New Zealand-isms

Here's some lingo and phrases we heard frequently while we were there in case you take a trip (which you totally should).

• no worries:  As in "no problem".  This one is used here too but it is used all the time there.
• mate
• A sign as you were approaching a freeway entrance: "Merge like a zip".  Great visual.  I think we should post these all over Oregon.  It cant hurt.
• flash = great.  As in "That's really flash."
• They take their gardening serious.  We saw a warning sign similar to what we would see here for a construction zone but this one just said "Gardening"
• Good as.  As in "Good as gold" but they drop the gold.  
• Gum boots = rain boots or wellies
• dear = expensive
• jandals = flip-flops
• aluminum is pronounced all-u-min-ee-um

We've been back for 3 months and I am still adjusting to the real-world.  Besides the beauty everywhere and fewer people, I really enjoyed how laid back everyone was.  They didn't get uptight or flustered very easily.  That is something I've tried to better at but I don't think I have succeeded most of the time.  For now, we are working on our list of things to do on our next trip over...which I hope is not too far away.  Thanks for reading.

Day 20 - Heading home

On our way to the airport, we stopped to watch a cricket match.

I dont get this game at all. 

We slept in until 8:15am.  This was the latest we slept the whole trip because we always were so excited to get out the door explore.  We headed out to check out the beach and went for a walk along it. Watched the surfers and swimmers it was in the high 70s but windy.  On the way, we stopped for my final savory scone and flat white.
Ironically, when we were on our way to return our rental car Matt turned onto the wrong side of the road for the first time of the entire trip.  It was a little scary as there was a car coming but he recovered well.  Our rental car return gave us more reasons to love this place.  They found some scratches on the front bumper.  We honestly hadn't looked the car over when we picked it up and had know idea how we would have gotten scratches on it.  The worker said she had to show her manager.  I'm thinking, oh great, they'll look and see that we didn't get the extra insurance and make a big hassle out of this.  The manager came out, looked at the scratches and said oh we can buff those out.  No worries, Mate.  That so would not have gone down like that at an American rental car place.  I heart NZ.
Our flight back took us to Auckland and then onto San Fran.  The flight was way more crowded than on the way there but it was 3 days before Christmas so that made sense.  The landing in San Fran caused Matt to declare we will never fly in to that airport again (I'll just say that many folks utilized their air sickness bags so it was pretty bad).  We had a bit of a layover and then headed back to Portland where it was dark, cloudy and rainy at 4:30pm.  Home sweet home:-)  Next time I'll post some funny new zealand-isms we learned and my final thoughts on the trip.

Day 19 - Mt Cook and Christchurch

The clouds had settled in overnight and we woke up not even able to see the mountains.  We decided to head up to the Mt Cook visitors center and check it out.  It was basically a museum about the area and mountain climbing.  Pretty cool.  It began pouring rain and we were thankful that our timing had worked out with our hike the day before.  After a couple of hours of checking out the visitors center, headed to Christchurch where we would fly out the following day.

This was the only picture we took on this day.  I wore 0 make-up our entire trip.  Loved it!

We stopped at Hagley Park and Botanic Gardens in  Christchurch.  It was beautiful but several of the buildings were closed due to the earthquake that happened in February of 2011.  When we tried to go to dinner that evening most of the central downtown was still closed and just fenced off so we kept running into dead ends.  That struck me as very different from the US.  Here, we would likely be working on getting things back to normal as quickly as possible but NZ has some kind of governmental review process that could mean 10 years before things are restored to the way they were.  It was odd to run into fenced off roads and piles of rubble on a corner that represented what was left of a demolished building.  A little eerie.   We ended up at an Italian Restaurant called Tutto Benne.  Delicious last meal in NZ.
The holiday park we stayed at proved to be my least favorite.  There were some men a few doors down that hung out on their patio all evening drinking and getting loud but I figured out of all the places we stayed, having 1 bad experience wasn't not so bad.  We didnt' want to sleep really anyway because we knew when we woke up it would be our final day in this great place.

Day 18 - Mt Cook, Mueller Hut Track

We woke up to a perfectly clear day and started out.  The first hour of the hike was stairs which went straight up.  After that the hike turned to scrambling over boulders and then we started crossing snowfields.  We could hear avalanches off Mt Sufton in the distance.  We got to the top of the ridge and then climbed another 20 minutes thru snow and builders to Mueller Hut.

