The Eoin Zone

Coming Clean

2009-08-07T02:00:00.000-07:00

This is almost three weeks past due, but better late than never!

I think a good majority of you realize this by now, but for those of you still in the dark: my last two blog posts were complete lies. I never found a job in Whangarei, Alexa and I left New Zealand on June 30th and traveled around Australia for 16 days before flying back to Auckland for a quick stopover. On the evening of July 18th we landed in Reagan National Airport and we've been back since then.

Why the deception, you ask? In early June Alexa and I picked July 18th as an arbitrary date to return home, and when I told my parents I realized July 19th was my niece Madison's birthday/party. And what could be a better surprise than Uncle Eoin and Alexa randomly showing up on the doorstep?

We decided to keep our return a secret from the entirety of my sister's family, and since they read the blog I had to make a few fake posts.

Anyway, the surprise ended up being a bit more exciting than just showing up on the doorstep. My dad had jokingly promised Madison a horse for her birthday, so my mom set about creating a fantastic two-person horse costume. Obviously I was the brains of the operation so Alexa pulled up the rear (literally), and after confusion ensued for a couple minutes we popped out of the costume and surprised everybody! I think the look on my sister's face was the most priceless, but unfortunately we didn't get a picture. We did, however, get these two pictures:

Awwwww.

And yes, the costume did have a mask. Once Alexa's back in town we'll have to don the suit again just so we can get a full picture of the brilliant costume my mom made.

So that's that. Now that I'm back in the States you may be worried that you'll never have the fortune of reading my blog ever again, but don't worry. I still have 3 or 4 posts to write about our fantastic journey along Australia's east coast before I retire the blog.

I apologize to the many, many people I haven't gotten in contact with yet. I don't know how 3 weeks have gone by already, but I've been insanely busy--cleaning, selling junk on ebay, trying to find a real job and all that other fun BS. More on that later. Keep an eye on your inbox for my updates about Oz-Trail-Yer.

Homecoming

2009-07-13T16:58:00.001-07:00

Yeah. It's been a while. But you guys should be used to that by now, right?

Once again, there hasn't been much to report on. There really aren't many touristy, fun things to do here in Whangarei, and besides that we're trying to save all our money for the upcoming trip to Australia... which we have finally purchased tickets for!

We leave New Zealand next Friday, the 24th for Sydney. From Sydney we'll fly up to Cairns and then begin our 16 day journey down the east cost, from Cairns to Sydney. Along the way we'll see the Great Barrier Reef, rainforests, opera houses, and probably lots of Kangaroos, Koalas, and all those other crazy Australia-exclusive animals. Once we're finished up in Sydney, we'll fly back to Auckland for a brief 2-day stopover to pick up our excess baggage (we're going to store the stuff we don't need for Australia so we don't have to haul everything around) and then board our final flight back to the States on August 12th. The flight leaves at 2:30 pm and gets in at 9 pm on the same day, even though it's over 24 hours of travel time. Time zones are so fun!

So there's the big news for the day. This could be my last post until I'm back home. Internet connections at hostels are always sketchy and/or expensive, so I'm not sure if I'll be updating on the go.

If not, I'll see you all sometime after August 12th! Now I've got Australia-trip-planning to do.

Pictures Galore

2009-06-22T17:04:00.001-07:00

It's been a while, but there hasn't been too much to report on.

In my last post I promised pictures of the famed shark and other underwater beasties, but as it turns out my underwater photography skills are not up to par. No shark picture came out when I got the photos developed. A few pictures were actually missing from the set, so I guess the guy didn't bother developing those that came out too dark. A few decent underwater shots came out, though, and you can find them in one of the new albums on the right-hand sidebar. I've addded Albums Nine, Ten, and Eleven, which span from our trip to Doubtful Sound in late March all the way through the present, so you'll find more pictures of Franz Josef, Abel Tasman National Park, and Fiji.

In other news, I've acquired a very part-time job, just doing odd work around Plunket, a child care agency's office for a few hours every week. It's not much, but it's enough to pay the rent and keep me floating for the next month Sometime in late July we'll be heading off to Australia for a trip from Cairns to Sydney and then we'll be back in the States in mid-late August.

I guess that's about it for now. Even though I don't have much to say, though, I'm sure you'll find plenty of entertainment in the new albums. There's something like 150 new pictures between the three albums. Knock yourselves out!

Bula!

2009-06-01T17:23:00.000-07:00

We're back from Fiji! It was a great trip, even though we had two days of rain. The other three days were perfect and sunny, and even the rainy days weren't so bad since the rain mostly came at night time and it stayed warm during the day.

Over the course of our trip we explored Nadi, took a day trip to a private island, snorkelled, spent plenty of time relaxing by our hotel's pool, and endured a combined total of over 24 hours in airports. Yep, over 24 hours. Thanks to our early flight, the bus schedule from Whangarei to Auckland, and our not wanting to pay for a hostel room for only a few hours, we slept in Auckland airport both before our departure and after our return. Good thing they have padded benches!

The best day was definitely Friday, when we went out to the island. Beaches on the mainland are pretty dirty and covered in trash (near Nadi, at least). Fiji is another of those countries where most of the locals live in poverty while tourists come and live in luxury. Fortunately, the indigenous Fijians had some foresight when they became a British colony and kept some rights to themselves. Over 80% of Fiji's land is owned by the indigenous people, and it can't be taken away. Instead, they lease out the land at high cost. So all of the big fancy resorts have to pay the indigenous Fijians for the use of their land. The money goes straight back to the villages, so the Fijians in those lucky villages don't have it quite so bad.

But back to the island. The pristine, white sand beaches are found on the many smaller islands such as South Sea island. This is where we spent the day:

For a ridicuously-cheap price (especially after the exchange rate) we were ferried out to the island for the day. With less than thirty in our group, it wasn't a crowded trip. We had a huge lunch buffet, as well as all we could drink (water, beer, wine, soda) for the entire day, unlimited access to snorkelling equipment, kayaks, two snorkelling trips off a boat, and two trips in this semi-submersible boat (like glass bottom, but glass sides instead). Basically, we spent eight hours in an all-inclusive paradise.

Snorkelling made the trip for me. Apart from the two boat trips, they had a large roped-off area where you could snorkel by the beach. It turns out the reef starts only 10-15 feet away from the shore, so there was plenty to see. On the second trip out I even saw a shark! It was about 5-6 feet long and was just swimming around about ten feet below me. Only four others were out on the trip, and I swam up to the boat and said, "Uh... I just saw a shark. Is that okay?" The guide said it was probably just a reef shark and it was perfectly fine. So I swam back and found the shark again and took a picture before he disappeared into the deeper water. Very cool.

Even aside from the shark, snorkelling was great fun. I think I spent a combined three or so hours snorkelling, getting my back sunburned and my arms and legs chewed up by sea lice. Yes, sea lice. Apparently these are microscopic little nasties whose bites feel similar to a mild jelly-fish sting, but the pain only lasts for a few minutes. Seeing the many varieties of multi-colored fish in every shape and size made it all worthwhile. It certainly has gotten me excited for seeing the Great Barrier Reef when we head to Australia--as long as the mean sharks keep their distance.

Sadly, Mr. Shark and our other snorkelling pictures will have to wait. We bought a waterproof camera that uses this weird stuff called "film." And you have to "wind" this weird knob after every picture, and when it's all finished you have to get it "developed." There's not even a screen on the camera. Crazy, I know. At any rate I will try to get the pictures "deveoped" as soon as possible so you all can have a look.

We also took a half day bus tour of the Nadi area. Alexa and I ended up being the only people on the tour that day, so we more or less had a private drive around Nadi. We saw a Fijian village, a downtown fruit market, a large Hindu temple, and the Garden of the Sleeping Giant, which lies at the base of the Mountain of the Sleeping Giant:

The far left is his head, the radio tower is his belly, and the mound on the right are his feet. Actually fairly proportionate, huh? Except he has super short legs.

Here's the open air market in Fiji:

Downtown Nadi is a sketchy sort of place. We learned one lesson really quick: if a slick-looking dude comes up to you and says, "Bula!" and starts asking you a bunch of friendly questions, he isn't just being nice. He will walk and talk with you for about twenty feet, until suddenly you find yourself at the entrance to a dingy shop and your way down the sidewalk is blocked by two or three of his friends. At this point you're supposed to feel compelled to enter the shop, where they offer you Kava, show you pictures of their village, and then ask you for donations for said village while urging you to buy crappy, over-priced trinkets. We only fell for this once, but quickly left the shop after glancing at a few price tags.

We spent the rest of our time in Fiji hanging out at our hotel's pool, venturing into downtown Nadi for souviniers, and checking out a local beach. Not much else too exciting. Like I said before, the highlight was our day on South Sea Island.

Upon returning to New Zealand, we had to resume our job hunt. Boo. It actually got so bad we were seriously considering just going to Australia next week and then coming home early. But just as we'd resigned ourselves to this, Alexa got a job! She's nannying for a family with two little girls 4 days a week, with an optional extra day depending if the parents' shop is busy. Sweet. With any luck I too will find some means of employment.

Here's hoping that by my next post I'll be a working man!

Anti-bula! (Good bye in Fijian, obviously)

An inviting hammock on South Sea Island:

The view off our hotel room's balcony:

Nadi's huge Hindu temple, as seen from the front:

April Adventures, Part 3

2009-05-18T15:34:00.000-07:00

Here we go! The final segment of our April Adventures!

Wellington - Taupo - Rotorua

We got away from Wellington later than intended and started the five hour drive to Taupo, where I was planning on doing an awesome 15,000 foot skydive! An hour into the drive, the weather began to cast doubts on whether I would actually be doing any skydiving. Skydive companies only operate in near-perfect weather: low winds, clear blue skies with maybe a cloud or two. Rainy, cloudy days are a no-go. But since the weather had turned in our favor for Franz Josef and Abel Tasman, I remained cautiously optimistic.

The rain hadn't relented by the time we pulled into our hostel in Taupo, and the next morning we woke to a sullen, grey sky. No skydiving that day, so we carried on to Rotorua. We planned on spending three nights in Rotorua, and it's only an hour from Taupo, so I figured I could easily drive back to Taupo should the weather clear up.

It never happened. It rained all three days. Fortunately rain wasn't enough to ruin our good time in Rotorua.

Sunday we went to quiz night at Hennessey's, the Irish pub Alexa and I first went to back in September. In honor of Wellington's icon, we named our team Blanket Man, and finished 7th place out of 11. Woo hoo! Some controversy: One question asked, "What's the largest predator in North America?" We wrote grizzly, but then I remembered hearing polar bears are the largest predators in the world. Furthermore, I was almost positive they lived in North America, thanks to Sarah Palin. The animal-hating witch wanted polar bears taken off the threatened species list to legalize their habitat's destruction in the name of oil-drilling in Alaska. For the first time in her meaningless life, Sarah Palin served a mildly-useful purpose: my memory was jogged and we changed our answer!

Unfortunately the "correct" answer ended up being grizzly bear. Back at the hostel I checked wikipedia, and sure enough, polar bears are the largest land predator in the world and they do live in North America, therefore polar bears are the largest predator in North America. Not that one point would've done so much as bump us up to 6th place, let alone make us the winners. As a side note, the wicked witch of Alaska didn't have her way, and polar bears are indeed a protected species.

While in Rotorua we did a handful of touristy activities. It turns out Rotorua has a gondola and luge just like Queenstown, except there are three luge tracks totalling 5 km in length, much longer than Queenstown's measly two 800 meter tracks. The luge carts themselves weren't in tip-top shape, though, so the brakes and steering didn't always work properly. Adding to that, the tracks were freshly-wet with rain, which made the rides quite interesting! We all made it down alive, don't worry.

We also went Zorbing again, since we couldn't let Mike come to New Zealand without trying the crazy sport. If you don't remember from when Alexa and I Zorbed in December, Zorbing is the where you climb into a big plastic water-filled ball and roll down the side of a hill.

Lastly, Alexa and I finally made it to a Maori cultural show/hangi. Basically you go to a Maori "village" where a bunch of Maoris await in traditional costume and they put on a show. I went in with very low expectations. I thought it would be a really cheesy sort of thing. You know, "Hoo hoo hah hah, look at us dance for the white man!" kind of deal. But it wasn't. It was actually really informative and the performers seemed genuinely interested in preserving their culture.

The best part came after the performance: the hangi.

Hangi is the method Maoris traditionally used to cook their meals. It involves heating a bunch of huge rocks on a fire for several hours, then placing those rocks into a large hole in the ground. The food (typically meats and root vegetables) goes on top of the rocks, then the food is covered with damp cloth to lock in the heat and create steam. This is left to sit for another couple hours until the food is ready. Our hangi consisted of lamb, chicken, potatoes, and kumara, along with non-traditional foods like stuffing, scalloped potatoes, a few different salads, and dessert.

Our last full day in Rotorua we just chilled out and went to the Waikite Valley thermal pools, a welcome period of relaxation after all the rushing around we did during our trip. Once finished in the geothermal capital of New Zealand, we hit the road for the last leg of our journey with Mike.

Auckland

We spent our first hour in Auckland trying to find our hostel. It was on Owens road, but what Google Maps failed to tell us is there are two Owens roads in Auckland, and the incorrect one is located across a bridge on the other side of the harbor. And of course our directions were for the incorrect one.

We finally made it to our hostel, Yaping House, quite the dirty little joint. The rooms seriously needed cleaning, and the mold growing around the windowsills and skirting boards meant Alexa had to pop Claritin whenever we were inside. Fortunately we didn't spent much time at the hostel.

Our first day was X-Men Origins: Wolverine's opening day (2 days before it came out in the US, what!) so we went to the cinema to check it out. The movie was pretty good, but the best part was seeing all the familiar scenes from Queenstown/Glenorchy. If you've seen the movie, or plan on seeing it, whenever they're in the "Canadian Rockies," they're actually in Deer Park Heights or Glenorchy. Thanks to this, there's a fantastic goof-up. About half an hour into the movie, a farmer is driving over a bridge in the "Canadian Rockies." In New Zealand it's not uncommon for arrows to be painted on the road, indicating to drive in the left-hand lane. It sounds silly, but south island roads often have no traffic. Without other cars passing by as reminders, tourists can lapse and slip into the wrong lane. Maybe by accident or maybe just for fun, one of these arrows is clearly visible as the farmer crosses the other side of the bridge--on the wrong side!

After the movie we had dinner at an awesome Japanese restaurant and walked around to take in Auckland by night.

The next morning we headed out of town a few kilometers to the Tip Top Ice Cream Factory for a tour, which ended up being my most awkward experience in recent memory. Upon arrival we realized the rest of the tour group consisted of a bunch of school kids. Picture it: Mike, Eoin, and Alexa crammed into a colorful meeting room with a bunch of uniformed tweens and their teachers (who gave us a few odd looks). If there could've been just one other small group, or a couple, or even just one individual who wasn't part of the school group it would've been okay. But nope, just us. The three American weirdos field-trip crashing. If we weren't conspicuous enough, I screwed up by taking a picture at the beginning of the tour. Just as the flash was going off, our tour guide shouted, "Sir! No pictures, please!" Whoops.

To make matters worse, our tour guide was insane. From the way she lectured the tour group, you'd think we were delinquent Tip Top employees. For example, at one stage of the tour she was discussing the process of cooking fruit ripple for the ice cream. "If you cook it too long," she ranted, "it becomes jelly! And we don't want to make jelly at an ice cream factory, do we? So it all has to be thrown out and the whole day is wasted, and that's why it's important to work carefully!" I don't know about the kids, but I sure as hell was frightened.

At least we got free ice cream.

After the tour Mike wasn't feeling so hot, so Alexa and I headed to the Auckland Museum while he rested. The Museum isn't as impressive as Te Papa, but it had several interesting exhibits. The volcano exhibit was the best. It had a simulation of one what would happen if one of Auckland's volcanoes decided to erupt. Basically, it would be Bad. They also had a replica of a giant moa, birds that roamed New Zealand before Maori and European settlers wiped them out:

The museum with Sky Tower in the background:

Later that night, Mike and I produced the greatest picture to come out of this entire trip. It took a lot of planning: First, we had to polish off the bottle of whiskey he'd bought for our night out in Wellington. Next, we had to decide it wasn't enough and surely we must go out in search of more. After that, we had to wander the outer-suburbs of Auckland (our hostel wasn't quite in city center) in search of some place, any place selling liquor after midnight. Mike's first attempt, a gas station, had him shouting through the window at the attendant, "Hey! Can I buy liquor from you?" Obviously not. Still unsatisfied, we continued into a larger shopping area where we eventually found an open bar. A girl outside told us we couldn't come in because it was a pajama party and we didn't have pajamas, but the bouncer let us in anyway. Finally, we had to make our way to the second floor, where we spotted a flashing, colorful dance floor. Only one person was dancing. A lone young man in his flamboyant pajamas. And then Mike did what he does best:

Later he would insist he was "following the lights," not dancing with the pajama dude. But we all know the truth.

Our final day in Auckland I was feeling a little under the weather for some reason, so we just sort of wandered aimlessly. At some point we found a $2 shop and went inside. I don't know what made us head to the toy section, but I'm very glad we did. We probably spent close to an hour looking at the toys. What made the toys so intriguing, you ask?

Special for you of children design. It will give you infinite pleasure!

They were all cheap knock-offs made in China. Other gems include "Pursue the Vogue," a bratz-style doll, a "4-D Reptile Puzzle" (yes, 4-D. "Three dimensions + details!" as the box explained), and a number of Spiderman-themed toys, including a set with handcuffs, badge, and gun that inexplicably had the Spiderman 2 logo attached to it.

Eventually we had to take Mike to the airport and bid him farewell. The two and a half weeks went by really quickly, but I think we all had a great time during Mike's visit. Especially dancing pajama man.

Whangarei - Kerikeri - Whangarei

After depositing Mike at the airport, Alexa and I fought Auckland's horrible traffic congestion for over an hour before finally making it on the road to Whangarei, our next stop.

It didn't take long to assess Whangarei isn't a very exciting place. Sure, it's a bigger city than Queenstown and has a larger variety of shops, but it lacks severely in the "things to do" department. Noting this, we continued on to Kerikeri the next morning. Kerikeri is an even smaller town. One grocery store, one McDonald's, one video rental shop... and not much else. If we stayed in Kerikeri, fruit-picking would be our only option for work. And the way it works out isn't that great: you stay at a hostel, and they help you find work and drive you to and from work each day. Staying at the hostel would've run us $260/week because they were out of the "cheap" rooms (cheap being relative, at $240/week). After paying the hostel, we probably would've made less than $200/week each. No good.

So we turned down the work offer (we could've been packing kiwi-fruit into crates that very day) and drove back down to Whangarei, checking out a few smaller towns along the way. The smaller towns, like Pahia, were situated on lovely little beaches and seemed really nice, but didn't have any work available.

We've been in Whangarei for a little over two weeks now, and I can assuredly say it is the ugliest little city I've seen in New Zealand. Whangarei Harbor is disgraceful. Nowhere else in New Zealand have I seen such dirty water. Even Wellington and Auckland, the two largest ports brimming with boats, have clean, clear water. But for whatever reason, dingy little Whangarei Harbor is murky and filled with floating rubbish.

BLECH.

On a redeeming note, Whangarei isn't too far from the prettier parts of Northland, and boat trips leave frequently to the Poor Knights' Islands, which Jacques Cousteau rated as one of the top ten diving spots in the world. Time and money permitting, I just may have to go and try out an introductory diving lesson.

So far we've had no luck with jobs, despite applying for many. Fortunately we secured cheap accommodation. We're staying in a room in a house owned by three Filipino guys. They're all really nice and the common areas are kept clean. So while it's not the same as having our own place like we did in Queenstown, it's still a lot better than the situation in Wellington.

