Rugby: The Heart and Soul of New Zealand?

So, as mentioned in my last post, I have now seen a rugby game in a country that calls the sport its lifeblood. I went and saw the local professional team called the Highlanders play a club called the Sharks on the 20th of March. The Sharks hail from Durban, South Africa, and both teams are currently cellar dwellers in the "Super 14", the biggest rugby league in the world, with teams from NZ, South Africa, and Australia. 

Thoughts on the game:

Gameday was rainy in Dunedin, but I had no doubt in my mind that the self proclaimed "toughness" of the kiwi spirit would not be dampened by the downpour, especially for something as important as a Super 14 game. I was wrong. The pre-game atmosphere reminded me more of a kids t-ball game than a professional sport (no tailgating folks), and there were probably only 3 or 4 thousand people at the game... 

Carisbrook, home of the Highlanders, is apparently called "the house of pain" because of its raucous atmosphere and the difficulty that visiting teams have winning there. Well, from my experience, the sound of rain hitting the empty seats might have been louder than the efforts of the Highlander faithful (check the picture below if you don't believe me). The home-field advantage was so poor in fact that the Highlanders were beaten handily by the Sharks, one of only two teams in the Super 14 that had a worse record prior to the game's kickoff. 

Overall Thoughts:

I was shocked at the disgustingly bad turnout and support that the local fans gave the Highlanders. Sure, the team isn't churning out wins. Yes, it is raining. Get over it. Bottom line = throw on a rain jacket, put a paper bag over your head and go support your team like a real fan. The only area that had any actual presence was the student section, and the three or so hundred kids that did turn out weren't nearly enough to make the stadium atmosphere exciting. 

It's not like these tickets are expensive either. For $25 NZ, I was able to get one of the better seats in the house. So for, lets say AT MOST $50 NZ, you could get a field-side seat in a covered area. Thats only $35 in real money, so there are no financial grounds for complaint. The Super 14 is like the NFL of rugby, so it is mind blowing to think that one of its teams can't even get a respectable crowd to one of only 7 or so home games a season. From what I've heard, this isn't just happening at Carisbrook either, it's like this at stadiums for all 4 of New Zealand's Super 14 teams. Australian and South African clubs are doing ok. 

Overall, I don't know what pride New Zealanders have, because it surely isn't what they claimed it to be. Carisbrook might be the "house of pain", but on March 20th, 2010 that pain was felt most by an American sports fanatic, expecting a taste of something exciting and different, only to have his hopes and dreams shattered. New Zealand, you have shown me that the people here are passionless and you do not deserve to call rugby "yours". Judging by what I've seen, I'd have to give that claim to South Africa because there were almost as many fans from Durban at the game as there were from Dunedin. Congratulations Kiwis, you fail. 

Now that I'm done venting, all I can really say is that NZ can still make it up to me. I will give the Highlanders another try at some point, but if the results are not significantly better than in my first outing, I will officially lose a lot of faith in New Zealanders as a people, and in New Zealand as a place. If you disagree with me or think I'm being overly harsh, all I can say is you had to be there, and you aren't me. 

Thanks everybody, sorry to sour the mood. I'll be back on in a few weeks with a post on the week long extravaganza that will be our Fall Break trip. It's going to be awesome, look for it. 

Jake

Paradise, Glenorchy (& Around Otago: vol. 1)

Hey everybody,

Ok, so this post is going to cover a trip from two weeks ago, accompanied by some random things that I have seen close to basecamp Dunedin since I've been here. I wasn't able to take a trip this past weekend because work seems to have caught up with me. It definitely seems like I will probably be having to take one of these catch up weekends every now and then.

Paradise, Glenorchy:
Paradise is probably one of the more difficult places to access in the entire country. It is about a 5 hour drive from Dunedin all told, but an hour and a half of that comes from the short stretch between Queenstown and and Paradise itself, which is only 65 km west. We set out on Friday, the 12th of March and drove to a town in Central Otago called Ranfurly with the intention of fishing. The weather was windy and rainy when we arrived though, so we made the decision to push all the way to Paradise. At about 6PM we finally made it to a campground near the Dart River, past Lake Wakatipu and Queenstown and very near our final destination. It was a cool spot, isolated along a stream with some fantastic views and dense beech forests.

