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Caleb travels to New Zealand and hopefully updates this sometimes.
Friday, July 29, 2005
Mike's bedding
Mike would feel right at home in all the hostels we travel to. Mainly because every hostel we travel to has a comforter that Mike would love. I feel like i should blow my nose on them every morning, but I don't. I'm not Mike.
Thursday, July 28, 2005
Wellington
After a two day trip in by bus, train and ferry, we've arrived in Wellington, which is a really cool city. The weather hasn't been the best so far - windy (it has a reputation for being a windy city) and rainy - but the city itself is great. Getting a job here should be no problem. Everything i've read about the city mentions the fact that they have more restaurants per capita than New York City, and they do have a lot, which means i'll probably end up waiting tables... Finding a flat to live in might be a little bit harder. The areas we're looking in are pretty popular and so far the emails we've sent about ads we've seen have gone unanswered.
Pictures from Queenstown (click to make bigger):
The view of lake Wakatipu from downtown Queenstown
There was an expensive gondola and a free trail behind our hostel. We opted for the free trail straight up the mountain. This was the view from the top
Skiing the second day we were there - the view from the top.
Since everyone asks about the sheep... here are some as seen from our bus as we traveled from Queenstown to Christchurch
Pictures from Queenstown (click to make bigger):
The view of lake Wakatipu from downtown Queenstown
There was an expensive gondola and a free trail behind our hostel. We opted for the free trail straight up the mountain. This was the view from the top
Skiing the second day we were there - the view from the top.
Since everyone asks about the sheep... here are some as seen from our bus as we traveled from Queenstown to Christchurch
Saturday, July 23, 2005
Queenstown
On the list of people you don't want to kick in the nuts, the guy who is tying your feet to a bungee cord before you jump off a bridge is probably pretty high on that list. In clumsiness that doesn't really surprise me anymore I managed to do just that when I straightened my legs to look for change before I jumped....
He seemed pretty cool about it, but then asked if I wanted to 'touch' the water when I jumped. Even though it was winter this seemed like a pretty good idea to me. How often do you bungee jump on the spot where bungee started? Yes, touching the water would be fun... My touch turned out to be a dunk in the river almost to my knees. I was freezing, but it didn't matter. The whole thing was incredible - one of the biggest rushes I've ever had. Actually making yourself jump is hard, but once you do it's a complete blast. So yes mom, I bungee jumped.
Queenstown is a beautiful city. It's on a lake with these snow capped mountains surrounding the entire thing. The town itself is tiny, so you can see the mountains no matter where you are. It looks like we won't be living here though. For all our high hopes for the skiing here, when we actually went we weren't incredibly impressed. The mountains are huge, but they only really use the top half of them on their ski areas for some reason. On top of that, I guess it's a pretty mild winter here so about half the trails are still closed. Since skiing won't be our thing this winter we've now decided to move to Wellington, the capital city to look for jobs and apartments. They'll both be a lot easier to find there than here anyway. We leave for Christchurch on Monday by bus and from there hop on a train to a ferry that connects the north and south islands. Wellington is on the very southern tip of the north island.
All we've met here is UK people. Everytime we meet someone new theres an 90% chance they're from England, with a smaller possibility they're from Ireland, Scotland or the one Australian we met.
He seemed pretty cool about it, but then asked if I wanted to 'touch' the water when I jumped. Even though it was winter this seemed like a pretty good idea to me. How often do you bungee jump on the spot where bungee started? Yes, touching the water would be fun... My touch turned out to be a dunk in the river almost to my knees. I was freezing, but it didn't matter. The whole thing was incredible - one of the biggest rushes I've ever had. Actually making yourself jump is hard, but once you do it's a complete blast. So yes mom, I bungee jumped.
Queenstown is a beautiful city. It's on a lake with these snow capped mountains surrounding the entire thing. The town itself is tiny, so you can see the mountains no matter where you are. It looks like we won't be living here though. For all our high hopes for the skiing here, when we actually went we weren't incredibly impressed. The mountains are huge, but they only really use the top half of them on their ski areas for some reason. On top of that, I guess it's a pretty mild winter here so about half the trails are still closed. Since skiing won't be our thing this winter we've now decided to move to Wellington, the capital city to look for jobs and apartments. They'll both be a lot easier to find there than here anyway. We leave for Christchurch on Monday by bus and from there hop on a train to a ferry that connects the north and south islands. Wellington is on the very southern tip of the north island.
