Nothing too exciting has happened since the last time I wrote a post, but in an effort to keep writing fresh content, I decided it was time to give y’all an update on what I’ve been up to these past few weeks.

There was Christmas, of course, and I assume that if you’re reading this you’ve also seen my cheesy, hastily-edited video, but if not, you can check it out below.  I had the day off on Christmas, and I spent the day video chatting with my family who, because I’m 18 hours ahead,  were having the annual Christmas Eve/Christine’s birthday dinner of macaroni and cheese and German chocolate cake.  It was a strange feeling to be sitting there virtually at the table, while they fed me cyber-cake (not as tasty as real cake), but it was nice to spend some time seeing and talking to the family. 

I spent the second half of the day baking bread and speaking broken English with an Italian guy who lives near me at the hostel.  Bruno is a middle-aged chef at the Dolce Vida, a local restaurant, and he likes to smoke cigarettes.  Because he doesn’t speak much English, our conversation was short and consisted of a lot of misunderstandings.  For instance, it took three repetitions for me to realize that “the waiter is shit” means that it is raining outside, not that his coworkers are incompetent. But he shared some wine with me and I didn’t have to work, so it was a pleasant little Christmas day, really.

I also had New Years day off, although I had to work until 10pm on New Years Eve.  Immediately after work, I decided to meet some friends from my wine-bottling days who were in the slightly larger, and more party-friendly, Queenstown…a two hour drive away.  I sped around the windy turns through the mountains, hoping to spend the first few minutes of 2010 among friends, and not in my car en route to the party.  On the way, I came within inches of hitting a sheep in the middle of the road.  And not a little lamb either…there was a full-grown sheep just wandering across the main highway, and I was lucky that my brights caught his reflective eyes early enough for me to hit the brakes and swerve around him.  After this incident, I slowed down a bit, and after my heart stopped racing, I laughed out loud, realizing that hitting a sheep in the wee hours of 2009 would have been an very unfortunate, but very New Zealand thing to do.

I ended up pulling into Queenstown at 11:55pm, miraculously finding a parking spot in under a minute, and sprinting from my car down towards the lakefront, where the entire town had gathered to bring in the New Year.  As I rounded the corner of the last block before the lake, I could hear a crowd of people counting down “three…two…one…Happy New Year!!!”.

But I was still half a block away…I missed it…by about ten seconds.  I got to the lakefront, completely out of breath, in time to see the first of the fireworks, and stayed down for the fifteen minute show, but I will always remember that I welcomed the new decade in a full sprint, by myself, in New Zealand.  Memorable in its own way, I guess. 

Anyhow, after the fireworks, I met up with my friends and went out to a crowded, modern bar.  While we were waiting outside, someone mentioned that I looked like Moses and soon half a dozen Kiwis around me were cracking biblical jokes.  I should have been offended perhaps, but I’m proud of my beard so I went along with it.  Queenstown is a much better choice for a New Years party than tiny little Te Anau, and I was happy to have made the trip.

The next day was slow and lazy, and a few of us went for a Polar Bear dip in Lake Wakatipu (it is supposed to be summer here, but it was cold and windy…and the lake temperature was frigid).  Later in the evening I drove cautiously back to Te Anau.

Since then, I’ve been making pizzas five days a week, and I must admit that I’m getting pretty good.  My pizzas are each a work of art, and I shed a small tear every time I have to take one from the oven and hand it over to someone else to be eaten…  But more importantly, I kind of like the job.  It is fast paced, so time goes by quickly, and it is surprisingly interesting to me.  I think that gaining some experience in the foodservice industry will be helpful for me getting future seasonal working/holiday jobs while I’m in NZ…and the 75% discount on all food is not too bad either.

My car is currently out of commission because it didn’t pass inspection, so I’m spending my free time doing some minor repairs to it to make it street legal again, but because I have no ride, I haven’t been able to do any big hikes on my days off.  Also, the weather has been crazy here, twice now the surrounding mountains have gotten unseasonably late snowfalls.  Although it makes my daily walk to work ten times more scenic, it has forced many of the tracks in the area to close due to avalanche danger, which is uncommon this late in the year.  I hope to get out and do some good day hikes in the next few weeks when I have a car and the weather improves. The numerous outdoor opportunities around me is, after all, the reason I’m staying in this area…about time I added another trek to my list.

