Romping in Paradise

“Hey Hannah, where did you go this weekend?” “Oh, you know, to Paradise.” Legit. I went to a place called Paradise… and it was pretty close to just that. It was the first official trip with the tramping club, where the hike lasted more than a half hour march up a hill. There were about 65 people on the trip total, but we split up into smaller groups for each hike.
***PAUSE. Wagon Wheel is playing. Shout out to SLU!***
Ok, so on my hike was my roommate and another friend Jackie, and then a guy from North Carolina, a girl from the Netherlands, a girl from Ohio, and TWO Kiwis, plus our Kiwi leader. Oh yeah, 80% of the tramping club is international students. So much for trying to branch out and meet the locals. But, since Julia and I were conveniently some of the last to get to the meeting place, we hopped in a van rather than the coach bus and rode with some of the trip leaders… real, live, Kiwis through and through. On the way there, Joe announced to the van “Have you ever seen a road cone on top of a mountain?” After we all answered no, he immediately pulled the van over, told Kate to grab a cone on the side of the road and announced that he would carry it up tomorrow, and place it on top of the mountain.
So we got to the site, and it was already about midnight. Much to our dismay, there was a group of rowdy campers that had clearly been there for a quite some time, judging from the music, singing, dancing, empty bottles, and use of a headlamp on SOS for a strobe light. YES. So we went to another site after turning the bus around, and finally set up camp and got to bed around 1:00. Julia and I slept in my brand new tent (2 person bearing the name Hubba Hubba, I kid you not), which I am in love with. I’m that geek that is just is so excited to use all of my new camping gear. The next morning when I was getting all of my bowls/cup/spork out, Krystal looked at me (as I was giddy), laughed, and said “You are so in your element right now.” (Couldn’t help but think of you Berg!!) But yeah, so we woke up that morning, again, surrounded by the Southern Alp beauty. Everything here seems straight out of a postcard… it’s absolutely breathtaking, and it’s moments like those when I realize that I am really, finally in New Zealand. It’s awesome.

So our hike was lead by Paula, who Julia and I met earlier in the week, and she sort of gave us the impression that she hated us. But I guess she was having a bad day, cause she is awesome, and ended up having a great time. Our group hiked to the Scott Basin, which gave quite a variety of terrain. We started climbing up a steep, steep hill in a paddock for sheep, and quickly entered what seemed like a jungle, bringing us to a waterfall straight out of a Disney movie. Soo beautiful.

It was then pretty normal hiking though the woods for about 2 hours, brining us to the river, where we stopped to eat lunch. At this point, a girl who clearly was nowhere near in shape (DON’T sign up for a medium+ hike if you know you can’t handle it! You’re in New Zealand; they take this tramping thing kind of seriously). So we left a few people at our lunch spot, and hiked up to the top of a peak about 45 minutes fast hiking up. And it was spectacular! The bush-whacking that we did to get there (and my legs are scabbed to prove it) was totally worth it.

The grass may look soft, but it is very deceiving. I have so many cuts on my legs now.

We then turned around and went back down to the other girls, and hiked down to where we met the van to pick us up. On the way back, we had something that stereotypically would happen here. As we were driving along, we turned a corner and had to slam on the breaks in order not to run into a flock of about 100 sheep being herded along the side of the road by a farmer and his daughter on horses, and about 7 sheep dogs.


So great. We then got back to the campsite, went swimming in the river (so cold, but soo refreshing), and started to make dinner. This is where the $80 that we paid for our trip came in. Each group was in a competition to win the best meal, so we each had entrees (what they call hors d'oeuvre here) of bread, Brie and Camembert cheese (couldn’t help but think of you LG), and spreads for our bread. Then the main course was steak/onion/pepper kababs, and desert was lime-coconut tart with yogurt, chocolate sauce, and raspberries. Soooo goooood. Needless to say, we won dessert. Then came the best part of the night: WORM WRESTELING. Basically by the headlights of the car, 2 people got in a sleeping bag each, got on their knees, and entered the ring. They then fought (without the use of hands), until one was pushed out of the ring, or a round 2 was called for. So of course Krystal challenged me, and we both could stop laughing. But I did hear someone say that we both pulled the best moves they had seen all night. It was a good fight, but in the end Krystal ended up pushing me out of the ring. My fellow slu-goers we warned: worm wrestling WILL happen in townhouse 303 next year. Get psyched.

