Sweet Silver Lining

On a scale of one to successful, I definitely wouldn't rate the last few weeks very high. We attempted to do quite a few things... and failed to do quite a few of those. But hey, there's always a silver lining. So here's the rundown..

Idea #1: 

Temple Basin Ski Field. I was so excited to try this field! It's supposed to be a really unique experience - some would even say the best skiing experience of their life (in NZ), but as their website says, "It is not for the feint of heart". Since I don't consider myself to be that, I bought a GrabOne deal with two day passes- one for me and one for Cam. We waited for the perfect day and on a sunny day with 30 cm of fresh powder, we drove out to Arthurs Pass.

Where it all went wrong: 

The reason this field is not for the feint of heart is because you have to HIKE there. Remember the access roads I described in the last post? This field doesn't have one. Instead it has a "goods lift" that you access from the main road, and then you hike up the mountain and get your gear at the top. The problem is that every description we read of the goods lift said it was right near the parking lot. So we parked near the parking lot (it was full so we really parked on the side of the highway) and started up the track. About 10 minutes in we were thinking that this was really ridiculous and we couldn't see the lift anywhere. Cam decided to drop his stuff and run up without gear to see if he could find it, and in the meantime I called the number on the website to ask. No answer. As soon as I googled the goods lift and found out it was actually 800 meters PAST the carpark, I got a call back from the number I had just called. He said the goods lift had closed about 10 minutes ago and that we could maybe pay the goods lift guy, who would be coming up behind us, to carry our gear for us. No thanks, we said. We've had enough of you Temple Basin.

The view from the track wasn't too bad. If only we weren't carrying all our gear.

The silver lining?: 

We ended up calling to complain - the lift was poorly marked and the man on the phone told us the goods lift closed at 11 when the website told us it closed at 12. He also told us that if we tried to go down and see if it was still working, we wouldnt get up to the top for another hour so it probably wouldnt be worth it. The resort apologized profusely and said WHY WOULD HE SAY THAT ON THE BEST DAY OF THE YEAR???Rub it in, Temple Basin. (They refunded us our lift passes, so that was nice)

Since that wasn't much of a silver lining, I'll come up with the one we felt in the moment. The drive was beautiful, Cam had never been so far in to Arthurs Pass and there were at least 4 ski fields on the way back to Chch that we could stop at and just pay for a cheap half day pass. On to the next brilliant idea.

Sick of snow photos yet? This one is the view from Idea #2 (Porters Ski Field)

Idea #2: 

Porters Ski Field. One of our kiwi engineering interns told me to go to Porters at some point this winter. It's a club field, so it'll be cheaper than Mt. Hutt, and it's really close to Chch. It's on the way back from Temple Basin so we called to see how the conditions were and if we needed chains and they said all good - come on over!

Where it all went wrong: 

Twenty-ish minutes later we drove in, feeling great about the road and the day, and just as we thought we're gonna make it to the top, we run in to about 5 cars stopped at a switchback. A Porters employee comes over and tells us "it'll just be a minute, we had someone drive off the road" (MY WORST NIGHTMARE). About 10 minutes later a grater goes up. About 5 minutes after that, the same porters employee asks us if he can have one of our sour patch kid candies (only if you fix the problem, sir - nah he was the man, we shared happily). And to make a long story story, about 40 minutes later, we were told that the road was closing and we weren't going to be able to go skiing today. womp. womp.

The silver lining: 

They said if we called and intended to go back they'd "try to work something out... maybe some free food at the top". Cause everyone wants free ski resort pizza. We probably won't be going back, but at least they felt a little bit bad. And on the way home we stopped and made a snowman! That was pretty awesome. Oh also since Porter's messed up, we were able to get a refund on all the ski gear I had rented! Win!

Captured the snowman AND snowball fight in one photo!

We made it back to Chch in time to relax a bit before the work week started. And the next weekend we were off to Tekapo with one of my new work colleagues and his girlfriend.

The road back - sorry for the overload of snow photos.

Idea #3: 

I feel a little bad doing it, but I think I'm going to anyway - this one was Cam's idea. Cam was really keen on going to Tekapo. It's about three hours away, there's a holiday homes website, so you can get a bach there, and most of all there's an observatory there where you can do incredible stargazing. Cam has never seen the milky way so we thought it would be fun to make a weekend out of it. There's also a ski resort, a hiking track I was interested in, hot pools, and a tube park. I agreed - it was a pretty good idea.

