Ok, time to catch you up on the last 5 weeks of my life. Good thing the first two weren’t too eventful: filled with lots of walking around Dunedin, shopping, spending an alarming amount of money to settle in, and sore feet (from all the walking-asphalt bloody hurts you know). I’m going to (try to) fast forward through them so you don’t feel like you walked every step with me (trust me, you don’t want to; I walked about 15 miles in just one day, but that is a story you must hear)
Dunedin Week 1: Pre-Uni & Settling into the NZ way of life.
July 4-10
So the first couple of days consisted of shopping for food and supplies, and figuring out the layout of the city/Uni . Unfortunately, this was all on foot because I was unable to get a cheap bike. I think I hiked more miles this week than I did with Eagle Rock’s 24-day trip.
Anyways, we had a couple of orientation meetings at Uni within the first three days of arriving. Thursday night I attended a party organized by the international office (to my utmost surprise) at Bar 10 in the Octagon . It was here Dave and I worked on our socializing skills. Seriously, this would never happen at UNH; of course I quickly came to realize that UNH may be the ‘number 7 drinking school’ (lies) in the US, but I really think Otago easily has it beat.
Dave and I also began our exercise routines together and I’m finally working out regularly again. I’m definitely emphasizing stretching more (21 was the age I discovered long term injuries, 22 I hope to be the age I learn to completely prevent them). Something about New Zealand has instigated me into doing a lot of things I’ve talked about doing the last few years, but never actually got around to. So working on getting in physical shape with a balance of running, climbing, and weight routines, while still staying on top of stretching (lets see how this goes this classes). I’ve also started taking capoeira classes to help me work on reflexes (physical and mental: rock doesn’t move, so needless to say it hasn’t helped me with solving problems faster or reacting quickly), flexibility, and balance. I’ve started cooking food from scratch and eating a lot more veggies (my flatties and I rotate dinner weekday nights, which has led me to be more creative, especially since apparently there is this ‘unspoken’ competition between us of who can make the best dinner for each week).
Thursday morning was class registration, which involved wandering around to different buildings, waiting forever in lines, and collecting signatures from professors to get classes approved. It was a bit tedious and I grew to appreciate UNH’s online system. That afternoon was an epic 3-4 mile walk to get groceries at the cheapest supermarket in town (that will not be repeated, I can promise you; I now wait to hitch rides from Liz).
Friday morning we got to go on Dunedin’s train ride for ‘free’ (you know it’s budgeted into that tuition somewhere). It was a pretty beautiful and neat 2-hour train ride. Though it was a little disappointing because we’re too far from the real mountains.
Sunday was our last day of Freedom before classes started; Steph, Dave, Quentin and I went on an afternoon hike up a local hill. We were supposed to do Flagstaff, but then Dave mentioned that we should do Cargill, ‘it’s closer.’ I was surprised, because Liz hadn’t mentioned it and she said that Flagstaff was a short walk from the house. He pointed Cargill out on the map (one of those colourful maps that looks like it was drawn by someone on a computer-not to scale). I warned him that I think it’s a lot further than he thinks and if he wants to do it, we should probably take a bus. He insisted though that by the map it showed Cargill to not be that far. I said I was looking at the real mountain way ahead of us and it looked quite far (I even pointed it out, since it was very obvious with the tower on top and he still insisted that it wasn’t that far). I suppose I could have been a little more assertive, but I caved and after 45-60 minutes of walking along the road we finally reached the trail head of a hike that was suppose to be 3.5 hours in length (one way). Luckily we booked it up to the summit in 2.5, just in time to watch the start of the sunset before heading down a dirt road that brought us back close to home (eventually, but I guess dirt road beats asphalt). This would be the 15-miler day (I didn’t even mention the walking we did in the morning around downtown for errands). My legs were very tired and sore that night.
Dunedin Week 2: Vacation ends, Classes Begin and Adventure Time Begins to Dwindle
July 11-17
So, not too much to report from this week. If you’re interested in what courses I’m taking they are: Creative Non-fiction English class , Writing for Professions (sadly, instead of travel narratives), Human Geography, and Maori Society.
What you need to know about is my weekend adventure (15th-17th) with the tramping club to Awakine Ski ‘Resort’-the tramping clubs homey little ski place.
The adventure starts with the drive in, with the last five miles on a dirt road up to the hut. You can make the first four in a regular car loaded with people (we only bottomed out a little, but we did have the car overloaded). In the last mile you need to have a truck/jeep with four-wheel drive and tire chains, or you have to ride in this old van on steroids. Now when I say steroids, I mean it’s a large van with good clearance, four wheel drive, and tires that you’d see on an old land rover or all terrain military car. When I say old, I mean it’s probably at from the 80’s, seats in back are missing, and parts of it are held together by duck tape. Do we have a good enough picture?
Well, sadly, we were unable to ride the old timer, because the chains could not be found. So someone with a jeep had to drive back down to shuttle us up. It was probably one of the scariest drives of my life (and that’s saying something). So imagine driving (more like flying) up a mountain valley on a narrow, windy, snow covered dirt road, with steep drop offs along most of the corners. It got even better when we reached the deeper snow and someone told the driver they could get through it if they do little quick jerks left and right with the steering wheel. We went about 100 m with the driver doing this and me wandering why I hadn’t volunteered to walk. I was relieved when we finally did get stuck; I took the opportunity to volunteer myself to take weight out of the car so they could un-stick themselves. I walked the rest (a grand total of 400ish meters). The rest of the night was not so eventful (luckily), just relaxing and meeting new people, playing cards, etc.
The next day, we spent most of the morning getting the ski tow set up (that’s right, it was a rope tow from just after WW2, but the biggest I’ve ever seen, and no, they don’t have a ski lift), by digging the rope out from under a couple feet of snow, getting it up and over to the right side of a supporting pole, and watching them set up the counter weight to tighten the rope again. In the afternoon we got to make a couple of runs with the new rope tow running (oh, and an old tractor was what ran the rope tow). You can basically see this whole process via my pictures.
Sunday was a fantastic day. The sky was clear and it was sunny and around noon, Jaz (the tramping club president) and I headed to Foster’s peak for some mountaineering-a mere 45-minute walk from the upper hut to the base. It has tons of routes on it-from easy slope climbing to technical mix climbing (climbing on ice and rock). We were hoping to get on a more challenging route, but sadly the snow conditions were not in our favour and we had to stick to just a steep snow slope. Though the climb didn’t quite live up to my expectations, the views did. Finally I got a glimpse of the southern alps of New Zealand-from Mount Aspiring (beautiful pointy peak I must climb before I go) in the Southwest, to Mount Cook (tallest peak in NZ, a mountain I would like to at least climb on, if not summit) in the North and so much in between. Highlight of the trip by far and the wind died down while we were up there so we stopped for a quick lunch to sit and admire the views. We made a quick trek back to the hut to sneak ski runs in before heading back to Dunedin (I wont lie, I only did one run-I’ll use the excuse that the boots I borrowed were too big and the skis pretty beaten, so skiing on an icy steep slope with no warm up wasn’t my cup of tea-I can ski back diamonds, but not right off the bat). The trip ended nicely with a stop at a delicious Mediterranean restaurant.
Oh, I do have sad news: my warm red hat blew away. Tragic, I know; I lose hats like no other.