WORM WRESTLING!!

Krystal is in the Army, so I guess it's okay she beat me. Plus, I was nearly peeing my pants laughing as you can see.

So the next morning we got all packed up and then went swimming in a gorgeous lake surrounded by mountains about a 20 minute walk from our site, came back, packed the vans and buses and left.

Swimming in the lake in Paradise

Julia and I decided to van it again, which was SUCH a good decision. Taking an alternate route, we went through the mountains that were pure NZ farmland. It was a 1-lane dirt road that we had to open gates at (sheep were some of the only signs of civilization seen). We were driving with a cliff face straight up to one side, and a drop off of, well, a long way, to the other. It was so cool! It was a great way to see a new part of the country and we got to know our Kiwi guides a lot better than if we had been on the bus.
(See the other van behind us? ->)

So that is Paradise in a wrap. And by wrap I mean extensively long post. But my Mom and Nana are here this week, and I head off to Queenstown with them for the weekend leaving tomorrow morning. Yesterday we went to the Otago Peninsula and saw Hooker Sea Lions (rarest in the world), Fur Seals, Royal Albatross, and saw where Julia and I will return to see the yellow eyed and blue penguins. They come up at dusk (which is about 8:30 now), so we didn’t want to stay that long and drive back in the dark. But Julia and I will return!

Let the tramping begin

Ok, so fail on my part for keeping up on this blog. This past weekend I officially joined the tramping club, and we had a (very large) group hike up to the top of Mt. Cargill, which is just a 15 minute drive from campus. Since this was the first official activity of the tramping club, there were of course about 80 people there. I don’t know if anyone has ever hiked up a mountain with a busload full of people, but I don’t recommend it. It wasn’t really a hiking experience; we were just kind of herded along to the top. It was still fun though, I saw Abby and Lily for the first time since being here, and caught up with them. When we all got to the top, it was sort of drizzly and really foggy, so we weren’t able to see the city at all, and I’m pretty sure that’s the weather that provided this spectacular hacking cough that I’ve had all week. On the way down, we took a different route and went to the base of the mountain (we had driven up about ½ of it going up), where a delicious barbeque was waiting for us. It must be a New Zealand thing, but all during O-Week they had these tents that were giving out free sausages with bread for a bun with ketchup and onions, and they had them again for us… along with the staple choice of Tui or Speights. =) Sitting in our picnic was really interesting; we got to meet people from all around the world. That’s a really cool thing about being an international student here, I feel like half of the people I have met are international as well! We ate lunch with a girl from Switzerland, another from Brazil, and then walked back with a Kiwi and someone else from the states. And since it’s the tramping club, and we like walking (Julia’s reply to someone who questioned what we were saying), we walked back to campus.
On our way, Julia, Krystal, and I stopped at the steepest street in the world, Baldwin Street. Honestly, hiking up that was more of a workout than our hike. And it is steep! I forgot to snap a photo on the base of the street, but here is a sign explaining it stolen off the internet. I would love to take place in the gutbuster, but I think that happened earlier in the summer.

Spenst anyone?

Julia has some great pictures of us all; I will have to steal them from her sometime later. But these will do for now:

My flatmate, Julia. Notice the strategically placed water fountain!

I told Julia if we walked down backwards our calves would get a great workout... we had trouble climbing stairs the next day. PS, we're twins.

Oh, and walking back we saw this adorable kiwi stuffed animal.
So this weekend, we are tramping in Paradise... literally, it's called Paradise. Much more to come!

Oh yeah, and classes started. I'm now officially done with my Christmas break, just in time for everyone back home to go on spring break. I should probably go study minerals... dammit.

Ok, so I'll be a blogger...

So I’ve been very reluctant to actually start this whole blogging process, but I figured that since I told almost everyone who said “Keep in touch” that I’d be blogging, I should probably do something about it. So here goes!

