| QUICK UPDATE Where are they now? |
| 12/15/2001: (23 days to go) It is 2:30 p.m. and the yard sale has ended for the day. When we woke up at 6 a.m. to get ready - there was frost on the ground! In Oxnard! I sure won't miss the rest of the winter. We sold an outrageous amount of stuff (and a fair amount of junk) to local pack rats. It is amazing what some people will buy. We made several hundred dollars, and still have some good stuff left for tomorrow. We could end up netting about $400. Amazing, since a lot of stuff went for $.25 to $.50. At least we don't have to pay to have it removed. 12/30/2001: (9 days to go) We've moved out of our apartment and will be "camping out" at various friend's homes until we leave. Being full-time transients two weeks early is giving us a taste of what's to come. We're still hunting through all the stuff we have scattered about trying to find what we need to get by. Still hasn't hit us that our world is about to turn upside down (literally) in a few days. Too much to do still. We're getting all our stuff stored in Oxnard, and running down last minute loose ends. 1/27/02 Christchutch NZ OK, OK Already.... I know we haven't added any new content, but things are different here. In Fiji, and here on the south island of NZ, there is no high-speed internet access. Everything is dial up and you pay by the hour, which doesn't make for quick updates. Also, don't want to spend hours inside when there is so much to do. Following is a brief synopsis of our trip: 1/8 - Left LAX for Fiji. 1/10 - Arrived in Fiji. 90% humidity and 80 degrees at 7 a.m. 1/10-1/16 - Beachhouse, Korolevu Town, Viti Levu (the big island). Spent a relaxing week on the beach. The Fijian people are wonderful. Bula! (Fijian for hello, welcome, etc.) Everyone is so warm and friendly. Met a whole load of very happy people from all over the world, mainly people fleeing the winter of northern europe. Lots of Irish, Germans, Swedes, etc. The weather was very nice our first two days, but once the rain hit, the humidity was high all the time. This is their summer, after all, and typhoon season. A big one wiped out a large chunk of Tonga that week. Mosquitoes too. We enjoyed ourselves, but were glad to leave, too. Night of 1/16 - An important lesson was learned: never trust someone else's judgement when it comes to places to stay the night! We had a 7 a.m. flight to catch to Christchurch, so we took the bus to town (about 2 hours) the night before. Another girl from Phoenix was also going to catch a morning flight, and she said she had stayed at an O.K. place next to the airport, and they would take us there at 5 a.m. The place was not O.K. By this time we were damn glad to leave. 1/17 - Beautiful flight to NZ. Met at the airport by both our hosts: my friend John and Monica's father's friend, George. We all went to George's house. 1/18-21 - Spent some time seeing the sights and running errands in town. Christchurch is a very english town, full of gardens and huge parks. 1/22-26 - John let us use his truck and we spent 4 days on the west coast of the south island. This is the "Wild West" side of the island, known for its frontier spirit and harsh weather. We experienced 4 days of sunshine and perfect summer weather. Visited the northern city of Westport, the historic reconstruction of old buildings in Shantytown (sort of like Frontierland at Disneyland), and the Franz Joseph glacier. Strapping on crampons (metal spikes) to our boots, we spent 3 hours running around on a living river of ice. Good fun and great photo opportunity. 1/27 - We're back in Christchurch. We leave for the southern part of the island to do our backpacking on the 29th. For those with a map and pins, this is a list of the cities we have visited: Fiji - Nadi, Korolevu, Sigatoka, Suva. NZ - Christchurch, Akaroa, Hanmer Springs, Westport, Greymouth, Hokitika, Franz Joseph Glacier, Arthur's Pass. 2/3/02 Add to the above cities, Dunedin and Queenstown. Dunedin (gaelic for Edinburough) is the most Scottish city in New Zealand. The highlights of the city are its many beautiful stone public buildings and churches. The stone masons were busy here. Lots of very old money. It was the major shipping port for exporting the sheep, lumber, agricultural products and gold from the southern part of the island. It is also home to Otago University, the most prestigious university in New Zealand. With only 4 million total people in New Zealand, the nation doesn't support many large schools, and this is the big one. We walked through the campus one day. It has a large core of old style buildings, and a new area of modern buildings. Their new library was just opened, and