TravelStream™ news feed for member tabonyhl on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/tabonyhl en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Wed, 27 Jun 2007 09:09:02 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1163772780/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1163772780/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1163772780/tpod.html Wed, 27 Jun 2007 09:09:02 -0400 Where in the world are Hunter and Cierra?

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Siem Reap, Cambodia

Sweating profusely. I've never really known what those words mean until now. Cierra's gotten worried about me a few times as we've stumbled around Siem Reap and my face develops a force field of water so thick you'd swear the sweat itself is sweating. I can't feel it, however, and I don't feel it until it actually starts to run off my face, or until I touch my own face and surprise myself by soaking my hand. When the French arrived here in the 18th or 19th century (forgive my vague sense of history, I've been baking in a cheap hat all day) and subjugated Cambodia, I wonder if the knowledge of Angkor Wat and the other Khmer temples' existence would have made them hunger for ownership of the land even more, or would the immense task of reclaiming these treasures from the jungle have scared the conquerors away from their plunder? Nevertheless, they did take over Cambodia for a time, discovered these ruins, and set about the work of beating back the cotton trees and strangler figs that were prying the great stones of these temples apart over the span of centuries. We've spent the last 3 days exploring what ruins we could, built from the 9th to the 12th century. The stonework at these sites just blows you away. Stone buildings that in their size dwarf anything you've ever seen, but in the minutest detail have been lovingly carved with individual markings. Each door frame, each pediment tells a different story. Angkor Wat itself is the largest religious building in the world, and it's still used as a temple today. But what we didn't know is the entire area is pockmarked with temple ruins. The Khmer empire was based right here, with cities of over a million people at a time when London housed just 300,000. A great civilization swallowed up by the invading Mongols, and now everything but their temples is gone, owing to their law that only Gods could live in houses of stone. I think our favorites over the past few days include Ta Prohm, where the French chose to protect the building as best they could, but also preserve it in the state of partial ruin. You enter by crossing a moat on an ancient causeway, where the thick roots of ancient trees have upended the sandstone blocks as if they were made of Styrofoam. Inside, buildings are slowly being strangled by the roots of these giant monsters, and the piles of rubble all around make it a real maze to navigate. The whole place feels like Indiana Jones may come running down the hallway at any time, a giant boulder in close pursuit. We spent 2 hours on a tuk-tuk (that's a small 2 seater wagon hitched to the back of a motorbike) to get to a mountain stream area where the Khmer artists actually carved their religious images on the bottom of a stream. This was truly amazing, as the carvings were done nearly a thousand years ago, and you'd think they'd have worn down to almost nothing by now, but they're still almost pristine in many areas. I thought the trip out there might kill us, however.When we told our driver where we wanted to go, he hesitated and said the road was difficult. Cierra used the tactics she usually reserves for me and acted all disappointed that he couldn't do it. Oh, no, our driver said, we can do it, it's just difficult. Ok, says Cierra. We can handle it.What followed was a 45 minute rodeo ride. We crossed 3 decrepit wooden bridges, forded 2 rivers and hit about a million potholes. I thought for sure that we'd crack the axle of that poor tuk-tuk, but the only thing that got cracked was my noggin on the roof of that compartment after a particularly vigorous bump. After that, I spent the remainder of the ride holding on for dear life, trying to prevent a second concussion. But we survived that one and the ride back, and now are left only with amazing memories of these monuments in the wilderness. I would spend more time detailing these places, but better writers than I have written whole books on the subject. If you can, pick one up, or better yet, get out here yourself and explore them for real. We leave in the morning by bus for Thailand!*******Ahhh... Third world travel agents. It's so much fun booking transportation with them. Cierra says to the travel agent, "We'd like to take the bus to Ko Chang. When will we arrive there?" She sizes us up quickly. Her eyes dart up and to the right as she makes up a number. "Ummm... 3 or 4 pm.""Ok." We know this is a lie. It'll take nearly that long to get to the border. But it's a nice story, and we'd like to know how it ends. "Will the bus have air conditioning?""Oh, yes", she lied. Well, technically this may not have been a lie, because the bus that rolled in the next morning an hour late had at one time been equipped for air conditioning. The little vents were in the ceiling, there just wasn't anything coming out of them. We had to make use of the larger vents, called "windows", to the right and left of our heads. This plan worked really well as we careened down the bumpy dirt highway, as every passing car left a handful of reddish dust strewn across our hair and faces. By the time we changed the flat tire on the bus, squeezed the passengers from another bus onto ours (theirs had broken an axle, suprise, suprise), and bounced our way to the border, we looked like a bunch of bushmen on a group tour.********** A final note on Cambodia. For those of you planning to travel to Cambodia, you may be wondering whether you should change your dollars to Riel at the airport, or maybe with a local bank branch. The exchange rate is around 4,100 Riel to one dollar. But my suggestion is just, don't. Inexplicably, everything is priced in dollars. American dollars. We made the mistake of changing money and getting their country's currency, and then literally, every time we were buying a loaf of bread, we'd have to pay in riel at whatever disadvantageous rate that shop was giving us that day. (They have one rate for paying them, and another for giving change, so that every shop takes an additional cut.)It's like, have a bit of pride, people. The riel is your currency, how about you price in that. Also, you're either a bakery or a currency exchange, not both. If you're not happy selling me your bread at the price you post without taking a bite out of me in the exchange, then raise the stupid price.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1180670100/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1180670100/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1180670100/tpod.html Fri, 01 Jun 2007 00:02:55 -0400 Where in the world are Hunter and Cierra?

