The Catlins

The weekend started by playing golf on Thursday and Friday. After procrastinating all week on weekend planning we finally decided roughly on a trip to the Catlins, a region covering the southeast corner of the South Island between Invercargill and Dunedin. Heather, Rob, Xander, and I left on Friday morning and drove straight to Invercargill (about a 2 and a half to three hour drive). We had lunch at Hell Pizza and went to some outdoor type stores. We found a really cheap portable stove that we’ll need when we’re doing all our hiking later in the semester. After leaving Invercargill we went down to Bluff and checked out the international signpost that stands near the second most southern point on the South Island. According to the sign New York is 15,008 km away from that point. The furthest city on the sign is London at 18,958 km. We took a little trail out to the actual point and back. After that we headed on the southern scenic route- some pretty winding, shady roads. We saw a lot of sheep- a few on the road itself. We stopped at Waipapa Point and went down to a beach near the lighthouse, where we saw a fur seal rolling around in the sand. We walked around on rocks and saw tide pools and lots of washed up, smelly seaweeds. We headed next to Curino Bay, where we decided to spend the night. We found the backpacker’s house right on the beach that one of our guidebooks recommended. Since the “town” of Curino Bay, maybe only consists of 100 people we drove 20 kms to Waikawa to a dairy where we bought groceries for snacking and breakfast the next day as well as some fish and chips for the nights meal. We drove back to Curino Bay and checked into our accommodation (By checking in I mean walking into the open beach house and calling to owners to tell them we’re staying there). There is a cat (Lilly) that pretty much lives at/around the house and hung out with us all night. That was pretty cool. Since it was dark by the time we actually got into the house we couldn’t really enjoy the beach that evening. We sat around our comfortable little house and played scrabble and golf the card game. Eventually we went to bed after standing around the world map in the bedroom discussing other sweet places we’d like to go for a while.

Sunday we all woke up early and watched the sunrise on the beach. It was perfect since the beach faces east and we could see it come up over the water and the hills on the other side of the bay. We were out on the beach for probably a half hour watching the whole thing. Then we made breakfast- egg and cheese sandwiches… delicious. We cleaned up and packed up and then made our way up the road to pay the owners of the place. It was only $22 per person for this great house all to ourselves. Amazing. Our first tourist activity of the day was to visit the Petrified Forest in Curino Bay. That was really cool- lots of tide pools and fossilized tree stumps and fallen tree trunks. We headed back on the southern scenic route and hit a bunch of points of interest along the south coast, slowly making our way back towards Dunedin. We took a 30-minute forest walk up to the McLean Falls, which turned out to be very cool (the highest part is 22 m). Also we stopped at another beach with sea lions and seals and went out to Nugget Point, where there is a lighthouse out on the small point overlooking small islets. They’re basically sedimentary rock formations pushed up vertically by tectonic activity- pretty cool looking. To get to most of these places we had to take sketchy dirt roads off of the main route, although they were very well maintained despite their winding, narrow nature. Eventually we made it back to Dunedin and rested since it was a fairly long day. Shayla, one of my Kiwi flatmates, made chicken and beef sushi. It’s cooked meat but then everything else is like sushi- I claim it’s not really sushi, however, it was tasty.

This is the last week of class before we go on our semester break. My last day of class this week is the 23rd, although I’m not going to class that day so it’s really the 22nd- the same day as the first day of class at the ole U of I. Wacky. I’m going up the west coast with Heather, Rob, and Xander and ending up at the Abel Tasman national park to do hiking and kayaking with the Arcadia group. It should be glorious. I hope everyone at school has a good first week and fun at quad day, etc. I know I’ll be having a good time on the epic journey that is the west coast. And if I’m lucky we won’t even have to go through the mines of Moria.