In two days we're heading to Auckland to catch a plane to Fiji! Remember the holiday we booked back in February? Well, time has flown right on by and we'll be in the tiny island nation this time on Thursday. Excellent.

Anyway, I think I've written more than enough for now. I'll update again once I'm back from Fiji, and I'll be sure to fill the post with jealousy-inducing images of beautiful beaches and crazy Fijians yelling "Bula!" (Don't ask me, that's just what they do in all the Fiji tourism commercials here).

April Adventures, Part 2

2009-05-08T15:29:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm still unemployed and have plenty of free time, so here's the next part of our April Adventures!

Abel Tasman Coast Track

Where I left off last time we were en route to Marahau, and it was probably raining. For whatever reason it rained pretty much any time we were on the road in the south island. Rain was in the forecast for the next three days as well, which meant our three-day trek on the Abel Tasman Coast Track would not be as pleasant as we'd hoped.

When we arrived in the sleepy beach-side town of Marahau, though, we found the forecast had changed! Three days of clear, blue skies and warm sun awaited us.

In the way of background information, the Abel Tasman Coast Track is another of New Zealand's 9 Great Walks. It's generally considered the easiest, and therefore the most visited. The ascents on the hike are sudden and steep, but few and far between. Most of the walk consists of easy, flat walking through coastal forest with bountiful opportunities to stop along at the many beaches with pristine sand, stunningly-turquoise water, and fantastic limestone rock formations and caves for exploration.

All told, the track is 51 km long, taking 3-5 days to complete depending on how many hours you let yourself get sidetracked by the beautiful beaches. As we were a little pressed for time on this trip, we opted to hike the first 3 days, or 33 km.

Conveniently our hostel was located just 1 km from the start of the track, so we took our time in the morning to have breakfast, finish packing our bags, and stow the car in a special car park before making our way to the track.

The first day was incredibly easy. We stopped at three or four beaches along the way and still made it to Anchorage Bay, our first campsite, well before sundown. Mike and I had a little excitement at one of the beaches. Inside a small, dark limestone cave I saw the light from a solitary glow worm. I'm not sure what it was doing all alone, but I tried to take a picture. Flash fully illuminated the cave for a split second, and when I looked down at the camera to review the picture I realized Mr. Glow Worm and I weren't alone.

Creepy cave weta! At first I thought they were spiders so I got the hell out of there, but later on I realized they must've been New Zealand's most darling little insects. And by darling I mean disgusting, and by little I mean frickin' huge. They're generally about 4-5 inches long, sometimes longer depending on leg and antennae length.

At the campsite we tried our best to make a fire, but the wind was relentless. On the bright side I learned how to chop wood, adding another valuable life skill to my repertoire.

Early the next morning Mike and I set out on an hour sidetrack to Pitt Head, a promontory which was supposedly the site of an old Pa (Maori fortification). As it turned out, it was only the site of the Pa indeed, as we could find no evidence of the fort itself. We were rewarded for our efforts, though, with great views out across the Cook Strait. We could even see the hazy outline of the north island in the distance.

Back at camp I dragged Alexa from her sleep so we could breakfast and pack up our gear for the next section of the height. From Anchorage we had an option of an easy low tide route (ten minutes) or a long, uphill high tide route (1.5 hours). It was low tide so we could have crossed the estuary easily, but we wanted to see Cleopatra Pools, a series of fresh water pools, so we had to take the high road.

After our stop at the pools we noticed we were running parallel to the low-tide track, so we took a shortcut down a ten foot embankment and crossed the estuary. Thousands upon thousands of empty clam shells littered the sand and under every piece of soaking rotted wood were dozens of miniature crabs. It was like walking on the ocean floor, which made it one of the cooler parts of the hike.

Clam shells scattered across the sand. These are all empty, dead shells. I'm not sure what living clams do when it's low tide. I guess they can burrow?

We eventually made our way to Bark Bay, our second campsite. At Bark Bay a thick line of trees sheltered the fire pit from the wind, so we thought we might have better luck with the fire. Wrong. All but two-three small chunks of the wood provided were too wet to burn, so once again we found ourselves nursing a pitiful flame. Later on, a large group of European travelers happened by. Daniel Boone himself strolled up, smirked at our would-be fire, and with broken English said, "I fix it?"

Not ten minutes later he had the fire going, through some mystical combination of shaving off small pieces from the wet wood, blowing, and flapping air into the coals. With smoke flooding the campsite and our egos crushed, we decided to head into Mike's tent for a few rounds of rummy before bed.

The final day presented us with two gruelling uphill segments and a few pretty beaches to explore. Mike and I found another cave, so we grabbed the flashlight and headed in. This time we kept an eye out for cave weta and spiders. After about twenty feet we came to a large chamber and the only way to continue would have been to crawl on our stomachs through a small gap near the ground. No thanks.

Eventually we made our way to Awaroa Bay, our final beach, and laid out in the sand to wait for our water taxi back to Marahau. Here are a few more pictures from the hike:

Sea birds sitting on a sign in Marahau:

Alexa and I standing at the start of the track:

All three of us standing on a cool limestone formation:

Just a pretty beach from the first day:

Scenic view near Anchorage Bay:

Awaroa Bay, where we lounged and waited for the water taxi.

Picton - Ferry - Wellington

After returning to Marahau and repacking our very, very smelly car (by then the garbage bag of dirty laundry had reached tremendous proportions), our first order of business was getting some warm food in our aching stomachs. We made a fast food stop in Motueka. Alexa got herself KFC, while Mike and I took a more piggish route. In New Zealand, McDonald's offers family meals after 5 pm, so Mike and I ordered the $20 "Family of Four" meal consisting of two cheeseburgers, a McChicken, a Big Mac, two large fries, two small fries, and four drinks. Delicious (not really, but it was cheap).

From there we drove the 2.5 hour voyage to Picton. After an awesome shower to wipe off layers of sweat, sunscreen, and insect repellent from the past three days, we headed straight to bed. The next morning we caught the 8 am ferry to Wellington and drove to our friends Jason and Tammy's flat. Once again they were awesome enough to let us crash at their place.

Over the next couple days we toured Wellington, spending plenty of time just walking around the city, but also made stops at the Botanic Gardens and Te Papa. Since Wellington is known for its night life we planned on having a big night out Friday. Unfortunately, our plans were cut short by ANZAC Day (similar to Veterans' or Memorial Day) being on Saturday. On public holidays employers are required to pay employees time and a half, so many restaurants and bars will either close or charge a 15% surcharge to make up for the difference. We hadn't counted on this starting at midnight until all but three bars closed at 11:59 and the rest started packing on the surcharges. Fortunately Burger Fuel (the best burger chain ever) hadn't started with surcharges yet, so we had a nice midnight snack before heading back to Jason and Tammy's.

Saturday morning we had to pack up and bid Jason and Tammy farewell. With less than a week until Mike had to be in Auckland for his flight home and lots to see and do, we had to get on the road.

Next stop, Taupo. I'm going to end this post here because once again I've written too much! Next time I'll finish up our trip with Mike and get on to what Alexa and I have been up to for the past week, promise.

April Adventures, Part 1

2009-05-05T18:59:00.001-07:00

Yes, I'm still here. I almost posted a blog entry back at the beginning of April, but I'd barely gotten halfway through when I realized I had to head to the airport to pick up Mike and our rental car. After that, April stormed by in a whirlwind of crazy adventures and I haven't had time since. A thorough, detailed account of everything we did would prove too taxing for me to write and too long for you to read, so instead I'll try to summarize our trip keeping to three to four paragraphs per city/area.

Here we go.

Doubtful Sound

Before Mike arrived, Alexa and I took an overnight trip to marvelous Doubtful Sound. The trip started with a three hour coach ride to Manapouri, a small town on a large lake called, cleverly enough, Lake Manapouri. From there we rode a shuttle boat across Lake Manapouri to the Manapouri Power Station. It's a hydroelectric plant where all the action takes place underground in large tunnels. Another set of coaches were waiting for us at the power station, and these took us over the mountains to the Doubtful Sound Wharf and our vessel, the Doubtful Sound Navigator. The Navigator is a decent-sized ship with sleeping room for about 70 plus crew, several observation decks, a large dining room, and an array of tender craft and kayaks for exploration.

After cruising around for a while in the rain (this is Fiordland National Park, where it rains 200 days a year), we stopped in one of the sound's three arms for activities. Alexa choose to go out on one of the tender craft, but I went kayaking instead. Although I've canoed plenty of times, I've never kayaked before and it was quite different. I'm not sure if I was paddling correctly, but I was moving in a generally forward direction. That's a plus, right? We explored for an hour and then rejoined the boat for one final activity: swimming. Only four of the seventy passengers braved the 11 degree Celsius (which in American means really, really cold) water. Who would be so stupid, you ask? The same person who bungy jumped three times in two days, probably.

We spent the rest of the day sight-seeing around the sound, eventually coming to the Tasman Sea and two massive seal colonies. Anyone who reads this blog knows how many times we've seen god damn fur seals, and so can imagine our excitement. But wait! This time it was in the evening, which is apparently when fur seals get off their lazy butts to hunt, so they were moving. We were able to see them in all their splashing, barking, flopping glory. Awesome!

The day ended with a huge dinner and dessert buffet. This included one of New Zealand's many gifts to the world, pavlova. Pavlova is a meringue-like dessert covered in whipped cream and fresh fruit (strawberry, kiwifruit, and mandarins in this case), named after Anna Pavlova for her airy lightness. Australia tries to take credit for the dessert's invention, but keep in the mind the Aussies also try to claim Peter Jackson and Lord of the Rings. Plus, how can you trust the descendants of convicts?

After dinner there was an interesting nature talk, the highlight of which was the discussion of Moose Man. Apparently moose were once introduced to Fiordland National Park but they died out shortly after. Unless, of course, you ask Moose Man who is convinced moose still roam the park and devotes his life to searching for evidence--fur, droppings, footprints, whatever--to prove they still exist. After that craziness it was off to bed. We woke early the next morning to gloriously clear weather and explored the sound for a few hours before returning to the wharf and being shuttled all the way back to Queenstown the same way we came. And because I made a promise, here's a plug: Real Journeys is an awesome tour company, and if you ever find yourself in the south of New Zealand, choose them as your guides for Milford and Doubtful Sounds and beyond! Seriously. It was pouring rain back in Queenstown, so the coach driver took Alexa and I all the way to our flat. It's pretty far out of the way and I don't think many other coach companies would've been so generous.

Anyway, here's a few shots of the sound in her many moods:

Mike's Arrival/Queenstown

My good friend Mike arrived in Queenstown on Tuesday the 14th, jet lagged and as short as ever. I grabbed him and the rental car from the airport, then we headed back to Queenstown. Over the next two days we plowed through as many of Queenstown's touristy offerings as possible, making trips to the luge, Deer Park Heights, Fergburger, several bars, and Fresh Choice. So incredibly exciting. Alexa and I also had to hunker down and do some cleaning. Apart from wanting our bond (deposit) back, we really liked our landlady and wanted to leave the flat just as nice as we'd found it. And so after a fond farewell, we packed our car to the brim, leaving just enough space for Mike to squeeze into the back seat, and drove northward to Franz Josef.

The only worthwhile shot from Queenstown. Our racing turned a little aggressive on the luge, with plenty of side-to-side slamming in a fierce competition for first place. As we came towards the photo finish, we both ignored the "slow down" signs and yelled loudly. Me, yelling in triumph, and Mike in the anguish of defeat. A little kid was in front of us, but fortunately we made it past without incident. I think he was a bit startled, though. The resulting picture, with his head turned back to see what's coming/just went past, is priceless.

Franz Josef Glacier

The drive started off on a strange note. Just outside of Queenstown we were passed by sign-yielding trucks telling us "PULL OVER, WIDE LOAD." And they meant it. Soon after we pulled over, a truck pulling an entire house came chugging down the road:

Crazy.

After an hour of sunshine and beautiful scenery the weather turned to complete shit and we spent the next four hours navigating through heavy rain and dense fog. As an added bonus, the rental car's CD player didn't work (it would only play the first 2:49 of the first track) and the radio wouldn't pick up a station for more than five minutes at a time.

The morning after we arrived in Franz Josef, however, the sky had cleared just in time for our full day glacier hike. We started off at the Franz Josef Glacier Guides office in town, stuffing ourselves into waterproof trousers, wool socks, boots, jackets, and red bags containing crampons, hats, and mittens for later on. After a quick bus ride and a brief tramp through the woods, we came upon our first view of the glacier.

The glacier is currently about 11 km long, and this view only shows about 6 km of it. Also, Franz Josef is unique in that it's currently in a cycle of advancing/retreating (growing/shrinking), unlike most other glaciers which are currently only retreating.

It took us about 45 minutes of hiking across the rocks, and then up through the bush and back down again, to get to the bottom of the glacier. Here we were broken up into groups of ten and given a chance to spike-ify our feet by strapping on crampons. Here's Mike and I showing off our sweet new footwear:

For the next six hours we climbed up steep "staircases" carved out by our fearless guide Daniel, shuffled down icy banks, and slid through neon-blue ice tunnels. For now we'll go into storybook mode and I'll let the pictures guide you along. You don't need me to tell you how beautiful it was when you can see it for yourself, right?

A cave where the water is flowing out from under the glacier terminus:

Here I am climbing out of one of first ice caves, with Mike peering creepily over my shoulder:

Mike and I climbing up an ice "staircase" carved out by Daniel. This was one of the steeper climbs, hence the rope.

Alexa passing through one of the beautifully-blue ice caves.

And now she's climbing up and out the other side of the cave:

Mike's small stature paid off in this tight tunnel we had to crawl/slide through on hands and knees:

Alexa swears this picture is a coincidence, but I think it looks like she's contemplating our guide's butt. What do you think?

As you can see, hiking Franz Josef was a spectacular experience filled with beautiful sights. And it really made us feel pretty adventurous, too. Several of the cracks we had to step or jump across surely could've lead to serious injury if we've lost our footing, and even with the crampons and ice staircases, a few of the climbs were a little scary. Not to mention the omnipresent threat that chunks of the glacier could collapse at any given moment. Lastly, our guide may have been slightly insane. He had a soft spot for randomly destroying things. Towards the end of the hike he noticed this arch:

Apparently part of it was in danger of collapsing, so he climbed to the top and proceeded to hack away at the thing he was standing on with his pick-axe. Later, as we were descending the glacier, he wandered about twenty feet off the track and lay on his back beside a large boulder. Just as we began to wonder what he was doing, he rolled back, lifted his legs, and kicked the boulder down a hill. Bear in mind this was nowhere near the track. Lastly, he stopped right in the middle of the track and chucked a few random stones off to the side before resuming the hike without comment. Was there a method to his madness, was it all for show, or was he just crazy? The world may never know.

Eventually we made it down off the glacier, removed the crampons from our sore feet, and hiked back to the bus. About eight hours after we left, we were back at the Glacier Guides office in Franz Josef and duly exhausted. Unfortunately there's no rest for the wicked, and we had to pile back into the car to continue along to our next destination. We hadn't been on the road for five minutes when the rain started again. I guess we should be grateful that it held off during our hike.

Greymouth

The rain lead the way to Greymouth, "The Dark Hole," as it's known for its horrible weather. We checked into our hostel, had a quick but replenishing dinner, and were in bed by 9:00. After all, we needed our rest for the next morning's awesome activity.

Drinking in the morning!

Uh, I mean the Monteith's Brewery tour.

Monteith's is kind of like the Sam Adams of New Zealand, in that it's a high-end, flavorful beer with several different varieties. Except that it's better than Sam Adams, and it's cheaper. Monteith's is my favorite beer and is one of the many things I'll miss dearly when Alexa drags me kicking and screaming back to the States in a few months. Although the guide told us they've started exporting to a few cities in California because it's popular there, so maybe the east coast will catch wise and start importing as well.

The tour was brief, but it was cool because beer was actually brewing that day so we saw more than just empty vats. They do their own bottling, so we also had a look at the bottling line, which was pretty neat. But who am I kidding? The real reason we went was for the samples, of course. And they gave us plenty. Unlike other brewery tours, Monteith's seemed intent on getting visitors drunk. After sampling half-glasses of all seven varieties, we each poured one final beer of our choosing from the tap and downed that as well. Fortunately for Mike, Alexa doesn't really like beer and I had to drive soon, so he got most of Alexa's beers as well as those I'd already tried.

Oh, and check this out. Keg urinals.

After a quick lunch at Greymouth's very own Fresh Choice, we crammed back into the car and headed northward to Marahau, starting point for our three-day trek on the Abel Tasman Coastal Track.

I'm afraid I'll have to leave you in suspense for now, though. This entry is way too long despite my best efforts to keep each section to a few paragraphs. Next time I'll pick up where we left off with the Abel Tasman Coastal Track, our journey to and through the north island, and what Alexa and I have been up to for the past week.

Huge Update!

2009-03-30T00:10:00.001-07:00

This blog entry is pretty much the most action-packed piece of writing I've created since World War III, the picture-book I made in first grade that illogically pitted America, Ireland, and Canada against China, England, Russia, and Mexico. I think it had something to do with my recently-acquired ability to draw mushroom clouds.

Somehow I've let another huge chunk of time slip by since my last post (not "time of chunk," the typo/brainfart my dad was kind enough to point out in one of my previous entries), and a lot has happened since good old March 6th. Since my last post, my dad visited Queenstown, Alexa and I hiked the Routeburn Track, and we've put in our two weeks' notice at Fresh Choice in preparation for our next relocation.

Let's start with my dad's visit. He arrived a day late thanks to a storm in Chicago delaying his flight from Baltimore, and a little bit delirious from all the travel. Fresh off the plane, we headed to Harry's Pool Bar for a few beers and games of pool. Dad might remember it differently since he was so mixed up from spending so much time on a plane, but I beat him fifty games in a row. Straight. Remember: if it's on my blog, it's the truth.

Throughout the week we sampled Queenstown's many touristy offerings, some new to us and some repeats, but all fun. Thursday we took a 4X4 Lord of the Rings tour to Glenorchy, an isolated town located about one and a half hours from Queenstown. It was more about the scenery than the movies, as the guide said he wasn't much of a fan. Not sure how he landed the job if he isn't even a fan of the films, but as a local he did share a variety of local facts and the scenery was, as always, fantastic.

Friday we boarded the TSS Earnslaw, Queenstown's very own steamship from the early 1900's, and rode out to Walter Peak Station, a sheep station on Lake Wakatipu's opposite shore. It doesn't look very far away, but the trip took a considerably long time. Apparently steamboats aren't the quickest way to get around on the water. Since Alexa and I are working and living here in Queenstown, we were able to get a locals' special and the trip included a free BBQ buffet lunch. First all-you-can-eat buffet I've had since leaving the states over seven months ago. It was awesome. We also checked out a brief sheep mustering and shearing demonstration. The ewe did not look happy about the shearing process, despite the farmer's assurances that she was "quite happy" to be rid of the wool. Maybe, but I doubt she'll be happy about being turned into mutton at the end of the year (a fun fact the farmer shared with the audience--for the kids!)

The next day we fulfilled one of my Dad's dreams and went white water rafting. The water levels were lower than when Alexa and I rafted on Boxing Day, and our guide was a bit of a prick, but it was still a lot of fun and we're glad we did it.

Dad's in the front row on the right, and I'm directly behind him. As you can see, the rapids are still quite rough even though the water level has dropped significantly.

Sunday brought work for me and Alexa and souvenir shopping for my Dad, but on Monday we all took the gondola up to Bob's Peak to try out the luge track. At first we weren't sure if Dad would even make it up to the track since he wasn't too thrilled about the chair lift, but in the end it all worked out!

