Hello From The Future!!

*snicker*

Well, considering it's 2008 here, and you're all still back in 2007, I'm even more so in the future than I was before. I just think it's funny.

So the last few weeks have been pretty cool. I left off at the end of my Milford Track hike, but that was over on Dec 16th, so I've done quite a bit since then.

After the track I stayed in Milford Sound for a night, and the first thing I did was have a glorious hot shower. After 4 days without one, I think it was the longest shower I've ever had! When I left in the morning it was still rainy and cloudy and I still couldn't see Mitre Peak to get a picture of it. Nuts.

I made my way up the west coast of the south island to a town called Wanaka, where there really wasn't much to do. So I went to Puzzling World. It was a crazy building full of optical illusions and fun stuff to play with. The cafe had a whole bunch of mind puzzles out on the tables for you to play with, and there was another huge wooden maze outside like the one Tyler and I went to in Rotorua. (Oh yeah, Tyler and I have separated again, and probably won't run into each other anymore since I leave soon.)

Here are some fun pictures from Puzzling World



Look, in this room I was tiny up there ^, but giant down there! v


Funny room outside the bathrooms. This was a recreated old time Roman Bathroom. In the background there's people using it see? Haha. Funny optical illusion


On the drive out of Wanaka

I only spent one day in Wanaka and then continued up the coast to a teensy little town called Fox Glacier. I'm not sure whether the town is called Fox Glacier or not, but I never heard otherwise, and it's main feature is the Fox Glacier, a few minutes drive out of town. I did a day walk trip and actually got to go do some hiking on the glacier, which was really cool. The ice on top melts so quickly that the guides have to cut new steps every day on it. We were on the actual glacier for about 4.5 hours, and got to look down crevasses, see some small tunnels, and look down at the face of the glacier from on top of it. A real neat experience that's for sure. And one of the small mountains right near the glacier totally looked like the Chief, only a miniature version!









If you look really really closely at that last picture, there are some tiny specks at the bottom of the glacier. Those are actually people. So that might give you an idea of the scale of how big it actually is at the face. About 50 meters thick I think it was. It was a really great day, and I learned a lot about glaciers and how they form, and continue to grow and retreat all the time.

The only other thing to do in the tiny town of Fox Glacier (which only consisted of one main street with a gas station, two cafes, a bar, a corner store and the glacier guiding company) was to go out to Lake Matheson, which is the most photographed lake in New Zealand. That is because it is also called 'Mirror Lake' because when the wind dies down it is completely calm and the surface is as still and smooth as glass. It gives amazing reflections of Mount Cook and Mount Tasman (some of the tallest mountains in NZ) and is stunning at sunset. So that's when I went, and I did get some great pictures.




Once I left Fox Glacier, I was pretty much just traveling up the coast so that I could get back to the top to catch the ferry back to Wellington for Christmas. There's not much to mention about those few days of my trip as they were pretty uneventful. I did another brewery tour, Montieth's this time, but it was a much much smaller brewery than Speights in Dunedin. Still very cool and free taste testing at the end. I did some hiking, and not much else really.

Two of the stops that the bus made during my journey were pretty neat though. One was at a totally obscure cafe in an off the beaten track kind of town. It was neat though because the owner is a hunter, and has found baby deer on his travelling in the bushes, and has brought them back and hand raised them. So the result is now two huge Red Deer stags that are completely tame and will let you hand feed them and pet them. Their antlers are soooo soft!




The other stop was in a small town of Punakaiki (Poo-nah-kay-kee), which is famous for it's 'Pancake Rocks.' They are huge columns of limestone rock that have been carved and washed away by the ocean over a really long time, and result in a layered look that does look like stacks of pancakes. At high tide the water will surge into them and erupt guyser-style from them, but unfortunately it wasn't high tide when we stopped there. But they were still very cool too see.




I arrived in Wellington on Christmas Eve, and my friends Evie and Jarratt were kind enough to pick me up from the ferry and bring me back to their lovely little home. I've been getting some wonderful R&R while I've been here, and Evie and Jarratt have taken me to a whole bunch of neat things around Wellington. We went to a wildlife sanctuary and the Botanic Gardens, and also to a party where one of their friends' band was playing. And on Christmas Day I was also welcome to join them for a barbeque at one of their friend's houses.

