Wildlife!

Since David has stopped boating and shipped all his gear home the focus of the trip has once again become tourism. This is my doing, as David would happily boat every single day and not see a bit of the rest of the country. We've spent the last few days running around the country to hit the known hotspots for lots of sea life. And man! Its been great!! We stopped at Curio Bay, which is a beautiful petrified forest that's located on the beach. We got super lucky and managed to see several rare yellow-eyed penguins even though they aren't usually there.

We also went over to the other side of the bay and managed to score a few sightings of the world's smallest dolphins, the Hector dolphins. They use the bay as a nursery, so there were lots of babies around. No luck with photography though. Bummer.

Next, we headed to Nugget Point, where there are seal colonies and sea lions. We scored both! There was a crowd of people on the beach surrounding this huge bull sea lion. I can't believe how close people were getting to this thing! I kept my distance...

As we were driving up the coast, Dave (my awesome navigator) brought to my attention that we were passing by a place that has blue penguins, which are the smallest penguins weighing only 1 kilogram. Turns out that there's a tour operated where you can actually walk through with an expert inside their man-made nesting area. Blue penguins are unique because they're the only penguins that live in burrows. They didn't let us take any photos and because it wasn't dusk, we didn't see any penguins returning back to their dens from the sea. But we did manage to get super close to some seals!

And then today, we went whale watching. I've never seen a live whale before and we were really excited about the whole thing. That is until it started POURING last night. As if that weren't bad enough, we'd been lazy the night before and left part of our dinner in the tent. Dave woke up at 5am because there was something on his sleeping bag. Turned out there was a mouse in the tent!! He got it out by scaring it back through the tent door, which is how we figured it got inside in the first place. We didn't realize how wrong we were until we were packing up and discovered it had chewed a hole in the tent and through the bread packaging. It left us a nice little mouse turd in the bread as evidence. Lovely.

So we'd already paid for the whale watching trip and weren't backing out for a little rain. No way! We arrived to find a prediction of "ideal sea conditions" for our scheduled departure, with "slight seasick conditions" for the departure after ours. I think they got things backwards. The seas weren't nearly as rough as they were returning from Koh Tao in the Gulf of Thailand, but it was still sufficient to turn me several different shades of green. Even Dave, who never gets motion sick, was feeling the effects. I eventually threw up (the only person on the boat who did!), and quickly recovered. I ended up feeling great and even managed to get a last-second shot of a whale's fluke before it disappeared beneath the surface on its way to another deep feeding dive.

We stopped on the voyage back to the pier to admire a giant albatrose. These birds have up to a 12 foot wingspan! They're really impressive in flight, though we never got to see it. Instead, it bobbed happily on the sea watching us watch it.

New Zealand has provided several "first" encounters with so much wildlife that I've really managed to get everything out of this trip that I wanted. We leave in two days to head to Australia and I'll be completely satisfied with this trip by then!

A Snip Snip Here

We started this trip in October with fresh haircuts, among other things. We looked all neat, trimmed and tidy for our 10-year high school reunion that we attended less than two weeks before departing. Man, we were styling!


Four months later, that was not the case so much. You could argue that we were just fitting in with the rest of the backpacker crowd, but those are often some well groomed people who travel with large bags of toiletries, hairdryers and beard trimmers. I'd been asked by my mom what I planned on doing with my hair while traveling. She worries about a lot of things and apparently my personal grooming had made the list. I figured I'd either get a haircut along the way or arrive home with 6 months of growth, a huge ponytail and plenty of hair for Jamie to work with as she did her styling magic and gave me another awesome cut. I absolutely hate having hair that is longer than shoulder length. As David points out, it makes me look like a hippie, but I think it makes me look more like a drowned rat. We'd reached that point so it had to go!