it has an ocean of computers on the first floor! None of which we could use because they also have a very effective password and logon ID application. We relaxed in the city and didn't do too much, as the tourist attractions (old castle, penguin colony, etc.) are well outside town, and the transportation charge that was added to every ticket to get out to the site was expensive. We also experienced some of the weather that this city is famous for. A big wind and rainstorm blew through one night. It was raining sideways! By morning, though, the skies had cleared and we were back under sunny skies. A word about the weather. It has been a miserable summer here (prior to our arrival), the wettest and coldest in a long time. Fortunately, it looks like they are are getting their summer late. Im most areas that we have been to we have experienced the warmest and driest late summer they can remember. All the places we read about that should have been at least cool and rainy (the west coast cities and Dunedin) have been beautiful. We start hiking on Tuesday, so I'm sure it will change. We left Dunedin for Queenstown on the 31st. This is kind of like Tahoe with a bigger and colder lake. If you can imagine Tahoe 80 years ago, that is what this city is like (except for all the attractions). Clean air, quiet streets, and no huge crowds; it is everything that a resort should be. We have been jet boating (no bungy yet) and are setting out for another full day of fun right now. This will likely be our last update before we start hiking. Then it will be about a week till we get back to it. 2/19/2002 Back in Christchurch Well, we made it throught the hiking and assorted other activities in the far south of New Zealand. We're back staying with my friend John and his family. We'll be here until the 7th or 8th of March, when we head up to the northern city of Nelson for our last backpacking trip. Time for a bit of recovery from our hiking. We'll take some time to explore the city (a bit of urban hiking) and help John out around the house; there is painting to be done. We have 8 rolls of film to get developed, so I'll have plenty of work to do in the next few days to get the pictures posted. 3/4/2002 After solving some technical difficulties, I'm back at the updates. We've spent time resting, surfing, beach-bumming, exploring, and just enjoying ourselves. There have been some brief stretches of beautiful summer weather, but also some crummy overcast days and rain. They haven't seen a summer this lacking in sun and nice weather in 20 years, just our luck. It always seems to clear up when we head out for our trips though! I think I finally figured out how to use the scanner progam, but I have two problems. First, it is 80 degrees and there is a surfboard with my name on it in the back yard calling to me. Second, we leave for our next hiking trip in 2 days. Guess I'll have some long nights on the computer. We just ran out of money! Well, the US$1,000 we changed before we left, which ended up being NZ$2,340. We've put $1,200 on credit cards, so in total that is $2,200 over 56 days, or about US$40 per day. The rule of thumb is that NZ will cost about US$50 per person per day, so we're getting by on less than half of what is normal. The only reason this is possible is because of the extreme generosity of our friends here. George, John, Sonia, Candi, Sam, and Brittany have gone out of their way to make us feel welcome and provide us with a level of comfort that is only going to make the transition to life on the road harder, but we're very grateful. John and Sonia have let us use their truck whenever we need it. This will save us over US$600 while on the south island. Samantha has given up her room so we don't have to sleep outside with the puppies. Well, puppies isn't exactly correct; Carbon is a 160 lb. Newfoundland, Dakota (his son) is about 140 lb., and Barney the Dalmation is about 50 lbs. Some of our observations about NZ: New Zealanders are, with very few exceptions, terrible drivers. There are some very weird quirks to the driving laws that make driving a real challenge in the city, and don't forget the traffic roundabout. Prices for almost everything are very uniform, no use shopping around here. Consumer products, groceries, liquor, souveniers, clothes, gasoline - they all appear to be the same no matter where you go. A "sale" usually means a $5 markdown on an $80 item. Cricket is a very boring sport to watch, even upside down. Rugby is better here; it just is. They use two separate faucets, one for hot, and on the opposite side of the sink one for cold water, so you get either scalding hot or freezing cold. If you want warm, you have to stop up the sink - even in public toilets. No thanks. So we don't wash our hands - ever. (Just kidding) 3/6/2002 New Photos Added We spent the better part of two days scanning in new photos, and re-working those on the site to address two problems. First, the photos that were there was taking forever to load on computers using a modem. Second, we were running out of space to store photos. The pictures that are on the site now are much smaller, and of lower quality, but there will be more of them. I am working on creating a place to store all the high quality images in case anyone is interested. Enjoy! 