I’ve been here in NZ for officially over a week, and am finally starting to get a hang of the campus. University of Otago is just a wee bit bigger than SLU… and by that I mean almost 10 times as big. This is also my first time living in a city (it’s about 120,000 people. A bit of a step up from the 500 who live in Avon.), which I am really excited about and enjoying so far. My flat is great; I live with 3 other American girls and a Kiwi host. Our street is quite the bumping place. For those of you at SLU, picture the Spring Fest atmosphere on the quad… 24/7… on a street where only college students reside… where the drinking age is 18. And that my friends, is Castle Street North… always an adventure. But it’s great, I love it, and I love all of my flatmates. One of them was actually on my soccer team at the World Scholar Athlete Games I attended in the summer of 2006. Small world, huh?

So an overview of what has happened so far: The first few days I was here was be-a-utiful! It’s the summer that everyone was jealous that I was going to be living in basically.

Since we had a whole week for orientation, there was a lot of free time to do whatever we wanted. Dani and Julia (two of my flatmates), Jackie (a friend through Julia’s program) and I all walked into Dunedin hoping to just hop on the city bus that would bring us to the beach, but because of a bagpipe competition (of all things) the bus schedule was all screwed up.

So the 5 minute walk into town for the 15 minute bus ride ended up being a 2 hour ordeal. But we did get to the beach, swam, tanned, and took some touristy photos.

SIDENOTE: Because of the ozone depletion over Antarctica (go USA!), it is reallllly easy to get sunburned here. Take this advice from the girl whose legs were blindingly white a week ago. And the fact that sunscreen is $20 a bottle doesn’t help either.

Orientation Week other than that was cut pretty short for me because of my ALPINE GEOMORPH TRIP TO THE TASMAN VALLEY OF THE SOUTHERN ALPS. Yeah, I was a little excited. Basically for this paper (Kiwi term for class) everything from here on out is based on this trip that we had to Mt. Cook village this past week. My pictures go nowhere near capturing the beauty of this area, it really makes me want to buy a nice camera… or have LG send me hers? Yes? Just kidding… but really. I want it. I went into the trip thinking that I would be one a few international students, and the people wouldn’t know each other already. False. I was the only American in the group of 6 Kiwis, who were all really good friends…. Geo families are around the world apparently. But thankfully, the stereotype that Kiwis are some of the nicest people you will meet has been proved true so far, so it was no problem getting along with them. We left campus at 5:30, so by the time we to our cabins it was really dark and we couldn’t see any of the mountains. Here’s the view of what I saw when I woke up in the morning.

It’s safe to say I finally felt like I was in New Zealand. So that day we split up into 2 groups and mapped separate glaciers. My group did the Mueller Glacier, while the others did the Hooker Glacier. It was sort of rainy and windy when we got up there, but the next 2 days provided plenty of great views of Mt. Cook and the surrounding area. The fact that I was in a contemporary glacial environment got me really excited, it’s a lot more thrilling than Cincinasty. Speaking of… the next day we went to a terminal moraine and logged the sedimentary features through it. Not the most thrilling, but it was beautiful weather (meaning my snow-white legs were a burning red by the end of the day, and now are sort of tan), and hello, we were still in New Zealand. I managed to push though it =)

So then the final day we went back up into the mountains and mapped a bit around the Tasman Glacier, which was the best day there by far. It was crystal clear, with a bit of a breeze coming off the proglacial lake with some massive icebergs to keep us just cool enough. Then later that afternoon we went back out to the terminal moraines and did some GPR collecting… which ended up failing on us about 15 times, but again, it was a beautiful day and I was surrounded by one of the most amazing landscapes in the world.

So my Christmas break has officially come to an end, my classes started today. Along with the Alpine Geomorphology, I am taking Minerals and Rocks, Environmental History of New Zealand, and Cinema of New Zealand. The cinema was sort of a last minute call, but I’m pretty excited about it. I took a film class at SLU my freshman year and loved it, so it will be nice to have a lower key class.

Alright, if you’re still reading, I am thoroughly impressed. I will try to keep up on my entries so I don’t write a short novel every time. Now comes the fun part: pictures. The scale of these mountains is impossible to capture, even when we were there, it's hard to take in just how BIG everything is! There were some kayakers in the lake, which were specks.

Tasman Glacier. Unfortunately, I'm blocking Mt. Cook right behind me

My Kiwi group mapping the Mueller glacier the first day.

Mueller Glacier