Dave was first in line for the haircuts. We're on a budget so instead of going to a barber, we invested in a pair of multipurpose scissors and I gave him a haircut--my first (unless you count the time when I was 10 years old and overheard my mom talking about going back to the barber to have him cut my brother's hair shorter than he'd cut that afternoon. I took it upon myself to save my mom the trouble and butchered Scott's hair so badly that he practically had to have his head shaved by the barber to correct my attempt). Given my track record, I was less than certain about my abilities. David had full confidence in me though, fully aware that he'd have to wander around with a bad haircut if I failed. We took photos to document the progress and I had these great before and after shots of his haircut but my memory card died and I've been unable to recover any photos off the card at all. Instead, I have had to dig back through some earlier photos and try to find a picture of Dave without him wearing a hat or helmet, which is next to impossible because his hair is thinning and he's always wearing a hat to protect his head from sunburn. Many of my other shots of him are kayaking shots, which include the helmet. I realize he's wearing a helmet in this photo but its the best I could do. You can see his sideburns starting to curl and the long beard. Unfortunately, the helmet strap is covering his flowing mane of hair in the back. You get the idea though.


I sat him down in our handy dandy camping chair on a beautiful sunny afternoon and got to work with my rudimentary tools (i.e. multipurpose scissors and a huge, ghetto comb. The kind you buy in a dollar store with really wide teeth). We'd discussed giving him a mullet, as is the fashion here in NZ, or maybe a faux-hawk but he said whatever style I cut I'd have to live with until we got home in April. I decided that as funny as it would be, I'd rather not look at a balding mullet for another two months and he didn't really have enough hair to rock out a faux-hawk. My first priority, therefore, was to cut the back of his hair and work my way up. I've watched the stylists cut my hair for years and did my best to copy what I'd seen. I did okay with things until I got to the left side of his head, when I accidentally sliced into Dave's ear. OOPS!!

I felt really awful, especially since it was a gash about a 1/4 - 1/2 inches long and it wouldn't stop bleeding. After a few minutes to clean the flesh wound and for me to calm down about gashing my lover, I resumed my work and did my best to finish the job. Aside from cutting the left side a little uneven (out of fear of cutting his ear again), I thought I'd done a fairly decent job of things by the end of the haircut. David thought I'd left it a bit long on the top and couldn't figure out why I was cutting it so specifically. He said I'd done a good job but that he wasn't used to the look and thought he resembled college boys he'd hustle while playing pool. After about a half an hour of looking at it, I realized why I'd cut his hair the way I had. Its the same haircut my brother has had for years!

Dave thought it made perfect sense that I'd given him Scott's haircut since its the cut I'd been looking at for a good part of my life. The resemblance was really uncanny. He'd turn his head a certain way and it was like my brother was right there with us. That's not the first time I've experienced that--Cristen Hair pointed it out so eloquently at the football game during out 10-year high school reunion in October when she asked if I was sitting on the bleachers holding hands with my brother. It'd only been that afternoon that I'd first though Dave resembled Scott, so her affirmation hit me hard. Of course I'd never meant to make my mountain-man boyfriend look like a fraternity boy, so we decided that I'd shorten it again in a few days. In the meantime, I trimmed the beard down to a manageable length (so it wouldn't get in his mouth or itch in places). Of course the end result is being held hostage on my memory card, so here's a shot I found of us from this past week after the final trimming, illustrating his shorter look (not too bad, if I do say so myself!) and my scraggle. Two birds, one stone!


We've been in Queenstown for the last week and something about the humidity levels has been making my usually wavy hair really flat and dry. I've been looking in the mirror at hair that's started to creep past my shoulders and my first reaction is to grab the multipurpose scissors and attack it with everything I've got. And then that awful haircut I gave Scott all those years ago flashes through my head along with the trouble it was to correct the damage and I realize its not worth attempting to cut my own hair. So I sucked it up and went into town and found someone far more competent than myself. Here's the result!


I'm so glad not to have a mullet!

