New Zealand as Jake saw it: Awards

Hey Everyone,

As I mentioned, I have one last post here, this time with a bunch of random awards that I have decided to give out after I have gone and seen as much as possible over the past 5 months. These cover a wide variety of topics, and are my personal opinion, but might give you some direction if you are ever thinking of coming to New Zealand.

• Most Worthwhile Tourist Trap: With little hesitation, I give this award to Milford Sound, a place swarming with tourists, but with some of the most beautiful scenery imaginable. You really have to be there to see it and understand. An honorable mention here is Mt. Cook. 

• Tourist Trap to Avoid: Also with little hesitation, this one goes out to the Moeraki Boulders. It is incredibly surprising these get bombarded by tourists, given that they are just some boulders. Yeah, the ocean has made them pretty close to spherical, cool.... You only need about three seconds with these to know what they are all about and want to move on. This one is extremely popular with the Asian tour buses. 

• Best City: Out of all the cities I visited in New Zealand, Nelson was the most appealing. It is hard to describe exactly why, but it felt the most livable. 

• Best Town: Oban. This place is awesome. Tucked into a protected bay on the wilderness sanctuary of Stewart Island, it is the only place people live on the whole island, and only 400 people live there year round. Really cool atmosphere. 

• Most Overrated Place: This one has to go to Queenstown. Yeah, it was pretty cool, but is way too touristy, and is the kind of place where people go to act like they enjoy the outdoors, when in fact, they need five star accommodation to keep from having a nervous breakdown. I hate that.

• Best Place That Nobody Has Heard of: This one was easy for me, going to the Golden Bay area of Takaka, extending past Onekaka to the Farewell Spit. It has a frontier feel, lacks tourists, and is close to amazing scenery at the tip of the South Island. 

• Pleasant Surprise: After seeing Queenstown for what it is, I wasn't sure how I'd feel about Wanaka, another mountain town nearby. This town is great though, feeling far less upper crust and having some great scenery. Queenstown, you've got nothing on Wanaka. 

• Best Place to Get Some Food: This is another easy one for me, going to the Mussel Inn in Golden Bay. The place is a tucked away log cabin that is surrounded by thick forest, and has an excellent outdoor area that is covered by trees, complete with fire pits and an outdoor stage for live music. Fittingly, the mussels here are amazing, and the place is also known for its quirky microbrews. 

• Felt Most Like Home: The place that felt the most like home to me was the Marlborough Region; wine country. The vineyards make it very different than Boise, but the landscape and raw hills that shoot up from the valley throw shadows like the meandering golden foothills of Boise. A slice of home for sure. 

• Felt Most Like Middle Earth: I had to do this one, especially given the fact that I made the above category. This was a tough call, with a lot of places feeling truly like they were taken from the story, some even more so like the imagery from the books than the movies, which is saying something. New Zealand truly is Middle Earth. This award goes out to Paradise, Glenorchy, for its moss carpeted floors, misty beech forests, crystal clear streams and ethereal stillness. Still surprised I didn't see an elf or two. 

• Biggest Letdown: Definitely Highlanders Rugby, for the reasons mentioned in my post about said club. The sting has been alleviated by the epic All Blacks match though. 

• Biggest Regret: This one hurts a little, but I never got to Doubtful Sound. Flooding and more got in the way of the planned trip, and I never had another chance. This is one very good reason to come back to New Zealand because it is supposed to be even better than Milford. An honorable mention here is not getting to spend more than a week on the North Island. It still has a lot to offer. 
• Most Glad I Did: The Ten Day Trip Around the South Island. This was a long trip over my fall break, and gave me the opportunity to see more things than any other trip. It was surely the only way I ever would have reached the northern end of the island as well.
• Best Place: As far as places go, the alpine crossing on the Routeburn Track is the best, but I'm awarding this to the entire track because it's just so awesome. 