Also, because I live directly across the street from the Fiordland National Park Visitor Center, I’ve begun to take advantage of their summer lecture series.  So far I’ve only been able to attend one lecture, “Above the Bushline - Alpine Vegetation in Fiordland”, which despite its enthralling title was quite boring, even for a science nerd like myself…but I’m looking forward to future talks on Electric Fishing, SCUBA Diving in Fiordland, and one on the new “self-resetting predator trap” that hopes to cut down on the number of introduced threats to NZ native birds.  If any are worth posting about„ I’ll be sure to write up a recap.

Other than that…nothing much is new.  Tomorrow I will meet with a landlord about possibly moving into a flat for the next two or three months…I’ll keep you posted.  And I’ve been busy watching The Wire, an HBO series about Baltimore crime that is as addicting as its crack cocaine subject matter.  If you haven’t seen it, you should check it out.

All for now folks, hope you’re enjoying 2010.

Despite all of my efforts of avoiding it…despite running off to climb mountains and sail on ships…despite three months of almost continuous recreation, I’ve finally come to the inevitable conclusion that I need a job.

Luckily, almost immediately after completing the Routeburn/Greenstone Tracks, I was able to land a job in the tiny town of Te Anau, “Gateway to Fiorldland”, where I’ll be working in a café/pizzeria until March.  It isn’t the best job, really, I am only able to get about 30-35 hours per week, and it is minimum wage.  But I have plenty of free time, and I am a short drive from some of the most astounding scenery in the world, so I’ll try not to complain.

While in town, I am thinking about joining the NZ Alpine Club to try to get some experience with crampons and an ice axe.  I’m also considering volunteering some time to help with Takahe conservation.  The takahe is an extremely rare flightless bird (less that 200 in the world) that only survives in one small hamlet in the wild…the Murchison Mountains, which are across Lake Te Anau from where I’m staying.  I’ll write more about this later, because it is fascinating to me.  I’m also trying to pick up another job or build up my freelance web development portfolio…so if you know anyone looking for some website work, let me know.

Other than that, there isn’t much to do in Te Anau, apart from use it as a base to explore the surrounding wilderness.  As a town, it doesn’t have much to offer.  There is a line of touristy shops and cafés, a grocery store, and a Subway.  Oh, and there is a movie theater, which was built by a local helicopter pilot to show a 30-minute film that he shot with the help of some Lord of the Rings videographers.  The film is decent…stunning visuals with a good soundtrack, and no voiceover whatsoever…but it is really just a promotional piece to get tourists to pay him for scenic rides in his choppa.

Work itself is very straightforward.  So far, I’ve only made pizzas, but I may get some experience working up front as a barista, or as a server in the steakhouse next door (which is also owned and operated by my German boss).  Of the handful of other seasonal workers I’ve met so far, I am the oldest by about six years, and almost everyone else speaks German as their first language.  So hopefully I can pick up a little Deutsche while I’m here…

The other day, as I was making pizzas, a funny thought occurred to me.  When I was 15 years old, I got my first real job…working in a pizzeria up the street from my house.  Now, after ten years (and tens of thousands of dollars spent on a college education) I am working the exact same job.  Maybe that will be my plan in life…no matter what I’m doing or where I am, every ten years I will quit my job and make pizzas for a few months.

Part One: Blenheim to Christchurch

I spent three weeks in Blenheim, which is the longest I’ve spent in any location for the past three months.  I was happy to be done working 12 hour shifts in the wine bottling factory, so I decided to make Friday night a celebration/farewell to my friends and the Marlborough wine country.

Unfortunately, almost all of my friends had to work on Saturday, so the hostel was pretty low key.  I had a few beers and played my last games of ping-pong and pool, and at about 9:00, everyone started to wander into the TV room or off to bed.  I ended up chatting with two guys from Paris, a few Germans, and a group of friends from the Czech Republic.  They were all in the same jovial mindset I was in, so we shared bottles of wine and practiced our Czech and at about midnight, a few of us decided to go out on the town in Blenheim again.

Jean-Marie and Arnold, the Parisians, and Chrstopher a tall blonde German, and I decided to go back to Paddy Barry’s Irish Pub for a few pints.  It was pretty dead, so we moved on to The Loft, the saddest dance club I’ve ever been in, but decided to make the best of it there and tore up the dance floor by ourselves.  At 3:00AM, the club closed and we stumbled back to the hostel, Arlnold spinning the whole way home and Christopher walking hunched over like Frankenstein’s monster…when we got home, we polished off the last of the wine and I collapsed into my bed after another long, fun day.

The next morning, I packed up and said my goodbyes and around noon, I hit the road towards Christchurch, where I would be meeting some friends at the airport.  The road out of Blenheim was a pleasant winding road through the wine country, over rocky rivers and past acre after acre of rolling vineyards.  After about an hour, the road curved sharply to reveal the South Island’s east coast and a grand view to the Pacific.