All we've met here is UK people. Everytime we meet someone new theres an 90% chance they're from England, with a smaller possibility they're from Ireland, Scotland or the one Australian we met.
Sunday, July 17, 2005
Pictures
Alright, quick update since i've figured out how to get some pictures on this thing. The first one is a view of Auckland from a small mountain in the area.
Next is a vocano we climbed with a few Brits we met. This is the cone of the vocano, which as you can see has been completely overtaken by a small forest
Next is a vocano we climbed with a few Brits we met. This is the cone of the vocano, which as you can see has been completely overtaken by a small forest
The view from the top of the volcano. Incredible views up there and I wish i'd taken more pictures
More to come later. Times up on the computer for now.
Still in Auckland
Not a whole lot to update right now. I'm definitely ready to leave Auckland and go to see some of the "real" New Zealand. Auckland's a great city, but like I said before it's a lot like any other city you'll ever see - complete with Dunkin Donuts, Mc Donalds, Starbucks and Burger King. Where it beats every other city is with the views, blue water and a love for that water. I've never seen so many sailboats in my life.
Today we took a ferry to an island that's a dormant volcano formed about 600 years ago and hiked to the top for an awesome view of the area. The skyline of the city was great and the islands around the city with rolling hills, green grass and that blue water all around it made the hike with the views we had one of my favorite things i've seen so far here. It's pretty crazy how lush this island is now even though it's all lava rock.
Still no luck getting my pictures off my camera. I'll keep trying.
Today we took a ferry to an island that's a dormant volcano formed about 600 years ago and hiked to the top for an awesome view of the area. The skyline of the city was great and the islands around the city with rolling hills, green grass and that blue water all around it made the hike with the views we had one of my favorite things i've seen so far here. It's pretty crazy how lush this island is now even though it's all lava rock.
Still no luck getting my pictures off my camera. I'll keep trying.
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Auckland
We arrived yesterday (Wednesday) around 6am after a 13 hour flight where, for some reason, I couldn't manage more than 30 minutes of sleep. The company we're going through gives orientation every Wednesday at 10, so we decided to forget sleep for the day and try to get as much done as possible.
Orientation was great - there's a ton of stuff we needed to know that would have taken forever to figure out otherwise. One of those being how ridiculously expensive cell phones are here. Even when you're on a plan they're about 1.50 a minute during peak times... so don't expect many calls (The way I understand it though, calls to the phone are free). We signed up for a KiwiBank account and also started an application for a New Zealand ID, since the only form of ID that we have that's valid over here is our passport and i'd rather not carry that around everywhere.
Looks like we'll be here for about a week now while we wait for the ID card and our bank card to be processed. I can't figure out how to get pictures onto this computer, so none of those yet. Auckland's a pretty typical big city though.
Hostel life should be interesting. I woke up at 4am this morning to the 3rd guy in our 3 person room moaning and talking in his sleep in japanese.
Orientation was great - there's a ton of stuff we needed to know that would have taken forever to figure out otherwise. One of those being how ridiculously expensive cell phones are here. Even when you're on a plan they're about 1.50 a minute during peak times... so don't expect many calls (The way I understand it though, calls to the phone are free). We signed up for a KiwiBank account and also started an application for a New Zealand ID, since the only form of ID that we have that's valid over here is our passport and i'd rather not carry that around everywhere.
Looks like we'll be here for about a week now while we wait for the ID card and our bank card to be processed. I can't figure out how to get pictures onto this computer, so none of those yet. Auckland's a pretty typical big city though.
Hostel life should be interesting. I woke up at 4am this morning to the 3rd guy in our 3 person room moaning and talking in his sleep in japanese.
Friday, July 08, 2005
2 days left! A day of packing...
I guess I've put it off as long as I could. Today everything I need for the next 10 months gets packed into a backpack the size of one of the drawers in my bureau.
Saturday I figure out how to store a car for 10 months. After that, there's a going away party at 5 at Adam's - get there if you can.
Sunday I hitch a ride to DC.
Monday at 3 I'm out!
