I interrupt the chronology of the blog to the here and now... April 8th, 2011. A great friend of mine challenged me with a verse from the Bible the other day and it really got me thinking. I was so overwhelmed with amazement that I wanted to share some of the things I was reminded of. As I began to think there were two other parts of scripture that came to my mind. Although I dislike sharing just bits and pieces of the Bible while mentioning nothing about the context of the words around them... these verses speak concisely of the themes of God's grace repeated over and over throughout scripture. They are both instances of the apostle Paul describing it. The first comes from Galatians 2:19-21
19 “For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. 20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”
The second comes from 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 "Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."
Wow, how much punch are in those words. Where we are weak, He is strong. Where we fail, He can succeed. Where we are unfaithful, He is faithful. What is absolutely not possible for us is entirely possible for Him. Grace is an undeserved gift that costs the giver everything and the receiver nothing. What have we done that God should extend such mercy and abundant provision to us? I'd like to think that God's grace is all around us every day. That it includes everything from the our salvation in Christ to the ability to get out of bed on two feet and live another miraculous day. One of the biggest illustrations that I have come across was when I took a cell biology class where we took a detailed look at the cell, how it functions, and how it works together with literally trillions of other cells to enable us to experience life as we know it. We depend on hundreds of microscopic events and meticulous chemical reactions in each of these cells every moment to sustain life... and an extremely high percentage of time it all works perfectly. His grace something I will never really grasp... it's so unlike anything else that I've ever known. It doesn't make logical sense. In our world, there is no free lunch and you have to earn what you get. How grateful I am that the focus is not on what we do, it is on what He has done. When His work on the cross was through, He said "It is finished!" And there is nothing that can or needs to be added or taken away from that. Because this is true we are not stuck in a place where we have to impress God, where it is a constant score board in a game that is impossible to win. Instead we can fall before Him, admit where we come up short and have confidence that He will come through where we really need it. Somehow, if we extend ourselves in faith, even if it seems the most awkward and in-effective thing ever... He can still work with that!!! If we stumble over words when we try and tell others about Him... He can use that! He can make something beautiful from some of the smallest acts of our obedience. And He ALLOWS us to be a part of the process. He could have chosen to do it all Himself, or chosen to avoid working in the lives of a human beings altogether. After all, it is a huge mess most of the time because if we are honest, all of us have our share of ugly, nasty, tough stuff. Even the best person in the world has fallen short of perfection. But instead of standing back He has gotten intimately involved... in such a way that He allows us to be a part of His work in each other's lives. How cool is it to see this happening. To have these relationships, to encourage and sharpen each other? To experience Him in ways that we would not otherwise know if He wouldn't have chosen to use us as vessels of His work. To become clearly aware that on our own we are completely lacking. But with Him working in our hearts, and in other ways we are not even aware of... great things can happen. To realize by experience that HE is the way, the truth, and the life and ALL other roads lead to some form of destruction... something less than a life changing and saving connection to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. To see that He really is worthy of all the praise we can ever give Him, that He is the only one who is unshakable, the only one who will never leave our side, the only one who has claimed victory over sin and death, who we can ALWAYS depend on even when others let us down, who rules over all, who never changes, is always faithful, and who no one can stop. And He has made a way for us to be WITH HIM. Not because we did anything to deserve Him, but just because He is that good. WOw. Incredible. And it's funny... this whole train of thought... which is nothing new, but such an encouragment to me... started from what God placed on a friend's heart to share. That is pretty cool too.
Friday, April 8, 2011
New Zealand Finale with Mt. Cook + Australia Zoo, North Keppel Island, & Fraser Island
wow, the traveling schedule is intense and so much time has gone by! my, the blog has fallen behind! craziness! so lets get to it... after the unique encounter with the brazil guy on the last night in queenstown....
Wednesday, 2/23, day 34: travel day from Queenstown to Mt. Cook. 4 hours of driving that felt like 8. i was very tired this day, feeling the lack of sleep! the drive between these two cities is beautiful as Mt. Cook is a small backpacker village surrounded by mountains on all sides basically... every morning it was like wow, what a view to wake up to! in a way it kinda reminds me of estes park in colorado for anyone that has been there. less touristy than most places, lots of stuff to do outside which is nice. lots of single or multiple day hikes, things to do on the surrounding glaciers, and the hostile was very nice... cabin-like feel to it, all wood. had some of the best nights of sleep here!
Thursday, 2/24, day 35:
today steph, trick, alli and i took a 7 hour round hike up to a place Mueller Hut and back. started early, beautiful morning, crisp, cool air, comfortable temp. this consisted of a bit of a walk to the base of the mountain, a steep section of dirt/rock with wooden beams stuck in the ground forming 'steps' then a section that was completely rocks... big boulder types and smaller types... lots of rock hopping in this section. this lead into a flattened part where the hut was. all up this climb was fantastic views of the surrounding mountains, the valley where the village was settled into, a mountain lake and other smaller pond like bodies of water and Mt. Cook of course, standing head and shoulders taller than everything else around. good story about Mt. Cook... it was the practice ground used to help a man climb Mt. Everest. this is the mountain that Sir Edmund Hillary, a new zealander, trained to be the first person to reach the summit of Mt. Everest. pretty cool. beautiful hike, simply amazing. i thought several times how convenient having 4 eyes would be... two eyes to look at where my feet where going and two to look around to see all the incredible creation around me. however it was a blessing to have two to see with! it is amazing to think about the eye... whenever i take a picture i am reminded how masterfully it is made. the eye can see great distances as well as things close up... small objects and big ones... together with the brain it can calculate distances, space, depth... it can pick up the most wonderful colors, light and dark, contrast, shading... on and on. no other camera or lens that man makes can do the things that they eye can. every picture never compares to seeing it through my two eyes. i get so used to them... looking through them every day that i forget what incredible masterpieces from God's hand that they are. another neat thing about this stuff is finding out what is over the next corner or hill... when we finally arrived where the rock flattened out, suddenly we were among glaciers and peaks that we had no idea existed on the way up. the nice thing about a day hike is you can take a light backpack instead of the full on heavy duty one. makes the hike much easier! once at Mueller Hut we met a guy from Germany and ate lunch with him there. good guy. crazy how everyone is a unique life and each person's life story is different. the return trip was just as beautiful as the way up was. once we got back to our hostile we had some nice down time before making pizza from scratch for supper. we watched the new zealand made movie 'whale rider' to round out the night.