View from Sealy Tarns (the halfway point).  Honestly, I was ready to quit after  climbing 100s of stairs but the views were awesome.

See the red hut near the top of the snowfield?

Mt Cook

I chilled at the hut and took in the view.

Matt decided to do the hike up to Mt. Olivier which was right behind the hut and the first mountain Sir Edmund Hilary ever climbed.  He got to glisade down.

View from Mt. Olivier

Every angle was beautiful here.

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not our finest self portrait

This was my favorite part of the whole trip.  After a long, challenging hike we glisaded down the snowfield.  It was pretty steep so you go going pretty fast and there was a cloud of snow that flew up after you.

We had so much fun that we hiked up the snowfield and did it again!

Sucha a great day and still plenty of sunlight, after we finished the Mueller Hut Track, we headed over to Kea Point.  It was a short hike out to a view point of the glacier.

Back at camp we were darn tired.  Thankfully we got a room for our 2nd night so we packed up our tent and moved over to our room.  After we made dinner and cleaned up, we chatted with the man next door for awhile.  He was british but currently living in Australia and in NZ on holiday.  He was a riot and once again we realized that the rest of the world cares way more about US politics than we do.  

Day 17 - Oamaru and Mt. Cook

We spent the morning walking around Oamaru and checking out all the cool buildings and Steampunk stuff.  This was a term I had never heard of before so check out the link if you are interested.  After our leisurely morning, we headed to Glen Tanner which was where we would stay in the Mt. Cook area.

An example of steampunk.  You could put $2 in and flames and sound effects occurred.  

This building was right across from our backpacker.  Example of steampunk in front.

Mt Cook with Lake Pukaki.  Beautiful

We headed straight for a hike when we arrived and we ran into a herd of sheep crossing the road.

They were everywhere.

We did the Hooker Valley hike which took you up to Hooker glacier.  It was a perfect day and beautiful hike.

These are chunks of the glacial ice floating down the river.

Matt skipped some stones in this water and I swear they skipped 15+ times.  It was amazing.  We assume that the water was more dense than normal because of all the glacial debris in the water.  We hung out hear for awhile and saw some Keas flying high overhead.  I soaked my feet in the freezing cold water.

A swing bridge they had just completed. 

This was a memorial for those that had died on the mountain.

Freda Du Faur (in the picture bottom left) was the first woman to climb Mt Cook on December 3rd (matt's birthday), 1910.

Lupin and Mt Cook.

After our hike, we headed back and made dinner and got ready for the next day's hike which Matt warned me may be our most challenging yet...

Day 16 - Penguins and more Penguins

Stopped for coffee, a meat pie (for Matt) and custard roll (for me) on our way to the YEP preserve.  Did I mention that I loved the abundance of bakeries?  On the way there we stopped at the same beach we had stopped the day before but this time waves were crashing fiercly into the board walk area and going over the wall.  It was cool to watch the waves roll in.  

While we watched a local stopped by.  He said he had never seen anything like this before in his life.  Once he found out we were Americans he asked if we like our President and proceeded to call him a sappy bloke.

Yellow-Eyed Penguins

Can you see the furry baby in there?  Click to enlarge

We did a tour of Cadbury Chocolate.  The end of the tour had an amazing chocolate chute where 100s of gallons of chocolate dropped in front of our eyes.  

Ducks of Paradise mama and chicks.

Moeraki Boulders along the way to Oamaru.   

A bunch of boulders are buried in this beach and slowly uncovered over time and then they break down into huge pieces.  pretty cool.

After we checked into our backpacker we went to the Little Blue Penguin preserve.  The LBP are not endangered.  This is the viewing area that you sit and wait for it to get dark and then slowly "rafts" of penguins come floating onto shore and climb up the rocks to go to their nests to feed their babies.  There was a light so we could see but the penguins couldn't see us.  We saw hundreds come ashore.  Pictures weren't allowed so check out the link above.  

After we watched all the LBP come in, we saw some in the parking lot and some wandered under our car as we were driving out.  We had to stop our car and scare them out from under the car by shaking our keys at them.

