On Friday, April 3 Tommy, Carsten, Ryan and I piled into their Toyota Royal Town Ace--she's aptly named the Royale Lounge.
We had four 60-Litre tubs behind the two front seats. One for shoes, one for food, one for group gear (stoves, tarps, etc) and one for anything extra. I sat in the back corner the whole time (where the white pillow is) and I really got to lounge. My feet didn't even reach all the way to the boxes stretched out!
This was my view from the back. In this picture we're just leaving Ilam village. The van looks so clean! Tommy's driving and Carsten is next to him. Tommy is from Illinois and goes to DePauw University. He's majoring in music (hence the guitar) and geology. We went the entire term in three of the same classes and didn't even know it! Carsten is a business major from Germany. He's not a complainer or anything, he's just extremely easily amused. Ryan is from New Jersey but goes to school in Boulder, CO and is becoming an archaeologist. Overall, a very well rounded group.
So anyway, we drove straight to the top of the South Island to catch a 10:30 ferry to the North Island. The ferry ride was about three hours and we sort of slept but were mostly too excited for the adventure.
We got off of the ferry around 2 and drove for about half an hour until we saw a very comfortable looking beach. We laid down the tarp and passed out under beautiful southern hemisphere stars. Imagine our delight when we woke up to this:
Good morning!
This was the pathway to the beach.
As beautiful as it was, we decided to keep heading North. We only had six days and wanted to get some tramping in.
This is the route we ended up taking (map stolen from Tommy).
Tommy.
Breathtaking NZ scenery.
Look Mom! They have concrete pipe in NZ...it looks pretty good here eh?
We had fantastic weather pretty much the whole time, which is nice because it had been fairly rainy in Christchurch.
Tommy and Ryan standing in front of Lake Taupo. It is NZ's largest lake and was formed by a volcano about 27,000 years ago. The eruption was the world's largest in the last 70,000 years (Mt. St. Helen's spewed 1.2 cubic km of debris in 1980, Taupo spewed 430 cubic km). Needless to say, it's a big lake.We hung around the town of Taupo for a while, then drove a bit south into Tongariro National Park. It was dark before we found a campsite, so again we found a nice piece of land and went to sleep under the stars. And then we got another great surprise in the morning:
We were camping right near Mt. Ngauruhoe, or Mt. Doom as most people know it.
Campsite.So then we drove to the town of Whakapapa. Which, by the way, is the best name for a town EVER (wh is pronounced like an "f" in Maori speak...think about it...there you go...bahaha). We bought hut tickets for a track called the Tongariro Northern Circuit. It is a three day, two night walk through the park.
The first day was only going to be a couple hours, so we had lunch near the van before heading out:
Ryan, Carsten and Tommy.
This is Mt. Ruapehu, the most active volcano in the area. The last time it erupted was about two years ago. The mountain was in our sight most of the trip.
On the trail. The mountain to the left is Mt. Tongariro, the oldest and least active volcano.
Where's Mt. Doom?
Finally made it the hut...the boys being boys. Most tracks in NZ have huts that you can stay in for a fee. These ones were 20 dollars a night...it was 15 dollars to camp, so we decided that running water, real beds, stoves and a fire place were worth the ten extra dollars.
The sunset hitting Mt. Doom. This was one view from the hut.
This is Mt. Egmont, about 150 km West of where we were...another active volcano
The kitchen of the hut.
The bedroom.
This is me in front of Mt. Doom on the second day of our tramp. It was the longest day and I believe we clocked in about 19 kms before collapsing in front of the second hut.
Lava fields.
A rare group shot. I look a bit pissed in this picture, but it's mostly due to the sun shining in my eyes(I lost my sunglasses the previous day).
I think we hiked up about a zillion wooden stairs to get to this point. And we didn't even go all of the way up the mountain.
This is abot as close as we got to Mt. Doom. It would have been another three hours to summit it. The sign in the corner is a volcanic gas warning.
We walked across yellow crater, next to Mt. Doom.
Then we came upon Red Crater.
Craters of the Moon lakes.
Taking a break at the lakes, which were (surprisingly) really cold.
Steam vents.
This part of the trail was littered with pumice, a rock so light it floats.
The four of us outside of the second cabin on the third morning. Not the best picture, that's for sure, but to our credit we had just woken up.
I would have loved to see a lahar.
This is the first hut ever built (for tramping purposes) and is now a restored historic site. Unfortunately it started pouring shortly after this picture was taken and I didn't take any more pictures on the trail. It was another long day (16 km) in which we hiked through the bush and next to a beautiful creek.We got to the van around 3 in the afternoon, peeled off our wet clothes and began driving south to Wellington. It was a bit of disaster and we were all on edge by the time we got to the hostel. But, no matter, we made it safe and sound and the next morning we did laundry and had a lazy day walking around the city:
Look at how happy these two are!
We had to fold our laundry in the parking garage, that's what you get for living out of a van.
Wellington is a pretty neat city.Our ferry home was set to leave at 8:30 am on April 9, so Wednesday afternoon we started driving out of the city to find somewhere cheaper to stay than a $30 hostel. Turns out, there's not much. After a lot of driving around, I suggested that we go to the dock to see if we could just get onto an earlier ferry.
We parked Royale in the employee parking lot and Ryan and Tommy went to go see if there was anyone around to ask (it was a pretty industrial area). They found someone, and were told it would be fine.
They came back to the car and we decided to go find something to eat before getting on the 2am ferry (it was about 10 at this point). And the car wouldn't start. We waited a bit, and it still wouldn't start. We waited a bit more, and Royale just wasn't starting.