Friday, 2/25, day 36
Travel day from Mt. Cook to Christchurch International airport. got to sleep in today which was very nice. took it very slow driving the 5 hours because we were going to stay the night in the airport and wanted to spend the least amount of time there as possible. i had my first NZ 'pie' today. pies are very popular here, almost like a cheeseburgers back home... a fast, take on the run meal, lots of street shops... and like the fish and chips places, and you can get them almost everywhere. they are like a hot pocket, except in miniature pie shape that can fit in your hand, usually with some sort of combination of meat and veggies filling in the middle. the pie i had was sort of a beef stew pie. pretty good. the airport was better than we expected after the earthquake, and it even had water and toilets working again. we had a small picnic for supper, where we made a communal pile of different snacks that everyone nibbled on. we all rolled our sleeping bags out and made a nice 'camp out' area with all our stuff. first time ive slept in an airport, kind of odd but it worked! nighty night!
Saturday, 2/26, day 37
woke up in the airport at 3:45 am today to prepare for 6 am flight. i was so concerned about making sure the weight in my bags met the standards that i made a small error in forgetting to put toiletries and suncreen in my bag that was checked... and therefore i lost that stuff because of the no liquids and gels rule in carry-ons. nuts! it was "a bit of a tragedy" (a phrase often used here) because sunscreen is so expensive... you pretty much dont go outside for any extended period of time with out it. they have this saying it goes something like 'slip, slop, slap'. slip on your sunnies (sunglasses) slop on the sunscreen and slap on a hat... something like that at least. anyways, the plane was very nice. each seat had a digital screen on the back of it so each passenger could enjoy movies, games, and music during the flight. the routine briefing of the safety features on the plane was quite comical because instead of the standard airline employee describing the policies and procedures we had the privilege of watching about 10 members from the "All Blacks" rugby team (new zealand's national team) take us through the drill. it was great. hearing things like "if you need to stretch your hammies, feel free to leave your seat if the seat belt sign is off" (this doesnt do it justice because the accent makes it all the better) or watching a player try the ironic demonstration on how the seat cushion can be used as a flotation device when it seems that in no way could this object keep such a hulk of a man afloat. these guys are highly revered in by new zealanders. to be on the All Blacks squad is quite the honor... the country is quite patriotic over their rugby. for those in nebraska, it would be similar to having husker players and coaches teach you about the safety features... can you imagine Mr. Bo Pelini giving you an airplane talk?? good fun. I watched two movies: 'unstoppable' with denzel washington and '127 hours' with james franco. provided good entertainment and kept me from becoming a complete zombie because i was quite tired. we arrived safely in Brisbane, taking our first steps in Australia. we loaded our gear into our new van and trailor and headed to the Australia Zoo, home of the famous steve irwin, the crocodile hunter. this was quite the place and it does not do it justice to simply say that we saw many cool animals there. i experienced another 'first' in this zoo... i fed a living breathing hopping kangaroo. they had a big open area for them where a guy could go, walk around and feed them, hang out with them. they were very accustomed to this so they were quite comfortable around us. very interesting. we also saw one of their shows which was very neat... including a croc in action! after the zoo we drove about 45 minutes to Noosa, where we stayed at a hostile called the Noosa Flashpacker. It had free internet... a huge bonus if you are writing a blog! we were about a 10 minute jog away from the beach so i took full advantage of that. it was perfectly clear, hot day. the day was beautiful so it made for a great run especially after being cooped up in a plane earlier. there were lots of people on the beach, many with their dogs playing catch with frisbees or sticks. many different activities going on... picnics, sand castles, walkers, joggers, sun bathers, swimmers, hang gliders... lots of people having good old fashioned fun. a good place to be for sure. i apologize again for this being so poorly written... time is of the essence! the heat is intense here... that kind of heavy, humid, sticky, inescapable, punishing heat that occurs in Nebraska on the hottest days. The type of heat and humidity that happens on a sunny day after it has rained a bunch. makes it a good challenge to run in for sure. today i ran right next to the edge of the gentle rhythmic flow of the water as the waves came onto the beach, always right next to it. if i looked straight out, my peripheral vision did not quite pick up the edge of the water right next to my feet so it felt as though i was running on the water. ended up getting some good dory fish for supper from a small street shop, it was real good. holly shared some of her salad with me which was great as well.
