Rugby World Cup

Today I went to the USA vs. Australia game at the Rugby World Cup. We had quite a large American fan base at the game, as Kiwis will cheer on any team other than Australia. To celebrate my American heritage, I wore carhatts, a flannel red, blue, and white shirt, an American flag, and face paint.

Singing the national anthems. I made sure to sing ours as loud as possible.

Too many Australia fans in yellow

bouldering at Baring Head

Today I went bouldering with a couple "mates" (friends) out at Baring Head, which is across the bay and about a 40 minute drive from Wellington. From the carpark, it's a 30 minute walk in with one river crossing. The boulders are right on the beach and the water actually comes up to a few of them in high tide.

I was by far the worse climber there, so I let them play on the hard problems while I scrambled around on some easy rock (usually the down routes for the hard problems).

Bouldering at Baring Point

Bouldering at Baring Point

Baring Head with the Kaikoura Mountains of the South Island in the far distance

Walkout from Baring Head

more skiing

I've had several more days up at Mt. Ruapehu since I last posted about skiing. Fortunately when it snowed in Welly, it was also snowing across most of New Zealand, including Mt. Ruapehu. Turoa, one of the skifields on the mountain, added another meter to their base in only a few days. The skiing is great now as long as you stick to the groomed trails. Off the groomers, it's incredibly ice so I have not taken the time to explore the backcountry yet. It should be great in the spring!

Skiing above the clouds

Another beautiful day on the mountain, and thankfully far less rock is exposed!

Impromptu Antarctic Research Centre gathering on the mountain. As long as I'm here with my advisor on a Monday, it's ok to skipping school, right?

snow in Welly

Snow in Wellington is incredibly rare. So rare, in fact, that several of my flatmates had never seen snow fall from the sky. So, when it started snowing today, the city went hysterical. All of my officemates ran out of the office to go dance around in the snow. Students started sledding on broken-down cardboad boxes on one of the hills near the university. People went skiing on the hills nearby, likely destroying their skis in the process. City buses couldn't make it up the big hills. Sidewalks became incredibly icy. The lights flickered and we almost had a blackout due to several of the powerlines being damaged.

The day turned into a "let's stare outside our office window and determine what the form of precipitation (rain, hail, sleet, snow) is falling." Needless to say not much got done.

Snow on a car outside my flat the following morning

Snow outside my flat the following morning

Snow on the Rimutaka Range!

first day skiing in the Southern Hemisphere!

I just got back from a two-day ski trip to Mt. Ruapehu. I find it a bit weird to say that considering it's July, but I guess that's one of the benefits of being in the Southern Hemisphere this time of year.

Mt. Ruapehu is a 4-5 hour drive from Wellington, so it's best to go up for a couple days. It's still early season here (think January in the Northern Hemisphere), and the snow conditions definitely show it. Apparently there is more snow now than there was all of last year, but it's still quite bare and icy. It doesn't help that Mt. Ruapehu is an active volcano, and so the tree line is quite low -- lower than the first lift. So when the wind picks up Mt. Ruapehu, the fresh snow gets blown away and the ice becomes exposed again. The skifield frequently shuts down due to high winds.

Turoa skifield on Mt. Ruapehu, one of two skifields I can access with my season pass

Turoa skifield

 Turoa skifield, which is the skifield that we skiied at for both days, is a very small skifield in comparison to the typical American skifield. It only has 5 chair lifts and covers 700 m of vertical. On our first day on the mountain, the top chairlift wasn't running so we skinned/hiked up to get some "fresh" runs down the recently groomed trail.

Skinning to the top of the highest chairlift, which was closed due to storm damage

All in all, it was an awesome two days. I'm looking forward to more turns this season, a bit more backcountry skiing, and hopefully some fresh powder! Fingers crossed.

Sunset over Mt. Taranaki at the end of our first day

Sunday market

As I have mentioned before, on Sundays there is a fresh produce market on the waterfront. It is now my Sunday routine to grab veggies and fruit from the market, and then hop over to the Supermarket to pick up the rest of my food (mostly just cereal and milk) for the rest of the week.

Wellington produce market

Today I decided to spice up my Sunday ritual a bit and get a meat pie on the way to the market. Meat pies are perhaps one of my favorite Kiwi delicacies -- they are essentially a pastry full of delicious veggies and/or meat. I hear that you can find the best meat pies on your way to Arthur's Pass, so I'll report back when I try those!

Delicious meat pie

sunny Welly?

When it's sunny in the winter in Wellington, I have learned to make the most of it. There is no "I will wait to see if it gets any nicer," because most likely it'll start pouring down rain later in the day. Today the weather in Wellington was absolutely beautiful for almost the entire day, so I headed to Uni (kiwi slang for university) late and left early. Besides, it was a Friday.

