New Zealand - Part 2

Yes, I’ve finally returned to finished writing about New Zealand. It’s just been so busy traveling around that I haven’t had time to sit down and do it. Oh well, here we are now. So the last I wrote, I was in Queenstown loving the adventurous culture. There was always something going on or some new adrenaline challenge, I could have stayed there for a month! However, since we only had a few days there, we had to narrow it down to a few of the most important activities. 

One of the things I knew we had to do was go to visit Milford Sound. However, I wasn’t really keen to drive all the way there in our sweet rental van – it was 5 hours each direction, so it would have been one really massive day or it would have taken us two days. However, we got lucky and found a great deal to go on a Jucy bus. I am so glad we did that, because then I could just spend the whole drive enjoying the scenery. In my opinion, the scenery on the drive was better than what we saw in Milford Sound itself.

There were just towering mountains all around you, waterfalls everywhere you looked and such vibrant blue sky above you – just beauty everywhere you looked. The sound itself was carved out by glaciers thousands of years ago, so the cliffs are almost completely vertical. There is no gentle slope, they simply fall from the top all the way into the water below. Truly beautiful surroundings, I’m so glad we were able to see it. 

The final thing we did in Queenstown was the Nevis Swing. For those of you who have never heard of it, it is a huge swing that does a 70 meter freefall, then swings you across the valley for a few minutes. I really wanted to do a bungy jump, but I’m so afraid that my feet will come out of the bindings, so this was a great alternate. The other fun thing is that Zach and I were able to go together. You walk out on this skinny little bridge into a little enclosure that is just floating in the middle of the gorge. I think the walk out there is one of the scariest bits, since the wind is blowing and you have so much time to look down and think about what you’re doing, but once you get out there, it goes very quickly. 

They encourage you to try different ways of swinging, so the first time we went backwards. It is so scary because you can’t see where you’re going! They also surprised us, so there was no countdown or anything, just a drop. It was so incredible, before we were even finished the swing we had already decided to do it again. The second time I decided to be really daring – I went upside down….wow, did that really double the fear factor! Zach went right side up so he could get pictures of us – I really love the one below. I was so terrified and loved it so much that I made Zach go one final time on his own, so that he could also experience the upside down drop. The Nevis Swing was definitely our highlight of Queenstown!

 

After we finished our adrenaline kick, we started working our way up the west coast. First stop? Franz Josef to walk on the glacier.
 I know, more adventure activities for us! I do think it’s funny that I had to come half way around the world to walk on a glacier – we have a few near us in Colorado, but I don’t think they’re anywhere near as famous or exciting as Franz Josef. We did the full day glacier hike and it was amazing. You walk about an hour through the rainforest to get to the face of the glacier. There, you strap on your crampons and charge up the ice. Once you’ve got the crampons on, you can go up and down the ice face, climb the stairs and go along the rocky bits with no problems. The ice is so beautiful and blue, you can’t help but stare up at it. We were able to go into a few ice caves and walk in a few crevices, it was heaps of fun. Some of the crevices were so narrow that you had to take off your backpack and shuffle your feet to get through them – definitely an adventure. 

After Franz Josef we continued our trek up the west coast. We stopped at a few of the towns either to stay for a night or just to grab a quick meal. One of my favorite stops was to see the Pancake Rocks (called Punakaiki). To this day they still have no idea how the rocks were formed, but somehow they grew in layers that cause them to look like pancakes. We were there at the wrong time of day and were unable to see the blowhole in action, but it was still a really cool site. 

Our last couple of days were really calm. We were just enjoying the beautiful views along the coast, where you’ve got rainforest on one side and beaches on the other side. It’s difficult to keep your eyes on the road when all you want to do is look everywhere!  Our final day we had to drive from the west coast, across the “mountains” (I know, I’m really spoiled by Colorado) and into Christchurch. Normally this wouldn’t be a huge deal, but we were in the super sweet campervan, and she just didn’t do well on hills. It also didn’t help that it was pouring down rain – you can see below how much fun it was to drive over the pass that day! 