Sunday, 2/27, day 38
as in many of our hostiles there is no air conditioning so it made for a rather sweaty night of sleep. you have to expect that though when the stay is this cheap. this trip has definitely helped me gain a new appreciation of a lot of simple things. it has also helped me to experience how a person can adapt far beyond their perceived limits, while even keeping a good attitude about it... if they simply set their mind to do so. we hit the road early today driving 7 hours from Noosa to Emu Park. unlike new zealand driving in australia is extremely monotonous in most places. it hardly feels like you go anywhere because the surroundings look exactly the same. some people think driving in nebraska is boring... this might rival it. most of it is scrubby jungly trees, bushes, and long grasses. not near as thick, lush and green as new zealand. it is so monotonous that they have creative signs posted with things like trivia questions to keep the driver's mind occupied. one sign will say a question, and the signs a few kilometers later will have the answer. there are some funny signs as well. some have clever sayings like: 'stop. revive. stay alive.' also some funny one liners. we stopped in rockhampton to do some grocery shopping in preparation for the next volunteer project in the Keppel Bay Islands National Park where we would be camping and cooking our own food. this time my cooking group consisted of the four hombres. no ladies here. our supper for the next four nights is an interesting set of meals: 1.macaroni and cheese 2. chilli soup (minus the meat) 3. pasta with alfredo sauce 4. campbell's canned chunky soup. maybe not so nutritous for the island, however we did eat well tonight. the owner of the hostile campus made us an excellent grill out meal of grilled fish, sausage, steak... plus pasta salad, freshcheap. this trip has definitely helped me gain a new appreciation of a lot of simple things. it has also helped me to experience how a person can adapt far beyond their perceived limits, while even keeping a good attitude about it... if they simply set their mind to do so. we hit the road early today driving 7 hours from Noosa to Emu Park. unlike new zealand driving in australia is extremely monotonous in most places. it hardly feels like you go anywhere because the surroundings look exactly the same. some people think driving in nebraska is boring... this might rival it. most of it is scrubby jungly trees, bushes, and long grasses. not near as thick, lush and green as new zealand. it is so monotonous that they have creative signs posted with things like trivia questions to keep the driver's mind occupied. one sign will say a question, and the signs a few kilometers later will have the answer. there are some funny signs as well. some have clever sayings like: 'stop. revive. stay alive.' also some funny one liners. we stopped in rockhampton to do some grocery shopping in preparation for the next volunteer project in the Keppel Bay Islands National Park where we would be camping and cooking our own food. this time my cooking group consisted of the four hombres. no ladies here. our supper for the next four nights is an interesting set of meals: 1.macaroni and cheese 2. chilli soup (minus the meat) 3. pasta with alfredo sauce 4. campbell's canned chunky soup. maybe not so nutritous for the island, however we did eat well tonight. the owner of the hostile campus made us an excellent grill out meal of grilled fish, sausage, steak... plus pasta salad, fresh greens, fruit, and potato salad. the fish was great. there was music playing so kitty and i decided to do some swing dancing. she is very technically sound on the swing dancing and i have never received any formal training so i was definitely a student. she is used to dancing with guys that are good at leading so she was trying to give me small tricks on how the guy lets the girl know what he is going to do / wants her to do. very interesting, i had no idea it was so technical! it was fun. i can see now if you're good at dancing and can keep it up on a regular basis that it would be a really enjoyable hobby.
Monday, 2/28, day 39
today we begin our third volunteer project with the north keppel island education center. this is on north keppel island, the largest of the 15 islands in the national park. the great barrier reef surrounds the park so it also happens to be a great spot for snorkeling and diving. it is a part of the great barrier reef world heritage area, the world's largest reef and island system. we woke early to make our way to rosslyn bay where we unloaded all of our gear and transferred it over to Gundoo Spirit, the education center's vessel transports all guests to and fro. it was a short 10-15 minute ride to the island where we unloaded our gear and set right to work on putting up tents, setting up the kitchen area and preparing our camp spot. we had the luxury of a clearing right next to considine beach. this clearing had several picnic tables, a compost toilet station, and a giant tank of water which provided a cold shower and water for cleaning dishes. the the education center provided us with drinking water in plastic containers and a huge black box which we would use to store our food and from possums. if the possums get to your food it will be gone or torn to pieces. they were regular visitors at night, quite inquisitive, along with an odd looking bird with long legs. we considered the bird our mascot. he was there constantly, looking for any crumb that might stray. the heat seems even more intense here and shade is hard to come by. a few short trees which we put our tents and make-shift kitchen under provided a little bit of shade. the island is a bit of a rugged place. definitely still jungle like but vegetation is shorter and thinner than in new zealand. there are several hiking tracks around the island as well as the education center itself which consisted of multiple cabin like accommodation buildings, a large community kitchen and some large shelters with a roof and no walls for doing activities/lectures in. its so hard to explain something when you know what you are talking about and your audience has no idea! today was pretty chill after we got our camp set up. today i did some 800 meter sprints up and down the beach... it was real hot and everyone else thought i was insane but i had a ton of fun. we made supper and that was it. the tough part about this place is the heat/humidity and the sand flies. the sand flies are absolutely atrocious. unrelenting. if you are sitting still without a layer of clothing covering the skin you are in big trouble. they are the worst during the day. then the mosquitoes come out at night which are equally brutal. by the second day, holly looked like she had some desease... chicken pocks or something. her legs and arms were covered with literally hundreds of bites. it was astounding. Bill, one of the ed center's sponsors, referred to the level of holly's bites as a "flogging." i felt so bad for her. she itched for like two weeks after the island. there is also very little wind. so the sleeping conditions were far from ideal. option 1 was to sleep dripping with sweat in your tent with two other smelly kids and absolutely no air movement, the good side being you were safe from the mosquitoes for the most part. i tried one night of this and was it not successful so i chose option #2 for the last 3 nights. option #2 is sleeping out in the open on the beach where the mosquitoes congregate. that obnoxious high pitched hum as they fly into your ears made for an interesting lullaby. not to mention the invasion of sand everywhere... in the ears, eyes, nose, mouth. all unpleasant parts aside... the sound of the waves coming in was great and the stars were fantastic. i have never slept on a beach before and i have to say it was a cool experience.