In the afternoon, I headed to the Wellington Botanic Garden to explore them a bit more. The Gardens are about a ten minute walk from my doorstep, but I rarely head in that direction as I end up running up into the hills behind my house. It is surprisingly easy to get lost in the Gardens, as I have found out. It's hard to stay lost for long, though, as all the tracks lead you back to the same few locations eventually.

Cactus Garden

Silver tree ferns are perhaps one of my favorite plants/trees native to New Zealand.

Wellington at dusk, overlooking the cable car tracks

Fulbright mid-year programme and award ceremony

It's hard to believe that I am halfway through my Fulbright grant! Today the other Fulbrighters and I gathered together at the Fulbright office to report on our projects and life in New Zealand thus far. It was  great to hear what everyone else had been up to these last fives months, their struggles, and their triumphs.

In addition to the mid-year programme, each year Fulbright hosts an award ceremony for its grantees at the Beehive, the Executive Wing of the New Zealand Parliament Buildings. It is commonly referred to as the Beehive, because it does, in fact, look exactly like a beehive. Photos of the event can be viewed here.

Sydney in a Day

On my way back from visiting the States, my flight from Sydney to Wellington was cancelled because of the Chilean ash cloud. The ash cloud was on its second time around the world and still causing airline disruptions, after erupting on June 4th. So the airline put me up in a hotel near the Sydney airport, and I got to explore the city for a day!

Of course my first priority was to see the esteemed Sydney Opera House. It doesn't look quite like it did in "Finding Nemo," but it's still pretty impressive. 

Sydney Opera House

Sydney Opera House

 After seeing the Opera House, I walked across perhaps the second most famous tourist attraction in Sydney: the Sydney Harbour Bridge. You can pay to climb up and walk along the top of the bridge, but as a student, I figured my money would be better spent by buying food for the next month. Needless to say, it's quite expensive to walk across the top.

Sydney Harbour Bridge

Sydney Harbour Bridge

I then met up with a friend from Wellington who had been in Australia for the last month. We walked over to the Royal Botanic Gardens and shortly thereafter (around 7pm) I headed back to my hotel room to collapse in a comfy, warm bed. I have to take advantage of the warmth before heading back to windy, wet Welly!

Royal Botanic Gardens

too long of a hiatus

First off, I apologize for the hiatus in posting. May was a very productive month for me in terms of my research,  and then I was in the States for most of June visiting family and friends. Going back to the States was definitely a bit weird, and I experienced far more culture shock than I had anticipated. It will be interesting to see how I feel when I head back to the States permanently in 6-7 months.

For now, I will try to post more regularly! I would promise, but I don't like breaking promises...

Tongariro Crossing

This past weekend I hitched a ride up with a friend of a friend to Turangi, which borders the Tongariro National Park. I had planned to do the Tongariro Alpine Crossing over Easter Weekend but didn't have transportation. The Tongariro Alpine Crossing is considered one of the "top ten day hikes in the world" and more than 65,000 people hike it each year. That's a lot of people, and many of them are ill-prepared for the quickly-changing alpine environment. In fact, the Department of Conservation changed the name of the trek back in 2007 from the Tongariro Crossing to the Tongariro Alpine Crossing to try to get the point across that the trail can be dangerous. It's a bit hard to believe it's dangerous, though, when you are following a queue of people up the trail.

I arrived on Friday at 10:30pm at a backpacker's hostel painted in crazy colorful pictures and arranged to have a shuttle pick me up the following morning to do the crossing. The shuttle was supposed to arrive at 6am, so I made my way to my dorm room, met my German roommate, and went to sleep. The following morning I caught the shuttle and watched the sun rise as we drove towards the crossing.

Mt. Ruapehu as the sun rises. I just bought a season pass to Mt. Ruapehu, so I'll be spending quite a bit of time here once the ski season rolls around.

The Tongariro Crossing is a 18.5 km trail (one way) that travels over volcanic terrain between Mt. Ngauruhoe (Mt. Doom in the Lord of the Rings) and Mt. Tongariro. It is therefore necessary to arrange a shuttle either to the beginning or end of the trail (or both) in order to complete. As a result, heaps of people end up starting at the same time and ending around the same time, making the trail unbelievably crowded. Luckily I beat the crowd at the beginning, but they caught up to me when I got back down from scrambling partway up Mt. Ngauruhoe. The rest of the hike involved maneuvering around hoards of people, and for that reason, I wouldn't go as far as to say the Tongariro Crossing will ever be one of my top ten day hikes. The scenery was beautiful though, and the geology breathtaking.

Mt. Ngauruhoe. As you can tell by my hair, it was a very windy day.

Mt. Nguaruhoe with Mt. Ruapehu in the distance.

View from Mt. Tongariro.

View down from Red Crater.

Red Crater, Mt. Ngauruhoe, and Mt. Ruapehu.

Coming down from the Tongariro Crossing.