Finally, we arrived back in Christchurch. It was so sad to say goodbye to Zach! I had an absolutely incredible time with him in NZ, minus the crappy weather we had the whole time. I am so glad he was able to come out to visit – hopefully now that he’s experienced a new country, he’ll keep traveling and discovering new things. If not, at least we had an amazing campervan experience in the South Island!

After Zach flew out, I met up with my friend Angela again. She was kind enough to let me stay with her for a week, and just tag along with her wherever she went. The first thing we did was go to a horse show. She has a sweet horse named Milan (who I got to ride!) that she does shows with. I had never been to a horse show, so I didn’t know just how much work goes into it – they put horse mascara on, put hair extensions in their tails, paint their hooves black and braid their entire manes! It takes hours to get the poor horses ready for these shows. After all this work and effort, I was soooo excited that Angela won Supreme Grand Champion. That meant she won the entire show and got to lead the parade! 

 

Afterwards we went back to her house for the rest of the weekend. It is not a super old house but her landlords are complete jerks, so imagine my surprise when I got e-coli! Yes, I made it safely through India, Morocco, SE Asia and other third world countries without getting sick at all, only to get e-coli in New Zealand. What are the chances of that? Good thing that I had the antibiotics to kill it. Needless to say, I think she’s glad she was already moving out of that place! We spent the rest of the week going up and down the west coast for her job. She sells fertilizer and feed to dairy farms so I got to learn more than I’ve ever wanted to know about dairy cows. I was lucky enough that one of her clients even let me come and help with milking the cows a little bit! Quite an experience and I only got a little bit of poo on me. Finally, at the end of our week of exploring, we went to the amazing Hanmar hot springs. It was nice to relax and just think about all of the incredible scenery I had experienced while in New Zealand. What an absolutely beautiful country!!

Rainy New Zealand

Wow – I can’t believe it’s been so long since I’ve done a blog post. I meant to do one much sooner, but you know how the time just seems to slip away from you… I’ve spent the last 3 weeks traveling around New Zealand and I’ve really enjoyed it. However, I have to get this complaint out of the way early – the weather here is terrible! It rains and pours down rain and it’s windy all the time. This is supposed to be their nicest month of the year, yet the warmest day here is the same temperature of a cold day in Denver during the summer. I wore my one pair of jeans for nearly the whole 3 weeks I was here (I washed them, I promise!), which was very disappointing. However, if I look past the weather, I had an incredible time.

First and foremost, my brother Zach was here with me for the first 2 weeks. He came with me when I left the US in February. We flew through Sydney and spent a day there seeing the sights. We were even able to catch up with a few of my friends and have a night out on the town. Definitely glad Zach at least got to see a glance of Australia! We arrived in Christchurch and were picked up by my friend Angela, who I met in China. She took us for a spin around the Christchurch area, to see the devastation from the earthquakes. It is amazing how much there is still damaged. You had houses hanging off the side of mountains and entire neighborhoods that have been marked for demolition. It is nearly impossible to drive around the city, as many buildings are structurally unsound and they can’t have people near them in case there is another earthquake and they fall down. I just can’t believe how much work there is still do to do even get rid of all the damaged buildings. By the time the rebuild the city, I imagine it will take them years and who knows how much money it will take. It is sad to see how much damage can be done in just a matter of seconds.

After a lovely breakfast in Sumner, we went to pick up our sweet campervan. When I say sweet, you should know I mean really old and crappy! We rented with a company called Go Wild Campervan Rentals, and I cannot sway you away from them strongly enough. We were late in picking up the van and I was lectured for nearly 20 minutes. He was telling me how inconsiderate and rude and immature I am – who does he think he is, my father? I have rented literally hundreds of cars for work and never once was I lectured for being late. When you are working in an industry where flights are delayed all the time, you have to be flexible when travel plans change. Anyhow, back to the campervan. We knew coming into it that the van was about 20 years old, which was a concession I was willing to make to get a lower rate. However, there were some fun problems that we got to discover as we went along – the lights didn’t work, you couldn’t lock the doors if the windows were down at all and it was “recommended” that we not drink the water as it might not be safe….so awesome! It worked fine for us as it was just a place to sleep, but it did give us a new adventure every day. And don’t even get me started on trying to shift the tiny little engine while driving up and down the hills on the wrong side of the mountain – as I said, a new adventure every day!

