(View from the ferry as I crossed to the south island)

Traveling the South

It's been about 20 days since I set off on my hitchhiking adventure through the South Island. I can't believe how fast its gone but even more unbelievable is just how picturesque the majority of the trip has been.

Tom and I had a cup of coffee at Capitol on my last day in Wellington before he brought me to the ferry terminal. I remember sitting in that chair waiting for the ferry with such mixed emotions. I was sad to say goodbye to these people that had really become as close as family. At the same time I was anxious and my mind was filled with imaginings of what the next month of life on the road would bring. It's a feeling of unknown possibilities. It truly makes you feel alive. It's the same feeling that first made me want to travel.

(view from the ferry before taking off)>>>

It was nearly dark by the time I got off the ferry in Picton and took a shuttle to the city center. I stepped off the bus. I was tired, hungry, and weighed down with backpacks on both my front and back, and another bag with food in my hand. I thought to myself that I'd be feeling this way quite often over the next month of traveling. I walked a few blocks to the nearest hostel where I grabbed some food and one of the last rooms available.

With a full stomach, I stretched out in bed to rest for a bit. This was going to be my first night back in a hostel after 3 months of living in a flat. Outside the room, there was a group of backpackers talking around a table. I laughed when listening in on their conversation, it couldn't have been more stereotypical. "Where are you from? Oh, neat, how long have you been traveling? Where have you been?" Inevitably, the small talk took the oh so traveled path of discussing the differences between each persons country. "You say vit-a-min? Haha, it's vite-a-min!", "This beer tastes way different back home", "It's great coming from the pound, it's like a 3 to 1 exchange rate!". I remember when I first got to Auckland 8 months ago. Back then, I really thought these conversations were interesting. I really did wonder where people were from and what things were like there. Now, I can usually guess which country people are from after a few words. I can hear the difference between Australians and Kiwis, Canadians and Americans, and in the case of the British I can guess about how far north they live in the country. Of course, I did later hop in the conversation that night for after a drink or two it's all a lot more stimulating. But, I knew at that moment that I wouldn't be content hanging out in a hostel anymore like I was in the Bay of Islands. I was here to see places I couldn't see anywhere else, and do things I had never done before.

(one of the final sunrises from the kitchen window of my flat)>>>

With that mindset, I woke up early the next morning and hit the road with my bags. The plan was to make it to Nelson by the days end. If it was a straight drive through it'd be about 2 1/2 hours. I walked about 30 minutes down the roadway out of town. Your best chance when hitching is to stand at the edge of town on the only road out. That way, just about everyone that passes is going in the general direction that you'd like to. By that time, my shoulders were really starting to hurt. I came to the conclusion that backpacks simply weren't designed to be held on your front side, and shoulders simply weren't designed to hold 20+kg.

After about 20 minutes of smiling and waving my thumb at cars I managed to land a ride. He looked to be in his late 60's, drove a new ford and worked as an aircraft inspector paid by the goverment. He proudly made me aware he was one of three inspectors in the entire country. I like hitching rides with older people, they actually know quite a bit of local history and random facts and are more than happy to tell you all about it. While not always incredibly interesting (on this particular occassion I walked away knowing about the 25 year cycle on pine tree farming) it does help to pass the time.

(next couple are from hiking through Nelson trails)>>>>

He was heading into Blehhiem and was nice enough to take me a bit out of his way to a better spot (a road next to a nice little duck pond) for me to hitch my next ride. With my company of hungry ducks, I waited here for about 45 minutes before getting a ride. A thirty something lady from Malaysia, with rather poor english stopped to pick me up. She said she was a student, studying Toris... Turiz... "Tourism?", I corrected her. "Yes, that's it." At first I wondered why she still called herself a student when she was clearly over thirty, but now it was clear. She couldn't even pronounce the name of her field of study. The conversation only got to be more strange as we drove down the street. I told her about my plans to do some hikes and maybe camp out in the bush. She seemed appalled that I would consider going out in the bush on my own; "It's so dangerous, people get killed out there all the time, I know it!" Obviously nonsense, in the time I've been here there has been one single incident involving travelers and nobody was killed. When we seemed to agree to disagree on the dangers of the bush, the conversation took a turn to what would normally be simple small talk, family. "Do you have any brothers?", she asked me. When I told her I did, her follow up question was "Can I write him?". Now what the hell does she intend on writing him, I thought to myself. I paused for a second, "uhhh..." and she cut in again, "Is he married?... oh he's probably married, I know it. Where did you want me to drop you off?" I thought to myself, RIGHT HERE!, but rather than be completely rude, I settled for a bit further up the street. I hopped out of the car in the middle of nowhere, quite happily.