• Thing New Zealand Needs Most: New Zealand is a bird lovers paradise, but its lack of animal life is a bit disturbing for me personally. Birds are cool, don't get me wrong, but I want something awesome. Basically, the introduction of a mammal that won't wreck the sheep population or ruin bird life like the possum is currently doing. Vote goes to Bears, they are awesome. 
• Stupidest "Kiwi-ism": Really tough category, there are just so many choices. The Kiwi accent itself doesn't even pronounce almost half of all letters in words, which is enough to make one cringe, but as far as bonafide "kiwi-isms" are concerned, it is a tie between the use of "as" (example: "that game last night was wicked as") and the phrase "feed" (example: "I just had a mean feed"). The worst is when these are combined, which they commonly are (example: "Ah broo, that game last night was wicked as, heyy? Had a mean feed with my mates and watched. A sausage sizzle with heaps of food and some beers in the chilly bin. It was sweet as broo."). No, that isn't a stretch. As funny as it is, Kiwis talk like that. 
• Biggest Mystery: This one is close to a tie, but the award has to go out to wondering what February 10th, 2010 would have been like. I'll never know, because the international dateline stole it from me. I could have had something awesome happen that day, but it is not to be. In exchange, I will get two June 21st's, but I want February 10th, too. A close second is the mystery behind the thought process that goes into Kiwi guys' choice of hair styles. Rat tails and mullets, bleached in the back. Cool guys, you look like idiots. 
• Biggest Lesson Learned: My biggest lesson learned is that New Zealand is not my paradise. As great as it is, the best places in New Zealand don't fulfill the dreams I had of finding my perfect place in the world. The beauty absolutely lives up to expectations, but the small size and popularity means that you cannot experience these without other people, which is a massive, massive bummer. In reality, there is no perfect place, but still, I can't really imagine living here full time, which is a bit of a surprise. 

That does it for my random and sometimes pointless list of post-travel awards. This also marks the end of my posting for good this time, thanks for reading and I hope everyone has enjoyed.

Jake Martin

All Blacks Rugby: The Heart and Soul of New Zealand

Hello for the last time (kind of),

Three months ago today I attended my first rugby match. For a sports fanatic like me, being in New Zealand, the center of the rugby universe, made the occasion special and the expectations high. Most of you will remember my post on the Highlanders game and my strong feelings regarding the Otago fans in relation to their team. The Highlanders finished the season with 19 points, bad enough for 12th out of 14 teams. With this in mind, I suppose it isn't out of the ordinary for people to be cutting off the reflected failures of their team by distancing themselves from it. My expectations were simply too high, and I was viewing the entire thing through a lens that made it extremely difficult to be objective. Support is really no different in the states, and success has a lot to do with turnout anywhere. That is the story of the Highlanders.

The All Blacks are, on the other hand, a completely different story. This is the national team for New Zealand, and is undoubtedly the most recognizable brand in world rugby. The All Blacks haka alone is a thing of legend, and countless other sports teams have tried to copy the Maori war dance and paste it into their own pre game rituals, (I'm looking at you, University of Hawaii football). I knew prior to coming to New Zealand that seeing an All Blacks game was a necessity, and game location and ticket price would not be a factor in my attending a game.

It just so happens that I was lucky enough to be able to see an All Blacks game right here in Dunedin, immediately following my last final exam, and only two days prior to leaving for home. The match was to be played at Carisbrook ("the house of pain"), the stadium I so harshly criticized after my first game, making my second helping of rugby a promising opportunity to witness and judge the best show in Aotearoa. On top of representing the last big thing that I was going to be doing in New Zealand, this All Blacks game wasn't just an All Blacks game, it was the last ever match to be played at Carisbrook. The stadium is only about 8 months from giving way to the brand new Forsyth Barr Stadium, being built right next to my house for the upcoming Rugby World Cup to be hosted in 2011.

Feelings in and around Dunedin are strong regarding the new stadium, with its modern design, roof, and different location. Many feel it is taking away from what makes rugby in Otago so special, eliminating the influence of the elements, and removing the charm that Carisbrook has as one of, if not the most important centers of rugby culture in the world. The game, being played against Wales, was a four month buildup for me, with promotion and excitement for the "Last Test at the Brook" slowly growing in momentum as June 19th grew closer.

Game day finally rolled around and I knew that this was going to be a much, much different experience than that of the Highlanders. The entire city had a sort of calm about it all day, the streets were eerily empty, and the typical drone of the nearby industrial sector and clattering of construction on the new stadium were silenced. No one was there to work. It was the calm before the storm. As night began to fall the silence gave way to cheering and song throughout the city, streets were shut down for foot traffic and the entire downtown became a fan center, complete with jumbo-tron broadcasts of the match. Carisbrook itself was not the same place I remember from before. Loaded to the rafters by an hour to kickoff, the 30,000 person stadium packed more of a punch than its meager capacity would suggest.

The teams took the field at fifteen minutes to kickoff and the anthems were played. These were remarkable in their own right, as two English speaking nations sang anthems in very different tongues, first with the Welsh anthem, followed by the Maori of New Zealand's. After this, the teams gathered on their respective sides, and, for the first time all night, the crowd began to calm. The Welsh lined up at midfield, arm in arm, and the All Blacks created a grouped formation, walking slowly up to the Welsh players. By now the crowd was completely silent. After advancing to within ten feet of the opposition a cry rang out from one of the players, and the other 14 stopped in their tracks. The haka was on. It was one of the more remarkable things I have ever seen, and though I have seen the All Blacks pre game ritual before, being there for the experience yields a much different feeling. No one else should be able to do this.