I was really excited that Zach decided to do New Zealand with me. I had been told by many people that the best way to do it was to drive yourself, so you could see things at your own pace. If I was on my own I would not have been able to do that, so I was happy to have him along. He hasn’t traveled outside the US much before so this was a great opportunity for him to do it – NZ is just different enough to be fun, but not scary in any way. We chose NZ because it has lots of different outdoor activities, lots of ways to get out and do something new. He mentioned before he came that he really wanted to go cliff diving – so imagine my surprise when Angela suggested it on the first day! We went on these small back roads to a tiny rock pool that only the locals could know about. There were a couple of great ledges to dive off of, the tallest that we did probably being about 20 feet up. I wasn’t nervous, but still when you get up and stand on the edge preparing to jump, your heart starts to beat just a little bit faster.

After a couple days spent with Angela around Canterbury, Zach and I took off in the campervan. We stopped along the way to go to Puzzling World. It is a great place with lots of ways to confuse your senses, such as a room where water runs up hill or a puzzle with over 10,000 possible solutions, yet it took an average of 30 minutes to find just one of them. Best of all, they had a huge maze outside. You had to find your way to all four corners and then back again, which sounds so easy, but let me be the first to tell you that it’s not! I can only imagine what it feels like to be a mouse, trying to get through the maze to the piece of cheese at the end.

Next we made our way to Queenstown, the adventure capital of New Zealand. We spent our first day wandering around town, figuring out exactly what activities we wanted to do. Zach really wanted to do mountain biking, so he did that one morning and I just slept in and relaxed. We went on a pub crawl that evening, which was really cool. My favorite was a bar called Minus 5, which as the name implies, is a bar that is freezing inside. They give you a jacket and gloves and boots to go in, and all the drinks are served in ice “cups”. Below is one of Zach’s favorite photos of the trip – we were trying to get a nice photo for my mom, and up walks this really annoying, extremely drunk girl. She got all cozy up next to Zach and smiled at the camera – if only she realized exactly what he thought of her!

The next day we did an activity called river surfing. To sum it up, they give you a boogie board and a helmet and throw you in the river. I downloaded the photo below so you can get the idea, but obviously it was impossible for us to get a photo of ourselves. It was pouring down rain that day so they chose the “easier” river – we were only going through Class III rapids! They would never, ever let us do this kind of activity in the US no matter how many different legal liability waivers we signed, so thank goodness that NZ doesn’t seem to care. It was wild – the water was absolutely freezing (maybe 50F or 10C) so we were in head to toe wetsuits, and the water was a chocolate brown due to how fast it was going. However, once you jumped in you forgot all those things and just had a great time. You go really quickly down the river when you’re pulled by the rapids and it’s a nice chill ride when you’re in a flat section. I lost my boogie board on one of the rapids and that scared me for a second – going through with absolutely nothing at all to hold on to! It was absolutely incredible, but I don’t know how I will ever be able to go white water rafting again – it will just seem to safe J

Wow, after writing for a while now, I realize I have a lot more to say about New Zealand! In an effort not to bore you, I’ll just finish this for now and do another post on NZ later….

The United States

Yes, you read that correctly – the United States! This was not originally part of my travel plans, but in mid-December I made the decision to come home for a while. There are lots of reasons I decided to come home: I really missed having Christmas with my family, I was soooo tired of packing my backpack every morning and I kept thinking of the food from back home. In addition, my Grandma was visiting and she thought it might be the last time she was comfortable flying down, so I didn’t want to miss her visit. I’m very close with my Grandma and wanted to spend some time with her while she was in town. One night in mid-December, I decided to splurge and just buy the flight home.

The best part of coming back to the United States was that I didn’t tell anyone I was coming! Alex knew because he had just spent a week with me, but not a single other person was aware. I took a cab home and surprised everyone!!! Seeing the reactions of my family was great – my sisters cried, my brother said things I can’t write on my blog and my mom shouted so loud! Seeing their responses was priceless, something I’ll always remember. Not what I originally planned for my trip, but something I’m so excited that I did! 