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Washington, DC, District of Columbia, United States

We paused in Auckland for a 5 hour layover (can't be too careful when your flights are on separate tickets). There was plenty of time for us to walk out of the airport and have a 36 hole Mini Golf Challenge.  Right after we paid for all of it, an entire school of primary school kids came in and mobbed the course, hitting balls everywhere, climbing the rocks, and prodding the pond algae with their clubs.  The most intrepid explorer in front of us bore signs of being a natural daredevil- one sprained wrist and the other arm broken.  I imagine his game might have been affected.  Actually, it was maximum scores all around on every hole we watched, and we played slowly behind his group, talking while we waited for them to clear the next green.  In the end, we each won a round by the same number of strokes, necessitating a tie-braking round neither one of us could afford.  Mini Golf Challenge Co-Champions!Back in Auckland airport, Cierra had a slight panic attack as we prepared to board the flight to LAX.  Rationally, she knew she had to go, but emotionally, it felt wrong to her.  She was only half-joking while asking if we had enough money to "not get on the plane and spend some more time here."  I explained patiently that that would create problems with, in order of magnitude, 1. her Mom, 2. the New Zealand Government, 3. our banking institutions, and 4., me.  I was a bit worried that I might have to wrestle her onto the plane and hold her down while they went through the safety demonstration, but fortunately the debate was soon over and rationality declared the winner.  I wasn't rational once on the flight and confronted with a state-of-the-art entertainment system for the first time in many months.  With dozens of movies available free on demand, I decided to stay awake throughout the 11 hour flight and watch as many as I could.  By far the most powerful was "The Last King of Scotland", in which Forrest Whitaker channels Ugandan Dictator Idi Amin.  Watching that one took us right back to Africa, right down to the Swahili that we could understand snatches of.  Bleary eyed, we wandered through LAX, changed some money, boarded our flight to Washington.  Couple of winks on the plane, then touchdown again, walking through the airport towards a hug from my father.  He leaned against a rental car counter, sipping a tall cup of coffee, eager to talk about our trip and catch us up on the news from home.  Home.  Wow.  We drove towards it, and I stayed awake, amazingly, as we all chattered away.  Home.  We really were there, the trip over, yet all the adventures we'd had were flashing through our heads as we answered Dad's questions. What have we learned?  Let's see...Reservations are definitely not required...they're not even recommended.True serenity is a beach in Thailand.Hospitality is everywhere, especially where you least expect it.It's possible to be perfectly happy with next to nothing, or miserable with everything you could ask for... life depends on your perspective on it.American financial standard of living is beyond the wildest dreams of the vast majority of the world's population.  Even after the slums of Zanzibar and the backstreets of Beijing, there may be nothing in the world as mind-numbingly depressing as American commercial suburbia.  Are fast food franchises and big box store chains becoming our natural habitat?  Our trip by the numbers...Number of countries visited- 21.Days on the road- 240Days spent separately- 3Time spent together in years of "normal life" - 3.5Nights spent on an island- 22Important things lost- 10Pickpocket attempts- 2Jars of peanut butter eaten- 4Stamps in each passport- 52Organized tours taken- 2Flights flown- 34Delayed flights- 17Host contacts made- 33Hosts we returned to stay with again- 4Family members visited or met- 7Most kilometers walked in a single day- 35Borders walked across- 3Number of times through Santiago airport- 7Now, as a special treat for those of you who have slogged through all this way with us, the final numbers and a secret revealed.  Low End Budget for our 8 month adventure (per person, including air travel) - $11,510.Actual amount spent (per person) - $11,748Yes, my friends, that is the big secret.  If this kind of adventure is one of your dreams, you can do it too.  A lot of people drop that kind of cash on a flashy new car.  Me, I'll be driving a junker for the rest of my life if it means that I can save for experiences like this one.Now, keep in mind that this wasn't a 5-star group tour around the world.  Those are in a whole different category.  But if you're prepared to put your worldly possessions in a backpack, sleep with bugs, talk with strangers, eat crackers, and have a real adventure, then you're set to find out that the world is a pretty fantastic deal.  I hope this small novel I've written here has been an inspiration to some of you to get out there and see a world that many of us keep at arm's length.  Knowing a country's headlines on the international news is one thing.  Walking its streets and meeting the citizens is quite a different experience.  It really is amazing in the end how easy the whole trip was... in fact, the hardest part of the whole thing was deciding to do it.  That's the way it is with most of our dreams, I think, overcoming the I can'ts and all the other forms of self-doubts is the difficult part.  Once we've started to plan and execute, we find that there are tough times, but it's still a joy.  
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1179125940/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1179125940/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1179125940/tpod.html Mon, 14 May 2007 02:00:01 -0400 Where in the world are Hunter and Cierra?