For the next 2 hours I stood on the side of the road waiting for a ride. Hardly any cars came through this area. Sometimes it gets hard to force out a smile for every car that passes, especially when you're hot and tired. Each time a car drove by I just kept thinking back to the ridiculous conversation with the Malaysian lady and I couldn't help but laugh and smile. When I had just about given up hope, a big rig truck stopped for me. I actually didn't even try to flag him down because I simply thought they wouldn't stop. He was a nice guy, an ex-construction worker that took up transport after a back injury. He didn't talk much, but seemed happy just to have some company on his daily route. A few business stops, and 2 hours later, he dropped me off at the information center in Nelson.

I had heard lots of great things about Nelson, so I decided to stay for at least a few days before moving on. I stayed at this place called 'The Palace'. It's probably my favorite hostel I've been to yet. The place is just outside the city center atop this really steep hill that can only be accessed by a series of stairs. The place must have once been a mansion built by a prominent member of 1930's society. It had this great fully wooden architecture that must have recently been renovated. The rooms all have these massive 15 foot ceilings, great old paintings and furniture and no bunk beds to be found. Better yet, you get free breakfast, free coffee, tea, breads and buscuits all day, and free meat pies and sandwhiches at night. In addition to the usual TV room and kitchen, this place had a great reading room with a fireplace, sunroom situated on the 2nd floor balcony overlooking the city. It's no surprise the majority of the people I met there were long termers, staying for a couple months or longer...

That was only the first day. But don't worry, I'm not about to go through the whole thing day by day. I'll break the rest of it up into the major events over the last month.

More to come...

Just a quick update to let everyone know I haven't been murdered by a truck driver (actually the one ride I did get with a truck driver must have been one of the nicest). In the last week and a half or so I've kayaked through the Abel Tasman National Park, ice climbed over and through the Franz Joseph Glacier, and participated in a hitch hiking race down the west coast with some friends I made at a hostel.

At the moment, I'm in Wanaka which to my pleasant surprise is the location of the picture from the title of this blog (look above). I have a ton of amazing photos and some interesting stories to go along with them. I'll try to get to writing when I get a free moment, but so far I'm having too much fun to stop.

Tomorrow I'm off on an 8 hour hike along the tip of the mountain range seen in the background of the title picture. Post again soon!

Wellington - Part 2

(Note about pictures: One of the guys I met at the hostel I'm currently staying at happened to be at the Cuba street festival the same night I was. I was able to get some photos off of him yesterday, he must have been no more than a few yards from where I was the same night. He even got a picture of that stripping girl I mentioned in the last post. Also pictured is Rabbit, Tom's cat that more or less lived on the rocking chair in my room. Check out the pictures below.)

Steve only ended up staying in the flat for about a week before deciding to go back to Queenstown in the South Island. He was running out of money quickly and saw the cheaper Queenstown as his best bet. On the day he left, he had about $30 cash to his name and a mission to hitch hike to the middle of the South Island before it ran out.

For the remainder of my time in Wellington, I had the 2 bedroom flat to myself. But, that's not to say I was really by myself. It was quite a regular occasion for Tom and Kate (Tom's Wife) to invite me upstairs for dinner with the family, a late night movie, the latest episode of Grey's Anatomy, or just a drink as we talked on the patio under the stars. Kate was studying to become a teacher, and as part of her training, she had to stay and teach in a city quite far north for the first month that I was there. With Kate and the kids gone, and the house now under the supervision of Tom and I, it more or less became a bachelor pad. A six pack of whatever was on sale, some takeaways from Hell Pizza, and the latest blockbuster available in New Zealand (stuff that came out in the US about 6 months ago) made up a good number of our nights.

However, we weren't always lazy slobs. Tom recently got to be pretty keen on paua hunting, and he took me out a few times with him. Paua, known to most Americans as Abalone, are a shell fish that live on rocks in shallow water. They're quite expensive all over the world and are usually pretty hard to come by in the wild. However, in certain areas of New Zealand they're still plentiful due in part to the limitations put on collecting them. Tom came across a great tide pool about a 10 minutes drive from the house that's home to tons of the little guys. Our gear consisted of wetsuits, some old sneakers to help climb along the rocks, a mask and snorkel (tanks are illegal when hunting paua), and a knife to help dislodge them from the rocks. While I did have a blast diving around in the tide pools on a sort of treasure hunt, the first time we went out, I completely failed to catch any. I was only able to find a couple paua that were legal size. On my first attempt, rather than prying between the paua and the rock with my knife I accidentally stabbed it, clouding up the water with its black blood. My second go wasn't a whole lot smoother when I simply ripped the shell off the paua.

