Queenstown

Milford

'Ello, we conquered the milford track yesterday, the last 4 days we managed to tramp around 40-43 miles with the weight of a small child on our backs. But, we also journeyed our way through some of the most beautiful, breathtaking scenery I've ever seen. The day before Milford we hiked 3 hours into the Keplar Track, which is another "Great Walk" Of New Zealand, retreated backto our cabin ni Te Anau where a new couple from China checked in. We woke up early the next morning and hopped on a bus that lead us to Te Anau Downs, where we hopped on a boat that drove us through fjords surrounded by huge lakes, where eventually Clint dropped us off at the beginning of the Milford Track. Our journey began with a group of 4 from UK,Georgia,Czech Republic, and Germany, and also a group of 2 from Czech Republic. After 45 minutes of hiking a rather green,foresty trail we stopped at Clinton Hut for lunch, which was probably a mistake. We then ate for an hour and hiked about another 80 minutes and stopped and played around on a river, hopping rocks and taking rest on a huge tree laying in the river as deadwood. We were extremely behind the pace to make it to Montanyo Hut (little did we know). About an hour of hiking past our river stop we hiked in the most beautiful valley, inbetween 2 huge mountain ranges of the Fjordland National Park. As we layed and drank water for our last break I snapped a few pictures of us laying against our packs, we had our moment of silence for a few minutes to soak it all in, some of the most beautiful moments I've been apart of. The last 3 hours were pure hustle halfway up the mountain. We finally arrived at Montanyo Hut about sunfall, sometime around 6:30, the mountains block all the sun at a fairly early time. We arrived to a nice hut nestled up in a mountain, no electricity,only source of anything was water from the stream. It was filled with tramping groups and hikers all over the place, cooking with their fancy,expensive camping gear. We walk in with dried fruits,bread and trail mix as they are sipping teas,gorging on pasta and somehow a birthday cake. So there we all were, 46 trampers all in a hut with a few picnic tables resting our aching bones, everyone being guided by the headlamp on their heads, you could really tell where people were looking with headlamps on their heads. We started day 2 about 9 am (quite late). The first hour of hiking was all up the mountain until we reached the summit. It got very snowy and windy at the top, but also new views formed as we were looking top-down rather the former. We stopped for lunch ina freezing cold hut on the top, right near Mackinnon Pass which is the highest point of the hike. After lunch little did we know (yet again) that a 3 minute's hike from our frigid lunch spot was down the mountain a nice sunfilled path going down the opposite side of the mountain. The remainder of the 2nd day was down the mountain through lush forrest , across cabled and wood plank bridges until we reached the Sutherland Falls, which are 5th largest in the world. About 6 pm we arrived at our Hut for the evening. Again, all the bunks were full so we were plotted on the floor of the Hut, McLean with just a blanket was freezing both nights, I felt sorry for the guy, seeing that I had a 20 degree bag and was very cold myself with 2 sweatshirts on. I'd say it was about 40-45 degrees in the Huts both nights. We woke about 6 am on day 3 to get a good start. It was all along the side of a river and lakes on day 3, straight and the easiest day of the hike, except for being very tender and sore. We arrived at the end around 3 pm where the boats would pick us up and drive us through part of Milford Sound. It was an amazing 3 day journey, meeting some amazingly friendly trampers, a majority of the gruop of 46 were middle-aged, somewhere in their 30's or up through 50's. There were also plenty of people in 20's as well, from all over the world. US,Canada,Israel,Czech Republic,Germany,China,Italy,a few tramping clubs from Ontago Region of New Zealand. ONe of the best things was meeting and being around all these amazing people throughout the hike, always seeing them when you pass eachother for lunch breaks or for the sites of the hike. Last night we got back to our beloved Cabin in Te Anau after a 2 hour bus ride away from the sound, which we have been longing for. We ran into Yon and Asaf from our hike in the town at a pizza joint. Turned our Asaf was going to sleep in his vehicle to save on cash and Yon had a room in the same hostel as us. So we offered Asaf couch space for the evning and he abliged. Since it is getting closer to winter down in NZ and the south island is cooling down, especially overnight temps drop. We woke up this morning and McLean had to hop on the bus to Queenstown, then board a flight from QTown to Wellington, back to his schooling, we had some solid times with Ben, for about 10 days straight. Feigs and I woke up and right as I ordered our $35 dollar bus tickets he ran and told me we didn't need to, that Asaf was headed to Queenstown and would give us a ride for 8 dollars, just to split gas. So we eventually cancelled the bus fare and got $17 back from the $35 and rode a couple hours with Asaf and Yon. Asaf is from Israel, it was interesting learning more about their culture, in his army duties he had to do for 3 years (no choice in Israel) he had to watch over terrorist palestinians and such. Yon is a mechanical engineer from east coast Canada, Ottawa region. Us 4 cruised to Q-town and checked out the city today, it is quite beautiful here, smaller then Wellington by quite a bit tucked up in mountains and on a lake. We are staying at a hostel here for 2 nights in a tool shed that is heated and with beds, actually pretty comfortable. Our plan is to slowly make our way northward, where it is warmer. We have a job possibly lined up in Christchurch which is about 8 hours NW of Q-Town. with goats to milk, and organic veggies and other work for us to keep busy with. After that we also have to lined up in the Marlborough Sound Region, doing similar work plus additional work with the land for conservational help, seeing they are covering heaps and heaps of land and many hikers come through.