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Christchurch, New Zealand

Nearing Christchurch, we passed through a wine-growing region and stopped to enjoy a few tastings.  Cierra was driving, so had to limit herself, and so she was having me taste some of the varieties for her.  By the time we got to the second vineyard, I was having to work extra hard to put together my descriptions of the aroma and taste of the wines so that they would include more complete sentences than slurred words.  Finally, work done and back in the van, I leaned back in my seat and ate the rest of our peanuts as we reentered Christchurch, nearly a day ahead of schedule.  So we simply passed straight through and out the other side, to the Banks Peninsula, site of an ancient volcanic eruption, where the gentle slopes of a weathered cone meet the sea in wide, rolling grassland.  Another hiking trail took off here by the shore, and we decided to take one last walk the next morning.  As for tonight, the car-park for the trail would do quite nicely for a campsite.Gasp! It was here.  We thought it would never come.  Morning had broken on the final full day of our worldwide adventure.  Lying awake in the pre-dawn hours, I decided that I would focus on all of the great things I would be returning home to, and that might make the transition easier than it would be otherwise.  Instead of thinking about the carefree and educational lifestyle I was giving up, I'd think about the family and friends that I'd soon be reunited with.  My dog Pogo.  Our house.  Getting a job again, believe it or not.  There's something about having a job that is fun, something about earning a paycheck that affirms, not to mention that I really need to start earning something soon if we are going to have a house when we return.Cierra roused sleepily and slowly as the light started to filter in around the sky blue curtains.  Cold cereal for breakfast, then a long walk on the bed of an old coastal railway, tracks long ago torn up.  Walking in a straight line on flat ground hardly seems like a real walk anymore, but we got to see lots of birds floating around on the marshland.  Geese stroked regally about the ponds in pairs, while the excitable flocks of ducks and other small birds took off at our approach, their wingtips beating the water a quick spak-spak-spak as they strained to gain altitude.  The sheep paused momentarily from their ongoing meal to watch us as we walked by.  After tomorrow morning, we won't be seeing many sheep.  We'll miss their cute faces and variable fluffiness, some overstuffed with wool, other pink ones freshly shorn (and at this time of year, probably shivering!)Back to Christchurch and parked in the Botanic Gardens, we visited the local museum, which has a lot of information about the only continent we missed on this trip.  The US and New Zealand's joint program to explore Antarctica is based here in Christchurch, and the defunct base from Hallett Station was relocated here after a massive cleanup effort that removed the buildings and a prodigious amount of waste we'd produced in just 50 years on the ice.  This base might have been scientifically useful, but pretty it wasn't.  The buildings themselves could easily be taken for piles of garbage.  They appeared to have been built out of plywood, which the informative sign tells me is insulated fiberboard.  Either way, remove South Pole Scientist from the list of glamorous jobs.  We went back to Charlie B's and checked in for one last night in dorm bed accommodation.  Ah, sleeping in a room full of strangers.  There are a few things about this trip I will not miss.  Then it was off to return the camper-van, for some last minute shopping, and to the Internet cafe, so our account of the final weeks of our trip could beat us home. At this point, we'll leave it for just a little while, and once my feet are on terra firma again, I'll be back with the stories from our trip home and some parting facts about the whole travels.  Stay tuned, it'll be worth it.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1179125280/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1179125280/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1179125280/tpod.html Mon, 14 May 2007 01:59:30 -0400 Where in the world are Hunter and Cierra?

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Abel Tasman National Park, New Zealand

On the northern shores of the South Island sits New Zealand's smallest national park, so small it can hardly handle the rush of people who come to walk through its beauty every summer.  Abel Tasman's mountains kneel down to meet the ocean in an intricate pattern of sandy beaches, reedy inlets, and peaceful forest.  Summer's long gone, so the tourists (and the insects) left us alone as we strolled the coastal track for a day walk.  We sat on a long beach and ate our tuna fish sandwiches for lunch, contending all the while with a pair of gulls who were convinced all the food was meant for them.  We spent most of the time walking and talking about the trip, digesting, as it were, with the "meal" so close to over.  Talking about what we'd learned.  What's that? Of course, reader, we'll share that too, but not quite yet.In search of tomorrow's walk, we drove up into the mountains, but couldn't find the road that a map swore was there.  With dusk coming on, we pulled into a overlook parking lot.  We'd already cooked dinner and were settling in for the evening when the winds picked up, rattling the van and dropping the temperature inside several degrees.  As the van shifted on its axles, we wondered, just how windy does it get up here? We woke up in one piece and with the van still perched in the high altitude lot, so I guess it didn't pick up any more after we nodded off.  A long drive down a gravel road began to reveal some geologically odd stuff going on.  A farmer's field was pockmarked with deep conical depressions.  Pretty soon, everywhere you looked there was another sinkhole, until there wasn't any flat ground anymore except the thin strip we were navigating.  There was limestone underneath here, and caves within.  Driving further, we scared the bejeezus out of a herd of sheep who were grazing in the grassy area next to a parking lot.  When we parked and closed the doors, they mistook it for a gunshot and ran, panicked, over the horizon.  Harwood's Hole, the deepest limestone cave shaft in New Zealand, was a 45 minute walk away.  The deep woods the trail wound through were dark, and a lot colder than the sunny field we'd been standing in a few minutes before, but it seemed as if the trail's designer had been worried we'd get chilly, and had introduced some exercise equipment halfway through.  In a tight valley, the trail appeared to dead-end against a jumble of large karst rocks.  Karst is a sort of wild sculpture Mother Nature got really into when she was decorating New Zealand.  Characterized by pointy, ridged peaks and curved sides with regular striations, it's pretty, but not a whole lot of fun to climb over, as the top of the formations are sharp as knives.  Eventually, we found the hole, a giant shaft that we couldn't see the bottom of at all.  Crawling through a tunnel in the rock, we emerged at an outcropping right on the edge, where you could hold on for dear life, lean way over the edge, and still fail to see the bottom.  But the echo as we shouted into the void was pretty cool.After going on another couple of walks through the woods, it was time to start driving south again, with an eye towards making our appointment with the rental people in Christchurch in a couple of days.  We retraced our steps to the South, turning off in the twilight towards a break in the Alps called Lewis Pass, and stopping for the night at a campground under the bright highland stars.  The next day, the penultimate day of this trip that started out long but now seems much shorter, a fresh dusting of snow lay on the peaks around us when we got underway, a reminder of the fast approaching winter when weather would frequently make the pass a treacherous place to be.  We were there in plenty of time, however, and sailed across to the resort town of Hamner Springs.  The thermal pools smelled a little too sulfuric to us, so we took a stroll up a nearby hill to get a good look around, then we walked through town so Cierra could go into every shop and pick everything up twice.  Okay, I lied.  It was three times on most of the things.  We found ourselves done with Hamner earlier than expected, so we continued south.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1179124740/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1179124740/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1179124740/tpod.html Mon, 14 May 2007 01:48:37 -0400 Where in the world are Hunter and Cierra?