So it's been a pretty laid back holiday season for me. I keep getting asked if I was sad on Christmas since I wasn't at home with family and friends. Well, I missed the people, but I wasn't too upset because it doesn't really feel like the holidays here. There are some decorations but not many, no Christmas lights because it's summer and doesn't get dark until 10, and there's no egg nog! Plus the weather is nice and warm instead of dark, cold and wet, and so it really just felt like any other day for me. But to be honest it was a nice change of pace from the hectic, stressful commercialism that Christmas has become in North America. I think the kiwis have it right. Just settle down for a nice barby on the patio and have a good time with some friends. That's what it should be all about really.

I was planning to be up on a beach just south of Auckland for New Years last night, but through my own procrastination and lack of planning, when I went to book a hostel I found out that all of New Zealand was completely booked out for the 31st. I felt pretty stupid about that, not even thinking that I might have to book a hostel for that night much further in advance than usual, and so I was faced with either staying on the street or in an expensive hotel room for the night. Fortunately Evie and Jarratt are very kind people and have let me impose on their home for a few more days. (They assure me I'm no bother at all, and have taken to calling me their 'magical Canadian elf' as I like to clean up the kitchen for them to in part pay for my stay. They rather like the fact that the kitchen is magically cleaning itself while I'm staying here. Haha.) They had a karaoke party with a small group of their friends last night, and I had a great time and a great New Year's Eve.

So, I'm heading up to that beach tomorrow, and in a few days I start a 5 day surf school, where hopefully I will actually accomplish being able to stand on a board for longer than one second. I'm pretty excited about it, since it's supposed to be a really great beach and a great school too. I've always wanted to learn to surf!

So, since the New Year begins for all of you (the ones in Vancouver and home anyway) in about 5 hours, I'm sure some of the festivities are already well under way. From my experience of it so far, 2008 is going very well, and is looking to be a good year indeed.

Wishing you all a safe and happy New Year,
Love Julie

Milford Track!

So, I've finally done it! I booked this hike back at the beginning of July, and I've been wanting to do it for months even before then.

If I haven't already prattled on to some of you about this hike, it's supposed to be one of the greatest in the world. It's four days long and takes you from inland at Lake Te Anau up through the Clinton Valley, over Mackinnon Pass, and down Arthur Valley to finish in Milford Sound.

This is no piece of cake walk. It's 55 km (33.5 miles for Grandpa and my American friends,) in pretty much 3 days. This area is a rainforest, and when I say that I mean RAINforest. It averages 8-11 METERS of rain a year, with their records being 94cm in 5 days, and 33cm in 36 hours. That's 1cm per hour almost!

And rather than spending $1800 to do this walk guided and live in the lap of luxury, we actually had to carry all our food in with us, as well as things like cooking equipment and sleeping bags. That also meant we didn't get a shower for 4 days. Ewww.

I set off on Dec. 13th with Tyler in tow (I told him about this hike and he booked in for the same day as me back before either of us were even here) and after a bus and boat ride we were at the start of the track.

Day One
- 5km, 3.1 miles
- 1.5 hours
- Cloudy with sunny periods



The first day was pretty easy. We were only able to walk 5 km to the first hut because the people who started the track the day before would have been at the next hut. This walk is very controlled in the summer and they only let 40 (unguided) people on it each day.

The walk was a nice flat trail that hugged the Clinton River the whole way to the hut. About 10 minutes before the hut was a small boardwalk that went into the wetlands. The hut that night was called Clinton Hut, and slept 20 people to each bunkroom. Can you say HORRIBLE? Some guy on the other side of the hut horrendously snored the whole night, and with that and kiwi birds screaming outside all night I didn't get much sleep! But I was excited for the next day.




Day Two
- 16.5 km, 10.3 miles
- 6 hours
- Light showers turning to rain

So, the day started out drizzling, but turned to full out rain after about an hour. Needless to say we got soaked to the bone, despite wet weather gear. It sucked, but it was good too, because the rain brings the waterfalls to life. Day two consists of walking up a glacier formed valley with really steep sides, which means they were completely covered in waterfalls. Absolutely breathtaking. The fog rolled in and gave it such a moody atmosphere that it was almost creepy. Even though I was miserably wet and my boots were puddles it was hard to miss the beauty of the place. The immense amount of water cascading down the mountains was almost unbelievable. I would have taken more pictures but it was hard to try and keep my camera dry and the pictures don't really do it justice.

We were able to make a fire at the hut that night and hang up all our stuff to dry. We got there in the early afternoon so we had time to kill, and we met a bunch of young people from Germany and played cards with them. And the keas (alpine parrots) came out to play at the hut in the evening. Very playful birds! They've been known to rip the rubber lining out from around car doors and windows just for fun. We had to hang up all our sutff that was outside so they couldn't get at it and destroy it. That night at Mintaro hut we managed to snag beds in a 8 bed room, but Tyler snored all night. He's never snored before! Needless to say I spent another night without much sleep...