Here's Dad looking extremely nervous (and I'm looking extremely mature) on the chair-lift up to the start of the luge track:

The first time around I reached the bottom of the track first and had to wait about half an hour for Alexa to catch up, and then we both had to wait an additional two hours for my Dad. No exaggeration.

On the second go we weren't quite as spread out. We all met up at the bottom so we could come in for a group photo finish:

I can't decide who's making the best face in that picture. Regardless, we're all looking pretty awesome.

Later on Alexa had to work, but Dad and I took the drive up to Wanaka so he could check out Puzzling World. If you think back to the ancient times (aka December) when Alexa and I were first driving down to Queenstown, you'll remember the place that had the giant maze, crazy illusion rooms, and Roman-style toilets. Yep, that's Puzzling World. Here's Giant Eoin and Little Dad:

I want to do this when Mike's with us. It's a great puzzle in itself: if Mike stood in the tall spot, and I stood in the short spot, what would happen? Would he appear taller than me? Would we be the same height? Or, maybe, just maybe, would he still be shorter? In a few weeks we'll be able to solve one of science's greatest riddles: how to make Mike look tall! I need to stop. I don't think he even reads this, so this is essentially as bad as talking about him behind his back...with an audience. Sorry Mike. But that's what you get for not reading my blog. Gosh.

Anyway, the next day was Tuesday and St. Patrick's Day, and I really don't think any explanation is required. Obviously we spent the day at church learning about St. Patrick, Jesus, and all those other awesome folk. And there was no alcohol involved. At all. Surprisingly enough, the church had a pool table. In the course of the day I once again bested the old man. This time I conquered him in ninety nine out of a hundred games of pool (it was a long day). Not sure how I let that last slip past me. Maybe I just didn't feel right crushing his ego entirely.

And remember: if it's on my blog, it's the truth. I use only the highest level of journalistic integrity for you, my dear readers.

Here we are at the end of the holy day. Clearly no alcohol involved whatsoever.

After leaving ~~the pub~~ church we headed to Winnie's, a local bar/pizzeria for some delicious dinner, then caught a cab home. We crashed pretty quickly: spending St. Patrick's day at a church is more exhausting than you might think. In fact, the exhaustion carried over into the next day and manifested itself in a terrible illness with symptoms not unlike those of a hangover. Very, very strange. Dad managed to make it out of the house before I did and headed downtown for some brunch. After fighting off a crippling headache, I followed an hour later, scarfed down a kebab, and joined Dad for a trip up to Deer Park Heights.

As a quick refresher, Deer Park Heights is where this photo was taken:

Alexa had to work, so unfortunately she couldn't reenact this Kodak moment. Dad got to meet a few alpacas, however. We also saw several deer (including a few stags making their claim over the females as it's "roaring season." If you've never heard a stag "roar," it's freaking weird), miniature ponies, a water buffalo, and more goats than I ever care to see again. It seemed like there were twice as many goats as last time, and every last one of them dedicated their time to sitting nonchalantly in the middle of the road, completely unfazed as I laid on the horn.

Also, what the hell is this alpaca doing? The face he's making is like the face Napoleon Dynamite makes when he's angry:

The next day we woke early, breakfasted at a cafe in town, and headed straight for the airport. The week and a half had flown by quite quickly, and it was time for Dad to make his long, long flight home. Alexa and I bid him farewell and headed back to town without delay. We had no time to dilly-dally, as the next day we were due to start our next adventure...

The Routeburn Track!

The Routeburn Track, one of New Zealand's nine Great Walks, is a 32 kilometer (3 day) trek through the rain forest and mountains of two national parks, Mt. Aspiring and Fiordland National Parks. Only two of the Great Walks cross the border between different parks. Apart from the Routeburn, the other is the Heaphy. Do any of these names mean anything to my American readers? No, probably not. But it's information, and the more of it I spew out the more knowledgeable I can pretend to be. Perfect.

If you think back to Alexa's entry about the Tongariro Crossing, the hike we did in December, you'll remember how much she loved it. And the Tongariro Crossing was only a one day hike, and didn't require heavy backpacks! With a little imagination, then, I'm sure you can guess how Alexa felt about the Routeburn.

But in the end Alexa admitted to having an "okay" time despite her initial misgivings. After all, the Routeburn is 32 km in three days, whereas Tongariro was 21 km in one day. Apart from the first day (which is almost entirely uphill), the Routeburn Track is pretty much a combination of level and downhill walking.

The first day we hiked uphill through the rain forest alongside a river, which gave us great views of several rapids and waterfalls. We spent the night in the Routeburn Falls Hut, which had a balcony overlooking the Routeburn Flats and other areas we'd walked through over the course of the day. The second day started off with climbing up above the treeline and through a long valley. At the halfway point we reached the optional sidetrack up to Conical Hill. It's labeled as an hour to an hour and a half return trip, up the side of a "hill" and back down. Alexa stayed behind and relaxed with our bags while I climbed up the hill. And it certainly was a climb. The trail wasn't well formed, and I spent most of the ascent scrambling over huge rocks and thinking to myself "wow, this is going to suck on the way down." But the 360 degree views of the surround mountains, forest, and valleys made the climb well worth it. Off towards the west, I could see all the way to the Tasman Sea (the body of water between Australia and New Zealand)! Climbing back down Conical Hill did suck as much as I predicted. At one point I slipped on a muddy rock and fell. Fortunately I caught myself. If I hadn't, I would've rolled until I met a rock large enough to stop me, and Alexa and I would've gotten a helicopter ride out of the park.

Once I rejoined Alexa at the bottom, we began our descent towards Lake Mackenzie, site of the second hut. We spent the evening skipping stones and soaking our feet in Lake Mackenzie. A creepy American at the hut gave us directions to a secluded location where we could skinny dip in the lake, but we were quite content with just dipping our feet in. It's an alpine lake, so the water was obviously freezing.

The third and final day began with a very short climb up the opposite side of the valley, and then we once again found ourselves on relatively level ground. We came to Lake Howden around noon and stopped to eat lunch and lounge in the sun for about an hour. From that point we had another short climb, and then a brief 45-minute walk down to the car park where we once again lounged in the sun until the van picked us up.

I think the second day was probably my favorite in terms of scenery. The first picture I posted up top is from that part of the hike. I've included a few more shots in this post, but you can find the rest in my new Facebook album linked on the sidebar to the right, Album Eight: The Routeburn Track.

On that note, I've also updated Album Six: The Journey South and Queenstown, and created Album Seven: Milford Sound, Dunedin, and Dad's Visit, so there are heaps of new pictures for you guys to check out. Have at it!

Lake Mackenzie, site of the second night's hut.

Earland Falls, a little bit before we reached Lake Howden on our last day of hiking.

After returning from the Routeburn, we promptly put our noses back to the grindstone and we've been whiling our time away at Fresh Choice once again. Happily we gave our two weeks' notice last weekend!

My last day of work is Easter Sunday, but Alexa will keep working until Tuesday. Tuesday our third (and final? anyone else fancy a trip to New Zealand?) visitor, my good friend Mike arrives. After spending a few days in Queenstown, Mike will accompany us on our trip all the way back to Picton, across the Cook Straight to Wellington, and then all the way up to the top of the north island where we'll spend our last four months in New Zealand, dropping Mike off at the airport in Auckland along the way. Mike probably gets the best deal, since he gets see the sights on both islands.

Lastly, in two days Alexa and I will go on our final Queenstown-based adventure. Tuesday morning we're catching a coach down to Doubtful Sound, where we're going on an overnight cruise. Doubtful Sound, like Milford Sound, is a huge, remote body of water in the midst of mountains and rain forest. Doubtful sound is a bit further away, though, and is said to be more untouched by man and you have a better chance of seeing wildlife. In fact, our boat is likely to be the only man-made structure we'll see during the course of our cruise. It's supposed to be like a trip back to the Jurassic period (minus the dinosaurs).

Hopefully I'll get a chance to update on that before we leave Queenstown, so keep an eye out for a new post sometime next week. After that we'll be on the road again, so I'm not sure when I'll have a chance to update.

In the meantime, check out the new photo albums and enjoy this little anecdote:

Last Tuesday was the biannual stock take at Fresh Choice. One of my fellow checkout workers, Linda, is not the brightest crayon in the box. In fact, a few of the supervisors have a special hatred for her and her consistent ability to make the same, stupid mistakes over, and over, and over again on a daily basis. When she heard that we had a stock take coming up and attendance was mandatory for all employees, she got excited. Why would anybody in their right mind be excited about having to spend three-four hours tediously counting every item in the shop (including tiny sachets of seasons, packs of soup, boxes of toothpaste--you get the idea)? It turns out she took the phrase "stock take" a little too literally. She thought it was time to clear out old stock, and all the employees got to come in and take whatever they wanted for free! If only.

The Corona's Last Voyage

2009-03-06T19:15:00.000-08:00

I don't worry much about the existence of any sort of higher power in the universe, but if there is a god, then last Friday serves as proof that he/she/it enjoys a little good old fashioned Schadenfreude as much as us lowly mortals.

Our trip to Dunedin with Alexa's mom started off with a few minor hitches. First, misdirections sent us an hour in the wrong direction. Following that, our battery (which, as it turns out, was too large for the Corona) slid out of place and our car wouldn't start until a nice guy stopped and fixed it. Once we were on the road again, we failed to see a road sign and ended up going another half hour out of our way. These little problems set us back about three or four hours all told, but that wasn't too big of a deal. We continued on our merry little way. A few kilometers past a dinky little town, we were passing a farm when a raucous rattling filled our ears.

"Is that this car?" Jodi asked.

"Nah, I think it's some farming equipment," I said and scanned the farm for the source of the racket. A farmer on a four-wheeler with a cart full of sheep dogs in tow came racing down his driveway, and I ever-so-foolishly thought "aha! That's the noise!"

Wrong.

With a tremendous KATHUNK something flew out from the undercarriage of the car and smoke came billowing out in thick waves. As a final display of glory, the Corona breathed a brief-yet-powerful jet of flame from the front right of the hood before the engine cut off and I was forced to steer her off to the side of the road.

At first I remained under the influence of some naive optimism: hey, anything that goes wrong with a car can be fixed! Wrong again. According to the guy who came to tow us, a hole had been blown in the engine. I kept a little chunk of piston as a souvenir.

We were towed back to a garage in the dinky little town, and as we rounded the corner to the garage's back lot car graveyard, I realized our poor little Corona would never ride again. The mechanic tucked her in snugly between a smashed-up van and an old truck.

At that point we found ourselves in a bit of a pickle. Obviously we were stranded halfway between Queenstown and Dunedin. More importantly, a car is something of a necessity for our time in New Zealand. A combination of busing and walking will work out fine in Queenstown, but in a little over a month we're going to take the lengthy journey from Queenstown (a mere 3 hours from the bottom of the south island) all the way up to Kerikeri, a town basically at the tippy-top of the north island. Seeing our dilemma, the owner of the garage was kind enough to offer us a vehicle for sale. A 1993 something or other, with a manual transmission and close to 300,000 kilometers under its belt. Back when we bought the Corona, we were told any car under 250,000 is probably a safe bet, but after that it's risky. When I pointed that out to the would-be salesman, he replied, "Oh, no. Cars these days can easily last to 300, 350 K. Look how clean the car is--and it has no rust! Hand on my heart, this is a great deal. I wouldn't sell it if it wasn't road worthy." During the course of our discussion, the two-faced ratshit used the phrase "hand on my heart" at least a dozen times. In fact, if he'd used it one more time I probably would've pulled out his heart with my hand like that crazy native dude from Temple of Doom.

He then told us that even if we didn't buy the car, he would need $50 from us to tow our vehicle from his garage to the junkyard. No way. No fucking way. Maybe he thought we were stupid, but he's going to get something for our car when he scraps it. He's certainly not going to be out $50, at any rate.

We told him "okay, we just need to think about buying the car and we'll get back to you," because really, I have no problem with lying to a liar, and then hitched a bus back to another small town where we rented a car and drove to Dunedin.

Our experience in the town wasn't all bad, though. When we went to the information center to make a booking for a bus to Dunedin and found out the last bus was already full, the lady at the center was incredibly kind enough to offer us her car for the weekend. That's right, she was going to let three total strangers borrow her own personal car for the weekend. In the end we turned her down and went with a rental, though, because given our track record we didn't want to have something bad happen to her car.

Our time in Dunedin, if cut a bit short by the Corona deciding it was an opportune time to blow the hell up, was enjoyable. We ate out at a couple restaurants, toured the Speight's Brewery, and saw real live penguins in the wild.

First we went to Penguin Place, a reserve where yellow-eyed penguins nest. Everyday they swim 20 km out to sea to do their fishing, and every night they come back to the beach and below their slow, waddling journey back to their inland nests. They're unique from other penguins in that they aren't as social, and mating pairs keep to their own nests rather than nesting all in one group. They also nest further off-shore than other penguins, making their homes in the shelter of bushes, tall grass, and trees. The reserve had an elaborate system of covered trenches for tourists to view the penguins from. It's surrounded by farmland, which is part of the problem and the reason the reserve was created in the first place. Farmland doesn't provide the shelter yellow-eyed penguins need, so the reserve was made so they'd have the natural forests they need to nest in. It was quite strange seeing lambs and penguins hanging out together.

After leaving penguin place, we spotted a viewing point for a different species of penguin. The little blue penguins are the type we were supposed to see on Some's Island back in Wellington, but they were too busy hiding in their nests. Unlike their yellow-eyed cousins, the blue penguins don't come ashore until after dark, so we had to wait a good while. At long last, about ten of the little guys swam up to the beach in formation. They were no bigger than an average-sized pigeons, and they kept getting knocked over by the waves as they waddled up the beach! We didn't stay and watch for too long because we wanted to get back for Alexa's birthday dinner.

As we were leaving, the most incredible thing happened. Alexa and Jodi left about a minute before I did, because I was reluctant to leave before seeing the penguins up-close. When I caught up with them, they had stopped in the middle of the staircase back up to the car. Apparently a little blue penguin had walked out right in front of Alexa. It was quite possibly the cutest thing I've ever seen. It was just light enough out for us to see him, but not bright enough to photograph. Flash is forbidden for obvious reasons. We were able to stand and watch it for a few minutes before it waddled away, though. It was definitely the highlight of our trip to Dunedin, for me at least. Call me a dork, but I've always been fascinated with penguins and it was so cool to see the adorable little fluff-ball up close and personal.

I guess that's about it for Dunedin. Alexa and her mom went for a 4-hour spa treatment before we checked out the penguins, but I'm sure she'll blog about that later. As for the car situation, we've been walking to work. It's about 2.25 miles each way. On the bright side, I'm getting some extra exercise! I walk both ways, but Alexa takes the bus home because she normally works a little later than I do. Our long term solution is probably going to be to just rent a car when we need one. There are cheap enough rental companies here that renting will work out to the same price of buying another jalopy, and it carries far less risk.

Anyway, I think that's about enough for now, mainly because I'm getting tired of writing. In less than four days my dad will be here for his visit. Over the next two weeks I'll only be working two and a half days, so we'll have plenty of time to be out and about doing fun touristy things. Hopefully my next blog post will be filled with awesome tales of adventure, and 100% less engine explosions.

On to the pictures:

The massive hole in the Corona's engine:

The bar at the Speight's Brewery. Pretty much the only worthwhile part of the tour, as can be expected.

A yellow-eyed penguin being nice enough to strike a pose for the camera.

And some videos of the penguins in action!

Most boring entry ever.

2009-02-20T16:57:00.000-08:00

So it seems I've once again allowed a considerable time of chunk to wiz by without updating my blog. Two main factors contributed to this: 1) I've been working a metric shit ton and 2) not really much blog-worthy has happened since my bungy adventures.

For the past four weeks I've worked 45+ hours, and two of those weeks only had one day off. Lame. I haven't had two days off in a row since my bungy adventure, in fact. Like I said before, though, I can't really complain because having money is nice. Last weekend Alexa and I booked a 5 day/4 night holiday to Fiji. It was a little less than $NZ700 for each of us, which is quite a bargain when you consider that's about $US360 for airfare, hotel, and transfers inclusive. We also made bookings for the Routeburn Track, a 3 day/2 night backpacking tramp through the wilderness of Mt. Aspiring national park. It's one of New Zealand's 9 Great Walks and is renowned worldwide for its scenery. We'll be embarking on that adventure March 20-22, departing the day after my dad leaves NZ. The Fiji holiday isn't until late May.

In the little free time I've had, I've been continuing to work on my very manly baking skills. I'm happy to say I can now cross "Learn to bake bread from scratch" from my list of 101 Things, since my loaves no longer come out as dense, chewy bricks and are quite delicious. I recently expanded my repetoire to include pretzels. The first batch came out a bit dodgy, partly due to not having as much flour as I needed and having to sub in wholemeal flour. Whole wheat and pretzels don't mix so well. But batch number two is in progress as I'm typing and I have high hopes for it. I think english muffins will be my next endeavor.

In other news, Alexa's mom should be in the sky, on her way from LA to Auckland. She arrives in Queenstown tomorrow (Sunday) morning at around 9 local time. She and Alexa will embark on a variety of adventures throughout the week including a wine tour and steamship cruise. I couldn't take much leave since I'll need a lot of time off when my dad comes in two weeks, but I will join them on a trip to Dunedin next weekend. Dunedin is primarily a university town, but it also has cool tourist sites like the Cadbury World factory tour, Speight's brewery, NZ's only castle, and eco-tours to see wild penguin colonies (packs? groups? gangs? whatever the hell you call large numbers of penguins congregated in one area) a short drive from the city.

Oh! I don't think this has been mentioned yet, but Alexa finally has a job! After a month of unsuccessful job-hunting she finally broke down and joined me in the trenches of Fresh Choice Queenstown's checkout lanes. Queenstown is a tough job market in the summer. While there's new jobs popping up every day, they seem to get gobbled up as soon as they're hosted due to the high concentration of travelling workers like us.

Anyway, I think I've probably bored you enough. I know booking trips and baking aren't thrilling topics, but bungy jumping is a tough act to follow. Hopefully next week's trip to Dunedin will make a break in the lull.

And no pictures this time, obviously. Unless you guys want a picture of Fresh Choice or bread, which I'll happily supply upon demand.

AGHHHHHHHHHH... (breathing) ...AGHHHHHHHHH

2009-01-30T18:59:00.001-08:00

This Sunday I turn 23. Surely my life is plunging into a downward spiral now, because what more do I have to look forward to? At 16 I could drive, at 18 I gained the right to vote and smoke tobacco, and upon my 21st birthday I earned the privilege of buying alcohol for myself instead of having to give money to an older friend to get it for me. Even 22 offered some promise, as it marked the year of my graduation from university. But now, at 23, what’s the next great milestone? Losing my hair and getting wrinkles at 40? Great!

To reflect on the downward spiral my life has become, I decided to take not one, not two, but THREE literal plunges in the form of bungy jumping. Fitting, no?

...actually, that’s a load of bull. I just did it because it seemed like an effing crazy fun way to spend my birthday weekend.

First up in my “Thrillogy” of jumps was the Kawarau Bridge Bungy. A little background: AJ Hackett, a native Kiwi, pioneered the sport of commercial bungy jumping. The Kawarau Bridge Bungy was the world’s first commercial bungy site, where the layperson can go and experience the extreme sport for themselves. Also, my spellchecker would like me to think that “bungee” is the proper spelling, but since AJ Hackett invented bungy, I figure I’ll go with his way.

Anyway, AJ Hackett Bungy has helped over a million jumpers conquer their fears and take the plunge in its 20-some years of operation, and there have only ever been 42 minor injuries and no major injuries or deaths. Safety is the first priority of all staff members, and all equipment is state-of-the-art and extremely safe.