4/4/2002 First Update on the North Island and the rest of the South Well, it's been a while since my last posting to this page, so I'll cover a lot. We left Christchurch for the northern part of the south island on March 8th. We drove along the rough Pacific coast, through the wine region, and into the Queen Charlotte Sound area. There we spent 2 days at a little resort that was in a bay about the size of Avalon, but with only 4 boats and a scattering of holiday homes. After that, we headed off to begin the Abel Tasman Forest hike. This was a very good time, as it looked like the La Jolla area of San Diego before it was developed. We also were able to hand our packs off to a water taxi to deliver to the next campsite. All the campsites are very near the beach, and the entire park is infested with sandflies! We cut our hike short by 2 days (still did 17 miles, though), and searched for a more bug-free place to spend our time. We ended up in a little (but then again what isn't little here?) farmng town that was full of hippies and bums. It reminded me very much of Isla Vista. There we celebrated St. Patrick's Day by making our own costumes from green trash bags (I made a hat, Monica a vest) and 25 people from all over the world (Japan, Israel, Germany, Spain...), including my twin brother Amit from Israel, raided a country bar and scared some sheep and dairy farmers. After that we slept on a very remote beach on the way home, looking at the lights of Wellington - the nation's capitol - across the Cook Straight on the North Island. Two days later (March 20th) we flew from Christchurch to Auckland. Upon landing in Auckland, we immediately picked up our home for the next 22 days, a late 80's Ford mini-van. 5 speed and no power steering! The back converts from a small table/kitchen area into a double bed. It has taken us all over the place, from Auckland south to Napier, Palmerston North, and back up to Hamilton. The UCSB rugby team flew into town on the 22nd, and we put on a Welcome to New Zealand picnic for them. We had sandwiches and beer on the beach to keep them from crashing in their rooms and only making the jet-lag worse. We played rugby on the beach with 20 or 30 4th graders who were having outdoor education. It was too much fun. For the next 10 days we followed them around the south island, watching them get killed in every game they played, but also attending 2 professional rugby games. There are teams from Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa in the league. Since they left, we have travelled back north, and are presently in the far north of the North Island. I'm writing from the Bay of Islands, a huge natural harbor where summer spends the winter. The areas we were in a month or two ago on the South Island are now freezing and getting snow. Our timing was pretty good, I guess. On a more personal note, we are still talking. About the only thing we fight over is the radio. We are now spending a lot of time reading and enjoying the time to relax after the hikes. Australia is only 9 days away. In a way, we are sorry to go, but there is also a lot of excitement building. Australia is a vast and much more densely populated country in the major cities Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. We'll scan all the pictures we can and post them before we leave the country on the 13th. Tony 4/7/2002 More from Auckland... We found out that a sudden end to summer was upon us.. Summer may spend the winter in the far north, but it got lost along the way this year. Summer ended March 1st, and we have gone right into winter. The usually sunny places we tried to reach in the far north have been getting pounded with wind, rain, and cool temperatures. This all might be a sign that we are without a doubt headed into an El Nino year. We're spending our last few days here in the city rather than on the beach. What this will mean to us over the next few months I'm not sure. I don't know how the El Nino affects weather in Australia and south east Asia. Have to research that one. |