Following the haka the game bagan, and after a tight first half, the All Blacks exploded, showing why they are the number 1 ranked team in the world, dominating the Welsh with vastly superior speed, conditioning, and more tightly knit physical play that offered up opportunity after opportunity. The passing was crisp, the tackles all solid, and the depth of the team was too much for  the Welsh. This raises another remarkable aspect of the All Blacks. New Zealand only has 4 million people, and the talent they put on the pitch clearly shows that the country has the an incredibly talented base given its small size. When all was said and done, the All Blacks defeated the 8th ranked Welsh in a 42-9 blowout, keeping true to the "house of pain" legacy. It was a fitting and inspired way to send Carisbrook off after 127 years. The game was followed by a show with bagpipes, a native Maori performance, and a helicopter landing, where a piece of the pitch was dug up from midfield, loaded on to the helicopter, and flown to Forsyth Barr Stadium in a shower of fireworks. It was a powerful and symbolic changing of the guard, linking the heritage of New Zealand to the modern movement of sports, and was fairly emotional, even for someone who had no previous personal connection to the stadium or team.

For everything the Highlanders game wasn't, the All Blacks experience was. It was exciting, top quality sport, a good glimpse into a peoples' identity through sport, and a poetic end to my life in New Zealand. Overall, the experience at the game was remarkable, made up for my previous complaints of Kiwi culture, and provided a far more personal and emotional end to my trip than I would have ever imagined. The past  five months have been very strange, with a constant balancing act between school and travel, greater independence and solitude than I have ever had, and many lessons learned. I have immensely enjoyed my stay here, but New Zealand is nowhere near perfect, at least for me. I am looking forward to getting back home to the states in 2 days, and the only thing that I can really say with certainty at this stage is that I hope and plan to come back here in the future, as New Zealand has become a part of me, and will always hold a special place in my heart.

I want to thank all of you who have been following my blog this semester, and I have learned along the way that there are many more than I even anticipated. I hope this has been something that has provided you with a somewhat effective look into my travels over the past 5 months, and that my pictures and stories may inspire you to one day come to NZ and experience just what it has to offer, it will not let you down. New Zealand is called "the youngest country in the world" because of its late exploration and settlement, but I think it is also because of its immense variety of things to do, the genuineness of its people, and its unparalleled beauty, sense of scale, and wonder. I leave feeling both full of experiences and empty, clean and refreshed, ready to turn the page and begin life again.  Thanks again for following my postings, I wish you all the best.

Cheers,
Jake Martin

I am going to post one more time about this trip, and it will not provide final thoughts or anything, as I believe I have let it all out here. The post will instead be very different, with my own personal awards covering a variety of kiwi subjects that I have been adding to over the semester. Look for it soon and enjoy. That will definitely be my last post, but this marks my last official thoughts and feelings in real time. 

Around Otago, Vol 2. & Routeburn Panoramas

Hey everybody,
Like I mentioned earlier, I am going to be posting about some of the things that I have been doing around casa Dunedin over the past few months. This will follow a format similar to that of the first post like this.

Before I get into all of that however, I just got some really awesome panorama pictures from my trip on the Routeburn a couple of weeks ago. I'll post them here to give you all an even better look at what it was like. The first two pictures here have problems in thumbnail version, so be sure to click in for the full panorama.

Routeburn Panoramas:

This first one is from Harris Lake, near the top of Harris saddle at the highest point of the hike.

This next picture is from the opposite side of Harris Saddle, looking south towards the Darren Range, that runs to the Tasman Sea and the fiords. 

This one is another view of the Darren's, looking southeast.

Next is a look at Lake Mackenzie from the side trip up Conical Hill from Harris Saddle.

Finally, this shot is from the top of Conical Hill, above Harris Saddle and looking out over the Southern Alps.

Around Otago: vol. 2

Tunnel Beach: Tunnel Beach is pretty much in Dunedin proper, but despite this lack of remoteness, it is still fairly cool. The Pacific Ocean has carved out an amazing land formation at the site, which gives the beach its name. 

Golf at Chisholm Links: This is a pretty cool golf course in Dunedin, very near tunnel beach. It runs along some great coastline, and the green fees were cheap enough that I could have, if I had enough time, played there often. We ended up finishing 18 in the midst of a great sunset too. I was surprisingly playing bogey golf that day as well, despite never really playing the sport. This is a hobby I could get used to. 