Day 15 - Dunedin

We checked out and headed to Dunedin, another coastal town that is famous for their Edwardian style architecture, Cadbury Chocolate, and Yellow-Eyed Penguins.  But first we started the day with a flat white and a savory biscuit.  Yum. I appreciate the New Zealanders love of baked goods.

We stopped at St. Clair beach and ate lunch in our car since it was sprinkling.  We watched the surfers while this guy watched us.

We did a a quick hike down to Tunnel Beach.

  Kind of off the beaten path.  You hike downhill to this great view of an impressive land bridge.  

Then you look to your left and see a tunnel in the side of the hill.  The beach has very dramatic cliffs in this area and is not very accessible so Mr.  Cargill, one of the early settlers, made this tunnel so his daughters could play on the beach.  You walk down the stone stairs too...

...this beach where there is another cave...

and these impressive jagged cliffs surrounding you.  You feel very small.  There was no body else here so it also felt very remote.

After the hike, we checked out the city.  They have Scottish roots here and very cool architecture.

This is the train station.  

We decided to have an alfresco dinner at a place called Ratbag(not an appealing name but good food).  They were famous for their meter pizzas.  The restaurant was right off the Octagon which is the center of town and felt a bit like Pioneer Square.  It felt funny eating outside at Christmas time when we are used to trying to stay warm and dry at this time of year.

After dinner we grabbed some warmer clothes and headed out to Sandfly Beach to try to catch some Yellow-eyed Penguins (YEP) coming assure to feed their babies.  YEP are native to NZ and endangered with a population of only about 4000 currently.  There was a volunteer stationed at the beach to instruct us where best to spot them.  We had to keep low and not move because if they see you they wont come assure which they need to do in order to feed their babies.  We got to see 2 float onto the beach and then they hiked about 50 yards up some boulders to their nests.  So fascinating to watch these guys in their natural habitat.  No pictures because it was dark and they were a bit far off but we did get some the following day when we went to a preserve for the YEP.

Day 14 - Doubtful Sound

We had a 7:40am check-in time for our cruise to Doubtful Sound.  It started with a 45 minute cruise across Lake Manapouri which has alot of little islands in it that look like haystack rock with a forest on it.  The lake is very deep.

 After the cruise across the lake, we got off the boat and loaded onto a bus to ride a windy gravel road to the Sound.  The road was built for the construction of the power station  (more on that later).  Because it is such a remote place, camps of men stayed there to work on the road and then build the power station.  As we drove we saw beautiful green forests, water falls, etc but all the vegetation is actually growing on rock.

We stopped for this view of Doubtful Sound along the way. 

After the bus ride, we loaded another boat and headed out.  It is hard to describe and our pictures do not do it justice.  They turned out a bit dark because of the clouds and the massive walls of rock that surround you but the sound was quite impressive.  Very deep, dark water that is actually fresh water sitting on top of salt water.  Impressive cliffs, cool vegetation, tons of rock formations.  Lots of little inlets or fiords.  It is so remote and peaceful.  At one point, the captain turned off all the engines and asked everyone to be quiet so you could only here natural sounds

There is a seal colony at the end of the Sound.

We are approaching the Tasman Sea.  It was very windy but not overly cold.

When we returned from our cruise, we loaded back in buses and headed to the power station which is NZ's greatest engineering feat.  How could we pass this up, right?  Some folks chose not to come along because you rode the bus deep underground down a long, dark, tunnel.  The bus driver called it middle earth.  They love them some Lord of the Ring references.  Anyway the station takes water from the lake and pours it into the Sound.  The company Matt worked for when he lived in NZ worked on the power station but he had never been here so he was very interested to see it.

The top of the power turbines which are apparently 5 stories tall.

After the boat ride back, it was still daylight so we decided to drive as far as we could on the Milford Highway (which was the road to Milford Sound that was closed due to mudslides) to the Key Summit hike.  It was supposed to have a good view and a possibility to see Kia.  By the time we reached the trailhead it was spitting rain and cloudy.  As we hiked up the clouds dropped so we could see less and less. It was still a nice hike and good to get out and walk since we had not been very active that day.

waterfall along Key Summit hike

We headed back to our place for dinner (and no mosquitos this time).