Lake Tekapo in Fall (March 2015)

Church of the Good Shepard (also in good weather)

Where it all fell apart: 

God decided to dump a midwinter, blustery, cloudy, cold, miserable, rainstorm on Christchurch and Tekapo last weekend. The house was non-refundable, the observatory tour is only refundable if you're there in person at 5:50 pm for them to tell you the weather is bad, and chances are the forecast is going to be wrong in this country... so we went anyway. Despite our best wishes, the weather didn't really clear up, and it turns out there isn't much to do in Tekapo if its raining. Also it was a popular weekend for this rest stop/town because of the new moon (good for stargazing) so the "bach" we rented was pretty lame. Didn't even have a full size couch!

The drive around Lake Tekapo to the Roundhill Ski Field

Silver lining: 

Cam and I managed to get in an afternoon of skiing. (Finally!) Visibility wasn't great, but we had fun on the slopes while we could. I was glad just to make it to a field successfully after all the trouble we've been having. 

Once we met up with Kyle and Iona and realized that the obsevatory tour would probably get cancelled, we called the house-rental company and asked if they had any board games. They did! So we played a fun battle-of-the-sexes round of Cranium :) We also ate really good pizza, saw a bit of the All Blacks rugby game, and got a good night sleep. It was really fun hanging out with Kyle and Iona, but I still wish we had seen the stars!

Skiing was fun.

So that's it for this episode of Ideas and Mishaps, but just so you don't think we have the worst luck in the world, here are a few things that went well:

We went to Paint n Sip!! We actually had to cancel and reschedule this twice, but we finally made it and it was really fun. The theme was Paint Your Mate - Picasso Style, and I think I hit this one out of the park.

Beautiful!

Looks nothing like me.

My sister got engaged!!! I'm so so happy for her and cannot wait to help plan the celebration!

This photo is THREE YEARS OLD. Still love you guys just as much as when we danced the night away in Hoboken.

My mom's puppy went to Canada while my parents are out of town. This is particularly exciting for me because the family who is dogsitting take the best pictures of her.

This is her boyfriend - They like to cuddle.

And finally, the New Zealand Film Festival came to Christchurch! We got tickets to five movies and have gone to four so far. Here are my ratings:

Enchanted Kingdom - ✶✶✶✶✶ (best nature documentary I've ever seen)

Pheonix - ✶✶✶✶ 

Dope - ✶

While We're Young- ✶✶✶

Lobster - TBD

Just two more wintery weekends until my trip to Australia/the USA! Spring will be here before I know it - just in time to kick my winter blues away :)

As much as I love this GIF, it's time to stop wearing sweaters.

SEE YA SOON, SPRINGTIME

Stoked For Saturday

 This week was full of new discoveries. We discovered weekly 5ks in the park for $5, which include a free sausage at the finish line; I learned what a "busker" is and attended the world famous Buskers Festival right here in Christchurch; and finally we discovered an amazing New Zealand travel blog, stoked for Saturday and enjoyed an amazing Saturday of hiking, dining, and dance-partying.

There isn't much to say about the 5k except that we ran it, so I'll start with the buskers festival. CPIT, a university in Christchurch, actually has a circus school, so the busking/street performing culture is really big here. Once a year all the top street performers from around the world come to Christchurch for 10 days to perform. There are many free acts all day in the park, but the headliners cost $10-$20 in venues at night. The prices are really reasonable considering that when the performers have shows in London they charge anywhere from $40 to $80/show. On Wednesday a group from the office went to see three standup comedians and a hilarious Australian MC at the casino. I believe they were all British, and they were pretty funny. The first comedian had a joke about the way kiwis say "eh?" at the end of their sentences as if they're asking you a multiple choice question. Example: "the weather's great today a)?........ Or b) the weather fucking sucks" I ran this one past Cam, my resident kiwi expert, and he said that is, in fact exactly what they mean. Good. Thought so.

The comedians were so good, we decided to go to another show. We had heard that one performer, "the boy with tape on his face", was particularly good and wins this festival all the time -- this was also verified by my resident kiwi expert-- so we bought tickets to see him. His show, which here costs $15 NZD, goes for $40 pounds in England. That's $82 New Zealand dollars! He's essentially a mime with a production team so there's a good amt of music and lights that go along with his act and the show is 90% audience participation. It was really entertaining but I think I preferred the stand up comedians.

Those two buskers events kept the week moving really quickly. The last thing I wanted to do early Saturday morning was to get out of bed and go on a massive hike -- but hey, when in New Zealand.

We found a blog this week called Stoked for Saturday- written by two engineers who moved to New Zealand, work during the week, and explore the country on weekends. Sounds pretty familiar eh? (Or b) not at all). This weekend we didn't have a trip planned but couldn't let a gorgeous weekend go, so in true #stokedforsaturday fashion we had a really epic Saturday. Mike and I met Jen and Keith at their house Saturday morning and we drove about two hours in the the center of the country.