For the next hour, the road hugged the coastline and the further south I went, the closer the mountains seemed to get.  Eventually, I was squished between empty sandy beaches and looming granite cliffs, and I realized that this was perhaps the most scenic road I’ve been on yet in New Zealand.  The road wound impossibly tight, with precipitous cliffs rising around every bend, and I was close enough to the ocean that the crashing surf sprayed on my windshield.  I also encountered a new road sign: “Seal Crossing”…I was so close the the rocky habitat of the New Zealand Fur Seal that they occasionally wandered up onto the road.  I blasted my music and drove sped around the bends pretending I was in a spy movie.

Oh, and this wasn’t a scenic detour or back road…I was traveling on the main north-south thoroughfare through New Zealand, the same highway that I’ve been on since I left Cape Reinga at the top of the North Island.  I love this country.

Eventually, I reached the town of Kaikoura, a pleasant, touristy establishment in a sheltered cove that caters almost exclusively to the whale-watching and dolphin-swimming industry.  The cover of my guide book is from Kaikoura, with a large whale fluke in front of snow-capped mountains that rise out of the sea.  Unfortunately, when I was there it was too cloudy to see the peaks so I had to just imagine that they were impressive.

I drove to the end of the peninsula, where there is a seal colony, and considered going for a stroll along the beach, but by that point, the previous night’s festivities started to pay their toll on my well-being and I decided to take a nap.

After my refreshing snooze, I got back on the road to Christchurch.  I soon reached the northern part of the Otago region, the largest farming area on the South Island, and saw the same rolling, sheep covered hills I’d seen on the North Island.  Otago was a bit different though…bigger, vaster, and much less populated.  I had the feeling I was the only one on the entire island as I drove down the highway.

I got to Christchurch around 6:00PM and had a few hours before I had to get to the airport, so I parked my car and strolled through the city.  At first, I was very turned off by the South Island’s largest city and the third largest in NZ.  It felt like a medium sized town, and it was empty.  But as I got out of the business district and more into the historical center, my feelings started to change.  This is by far the most British feeling town I’ve ever been in.  More so than London.  And even though I’ve never been to any other towns in the UK, this was exactly what I’d imagine they’d be like. Britishy.

There was a central square with an old cathedral, and a few nice looking museums, but the highlight is the huge botanical garden, complete with a lazy, swan-filled river lined with willow trees and park benches.  Unfortunately, as I got closer to the gardens, it appeared that everyone was leaving and when I got to the gate, I was told it was closed for the day.  No worries.  I wandered through the narrow cobblestone streets and down pedestrian shopping streets, crossing back and forth across the path of the city’s authentic trolley, which still operates throughout downtown.  I only had an hour or so in the city, but I got a positive vibe, and I’d like to come back and spend more time there.

Also, I happened to run into Roberto, my Argentinian roommate from the hostel in Blenheim, who was in Christchurch for the Pearl Jam concert (I know, I know I should have gone too… but tickets were a bit beyond my meager price range).  We laughed at the fact that in the third-largest city in New Zealand, we could bump into someone we know on the street.  That’s just kind of the way this country is.

Around 8:00PM, I headed out to the airport and met Todd and Troy Dubenezic, two of my former coworkers from DC who were taking a two week vacation to Australia and New Zealand.  Todd and Troy are brothers who went to school together, work together, and live together.  They are not twins, but they are might as well be. 

That being said, they are complete opposites.  Todd, who was my former boss, is a lenky, earthly guy with long hair and a glowing smile.  He teaches yoga professionally in his free time.  Troy is clean cut, with a shaved head and expensive cologne.  He is the only one at the company who voluntarily wore a suit every day to work.  He is an avid photographer and has a pilot’s license.  I worked with Troy as a DVD author and video compressionist, and he is the most thorough person I’ve ever met.  They are both vegan and they listen almost exclusively to trance music.

I worked very closely with Todd and Troy for two years, and I got to know both of them well.  We shared interests in snowboarding and backpacking, and the three of us had planned to hike the Milford Track together way back in July, before I had even purchased my plane ticket to New Zealand. 

When I picked them up at the airport, they both looked exactly the same, and it was obvious that they had gotten some sun while traveling Aussie.  They jumped in the car and we immediately began to plan the next few days.  After living on the road and having mostly fleeting relationships with other travelers, I was happy to be in the company of old friends.

That night we drove through the dark to the foothills of Mt. Hutt, a popular ski resort that was completely empty because it was out of season.  We stayed briefly in a nice hostel called the Redwood Lodge.