Day Three
- 18km, 11.5 miles
- 7.5 hours
- Overcast sky with afternoon sun

So, your prayers for nice weather for me made it with the time difference in time for the best day, the hike over the pass. Up 500 vertical meters, down 900. Hard on the knees but amazing views! It took about two hours to make the climb over the pass, and from the top we could see all the way down the Clinton Valley (the way we had come in the last few days, and also down the other side to the Arthur Valley (where we were heading.) In the picture I'm looking over a ledge that has a 12 second drop. I totally have my scared smile on.



Back down Clinton Valley, where we came from

Panorama of the Arthur Valley area from the top of the pass.

In the afternoon we were able to leave our packs at a shelter on the track and take a side trip to Sutherland Falls, the fifth highest in the world and highest in New Zealand at 580 meters. Pretty beautiful, but I got thoroughly soaked standing at the bottom because of the spray. The sun really came out in the afternoon and so the last hour hike to the hut was a hot one. So when I saw a sign for a swimming hole I was all for getting clean. Only we're not allowed to use soap or shampoo in the lakes or rivers so it was pretty much just trying to rub my head clean. It was absolutely freezing though since it's snow and glacier run off in the river. Anna from Germany came too, and it was so cold her nose started running! It was definitely refreshing though and I did feel much cleaner after!



Sutherland Falls

The hut warden that night told us a lot of cool stuff about the history of the track. It wasn't open to unguided walkers until 1964 when the Otago Tramping Club walked in and staged a protest on the top of Mackinnon Pass to let independent walkers on. The government had no choice but to give in and built the huts that we're using now and let unguided walkers on the track. Pretty cool. Also, do you know why the only flowers in alpine areas are white? It's because bees don't live that high up and can't pollinate the flowers, so that only things left are moths. And moths only come out at night, so all they can pollinate are the flowers they can see, hence the white ones surviving and the rest not. I thought that was pretty interesting!

In the hut I was in a 10 bed room but no one in it snored! Yay, so I actually got a pretty good sleep for the last day.

Day Four
- 18km, 11.5 miles
- 5.5 hours
- Pouring rain all day.

We think we get rain back home, but THIS was RAIN. It was thundering down so hard it was like drums hitting the ground, and the drops were the size of huge raisins, if not jellybeans.

It was pouring rain right from when we got up, and after only 45 minutes my boots were completely soaked through again. So I just gave up trying to be dry and had fun doing some puddle-jumping. Day four was pretty much following the Arthur River and Lake Ada down to the ocean at Milford Sound. Because it was raining so hard, once again the waterfalls were alive, but not as dramatic as day two because we weren't in such a contained valley this time. Mostly they were really large ones, but there were tons of streams that crossed the path that we had to walk through. The deepest one was almost up to my knees!

It was really amazing to be walking through the forest in the pouring rain. It gives a completely different perspective. The whole forest is alive with the tapping of rain on leaves and shrill bird calls. It smells so earthy and natural that it almost enhances your vision because it gives you more detail and a bigger overall vision of what you're seeing. The trees and ferns were similar and yet so different from the ones at home giving me a sense of familiarity and new adventure at the same time. Simply amazing.






Mitre peak, but it's hidden behind the clouds and you can't see it. I was really disappointed about that because Milford Sound is supposed to be absolutely beautiful when it's nice out.

We took a boat into Milford Sound, and we were done!

I feel so much more fit now! I feel like I could climb another mountain. Although I don't want to because I'm pretty sore!

Thanks for the recipe ideas guys, they really helped!

Please Help!

Ok, so I need some help from everyone out there.

I'm tired of my cooking.

I need some fresh ideas from all you meal-in-a-minute college friends, great recipes from parents, and just some new ideas. I've been travelling for over two months now, and I'm pretty much sick of the meals I've been having, becasue I keep making the same ones every week pretty much.

The thing is, it's a bit more difficult than cooking at home.
- I have no way of storing extra food, so whatever I cook I have to eat it all in one go. Meaning no big meals or casseroles or anything like that please.
- I have no way of storing extra ingredients, which makes buying and cooking meat very difficult because it hardly ever comes in single serving sizes or portions at the store.
- I need to use cheap ingredients, and ones I can get in small amounts, so nothing like mustard or something like that because I can't use it all.