The hiking crew -- Same group minus Nick who did the Routeburn

The New Zealand Southern Alps run up the middle of the country, but you can pass through them by using either Arthur's Pass or Lewis Pass. I drove through Arthur's Pass early in my time here and had been wanting to go back for a hike, so was thrilled when my coworkers suggested doing Avalanche Peak this weekend.

Arthurs Pass back in October

The hike is meant to take 4 hours to get to the top of what is called "Avalanche Peak", so five minutes in when I was climbing a nearly vertical rock wall, I was nervous. I had expected a much more well maintained track, like the Routeburn we went on in November, but if I've learned anything in NZ, it's that nothing is going to go as planned. We continued on and made it to the top in two hours. DOC time estimate crushed again :) .

The first thing you see coming out of the bushline

The views at the top were amazing. I couldn't believe we were on top of the mountains and we could see the tops of all of them as well as the Devil's Punchbowl Falls. 

Found a Kea!

Avalanche peak actually had has two paths to the top. The first, Avalanche Peak Track, which is steep and rocky is the one we took up. The other one is Scott's Track, longer and less steep but with better views. We took Scott's track down, as as promised the views were awesome.

 

By the time we got to the bottom, all of us were exhausted and so we quickly got in the car and rode home. 

It's rare for us to come back to Chch on a Saturday night after being away, so we were all in group-travel mode and wanted to keep hanging out.

Kentucky Sours making us feel right at home

We went to Boo Radleys, the bar above Tequila Mockingbird (Get it?) for a cocktail and Keith put a $2 coin on the table in case anyone wanted to play pool. Instead, I suggested we save the coin for the Dance-o-Mat that I had been to with Cam and his friends the night before. All of my friends said they had seen it but never tried it,so we decided Saturday was going to be the night. After some amazing mexican food we went down to the Dance-o-mat. 

What's a dance-o-mat? Just another reason to love Christchurch. (Skye, I wish we had gone!!)

In one of the abandoned lots in downtown Christchurch, right next to the partially collapsed cathedral, there is a dance platform with a laundry machine and when you put a $2 coin in, lights come on to light up the dance floor and you can play music from your iPod for half an hour! When we stumbled upon it in Friday, Cam's friends didn't go for my tswift suggestion, so my friends and I started the dance party with some "Shake It Off." Jen DJ'ed for a few more songs until the Christchurch curfew turned off the dance-o-mat -- definitely not the city that never sleeps. 

After a busy day and a busy evening, I was ready to walk home and fall asleep. Pretty awesome week if I do say so myself. Can't wait for the next one. #stokedfornextsaturday

Just one more thing... Christchurch and it's port hills/mountains were beautiful this week.

Christchurch from an early morning run in the porthills

Hagley Park

Sumner Beach

Lyttleton

The Very Real Challenges of Driving

Disclaimer: Mom, this might not be your favorite post ever.





Alpine Highway -- At this point, I had no idea what was in store for the drive ahead



When I first got here, there was some talk in the office about needing to take a driving lesson before getting my rental car. The other new engineer in the office from New York had barely driven before coming to New Zealand and has had a few incidents (to say the least). Management asked me how comfortable I was driving, and I said I thought I'd be ok, so they decided to forgo my driving lesson.

It's been going pretty well, but after a day of driving across the country  I have a few comments to make on driving here. I've found that the hardest thing about driving is New Zealand is... driving in New Zealand.

Hear me out.

There are plenty of things that could be hard..

1. Driving on the left side of the road

A coworker gave me the advice, "Follow traffic and go the wrong way on the roundabout". Turns out that's all there is to it. Honestly, the hardest part of driving on the left is remembering which side of your steering wheel has windshield wipers and which has a turn signal.

2. Navigating without GPS

Navigating in New Zealand is pretty simple because there's really only one road in any direction. As long as you don't stray from the path you can get pretty much anywhere you want to go. Sometimes the road will even change and as long as you keep going straight it'll all work out. For example to get to Taylor's Mistake the road will change from Blenheim to Moorhouse to Ferry to Main to Mariner to Wakefield to Evans Pass to Summit Road and you won't make a single turn. Just keep driving and you'll be there in an hour.

3. Other drivers

You might even thing the other drivers could make it difficult, but surprisingly, Kiwis are pretty good drivers. They will always let you cut in front of them in a pinch... as long as you're not on foot. Pedestrians do not have the right of way here.

4. It's really just being in New Zealand that makes it so hard. There is no such thing as an easy drive here and that makes it so difficult and ultimately, exhausting.