Paradise is a place on the map, but it's not a town. No one lives there. It is more of a name for the area at the end of the road, as far west as you can get in a car on that part of the South Island. As far as locations go, it really doesn't get much better. In some ways, it is my favorite place I've visited thus far. There are tons of small streams, slightly blue and extremely clear, that flow year round from snow melt. The forest is beech, something I'm not used to, making it really unique.

Moss is everywhere in paradise. It climbs the trees, covers the ground, and lines the sides of rock faces that jut up out of the ground in certain areas. It is without a doubt the greenest place I have ever been, and it really surpassed all expectations since our trip was without any real intent as far as crossing something off the must-do list.

Required Lord of the Rings Nerd Section: 
From the above description, it should be fairly easy to figure out where Paradise fits into the tour de Peter Jackson sites that I've got going on here. Paradise itself was the site used for the filming of two sections in the Fellowship of the Ring; first as the woods of Lothlorien and next during the Amon Hen battle scene at the end of the film. The Dart River area we visited was also used in the Two Towers as the outskirts of Fangorn Forest. Finally, covering all three films in a single trip, a place called Greenstone Station was used in Return of the King as the Dunharrow camp. WOW... This stuff is everywhere, and believe me when I say, they really didn't need to edit things to make them look more impressive or otherworldly.
END.


On Sunday the 14th, we left Paradise after doing some slack-lining (essentially tight rope walking for those of you who have never heard of it), and headed to Queenstown. We were only there for a few hours, but I didn't care for it. It has a cool enough location, but the tourist feel and upper crust resort status of the town doesn't really do it for me. We ate lunch at a place called Fergburger, supposedly the best burger place in NZ. It was packed at an off hour, so I had high hopes. Overall, the burgers were good, but good burgers in America are better. Big Jud's is an example of what I'm talking about here, some of you will know exactly what I mean. After eating we pushed back to Dunedin and into the school life again. I will be going back to Queenstown to do some more outrageous, thrill-seeking stuff in the future, but overall, the tourists can keep Queenstown, I'll take Paradise.

Around Otago: vol. 1
This is going to be a short section. I'm not going to give trip reports or dates, just let you know of a few places that I've seen over the past month.

Moeraki Boulders: About an hour north of Dunedin along the coast. These are a collection of boulders, naturally molded into spherical shapes by the beating of the tide. Too touristy though.

Shag Point: An area with a lot of rock faces and sea cliffs. Fur seals, shags, and the yellow-eyed penguin (the rarest penguin in the world) hang out here. We didn't see any penguins.

Otago Peninsula: A few places here. At the very tip of the peninsula is Taiaroa head, an old fortress used as a defensive position guarding the Otago harbor. This is where the Royal Albatross colony nest, and though the picture doesn't really show it, the albatross are enormous, with 6+ foot wingspans. On the peninsula are also places called The Chasm and Lover's Leap. This is a really weird area, where you park the car, walk through an alley of dead trees that look cooler than any other trees I've ever seen in my life, emerge to sheep fields lining a cliff hundreds of feet above the ocean, and come across giant holes that sink from the cliff top to below sea level. We even walked across the land-bridge shown in the picture, but it was pretty sketchy. One thing of note here is that the day we were out on the peninsula was the day the earthquake hit Chile, so there was a lot of talk about a tsunami coming in. I saw flat water, no storm swells. Liars...

This past weekend I was also able to attend my first rugby game. That will be covered in a separate 'mini-post' eventually, because I have a lot to say.

Anyway, hope all is well and that everyone is enjoying 'March Madness'. I had Kansas taking it all, so naturally they lose to a vastly inferior team in a shocker. Awesome... I'll post here again soon regarding THE New Zealand sport and pride of the country.

Cheers!