It depends. Sometimes if I'm staying in one place for a few days, I can get by storing a bit of food in the fridge if there's room, or if they have tupperware or some cling wrap I am able to store some left overs. Most hostels don't have freezers though, so any meat I buy has to be used within a day or two. So if you have a recipe or idea you think is good, but needs meat or makes a meal for two or something, give it to me anyway becasue I may still be able to make it sometimes.

Things that I usually can't buy because of the storage issues are things like cheese, deli meats, condiments, sauces etc. Sometimes hostels will have a small supply of these, or provide salt and pepper, but it's not always.

That being said, I do have a small food bag I take everywhere with me, and so I usually always have a supply of pepper, butter, rice, jam and peanut butter with me.

The meals I usually end up cooking for myself are:
- Fried rice, with or without chicken if I can get it
- Some sort of pasta dish, sometimes adding a small can of salmon or meat if I have it.
- Lots of vegetables like carrots, broccoli, yams, corn, beets and peas
- Some fruits that keep for a few days like bananas and apples
- Sandwiches or breads

I am basically surviving off of all carbs - rice, breads, pastas, potatoes, etc. with some veggies thrown in.

So please, if you have any ideas help me out. I would like to branch out my flavour oportunities! And eat less carbs if possible! The perfect criteria for the meals I'm looking for are: small portions and easy to make with few ingredients.

Email me at justcallmejules@hotmail.com or leave a comment with your ideas, I can't wait to see them!

See you all in about about a week, I'm off on my 5 day hike today! Wish me luck, and pray for nice weather for me, since it's looking VERY crappy for the next few days. I'm really disappointed about the weather, since it's be glorious here for two months, and of course it decides to get crappy the ONE week I hoped it would be nice. I've been looking forward to this hike for over 6 months, so please keep thinking nice thoughts of nice weather for Julie in the next few days, I'd be ever grateful for that as well.

Thanks so much everyone!

Yummm... Beer and Chocolate

So, this part of my trip has been very yummy indeed. But first, the penguins!

So, I did go see the penguins in Oamaru (Ah-mah-roo), but I was very disappointed with the yellow eyed ones, because you had to look at them from way up on a hill, and they were so far away you could just barely tell they were penguins. I was pretty sad because I wanted to see them up close. So, I left there and went to try and find the little blue penguins, or fairy penguins. I went to the viewing area and found out you had to pay $20 to sit in bleachers up on the beach and watch them come out of the water to their nests. Well, I didn't want to sit with tons of other people to see THESE penguins far away too, so I decided to go find some myself. They nest all up and down the coast around there, so I figured I'd find some eventually.

I set off down the beach and found a place where there was a fence and a sign saying to respect the penguins, so I stopped there and waited, and sure enough, as it was getting dark I started to hear them honking out on the water, and you could see them bobbing there in groups. Then one by one or a few at a time they would ride the waves and try to come ashore. It was pretty adorable, because they'd get pushed up really far on the beach with a wave, and then the retreating water would pull on them and they'd fall over and get pulled back, but they'd get a bit further each wave. Then when they were far enough up the beach they'd start waddling really fast to try and get away from the waves. I also actually startled a bunch when I went to walk home, and came around a corner and there were like 20, about 5 feet away. But they ran under the fence and into the bushes pretty quick. I was able to crouch down and see them in their nests looking back at me, from only a few feet away. Quite the experience! They were so cute, I want one.



So even though I didn't really get to see the yellow eyed ones, I was very happy seeing the blue ones, which were the ones I really wanted to see in the first place.

Oamaru Botanic Gardens



After that, I left Oamaru and headed down further south to a city called Dunedin (Dun-ee-din). It was the first settlement by the Europeans, and it's name is Gaelic for Edinburgh, which is actually it's sister city. There's tons of beautiful buildings and churches, and the city is built on a harbour so there are tons of beautiful views of the ocean all around.



There was so much fun stuff to do in Dunedin! The best of all being the Speights Brewery tour, and the Cadbury Chocolate Factory tour! Hence the beer and chocolate title...

The brewery tour was pretty cool. I've found that I actually like this brand of beer, so I really did enjoy the tour. It's one of the last five gravity fed breweries in the world, which means the raw ingredients start at the top of the factory and work their way down to the bottom and come out as beer. It's also the last one in the world to still ferment it's brews in huge, 32,ooo litre fermenting barrels. The tour guide was really cool, and he told us a story about when the brewery needed to have a slogan so they had a contest back in 1980 for factory workers to submit their ideas. The winner was "Pride of the South" and the employee who thought of it got a cash reward, a special plate and... free beer for life. That lucky guy! He still works at the brewery today.