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Fox Glacier, New Zealand

We rolled into the town of Fox Glacier near the end of the day, just in time to rush in and book a tour for the next morning.  The twin lords of the Southern Alps range, Mountains Cook and Tasman, loom over the town to the East, peeking over the nearby bulk of Mt. Fox.  This is wet country, about as wet as the fiords to the south.  The town gets around 10 meters of rain a year.  At the peaks, it's 15 meters of water, but of course, it's snow that falls on those white monsters, around 60 meters a year, and that compacts into ice, a lot of it.  That ice has to go somewhere eventually, so it heads down the side of the mountain, taking big chunks of the slope along for the ride as it goes.  The glacier has been advancing for the last 15 years, meaning that it's moving faster than it's melting.  Around 13 kilometers in length, it's getting longer by about 1 meter a day.  All this heavy stuff moving around at its own whim means you've got to take caution, of course, so everything is roped off and to get out on the ice for a stroll, you have to book a tour with the only company in town.  We went for the half-day option, at my insistence, because I wanted to get on the glacier, but not spend too much time walking around on top of 120 meters of solid ice, as I had a feeling that it might be just a little bit cold up there.  Trip booked, we drove out to the beach and camped for the night, somehow whipping up a new and delicious meal from the same old ingredients that we had in the cupboard.  Sausages, onions, potatoes, peas and wine.  Maybe it's the wine that makes the rest of it taste good. The next day, I awake to find that my superpowers are still intact.  I can lose anything at the worst possible time.  It's nothing for a person with my abilities to sit completely stationary with a given item and lose it without moving.  Eerie.  So, this morning I found that I'd lost the tickets for our glacier walk, having put them in a secure zippered pocket that they'd then slipped out of later when I'd undone the zipper, fishing for a sweet, and left it that way.  Not only this, but I had also managed to misplace one of my gloves.  Needless to say, I kind of wanted to wear those gloves to keep my hands from turning blue while up on the glacier, assuming they'd even let us on now that I'd made the tickets vanish.  Cierra went on a walk around a local lake while I tossed the van from front to back.  The tickets showed up, but the glove was lost somewhere between the forth and fifth dimension, sending its regrets and willing its entire lint collection to its orphaned twin.  Depressed, I'd swept the entire floor and was occupied with eating cookies when Cierra returned.I bought a new pair of gloves in the guide shop as they were calling our tour in to get changed.  At the glacier site, the bus-load split into two groups, and we looked around to find the fittest team before choosing, figuring that the faster we climbed the mountain, the more time we could spend on the ice.  We clambered up the many steps on the trail, catching different views of the ridged glacier surface as we came around bends in the trail.  Once we reached the ice, we stopped to strap crampons onto our boots, spiky bits of metal that dig into the ice to prevent slipping.  Then we hiked into a different and much colder world.  Up and down and around the icy steps wound, through the light blue crags and frozen crests of waves that would take years to break.  We passed a swirling drain for the surface melt, then an ice wall where beginners were learning how to climb.  We posed at the entrance to an ice cave, where the half-day tour usually ends.  Then our guide, a Nepalese sherpa, asked us if we wanted to go through an ice tunnel.  We'd get a little wet in there, he said.  "Yeah!" we said."Are you sure?", he asked.  If a sherpa ever asks you "Are you sure?", you'd do well to up the difficulty estimate of the activity you're considering by about 500 percent and give it another good think.  As it was, we just shouted "Yeah", and followed him to the nearby tunnel.  He didn't go in, just checked the ceiling for loose ice, then motioned us inside the small blue hole. "Grab the rope and pull yourself up."Cierra was first in, I was second.  The short cave quickly shrank to a tiny passage that forced me down on my hands and knees.  Cierra stood up ahead, grabbed a rope and pulled herself into a tunnel sloping for the surface, but as I moved forward into the space she'd vacated, here she came sliding back down, boots and crampons first, and I pulled my head back from getting impaled at the last second.  It took her a few tries to get through, and when I tried it, I found out why.  You could get a good foothold with the crampons as you climbed up in the tight tunnel, but to pull yourself forward meant angling your foot forward, removing the crampon and reducing your traction to zero.  I had to jam my elbows into holes in the tunnel wall and wriggle my way forward, all while my hands and the rope were stuck in the melt-water streaming down the center of the tunnel.  My gloves were hand-shaped sponges absorbing it all.  Seconds after I got out of the cave, my hands became the pain center of my body, and I ripped off the soaking new gloves, wrapping one hand in the old mitten and the other in a scarf.  Wow.  I was glad I'd done it, but also happy that we were headed back now, off the ice and towards warmth again.  Heading north, through coastal farmland and hilly forest, we watched clouds gather, but the rain that the forecasts had promised held off for the time being.  Just as the light was fading, another lakeside campground came into view, so we made camp, then dinner.The next day was errand day.  First we stopped in the coastal town of Hokitika so Cierra could look at Jade carvings.  Jade is known as Greenstone here.  It occurs naturally on the South Island, and it was a material of great power and value to the Maori.  Cierra got a greenstone pendant, then started sneezing and getting the hiccups after she'd worn it for a little while.  "You sure that isn't made of Kryptonite?" "You think you're so (hic) funny."In the next town, it was time to give the flies a break from chasing us all around New Zealand.  That's right, boys and girls, time for our first shower since leaving Christchurch! We found a very strange fellow running a coin operated shower/laundromat/used car lot that was also a motor-home park.  Yep, if you paid this fellow, he'd tow one of his old wrecks out of the way and let you camp in the middle of a car lot.  We just took advantage of the showers, though.  Despite discovering that I'd made our shampoo disappear, we both came out feeling like brand new people.Further up the coast, we stopped to have a gander at the famous "pancake rocks".  In crooked chimneys that resemble stacks of pancakes, here layers of limestone stand up to a vigorous pounding dished out daily by the ocean.  Scientists don't quite know why they're in such regular layers.  We took some pictures, then a cold wind blew us back toward the van.  Later we went for a walk towards a cave in the woods, but turned around when the path entered a muddy bog.The road turned inland here, away from the windswept coast with its leaning trees, and up a deep gorge.  Cliff walls, fall colors and misty clouds turned the landscape into a painter's dream.  We drove until the light ran out, then camped in a park.  In the morning, we finished up the drive north to Abel Tasman National Park.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1179124620/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1179124620/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1179124620/tpod.html Mon, 14 May 2007 01:38:14 -0400 Where in the world are Hunter and Cierra?