Part Two: Mount Cook and Queenstown

In the morning I chatted with the owner, an elderly Kiwi who reiterated my observations about the do-it-yourself nature of New Zealanders when she told me that she owns and maintains her own website.  I would have liked to stay and chat, but we had much to see, and we hit the road early.

That day we drove from Mt. Hutt through the rolling farmlands of Otago and into the alpine foothills of Mount Cook, the highest point in New Zealand.   We passed fields of wildflowers and long, glacial lakes that glowed a brilliant turquoise color.  These were the Southern Alps I came here to see…they were gnarly, rugged and snow-capped and the scenery looked more like Switzerland or Alaska then anywhere in NZ I’ve yet seen.

We arrived in Mt. Cook village and ate lunch at the Old Mountaineer’s Cafe and Bar, a cool little place that I hoped would be filled with bearded mountainmen, returning from weeks away in harsh alpine conditions to share beer and stories and head lice.  But alas, it was instead filled with a few groups of Japanese tourists and three hungry Americans.

After lunch, we went on a short hike through the Hooker Valley and saw the peak of Mount Cook, a few glaciers, and a roaring river.  It was very scenic, and I wanted to stay and camp, but we had to get going so I added the area to the top of my list of “Places in NZ to Return To Before Leaving the Country”.

After Mt. Cook village, we headed to Queenstown, the tourism capital of the South Island and the adventure capital of the world.  If you ever have any interest in sky diving, bungy jumping, jet boat riding, white-water rafting, mountain biking, canyoning, base jumping, or any other sort of activity where you succumb to the mercy of gravity for the sake of adrenaline, Queenstown is the place to be.

The town is a quintessential resort village, similar to Aspen or Chamonix…touristy but tasteful.  Robert Redford would like it here.  It sits at the south end of pretty Lake Wakatipu, with the huge snowcapped Remarkables rising from its shores, and loads of villas and condos peaking through the trees. 

It was nearly sunset when we arrived, and as Troy is a photographer, we were on a quest to find a good place to take some photos of the dropping sun.  We drove north of the city along the lake and pulled over at a small beach, where the sky slowly began to give us an array of nearly every color in the rainbow.  We stayed there for over an hour, and got some great photographs.  At 9:30PM, it still wasn’t completely dark, but we were famished, so we returned to the town and checked into our hotel.

We wandered through town a bit, although it was pretty dead on a Sunday night this early in the season.  We ended up eating at Fergburgers, a modern burger joint that serves massive patties (vegan ones too!) from 9AM -5AM every day.  I liked the place…and they were even playing trance music when we walked in, so the Dubie brothers liked it too.

Part Three: Te Anau and Milford Sound

The next day, we jumped in the car and took care of a few last minute trekking preparations before hitting the road from Queenstown to Te Anau and on to Milford Sound.  The drive was spectacular.  As we left Queenstown, we meandered through vast Middle Earth scenery that reminded me of pictures I’ve seen of Montana and Wyoming until we reached Te Anau, the town at the base of Lake Te Anau, the second largest lake in NZ and the start of our Milford Track the next day.

However, our plan was to continue on to the town of Milford Sound, the end of the Milford Track, to drop off the car so it would be waiting for us upon the completion of the trek.  The road to Milford was even more scenic.  It started out along the lake, but quickly cut over to the next valley, a wide glacial, U-shaped valley highlighted by a slow river with loads of wildflowers along its banks.  Then we hit the green beech forest, and began to climb until eventually breaking out of the treeline to spectacular alpine views.  Near the end, the road dissects a huge mountain via the Homer Tunnel, the steepest road tunnel I’ve ever driven through.  After making it down the intense grade, we were rewarded with spectacular views of the narrow Cleddau Canyon which took us to the even more spectacular Milford Sound.

We checked into the Milford Sound Lodge, a cool backpacker resort in the small village of Milford Sound and went immediately to the waterfront to capture the sunset.  Milford Sound is one of many glacial fjords in Fiordland National Park, but as it is the only one accessible by car, it is the most touristed.  And looking out over the water, I could see why.  In the distance, huge glacier-covered peaks rise thousands of feet out of the water, up nearly-vertical walls that are covered with green shrubs and waterfalls.  The highlight is Mitre Peak, 1692 meters high, with a distinctive canine-tooth profile that is extremely picturesque. 

Staring out over the water, watching the setting sun cast brilliant oranges and pinks on the snowy peaks, I realized that this was the New Zealand I wanted to come to.  This is the Promised Land I hoped to find.  I won’t be leaving this area any time soon.