A few things I've noticed while living out of a backpack. You miss good, cheap, food. Everything here seems so much more expensive. Everyother day we head to the grocery to try and plot what foods we can carry with us, that won't spoil, that we enjoy, and that isn't expensive. This is a very tough task. Also, I have only found 1 decent pizza joint in Te Anau and only because they didn't put sauce on it. The sauce they put on their pizza here is usually similar to bbq sauce and tastes funky in a bad way. Also, Keabob's are huge here, basically our version of the burrito. People here are insanely friendly as well. Television and any sort of entertainment or media is very explicit here. Not much censoring goes on, even on prime time television. The police do not carry firearms in New Zealand, everything here is so laid back, that theme seems to carry over into everything. I'm currently downtown Queenstown at the World Cafe, where all travelers come to make cheap calls and get cheap internet access, the phones have been booked forever. I don't really remember the way back to the hostel but I guess I will go figure it out after alittle walk around this aspen esque town.
'til later,cheers,
Kc

Nonexistant Earth Day,Wind Burn and Missing Fleece

On the flight from Dallas to Frisco, which actually was longer then the MPLS--->Dallas flight, getting us nowhere..haha, it was cheaper yet we used almost twice the fuel? haha, doesn't make much sense. But I was lucky enough to land a spot next to a really nice guy from Michigan who had lived in NC,Dallas Region and was visiting his daughter in SF, who also had a son who is an aspiring actor in LA and was just in an episode of 2 and 1/2 men, also shooting a small role in a new Jamie Foxx film, he was good company for the3-4 hour flight to San Fran. So there we are around 6:30 PM on Thursday April 18, at the airport trying to figure out a way to navigate ourselves as cheaply as possible to downtown region to book a hostel for the evening. We hop on a bus, only about 25 minutes later we are headed the absolute wrong direction, and heading past San Mateo and onto Palo Alto (Stanford U). After running into the friendliest bum I've encountered, we headed on our way to the CalTrain where he lead us, and I felt as if earned my 62 cents. CalTrain takes us down to SF Finally, and after a grocery trip for food we are ready to find a hostel around 10:00 PM. We begin meandering the streets with all our gear like lost souls with no direction. Eventually another homeless man approaches, he offers to guide us to a hostel and asks if we need any sort of drugs (he was quite scary looking). I wanted to get away from this guy right away, but since we are so lost we follow him and he leads us through alleyways and backstreets, mumbling about stories of his 10 years of living on the streets of SF. He constantly was bending over picking up cigarette buts hoping they were something he could smoke, this man claimed his favorite was crystal meth,which scared me even more. He takes us to a pretty sketchy motel and says he can hook us up a deal, not true at all, we got the same price but we decide to move onto an old hostel turned into a hotel for 35 dollars a night each...we give the dude 10 bucks to get out of our lives and call it a night. We awaken the next day, load up our gear and begin walking for a backpackers hostel to stay the next 2 nights in. After about an hour of walking around,failing completely we stop at Union Square to munch on some apples and take a look around the park...only to have a fellow lead us right to a backpackers down an alley a block away. The place didn't look like a 5 star, but i was exactly what I was looking for, about 20 backpackers staying in (smaller hostel)...with a 3rd floor community room with kitchen and computer access. This hostel had folks from Ireland, West