New Zealand
Trip Start
Aug 30, 2006
1
Trip End
May 17, 2007
Christchurch,
New Zealand
Monday, June 11, 2007
Here are some of our highlights of New Zealand. It's very green, very beautiful and very empty. We had some of the best weekends just losing ourselves in the mountains.
Here a few highlights-it's different living and working somewhere though to just travelling around-that thing called work gets in the way.
We carried on our crazy meditation quest. Within 48 hrs of arriving in New Zealand we had started a Vipassana retreat, these are the hard core ones where you can't even look at anyone else for the whole time and you only eat fruit after midday....and after that we went back again to do the retreat and cook for everyone else
Andy and Dave
. I don't know what came over us, but we had very sore knees by the end.The North Island in winter was beautiful, and we made the most of it by camping and hiking on the empty beaches of the Coromandel peninsula which is all white sand and green hills. We ventured to the crazy volcanics of Taupo where there are loads of natural hot springs; so many that in some places the rivers just run warm! We stayed on a retreat centre for a week cooking for the various groups that came and learning a lot about growing veggies and just experiencing a different way of living, that tries to be a lot more gentle on the land and foster a sense of community. Everyone was so nice and we learnt a lot of cooking skills that we have been trying out since.
We've been throwing ourselves into the great outdoors a lot and had some of the most amazing weekends away-hiking for days. They have a system of huts which all have wood heaters and beds and after a day spent walking its really lovely to just arrive somewhere comfy and cosy, yet still be far away from the sounds of the world.
Andy took me swimming with dolphins---about 400 of them. Just dolphins spinning and flipping and messing about as far as the eye can see
Beautiful
. There were so many of them swarming around the boat when I was getting in that it felt like a shark pit. I think dolphins are petty giddy becasue they just kept coming up to me and swimming around and making me dizzy. They like it is you hum and sing--they go crazy spinning. They swim really fast too--like dolphin bullets whizzing by.For New Years we went on a 5 day cycle ride through a particularly empty farmscape with our lovely kiwi friends. I loved it-travelling at such a slow pace through the scenery allowed it to just settle into me. It wasn't the most spectacular part of New Zealand but it was probably my favourite bit; something about the tiny wooden cottages in the middle of nowhere and the broken down Bedford trucks encapsulated the isolated heart of this country-and taking a beautifully heated bath outdoors with glorious views of the snowy mountains and big skies, collecting the hugest wild mushrooms and cooking them and chatting around the camp fire felt like a proper holiday...even the rain didn't spoil it!
So somewhat unplanned we are now in Australia and it feels very different to New Zealand, sort of huge, spacious and fiery. We have settled in Sydney for the time being and are enjoying the vibrancy and buzz of being a in a big city
Big Sky
. Last weekend we went to the craziest party I've ever been to; in a massive artists community with art everywhere, including a huge inflatable cow which when you lifted its spots you couls spy on girls dressed in bunny rabbit suit bikinis inside and a heavy metal rock band all dressed up in spandex and make up who played for 2 hours straight but you couldn't hear anything except shouting. There must have been about 300 people there and they were all bonkers. Cities are great for crazy stuff like that.Love you all!!
Mary