But let me tell you something: when you’re standing on a bridge, feet bound by a towel and a harness strapped from your ankles to your crotch and staring 43 meters (141 feet) into the raging Kawarau river below, all of that reassuring knowledge goes out the window. The part of the brain in charge of logic meekly whispers “It’s perfectly safe,” from the backseat while pure, raw, self-preservation instinct is screaming “Oh my fucking Jesus, what are you doing?!”

Still, I managed to shut my brain down long enough to take the plunge. In a word, it was insane. For a few split-seconds I experienced nothing but ground-rush (water rush, perhaps?) and then—SPLASH!—I was quickly dunked into the river and just as quickly yo-yoing back into the air to bob around for a bit before being pulled into the recovery boat below. The video does it more justice:

Make sure your sound is turned on! Unless you're at work, in which case you will absolutely want to make sure the volume is off.

For the record, that is a yell, not a scream, thank you very much.

The second act in my Thrillogy brought me to The Ledge Bungy. It’s a part of the Skyline area up on Bob’s Peak, the same place where Alexa and I went luging and paragliding when we first arrived in Queenstown. It’s called an “urban bungy,” although it isn’t really in the midst of the city. Queenstown does, however, serve as a pretty spectacular backdrop to the jump.

The Ledge Bungy is more like a swing than a proper bungy, as the harness goes around your upper-body rather than around the ankles, and there’s a runway to run and jump out as opposed to a little platform to leap off.

All in all, it wasn’t quite as exhilarating as the Kawarau Bridge jump, although it did leave me with a pretty impressive bruise on my right bicep. Here’s the video:

For the rest of the day I rode the indescribable high of having just completed two jumps in one day, and that ended the experience for Friday. Like a fool I had booked the final (and highest) jump for today, nearly a full 24 hours after my first jump at Kawarau. A full 24 hours for my adrenaline-fueled high to burn out. A full 24 hours to poke around on youtube, watching videos of the Nevis Highwire Platform, the world’s third-highest commercial bungy site at 134 meters (440 feet, or 1.5 times the length of a football field). A full 24 hours to contemplate and, eventually, dread the foolish decision I’d made. Surely I must be insane, thinking I was going to jump from this:

Now you can see where the Nevis Highwire gets its name. Suspended high over the Nevis valley on wires, the glass-bottomed “jump-pod” can only be reached by cable car.

Still, despite an incredibly anxious morning of going for a run, eating a small breakfast, and pacing around the flat waiting to leave for the jump, it actually wasn’t much more frightening than the Kawarau jump. Up until the point that I had to step out onto the tiny 2x2 jumping platform, I was relatively fine. As you can see in the video below, though, my terror increased exponentially as I stepped out onto the eensty weensty square. Again, I don’t think the feeling is something that can be successfully explained without experiencing it for yourself. There’s a great difference between actual risk (very low) and perceived risk (HUGE!), but logic gets shoved to the side and perceived risk is all that matters, because some part of the brain thinks its about to die despite all the safety precautions.

So terrified. I can barely even wave to Alexa, I just want to jump so bad, ha ha:

Apparently the microphones were up in the jump-pod, so you can't quite hear me for the whole jump. Rest assured, I did shout in terror/exhiliration for the entire fall. Albeit with a pause in between to take a breath, since the free-fall lasts 8.5 seconds. In my first bounce I let out a braver-sounding "Wooo-hoooo!" and a "FUCK YEAH!" which I don't think the mic managed to pick up. Also, the little flip I do at the end is thanks to the orange strap you're supposed to pull at the height of your second bounce. If you fail to do this, you end up getting hauled back up upside-down, so it's a good thing I succeeded.

So there you have it. Altogether, bungy jumping was an incredible experience—and it was an experience. The anticipation, the waiting, the terror, and the adrenal high/buzz afterwards were all just as important as the jumps themselves.

And I can’t wait to do more! I probably won’t do the Queenstown jumps again, as this is a rather expensive hobby and I’d rather pay to jump in new places. But if I can coerce Mike into going with me, I would definitely do Nevis again. Otherwise, my next jump will probably be the AJ Hackett site in Auckland, or maybe the purpose-built bungy tower in Cairns, Australia. We’ll see!

Until next time, here’s hoping you guys found this entry more interesting than the past few. I know alpaca-feeding is the most exhilarating thing in the world, eh?

The exotic wildlife of Deer Park Heights.

2009-01-25T12:59:00.000-08:00

Looming 600 meters above the city lies Queenstown’s best kept secret, Deer Park Heights. Scratch that. It’s not really a secret at all since they play ads for it on the radio every five minutes, promising spectacular 360 degree panoramic views of the Wakatipu Basin and encounters with “exotic wildlife” such as sheep, horses, pigs, goats, deer, llamas, and alpacas. I suppose calling llamas and alpacas exotic isn’t too much of a stretch, but they’re going to have a hard time convincing me with the sheep. Fun fact: New Zealand has an impressive population of 40 million sheep to its 4 million people.

Still, we thought we’d give it a gander and drove on up. For the cost of $20 per car we were allowed to roam the dusty roads of the 800 hectare working deer farm. I think that’s something I haven’t mentioned yet. Here on the south island, there are numerous deer farms and venison can be bought in the supermarket just like beef, pork, or chicken. There could be deer farms in the US as well, but I’ve certainly never seen any. It would be a bit silly, since we have such an overabundance of deer that they routinely chuck themselves in front of cars speeding down the highway.

For the low price of $1 coin we filled up a large tin with “animal nuts,” which essentially looks just like the pellets you find at any petting zoo and set off to drive around feeding crazy animals. Here I am with a few alpacas:

Alexa, as you may know, holds a special hatred for any non-human animals. Fairly recently she made an exception in the form of her mom’s dog, Shuggy, but otherwise fears/hates animals. Yet she volunteered to feed a baby piglet and, with some persuasion, even an alpaca.

Cost of admission to Deer Park Heights: $20
Bucket of animal nuts: $1
The look on Alexa’s face after having alpaca eat from her hand:

Priceless.

Apart from its animals, Deer Park Heights’ main appeal is the stunning views of Queenstown and its rugged terrain. The latter made it an ideal filming location for several scenes from LOTR: The Two Towers. Most of them were spots that only super nerdy film-buffs would recognize, but we found one that looked familiar. Remember the scene where Aragorn is fighting an orc on the edge of a cliff and then he falls off into the river below? Here’s the spot:

And that’s me hanging on for dear life! Oh no. Actually there isn’t a river far, far below, but just another ledge and then a gradually-sloping hill. For the movie they superimposed the Kawarau River (the one we traversed on a jet boat) into the shot. It isn’t too much of a stretch, since the Kawarau River is visible from parts of Deer Park Heights. Deer Park Heights also served as the filming location for a 1986 Disney movie called The Rescue, and a movie set (a Korean Prison) still remains. The farm is also being used for the upcoming movie, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, so maybe we'll recognize some of the scenery when that comes out.

For those of you coming to visit us in the coming months, you’ll be thrilled to know that you’re flying into the largest, most state-of-the-art airport in the world. Behold, Queenstown Frankton Airport:

On the bright side you won’t have to worry about it being a terribly busy airport.

As we left Deer Park Heights, we passed by this fellow:

Hugest deer I’ve ever seen in my life. For perspective, check out how big his head is when he decided to come closer to our car to investigate. Fortunately Alexa closed the window just in time.

So that's about it for Deer Park Heights, and about all there is to say for this entry. Until next time... go see a dentist if you have teeth like that deer. Gross!

It was worth waking up at 6 am for...

2009-01-20T13:57:00.000-08:00

Hurray President Obama!

That is all.

Milford Sound and Brick Bread.

2009-01-16T17:57:00.000-08:00

Hey all! Remember me? I'm Eoin, your favorite person in the world and this here is The Eoin Zone, your favorite blog. It's all coming back now, right? I apologize for the gap in time since my last post (I know you all look forward to my blog so much), but that's what happens with a full-time job. FreshChoice pretty much owns my life now. Still, if I complained about not getting enough hours in Wellington, I can't rightly complain about having too many now. Around the Christmas and New Year period my schedule was kind of flimsy, but I've had the same schedule for the past two weeks and the upcoming week, so I think they have me set into a fixed roster now. I work 4 hours (from 4-8 pm) Sundays, and 9 hours Monday-Thursday (12-9 Mon-Wed, 10-7 Thurs), coming to a grand total of 38 paid hours a week (they don't pay for breaks--what is this shit?!) Really, it isn't all that bad. Believe it or not, working checkout at a supermarket is not incredibly taxing work, mentally or physically. It can be very, very dull at times, but that's my only complaint. I am at least blessed with fun and interesting coworkers.

Still, all work and no play drives Eoin to drinking and hard drug use, so we have been having fun on my days off. Last weekend we went to Milford Sound. Milford Sound is perhaps New Zealand's most famous tourist attraction. If you've heard of anything in New Zealand (apart from Lord of the Rings), it's probably Milford Sound. A sound is a large body of water/valley carved out by rivers over thousands and thousands of years. Milford Sound is actually a fiord, though, which is a body of water/valley carved out by glacial melt over thousands and thousands of years. Apparently there was no (and still isn't) an equivilent english word for fiord, so explorers inadvertantly gave it the misnomer Milford Sound, and the title has stuck. Does it really matter? Probably not.

Anyway, Milford Sound is famous for its beauty. It's surrounded on all sides by rainforest-covered mountains. They aren't your typical tree-topped mountains, though. Since the valley was carved out by glaciers, the mountains are sheerly rock, no topsoil. The trees grow in a thin layer of lichen and moss. Somehow the lichen is able to hold up the weight of the massive trees. Unsurprisingly, though, this arrangement doesn't last indefinitely, and once a tree gets too heavy it falls down the side of the mountain, tearing down the trees below in its wake in a pyramid shape (think of how knocking down the front pin in bowling causes the others behind it to topple). Apart from pretty trees, there's also a wide array of wildlife including countless varieties of fish, dolphins, seabirds, penguins, and fur seals. Yes, once again we were lucky enough to bear witness to the stunningly majestic (or just fat and lazy) fur seal. We also saw a few seagull chicks. No dolphins or penguins this time around though, sadly.

Mitre Peak in Milford Sound:

Once again we bear witness to a colony of majestic fur seals:

The drive to Milford Sound was just as scenic as the boat ride itself. The drive from Te Anau to the Milford wharf is only a little over 100 km, and yet the brochure said the drive would take three hours. Thankfully this wasn't the fault of overly-windy and mountainous roads, but rather the never-ending display of beautiful mountains, glaciers, forests, rivers, and waterfalls. We literally pulled over every 5-10 minutes to get out and have a look. We easily passed 300-400 waterfalls, ranging in size from garden-hose trickles to massive cascades of water.

At a parking lot/lookout point along the way, we had an interesting encounter with a group of kea. Kea are a species of New Zealand parrot. Unlike the kaka we saw at the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary in Wellington, the kea are not shy. They landed on cars, hopped around the parking lot, and swooped at tourists without care. One even graced us by landing on the roof of the Corona. Check it out!

As you can see, it's quite a large bird. So when the call of nature struck a few seconds after this picture was taken, it's no surprise the shit dripping down the roof of our car was equally collosal. Thanks, kea. Thanks a lot.

In summary, Milford Sound is great. Waterfalls, glaciers, huge mountains, lazy fur seals, and giant bird poops. If you're ever in New Zealand, don't miss it.

Also on the fun side of things, some group or other have been putting on outdoor movies in the Queenstown gardens. Tuesday we went to check it out and sprawled out on a sleeping bag in front of a large inflatable screen to watch Lars and the Real Girl. I was expecting it to be mostly a comedy, but I should have known better. Ryan Gosling. Duh, Eoin: it's a chick flick. Still, it wasn't all bad and it definitely had its funny moments. And the experience of watching a movie out under the stars was nothing to complain about.

Turning to the mundane aspects of life, we've experienced two recent failures. Yesterday we took the Corona to get its WOF (Warrant of Fitness) renewed. The WOF inspection basically determines if the car is road-fit, testing things like oil leaks, seat belts, windshield wipers, tire alignment, etc. Unfortunately, our car failed on two minor issues that alone would have been passable, but in conjunction warranted a failure. Some metal axel thingy or another on the back tire is bent out of shape, and there's a minor exhaust leak. That would explain the weird smell! Fortunately it's not going to cost us much to fix.

Yesterday I also attempted to bake a loaf of bread from scratch, as per my list of 101 things to do in 1001 days. As Alexa so gently put it, I "made a brick." Thanks sweetheart. She's right, though. If it'd been more spherical in shape my bread could've passed for a bowling ball. Despite a hard exterior, though, the inside (what little there was) did taste like bread. I later discovered that I failed to proof the yeast properly so the dough didn't rise anywhere near what it was supposed to. My second attempt is in the oven as I'm writing, so let's keep those fingers crossed. Rise, rise, rise, damnit!

In closing, here's a few more pictures:

A waterfall in Milford Sound:

Water falling down the side of a tree-covered cliff along the road from Te Anau to Milford:

The Mirror Lakes, another sight along the way from Te Anau to Milford. The DOC (Department of Conservation) is so clever!

That's all for now. Hopefully my next entry will be more timely.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-01T17:23:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

Hopefully your hangovers have worn off by now. If not, you have my pity.

Of course it's already well into January 2nd here in New Zealand so the festivities have long since ended and life is returning to normal. As a bonus, though, January 2nd is a public holiday here. It's very creatively-titled "The Day After New Year's Day." Oooh.

Normally I don't make New Year's resolutions because I think I'd probably forget about it in a week or less and end up a failure. After spending an unsuccessful hour trying to fall asleep last night, though, I crawled out of bed and did some web-surfing. I found this: 101 Things to do in 1001 Days Project. Coincidentally enough, it was dreamt up by a Kiwi.

Quoting the site, the mission is to "Complete 101 preset tasks in a period of 1001 days [2.75 years]" with the following criteria: "Tasks must be specific (ie. no ambiguity in the wording) with a result that is either measurable, or clearly defined. Tasks must also be realistic and stretching (ie. represent some amount of effort on your part)." Somewhere on the site, it also recommends using the following acronym when thinking up your goals:

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Timely

Smart. So clever, yeah?

Since it was past midnight and I was in the grips of some inexplicable bout of insomnia, I spent the next two and a half hours browsing through a LiveJournal community filled with other people taking a stab at this challenge. Through a combination of taking inspiration from others' ideas and coming up with items on my own, I came up with a list of about 60 things. This morning I worked on it some more and I'm up to about 87. Rather than finish it off with things that are rushed and silly, I'll add the last 14 items as they come to me. Maybe you guys can offer suggestions?

Anyway, the following list is a collection of things I'm definitely going to do if all goes to plan, things that I would like to do, things I think I should do, some things that are just plain silly, and a set of challenges.

Have a look:

The Big Three OR Expensive Goals (Complete one and plan/save money towards the other two)
1. Attempt to hike the Appalachian trail.
2. Visit two new continents (Asia, Africa, South America, or dare I suggest Antarctica?!).
3. Put my Irish passport to use and spend six months to a year living and working in Europe.

Things I've Been Meaning to Do
1. Read fifteen classic novels I somehow avoided in my Alfred education. (0/15)
2. Read fifteen of the unread books in my room. (0/15)
3. Watch twenty of the movies that people are always shocked to learn I haven't seen. (0/20)
4. Finish reading the rest of my Hemingway collection.

Artistic Endeavors
1. Complete Script Frenzy once.
2. Complete NaBloPoMo twice. (0/2)
3. Write or edit something every day for a week.
4. Write or edit something every day for a month with four "sick days."
5. Write or edit something every day for a year with thirty "sick days."
6. Complete NaNoWriMo twice. (0/2)
7. Submit at least five short stories to a publication (0/5).
8. Submit at least one extended work (novel, novella, or anthology) to a publisher.
9. Get a piece of writing, no matter how small or insignificant, published and paid for.
10. Reunite MAWB and have at least one more concert for our like... seven fans.

Becoming Cultured
1. Try 40 new beers (0/40).
2. Tour a brewery.
3. Go to a wine tasting.
4. Learn to bake bread from scratch.
5. Cook twenty-five new meals from recipe books/websites (0/25).
6. Visit five museums I've never been to before. (0/5)
7. Visit five zoos/aquariums that I've never been to before. (0/5)
8. Go to a professional rugby game.
9. Improve my Spanish.
10. Go see an opera.
11. See Senses Fail live.
12. See the Offspring live.
13. See Jim Gaffigan live.

Challenges
1. Exercise at least four days a week (0/143)
2. Go undefeated in a night of pool-playing against either Dad or Mike. This may be the toughest yet.
3. Go a week without using any non-essential electronics. No computer, radio, TV, etc--but I can use the lights, stove, etc. This has to be an ordinary week, not while I'm on vacation or camping.
4. Eat vegan for a week.
5. Go on a water-only fast for 48 full hours.
6. Go a month without using the internet for anything other than answering essential emails. No facebook, myspace, youtube or wikipedia. All my researching and communication will be done the old-fashioned way.
7. Run a mile in 7:30.
8. Go a week without using a microwave.
9. Go a month without using a microwave.
10. Go a month without eating out/ordering in/buying pre-made foods.
11. Go a week without products containing high fructose corn syrup.
12. Go a month without the same.
13. Go a week without products containing MSG--in any of its sneaky names.
14. Go a month without the same.

Adventure On
1. Skydive.
2. Bungee Jump.
3. Go kayaking.
4. Visit Machu Picchu.
5. Visit Australia.
6. Go skiing.
7. Learn to rollerblade.
8. Go paint balling.
9. Go fishing.
10. See the Grand Canyon.
11. Fire a real gun (in a controlled environment at an inanimate target--don't worry!)
12. Go snorkeling.

The Greater Good
1. Save money and the environment: don't buy bottled water. (0/143)
2. Spend 50 hours volunteering (0/50).
3. Donate 500,000 grains of rice on Freerice.org. (0/500,000)
4. Donate $2 to charity for every item crossed off my "101 Things in 1001 Days"
list, $5 for every item left uncompleted.
5. Reconnect with an old friend or relative, even if only for one conversation.
6. Assess my possessions, determine what I don't need, and take it to Salvation Army once every six months. (0/5)
7. Participate in a public demonstration/protest for a cause I believe in.
8. Donate $200 in food and toys to local food/toy drives. (0/200)
9. Do the Polar Bear Plunge again, should I find myself in Maryland at the right time.
10. Buy/consume only locally-grown/made food for a week.
11. Do the same for a month.
12. Buy nothing made in China for a month.
13. Apart from food, shop only at Salvation Army for a month.
14. Do ten big favors for friends or family. (0/10)

Personal/Self-Improvement
1. Write a letter to my future self, giving advice and hopes and details, and then don't look at it until the last day of this challenge.
2. Give contact lenses another shot.
3. Correct my posture.

For the Hell of it (here are the silly items and some that just didn't fit elsewhere)
1. Sing karaoke in public.
2. Go to a restaurant and eat in reverse: dessert, main course, appetizer. Bonus: no drinks until the end since that's usually what comes first.
3. Wrap 2009's Christmas presents in obituaries and personal ads.
4. Go into a store and pretend to not speak English while keeping a straight face.
5. Get a professional massage like Alexa keeps telling me to.
6. Write something profound on a bathroom wall.
7. Try to juggle eggs while drunk.
8. Make a movie with my friends--and not just a drunken music video.
9. Go camping with Christine, Gary, and the kids.
10. Go to a theme park with them too.
11. Go to Universal Studios when they open the Harry Potter Theme Park. (This is one I stole from another person's list. Look it up! It's awesome!)
12. Read all seven Harry Potter books in five days!
13. Send a postcard to post secret.
14. Eat something new and outside my comfort zone (real sushi, like a big hunk of raw fish, not the rolled-stuff. Or the internal organs of some poor animal, or something equally gross).