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Wanaka, New Zealand

We hadn't done nearly enough Stupid Tourist Stuff on this trip, so when I found out that sleepy Wanaka, a small mountain town on a beautiful lake, was home to Puzzling World, with amazing illusions and a Giant Maze, I insisted we go clown around.  The illusions were pretty lame, fun house stuff, but the maze was giant, very confusing and a competitive challenge.  Cierra and I raced around to find the four towers, neck and neck most of the way.  Then she completely forgot how to get out and wound up lost for fifteen minutes, task complete, just looking for the way she'd come in.  Onwards to the North we went, past placid lakes and gorges full of roaring rivers.  We stopped for a few short walks, but we were mostly focused on keeping our little van moving towards Glacier Country...
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1179124500/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1179124500/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1179124500/tpod.html Mon, 14 May 2007 01:36:20 -0400 Where in the world are Hunter and Cierra?

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Milford Sound, New Zealand

We were on the road towards Milford Sound, through the gigantic Fiordland National Park, a huge corner of southwest New Zealand set aside as perpetual wilderness.  What a drive.  You know you're in for an adventure when they hand out a pamphlet titled "Tips for drivers" at the start of a road you're about to take.  No fuel, no phones, no civilization down here.  Only pristine lakes, range after range of majestic mountains, and the deep fiords that characterize the coast.  A front was moving in that was predicted to bring rain, and lots of it, and here it came over the mountains, right on schedule.  Big drops started to fall as we finished stretching our legs at the Mirror Lakes, goading us on to our campsite on the edge of Lake Gunn, its misty mountain waters rippled and blown by the storm.  It rained most of the night, but the skies were clear by morning, and we drove on towards Milford.  As the mountains got higher, so did we, until we reached a wall of solid rock, so large it made the single hole in front of us look like a mouse's home.  This single lane hewn into the rock at a steep 15 or 20 degree downwards angle is the Homer Tunnel, completed in 1953 and still lacking interior lighting.  Or waterproofing, as it was raining inside the tunnel, last night's downpour still seeping through the cracks in the ceiling, and cascading along the pavement beside us all the way down.  When we emerged, it was to stare up in amazement at the rocky parapets of the mountain fortress that protected Milford Sound from the outside world for so many years.  All around, peaks reached for the sky, as the highway snaked down towards the sound, still unseen around a bend in the valley.The power of water carved this valley, and it's still present today.  We got a spectacular demonstration at a short walk just before the sound, Cascade Creek.  Sounds like a lovely little bubbling brook, right? Anywhere else, that might be true, but here it's a thundering blast of mountain runoff busy carving rocks into nothing right before your eyes.  A bridge built out over the gorge trembles with the force of the water on the basin below, and ghostly remains of former cauldrons linger in the swirled, circular carvings on either side, now filled with tree trunks like so many discarded popsicle sticks. A beautiful day for our cruise on the Sound, as it's sunny (rare), but the rain last night meant the waterfalls, all 10,000 of them, were putting on a show.  Water spurted from every face of the mountain walls, in large and small streams, all tumbling to the sound below.  The depth of the sound meant the pilot could put the bow right underneath one of the biggest falls, and only two people were dumb enough to take the challenge to stay out there the whole time... me and some crazy Kiwi girl.  Since it had been 5 days or so since I'd last had a shower, I figured that it couldn't hurt.  Was I wrong... that water hit so hard, it was like a sandblaster.  At three times the height of Niagara, it had plenty of time to pick up speed.After my shower, I spent the rest of the voyage drying off in the warm wheelhouse, and chatting with the captain, who was full of all sorts of information.  The West Coast of New Zealand gets plenty of rain, but the mountains here are just rock and trees, nothing else.  The trees all cling to lichen and the little cracks, and each other, until one day there's a bit too much rain, and you have what they call a tree avalanche.  I'd like to suggest they change that to "travalanche", because it's snappier.  (Not to be confused with "travelanche", which is when you do so much traveling that your actual life gets buried somewhere beneath, which is, of course, what we've done.) A landscape like this one has no absorptive power at all, so every drop of water that fell last night was draining straight out.  A few days without water, and most of the falls would dry up completely.  If a drought came along, which here is nine or more days without rain, all but two of the falls would cease production.  But that "never happens", and so while just across the Tasman Sea, Australia suffers through the worst drought in living memory, here the opposite occurs.  Every minute, 10 million liters of fresh water blasts out of these rocks and tumbles unused into the sound.  An embarrassment of riches... but that's what the sound is, more beautiful and awe inspiring than any place should be for it's own sake.  Thank goodness it's so hard to get here, or it would be ruined by too many people.When the cruise was done, we sped towards Wanaka around the 200 kilometer circle you have to drive from Milford, stopping to hike up Key Summit and stand on New Zealand's own Continental Divide.  3 rivers are visible from this summit, one flowing West, one East, and the other to the South.  The marshy landscape on top of this flat, rocky peak was more intriguing than the view, and we lingered a bit too long to make it to Wanaka by nightfall, camping instead at the lookout over Queenstown from Crown Ridge Road, assured by the lights below of a fantastic vista in the morning.  When we woke, I stepped outside to see the city and lake far beneath and a rosy glow in the sky.  We couldn't wait for the sun to show herself completely, because we had things to do...
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1179123420/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1179123420/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1179123420/tpod.html Mon, 14 May 2007 01:34:17 -0400 Where in the world are Hunter and Cierra?