Since I am so used to doing activities nearly every day, I tried to find fun things to do in Colorado. I went up to Vail and took an ice climbing class, which was lots of fun but really hard. I used crampons and ice axes to climb up a vertical wall – so cool! I liked the clunk you heard when the axe went into the ice. And why am I taking ice climbing classes? Because I’ve decided to go back to Nepal! I loved it so much when I was there in September that I just had to go back. I will be there for about a month in April, taking a glacier training course. I can’t wait to see it again! The people were so wonderful and the scenery is amazing, and I’m very excited to learn more glacier skills. I want to volunteer for a few weeks after the class but I can’t decide whether to do it in Nepal or Cambodia. I love Nepal and would love to give something back to the people there, but I feel like I didn’t get to see Cambodia very well the last time and this would be an opportunity to experience the local culture. Decisions, decisions!

I also spent an afternoon going with my sister and my nephew to the National Western Stock Show & Rodeo. I know, I know, it sounds like such an 1800’s thing to do. We used to go every year when I was a kid and it’s one of my most fond memories, so I was really excited to be able to go with my nephew. They have horses and cows and all kinds of other animals there and it’s just a great way to spend an afternoon. 

I didn’t just stay in Colorado while I was back in the US. I am a little bit of an addict and can’t go more than about 2 weeks without going on a plane, so I went to visit a few friends. I went to see Juliana, Sean and their son Matthew in Houston, which included lots of visits to the park and their beautiful new house. Then I went to see Jenn, Caleb and Jameson in Kansas, which included a 3^rd birthday party and another beautiful new house. It was fun to see two of my good friends and to surprise them with the help of their secret-keeping husbands!

I was also lucky enough to be home when my nephew lost his first 2 teeth! He lost them 5 days apart and now looks so silly. There was also a huge snowstorm which lead to lots of relaxing – just what I needed! Of course I did some boring stuff as well – got the oil changed in my car, took the GMAT (710…wahoo!) and shopped to replace a few things I’ve lost or ruined in my travels so far. All in all, my trip home was exactly what I needed. It was a great mix of seeing my friends and family, eating the foods that I miss from home and plenty of relaxing. I definitely feel refreshed now and ready to continue on with the next part of my trip.

So what exactly does the next part of my trip entail? First I will be off to New Zealand for 3 weeks with my brother. We’re renting a campervan and driving around the South Island - hope I can learn to drive on the opposite side of the road! Then I fly back to Australia and will meet up with my two lovely sisters for a week of fun in the sun. After they leave I will be heading to Perth and the west coast of Australia for a little exploring on my own. Finally, as I mentioned above, I will be going back to Nepal for a few months for a glacier training school. The it’s back home and back to the real world – phewJ Hopefully the next few months are as incredible and life changing as the last 8 months have been!

China, China, China

Where to even begin? I’ve had many people ask me where my blog entry about China is hiding, and I am sad to admit that I simply didn’t want to write it. After everywhere I have been, I was excited to see China. I think so much of the future of our world revolves around China, which makes it a very intriguing place to see and understand. However, I didn’t like China. I don’t know why. There isn’t one specific piece or location that I can put my finger on. For some reason, I just didn’t love it there and was counting down my remaining days there. It was unfortunate since I was spending nearly a month in the country. Don’t get me wrong – I had some wonderful days and met some incredible people, but in general I didn’t enjoy China. However, instead of focusing on the negative aspects of the country, it is more fun to tell you about the good parts.

First and foremost, the Great Wall!!! This monument is the biggest reason I went to China. It is one of the “New Seven Wonders of the World” and the only one I had not yet been to. Seeing them all was one of my goals so I was extremely excited to tick this off the list. The wall was amazing – we drove 3 hours outside of Beijing to a section of the wall where there were no other tourists. As we started climbing up onto the wall, we were followed by a group of 6 local women. There were 7 of us in my group so it was nearly a one to one relationship. The raced us up the wall and beat us, hands down. Since there were no other tourists, we were able to wander and not be disturbed at all. The wall goes on and on for ages (I know, the name would never give that away!). We spent a few hours walking along it, had a picnic lunch and just had a wonderful day. Definitely worth the visit!















