First taste of New Zealand’s Natural Beauty…and some cuts and bruises

FYI: Flickr is dumb and only allows you to upload a certain amount of photos per month, so now I’ll just provide a link for each album on facebook.

Tramping 2
Tramping 1

My apologies for not updating for a while. Not much was going on, then I couldn’t log into my account for a few days for some reason, but I’m back now!

Classes have been going well. Haven’t had too much to do for them except a little reading, which is nice. It’s hard to believe we are already going into the third week of classes! My Maori Art class is not as interesting as I had hoped, but it’s fine and hopefully will get better. My Maori and Indigenous Language class has actually been better than I thought. We talk about languages and how they are spread geographically and what causes a language to die out. Last Thursday, the professor taught the class completely in Maori, with the Powerpoints in English on the board. It was kind of interesting, but also kind of strange because I had NO IDEA what she was saying.
This weekend I decided to go on a trip with the University Tramping Club. It was advertised as a beginner trip, so I wasn’t expecting it to be too gruesome. However, it turned out to be a lot harder than I thought. We first drove 3 hours to the West Coast to get to the tramping destination. The trip to the campsite took about 6 hours. It started out pretty easy. We had to walk through some thorn bushes at the beginning in which my legs got very scratched up. The next hour was pretty flat though we had to walk for a while over rocks, which really made my feet and ankles sore. About 15 minutes in we hit the first river. It was about 30 feet wide, 3 feet deep and 40 degrees Fahrenheit. You had to go through in groups holding on to each other so that you didn’t get washed away by the current. After that it started to get harder. We entered the forest where we we’re walking up and downhill, through mud and more rivers. I fell several times and by hour two my legs we’re pretty much shot. We stopped for lunch at a pretty lake about 3 hours in. And then we were off again. The remainder of the trip continued pretty much the same way. The last hour was pretty much all walking on rocks and crossing rivers. I started to get frustrated but it was all worth it when we reached our finally destination, the Otehake hot pools. Basically these natural hot springs in the middle of the mountains. I pitched a tent with my tent mate Christine and then got into the pools. It was pretty much amazing and I didn’t want to ever get out. Mostly because it was pitch black, freezing cold and the campsite was about 50 yards away up hill over rocks. But I made it and slept pretty well for being in a freezing cold tent with a mediocre sleeping bag.

The next day ended up being much easier than the first. The whole route was pretty flat, though we still had to cross some rivers and walk over rocks. My ankles were killing me, but I knew I had to finish. The way back ended up only taking 5 hours. As soon as everyone got back to the vans we headed back to campus, stopping for dinner at a pub in Springfield on the way home. Overall the trip was fun. Although I am sore as hell today. I got to see some awesome sites which you will shortly be able to view on my photo site (flickr.com/britskee03).

Once I got back to my flat I got on Skype to talk to Dani and Leslie about Spring Break plans. Too bad my microphone broke and I couldn’t actually talk. I’m still kind of pissed about that. But on the positive side, I am officially going to Australia over my Spring Break! I’ll definitely be spending some time in Brisbane since Dani will be there at the same time, all three of us can spend some time together there which will be fun. I’m hoping to get to go to Sydney and/or Melbourne before Brisbane, but we’ll see.

I suppose that’s all for now. I’ve got class again tomorrow and still have some reading to do, so I should probably get to that!