Tuesday-Thursday, 3/1-3
The sun came up at about 6 am every morning so that is about the time i woke up everyday, being on the beach. The routine was first grab breakfast and then head out to the education center to receive our tasks for the day. Our camp was set on an isolated beach about 20 minutes walk via hiking trails to the education center which situated right next to another beach. The walk is pretty neat. There are all sorts of junctions so it was easy to get turned around. Lets just say that by the time we got back I had a pretty good feel for all of the tracks. There was one section of the track that we would pass each day on the way to the ed center that was filled with butterflies. I have never seen so many in one place. Most of them were sky blue and black in color, beautiful. And they would all start floating, the air completely filled with them around us when we would go through their space, pretty neat. On the first day I spent the morning doing some 'scrub-barring' or 'weed wacking' as I prefer to call it, around one of the maintenance buildings in the ed center. There was one ranger that we worked with on our volunteer stuff who was funded through the state of Queensland. He was about 6'8 really tall dude, in his 60's originally from the United States but has been in Aussie for the past 30 years. He went to college in Maine. Really nice guy. In the afternoon I had the privilege of going snorkeling with the Aussie campers that were at a week camp through the ed center. These were 7th graders or 'year 7' as they call it, so they were fun to be around. High energy for sure. These kids were all from the same school, and I guess it is fairly common for schools in Australia to dedicate a week of school time for the students to go to an educational camp like this one on North Keppel. I think that is a worthy idea. It was great being there with them because we being older students from the United States were like some kind of celebrities to them... they thought we were the coolest people ever. We could do anything or say anything and it would instantly be THE thing to say or do. I got a couple of them going with some fist pounds... we had some fun with that. As part of their educational experience, the camp took them out in small groups each morning and afternoon to some surrounding reefs to snorkel, see some wild life, and 3 of us 'young Americans' got to tag along each time they went out. The snorkeling was great, pretty amazing stuff. I got to stay near the back of the group and moved real slow so the fish that got scared away by everyone else started to come back out of the reef by the time I got to them... pretty cool. The camp supervisors are a hoot to be around. Really good with kids, fun loving, good natured people. There was a guy who everyone called 'Gillie' he was just a few years older than me and also an older guy in his 50's named Bill. Bill would make a great Santa Clause. He is a bigger guy, with a short beard who always has a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye. The kids all really respected him. He is the type that always has a simple way of explaining things, even a complex topic. After we returned on the Gundoo Spirit, the day was pretty much through so we joined everyone else back at camp. On Wednesday our task included picking up trash and debris on one of the beaches. Our ranger also showed us some of the wetlands in the area which were pretty interesting too. We also completed some weeding around the ed center. We were looking for a pest plant which produced prickly burrs for seeds. The ranger said at one time you could not walk without shoes on the island because the burrs covered the place, so they have made huge progress. Still fighting some off though. This evening was fun because the 'year sevens' had a camp fire and talent show around the fire for the evening festivity and we got to join them. It was sort of a creepy walk to the ed center tonight through the dark. We spotted and heard some bats over head as we walked. The darkness was also intense. It gets pitch black out here because the ed center is the only civilization on the island and it doesn't create that much light... so when the sun goes down, its real dark. The whole center is pretty neat because it is all powered by solar power. They have a big room full of batteries that are constantly storing the power absorbed by the solar panels. They have generators as back ups but rarely, if ever, use them. Very interesting. Another interesting fact... Aussies don't make s'mores, they make 'twisties.' to make a twisty you start with some basic dough, roll it in your hands, wrap it around a stick so it forms a bowl-like covering over the end of the stick, and cook it in the fire. When you got it cooked, you take it off the stick and put maple syrup in the indention where the stick was and you have yourself a nice little snack. Not near as good as a s'more, mind you, but still a pretty decent idea. It was intriguing listening to the camp leaders and the kids interact. Reminded me a lot of an educational environments that are found in the States but with its own different twist. To get the kids thinking, the leaders were telling jokes, riddles, and logic problems and seeing who could figure them out. The rules were you could blurt out the answer until everyone had a chance to ponder it. After he would ask the question or state the problem Gillie would say 'Have a think!' it was so funny. After the campfire/cooking twisties time it was the talent show. The year sevens were divided into small groups and each group had to come up with a routine or an act to perform for the rest. We as the Americans performed our own act for the kids as well. There were some very creative and quite wacky acts, very entertaining to watch. Good fun. After the talent show we played a game of spoons. Now this is not the same game that I first thought of when they said spoons. This game is played in a large outdoor area where there is two teams. Each team is given a giant spoon to hide and a flashlight. Only one person from each team can wield the flashlight and they must be blind folded. This person's mission is to 'tag' other opponents with the beam of the flashlight. The object of the game is to get the opposing team's spoon without losing your own. The rules are: absolutely no running. It also must be completely silent so only non-verbal communication can be used. Therefore collaborating with teammates on how to get the spoon as well as telling the person where to shine the flashlight is difficult. You can not touch the person with the flashlight to direct them. You also must get to the spoon and return it to your own spoon without being caught in a flashlight beam of the other opponent. If you are tagged, you must stop, drop the spoon if you have it, and return to your own spoon before continuing on. It is very much a strategy game. Pretty intense game, no doubt, and the kids got really into. It was fun. The highlight of Thursday was seeing the sunrise. Holly, Steph, Karen and I woke up at 4:45 and made the walk to the east side of the island to see it. It was captivating. When