One of the other places we visited was the Terracotta Warriors. I had heard so much about the site and was so excited to visit it, but once I arrived there I was terribly disappointed. There are just huge, open garage door type structures over lines of the warriors. You are not allowed to get very close to them and it’s not possible to see much detail at all. There are a few in glass cases, but the pictures you get are terrible. I felt like it is a very hyped up site with not a lot of excitement or interesting history behind it, very overrated.

The same day we went to another site, the Qianling Mausoleum, which was amazing. They have a mausoleum and tombs, of course, but they also have midget warriors! You were able to get up really close to everything and it was quiet and really well preserved – I was much happier with this than I was with the Terracotta Warriors. How odd the day ended up being!

Our next stop was Shanghai. I enjoyed the feeling of the city very much – they had great food and a good variety both Asian and European style buildings. It is very much a modern city, a nice change from some of the small towns in China. However, everything in China was so far apart and it took forever to get anywhere. During my month there, we took 6 overnight trains. The longest one was 28 hours. Imagine being on a train, stuck in your bed, for 28 hours. There is nowhere to go, nobody to talk to since nobody outside your small group can speak English, and the bathrooms are completely disgusting. We had the option to do an overnight to a small “local” village outside of Shanghai, but due to the 3 hour distance each direction, I was just not motivated enough to go. I hate to say it, but I think I was just really burned out on travelling. I was sick of packing my bag every single morning, tired of eating noodles or rice with every meal, tired of trains and busses, just tired.  I knew if I just one more UNESCO World Heritage Site, I would scream! Maybe my dislike for China has less to do with the country itself and more to do with my own breaking point. Either way, I know by the time I was leaving in Shanghai, I was ready for a change of pace.

Unfortunately, I was less than half way through my China tour at this point. I seriously considered leaving the tour and heading down to the islands in Thailand for 2 weeks before Christmas. I could lie on the beach and just do nothing for a while. However, the logical portion of my brain would not allow me to throw so much money away. I was determined to stick it out, no matter how unhappy I was with the tour. The one redeeming fact of the trip was that we were mostly done with the large cities. I have learned I much prefer the small villages with lots of outdoor activities to the large cities where you just wander around and look at old buildings. I would much rather go for a hike, kayak or bike ride than take a bus tour of a city. I feel you get a much better feel for the country and its people by being outside, so that is what I would search for on tours in the future.  

With the decision made to continue on the tour, we had a few good places left to go. We spent a few amazing days in Yangshao. It is a small town with lots of activities – I took a cooking class in the morning and a Kung Fu class in the afternoon. Let me tell you, Kung Fu is really hard! The next day we went on an 8 hour bike ride through the countryside. We had to ride through rice patty fields on a path that was only slightly larger than our tires.  It took so much concentration and a few of us failed and fell off the bikes – oops! We also had to cross the river a couple of times, which meant renting a small raft, piling us and the bikes on it, and crossing our fingers that we did not fall off. It was an incredible day!

Our next stop was another outdoorsy location – the Longji Terraces. We did a 3 day, 2 night trek, stopping in guesthouses each night. The best part of the trek was that we were able to see a full lunar eclipse!  I’ve never seen one before and I was so excited for it! We were lucky because it happened between 9 and 11 in the evening, so we didn’t even have to get up in the middle of the night to see it. We stood outside by the fire watching the moon disappear – a very unique experience J

The next few weeks were really quiet with not a whole lot of memorable places. We did spend a day gambling in Macau, which was lots of fun! I didn’t spend too much but I did win – can’t complain about that! I enjoyed the city of Beijing – seeing the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace and the Olympic Park. After crossing the border we spent 2 days hiking around the Sapa region of Vietnam. It was quite a beautiful region, except one of the girls stepped off the path and was bitten by a leech. So glad that wasn’t me! Finally, we made our way back down to Hanoi. I really enjoyed the city of Hanoi the first time so I was happy to be back there. We were there for Christmas Eve and it was completely crazy! Everybody in town comes out, hangs out around the lake and eats street food. A walk that would normally take us 20 took over an hour! It was interesting to see how excited they all got for Christmas Eve in a country that is not Christian and does not even celebrate the Christmas holiday.

