Christina got a little Route-burn

The Routeburn track is a three day alpine hike which has become the surrogate for those (us) who were not smart enough to book the Milford track (NZ's iconic walk) months in advance. That being said, 9/10 Kiwis agree that the Routeburn track is a much better hike than Milford. Milford is sort of like wanting to meet Michael Jackson. You're super excited to meet the "King of Pop" and shake is jewel encrusted white glove. But when you get up close, you see that his face has more plastic on it than a Tonka truck. Not so cool.

The views from this hike were spectacular, even by my(Chris) standards. The first day was flat and nothing to write home about. The second day, however, was great, despite Christina's persistent pee pee face. Christina thinks that hiking should be like walking through an English tea garden in a temperature-controlled environment where the sporadic flying insect or drop of moisture is taken care of by a team of penguin-suited yes-men. --Ahem...Christina here and I have to interject. I had a "pee pee" face on for the first half of the day because of the 2000 ft climb up a river, in the sleet! I was cold and wet and my pants got soaked. I swear I was going to get hypothermia! There, now you know the REAL story. ---(the sun just happened to come out right when this picture was being taken, then it went away)

We had steady and gradual climb through areas that were reminiscent of Scotland - not only because of the landscape but because of the weather. We had a continual smattering of rain and wind through fields of tussock and greenstone up to a saddle joining two peaks.

After a quick respite in the hiker's hut, we headed down the Hollyford face to our next night's rest.

The last day was the most rewarding, not only because the sun had cleared away the clouds, but because it had cleared away the cold memories of the prior day's adventures. At times it was difficult to discern the sun's golden rays from Christina's beautiful face. We had a fantastic early morning hike, walking under waterfalls, stealing views of the mountain tops, and discussing my movie ideas until we reached the trailhead where we caught a bus to the Milford sound.

My scared little monkey

You would have thought that we were getting ready to bungee jump off of the highest bridge...but no, Chris was only driving for the first (and last) time in New Zealand. He was so freaked out that he felt nauseous and perspirated profusely. The sad thing was, we were only driving for less than 10km. Needless to say, he made me drive back. Funny thing, I loved it!

Ice Ice Baby

From a distance, the Franz Josef Glacier looks like a frozen river flowing through the valley. This glacier has carved its way through the rainforest and unlike most glaciers, it is advancing. The glacier is nestled between the coast and the Southern Alps and is easily accessible by foot.

Along with our guide and a handful of others, we climbed up the glacier and wound our way through crevasses, some less than 2 feet wide and more than 20 feet deep. The labyrinth of crevasses was much like walking in between frozen waves.

Crayola doesn't come close to mimicking the true color of ice blue, a color that glows from the towering blocks of ice.

Possum, your end is the road!

There are about 70 million possums in New Zealand (about 20 per person) and the locals are not a fan of these pests. A favorite pastime is to steer your car towards the possum and create roadkill.

Abel Tasman Coastal Track

In 1642 Abel Tasman, a Dutch explorer, landed at the northern beachheads of the south island and didn't even get out of his boat (since 4 of his men were killed by Maori warriors). But that didn't stop the Kiwis from naming a national park after him. The 3500 acre park runs along the North coast and gives way to stunning views of the coastline (I say stunning, Chris wasn't all that impressed). Whereas many tourists choose to take a water taxi and walk a small portion of the track, we opted to walk for 3 days to cover more ground. During the second day we both developed blisters, but Chris initially refused to dole out the carefully-rationed blister bandaids "until it's bleeding". I whined and I won.

The well worn path takes you from bay to bay, bringing you across beaches and through esturaries. That may sound romantic to some of you, but having a heavy pack makes it less like a moonlight stroll with your honey and more like a physical fitness test in fifth grade gym class. The coolest part of the trip was figuring out when to cross the flooding inlets due to high tides. Our days had to be timed just right to avoid wading through waist-deep water. Occassionally we had to remove our shoes, hike up our pants and work our way through the shallowest areas to get to our destination.