We got to see a lot of the factory, but the best part was the end of the tour where they took us to the brewery bar and we got to sample 6 of their beers. They basically gave us free reign of the taps for half an hour, so a group of 4 young people that I had met on the tour and I just kind of gave'er, and drank as much as we could. Hey, we had to get our money's worth! I actually liked 5 of the 6 beers too, just not the really dark one. They had a killer good apricot one that tasted almost like a juice rather than a beer. I pretty much had the equivalent of about 2-2.5 pints in 25 minutes, so I was feeling rather good when I left there! It was 5:30 in the evening by that time, so the five of us went to a pub to get dinner and have a few more drinks. It was a fun night!




The next day was my chocolate factory tour! Holy crap the chocolate factory was amazing. Just walking in to the factory area and the whole place smells like melting chocolate. It was like a dream come true. But they didn't let cameras in to the factory which sucks cause I can't show anyone any pictures, but it was totally cool. Pretty much how I imagined it would be. Like, assembly line chocolate making machines, and people hand painting the buttons onto chocolate easter bunnies, an chocolate waterfall... I loved it. The best part thought was the gift shop at the end where they had huge chocolate bars discounted for killer cheap. Like, $2 canadian for a cadbury bar that is almost 3 times the size of the ones we have at home, and so many crazy flavours that we don't have. I bought tons... We got loads of free samples during the tour too so I have chocolate bursting out of all points of my backpack at the moment. Awesome.



The gold stuff is millions of Crunchie bars....

Some other cool things I did in Dunein was going to the museum where they had a rainforest exhibit, and a huge 3 story room that was set up like a rainforest. There were litterally hundreds, if not over a thousand butterflies flitting all around. They were so pretty! Some were absolutely huge, others were a beautiful blue colour, and there were tons just sitting around all over the plants.





I also went to Larnach castle, which was built in the 1800's and is the only castle in New Zealand, and the whole southern hemisphere. It even had a turret, so of course I loved it! Very beautifully built on the top of a hill overlooking the whole harbour too. The tour guide new so much about the castle and the whole family history, so I learned a lot about it on my tour.




And since I was still disappointed about not getting to see the yellow eyed penguins, I went on an actual wildlife tour in Dunedin to make sure that I would get to see them this time. Well, I wasn't disappointed! When we walked down the path to get to the beach, there were two just standing right by the path, about 5 feet away! So I definitely got to see them up close this time. We also went to a few little bunkers where you could see them coming in off the beach and climbing up to their nests on the hills. Pretty neat. On the tour I also got to see New Zealand Hooker Sea Lions, fur seals, a baby elephant seal (Awwww) and even albatrosses. For those of you that don't know, albatrosses are the biggest sea birds there are, with an average wingspan of 3 meters. Holy crap are they ever huge. Just seeing them gliding in the air next to a teensy seagull! Because they are so huge, they actually can't fly on their own. They need at least an 8 knot wind, because all they can do is glide on the wind. So if there is no wind, they can't fly. Luckily it was a windy day for us, so we were able to see a bunch gliding overhead and a few coming in off the water to land in their nests. They only ever come ashore to breed, and Dunedin is the only place in the world where they nest on a mainland, so it's a pretty lucky experience to be able to see them. They can spend years at a time without ever touching land! Crazy.




Baby elephant seal


Finally, the last thing I did in Dunedin was to visit the steepest street in the world. Pretty cool, and it WAS pretty steep. It's supposed to have a 19% grade, which is pretty crazy considering most hills are like, 7-9% on the highways around home and stuff. While I was there, three cars tried to make it up the street, and only two made it. I climbed to the top, yay for me! The pictures don't really show how steep it was, but I tried my best.




So now I've left Dunedin and I'm in a city called Queenstown, which actually reminds me tons of Whistler. It's a ski town in the winter, but it's summer right now. But it's the same city pretty much, just without the pedestrian area Whistler has. The buildings are all the chalet style with rock and wood construction, and it's killer expensive too. So yeah, Whilstler #2. But it's really nice, and my hostel is right across the road from the lake, and my room even has a great view of the lake and mountains. I'm going to be here for a little bit, until I head down to Te Anau (Tee An-ow) for my 4 day hiking trip to Milford Sound. I'm pretty excited about that, but not looking forward to carrying my pack on my back for 20km a day. Ouch.

So yeah, killer huge update here, took me forever to write. I hope you like all the pictures, cause there's a lot there for you!

Have a good one everyone!
Miss you all!