That's the list as it stands now. I'm not sure if the categories are logical, but I think they are. Obviously there are several items that fit into more than one category. Several of the "Challenges" could just as easily fit into "Personal/Self-Improvement," and many of the "Artistic Endeavors" could very well be "Challenges," and so on. I may end up making a separate category for the weekly ones (any containing [0/143]). A couple don't fit the SMART criteria--I'm not exactly sure how to measure "correct posture" or "Improve my Spanish" in any sort of objective way. Any ideas?

Soon I will make a separate blog to track my progress, because obviously it will be very annoying if The Eoin Zone is filled with massive 101-item long lists everytime I cross an item off. I just have to decide whether it's going to be here on blogspot or over in the dark, melancholy realm of LiveJournal. LiveJournal has the negative stigma of being filled with morose, whiney high schoolers, but at the same time it has a great community for 101 Things to Do in 1001 Days. The community has its fair share of whiney American teenagers, yes, but there are also a ton of other users from virtually every continent and age bracket. Goals range from high schoolers wanting their first kiss to aspiring graduates shooting for their first real job or opening their own business to middle-aged parents planning to spend more time with their children. The community can be found here for the interested.

If nothing else, sticking to this list should make the next 1001 days interesting. If any of you readers are inspired and decide to make your own list, let me know!

Anyway, I think I've made this post massive enough so I'll close with a few pictures.

Fireworks do not photograph well, sadly.

dDub, the live band playing on New Year's Eve. They were pretty good. Then again, I was blitzed, and of course drunk people think that any live music is THE MOST AWESOME THING EVER WOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I LOVE THIS BAND!

I don't know. I really don't.

A bit of catching up to do!

2008-12-26T17:24:00.000-08:00

I think I'm going to have to just forget about my Tongariro Crossing post for now, which I'm sure just breaks all your hearts. Really. If anyone really wants a play-by-play of the hike just leave a comment and I'll get around to it someday. Otherwise I'm just going to scrap it, because I still haven't written about other things we did over two weeks ago!

So let's take an imaginary trip back in time to when I wrote the post from Hamilton. Remember? It was raining and pouring and Alexa was snoring, and we had just gone to the zoo?

Great.

So the day after that entry we left Hamilton and drove to Waitomo Caves. Waitomo is a town that may as well be sitting on top of swiss cheese for all the hundreds of twisting, winding tunnels and holes underground. It's cave central. Various companies offer all sorts of tours, ranging from full-day caving experiences to casual walks on platforms to check out the stalagtites, stalagmites, and "glow-worms" (read: maggot shit). We opted to go somewhere in between and took the moderately-adventurous route with black-water rafting. It's not quite as intense as it sounds. You ride in an inner-tube, not a raft, and the water moves fairly slowly for the most part. There's two waterfall jumps, but neither was higher than about eight feet. Still, the walking portions were a little bit tricky as the rocks were incredibly slippery and the water tended to be fast moving where it was shallow. The coolest parts were the portions where we switched off our helmet lights and floated along through absolute darkness. The maggot shit overhead made the top of the cave look like a clear night sky, only the "stars" were greenish-blue instead of white.

Here we are after the journey, all dressed up in our wetsuits. I look a bit impatient because I had to pee SO BAD and the guide assured us that peeing in our wetsuits would only end with us smelling like festering piss-pots.

After leaving Waitomo we drove to the town of Taumarunui and prepared for our two-day canoe trip down the Whanganui river. The trip was fantastic. The weather even cooperated for the most part, giving us sunshine for the entirety of the first day and only a few patches of drizzle the second. In total, the trip was somewhere around 71 km long and passed through around 50 or 60 grade 1-3 rapids. We were fortunate (and skilled) enough to not capsize the entire time, even though a few of the rapids were quite challenging and we managed to get stuck on the rocks more than once.

A mild stretch of the Whanganui on our second day of paddling:

After the canoe trip, which brings us to Friday, 12th December, we decided to go ahead and make the drive back to Wellington. Our canoe guide assured us it was only a 4 hour drive. I suppose this might have been true had we stuck to the 100 km/hr speed limit the whole way, but that was pretty much impossible since a large chunk of the drive involved going down narrow roads, around sharp bends, through mountains, and alongside sheer drop-offs--all without guard rails, of course. Plus we had the unique experience of finding ourselves stuck in the midst of a sheep traffic jam. Awesome. I've embedded the video below:

We arrived in Wellington late in the night and crashed at our friends Jason and Tammy's place. The next day we wandered around Wellington one last time, sent some mail, did some shopping, and spent the night hanging out with Jason, Tammy, some Monteith's, and Flight of the Conchords. Yesssssss.

Sunday we boarded the ferry to Picton. It was a nice ride. As promised, it was a scenic journey. There was no boring, "water only" period, since by the time the north island was starting to fade out of sight, the south island had already come into view. I guess they really aren't that far apart. The last hour and a half of the trip took us through the Queen Charlotte Sound, which was absolutely beautiful, with rolling, forested hills and pristine beaches on either side. There were even a few homes along the sound, and I cannot imagine living in a more remote location. I reckon they'd have to take boats into work.

A seaplane taking off from Picton Harbor:

We spent two rainy, miserable nights tenting in Nelson. While there we saw the World of Wearable Art museum, which was pretty interesting, and also had a section of restored cars. Nelson is where we're planning on staying after we wrap things up in Queenstown, and it seems like it will be a suitable home--when it's dry, anyway.

From Nelson we began the 13+ hour journey to Queenstown which took us back through Picton, and down along the Pacific coast through Kaikoura and past Christchurch. After passing Chirstchurch we veered away from the coast and drove southwest through the MacKenzie Basin, a huge glacially-formed area of farmland, rolling hills, mountains, and lakes. It was gorgeous although rainclouds were on our tail the entire time.

On the drive to Kaikoura we spotted a random seal colony. Here's one of the seals chilling out on the rocks:

This is an awesome lake we passed during the drive to Queenstown. The neon blue coloration has something to due with glacial melt, but I don't really understand all that science mumbo-jumbo. It's just pretty. Look:

A little bit past the lake, we came to a turn-off for the Clay Cliffs, a little self-service tourist attraction down a long dirt road. It was a bumpy ride, but worth the view.

Eventually we made our way to Wanaka, our last stop before Queenstown. Wanaka is a little town about forty-five minutes from Queenstown. It's sort of like Queenstown's little brother. Both are primarily tourist towns, both sit on large lakes, and both rest in the shadow of impressive mountains. There's not much to Wanaka, especially compared to Queenstown, but before leaving we decided to check out Puzzling World. We went on a whim, thinking it would just be a silly, touristy sort of place, but it actually ended up being one of the coolest things we've seen so far in New Zealand. Puzzling World is made up of two main halves: a huge outdoor maze, and an indoor "hall of illusions." The hall of illusions is definitely Puzzling World's main selling-point, featuring room after room of crazy optical illusions that really need to be seen in person to be appreciated. It included an "Ames illusion room," which was one of the filming techniques used to make the hobbits look tiny in Lord of the Rings. Alexa already put a picture of that in her blog, so instead I'm going to show off Puzzling World's Roman style toilets:

Nice, yeah? Don't worry. They had real toilets too.

Anyway, from Puzzling World we headed straight to Queenstown. We found an apartment, I got a job, we went paragliding--yeah, we're all caught up now. Fantastic!

Also you may have noticed not one, not two, not three--actually it is three. Three new photo albums on the sidebar to the right! Check them out at your leisure. There's a few good shots in there, I promise.

Lastly, just to avoid falling behind again, I'll fill you in on our Boxing Day exploits. After having a video chat with Christine and family, during which Madison had a great time making faces at the camera and Zach bombarded us with sarcasm, Alexa and I headed into town for our day's adventure activities. First we took an hour-long jetboat ride down the Kawarau and Shotover rivers. It was a lot of fun, but nothing compared to what we did next: white-water rafting on the Shotover river. It was awesome! White-water rafting is one of those things I've wanted to do for the longest time, but never really had the opportunity. We went through several grade 4-5 rapids and finished up going through a 170 meter tunnel. I'd show you, but the maniacs want $39 for a pack of four pictures. Outrageous, eh?

Anyway, I think that's about it for now. Enjoy the pictures and have a great New Year if I don't update before then.

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-24T14:12:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas from the first country to see the sun each morning! While it's still Christmas Eve in most parts of the world, Christmas is already in full swing here in New Zealand, which means... well, not quite what you'd think, really. It's a much more subdued affair here. Storefronts, streetlamps, and indoor shopping malls have decorations, but most homes don't put on the light displays typical of American suburbia. In some ways it's nice, because you don't have to drive down the street and pass the homes of overzealous rednecks who drove to Wal Mart and bought a dozen three-story-high inflatable snowmen and reindeer to fill the neighborhood with the incessant roar of industrial-strength fans. Not that I have a problem with tasteful decorations, but there's a line that shouldn't be crossed.

I get the impression that Christmas here is more akin to our Thanksgiving in that it's the time for the whole family to get together, consume a boatload of rich food and alcohol, and fall asleep by three in the afternoon. Also, since summer's starting, Christmas barbeques are quite popular. Over the past few days at the grocery store, the Kiwis have been buying immeasurable amounts of charcoal, meat, and alcohol. Oh sweet dancing Jesus, so much alcohol--all I want for Christmas is for one of the customers to randomly invite me to share in this glorious tradition. We're talking shopping carts filled to the brim with Speight's, Mac's, Monteith's, and Tui (the main NZ beers), and whole cases of wine and "bubbly" (champagne). Apart from the odd shopper just in for a few things, I've been ringing up tickets anywhere from $150-$600. Sorry. Forget what I said about Christmas being more subdued here.

My booze-filled fantasies aside, Alexa and I actually have been invited to a Chirstmas barbeque. Our landlady's having one on Saturday. Since we live, oh, about a dozen feet away, we figure we'll probably take up the offer and check it out.

As for today, we're probably going to head downtown and see what Queenstown is up to for Christmas. A touristy, hoppin' town like this is bound to have something going on. Sadly, after three nine-hour days at work staring longingly through the windows at glorious sunlight, it's cloudy, raining, and miserable on my day off. Figures, right? Still, we'll find something to do. At least it's not snow! Later on we're going to have pretty much the fanciest Christmas dinner ever--we bought a whole chicken!

We already exchanged presents this morning. I gave Alexa roughly $5000 worth of lavish jewelry, clothing, lotions, and a week-long vacation to the world's most famous spa in Switzerland. All she gave me was a dirty, used sponge to do the dishes and a sock. It's true. Don't believe whatever she writes in her blog. Seriously.

Anyway, we're going to head downtown. I have the next three days off, so we're probably going to go white-water rafting or river-surfing tomorrow or Saturday, depending on the weather and what's open on Boxing Day (whatever the hell that is). I'll keep you posted!

Merry Christmas or Happy Chonnnjnucka' (Alexa says there's so many ways to spell it, I can spell it however I want, so I thought I'd use four n's and a silent j).

Oh, and happy Kwanzaa, Chad.

That's two shout-outs. You have to pay for the next one.

New Zealand's largest Christmas tree. It's up in Hamilton.

We're in Queenstown! And I am cracked out on caffeine!

2008-12-19T13:23:00.000-08:00

Well, we made it to Queenstown, and it is awesome!

It's been a while since I've had a chance to update, so the next few posts are going to be a bit disjointed. Here's the plan, so you can keep it all straight: I'm going to write this post just to talk about our move to Queenstown a bit and what we've been doing the past couple days. The next post is going to be the Tongariro Crossing-dedicated post I promised a couple weeks ago. Finally, there will be a third post (which I will probably not get around to today) that will pick up from Hamilton and take you through the rest of our trip to Queenstown. From then on, my posts will be less postmodernly-nonlinear and more normal.

Here we go:

Two days ago we arrived in beautiful, stunningly-scenic Queenstown. Queenstown is a smallish city near the bottom of the south island. Despite its size, it's quite a bustling place. It's one of the top tourist towns and the adventure capital of New Zealand. Here you can skydive, bungy jump, parasail, white water raft, jet boat, river surf, street-luge down the side of the mountain, paraglide, ski (in the winter), go mountain biking, and pretty much any other insane activity the Kiwis can dream up. It's also a good base for exploring the many national parks that are only two hours' drive, or less, from city center.

Geographically, Queenstown sits on the edge of the massive Lake Wakatipu and is surrounded by the Remarkables, a large mountain range. Yesterday we rode the gondola (a ski-lift but without the skis), up to the Skyline. The Skyline features an impressive (and expensive--$60 for lunch!) buffet restaurant, a large observation deck and viewing center, and also serves as a base for street luging, bungy jumping, and paragliding.

Here's the view of Queenstown from the observation deck. The little orange blip towards the right is a paraglider.

We originally took the gondola up to do some luging. There are two 800 meter tracks, which wind halfway down the mountain through tunnels, over bridges, and around bends. We did each track once, and it was pretty awesome! Here's some other people coming down the track so you get an idea of what it's like:

While we were at the Skyline, we noticed the paragliders. I'm not quite sure how it happened, but I managed to convince Alexa to "think about" doing paragliding at some point during our stay in Queenstown. If convincing her to think about it seemed impossible, then what happened next was nothing short of a miracle. We went to the kiosk just to enquire about the price and what the experience was like in case we wanted to come back at some point, but the skilled salesman convinced us to do it that day! That's right, we pretty much jumped off a mountain! Paragliding is basically skydiving, minus the free-fall and from a much lower height. I told Alexa the next natural step is skydiving, but she's not having it, and there probably isn't any convincing her of it.

Here's photographic proof of our paragliding, though:

It was tandem, in case you're wondering who the two insanely-enthusiastic guys are. Apparently they just can't let you jump off a mountain on your own.

Aside from pulling insane stunts like riding luges down the side of and jumping off of mountains, we've been doing the mundane tasks of apartment and job-hunting. Incredibly enough, we've already had some success!

I'm writing this from the comfort of our new studio flat. Our very OWN flat. It's not shared. There is no Ornery and there is no Silly. It's clean and it's comfortable, and we can see the Remarkables from our living room window! We have our OWN kitchen and our OWN bathroom and our OWN everything! The only other person around is the quiet, friendly landlady who lives upstairs. It may not seem like a big deal, but after three months at the Pickled Parrot it's pretty amazing to have our own space. What's even better is that we're not paying much more rent than we were in Wellington, so it's quite a bargain. It also came fully-furnished and included a bunch of sweet kitchen gadgets.

Check it:

On the job front, I applied for a job the day we arrived, interviewed for it yesterday, and I start on Monday. Not too shabby, eh? What's more, the job has 100% less toilet-cleaning than my job at the hotel. What, oh what, could this glamorous job be, you ask? Am I a copy-writer for the local newspaper? Am I an assitant at one of the many extreme-sport kiosks in town? Am I a taxi driver? Did I open my own business? Am I the CEO of a brand new, up-and-coming multinational business?!

I'm afraid not. I'm also afraid I don't know why I included taxi driver in the list of glamorous jobs. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

As of Monday, I'll be a cashier at Fresh Choice, the only grocery store in town. Woooooooooooo!!!

On the upside, I'll have between 40-45 hours a week right from the start, unlike in Wellington where I was barely scraping together 20 hours for the first month and a half, and I'm making a bit more per hour than I was making in Wellington. Plus I get a 5% discount on groceries. Yeah, I know, big whoop. 5% is sales tax in Maryland. Still, I'll be hauling in a lot more money than I was in Wellington so we can live a bit more extravagantly. Last night, for instance, I cooked actual food--chicken parmesean--instead of some combination of gross meat, pasta, and frozen vegetables. We even bought wine and beer. Oooh. Ahhh. Having our own fridge where we don't have to worry about Orneries and Sillies stealing our food is a plus too.

Alexa's prospects are looking good as well, as she's landed an interview at a nannying agency on Monday.

Anyway, Alexa is growing bored with my blog-writing and wants to go out and find the Remarkables Shopping Center, so I'd best be on my way. For now, enjoy all the sweet pictures. I was quite generous with pictures for this post, eh? It probably has something to do with the metric shit ton of coffee I drank this morning. Enthralled by the shiny new coffee press in our flat, I filled it to the brim and consumed enough caffeine for about ten people. Weeeeeeeee!

Greetings from Hamilton!

2008-12-08T20:36:00.001-08:00

It's raining, it's pouring, Alexa is snoring... well, not really, but she is taking a nap, and it really is raining here in Hamilton. We're in Hamilton, New Zealand's largest inland city (Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch are all on the coast). It wasn't a part of our planned travel itinerary, but we changed our plans around quite a bit and saw some pretty interesting things.

On Friday we left Wellington as planned and drove to Turangi, a small town bordering Tongariro National Park. The drive was absolutely beautiful. It's the same drive we made before when we first came down to Wellington from Rotorua, except this time it wasn't rainy, cloudy, and miserable. Oh, what a difference the weather can make. Last time it had been so foggy we didn't even realize that Mount Ruapehu was in sight.

We spent the night at a holiday park. The next morning we woke at 5:20 to be on a shuttle by 6:30 and we were at the beginning of the Tongariro Crossing a little after 7. For the next 9 hours we hiked the 18.5 km trail (with a few necessary breaks). It started with a scenic jaunt through a barren desert littered with massive chunks of volcanic debris, followed by a grueling series of climbs up Mt. Tongariro: the Devil's Staircase, a 45-minute hike up to the brim of an ancient crater; the climb up red crater, a hazardous journey up a path of scree (loose rock and volcanic ash that slips away under your feet) with a plummeting death only 2-3 meters away on either side; and lastly the optional side-track (an extra 3 km added to the 18.5) up to the snow-capped summit of Mt. Tongariro. Alexa opted out of the final ascent, but I hiked up through the snow to the very top. By that time some low clouds had settled over the area. It was completely surreal. I could only see the rocky outcroppings and patches of snow 4-5 meters around me. Beyond that, I was inside a cloud and cut off from the world. Completely still and completely silent.

After the summit we began our descent. At some point along the way Alexa mysteriously injured her ankle. She can't pinpoint the exact moment it started hurting, but the last two hours of the hike were pretty miserable for her, unfortunately.

Once we've settled in some place where I'll have more internet time I'm going to devote an entire blog post to the crossing, complete with beautiful pictures and a play-by-play (rock-by-rock, maybe?) account of the hike. For now, just know that it was awesome.

Back at the holiday park we soaked our feet in the spa--I had a blister thicker than Angelina Jolie's lower lip!--and changed our plans for the next few days. Originally Sunday would've been the day I went skydiving, but we decided to head up to the Coromandel Peninsula instead. There are many scenic beaches and parks on the peninsula that are best seen during the summer, and as we're headed to the south island for the next six months, this is our only chance. Skydiving I can do pretty much anywhere, and I'll probably end up doing so in Nelson with Abel Tasman National Park as my in-flight scenary.

So on Sunday we drove to a holiday park near Hahei, a small coastal town on the peninsula. Along the way we went Zorbing in Rotorua. Basically you climb into a human-sized hamster ball filled with water and roll down a massive hill. It's as insane as it sounds, but it's great fun.

The drive to Hahei was also beautiful although a bit hairy at times. Several sections of the road were marked by signs with squiggly lines for "Next 7 km." They might as well have just put one sign that said "The whole damn highway is like this" and saved themselves the trouble. Crazy turns around sharp bends past steep valleys with no guard rails, and of course the local Kiwis are zipping by at 80-100 kph without care. It makes the roads in Ireland look tame.