it first began we could still see some stars faintly overhead. It was a mystical feeling to watch the first light skim across the miles of ocean between us and the horizon. There was a wall of puffy clouds that stretched across our panoramic view and some of the light was bouncing off the clouds making some fantastic rays of light and colors. Golds, pinks, yellows, oranges, even a little violet... they were all there. The color change between the edge of the sunrise and the night sky was very cool too. We must have watched it for at least half an hour... amazing. It was crazy to think that these types of things go on all over the world each day... proclaiming God's glory. And we are not aware of 99% of them. We were just lucky enough to catch this particular miracle at this specific place and time... I am pretty sure we were the only ones on the island watching that sunrise. It probably looks that cool every morning, we just happened to be here this morning to witness it. The neat part about it was it kept changing. The clouds kept moving, colors kept changing, different rays would shine through different places, lighting changes... it was like watching a film. It was so quiet and peaceful sitting there. Nothing was really moving. The type of quiet that doesn't exist in a residential area or city. Once we set to work for the today, we began a project with the goal of limiting erosion of one of the beaches. Here there is a problem of the beaches just washing away because there is nothing there to stop the water from taking it out to see. One of the rangers dug trenches in the beach with a tractor and we filled the trenches with grasses, ferns, branches, trees, etc.which protruded out the top of the trenches after we filled them in with sand. This was to put some sort of anchor to keep things from slipping away. It was hard work. And we roasted being on the beach with no wind. Jumping in the ocean when we were done was a huge relief. The kids left camp today so that was a bit sad. We got lots of hugs! Amazing at the connection that can be made in a short time! Friday was cool because we had the whole place to ourselves. We helped the leaders clean up the camp and then they took us out for a 2 hour snorkel. We went to a huge rock, almost like a miniature island, sticking out in the sea a little further out that had reefs around it. Sweet place. The coral was definitely more alive here and the fish more numerous. Thousands of fish. There were these small blue shiny fish about the size of my index finger that would swim in schools. In some areas, if I was very still they would completely surround me.... underneath, around my arms, legs, and face... all just hovering in the water together, moving together, so much that I felt like one of them. I saw a small jellyfish swim by at one point... it was enchanting to watch its transparent body pulse through the water. There were also waterfalls coming down the sides of this huge rock and it was really cool to watch a waterfall from under the water. tons of white foam and waters exploding under the surface. When we got back to the boat they let us do some jumps off the boat. Gundoo Spirit is a fairly sizable boat... the place in the deck that we were jumping off was probably 8-9 ft above the water. Got some good back flips in. Before I knew it we were unloading all our stuff onto the mainland again and off to Emu Park, where we stayed before we came to North Keppel. Tonight was fun because the hostile was hosting a benefit BBQ for a girl that was raising money for cancer. In return for the pledges she received, she shaved her head. Interesting experience being a part of an Australian BBQ with a whole bunch of people we didn't know. Cool.
Saturday, 3/5
Travel day. About 6 hour drive from Emu Park to Hervey Bay. Everyone, including yours truly, is exhausted today from the demanding week and lack of sleep on North Keppel. This is never fun because tired travelers are often also grouchy travelers. Being packed in a van together, six hours in duration, also aggravates this already fragile condition. It is rarely boring :) Hervey Bay is an older smaller coastal community with an aged population. It is sort of a dumpy place to be honest... probably the least favorite of mine so far, the hostile was needing some attention as well. After a grocery run, I enjoyed some basketball with Trick on some random court where the hoops where about to fall apart. Basketball hoops are somewhat rare here so this was a treat. On the usual court, the best sound ever is the swishing sound of a ball passing through a net lacking any ring of iron. On this particular court the best sound is the same minus the swishing part. The sound is much like an air-ball in fact, except with added satisfaction of knowing the ball went perfectly through the net-less rim. This hoop was only about a 9 footer so we had a hoot with some dunks and alley oops. Trick is a bigger guy and has some hops so I was having fun feeding him the bread... we had one oop that was worthy of the top 10 plays on Sportscenter... if they could only have been there to see it! Impeccably timed and deliciously jammed. A thing of beauty I tell you. Like pancakes that have that perfect golden brown to them... hot out off the griddle... yeah. Laundry tonight was not an option. The stench was enough to bring a strong man to his knees. I have encountered a whole new level of odors on this trip. Exhibit A: compost toilets... need not go into any further detail there. Exhibit B: clothes... especially work clothes that have been soiled multiple times in insect repellent, mud, dirt, sand, drenched in sweat, that never really dried over the course of 5 wretchedly hot and steamy days. Blaaaah. Man and clothing smushed together that haven't seen a proper cleaning for days on end = unpleasant fragrance. So to the relief of all... the laundry was conquered. In the waning hours of the evening I was itching for a little run, to see the town a bit so I dialed up a route with the ol' map and sent myself a runnin to the edge of the beach and down the shore line. When I run I use certain landmarks to remind myself so I can find the way back. One such landmark was was little shack with a giant plastic model of a great white shark in the front yard demolishing a boat with jaws open wide. A landmark that is hard to forget indeed. It was a great run. What a gift the Lord has given me. Any time, any place... lace up the shoes and go.
Sunday, 3/6
Here is some fun Aussie vocabulary for you... they say 'mum,' we say mom. tomato sauce = ketchup, chemist = pharmacy, muck around = hang out, chill, mess around. They rarely use "good" or "great" but usually words like "excellent, ace, sweet as, lovely, brilliant" much more creative word choices than Uni Staters use... I like it. My other favorites include: straight away (immediately), oh sugar (disappointment or surprise), fancy a _____? Instead of "watch your head" its "mind your head." right-tee-oh (ok). The phrase "a bit" is used frequently. For example... "a bit of a drive isn't it?" Oh man I could go on forever with these little phrases, it's great entertainment.