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Glenorchy, New Zealand

Twenty minutes out of Queenstown, we stopped at the historic Kawarau Bridge, built to accommodate the rush of gold miners at the end of the 19th century, and preserved mostly because it's the place where A.J. Hackett invented bungy jumping.  The resulting funds paid for a glitzy facility here, and restored the bridge to near perfect condition, with a custom platform for jumping, of course.  With today's extreme options measuring out at 150 meters or more, the 43 meter original drop might seem wimpy to some, but not to me.  We watched a lady wimp out, then saw an older gentleman go for it, executing a swan dive off the platform before the assistant even finished counting to 3.  "Okay, one... two... oh, he's gone..." Thrilling stuff, but I think I'll leave it to those not equipped with a healthy fear of falling from heights.  Queenstown was about as overdeveloped a tourist mecca as New Zealand has to offer, with dozens of companies lining the streets, all hoping to take you on tour somewhere, or failing that, just to take you.  We stopped in for a quick visit to the area Department of Conservation office, got some maps, and blew town for the much quieter region near Glenorchy, at the head of giant Lake Wakatipu.  The drive there was just as gorgeous as the rest of New Zealand, except now we could see glaciers clinging to the sides of some of the higher peaks.  Cierra whipped the van to the shoulder with a frightening ferocity so she could snap pictures every time she saw one.  At some points, the road didn't even have a shoulder... it barely had a neck.  One lane sections with a cliff on one side, the lake far below on the other.  At the end of a long gravel road, we made camp for the night.  Veggie fried rice, then off to sleep.  We had a very big day planned...Milford Sound, one of New Zealand's top tourist draws, was actually very close to us now.  But the mountain ranges between us and it were daunting enough that nobody's ever carved a road out.  Instead, those 20 kilometers as the crow flies will be 290 kilometers and over 5 hours of driving from Queenstown.  Naturally, many people would rather walk over the mountains to approach the sound, and thus, the Routeburn Track.  Number 10 on the list of the World's Top 10 Great Hikes, it takes at least a couple of days to do, and we weren't equipped for multi-day hikes.  But we didn't want to do the whole thing anyway, as we had a camper that couldn't come along if we did.  One word.  Incredible... the walk, the valley we started in, everything.  The night we arrived, we were walking back to the van from the toilets when we saw a powerful searchlight cutting through the trees.  Oh-oh.  We weren't supposed to be camping here.  Should we hide?It turned out to be the full moon, on the rise and shining like a new dime.  The perfectly clear sky let it shine on all night, and several times during the night I woke to see its light streaming in around the curtains, and thought morning had broken.The sky was still clear when we started our walk early the next morning.  A small lunch packed, two bottles of water, and all the winter clothes in our possession.  Up, up through the green and mossy forest, up the valley lined with craggy glacier carved mountains all around.  Up through a narrow pass between two neighboring peaks, their cliff faces angled out instead of in, the stream below clogged with boulders, their eyes turned upwards as if expecting their friends along any second.The Routeburn Flats opened up to us now, a wide green valley, river in the middle, grasslands beside, lush forest close behind and climbing the walls toward the grey and rocky peaks.  The trail lingered on the valley floor until about halfway back, when it made for the wall and began to climb in earnest now towards the spectacular falls at the head of the valley.  As we climbed, higher peaks surrounding came into view, their blue-iced glaciers sliding imperceptibly toward us all the time.  Near the falls and right below the tree-line, we came upon the motel in the woods, a DOC "Hut" complete with giant kitchen facility and multi-room bunkhouse.  Wow, no wonder they get people to pay those hefty fees.  We were running out of time now, with only about an hour and 15 minutes to go before we'd have to turn around and start making for the car.  Harris Saddle, the highest point on the trail, was still listed as 2 hours away on the signs.  Might as well see what we can do, we agreed, and set out again.  Climbing over the falls, we emerged in yet another valley.  Too high for trees here, brush and grasses filled our eyes, stepping up several rises towards the rear of the valley, to the rocky summits beyond.  