Here are the tales of the three longer drives I've done so far -- its definitely not all sunshine and rainbows:

My first free Saturday, I decided to get out of Christchurch and drive to Akaroa. I texted my coworker, Sarah, to see what she thought of the idea. She responded, "Yes, but make sure you're back by dark. The roads to Akaroa are really windy." Sarah's from Wisconsin (where I imagine the roads are flat and straight), so I thought, being from Pittsburgh, an hour and a half on windy roads couldn't be too bad. Plus, the directions were literally to make a right and keep going for an hour and a half. How hard could that be? Well those roads certainly were windy. Up the mountain, around the mountain, down the mountain, and around the bay... The views were unbelievable. I told myself that I would stop at the overlooks on the way home, but by the time I was heading home, I knew I just needed to go with the momentum and drive straight home before I passed out. but I made it safely! and before dark.

The view from Akaroa looking back at the hills I drove around. They don't look like much but those roads are windy!

I mentioned that my drive to the Taylor's Mistake hike yesterday was terrifying, but I just want to reiterate this one. I followed the road (because thats what you do here) as it took me up a mountain, but then I came to a 3 way intersection. One way said "Road Closed" but had some dates that didn't apply, one way was a dead end, and the last way said "Scenic Reserve" and had about 5 ft of grating instead of a paved road - similar to what I had seen on the Rapaki Track, where cars were not allowed. I chose the "Road Closed" path.. naturally. This road turned out to be a one-lane-for-two-way-traffic road, on the side of a cliff, with no guard rail. A few minutes in to scaling the side of this mountain, I started to feel like this was not the way to be going. There was also no other traffic, so I started to wonder if I had misread the sign and the road actually was closed TODAY. If that way the case I was in a liiiittle bit of trouble because there was no way to turn around. Luckily, I got to a place in the mountain with some extra room to back a tight turn around. A little shaken up, I drove back to the point where I had made my original choice, and decided the "Scenic Reserve"  (what does that even mean??) had to be the way to go. I parked my car next to some others, and started walking. A couple minutes later a car passed me. I felt extremely unsafe, but more than that,  I was thrilled to know that I too could be in my car! I ran back to the car, drove in to the scenic reserve, and quickly became terrified of the cliff, yet again. You know the rest from my other post, and once again, I made it home safely, but absolutely exhausted. I drove straight to my new apartment, left all of my belongings in the car, and laid down in my new bed.

Too scared and confused to take any pictures of the actual drive, but this is how happy I was to be off that road



I went out with some friends last night and told them about my drive to Taylor's Mistake. Each of their responses was pretty appropriate. From the native Kiwi: Welcome to New Zealand. You should probably let someone know where you are and when you're back if you ever do that again. From the French Canadian: OMG I would've been terrified. From my boss: Oh yeaaaaa. I really should've warned you when I told you to go there. Thanks, boss.

Today was a new day, another opportunity for an exhausting drive. We have Monday off work, so I decided to take a two day trip to the west coast. I had heard the drive was nice, and there's just one road so I figured it would be pretty pleasant. Wrong again. Damn this country. The first half of the drive was absolutely beautiful!!

The mountains were massive (I guess I can finally agree with Sarah that the port hills of Christchurch are in fact "hills"). They were all different, and surrounded by beautiful creeks and rivers and lakes.


Rain was coming just to the left of this frame, so had to pull over and snap this one while I could

But after I got through the mountain ranges, and in to the rainforest, the blue sky disappeared and was replaced by an overbearing grey sky. It started to rain and the road signs changed from "Scenic Lookout" to "Death Corner Overlook". I'm not even kidding. Don't mind if I don't. So I kept driving, thinking it would get better. It couldn't be that grey on the coast right? I stuck it out and went to Hokitika as planned, felt tired by the drive, and bummed about the weather, and decided that I would go to my hotel in Greymouth, take a shower, rest for a few minutes and then try to enjoy the rest of the trip as a new person. When I got to Greymouth, the entire "city" was shut down for a motorcycle race (not my cup of tea) and I couldn't even get to my hotel. I had little patience left, so at that point I gave up, got a coffee, and told myself if I left now I could make it back through the mountains before the sun went down. Luckily, I was right (finally), and the mountains were just as beautiful on the way back, but by the time I got home I was so exhausted that I collapsed on the my couch and was able to convince myself that I had ebola. #paranoid. But also just so downright exhausted.

Pulled over to capture this view on my way back. Loved driving through the mountains, but happy to be home.

I'm happy to report that after some rest and some food, I no longer think I have any form of an illness.


I think I'm going to take a break from driving for a while. I'm excited to get settled in to my new apartment tomorrow and you'll be happy to know I have plane tickets for my three upcoming trips. Phew.