So what do you do with paua once you've caught it? Well, first you rip it out of its shell by prying your fingers under the thick edge of shell. When you have the slimy shell-less creature squirming around in your hand, you then grab at the white stump that was connected to the shell and rip that off, pulling out its major organs with it. And voila! Your left with paua meat in your hand that will go for something like $70/kilo ($35/lb). So how does paua taste? Well, when the guy preparing it is the head chef at his own restaurant... it tastes excellent! I had a bit of it sashimi style, (live, thinly sliced, and raw) and then we sent some of it through a meat grinder, flavored it with onion, capsicum, garlic, and chili oil before grilling it up in patties to make paua burgers, yum!

Even the simplest every day chores could be transformed into an adventure when in the company of Tom. Some of the funniest moments were grocery shopping. Why couldn't grocery stores be a social place, Tom argued. Why didn't people start up conversation with each other about what they were buying, and why isn't there more flirting going on in the isles? Tom was on a personal mission to change these things and I was along for the ride.

He might make stupid comments on someones items in passing, "My, you have a lot of power in that aid!", said to a guy with a cart full of Power Aid. Or when walking down the personal hygiene

Then there was the stalking of the infamous Freya. We passed her in the Woolworth's grocery store one day and couldn't help but take notice. She was probably the single best looking girl in Wellington. Tom said he knew her from somewhere but couldn't put his finger on where it was. We decided the best course of action was to discreetly follow her through the isles to help refresh Tom's memory. She was with her mom looking at hair removal products when it was decided that we needed to try and pick up conversation. As we neared them, Tom nudged me, "Just say something." Looking to the products along the wall I said the first thing that came to mind, "Ohh, look at that, they have Nad's for men now. That's fantastic!" They didn't take any notice of what I said, and it didn't seem like anyone else in the isle cared in the least bit either. But Tom was beside himself laughing as he hurried away from the scene down the isle. As we were driving out of the parking lot, analyzing the reasons for our failed game, Tom remembered that he knew her from the coffee shop just down the street from the house. Then he formulated a plan for me to meet with her, act as if Tom's house were my own and explain that Tom was just my sloppy flatmate. Of course the plan never went into motion, but from that moment it became a sort of tradition for Tom to ask me about my meeting with Freya whenever I'd see him. I'd walk into work in the morning, "So, Scott, did you see Freya at the coffee shop this morning?" I never so much as stepped a foot in that coffee shop, but often, before I could even respond, he would be leading into his next proposed strategy of getting us together. Every day it was something new, maybe it was using Cocoa, Tom's Dog, as a lure, or faking that I spoke very little English and asking her if she could show me around the city. By the end of my stay in Wellington, his plans became more desperate: "OK, Scott, what if I duct tape Freya to your door, will you at least talk to her then?"

That should give you a bit of an idea of the person Tom was, always aiming for a laugh and if he could work in some sexual innuendo, even better.

Part 3 to come soon...

Wellington - Part 1

It's been a while since I've updated the blog, a little over 3 months in fact. As I explained in the last post, my travels came to a bit of a halt in Wellington where I decided to stop and save up money before continuing on. In those 3 months I reached my goal of about $1500+NZ saved, but more importantly, I became more immersed in the Kiwi culture than ever before as I worked with, and became close friends with a handful of wonderful Wellitonians.

The whole point of stopping in Wellington was to make money. So, what did I do? I specialized as a full time Aquatic Ceramics Engineer. Those who fail to appreciate the intracacies and complexities of the postition might also know it as 'Dish Washing'. Alright, despite my best efforts, I don't think it's possible to portray kitchen hand work as glamorous or exciting. But, because of the raunchy, over the top humor everyone at Capitol shared, I actually enjoyed being in the kitchen most days.

My day to day life in the kitchen was filled with characters like 18 year old Tim. He was a constant source of laughter. Sometimes he would quote a great line from 'Family Guy' or 'Anchor Man', but more often he would unintentionally make you laugh by doing something stupid(like dropping a liter of the expensive orange zest), or getting caught in a rediculous lie (like saying "No, I didn't eat any of the chocolate!" when he clearly had it melted all over his teeth and lips). One day, as he was upstairs using the rotating blade when I heard a thump downstairs behind me. "Hey Scott, can you hand me that thing" he mumbled, pointing somewhere near the rubbish bin, obviously trying to be discreet about what he was saying so that the other chef, Amy, wouldn't hear him. "What thing, Tim? There's like 20 dishes, a bunch of boxes and other junk down here, what is it that you want?", I responded. "Uh, just that thing, it's right behind the rubbish bin," he said, still not stating what it was that he dropped. But I took a look anyways, and started cracking up to find an entire raw lamb rump sitting on the filthy floor behind the rubbish bin. I knew he'd get in trouble for it, but after dropping this expensive piece of meat and then being too lazy to pick it up on his own I couldn't resist the chance of making the situation more awkward. So I said plenty loud enough for Amy to hear, "Ohh, this lambs rump resting on the floor, is this what you wanted me to hand to you Tim?". Before he could respond, Amy was on him, "Seriously Tim, how did that meat even manage to get there? That's got to be at least 10 meters and down a flight of stairs from where you are. Are you just throwing the product now?"