Aoraki/ Mt. Cook

Kia Ora Everyone,

Well, the first week of class is in the books. It is early, but it appears that my "easy" semester might actually produce more work than I had anticipated, especially considering the fact that I plan to be gone/not doing schoolwork on weekends in order to see the country. It is looking like this might turn out to be a work hard/play hard sort of situation, which is fine by me. The good thing is that half of my classes focus on sports in business which, since you know me, is as interesting as it gets.

Last weekend was the first short trip of what I hope will fill as many weekends as possible while I am here. The destination was Mt. Cook, or Aoraki  ("cloud Piercer") in the Maori language. It is located in the heart of the Southern Alps, the country's most prominent mountain range. Mt. Cook is the tallest mountain in New Zealand, standing at 12,316 feet, and though plenty of mountains in Idaho and Colorado stand taller, I guarantee none are as large, and none as technical to climb. The mountain looks like something out of the Alps, dwarfing massive glaciers and dressed with huge cornices that frequently create avalanches due to the New Zealand weather patterns. It is also extremely windy.

The drive to Aoraki/ Mt. Cook National Park took about 4 hours, the first real test for our car... I suppose that maybe this would be a good time to introduce you to that car I mentioned wanting to find in the last post. After some looking, two friends and I found one that seemed to fit our needs. It is a 1992 Nissan Bluebird station wagon. It's a little rough around the edges, but judging by this trip, it should do just fine as long as it doesn't explode on us. I'm going to give it a (generous) 50/50 chance, not aided by the fact that it is a manual and we're driving on the other side of the road...

REQUIRED LORD OF THE RINGS NERD MOMENT: I apologize in advance. The drive took us through Twizel, a small town near the national park, and when we were picking up some last minute supplies at the general store, I saw some pictures at the cafe of the actors from the movies. The location was apparently their stay for most of the shooting of the Battle of Pelennor Fields scenes from the third film. I am starting to think that I will be running into this sort of thing often, which makes the inner geek in me extremely happy. END.

Our first night was spent at Lake Pukaki, just south of the mountains and what used to be the terminal moraine of the Tasman Glacier, the ice river credited with carving the valley sitting at Aoraki's foot. The years have seen it shrink just a little... The water here is tinged a crazy robin's egg blue, full of minerals from glacial runoff.

Saturday morning took us to the Hermitage, the departing point into the highest of the Southern Alps, and the home of the Sir Edmund Hillary Alpine Center. This was after all the man's training ground. From here, we left the car and began the climb up to the Mueller Hut. The hike was surprisingly grueling, climbing steep scrubland and turning into steeper scree-field. After gaining over 3,000 vertical feet in just under 2 miles, we made it to the hut. Exhausted, we set up camp on the edge of the cliff overlooking Mt. Cook. There was no way we were going to actually stay in the hut with the horde of other people who had made the trek. Not to mention the hut runs $30 a night, whereas camping is free. This made for a bad night of sleep on pure rock, but it was the overall coolest campsite of my life in terms of scenery.  Avalanches routinely thundered down the mountain faces not far from us, dumping tons of snow onto the glaciers lower in the valley. The scale of it all was absolutely incredible.

 After resting for a few hours, it was agreed that it was mandatory to climb up and tag the summit of Mt. Ollivier, the first summit Sir Edmund Hillary himself ever bagged. Really, really cool thing to have done when I think about it now. We also found edelweiss, known as the warrior's flower. It is an extremely rare plant that only grows in alpine zones, mainly the Alps. Saturday night provided by far the best sky I have seen thus far in NZ as well. The Milky Way was bright, arching across the sky through upside down Orion, the Southern Cross, and other constellations. Sitting there looking at the sky, hearing the occasional roar of an avalanche, does it get any better? On Sunday we got up before sunrise and watched the dawn creep over Mt. Cook, then packed up, climbed down to the car (which was actually worse than the hike up in my opinion) and drove back to Dunedin. I am still really tired, a little sore, and looking forward to whatever comes my way next.

Hope all is well, and I will post again in a few weeks, hopefully sharing two trips!
Cheers!