I would like to point out that while Ryan and Carsten thought it was the battery, Tommy and I didn't. The radio would turn on and all of the lights, the windows would go up and down at a normal speed, and the engine wasn't even trying to work. It didn't turn over or anything. But there was no convincing the other two, and either way we needed help. So Tommy called roadside assistance and they said they'd be there in an hour.
Meanwhile, we began unloading the van because the battery is right behind the driver's seat, underneath all of the boxes, and she could have used some reorganization anyway. We got everything out and organized and roadside assistance called back to ask Tommy some questions, walk him through some things like they do when you have a computer problem. The first step was to try to start the car and explain the sound it makes.
She started on the first try. Of course.
It then took Tommy a bit of convincing on his end that we were not pranking roadside assistance, that we really did need help but now we didn't. Eventually they said it was probably a starter problem (NOT THE BATTERY!) and that we should have it looked at. So then we got out of the employee parking lot, had some snacks, and went and got in line for the ferry again.
This time across we actually slept and it was probably one of the deepest sleeps I had all trip.
After crossing the Cook Straight in the dark once again (my only regret), we began driving south. Tommy claimed that he wasn't tired and he just wanted to get a move on, so off we went.
This is our South Island tour.I don't know how we planned it, but we woke up in another breathtaking part of NZ, the Nelson Lakes Region:
Very beautiful. I think if we had known what it was like, we would have stayed, but Carsten was catching a bus back to Christchurch from Queenstown in a couple of days so we had to keep going.
One of many fush and chups stops. 
Stretching our legs.
Fox Glacier.
Mt. Cook, NZ's tallest mountain.
Close up of the glacier.
At this point, we decided to find a camping spot. Our original plan was to camp at Matheson Lake because Tommy had a picture of it from ages ago and one his NZ goals was to camp there. However when we got there, it was plastered with no camping signs.
So we found another road towards a beach and headed out. After about 20 minutes of driving through a RAINFOREST we come out onto a beautiful beach. And there was camping, AND it was free (not to mention we were on the beach)! AND check out his view:
Amazing alpine glow on Mt. Cook.
The next day we kept heading south and decided to stop off to check out a glacier up close.
It was super cool.
This is the canyon the glacier resided in as early as 70 years ago.
This is [unfortunately] about as close as we got. I would love love LOVE to go back and actually walk on it.The next step in our journey was to keep driving all the way to Queenstown, but we stopped for dinner in a town called Wanaka and by the time we were done, we realized that we did not want to drive around another foreign city looking for a hostel at night. So we camped out in a cute little campground outside of Wanaka.
The moon was finally full.
Tommy feeding the ducks the next morning.So we drove down to Queenstown and got there on Easter Sunday. We had absolutely no idea it was Easter Sunday, and on top of that, Easter is one of the biggest public holidays and Queenstown is the tourist destination of NZ.
Somehow, we found a really cheap hostel right in the heart of downtown. We met up with Brandy, Megan and Bryan and hit the town.
The next day we drove about fifteen minutes outside of Queenstown to do some climbing at the Jardines:
After climbing we found a campsite and dropped the girls off to catch a ride up to Wanaka the next day. We headed back into Queenstown to figure out the rest of our trip.
We decided to book another tramp, called the Routeburn Track. It is a two night, one way track, and the DOC rep told us that transport back to our van shouldn't be a problem so long as we arranged it. So we ran around Queenstown for a couple more hours to get some supplies and drove to a campsite at the head of the track only to remember we forgot to book transport.
"Oh well," we thought "we'll just do it in the morning." That's the thing about flying by the seat of our pants, lots of important things get forgotten. But we had another great campsite and were able to get up in the morning in time to have pancakes before heading back into town to book transport.
When we got back to the DOC, we found out that it was a bit more complicated to get transport than we orginally thought. We could book a bus at the end of the track to take us back to Queenstown, but our van was still a good hour away from that. And there wasn't any way to get there except hitching. It probably would have been possible, but we didn't want to risk it as we really needed to get back to Christchurch the day after. So we decided to just do the first half and walk back. It was absolutely gorgous:
This is where we camped on the first night. The next morning Tommy informed us that there was no way he could hike any farther because he had blisters on both heels that were as big as golf balls. And of course we forgot a first aid kit. So we decided to just head back and get to Christchurch early. After all, we had a lot of work to do before our field trip.
This is right before I ran into a friend from Lewis & Clark I hadn't seen in nearly two years...the world can be so small.
At the end of the trail. This picture is great, check out their faces.
That night we stayed in another campsite outside of Queenstown and headed North the following morning. We camped about halfway there in a town called Fairley. At this point we were all kind of ready to be home, at least for a day.
Here's us looking sad in the Ilam Village parking lot...even though it's completely posed, this is exactly how we all felt--tired, sad and overwhelmed by the van explosion.We spent a few days in Christchurch unwinding and catching up on email/homework/laundry, and then on the 21st, Tommy and I headed out on our Geology field trip.
The trip was so much fun. We spent eight hours a day hiking around Island Hills, about an hour and half north of Christchurch. Our assignment was to map rock types in the area. At night we stayed in sheep-herder's quarters and got to know other members of the department. Here are a few pictures of the region:
Mapping the Island Hills Syncline (a huge fold in the area). We really lucked out and had wonderful weather the entire time. I couldn't even begin to imagine how awful it would have been if it was rainy.
One arm of the fold.
More people from our group.
The Mandamus River Valley. We ended up mapping the hills across the way too.
The Island Hills Field Station...it's really tiny in this picture, but it's the group of white houses in the center.
We walked in the river most days. All of the Kiwis were making fun of the Americans for trying to keep our feet dry. We soon learned that it's impossible and you just have get wet.
Well, that's about it. I apologize for not giving much more detail than that. It's taken me all day to write this, but email me if you'd like to hear more stories!
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