A fast flowing stream wound its way down from a series of waterfalls. Up, still up we climbed, until we found the source of that stream, a spectacular lake cradled just under the highest point on the trail.  Lake Harris's waters were so clear they nearly tempted us in for a swim, until we remembered that that's glacial melt-water and we didn't want to freeze.  It was just a few more steps to the saddle and a glimpse of the remaining trail snaking away down a new, deep valley to the south, and then it was time for lunch and the return trip.  8 hours after we began, we got back to the car, and only 5 minutes later, the first drops of rain all day were falling.  We drove out of the valley to see dark clouds massing in the north and headed our way.  Man, are we lucky!We made camp for the night on the shores of the lake and ate dinner while staring across the waters as the sun faded from the sky.  A long beaked, long legged bird patrolled the water's edge.  When the light had completely faded, we sighed with contentment, and turned on the lights inside for some writing and reading.On Sunday, another hike beckoned to us from the top of yonder ridge.  Yes, sirree, it's just a short 1 hour climb to the "Invincible Gold Mine" (which, ironically, closed after just 5 years of operation.) Of course, that there time estimate is iffin you brought yourself a vehicle along that can ford the mighty creeks of the Richardson Range... But listen to me, I've taken to writing like an ol' prospector.  Our progress toward the trail-head came to an abrupt stop several kilometers short when we found a creek in the road that nobody'd bothered to build a bridge over.  Since we're pretty sure one of those holes in our insurance coverage was big, deep, and full of water, we decided to walk the rest of the way.  Two creeks forded later, we were finally ready to "start" the walk, a taxing ascent that must have been easier back in the day when there were big hunks of gold waiting for you at the top.  All that's left now is the remains of the mine equipment, some of it in superb condition.  A row of rotating iron bowls that ground the ore still stand in their wooden frame, seemingly ready to go after sitting out in the weather since 1887.  Everything was here except an actual mine.  I went looking for the old shaft in some bushes and ended up sliding down a mud chute to Dirtytown.  Cierra was wise enough to stay out of the brush and kind enough not to laugh too hard when she saw me.  Dreams of soup when we got back to the camper were nearly foiled when the faucet wouldn't produce a drop.  We used our drinking water instead for the soup.  But we needed water for the next few days, so we swung back through Queenstown for petrol and refilled our water tank at the gas station as well.  Still not a drop from the faucet.  Oh-oh.  A broken pump.  A quick call to the rental company, and they hooked us up with a repairman in town who could fix us up right away.  Not bad for a Saturday afternoon!It was an even easier fix than we hoped, as a wire had just worked itself loose from the pump, and once reattached, everything worked just fine.  Off towards Milford Sound, driving south on a winding road with a beautiful lake on our right, a mirror in which the towering mountains on both sides of this valley could examine themselves.  Driving on into the night, we stopped at a roadside pullout, cooked dinner (pasta with homemade sauce), then turned in, pulling the van into a space hidden by the trees.It was blowing so hard on the high plateau we'd stopped on that when I stepped outside for the morning routine, I took a sideways whizz.  Pitched a curve-ball, if you know what I mean.  Held on to my hat and jumped back in the camper and we were away, to Te Anau, where we stopped for a morning hike.  The Kepler Track is another multi-day hike that we planned to sample for a few hours, then turn back.  It begins with a long section of flat trail through a mossy old-growth forest next to Lake Te Anau.  How long? Took us an hour and a half to get to the first hill.  How mossy? Even the moss had moss growing on it.  It was a pleasant, if not spectacular walk, and we got out of there before we started growing moss as well.  (As long as it's been since we had a good shower, anything could happen.)A quick stop in Te Anau for Internet and wine, then off we went towards Milford Sound...
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1179123180/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1179123180/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1179123180/tpod.html Mon, 14 May 2007 01:16:34 -0400 Where in the world are Hunter and Cierra?