Mt. Cargill and the Organ Pipes: The highest point in Dunedin, this is something that you really need to do if you spend a significant amount of time in the city. There really isn't anything special about Mt. Cargill, but the Organ Pipes are crazy, hexagonal rock formations that jut up from the earth and stick jaggedly into the sky. These were what made the day trip worthwhile. As a side note, on the way back I visited Baldwin st., the steepest street in the world, with a 35% grade. 

Sandfly Bay: A horrible name for a cool place. Out on the Otago Peninsula, this is one of the best places to see blue penguin without the crowds, because it is a half hour hike to reach the ocean's edge. We were lucky enough to see quite a few penguin coming in from fishing for the night, and though the picture doesn't show it well, trust me, its a penguin. In the wild. No lie. 

Alright, thanks everyone. I have one week of class left, and then finals. Our car just failed the warrant-of-fitness test, and we can't re-register the car to continue driving without the warrant. So it seems like this might be the end of the Bluebird, and the end of my unconstrained travels in Aotearoa. I am not sure when I will get out of town next, but I will be looking to do something early in the dead-week prior to final exams. Less than 4 weeks until my repatriation now, which feels nice. Check back in a couple of weeks for at least one more post.

Cheers,

Jake 

The Routeburn Track

Hey everybody,

Sorry it has taken me so long to get another post out. School has been crazy lately, and I just finished the second of two, 25 page papers due in the last week... I've been busy. The computer situation didn't help either, but all seems to be ironed out and back to normal, so it's time for a new entry.

This past weekend was the first chance I've had to get out in a while, and I wasn't about to waste it, so my car-mates and I headed past Queenstown to the trailhead of the Routeburn Track this past Friday, the 14th of May.

A little history lesson on the Routeburn to give you all an understanding of what this trip was about... The Routeburn Track was the first thing I saw about New Zealand, in a magazine article about ten years ago. It looked unbelievable, and really sparked my desire to come to NZ. In short, the Routeburn is, in many ways, THE reason why I'm here today. It's the trip that started it all.

With these sort of expectations and all my years of waiting and imagining the views and hiking, I was only setting myself up for disappointment when it came time to actually tackle the trek, right?

Wrong. Very, very wrong. This is the first time I have actually been overwhelmed in New Zealand. It was especially powerful because of the fact that I did have such high hopes for the trip, and yet it still managed to blow me away. There are really no words to describe the trip, what I saw, what I felt, and what I still feel, and the pictures I will post here do not even come close to doing it justice. With this in mind, I'm not even going to try to tell you how awesome it is, because I simply can't. Instead, I'm posting some of my favorite pictures and I'll tell you about the track itself, and how we hiked it.

The Routeburn is a 32 kilometer track running from just outside of Glenorchy to The Divide, in between Te Anau and Milford Sound. The track is a "Great Walk", meaning it gets a ton of traffic and operates on a reservation system during the high season. This is why I  have waited so long to hike it, and it turned out to be a good decision because the trail was almost empty and we didn't have to sign in beforehand. Here is a map of the Routeburn. It's a little hard to read, but it's the best I could do.

Day 1 was Saturday, and took us from the Routeburn trailhead on the Glenorchy side of the track, up to Routeburn falls, and all the way up and over the alpine crossing at a place called Harris Saddle, finally descending to Lake Mackenzie that night, totaling about 20 kilometers and 8 hours of hiking. This is a long day given the elevation gain and loss involved, and at the end, I slept from 6:30 that evening to 8 the next morning.

Day 2 took us back up from Lake Mackenzie to the high alpine area of Harris Saddle once again. We couldn't hike the trail as a straight shot because we had to get back to our car on the Glenorchy side of the mountains. This gave us a chance to slow down and do a side trip to Conical Hill, up from harris saddle, where views of mountains stretched to the fiords and Tasman sea. We ended up hiking down from the alpine zone, past the Routeburn Falls and down to the Routeburn Flats for the second night.

Day 3 was a short hike back to the car, and we were able to make our way back to Dunedin through Queenstown, stopping for burgers and visiting Arrowtown, a small gold-rush town in the mountains where the fall colors apparently reach their best in the country. I would have to agree. We arrived back in Dunedin around 6PM on Monday.

Getting to hike the Routeburn (basically twice) has been the highlight of my trip, and I really doubt it will be surpassed. I'm down to a month left in New Zealand now, and classes end in two weeks. I should have some time to travel before finals, perhaps finally getting down to Doubtful Sound. I also have an All Blacks game to look forward to. I can't wait to get home though.

Alright, thanks everybody, I will be making another post relatively soon covering some of the other things I have done in and around Dunedin, as I've spent so much time here lately.

Jake