Still, we made it up to Hahei without incident. Overnight rain came, and on Tuesday we found that the beautiful, sunny weather we'd been expecting had turned to clouds. Despite this we went to a couple beaches. First we went to Hot Water Beach, a beach famous for its natural subterranean geothermal springs. Supposedly you can dig into the sand at a certain section of the beach and hot water will come bubbling up from the ground. Maybe the springs were broken Monday, because out of the thirty or so eager tourists with shovels, not a single one of us dug up any hot water. I hit some that might've qualified as lukewarm compared to the stuff rolling in on the surf, but certainly no hot water. Hot Water Beach was also home to some tremendous jelly fish. I'm not sure if they were man-of-wars, but they were varying shades of maroon, pink, and purple, and some were larger than dinner plates. Needless to say we didn't go for a swim at Hot Water Beach.

Disappointed but not discouraged, we then headed to Cathedral Cove, a beach known for its enormous limestone formations. I really need more synonyms for beautiful, or maybe the ability to upload photos. I don't want to keep repeating myself.

Here's something different: beech wuz very pwetty lol :)

I swam for a while, even though the water was pretty damn cold. I wasn't alone in my craziness, though. A handful of high schoolers were standing, shivering, in waist-deep water and shrieking with great surprise each and every time a wave crashed against them every five seconds.

It was only a little past noon when we left Cathedral Cove. We had planned on spending our whole day at the beaches, but the weather didn't agree with that. Instead of spending another night near Hahei, we headed down off the peninsula to Hamilton. It's another rainy day, but we were able to do a bit of exploring. Hamilton has a few points of interest. Not only is it New Zealand's largest inland city, but it also has New Zealand's largest (fake) Christmas tree!!! Oooh. Ahhh. It also has an indoor mall that could fit in perfectly in just about any mid-sized US city, complete with a seasonal calendar shop and a mall Santa. Weird. The only differences are the store chains and the food court selections (sushi, curry, and kebabs instead of Cholesterol King and McObese). The rain let up for a couple hours today and we headed to Hamilton Zoo. Tonight we might check out the indoor waterpark just outside of town.

Tomorrow morning we're headed south to Waitomo Caves for our black water rafting adventure, and then we're headed further south still to Taumaranui where we'll leave for our two-day canoe trip down the Whanganui River before returning to Wellington for the weekend. On Sunday we catch the ferry to the south island.

Anyway, I guess that's enough about all the awesome things we've been doing for now. You'd better quit reading this and get back to your jobs. Hahahahahaha!

It's okay. I'll be picking fruit, cleaning rooms, or doing whatever other menial tasks I can for money in a few weeks. Just let me get my cheap shots in while I can.

Pictures will come as soon as I get a chance!

This is a very long entry

2008-11-26T17:55:00.001-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving! Well, not so much for you, my readers, since you are not fortunate enough to live in the future like Alexa and I do.

They don't actually celebrate Thanksgiving here, though. I suppose the Kiwis are an ungrateful bunch, huh? Kind of like you guys. Yeah, that's right. I spend hours meticuously slaving over each post on this beautiful blog, and yet weeks and weeks go by without any appreciative comments from my readers. It kills me.

So, what am I thankful for this Thanksgiving, you ask? I'm thankful to be sitting in our new room. Yep. We moved! ...about three buildings over, to another unit in the same lodge. Ha ha. It may seem like a pointless move since we're leaving Wellington in eight days anyway, but it had to be done. An already bad situation boiled over and reached crisis point, and we realized we needed out of the building we'd been in.

For some background information, allow me to introduce Ornery (all names have been changed to protect the innocent… or something). Ornery, along with his wife Silly, was one of the other inhabitants of our building. Ornery and Silly are pretty much the most worthless people on earth--including dead people interred in the earth, because at least they're fertilizing grass in cemeteries.

Ornery is twenty six, Silly's a little younger, and they have three kids, no jobs, and a passionate affection for drugs and alcohol. The kids live with their grandparents during the week and only visit on the weekends. This is actually a good thing, though, since Ornery and Silly aren't fit to raise a bowl of sea monkeys, let alone three young children. But because they aren't burdened by the daily tasks most often associated with child rearing, a typical day in the life of this magnificent couple involves: waking up in the afternoon, getting high and/or drunk multiple times, playing loud music, making the kitchen filthy, and having at least one (but probably more) dramatic shouting matches. But Eoin, you ask, how do these lovely fellows afford rent, food, drugs, and alcohol if they don't have jobs? The answer is simple: welfare! Every week a neat little slice of the taxpayers' money gets sectioned off and sent to the dynamic duo.

Being the terrible people we are, Alexa and I would often call the landlord to complain about, well... take your pick: loud screaming, loud music at absurd hours, pot smoke, living in filth. Now, our landlord is a good guy. He tends to get things done. He just recently acquired these buildings, and he's been doing a number of renovations to improve their condition. He works quickly, too. One day the TV in our unit stopped working, and it was replaced in a matter of hours. Yet, for some reason, we have heard the phrase "This is Ornery's last chance" at least seven point three million times. That's an awful lot of "last" chances.

Recently we found out the happy couple enjoy reduced rent in exchange for cleaning the common areas in the unit: lounge, kitchen, and bathroom. This would be fine, except--wait for it--they don't clean anything! Shocker, right? Two weeks ago we heard another "This is Ornery's last chance," in the form of the landlord telling us he was going to have a friend who runs a professional cleaning business come in to handle the common areas from now on. If you're a smart reader, as I'm sure you are, I don't think I need to tell you what happened next. But just in case Chad's reading this, I'll go ahead and tell you anyway: nothing happened. Ornery was still in charge of cleaning and nothing got cleaned.

Occasionally, and I mean occasionally, they vacuumed and took out the rubbish. Ornery would piss and moan about people leaving empty toilet paper rolls in the bathroom because he had to pick them up. At some point he left a passive-aggressive note saying "Throw out toilet paper rolls when finished using!" Later on, in his renewed frustration (Alexa and I complained again and he had to pick up more toilet paper rolls, gasp!), he added, "stop being lazy!" to the note.

This was too much. Perhaps he was being ironic, but it's more likely that Ornery was just unaware of his own laziness. So I thought I'd help him out. After coming home from the bar where I'd had my first drop of beer in two months(saving money is a bitch), I peed, saw the sign, thought "ha ha I am going to write on this," and wrote: You stop being lazy and start cleaning the toilets properly since you get reduced rent to do so.

Whoops!

The next morning a shit storm rolled through the unit. Shortly after I'd gotten out of the shower and was preparing for work--so this was around seven in the morning mind you--Ornery was out of bed and raging around the building. The first thing I heard him say was "fucking Americans," after coming out of the bathroom, and then he started pounding on doors and demanding to know who wrote the note. At first he seemed set on the idea that Happy (another inhabitant, who, quickly summed up is a mildly-retarded-due-to-braincell-loss, but otherwise perfectly nice, alcoholic woman who got me the hotel job) had written it and proceeded to call her virtually every obscenity imaginable and threatened to smash her face in. He pounded on our door too, but I didn't answer. When I left for work he was off sulking somewhere else.

As I headed for the bus stop, however, Alexa called me and said that Ornery had just tried to break into our room. Apparently he knocked. When that didn't work, he tried the door knob. Quite rudely I had locked the door since Alexa was still sleeping and he found that it wouldn't open. So, like any reasonable person would do, Ornery slammed his massive 250+ pounds of lard into the door--twice!--in an attempt to break in.

Alexa called the landlord and by the time I was home from work, a new room was ready for us to move into. I suppose our landlord must've felt this particular outburst demanded an explanation about all the supposed "last chances," because he told us the following: he can't just kick Ornery out because of the kids, and because Ornery is losing his welfare. Apparently WINZ (welfare people) check into who actually needs welfare so it doesn't get abused, and unfortunately "being a fat, lazy fuckwit" isn't on the list of qualifiers. This still doesn't make sense to me, since the kids live with the grandparents and are much better off for it--when the kids are around, Ornery constantly screams obscenities at them. I've heard him call the one-year-old a mother fucker several times. Lovely, that. Rumor has it he's been in jail for beating Silly. He does, at least, have a parole officer. All I know is that if I was in our landlord's shoes, Ornery would've been on the curb a long, long time ago.

The funniest thing about Ornery and Silly is something Silly said to me a couple days after we first met. We were discussing our backgrounds, and Ornery mentioned that they were half-Maori. Silly said, "It's embarrassing to be Maori, though, because other Maori are on welfare and don't have jobs and get arrested all the time." Come on, Silly. That just had to be tongue-in-cheek. If anything, the other Maori are embarrassed of those two.

Disclaimer: this has nothing to do with them being Maori, and I'm making no racial assertions. In writing this, I don't mean offense to anyone--except Ornery and Silly, and I'd be surprised if even they knew how to use a computer. Also, they can get bent.

So that's that. It's for the best, I suppose. This unit is much, much nicer. It's a bit more crowded as its a two-story building, but the people are all nice, polite, tidy, and--best of all--quiet. It's a shame we didn't move sooner. About four weeks ago we were offered this room, but we said no because we thought it'd be silly to move to a new room so close to leaving Wellington. And yet here we are only eight days away from leaving the city. Ha ha, oh well. It didn't take much time to move our meager possessions.

Whew!

In other news, I recently reconnected with my cousin (on my dad's side) Megan. She lives here in Wellington with boyfriend Jeremy, and we met up with them at a bar for quiz night. It was fun, despite us coming in 4th place out of 5. They were also gracious enough to invite us for Thanksgiving dinner at their place this Sunday, and we'll be heading over for that as well. Even a kajillion miles from home, I'll still be having Thanksgiving dinner with family, so that ought to be nice.

And you might want to congratulate me... because I finished my NaNoWriMo novel today! But Still We Carry On is 51,976 words (or 186 pages) long, written by yours truly, and those are all the details you're getting because it's a huge, steaming literary turd. I'm actually embarrassed to publicly display even the title. Yuck. Maybe someday I'll try to edit it, or maybe not. But either way it's there, and I managed to write over 50,000 semi-coherent words in a month.

As you know from Alexa's last blog, or the one before it maybe, we went and checked out the Weta studios, home to all of Peter Jackson's special effects/make up/costumer/everything gurus. The studios aren't open for touring, but they did have a little room with a few props and other odds and ends, as well as a brief behind-the-scenes film to watch. It was little more than a glorified gift shop, but worth a visit nonetheless. We managed to take these pictures to satiate my mom's constant demand for more pictures of us. Check it:

UGH! Just kidding, the internet is being really slow right now. I'll upload the pictures when I get a chance.

This past weekend we finally made it to the Embassy Theater, the cinema where Return of the Kind premiered. It was my first time in a premiere-worthy theater, and it was insane. Basically it was a huge, fancy opera-house type theater, complete with curtains! But instead of actors on a stage when the curtains opened, it was an enormous screen. The chairs were also quite plushy (although this seems to be a standard in New Zealand), and the chairs had the names of different actors on them. Some old guy in front of us had Liv Tyler's seats! The names on our seats weren't any that we recognized, unfortunately. In New Zealand seats are assigned in a movie theater, like when you go to a play or a sporting event. Your minds are blown, I know.

That's all for now, as I'm off to one of my last nights at Domino's. Seven more to go! I'll try to update again before we hit the road, and I'm not sure about roving updates. I may be out of touch until we arrive in Queenstown.

Good-bye Welly, it's been nice. Hope you find your paradise.

2008-11-15T17:21:00.000-08:00

I wish I didn't have to wear pants to work.

...or, to phrase that in a way that doesn't make me sound like a pervert, I wish I could wear shorts to work instead of pants. The weather's been very nice and warm lately. Then again, maybe pants are best for the hotel job--less exposed skin means less exposed skin being splashed with poop water.

Speaking of the hotel, an odd thing happened the other day. As part of my job cleaning the bathrooms, I have to fold the end of each toilet paper roll into an intricate triangle. Obviously the reason for this is to make the guests think, "Oh! This must be a nice hotel. They can afford to pay someone to make toilet paper origami!"

In the morning when I first went into the ladies room by the conference areas, all the toilet paper rolls were still folded from the day before. Mysteriously enough, there was also toilet paper in the toilets. So either A) the guests are bringing their own toilet paper or B) the guests are making their own toilet paper origami. I'm not sure which would be stranger.

Moving on to more exciting news, Alexa and I are planning on leaving Wellington in less than three weeks! It's a little bit sad, because I think Wellington is a really great city. But soon three months will be up, we'll be 1/4 of the way through our time in this lovely country, and there's still so much to see! Our next stop is Queenstown, a town near the bottom of the south island. Our trip won't be a direct one, however. We're going to spend close to two weeks getting there. The trip will take us on a loop up and around the north island before returning to Wellington to catch a ferry south.

As we've tenatively planned it, our action-packed trip is going to include: The Tongariro Crossing, one of the best day-hikes in the world; skydiving in Taupo (this one's just for me. Apparently Alexa has enough sense to not throw herself out of a plane); Orakei Korako Thermal Park; pretending to be human-sized hamsters and Zorbing in Rotorua; going black-water rafting with the glow worms in Waitomo Caves; and taking a two-day paddle down the famous Whanganui River! Just look at all those links! You're going to be busy for hours.

The ferry ride itself is supposed to be one of the most scenic ferry rides in the world, providing it's a fair day. Really, a lot of what we have planned could easily be wrecked by bad weather. Knock on wood.

Once we're off the ferry we'll break up the 11-hour drive to Queenstown into three chunks: Picton to Christchurch, Christchurch to Dunedin, and Dunedin to Queenstown. Once we're there, we'll restart the wild and wacky job hunting game. I'm already corresponding with two possible jobs in Queenstown: one at Subway, because apparently it is my desinty to travel the country working at American fast food places. The other is a resort hotel that would take both Alexa and myself, and would pay us in free accomodation and food for 4 hours work per day. Any work in excess of that would be paid in cash. They need kitchen, waiting, and bar staff in addition to housekeeping, so if we end up going with the hotel, I will do everything my power to not be a housekeeper again. Bartending sounds more up my alley. Hell, even reliving my high school dishwasher days in the kitchen would be preferable.

So that's that. Sometime this week we're going to put in our two weeks' notices at our jobs, the following week we'll give notice to our landlord, and with any luck we'll be on the road December 4th.

Not too much else has happened since my last post. As you may have read in Alexa's blog, last Sunday we went to Somes Island, an island in the harbor. We took a longer ferry ride that made a number of stops in different parts of Wellington, but it was a nice day for the ride. Somes is known for its population of little blue penguins and tuatara. Unfortunately it was nesting season for the penguins, so they were nowhere to be seen. And, as always, the tuatara remained elusive. I'm starting to think they don't exist. We did get to see a ton of skinks, though, as well as a few red-headed parakeets. There were also a pair of insane ducks that made the most terrible honking noise, and the male kept charging at the female and biting her neck, then running away. Crazy. We also got a look at a few old prison buildings, because the island was originally used to intern Italians, Germans, and Japanese during the World Wars.

On the bright side, I finally got the view of Wellington that I've been trying to get since we first moved here. Remember my first blog post about Wellington, when I said I would try to get a picture of the entirety of Wellington's city center, complete with the harbor in the foreground and mountains in the background? Here it is:

Also, the island claimed to be mammal-free, but we found sheep. This picture was pretty hard to get. That lamb was not as camera-friendly as he looks in this picture.

Here's a lighthouse on the island. In the background is greater Wellington.

Lastly, my mom is always complaining about how there aren't enough pictures of me and Alexa on our blogs. This isn't quite a picture of us, but it's the next best thing: a picture of me holding a dead weta!

That's all for now, but there's a bunch of other pictures from Somes Island in the new link to the right, Album 3: Even More Wellington. Enjoy!

A Real Update

2008-11-06T19:29:00.000-08:00

I have a confession to make to you, my faithful readers. It is with a heavy heart that I must admit to an act of simple deception. Remember the carnival and fireworks from the last post? They weren't in celebration of Obama's victory. They were for Guy Fawkes Day, an incredibly insane holiday where people shoot fireworks off and party. It's kinda' like the Fourth of July, except we know why we celebrate the Fourth of July--it's the day our forefathers declared independence from England and set off down the path to becoming a great nation.

Guy Fawkes Day, on the other hand, is the day a man by the name of Guy Fawkes tried (and failed) to blow up parliament in London. It's also celebrated in the UK, and I think they have it in Australia and Canada as well. But why do they celebrate the day some dude tried to symbolically destroy the English government? No one's been able to give me a solid answer, but I suspect it's just an excuse to get drunk and blow shit up.

That works for me, I guess.

Anyway, even though the celebration wasn't in Obama's honor, the Kiwis are quite happy about his election. Literally every person I talk to who recognizes my American accent asks me if I'm happy about Obama winning, and then proceeds to tell me how happy about it they are too.

And that works for me as well.

Life has been fairly quiet since my last real update. Last Sunday, Alexa and I did see a street performer who combined silly tricks with fire juggling, sword swallowing, and escape artistry with strange and crude jokes to create a pretty amazing show. We had seen part of his act on Labour Monday, but had to leave early on because we were meeting people for lunch.

Also, as I mentioned last time, I worked a few FIFA games at the stadium, and I discovered that FIFA stands for the "Federation of International Football ANAL RETENTIVES!"

Seriously, they were nuts. Coke is one of their sponsors, so they had all these crazy rules about how nothing could be advertised if it wasn't owned by Coke. Changes ranged from the small, such as having to pour beers into cups since we couldn't give the fans labeled bottles, to the large, such as blanketing the gigantic WestPac (bank that sponsors the stadium) sign on the outside of the stadium, to the utterly ridiculous, such as covering up the manufacturer names on our cash registers, the walk-in freezer door, and the various machines that keep food hot. Because, you know, McAllister's Refrigeration INC is a direct competitor to Coca-Cola, and if our fans were to see the teeny label in the back of our kitchen, they would immediately think, "Shit! I was thirsty for some Coke, but now I'm going to leave the game and go buy a giant walk-in fridge for my home instead!"

Thank god for business people.

Also, I've been doing some writing, using the word "writing" very loosely. November is National Novel Writing Month. It's just an online thing where participants try their hardest to write 50,000 words (roughly 200 pages double spaced) in a month. You "win" if you make it to 50,000 by November 30th, but there really aren't any prizes involved in winning. I'm not sure if there's a real point to it, other than to encourage people to produce 50,000-word-long heaps of doo doo. What else can you expect when you're writing so quickly and not editing? It's the method the big bad Woolfe used when writing Mrs. Dalloway, after all, and look how that turned out (oooh, sick burn). At any rate, my heap of doo doo is currently 11,130 words long. Last time I tried, in 2006, I only made it to about 7,000 before I quit. So my doo doo making skills have improved!

When not busy making doo doo, I've been working a lot more. For the past four weeks, I've had over thirty hours every week, which means I've been saving more money for fun things, like...

Whoops! Speaking of work, I had really better be getting ready to go to Domino's. There are hungry Wellingtonians who want pizza to go with their Friday night raging, and I'm the only one who can help them!

Here, McCain. What's this? It's Your Ass Being Handed to You, Sir.

2008-11-05T01:32:00.000-08:00

YES! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! YES!YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

YES!

Okay, I'm finished.

But seriously. What an awesome day. I spent about four hours fervently watching the AOLnews and MSNBC websites (a life, what's that?). Mostly waiting and growing increasingly hopeful as Obama gobbled up electoral votes and McCain stagnated.

At some point, I think about ten minutes before the west coast closed their polling centers, my buddy Amos said to me, "Some website says they're going to call in it ten minutes. Obama won."

I thought, "Bullshit. The west coast hasn't even finished polling yet! How could they call something so soon after what happened in 2000?" I was getting anxious because I had to go to work soon, and I wanted to see how Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida were going to end up, since they were so incredibly close (by the way, how awesome is it that Obama got Florida and Virginia?).

But, low and behold, ten minutes later, CNN declared it: Obama wins. MSNBC followed up a few minutes later with, "Obama Wins! First African American President!" accompanied by a really cheesy photograph of a black family with American flags.