Those damn flies

You can spot a victim several feet away. In fact, everyone falls prey to the sandfly. But don't be deceived by the name, they are not restricted to the sand, they are EVERYWHERE!!!!!!!!! And you would think that we would have learned our lesson by now (since we've been here for three weeks) and would slather ourselves in DEET each day before venturing out. But no, we are covered in bites. And the itch. Oh, do those bites itch!!! I recall standing in CVS (drug store) before leaving the states, staring at the anti-itch creams, convincing myself I wouldn't need it. And still, several bites later (now gaping wounds from all of my itching), I am refusing to shell out the four bucks.

Tongariro

Tongariro Crossing is the single most popular day trip in NZ attracting over 30,000 trampers a year. Mt Tongariro and Mt. Ngauruhoe are two active Volcanos that have transformed the surrounding bucolic landscape into a pyroclastic wasteland. It also happens to go between two moutains used in the filming of The Lord of the Rings, Mt. Doom and Mordor. (By the way, the Kiwis are sucking every ounce of fame from those movies. There hasn't been a day where we haven't had someone say "And this is where Peter Jackson.....") We started the trek at 8:30 a.m. with ~300 other people up a relatively steep climb of 2400 ft to the top of the South crater.

From there we hiked across a ridgeline to the thermically-active Red Crater.

Volcanic gases spew from cracks in the lava encrusted walls carrying the distinct aroma of sulfur and brimstone.
A quick drop in elevation takes you to the Emerald lakes whose color derives from minerals flowing from the volcanic effluent. The sight was amazing. But we quickly moved on because of the chilling winds. We made our way across a snow field to start our descent, mostly through Okahukura bush. The crossing was 17km in length and took us 6.5 hours to complete. Needless to say we were pretty tired that evening.

Ruapoopoo

We got held up in Taupo waiting for the weather to clear for the Tongariro Crossing and decided to do some Wwoofing to pass the time (and save some $$). So we made our way to Ohakune, a sleepy town under the shadow of Mt. Doom. Well, it certainly wasn't paradise (like our last Wwoofing gig). To summarize: rusty water, boiled cabbage and a mildew infested camper van. We were two of eight people working there, which made the experience somewhat tolerable. There were two perks: free horse trekking, which I (Christina) took advantage of...but if I never get on a horse again, I'll be just fine. And Goldie, the dog. Goldie LOVED us and will no doubt cry himself to sleep for the next couple of nights now that we are gone.

It's a small world....

...but I wouldn't want to paint it. Three days after we arrived we were on a ferry taking us back from an island near Auckland where I(Chris) ran into a girl who I had a beer with in Berkeley ~four years ago. She was an editor for a start-up publicly accessible journal called PLoS (Public Library of Science). I was trying to fast-track one of my papers through the review process.

1.5 weeks later I met these guys on a bus from Auckland down south. Steve (the guy on the left) literally lives three blocks from my house. He used to pick up my next door

neighbor for school every morning. We all went to the same junior high and high schools (~10 yrs apart) and even had some of the same teachers. Of course the teachers we shared are now pretty much on their death-beds. Chad, on the right, has a mom who works at the same hosptial my mom works at. I wonder who I'll run into next?

Green Glowing Poo

Wet suit? -check
Goofy white plastic boots? - check
Oversized red plastic helmet with LED light?- check
Making sure not to drink too much coffee before getting into all this stuff for 5 hours?-Whoops.
Now we're ready to go caving in Waitomo (world famous for it's glow worm caves)!
We started off with a 30 meter rappel into the mouth of the cave. From there we took a ride on a zip line through the pitch black to the underground Milky Way created by the glow worms. Our adventure had only just begun. We plunged about 25 feet into the 11 C water with our inner tubes and started rafting our way through the caves (hence the wet suits). The sight was amazing! Thousands of green glowing worm butts lit our way. After a while we ditched our tubes and spelunked through the rest of the massive underground flooded corridors. We winded our way through tight squeezes, and up and down waterfalls fending off eels until we saw our first rays of sunlight piercing through the abject blackness.