Some other highlights in the kitchen would include 20 year old half Kiwi, half American, Ryan's sex stories. It was a common sight to see him demonstating one of his favorite positions, like 'The Spiderman' on the kitchen floor in his chef uniform. Or there were the shocking words out of the mouth of 33 year old Australian lesbian, Carla. It was common place to hear her commenting on the female clientelle, saying things like "I'd love to stick my face in those jugs and just shake my head like this" (then shaking her head vigorously). Or walking in from the bathroom, "Ouch, my poo poo felt like acid", and one time giving me an innocent smile before saying "You're so cute, if I weren't a lesbian I would have given you a blowjob by now." Then there was the hilarity of seeing mild mannered 32 year old Kiwi chef, Amy, respond to Carla's "I can't wait to fuck my girlfriend when I get back to Aus," with a sweet, almost motherly, "Oh, that's nice." Then there was head chef and part owner of Capitol, Tom, with his corny jokes and constant sexual innuendos. You might find him responding to someone saying "It's hot in here", with an "Oh, I'm sorry, I can step out of room if you like." Or simply throwing in Ned Flander-esque "diddly-oo's" at the end of his sentences. I'm convinced he would make a sensational host for some sort of childrens programming.

Without Phil the van, I had to find a place to live. For the first 2 weeks while I was in Wellington, I stayed in 'Downtown Backpackers'. I had a bunk bed in a 20 person room, the largest dorm room I've stayed in yet. The building, one of the oldest in the city (I believe built in the 20's), was originally a high end hotel in its hay-day. It really felt like stepping back in time as all the architecture and much of the paint is the same as the original. During these first couple weeks I had no money as I was getting few hours at the restaurant, and still waiting for the weeks pay to take effect. At my low point, I was negative $200US in my American account, negative $20 in my Kiwi account, and the hostel was completely booked for a night, forcing me to sneak a restless night of sleep on a couch in the TV / Lounge room before working a double shift the following day.

But, from there, living conditions could only improve. One day after work, Tom proposed renting out the lower half of his newly purchased home to me for a discounted rate while he fixed the place up. After shopping around a bit, I decided that Tom's offer of a 1 bedroom flat with a private kitchen, living room and bath couldn't be beat for $110NZ a week. On top of that, it was located in the highly sought after community of Hataitai and within easy walking distance of the city center and work. Originally, my friend Steve (18, Half Kiwi, half Canadian that grew up in Hong Kong), whom I met in the hostel moved in with me to cut costs and keep some company. Our set up was pretty basic, almost primal. A couple blow up mattresses, a rocking chair, and a cable-less TV on the floor comprised our furniture. However, neither of us really cared that much since it was just a place to sleep and watch movies on the laptop. With the rest of our time off, we were swimming down at the beach or cruising the waterfront strip in the last days of the southern hemisphere's summer.

While Auckland and Christchurch might have bigger party scenes than Wellington, the fact that the entire party-going population of Wellington is basically condensed to one street makes it seem as lively as Vegas on a Friday night. "Getting on the piss", or as we more simply know it, "drinking" is a staple to the Kiwi weekend life. Right up there with Fish and Chips takeaways. While I didn't partake every weekend, (in order to save money, and sometimes I simply had to work the next morning) there are plenty of great nights to look back on.

The Cuba Street festival might be one of my favorites. This festival only takes place once every 2 years and goes on over the course of 2 days. On the final evening of the festival I went out with Olivia, a waitress from work, as well as her sister and a couple of their friends. During the festival, all of Courtney Place (that single street I mentioned earlier) was closed down to accomodate the swarms of people and multiple live stages that were erected in the place of traffic and parked cars. In that single night, we participated in a Guinness Book of World Records attempt at the 'largest organized dance routine', drank free all night at a gin and tonic promotional booth in the middle of the street, watched a few of the top live bands of New Zealand, checked out a parade including bumping music, massive floats, and nude people in full body paint, and finally some well proportioned chick standing on the edge of a second story balcony as she danced and stripped to nothing but a pair of high heels.

Part 2 to come soon...