Counter-Culture Shock

Coming to New Zealand has been a great experience so far. Its almost like a home away from home since its so Western compared to what we've been traveling through for the past 2.5 months. And while its great, its also a bit odd to be back in such a developed country. Dave has experienced this counter-culture shock on trips before but this is a first for me. I got so used to not being able to read signs or menus, speak much more than a handful of words in the language, calculate currency conversions in my head, concern myself over restroom conditions, carry my own toilet paper and hand sanitizer and ponder at what to eat that not having to do so anymore feels like we're cheating! Especially now that we've rented a car and eliminated the additional headache of figuring out bus and train schedules and worry about carrying heavy backpacks or shipping stuff home! Its meant that we can add luxury items like a cooler for all of our food and beer, camping gear to do things on the cheap, and of course, David's boat.

I can't believe what an odd feeling it is not to have to worry over our basic needs anymore. These daily concerns were ever-changing and required us to adapt quickly. It really became such a part of our existence that I almost feel a bit lazy for having more "stuff" (i.e. gifts) than I can fit into my backpack or carry comfortably by myself and a bit guilty for having toiletries that exceed 3.4 fluid ounces after being so limited for so long! Where are we going and how are we going to get there? Put gas in the car and consult the road atlas. Where are we going to eat? Grab something from the cooler. Or we can duck into a grocery store to buy things to cook on our camping stove. Where are we going to sleep? Doesn't matter, we have ground pads, sleeping bags, mosquito netting and a tent. We'll make it work. What if I have to pee? No worries, there are public restrooms with Western toilets, TP, soap and paper towels everywhere!

And we're back in an English-speaking country, so we can read signs (except our pronunciation of Maori words is AWFUL! Would you be able to pronounce the hill on the North island Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu without butchering it?) understand when people speak to us (even if the accents are a bit difficult sometimes) and we can absolutely be understood by those around us, which eliminates our previous ability to have rather private conversations in public without fear of being overheard. So even though we're still traveling, it doesn't feel like we're doing things much differently than we'd do if we were back Stateside. Its a bit of an odd existence to know that we're still 2 months from coming home, but in a way, we're already there. This whole experience has affected the idea of what my necessities actually are in a surprisingly profound way that I'm realizing I don't need nearly the amount of stuff not only to get by, but to be happy. Weird to me since I'm totally an American when it comes to consumer culture. Things are going to be different now....

Land of Kiwis, Sheep, Cows And The Biggest Ozone Hole On The Planet!

David and I arrived here in New Zealand yesterday afternoon at about 1:00 after an 11 hour flight. Despite only a 6 hour time change, we're having a really difficult time adjusting. Those overnight flights always kill me, though somehow Dave manages to catch several hours of solid sleep. I traded seats with him so that I sat in the middle and he had the aisle seat since he was going to be driving the rental car upon landing. Nothing like feeling like a zombie behind the wheel when you're driving on the left side of the road. Ever try to hug the wrong side of the road while sleepy? Doesn't work so well. David tagged a curb pretty hard on a round about and came close to swiping a few bumpers of parked cars before my screaming registered and he started to get the feel for things.

Things have been interesting during these last 24 hours Down Under. We're slowly getting over the jet lag and getting used to driving on the wrong side of the road. The landscape is absolutely gorgeous and its bright, sunny and warm all the time. Its light outside from 6am til 9pm, which is fantastic because the sun was setting at 6:45 in Thailand (which is great for "winter," but still....). There are more cows and sheep than I think I may have seen in my whole life. Milk is a HUGE thing here dairys and shops advertising milk are everywhere. There is so much to do and the people here are exceedingly nice, helpful and generous. My only complaint thus far is that the hole in the ozone above New Zealand is the largest in the entire world and the sun here feels like its scalding your skin even in the shade. For those who know, its like being on a glacier at 10,000 feet. People here wear sunscreen ALL THE TIME. You can wear 30 SPF and still get burned after only a few hours of exposure. Its really incredible.

We stayed in Tauranga last night with the sister of a guy Dave met while rafting in Colorado (he crashed on their couch for free for like 2 weeks). Christine and her husband Mike are wonderful and have volunteered their home for us to use as a base while we tour through the region. They're super awesome and we're going to totally take them up on it! Tonight we're back in Auckland staying with Jose, another boating friend of Dave's. No idea what's on the agenda for the next few days but we're going to spend some time tonight mapping it out over a few tasty beers. More to come!