Virginia, Australia, London,Uruguay,Tokyo and a few other places, everyone was amazingly nice and down to earth, we would hang with them on down time in the community room throughout our 2 night stay. After getting settled in there we headed down to Whole Foods which is gods gift to natural/organic food lovers. Found some amazing bottled organic milk. a couple fresh loaves of bread and had some lunch. Then we pregamed Friday evening for the YMSB show a few blocks away at the Warfield..legendary with Phish drummer john fishman. The show was filled with crazies, older deadheads who've moved onto the fresh jam scene of our generation, nothing but good vibes, bluegrass ,and smiles all around, amazing concert. After the show we just went back to the hostel around 1:45 am after a getting lost for about 20 minutes. The last day in SF we rented bikes with 3 others, one being Chase, who was also from Fargo and staying in our hostel, such a small world. Backalley hostel in SF and another Fargoan checks in. We bike toured from downtown to the GG Bridge to GG park and then finally Haight St....this town has so much zest and culture, I have a few pics and videos throughout our ventures here. After about 6-7 hours biking around SF we biked back to the hostel to pack up and head to the airport for our 12 hour flight to Auckland,NZ at 9pm.....The San Francisco Treat was more then I anticipated, greatest large city in the country as far as I'm concerned.

We completely skipped over Earth Day, and 4/20 up in the air. We left Frisco 4/19 at 9pm, and landed in Auckland 4/21 around 4 AM. The 12 hour flight over the Pacific was smooth, watched 2 movies, read alittle bit of Chuck Palaniuk's "Diary", and slept about 2 hours. We landed early, and by the time we gathered everything and our luggage I realized I forgot my jacket with deodorant and biking cateye in the pockets. While Feigum slept in the airport for 2 hours I was sent aimlessly from desk to desk in search of my missing north face, after 2 hours of desk meandering, I had no luck and now some Kiwi is sporting my fleece around Auckland. Oh well, just a jacket...right? Around 7 am we took the city bus to Auckland's City Centre and found a nice backpacker's hostel in the heart of the city in an 8 bedroom for 22 dead prez's a piece. We had the chance to meet many many nice people from all around. The countries/states representing our 8 bed was Germany,Israel,Michigan, and Turkey. After a nice shower (it had been 4 days) we met Ross from Fargo who has been tramping NZ and Auz for 6 months. We checked out the city and roamed with Ross all day and night, eventually opening our Jameson Whiskey and cracking a 6-pack on the 5 floor balcony of Ross's hostel about 2 miles down Queen St. The drinks lead to a craving for food, we bounced down to a local NZ pizza joint. Pizza is not NZ's specialty, they don't really use pizza sauce, but more so BBQ sauce on their pizza. I was hungry, I was sem-drunk...it was OK, he did have a good lager on tap which made up for the lack of pizza credibility. We headed to a pub a few blocks away for one last brew and headed home around 1:30...seeing that I had only 2 hours of sleep on the plane, and we had been slowly inebriating ourselves since 6 o'clock. We woke up today and walked around the harbor of Auckland looking for good fresh produce and fish. The skies were sunny for moments, then rainy the next, back and forth for hours. We finally decided on loading up on cheeses,fresh bread, hummus,pesto and organic milk to snack on. All while trying to figure out travel plans to get out of Auckland. They say Auckland is only here as the main transportation hub, but get out after a couple of days and see the country, which we are doing tomorrow. Taking 12 hour bus ride across the North Island to Wellington and Ben McLean, where Ross will head up north and work for someone a week longer.