Easter holiday in New Zealand

I am finally starting to understand what Kiwis mean when they say "Americans work too hard." Easter Holiday here is five days long, including Anzac day on Monday, Good Friday, and a Uni holiday on Tuesday. No one comes in to Uni on these days, except for the Americans. In fact, the university is locked over holidays, so you have to use your card to get through all the doors. Before holidays, the University sends out an email forbidding anyone from coming to the university over the holiday period, and explicitly asks the professors that do come to let them know why they were at uni and on what days. Apparently wanting to work is not a valid excuse.

Not only does the university shut down on holidays, but the entire city does as well. On public holidays, businesses are fined for being open unless they have a permit to do so. Those that have permits are usually in the tourist industry. Since Wellington is not a huge tourist destination, almost everything is closed on holidays. It's a bit surprising to see the capital city of New Zealand completely dead. I walked downtown on Good Friday to head to the Warehouse (NZ equivalent of Walmart), and it was closed. Even the supermarket was closed.

I guess I should take this as a lesson that I should stop working as hard.

run out to Red Rocks

Today a friend and I ran from the Northland shops, near my current flat, out to Red Rocks on the South Coast. First, we started up Wrights Hill near Zealandia and then took a narrow, steep trail down towards Makara Peak. Unfortunately it wasn't quite in the right direction, so after another two hours of unnecessary wandering around Makara Peak and nearly getting taken out by a few mountain bikers, we found a dirt road heading in the desired direction. Shortly thereafter, we ended up at the beach! A short run along the beach landed us in Owhiro Bay and then in Island Bay, where we took the bus back to Wellington.

Tree on Makara Peak. You can tell this area is maintained for mountain biking. 

First view of the ocean on our run. For a little while, I was wondering if we would ever make it to the coast! Right around this area we also started to hear gun shots from some guys shooting in an ATV park in the valley.

Most of the run involved dirt roads. A bit farther up this road, there was an anchor along the side of the road and a picnic table. Unfortunately the wind was blowing so bad that I could barely stand up and decided it wasn't worth the risk of pulling out my camera to take a picture of another bizarrely located bench in New Zealand.

Shortly after we reached the beach, a nasty storm blew through the valley we had just left and made some beautiful rainbows! That's what I call perfect timing.

Where Red Rocks gets its name from! It's hard to see in this image, but the rocks are red, I promise.

Red Rocks is also known for its seal colonies.

painting easter eggs

Today I tried my hand at crafts. A few friends and I gathered to paint easter eggs and make omelettes out of the remaining eggs. I haven't painted easter eggs since I was seven years old. Luckily none of our eggs broke while we were blowing out the yolks. Other than lacking the patience necessary to wait for the eggs to dry, the event was an all around success. As most of us were geologists, the eggs turned out as volcanoes, glaciers, the earth, and mountains. My egg, in fact, is probably the pinnacle of my artistic capabilities:

finally (maybe) settling in

I finally moved in to a new flat today. My old flat had a problem with mold and rats, and was horribly overpriced for the commodities. We had one love seat for a couch in the living room, and that couch put the ISA to shame in terms of swallowing you whole when you sat down. (For those of you unfamiliar with the Rock, where I lived as an undergrad, the ISA is a couch in the Rock's living room that nearly eats you when you sit down). My old flatmates were both incredibly nice but very different from me and a bit messy. One day I washed a couple pots that had been sitting around and had grown mold. To make a long story short, I needed to move. It's nice to be in a new place knowing that I will have a bed for the first time in two months on Monday! No more sleeping on my thermarest.

a running adventure

Running seems to be the theme of my life at the moment. It's a great way to explore a new place, and Welly is full of amazing trails. Every day I stumble upon new trails that I want to explore, and well, it's a never ending cycle.

Today I decided to bring my camera along for the run. So, here is a recap of my run in photo form:

In Welly, if you see a grassy hill you want to run up, you can be pretty sure there are trails. You just have to find them. Today I ran up the hills in this picture. The trail at the top of the hills is the Skyline Track.

Some bizarre (but pretty mushrooms) in Wellington. I am always excited to see these on my runs but think it's probably best that I don't eat them until I know they aren't poisonous. 

Beautiful woody single-track trails on my climb up the hill.

Wallah! I can see the summit in the distance across the grassy field.

I still lack maturity at times. This smiley face made me laugh -- cow dung is perhaps the biggest drawback of some of the trails in NZ. I haven't stepped in one of these yet (knock on wood).

View along the Skyline Track

The track follows dirt roads for the majority of its length. These roads pass through various pastures and cow gates.

Beautiful views with power lines and wind turbines in the distance

You see this sign almost anywhere you enter into the bush. Possums are a huge problem in NZ as they eat large quantifies of vegetation, and the only way to get rid of them is with poison. 

That's it for now! Hopefully I'll have more running adventure posts in the future, assuming I bring my camera.