Finally, it was time to leave this portion of my trip and head to Australia. I really loved all of my time in Asia, but I was ready to leave. Some places in Asia were incredible, such as Nepal, Laos and Cambodia, while others I would be happy never to return to.  Asia is so vast and so diverse and I am so happy that I was able to spend 3 months exploring this part of the word. Now on to the next adventure!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! I know I’m a few days late with this message, but better late than never. I had an incredible New Year’s Eve. Since I originally started planning this trip, I knew that one of the places I HAD to go was Sydney for New Year’s Eve. I was lucky enough that my wonderful friend from home, Alex, wanted to join me for this part of the trip. Alex and I have known each other since we were 12, worked together in the veterinary hospital and both love to travel. We previously went to Brazil together in 2007 so I knew we would travel well together.  It was so much fun to see another face from home!

Before we met up Alex had spent just over a week in India and I had spent about a month in China (I promise I’ll write that blog entry next – I know I’m out of order but I’m so excited to write about Australia!). We were both coming from very serious, emotional, difficult travel journeys, so the relaxed feel of Sydney was exactly what we needed. Speaking for myself, after being on tours for 7 months, I just needed to spend a week in one place without having to pack my backpack! I thought we would take a few days to relax but instead we just started with the activities immediately. Alex did the Harbour Bridge Climb, which is just an incredible experience! You get to be breathalized, scanned for any metal or objects that could fall and harnessed to the bridge. You climb up while cars zip by below you. You can even lean over the side and see nothing but the open water. Once you get to the top you have the most fabulous view of Sydney city – such a unique, amazing thing to do. If you’re ever in Sydney, I'd highly recommend it!

We spent a day going out to the Blue Mountains as well. The morning was my personal favorite – we got to go to a wildlife park and pet the koalas! There were so many of them there, most of them
just sleeping. Did you know they sleep 18 – 20 hours a day and spend the rest of their time eating? Sounds like a great life to me! We also go to feed an ice cream cone full of popped rice the kangaroos. If you ask Alex, I spent my time trying to force feed them, then when they refused to eat it, I ate a little something myself. I won’t way he was telling the truth…but I guess you can be the judge!

We spent the afternoon driving around the Blue Mountains and admiring the amazing views. It is such a beautiful, diverse country – though I would say for the most part I would call them hills, not mountains! Another day we went wine tasting in the Hunter Valley, a couple hours outside Sydney. I figured since Australian wine is delicious, it only made sense that we went out to visit its origin. It was fun trying wine from each of the small wineries, what a wonderful way to spend a day!

We also spent a few days just exploring Sydney. I was lucky enough to have quite a few friends who live in Sydney, both local Australians and fellow travelers, so we got to spend some time with them. We went out to Kings Cross and Oxford Street with both Tony from Texas and my friend Jason from Aus and had incredible nights out! After Alex left I was also lucky enough to meet up with Kari and Jaimie (who I met in Europe in 2009) as well as Dwayne who I met in SE Asia. It’s such a small world! We also spent an afternoon at Bondi Beach, something that you just can’t miss. We went there on New Year’s Day and it was insanely packed. There were people crammed in with absolutely no personal space, but it was still great to see the beach.

And of course, the most important part of Sydney, New Year’s Eve. I was so, SO excited for this! I was lucky because Alex thought ahead and booked us tickets back in October to the Sydney Opera House Bar. It is right next to the opera house, which fabulous views both of the opera house and the Harbour Bridge. You can’t get a better location, I was so happy with his decision! We got there early to stake out good seats and we definitely did – right on the water where nobody could stand in front of us. We spent the evening eating the delicious appetizers and chatting with the fun people around us.

Finally, the finale – the fireworks! It was the most incredible show. To our left they were shooting off the top of the Harbour Bridge, raining down from the middle section, there is a light show in the middle and behind the bridge there were more fireworks. On our right was the Opera House with fireworks behind it. Directly in front of us there were barges on the water with more fireworks, and directly behind us fireworks were shot off the tops of the buildings on the cityscape. There were literally fireworks in every direction that we looked! I honestly couldn’t have asked for more, it was perfect. After ringing in 2012 in such a spectacular fashion, I can’t imagine what else it has to bring!