I had to go to work right after that, but I remained cautiously optimistic. It's not like the networks hadn't dropped the ball before--uh, didn't Gore win that election in 2000? Wait, what? After I was at work two hours, though, Alexa texted me with the final news "O won. m concedes!"

Even the Kiwis were super excited. I was texting Alexa during my website monitoring, and she informed all her coworkers of how Obama was doing. And tonight they even threw a festival in his honor to celebrate! There was a band, a carnival, and some sweet fireworks down at the waterfront. Check it out:

Pretty sweet, eh?

Reading about different states' ballot initiatives was interesting too. I haven't had a chance to see the final results, but it looked like Massachusettes legalized pot (sort of), Maryland legalized video slots (right???), and a handful of states managed to continue keeping the gays from getting married. Congratulations, guys. It warms my heart to see that even in the face of war, our troubled environment, and economic disaster, there are still people bigoted enough to care about whether two dudes get married. Also, nice job putting a stop to stem cell research. Grow new organs, cure cancer, who wants any of that shit? Phew!

Anyway, to those of you who supported Obama: High five! To those of you who didn't, I'm sorry. If you were just mildly opposed to Obama and, really, were just voting along with your party for the sake of it, don't worry. Just be open-minded, sit back, and wait. Things will get better soon, and you will be bewildered when you realize just how appalling the past eight years have been.

On the other hand, if you were truly, passionately opposed to Obama... well, that's too bad for you, I guess. But I know how tough it is. When Kerry conceded to Bush I was inconsolably pissed off. I couldn't believe that Bush had, somehow, made it into the White House again. It's not a good feeling, thinking that your country is heading in a direction opposite your values. But just try to keep an open mind, and support Obama as your new president. The country needs unity, not more division, yeah?

Some brief other news (I'll post a proper update soon): as of yesterday it's been two months since we arrived in New Zealand. Crazy! No regrets yet, except that I brought Alexa with me (ha ha)!

Also, uh... I worked a couple FIFA World Cup games. The Women's Under-17 division. Why didn't I see you on the field, Zach?

This post has four pictures. Can you handle it?!

2008-10-27T19:26:00.000-07:00

In a little over a week from today, we'll know whether or not I'm going to spend the next four years in the United States. That's right. I've decided that if the McCain/Palin comedy duo are elected, I'm moving to a country where the leader knows how to pronounce "nuclear."

It's nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans. If Ron Paul had come out on top for the Republicans, I might've voted for him over Obama. I just can't even think about living in a country run by McCain and Palin, because doing so would mean that a majority of my fellow Americans are certifiably insane. Seriously. The only thing more insane than McCain picking Palin as his running mate is the fact that there are people who are actually going to wake up, crawl out of bed, go to their local election center, and tick the box for McCain/Palin--without even being drunk!

So make the right choice on November 4th. Not that I'm too worried: most of my readers live in Maryland and New York, so even if some temporary lapse of judgment allows you to vote incorrectly, it won't matter because Obama already owns those states--as well as all the battleground states, for that matter, and some traditionally-red states too, ha hee ha! Gee, anyone think that somewhere in his feeble, cobweb-ridden old head, McCain is finally entertaining the thought, "Hmmm.... maybe picking the crazy chick from Alaska wasn't what my campaign needed?"

Anyway, I know my compelling and intellectually-stimulating political commentary isn't what makes you check this site every ten minutes. You come here to read about me cleaning toilets and getting rained on. So, without further ado, let's move on to the main event.

Today I cleaned a record number of toilets. After finishing public areas, I helped do rooms at the hotel, and the other housekeepers decided that my skills would be best put to use in the bathrooms. Oh my sweet, joyous life. Taking the "glass is half full" point of view, I have at least been working close to thirty hours every week, so now I'm able to actually start saving some money. That's a plus.

In other exciting news, yesterday was Labour Monday here in New Zealand (the equivilent of Labor Day in the states). I had off from the hotel, but had to work at Domino's. According to the law, I am legally entitled to time and a half for my Labour Monday shift at Domino's, as well as pay for my day off from the hotel! Domino's is really sketchy, though, so we'll see if I actually get it, and the hotel flat out told me I wouldn't be paid for the two hour shift I would've worked that day. I'm disregarding that and putting it on my timesheet anyway. Sure, it's only two hours' pay, but I hate the very core of the hotel's being and don't care if they fire me.

Also, this Friday is Halloween! According to someone Alexa works with, Halloween only came to New Zealand about ten years ago, and it's really just for kids here. It's also not as commercialized as it is in the States. You have to actively go out and try to find Halloween-themed items, such as costumes or candy, and there don't seem to be any decorations anywhere. Not a single Jack-O-Lantern. :( I work Friday anyway, so I'll find out whether or not Halloween really is just for kids here, because if there are any drunk, costumed twenty-somethings, they most certainly will find their way to Domino's.

On the touristy, fun side of things, Alexa and I went to the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary. It's a good-sized wildlife sanctuary on the outskirts of Wellington City. It's special because it's the first urban wildlife sanctuary in the whole world. It might also be the largest. Or maybe just the first. I can't remember exactly what the sign said. Largest, first, best, most super duper--who gives a shit? If you want to know that badly, the real answer is only a quick visit to Wikipedia away.

The sanctuary is surrounded by a special type of fence designed by New Zealand environmentalists. It has different features to keep out different types of invasive pests--basically any animal not native to New Zealand. This is especially important, because prior to human arrival, the only land mammals in New Zealand were bats. New Zealand is one of the most recently-inhabited land mass in the entire world. Researchers estimate that the Maori only arrived between 800-1200 years ago. Indigenous peoples have been on the North American continent for at least 12,000 years, to put that in perspective. So, without any natural predators, some odd creatures evolved in New Zealand, such as many, many species of flightless birsd. Settlers, Maori and European alike, introduced rats, dogs, cats, possums, deer, etc. Most of the flightless birds became extinct. A few, like the kiwi and weka--a little duck-like bird--survived, though, and are on the endangered/protected list. The Karori sanctuary is about fifty years old, and is part of a five hundred year project to restore the area to the way it was before humans, and their non-indigenous plants and animals, arrived.

So, getting back to the point (because there is a point to all this animal blah blah blah), the environmentalists designed special fences. They are tall to keep out jumping animals, go underground to block burrowing animals, have overhangs to block climbing animals, and the gaps in the fence are narrow, to keep out little animals that might try to squeeze through. See:

We didn't actually see any kiwis or wekas. Kiwis are nocturnal and very adept at locating and avoiding humans, so the pair we saw at the Zoo will probably be the only we see in New Zealand. We did, however, get a really good look at a bunch of kakas and tui. Kakas are a species of parrot native to New Zealand, and are not to be confused with caca, which is Spanish for poop. Tui are very prevalent in New Zealand, and they have a very distinctive call. When I get around to it, I'll upload a video to YouTube so you can all hear them in action.

Karori Wildlife Sanctuary was also the site of several gold mines during the gold rush, an artificial lake, and a dam that was quickly put out of use once scientists realized it was built almost directly over the Wellington fault line. Whoops! We went inside of an old gold mine, where we saw a cave weta (a creepy bug native to New Zealand and dating back to dinosaur times). We also hiked up to the dam, which was pretty scenic.

Our next adventure will be Somme's Island, a nature reserve in the form of an island in the harbor, which is home to tuatara (the really, really old lizards that lived side-by-side with dinosaurs) and penguins! We're planning on going next weekend, weather permitting.

In the meantime, here are some pictures:

Here's a picture of a kaka on a bird feeder. If you want a picture of caca on a bird feeder, you'll have to find that on your own.

The dam:

Just a pretty view:

You can check out more pictures from the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary by clicking on Album Two on the sidebar to the right.

Mission Accomplished!

2008-10-17T20:50:00.001-07:00

On my third attempt, I finally did it! Did I get a job that will give me more than 20 hours a week? Nope! Did I find a flat where the other tenants aren't pigs? Nope! Did I cure AIDS? Certainly not!

But I did, after somewhere over an hour of not-quite-aimless but not-quite-purposeful wanderings through the forests of Mt. Victoria, manage to find one of the Lord of the Rings filming locations!

After getting a rough idea of where I was heading from good old Google Earth (including a few pictures of what the area was supposed to look like), I set off on my journey. After about fifteen minutes of walking, I came to this map and used it to figure out which way I should walk:

Keep that image in mind. There's something incredibly ironic about it, but we'll get to that later. I spent the next three quarters of an hour wandering through the forest. Eventually I came to an area Alexa and I had been to earlier, on the day we hiked up to the Mt. Vic overlook. I decided to head in the opposite direction from our last hike, and it eventually lead me to a little signpost that said "Lord of the Rings Filming Location" and had an arrow pointing in a vague direction. Sure enough, it lead to the right spot.

Are you guys ready for this little piece of Hollywood history? It's pretty exciting and intense. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Here it is:

Ooooh. Ahhhh. ....yeah, I know. It's not all it's cracked up to be. Elijah Wood didn't even spraypaint "Frodo wuz heer!" or anything. What a jerk.

Anyway, hard to tell from this picture, but the area in the center (where the sunlight is most concentrated) is a shallow alcove. It's the place where the four hobbits jumped off the road and crouched in the shelter of a massive tree's roots to hide from the Nazghul in Fellowship of the Ring. Apparently the tree was an artificial set piece/computer generated, so it's not there.

Once I was sure that was the right spot, I continued along the trail and shortly came upon the very first map (from the picture above) where I'd started. This time I noticed something I hadn't the first time. Scroll up to the picture. See the little, two-foot-tall signpost in the foreground? Guess what it says. Yep. "Lord of the Rings Filming Location." So I probably could've saved myself a good deal of wandering if I'd noticed the sign. Maybe that's where Alexa would've come in handy?

Now that I've wasted all that time talking about an over-rated patch of dirt, I'll give you a few general updates:

The weather has been uncannily fantastic for the past week. It only rained once! Alexa and I took advantage of this and checked out the Botanic Gardens. Yes, for a third time. I'm pretty sure we've seen just about everything there, though, so we probably won't go back for a while. We also took one of the free tours of the parliament buildings. I know that doesn't sound like a very exciting thing to do, but it was actually pretty interesting. We learned a bit about how New Zealand's government works. Unlike the corrupt, broken-beyond-a-grain-of-hope pile of shit we have in the US, the New Zealand government still cares enough to take their citizens' opinions into account (what a novel idea). Whenever a new bill is being discussed, the bill is advertised in the newspaper. The general public are allowed to write in a request to attend a council meeting about the proposed bill. Each and every Kiwi that sends in a request is allowed to attend, and they're all given a turn to voice their opinion to the government officials involved (house members, cabinet ministers, the prime minister; so it'd be like the average US citizen being able to talk to Bush, his cabinet, and the senators) without fear of intimidation, or being interrupted, or any other sort of rudeness. The only requirement is that they return the courtesy shown to them--anyone who interrupts or speaks out of turn will be removed from the premises and banned for six months. Of course, New Zealand's small population (four million) gives them an advantage, but I still think it's pretty cool.

In other news, I'm in the process of finding a way to quit my job at the hotel. I signed a contract saying I wouldn't write about my job at the hotel, so we're going to play a game. The game is called Pretend Eoin Works At an Imaginary Hotel. Here's how you play. I'm going to talk about imaginary, hypothetical things that might take place at an imaginary, hypothetical hotel. Your part of the game is simple: just think about how horribly gross it would be if these imaginary things were true (because, who knows, somewhere in the world they might be. Wink wink.)

At this imaginary hotel, which is not by any means a dump--they have nice rooms, nice beds, and charge a good deal--they may or may not lack standards when it comes to cleaning the rooms. Most of the imaginary rooms come with an electric kettle, tea, coffee, and mugs. Some more expensive rooms also have imaginary plates, knives, and glasses. Most people would think it makes sense to properly clean these dishes after they've been used--you know, with water and soap and all that--but not in imaginary land! In imaginary land, the dishes are "cleaned" by running them under water for a few minutes until there's no longer any visible dirt, and then put back for the next guests to use. Hopefully there's no bacteria in this imaginary world.

In the imaginary hotel, sheets are washed after each guest. You might think it would make sense to wash the comforter, or at the very least the smaller blanket, but you'd be wrong. In the imaginary hotel, the blankets and comforters are never laundered. I could go on, but I'm sure you can imagine it for yourselves.

At any rate, I have an interview tomorrow morning at Cafe Maranui. It's a popular cafe right on the beach in Lyall Bay (another suburb of Wellington, where cast members of Lord of the Rings surfed/learned how to surf during their down time--what the hell is with this entry and Lord of the Rings?). I also put in an application at a New World (grocery chain in New Zealand), plus I received a phone call from The Warehouse, another New Zealand chain I applied to back in September. One way or another I should be able to quit the job at the hotel in the immediate future, two weeks' notice be damned.

I think that's about everything for now. You may have already noticed, but I added links to my online photo albums to the right. Right above the link to Alexa's blog. The first album contains Auckland, Rotorua, and a little bit of Wellington, including the Zoo. The second album is all new, though. It includes the Botanic Gardens, parliament, and many pictures of the city in general. Go check it out!

I'll leave you with this parting advice from an old friend of mine: Confucious say, "Man who stay in imaginary hotel wake up with real herpes."

Amen.

All About New Zealand, Part 1

2008-10-08T15:50:00.000-07:00

This post is going to be part of a new, on-going feature of my blog called All About New Zealand. As the title implies, these posts are going to focus on all the different aspects of life here in New Zealand, rather than focusing on me and the things I do. As I learn more, more will be added, and by the end of the year we'll all be New Zealand experts... or something.

Before I get into that, though, I feel I should at least touch on my job at the hotel. Right now it involves a little over two hours of work a day, cleaning the public areas and doing "spring cleaning." Public areas include five bathrooms (two male, two female, and one staff), the mirrors in the elevators, vacuuming the lobby, and emptying a few trash bins. Spring cleaning varies. Yesterday I learned all about the joy of "wall skirtings," which are little ledges at the bottom of walls. From what I can tell, they were engineered for the sole purpose of gathering dust, and they do their job quite well. Today I had the pleasure of polishing the elevator. The cleaner I used was some foul-smelling stuff in an aerosol can that said, "USE ONLY IN WELL VENTILATED AREAS." I don't know about you guys, but I can't think of any area more ventilated than a cramped elevator, so that's great!

Fortunately, I haven't encountered any poop-smeared walls or hooker bodies. Phew. But I was treated to a rather gross look at hotel sanitation. The same sponges and towels are used for the following: toilet rims, toilet lids, toilet handles, sinks, faucets, and door handles. Yeeeepppp. If that's not horrifyingly disgusting, I don't know what is. I also went out and bought my own latex gloves today, since my supervisor was kind enough to inform me that they don't have any.

Anyway, on to the feature presentation:

All About New Zealand, Part 1

The Kiwi Accent: At a first listen, the New Zealand accent is similar to a British or Australian accent. As it was once described to be, "It's a cross between British and Australian, but more awesome than both." According to the Kiwis I work with at my various jobs, the main difference is in the way they say their vowels. Bed sounds like bid, when sounds like win, what sounds like wot, etcetera. What's even better are the words that sound the same. Hair, hear, and here all sound the same, as do bear, bare, and beer, and sore and saw. The last thing I've noticed is they say some of their numbers and letters differently than we do, and some of them sound the same. The number eight, and the letters A and E sound incredibly similar, which is awesome when I'm trying to take Domino's orders over the phone. Here's an example:

Phone Person: So that's thirty-ay Wairapapa Street.
Me: Thirty eight?
Phone Person: No, Thirty-ay.
Me: Oh. Thirty A, like the letter A.
Phone Person: No, not the letter ay. The letter ay.
Me: E?
Phone Person: No, ay!

Because whether they're saying E or A, it sounds like "ay." Once that's sorted, I have to tackle the spellings of crazy Maori street names.

Food: Ah, food. Maybe it's because I've never really lived in a city before, but to me the variety of food available is incredible. By my estimation, there's approximately 87 million Asian takeaway restaurants in Wellington alone. Thai, Indian, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, look at these... um, yeah. They've got it all is what I'm trying to say. Fish and chips takeaways are also fairly popular. And, of course, American fastfood restaurants are everywhere. Subway, Starbucks, and McDonald's are by far the most widespread, but there's a smattering of KFCs and Burger Kings as well. Their menus don't vary too much from what we see stateside. Subway offers a range of "Kiwi favorites," such as lamb and pork riblet, and McDonald's has family-sized meal deals, something I've never seen in the states, and "The Big Kiwi Breakfast." Also, the McDonald's here are almost always accompanied by a McCafe, a seperate counter featuring upscale hot beverages and baked goods. That's a feature I saw a lot in Europe, but--oh damn, I just wasted four sentences on McDonald's. Moving on.

New Zealand-exclusive chains include Burger Fuel (they make the best fastfood burgers I've ever tasted, with crazy toppings such as avocado, beet root, and mango), Wholly Bagel (opened by a New Yorker disappointed in Wellington's lack of a good bagel shop), and Mr. Bun (a bakery with a twist--they also serve country fried chicken. Actually, the combination of baked goods/coffee and country fried chicken is fairly common at other cafes as well. No idea why).

As a former British colony, New Zealand is fortunate to have the same healthy snacks as Ireland and the UK. And by "healthy snacks," I mean more sugary, delicious types of Cadbury bars than any reasonable person could possibly ask for. Crunchie, Caramello, Picnic, Pinkies, and THREE VARIETIES OF MORO BARS!!! Yes, it's awesome. While we're on the topic of things that rot your teeth and make you fat, let's talk about soda. Coke is easily 75-80% more prevalant than Pepsi. In fact, I haven't even seen a Pepsi product, apart from a Mountain Dew commercial at the movie theater. There's also the New Zealand-exclusive Lemon and Paeroa, more commonly called L&P. It started off in a town called Paeroa. They took water from a natural spring, carbonated it, and added sweetened lemon juice. Now, however, it's owned and distrubuted by Coca Cola. It's still delicious, though, and New Zealand is the only place in the world to buy it (apart from a few Kiwi groceries in Australia).

There are two types of cereal I've gotten into: Weet-Bix (same thing as Ireland's Weet-A-Bix) and muesli. Muesli is composed of rolled oats, raisins, delicious dried fruits, and sometimes weird stick things that look like rabbit food. Weet-Bix is made out of the papery stuff wasps use to make their nests and gets stuck between your teeth worse than you can possibly imagine. If you don't believe me, check out this stunning x-ray image of a wasp nest and some Weet-Bix side by side. Can you tell which is which?

I could probably go on a lot longer about food, but I'll end it here for now. And don't worry, beer is not food and will get its own category later.

Let's see, uh...

Transportation:

Wellington apparently has the best public transportation in New Zealand thanks to an elaborate system of buses and trams. Most of the buses/trams are powered by overhead electric lines, and the buses that run on gas are hybrids! New Zealand's great care for the natural environment will also have its own category later on.

The buses are great, apart from two things: they're expensive. A monthly pass is $99, and without the pass an average rider would probably spend over $150 a month. The other problem is the frequent striking. In the month we've been here, bus services have been disrupted five or six times due to union meetings or strikes. I guess it's a complicated issue. I understand the bus drivers wanting fair wages (currently the starting rate is only a little over minimum wage) and benefits, but going on strike is an asshole way to go about it. They're hurting the customer, the thousands of Wellingtonians that rely on the bus service to commute to and from work each day. What they should do is drive around giving out free bus rides. That'd get the message across to their employer without inconveniencing the passengers. See? I'm a genius!

That's a wrap for this edition of All About New Zealand. If I didn't answer your questions (because so many of you responded to my last post, har har), I'll get to them later.