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Lake Tekapo, New Zealand

Lake Tekapo, situated on the inner highlands of the South Island, was carved out by a glacier, and it's not about to let anybody forget it.  Finely ground silt particles linger in the lake today, refracting the light from above and turning the whole thing powder blue.  That is, if there's any light from above.  The weather just wasn't cooperating.  We set up camp at a trail-head just out of town, where nobody thought to put up no camping signs yet, and tried to go for a hike.  We got to the top of the first rise before we decided that it was just too nasty to do anything outside except freeze to death, and since that wasn't on the agenda, it was dinnertime! Bangers and mash again, since we figured we'd better get a head start on those 2 kgs of sausages.  After we shut the burners off, it started to get very cold in the van.  Bedtime already! The clouds were still hanging around in the morning, but the drizzle had stopped, and we opted to go on a little walk along the lake-front before driving towards Queenstown.  Well, the sky began to clear, revealing glimpses of snow covered peaks encircling the lake, and we just kept going, eventually climbing the mountain just outside of town, Mt. John.  From the top of the mountain, we could see the whole little village of Lake Tekapo, huddled on the shore and amid a great empty grassland.  A magical spot, still undiscovered by the masses.  Perhaps not for long, though, as we passed a resort under construction on our way out of the woods.  The weather continued to clear as we drove further south, revealing a vast valley, nearly uninhabited, snowcapped peaks on both sides.  The scrubby bushland here might not be good for livestock, but the farmers can fix all that.  Rotating sprinklers on wheels, several kilometers long, enable grass to grow, and thus sheep to eat.  Up and over a mountain range to an even more remote area, where we saw a farmer and son herding cattle next to the helicopter they used to locate the herd.After this drive, I'll never think of New Zealand as a small country again! Down a long valley to a wine-growing region, then up and over another mountain range, drawing close now to Queenstown... 
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1179122820/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1179122820/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tabonyhl/our_world_trip/1179122820/tpod.html Mon, 14 May 2007 01:12:46 -0400 Where in the world are Hunter and Cierra?

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Christchurch, New Zealand

Cierra got off at the first exit that said anything about Christchurch, so we got to drive through all the suburbs before we arrived in the actual city center.  Christchurch has over 300,000 residents, making it easily the largest city on the South Island.  Doesn't sound that big, until you realize that the population of New Zealand is just over 4 million, and more than 25 percent of those people live in Auckland.  Not too many left over to populate the rest of the country! It's a big, low city, stretching miles out from its quaint center, but no skyscrapers mark the business district.  Instead, you know you've found the heart of Christchurch when you cross Cathedral Square and see the spires of an Old English church giving meaning to the city's name.  We found the cheapest hostel in our book, parked out front, and went up to ring the bell.  It was then that we noticed the place had the look of a condemned building.  Tall grass was growing out front, litter interspersed between the tufts.  A light was on inside, but nobody came to the door.  This place was kaput.  After our second choice was full for the night, a random drive around the neighborhood revealed Charlie B's, a big, cozy backpackers.  The housecat (or perhaps the owner) was a tubby kitty named Charlie, so docile he'd fall asleep in anybody's lap.  We took a room, threw all our stuff inside, then Cierra had to run to return the campervan.  I took my first hot shower since Auckland, shaved, and began to feel human again.  While waiting for Cierra's return, I headed downstairs to the common room to write for a while.  People were watching Star Wars 1-Digital Strikes Back, and the terribleness of the movie kept me from concentrating.Later, we went for a walk around the center of town and Cierra got really excited when she found a Mexican restaurant with a Monday night special.  Christchurch was our first chance in a while to eat restaurant food, and we lived it up the next day as well, going out for Indian food at lunch and eating at some New Zealand chain called "Wisconsin Burgers", identifying itself with a land the owners probably had only read about.  The burgers were good, but I doubt they'd cut it in Wisconsin.  Cierra took a walk around Christchurch to see the gardens, but I wasn't feeling too great, sniffling away in the cold, drizzly weather, and I decided to head back to the hostel for some rest.That evening, we had a quiet night in and went to bed early, excited about picking up our new camper in the morning.During breakfast the next day, I discovered the "free food" area in the kitchen where departing guests put their unwanted supplies.  Jackpot! Peanut butter, sugar, salt, paprika, soya oil, salad dressing, and Thai chili sauce were added to our food bag.  That should make today's grocery bill a little lighter.We were concerned over whether the new camper would live up to the one we'd relocated, but had to laugh when we got a look inside.  It was the exact same design, same van make and model, just a logo slapped on the side.  No problem.  We signed all the paperwork and promised not to do a bunch of things, including enter it in a road rally.  Ha.  Yeah, if I wanted to lose a race, I might enter this thing in it.  Let's see, an engine with over 300,000 kilometers on it and a design with more wind resistance than Conan O'Brian's head.  Sounds like a winner to me!Then we spent two hours at the Pak N Save, outfitting ourselves for the next two weeks.  Well under a hundred bucks, and we got plenty of food, some of it cheap because we bought in bulk.  A big bag full of two kilograms of pre-cooked sausages should take care of the meat portion of our diet.  Bet we hate sausages in a couple of weeks!Though it was raining steadily, we decided to take the scenic road to Lake Tekapo anyway, because we didn't have anything better to do.  Rolling farmland revealed a lot of wet cows and cold sheep, but the mountain vistas were lost in the clouds.  We rolled upwards to the colder highlands, drove through an alpine pass where nearby snow covered peaks shone through the clouds, then down to Lake Tekapo...
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