my canadian drivers licence adn the guy was having none of that so i got denied and had to have someone else buy it for me. kind of sad considering the drinking age is 18 here. that's about all for now, its my friends mom's going away party that I somehow got invited to. i'm goign to work on getting a cellphone this week so i'll let you know how to get a hold of me when that happens. apparently you can't function w/o one around here, and calls are pretty expensive so everythign revolves around texting...

auckland

kristibetts — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 16:25:00 GMT

well my last day in auckland, I don't think i'm exactly sad to go. the city reminds me so much of vancouver, they even have a ferry that you can take over to the suburbs on the northshore.. I took a ferry to waiheke island yesterday which was gorgeous. got myself a nice sunburn while sitting on the beach. i guess the sun really is stronger here since it wasn't all that hot out and i wasn't all that long. while sitting on the shore we saw a sting ray or something like that real close to shore, but when I tried to swim after and have a closer look i couldn't see anything. i took a free tour of the city today and the tour guide was from vancouver, came here for a year and never left, that was 4 years ago... don't have to go far around here to find a canadian.. anyhow i've got myself a bus ticket for hamilton tommarrow so we'll see what that brings. hopefully things are cheaper there, b/c things here are crazy expensive... a bottle of pop is $3 sunscreen was $18 that's about all for now since my time is about to run out.

the hilton...

kristibetts — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 12:51:00 GMT

well I've finally made it to nz after getting to the airport in vancouver to find out my connecting flight from LA to fiji was moved up an hour and now left 2 hours before i got there from van. but things worked out ok, air pacific put me up in the hilton for the night and paid for 3 meals in the restaurant. turns out i wasn't the only one that got screwed over by the schedule change. there was a whole bunch of us. the flight to fiji was alright, the airline handed out little care packages w/ a toothbrush and tooth paste and a eye mask. gravol and a glass of wine put me out for most of the ride. it was 32 degrees when we go to fiji, should of planned better for a stopover there. things at customs were a breeze, i got probably the nicest most helpful customs officer i've ever encountered, a look at my paperwork and a stamp on my passport and i was on my way. anyhow I am in desperate need of a nap. until later...

-kristi

Final preparations

kristibetts — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 09:03:00 GMT

well tommarrow's the big day, it still doesn't seem real though. the bags are all packed and ready to go and the 2 day trip to Auckland starts at 6 am.