Quack quack quack.

2008-10-06T16:09:00.000-07:00

Well, it's raining again.

After being lucky enough to have a handful of exceptionally bright and sunny days, this morning I woke up to what sounded like someone throwing handfuls of pebbles against the window. My first thought was, "Oh great. Hail," but it was only rain. The wind was just blowing so insanely hard it made the rain sound like hail. Wonders never cease.

I did manage to do a handful of fun things during the brief bit of nice weather we had. Last Wednesday we checked out the second museum in Wellington, The Museum of City and Sea. Friday was Alexa's first full day of work, so I was left to my own devices and spent the afternoon walking through Wellington's waterfront area. Over the weekend Alexa was sick so we didn't really do much of anything, but Monday we revisited the Botanic Gardens. They had lots of flowers. Yay flowers. Not the most exciting thing we've done, but there was a cool garden filled with surreal, Dr. Seuss-esque plants. And a bunch of ducks and ducklings. I've decided ducks are either incredibly stupid or have incredibly bad short-term memory. I watched a deranged little Kiwi girl run towards a duck. The duck quickly swam away in panic, but when the girl threw bread into the water he just as quickly stopped and turned around to eat. Did he forget he was in danger? Was he really that hungry? What the hell were you thinking, Duck? At any rate, the survival of the duck species will be a great risk as soon as their natural predators discover they're easily swayed by sliced bread.

Moving along to boring serious things, like work (ugh), I was not hired by The Organic Grocer. Boo. I did, however, get a housekeeping job at a hotel (as of about an hour ago). It only has 2/5 stars on Google's review thingy. I hope that doesn't mean I'll have to clean poop off the walls and remove dead hookers' bodies. But money is money, and the job was easily acquired since one of our fellow lodgers here at the Pickled Parrot Lodge (that's what our apartment complex is called, have I mentioned that before?) works there. It'll be nice to start making some real money, since the measly 16-20 hours/week Domino's gives me only nets me about $10 once I pay for rent and groceries. I start tomorrow, so I'll update re: poop/hooker bodies in my next post.

Some more exciting news: the CEO of all the Domino's Pizzas in Australia/New Zealand is coming by our branch today. Since the manager wants everything to look up to standard, I finally got a name tag yesterday. My life is complete.

That's about it for now. My mom just IMed me an idea for my next post: "ok. i was thinking - how about a blog entry on the mundane stuff - what's on tv, the weather, tourists, where you'll get a haircut, what the drug stores are like, what does the mcdonalds serve that's different?
stuff like that , that people want to know but are afraid to ask."

So what do you guys want to know about New Zealand? Don't be afraid to ask. Ask anything; just leave a comment. My next post will aim to answer all of you questions about the day-to-day bits and pieces of the Kiwi life.

Picture time. Did you know you can click on the pictures to see them in full size? Well, you can:

A view of Mt. Victoria from the waterfront. The treeless patch at the top is the site of the Mt. Vic overlook (see my last post):

Ducklings!

The crazy garden that I think looks like something out of a Dr. Seuss book:

Thanks for reminding me to get my absentee ballot...

2008-09-29T21:53:00.001-07:00

So apparently there are still people in other countries who not only love America, but are also under the misguided notion that president Bush is doing a good job. No, that isn't the punchline to some sick joke; it's true. Last night at Domino's there was a customer from Sri Lanka, wherever the hell that is, who recognized my accent and asked if I was from the USA. After I confirmed this, he went on to say he had lived in four countries (Sri Lanka, the US, Scotland, Japan, and New Zealand--I guess he couldn't count) and our beloved America was the greatest of them all. And then he said "I support your President Bush," and gave me the dopiest grin in the history of all simple-as-shit dopey grins. Unfortunately, I was not as gratified as he expected me to be, so I just shrugged and said, "Well, I don't."

Wrong answer, I guess. He suddenly became all serious and went off on a tirade about how great Bush is, and how he is a bright ray of hope for the world, and how all the presidents, prime ministers, kings, and princes of all the countries of the world wished Bush would stay in power for at least ten more years (BARF!) since they had such a great relationship with him. Ummmm.... what?

I guess Sri Lanka gets a different slant on the world news. Maybe Fox News on Steriods or something. At any rate, he concluded his speech by telling me, "Just have faith in your president. You are very lucky to have him," and grinning stupidly again. It's not my place to argue with customers, so I just smiled, chuckled, and said, "Yeah, I guess. He's not going to be around much longer anyway." Zing.

Anyway, things have been going along pretty well. As you may have read on Alexa's blog, we went for a couple hikes last week. One was in our neighborhood and it took us through some pretty wooded areas and around the back of the zoo. We hiked for a kilometer or so along the zoo's fence and were able to see inside a bit. We got to see the top of an ostrich's head, for free! Take that, zoo. The other hike was up the side of Mount Victoria, one of the highest points in Wellington with a great view of the city from its lookout point. It was also the location of the outskirts of the Shire in The Fellowship of the Ring. We weren't able to find the filming sites, but eventually we should be able to find the place where Frodo yells "Get off the road!" when the Nazghul first appear, as well as the forest the hobbits run through to get to the ferry and escape the Nazghul. Nerd alert.

Also, things are going okay at Domino's, but I'm still on the lookout for a day job so I can actually start earning a decent income. Today I had an interview at The Organic Grocer, a little Trader Joe's-esque store, and I think it went well. Besides that, about a week ago I sent an email to the zoo asking if they needed any staff for the gift shop, and when I got back from my interview today, I had an email from them saying they had job openings for gift shop/admissions. I'd prefer to work at the zoo, but I guess I'll have to wait and see what the hours are like and how soon they get back to me.

On a sad note, we are now 17 hours apart instead of 16. Sunday marked the beginning of Daylight Savings Time for New Zealand, and once you all in the US head back to standard time in November, we'll be 18 hours apart.

But I think I've rambled on for long enough. In a bit I'm going to meet Alexa in town and we're going to see Eagle Eye. It's the same as the US version, except some guy with a Kiwi accent dubbed over Shia Lebeouf. Seriously.

I was going to post some pictures, but the internet is being a jerk, so that will have to wait until later. Que triste.

In the meantime, you should all go check out this article. It's a very insightful and well-written look at white privilege and the upcoming election, using a lot of examples from the farce that is the McCain/Palin duo (or as I like to call them, Dumb and Dumber--zing!): http://www.redroom.com/blog/tim-wise/this-your-nation-white-privilege-updated

EDIT: Here's the pictures.

This is Alexa being very happy/enjoying the weather at the botannical gardens:

A scary sign along the zoo's back fence:

Wellington, as seen from Mount Victoria:

Happy Thursday!

2008-09-24T05:08:00.000-07:00

Greetings from wet, windy Wellington.

Not much exciting has happened since my last post, but I figured I could scrounge something together to keep you all entertained. Besides that, I can't sleep. That's what happens when you stay in bed until noon. Having a night job really throws things off. The whole day is spent thinking, "God damnit, I've got to work tonight," and then I go to work, come home and watch a movie or TV for far too long and end up sleeping in the next day to start the whole process over again.

I actually didn't work tonight, though, since I needed the night off for the training at WestPac Stadium. It seems similar to my job at Domino's in that I'll spend most of my time standing behind a counter, taking people's orders and money in exchange for food. Unlike Domino's, however, this job actually requires a bit of skill. You see, we are legally bound to not serve alcohol to visibly intoxicated persons, as per the Major Buzzkill Act of 1989--at risk of a $2000 fine--so I'll have to carefully discern which customers are intoxicated. Finally, my college education will be put to use!

At any rate, I start this weekend, working a rugby game on Saturday and a football game on Sunday. While on the subject of jobs, I've also put in applications at an organic grocery store and The Warehouse (New Zealand's version of Wal-Mart, minus the unethical business practices and dirty stores) so hopefully I'll have something productive to do during the daytime.

I guess that's about it for this update. More of a "I'm still alive, whoopie!" update than anything, I suppose. I don't really have any pictures for you, except for this one of some odd-looking fellows I saw waiting for the bus at Courtenay Place. They seem strangely familiar...

Whoever they were, they looked pretty serious about catching the bus.

Watch out for the wild seals. They're so wild!

2008-09-17T16:06:00.000-07:00

I know it's been a while since my last post. I know you all spend every waking minute on this website, repetitously clicking the "reload" button in hopes of finding I've written a new post, so I'm sorry about that. But on the bright side, I have a job!

Preschool, kindergarten, twelve years of grade school, and four years at a private university (from which I graduated cum laude). So what is my glorious job here in Wellington, you ask?

Wait for it...

I work at Domino's! Yes, that would be Domino's Pizza, the same one from the States. Awesome, no? On the bright side, minimum wage is $12.00/hr here in New Zealand. Also, my job isn't that difficult. I stand at the front counter and take orders from customers, either in person or on the phone. The only difficult part is how absolutely boring it is when there's no customers. Oh well. Alexa and I also have part time jobs lined up at WestPac Stadium, the local stadium for rugby, soccer, and other events. They'll text us when they need us for an event, so it will just be a few times a month.

Other than that, things have been going well. Saturday we went for our first hike. We went to Te Kopahau (don't worry, I can't pronounce it either) reserve and hiked 5-6 km along the Coastal Track. It should've been 8 km, but Alexa was whining about all the walking so we headed back early. Psh. It was really scenic, like everything else in this country, but the real highlight of the walk was seeing wild fur seals. Not in cages, not part of a zoo exhibit, but just wild fur seals hanging out on the rocks. They weren't what I was expecting, though. For starters, they weren't jumping through hoops or balancing rubber balls on their nose. What the hell, fur seals? Where's the entertainment? Actually, if it weren't for the fact that the seals occasionally rolled over to get more sun, I wouldn't have even believed they were alive. Lazy, lazy animals.

Seeing the fur seals just wasn't enough, so on Monday we went to the Wellington Zoo to check out even more animals. It was a typical zoo, but a nice one. The animals all had plenty of leg room and most of them were in "natural," habitat-like exhibits rather than cages. The coolest part was the twilight exhibit, an indoor exhibit featuring a walk through a foresty area lit only by a few red lights. In there we got to see two Kiwis (they're nocturnal), which are the most ridiculous-looking animals I've ever seen. I wish I could've taken a clear shot of one, but it was too dark. They also had a few Tuatara, a species of lizard that has the longest longevity in the animal kingdom. Scientists think it might live to be two hundred years old, but can't be sure since no one has studied them for long enough to find out. Plus they haven't evolved or changed since dinosaur times, so they're pretty much modern-day dinosaurs.

Anyway, I think that's about it for now. We're about to head out to walk around the city and see what we can see. Picture time!

This is Alexa crossing a "river" at Te Kopahua and thinking that she's going to fall in. Oh no! Don't worry, she made across the roaring, six-inch-deep and two-feet-wide river unharmed.

A wild fur seal, wildly scratching his face before going back to wildly sunbathing on the rocks and being wildly lazy:

There were a lot of these funny signs at the zoo with silly cartoons warning visitors not to do certain things. This one is my favorite, but you can see all the rest in my online album:

And here's a link to my facebook album again. I've added pictures from Te Kopahua and Wellington Zoo, so go check them out: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021490&l=499de&id=49800204

Wellington!

2008-09-10T21:31:00.000-07:00

We're in Wellington! This is our fourth day here. We arrived Monday, spent two nights in a hostel, and yesterday we moved into our semi-permanent accomodation.

The drive from Rotorua to Wellington was long (about six hours or so), but scenic. Despite it being incredibly rainy the whole way down, it was very cool seeing such a diverse variety of ecosystems in a relatively small span of time. We started off in the thermal rainforests of Rotorua, then drove past the massive Lake Taupo. After that we passed through Tongariro National Park, home to Tongariro Crossing (one of New Zealand's Great Walks), Mount Ngauruhoe, and Mount Ruapehu (both mountains used to represent Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings films). This was the hairiest section of the drive, which involed zipping around incredibly sharp bends, often without any guard rails between the Corona and certain death in the form of a multi-story drop. Fortunately I'm an awesome driver and we lived through it. As we came out of Tongariro National Park we found ourselves in the midst of a vast stretch of desert-like plains, which eventually turned into grassy grazing land with a spectacular view of some snow-capped mountains. The last part of our trip took us along the coast of the Tasman Sea (the body of water between Australia and New Zealand) and ended in Wellington.

Now that we're in Wellington, the rainy trend has continued for the past three days. The weather seems almost identical to Galway's. Wind and rain, wind and rain--hey, is that the sun?--wind and rain, wind and rain, etc. Other than that, it's been great. It's a unique city, narrowly wedged between a mountain range and a harbor. The downtown area is very compact, and the suburbs sprawl over and through the mountains. When we get a chance we're going to drive to the opposite side of the bay to get a better view of the city, and then I'll be able to show you guys some awesome pictures.

As I mentioned, we found accomodation in the form of a room in a shared apartment building. Shared accomodation is fairly common around here, and it involves us having our own bedroom, but we share a bathroom, living room, and kitchen with the other tenants. Apart from the crazy and loud domestic dispute I just heard a few minutes ago, it's not bad!

We also started our job hunt today. Alexa was more successful than I was, picking up a couple promising leads at two clothing stores. Most of the places I wanted to work weren't hiring. All I found were two places that might hire me around Christmastime, and a "I don't know if we're hiring, but I'll give your resume to the manager!" I don't think I've heard the word "no" this much since I was six and asking my parents for drug money.

I'm not too discouraged, though. I only checked in book shops, so I just need to broaden my scope a little. I sent in online applications for Westpac Stadium, the local rugby stadium, and BP2GO, a chain of convenience stores attached to BP petrol stations. Ooooh. Aaaah.

Anyway, I think I've written enough. On with the pictures!

A lonely tree on the shore of Lake Taupo:

The deserted plains we came to after exiting Tongariro National Park:

A nice view of a valley full of grazing fields with snow-capped mountains in the distance:

My next post will go into more detail about Wellington, including pictures. Hopefully they'll be bright, sunny, rain-free pictures. And hopefully I'll be employed.

Also, here's a link to the online photo album I promised so you can see even more pictures. I'll link to my current albums in every post, so you don't have to worry about keeping track of it. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021490&l=499de&id=49800204

A new car, hotsprings, and a brief but insightful look at the Maori language.

2008-09-06T23:14:00.001-07:00

Spooti tahooti rama rama ding dong. That’s Maori for absolutely nothing.

So, a lot has happened since my last update. We acquired our used car. It’s a Toyota Corona, like the beer. It’s 1990. 18 years old, baby. No anti-lock breaks, no airbags, no power steering, and certainly no CD player. Let me back up to the third item, though. No power steering. Some of my older readers are probably familiar with this, but for the rest of you let me explain what that means: it means you have to steer a two ton hunk of metal with nothing but your own arm strength and a greasy steering wheel. Yes, it’s as awesome as it sounds.

It took about an hour to get comfortable with driving on the left, and as for the lack of power steering, it will probably take about the whole year to get used to that. Other than that, driving here is actually quite fun. The speed limits are high and the views are amazing. I literally wanted to pull over to take pictures every 2-3minutes. If I did that, though, we’d never make it anywhere.

Now we’re in Rotorua, a town on the way to Wellington. We realized that we weren’t spending our money fast enough so we decided to come here and spend it on all sorts of wonderful things like parks, hot springs, and petrol (that’s gas). Petrol is really expensive. Really, really expensive. I don’t want to hear any complaining about gas prices in the States as long as I’m here. What I do want to hear is, “Hey Eoin, here’s some money for petrol!”

But seriously, Rotorua is a cool area. The geothermal activity has made the landscape unlike anything I've seen before. The area is filled with geysers, hot springs, lakes that are unusual colors due to their chemical composition, and other things like that. As an added bonus, the whole area has the delicious sulphury smell of rotten eggs.

I’ll let pictures do the rest of my talking for me. Tomorrow we’re continuing on towards Wellington. Until then, take care. Or as the Maori say, “Rahiti rahiti smell my feety.”

Okay, they don’t really say that. Anyway, on with the pictures.

Mount Tarawera, the volcano that erupted in 1886 and buried the town of Te Wairo:

A couple cool pictures from the geothermal park we went to, Wai-O-Tapu:

(Once I have more online time I’ll create an online photo album, so there will be a lot more of these. I just don’t want to bog down my blog with a bunch of photos).

We've arrived!

2008-09-03T22:42:00.001-07:00

We're here! There's not much to say about the flight. I can't make it sound too terrible otherwise none of you will come visit me. But in all seriousness, apart from United serving three different varieties of dog food for all three in-flight meals and all the movies being in Spanish, it wasn't bad.

Auckland is nice. It's pretty much a city with skyscrapers and all that jazz, but the look is mixed up a bit with a few antique-looking buildings thrown in here and there. And, of course, the Sky City Tower, which is pretty much New Zealand's version of the Space Needle.

This is what it looks like (the picture isn't crooked; the tower is):

In the foreground you can see some boats. Auckland is called the City of ~~Sails~~ Masts.

Also, you guys don't have to worry about me getting homesick for the States. During our wanderings we found no less than four Burger Kings, three McDonald's, three Starbucks, a Wendy's, a Borders, an EB Games, a Foot Locker, a Dunkin Donuts, and even a Denny's. In a truly American fashion, most of these places are within three or four blocks of each other, which is convenient just in case you can't walk that extra hundred feet to squelch your Big Mac craving.
Check it:

Apart from sampling Auckland's finest cuisine, we were pretty productive today. We opened bank accounts, sent in our applications for our IRD number (the New Zealand equivilent of social security), and started the process of acquiring a used car. Hopefully we'll wrap that up tomorrow so we can begin our journey towards Wellington. Of course, it may be a very short journey ending with our car wrapped around the trunk of a palm tree. Hey, I can't be expected to drive on the wrong side of the road for the first time without a few minor bumps.

That's about it for now. I'll update again when I can.

As a parting gift, here's an awesome little anecdote:

On the way back from checking out cars, we took a shortcut through a park. As I was coming out of a little bathroom they had there, I spotted Alexa taking my picture. I know, she's weird. It can't be helped. But it gets weirder. A woman was walking by, and when she spotted Alexa snapping the picture, she took off her headphones and said, "That's so cool!"

Alexa and I didn't say anything, and she continued, "Everytime my boyfriend comes out of the bathroom I take his picture and whenever I come out of the bathroom he takes a picture of me! I've never seen anyone else do that before." Yeah, probably because you're fucking crazy, lady.

As it turns out, she's from New York. But seriously. I can't make this stuff up.

First post!

2008-08-22T13:28:00.000-07:00

So this is my blog. I haven't kept one of these in a long time, but I'll do my best to make it as awesomely entertaining as possible. It's primarily here as an easy way to catalogue my adventures in New Zealand... and beyond!

For the technologically-impaired (you know who you are) who may find this whole thing a bit bewildering, it's really quite simple: whenever you want to see what I'm up to, just type in the address http://theeoinzone.blogspot.com/ and you'll be brought to this page. Also, you'll notice a comment link at the bottom of each entry. That's there so you can comment and let me know how awesome my blog is. Comments are public, though, so please refrain from any mushy gushy messages like, "Oh, Eoin, my favorite son/brother/uncle/cousin/friend/mentor/your majesty, I miss you so so so much :(" Thanks in advance.

Lastly, the little link at the bottom of the sidebar to the right that says "New Zealand Adventures" will take you to Alexa's blog. Although she'll be doing a lot of the same things as me, making her blog a duller, less eloquent version of mine, I'm sure a few of her entries will be worth reading.

So that's about it. I'll try to update at least once a week. But reader beware: just because I'll be in New Zealand doesn't mean every day will be jam-packed with excitement, so some entries might be like, "This week I went to work every day. I just ate a muffin," but that's a chance you'll just have to take.

I leave September 1st. Check back soon!