August 1-7
Overall, the week was a complete wash out thanks to the four homework assignments due (it doesn’t help that I’m just not grasping some of the Maori concepts-it’s kind of hard to write an essay on noa or tapu when even the professor isn’t sure she completely understands them and you could probably do a PhD on each one).
I did have a break midweek and went to the New Zealand Alpine Club meeting with Jaz, where I meet a few people and got to watch a presentation on this woman’s travels in Northern India. The meeting itself was a bit entertaining, for apparently the elections are coming up and the president of the club was trying to convince others to run for his position so he’s not stuck with it next year (he mentioned that if you know how to heard cats, you’d be excellent for the position). I do love the social side of the climbing community.
Saturday I made it to Dunedin farmer’s market (supposedly the best in New Zealand) in the morning before heading off with Hannah in the afternoon to do a short hike up a hill that’s within walking distance of my house. Did I mention that I love Dunedin because there’s so many trails within walking distance? There’s the pineapple trek (which is the hike I just mentioned), the reservoir, Cargill (well that’s decently close I should say), Signall Hill, and the Botonical gardens (100 meters down the road from my flat)? After our hike, Hannah made Dave and I a delicious curry dinner (we gave Dave the hard work of peeling the pumpkin, so props to him for that).
Oh, Sunday was interesting. Tom (a climber from Maine that I met at the bouldering wall in Dunedin) and I went on a little ‘climbing adventure.’ We caught the bus at 9 AM to the peninsula. At the last stop we hopped off and with glances to the sky and fingers crossed for the weather to improve, we started our long (about 8km) walk to Lover’s Leap (a famed cliff ledge right on the ocean that’s suppose to have beautiful burly sport and trad climbs). Sadly, the fingers didn’t work and about 3 km from town on the dirt road we started to get rain and hail. We were about to turn back when a truck came our way and we were able to hitch a ride from this nice woman and her young son (coincidentally, also named Tom). She happened to be on her way towards Lover’s Leap-she and her husband own the farmland all around it.
Upon arriving to the trailhead of Lover’s Leap, we thought that the weather was finally turning in our favour. Oh how we were deceived. By the time we hiked to the top of the cliff ledge, the wind had a harsh, cold bite to it. By the time we climbed around to the bottom to have a closer look, we were trying to stick our heads around the hill to look at the wall, only to be pushed back by the hale pelting us in the face. My pictures are definitely not the greatest-that would be the hail you see on the lens. The red backpack in the other picture is Tom crouching down for shelter from the brutal wind. I’ve only experienced wind like this on top of mountains; it was odd to have them on the shore with no hurricane. We soon gave up and made our back up the slope and started a long walk back to the nearest town to catch the bus. About 2 hours into it, we were finally able to hitch a couple of rides that brought us basically right to our door steps-which was pretty awesome. At the end of the day, I just got my climbing done indoors at the bouldering wall.
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