Today we headed to Frasier Island. The mode of transport on Frasier is a large 4x4 vehicle which seemed to resemble some sort of combination of half jeep, half bus. It sat 14 of us. The guide, Simon, came and picked us up in this vehicle at our hostile. We caught a vehicle ferry across and were off cruising along the beaches. its crazy. There are no highways here... its all off roading stuff. The beaches are the closest thing to a highway... it even has speed limit signs posted. mostly tour vehicles like ours were driving the beaches but I saw a couple personal vehicles. There is a small village/town on the island where you can eat, purchase supplies, stay in some hotels, etc. It was here that Trick recounted with large amounts of laughter to me the story of how when he was little he didn't go to pre-school. One year he said he had a routine of watching all three of the original Star Wars movies every single day. All three movies. Every day. For an entire year. WOW. What a story. And I thought I was a fan. THAT is dedication. There are so many wild and crazy facts about Frasier I could write all day about them. One fact is the island is inhabited by dingoes... a dog-like animal who have been known to be aggressive around people. For this reason it was strongly encouraged to never be alone on the island and risky to go out at all in the night. Frasier is the largest sand island in the world... its completely composed of sand. It is the only sand island with rain forest growing on it. The eastern side is composed of mostly one long beach... they call it the 75 mile beach. Sharks are known to be in the waters around Frasier but the most dangerous part of the waters are the rips and currents. Simon told us of how one American decided to go swimming at night and was found face down in the sand the next morning, having drowned. I've noticed that is fairly safe to travel in these parts if you are smart and paying attention. I have also noticed there are a lot of ways to seriously or fatally hurt yourself if you are not paying attention. we visited two lakes on the first day. These were both tea-tree lakes. Tea-tree lakes are a unique brown color... it really looks like a big glass of iced tea. You can see a good 8 feet down if the sun is shining. Tea tree lakes have special trees growing around them that give the lake its special color. These lakes are said to have healing properties. Simon said... ha I feel like this is a game (Simon says)... he said that he had heard of a guy that had skin cancer and the guy made a point to swim in the lake every day for a year and by the end of the year the skin cancer was gone. Interesting. The particles of sand here are perfectly round so if you rub the sand on your skin and hair it makes them feel really really soft. You can also clean jewelry with the sand. Really nifty. Frasier is a crazy place because it is so diverse. It has lakes, rain forest, sand-blows (which are pretty much sections of desert with big sand dunes) long beaches, ocean... crazy. After Lake Wabby, we took a 45 minute walk through a section of rain forest. Amazing. After the walk, Simon prepared some sandwich fixings and fruit for lunch. It's clever how it works because he stores a lot of the food in a specially made compartment in the back so he can bust out utensils, food, a table to set it on, etc. and we can have lunch anywhere on the island. He made all of our breakfast and evening meals as well. We ate extremely well. Simon used to be a cook before he started giving tours on Frasier. I wish you could hear Simon say the word "Frasier" it never failed to bring a smile to my face every time he said it. I can't even describe it. Almost like "Fraziah." And he was passionate about it. Very knowledgeable. Tonight we stayed in the Dilli Village, it is a fenced in area with a kitchen & dining facility and dorm-like units to stay in. They host lots of groups here, and university students commonly do research here.
3/7, Day 2 Fraser Island
We left Dilli Village early for more 4x4 beach driving. First we visited a place called the Kirrar Sandblow which is a desert looking portion of the island with huge sand dunes which were fun to climb and run back down. We also had fun drawing things in the sand. In some parts the sand would be one color on the surface and another color below the surface which made for some groovy sand drawing. At one point I stared towards the coast and admired in this order, all within my field of vision: 1. the ocean... obviously a huge body of water. 2. a fairly wide portion of thick lush green trees... which formed a line in front of the ocean. 3. a desert of sand. Three things that should not logically be this close together but they were all right here. Very cool. After the sand exploration, we went to the waters edge and visited a ship wreck that was half submerged in the beach. All that remains is the large rusty frame protruding from the sand. It has been here since 1935. The S.S. Maheno once served as a luxury ocean liner as well as a hospital ship in World War I. The story of how it ended up on the beach of Fraser Island is pretty interesting but unfortunately time is short. After taking some marvelous photos with the Maheno, we stopped to admire the Indian Head rock formations. After that we went to a place called Eli Creek. This place dumps fresh water into the ocean at some crazy rate of like 4.4 million liters of water per hour. It is a popular place to go because it isn't very deep, pretty wide and one can simply float along and let the current take you down the creek... a natural lazy river. Returned to Dilli Village for supper and sleep. Buttered Fish with white gravy for supper... real good. Simon makes excellent gravy, you can tell he was a cook. Very interesting to talk with Simon after supper, he had a very unique story to tell about where he has been and what he has done in his life. A great day.
3/8, day 3 Fraser Island
This was my favorite of all days on Fraser. First of all we had a breakfast fit for royalty. Eggs, bacon, toast, and the best watermelon, pineapple, cantaloupe (or rock melon as they call it) and honeydew that I have ever had. I don't know what it was but every single one of these was fantastic! Today we visited Lake Boomanjin and Lake Mackenzie. If you ever go to Fraser Island you MUST go to Lake Mackenzie. It is the most beautiful body of water I have ever set my eyes on. This place was magical. The sand was completely white, very fine and powdery. The water was crystal clear. As you looked out on the lake there was a beautiful color change. Out in the middle it was a dazzling royal blue color, as the water got closer and the lake shallower it gradually changed from a blue to a pretty aqua green color and the water closest to the beach was completely transparent so all you could see was the white sand below. Just beautiful. There was a smaller beach away from the larger main beach that we hung out at and it was fantastic. We played some volleyball in the water which was fun. I also went for a 20 minute swim out to the middle where it was so quiet, calm, and peaceful. Pristine. It was definitely a "wow, God" moment. This lake is surrounded by beautiful green trees. The day was perfect, sun shining with white puffy clouds and a baby blue sky. I did multiple 360 degree turns while treading water trying to soak it all in. I could see my feet clear as day under the water. So cool. The water was so unbelievably clean. I felt refreshed just by being in it. There was no sound except the occasionaly light breeze and the water gently moving around me. It was like a dream. I could see rocks on the bottom, probably at least 20 feet below me. Just nuts. After Lake Mackenzie, our visit on Fraser Island came to an end and drove back to the ferry which took us back to the mainland. We returned to Hervey Bay and I experienced a run on the beach the I will remember for a very long time. More on that in the next entry... coming to a blog near you soon!!!