Dunedin Dubauchery and Wanaka

I didn't get to posting about the weekend until now mostly due to laziness. I bought a copy of Lord of the Rings, all 3 volumes in one book, on Monday and I've been spending a lot of time reading that this week instead of tidying up my room, unpacking my backpack from the weekend, or doing school work. But anyway, this post is mostly about the weekend. Thursday was my flatmate Rob's birthday so after he, Xander, and I played a round of golf (my first try time playing golf) we had a pretty nice dinner prepared by our flatmate Shayla. Rob's parents had a birthday cake delivered to the flat from a local bakery. That was pretty delicious. After awhile, Xander, Rob, and I went to the Dunedin Casino. We spent quite a long time there playing blackjack and being advised in the ways of the game by 3 older Kiwi brothers. A good time was had by all- Xander broke even, Rob won $40, and I went up $95. Glorious.
Friday was fairly uneventful since we couldn't start our weekend trip due to overbooking at our lodging (Heather's flatmate Scott has a vacation house in Wanaka that we were going to be staying at, but lots of people were already there). So Heather, Rob, and I headed up to Wanaka at 7am Saturday morning. About an hour out it started raining, which kind of cancelled our plans of going to watch the New Zealand Snowboarding Open. We did see an amazing rainbow- the largest I've ever seen. It made a complete arch from one size of the horizon to the other, which was pretty epic. In Wanaka we got some food at the grocery store since the power was fluctuating in and out in town and we didn't know how dependable the restaurants would be in such a condition. Also we wanted to eat on the cheap. We drove to the rock climbing gym and ate in the car in the parking lot. Heather and I did the rock climbing and Rob belayed for us since he couldn't climb due to a previous shoulder injury. That was a lot of fun. Then we walked around downtown Wanaka, which is real small but since it's a ski resort town, there are lots of shops and restaurants. We probably went to at least 5 almost identical ski/outdoor apparel stores and purchased nothing. We ate at the Speight’s Alehouse, which was really good. Then we hung out at an Irish pub for a little while. We eventually made our way to Scott's house and enjoyed the ensuing party. Lots of the other international kids I know (sadly mostly Americans) were at the house- if not there for the night, at least partying and staying elsewhere. So it got pretty big. Good times.
Sunday morning everyone got up early and had breakfast and cleaned up the house, which actually wasn't in too bad of shape. Then most of us went up to "Snow Park" for the Burton Open, the New Zealand snowboarding open. We watched a lot of the half pipe competition and wandered around awhile. I took a lot of pictures, however, I really needed a telephoto lens to get better images since I couldn't get up close to shoot any of the snowboarding. But, it was fun non the less. After that Heather, Rob and I added two people to our return journey- Mike and Greg, two other international students from Otago. One is from Hungary and the other another American. We ate lunch on lake Wanaka and then headed back to Dunedin. It was a good trip.
This week has been fairly low key- only 2 weeks until the semester break. My last day of class before break is August 23, which is the day after class starts back at the ole U of I. Haha suckers. Anyway, I'll be doing a lot of planning for that in the days to come- I'll be heading up the West Coast with the other owners of the car. It should be delightful.

Silver Peaks Backpacking

On Friday Xander, Rob, Heather, Julie, and I set out of the Silver Peaks trail heading to the Jubilee Hut, where we'd be spending the night. The trailhead was about 20 minutes north of Dunedin. We parked Pam, our car, on the dirt road that you get to the trail from. It was about a 3 and a half hour hike to the hut. It was a really varied track- we walked through part of a forest, across tall grasslands, across ridgelines, and up and down almost vertical cliff faces. On the way there though the weather was beautiful and you could see clearly for a long way. We got to the hut just before dark; would have been real bad if we'd left even 15 minutes later. The trail was almost unrecognizable in some parts and finding the hut took a bit of searching first. But, we got there just in time. Two guys Xander knows from his study abroad program, Ross and Neil, were already there- they'd arrived about an hour earlier. Xander had dropped them off at the trailhead earlier in the day. The hut was really nice- almost brand new, a table, about 10 mattresses, and some shelf space. There was a rainwater collection tank outside where you could get water right from the porch. The sign said it was good to drink so I drank lots of it. There was also a portable toilet a few meters away from the hut. We stayed up for awhile eating and drinking the boxed wine and a few beers we'd brought with. On an interesting note, it turns out that our friend Julie is the 2nd ranked women’s tri-athlete in the world. That's pretty crazy.
On Saturday morning we got up early and had breakfast, packed up, and cleaned the hut out. We hiked back up the ridiculous first uphill and continued on pretty rapidly. Unlike Friday’s nice weather, Saturday was cold, windy, and foggy so we headed back to the car quickly. It was a really cool hike- it had some pretty intense parts where the trail was basically the same as the rest of the bush. Good stuff.
The rest of the weekend was uneventful- sitting around doing homework for once, etc.