Wednesday, 2/23, day 34: travel day from Queenstown to Mt. Cook. 4 hours of driving that felt like 8. i was very tired this day, feeling the lack of sleep! the drive between these two cities is beautiful as Mt. Cook is a small backpacker village surrounded by mountains on all sides basically... every morning it was like wow, what a view to wake up to! in a way it kinda reminds me of estes park in colorado for anyone that has been there. less touristy than most places, lots of stuff to do outside which is nice. lots of single or multiple day hikes, things to do on the surrounding glaciers, and the hostile was very nice... cabin-like feel to it, all wood. had some of the best nights of sleep here!
Thursday, 2/24, day 35:
today steph, trick, alli and i took a 7 hour round hike up to a place Mueller Hut and back. started early, beautiful morning, crisp, cool air, comfortable temp. this consisted of a bit of a walk to the base of the mountain, a steep section of dirt/rock with wooden beams stuck in the ground forming 'steps' then a section that was completely rocks... big boulder types and smaller types... lots of rock hopping in this section. this lead into a flattened part where the hut was. all up this climb was fantastic views of the surrounding mountains, the valley where the village was settled into, a mountain lake and other smaller pond like bodies of water and Mt. Cook of course, standing head and shoulders taller than everything else around. good story about Mt. Cook... it was the practice ground used to help a man climb Mt. Everest. this is the mountain that Sir Edmund Hillary, a new zealander, trained to be the first person to reach the summit of Mt. Everest. pretty cool. beautiful hike, simply amazing. i thought several times how convenient having 4 eyes would be... two eyes to look at where my feet where going and two to look around to see all the incredible creation around me. however it was a blessing to have two to see with! it is amazing to think about the eye... whenever i take a picture i am reminded how masterfully it is made. the eye can see great distances as well as things close up... small objects and big ones... together with the brain it can calculate distances, space, depth... it can pick up the most wonderful colors, light and dark, contrast, shading... on and on. no other camera or lens that man makes can do the things that they eye can. every picture never compares to seeing it through my two eyes. i get so used to them... looking through them every day that i forget what incredible masterpieces from God's hand that they are. another neat thing about this stuff is finding out what is over the next corner or hill... when we finally arrived where the rock flattened out, suddenly we were among glaciers and peaks that we had no idea existed on the way up. the nice thing about a day hike is you can take a light backpack instead of the full on heavy duty one. makes the hike much easier! once at Mueller Hut we met a guy from Germany and ate lunch with him there. good guy. crazy how everyone is a unique life and each person's life story is different. the return trip was just as beautiful as the way up was. once we got back to our hostile we had some nice down time before making pizza from scratch for supper. we watched the new zealand made movie 'whale rider' to round out the night.
Friday, 2/25, day 36
Travel day from Mt. Cook to Christchurch International airport. got to sleep in today which was very nice. took it very slow driving the 5 hours because we were going to stay the night in the airport and wanted to spend the least amount of time there as possible. i had my first NZ 'pie' today. pies are very popular here, almost like a cheeseburgers back home... a fast, take on the run meal, lots of street shops... and like the fish and chips places, and you can get them almost everywhere. they are like a hot pocket, except in miniature pie shape that can fit in your hand, usually with some sort of combination of meat and veggies filling in the middle. the pie i had was sort of a beef stew pie. pretty good. the airport was better than we expected after the earthquake, and it even had water and toilets working again. we had a small picnic for supper, where we made a communal pile of different snacks that everyone nibbled on. we all rolled our sleeping bags out and made a nice 'camp out' area with all our stuff. first time ive slept in an airport, kind of odd but it worked! nighty night!
Saturday, 2/26, day 37
woke up in the airport at 3:45 am today to prepare for 6 am flight. i was so concerned about making sure the weight in my bags met the standards that i made a small error in forgetting to put toiletries and suncreen in my bag that was checked... and therefore i lost that stuff because of the no liquids and gels rule in carry-ons. nuts! it was "a bit of a tragedy" (a phrase often used here) because sunscreen is so expensive... you pretty much dont go outside for any extended period of time with out it. they have this saying it goes something like 'slip, slop, slap'. slip on your sunnies (sunglasses) slop on the sunscreen and slap on a hat... something like that at least. anyways, the plane was very nice. each seat had a digital screen on the back of it so each passenger could enjoy movies, games, and music during the flight. the routine briefing of the safety features on the plane was quite comical because instead of the standard airline employee describing the policies and procedures we had the privilege of watching about 10 members from the "All Blacks" rugby team (new zealand's national team) take us through the drill. it was great. hearing things like "if you need to stretch your hammies, feel free to leave your seat if the seat belt sign is off" (this doesnt do it justice because the accent makes it all the better) or watching a player try the ironic demonstration on how the seat cushion can be used as a flotation device when it seems that in no way could this object keep such a hulk of a man afloat. these guys are highly revered in by new zealanders. to be on the All Blacks squad is quite the honor... the country is quite patriotic over their rugby. for those in nebraska, it would be similar to having husker players and coaches teach you about the safety features... can you imagine Mr. Bo Pelini giving you an airplane talk?? good fun. I watched two movies: 'unstoppable' with denzel washington and '127 hours' with james franco. provided good entertainment and kept me from becoming a complete zombie because i was quite tired. we arrived safely in Brisbane, taking our first steps in Australia. we loaded our gear into our new van and trailor and headed to the Australia Zoo, home of the famous steve irwin, the crocodile hunter. this was quite the place and it does not do it justice to simply say that we saw many cool animals there. i experienced another 'first' in this zoo... i fed a living breathing hopping kangaroo. they had a big open area for them where a guy could go, walk around and feed them, hang out with them. they were very accustomed to this so they were quite comfortable around us. very interesting. we also saw one of their shows which was very neat... including a croc in action! after the zoo we drove about 45 minutes to Noosa, where we stayed at a hostile called the Noosa Flashpacker. It had free internet... a huge bonus if you are writing a blog! we were about a 10 minute jog away from the beach so i took full advantage of that. it was perfectly clear, hot day. the day was beautiful so it made for a great run especially after being cooped up in a plane earlier. there were lots of people on the beach, many with their dogs playing catch with frisbees or sticks. many different activities going on... picnics, sand castles, walkers, joggers, sun bathers, swimmers, hang gliders... lots of people having good old fashioned fun. a good place to be for sure. i apologize again for this being so poorly written... time is of the essence! the heat is intense here... that kind of heavy, humid, sticky, inescapable, punishing heat that occurs in Nebraska on the hottest days. The type of heat and humidity that happens on a sunny day after it has rained a bunch. makes it a good challenge to run in for sure. today i ran right next to the edge of the gentle rhythmic flow of the water as the waves came onto the beach, always right next to it. if i looked straight out, my peripheral vision did not quite pick up the edge of the water right next to my feet so it felt as though i was running on the water. ended up getting some good dory fish for supper from a small street shop, it was real good. holly shared some of her salad with me which was great as well.
Sunday, 2/27, day 38
as in many of our hostiles there is no air conditioning so it made for a rather sweaty night of sleep. you have to expect that though when the stay is this cheap. this trip has definitely helped me gain a new appreciation of a lot of simple things. it has also helped me to experience how a person can adapt far beyond their perceived limits, while even keeping a good attitude about it... if they simply set their mind to do so. we hit the road early today driving 7 hours from Noosa to Emu Park. unlike new zealand driving in australia is extremely monotonous in most places. it hardly feels like you go anywhere because the surroundings look exactly the same. some people think driving in nebraska is boring... this might rival it. most of it is scrubby jungly trees, bushes, and long grasses. not near as thick, lush and green as new zealand. it is so monotonous that they have creative signs posted with things like trivia questions to keep the driver's mind occupied. one sign will say a question, and the signs a few kilometers later will have the answer. there are some funny signs as well. some have clever sayings like: 'stop. revive. stay alive.' also some funny one liners. we stopped in rockhampton to do some grocery shopping in preparation for the next volunteer project in the Keppel Bay Islands National Park where we would be camping and cooking our own food. this time my cooking group consisted of the four hombres. no ladies here. our supper for the next four nights is an interesting set of meals: 1.macaroni and cheese 2. chilli soup (minus the meat) 3. pasta with alfredo sauce 4. campbell's canned chunky soup. maybe not so nutritous for the island, however we did eat well tonight. the owner of the hostile campus made us an excellent grill out meal of grilled fish, sausage, steak... plus pasta salad, freshcheap. this trip has definitely helped me gain a new appreciation of a lot of simple things. it has also helped me to experience how a person can adapt far beyond their perceived limits, while even keeping a good attitude about it... if they simply set their mind to do so. we hit the road early today driving 7 hours from Noosa to Emu Park. unlike new zealand driving in australia is extremely monotonous in most places. it hardly feels like you go anywhere because the surroundings look exactly the same. some people think driving in nebraska is boring... this might rival it. most of it is scrubby jungly trees, bushes, and long grasses. not near as thick, lush and green as new zealand. it is so monotonous that they have creative signs posted with things like trivia questions to keep the driver's mind occupied. one sign will say a question, and the signs a few kilometers later will have the answer. there are some funny signs as well. some have clever sayings like: 'stop. revive. stay alive.' also some funny one liners. we stopped in rockhampton to do some grocery shopping in preparation for the next volunteer project in the Keppel Bay Islands National Park where we would be camping and cooking our own food. this time my cooking group consisted of the four hombres. no ladies here. our supper for the next four nights is an interesting set of meals: 1.macaroni and cheese 2. chilli soup (minus the meat) 3. pasta with alfredo sauce 4. campbell's canned chunky soup. maybe not so nutritous for the island, however we did eat well tonight. the owner of the hostile campus made us an excellent grill out meal of grilled fish, sausage, steak... plus pasta salad, fresh greens, fruit, and potato salad. the fish was great. there was music playing so kitty and i decided to do some swing dancing. she is very technically sound on the swing dancing and i have never received any formal training so i was definitely a student. she is used to dancing with guys that are good at leading so she was trying to give me small tricks on how the guy lets the girl know what he is going to do / wants her to do. very interesting, i had no idea it was so technical! it was fun. i can see now if you're good at dancing and can keep it up on a regular basis that it would be a really enjoyable hobby.
Monday, 2/28, day 39
today we begin our third volunteer project with the north keppel island education center. this is on north keppel island, the largest of the 15 islands in the national park. the great barrier reef surrounds the park so it also happens to be a great spot for snorkeling and diving. it is a part of the great barrier reef world heritage area, the world's largest reef and island system. we woke early to make our way to rosslyn bay where we unloaded all of our gear and transferred it over to Gundoo Spirit, the education center's vessel transports all guests to and fro. it was a short 10-15 minute ride to the island where we unloaded our gear and set right to work on putting up tents, setting up the kitchen area and preparing our camp spot. we had the luxury of a clearing right next to considine beach. this clearing had several picnic tables, a compost toilet station, and a giant tank of water which provided a cold shower and water for cleaning dishes. the the education center provided us with drinking water in plastic containers and a huge black box which we would use to store our food and from possums. if the possums get to your food it will be gone or torn to pieces. they were regular visitors at night, quite inquisitive, along with an odd looking bird with long legs. we considered the bird our mascot. he was there constantly, looking for any crumb that might stray. the heat seems even more intense here and shade is hard to come by. a few short trees which we put our tents and make-shift kitchen under provided a little bit of shade. the island is a bit of a rugged place. definitely still jungle like but vegetation is shorter and thinner than in new zealand. there are several hiking tracks around the island as well as the education center itself which consisted of multiple cabin like accommodation buildings, a large community kitchen and some large shelters with a roof and no walls for doing activities/lectures in. its so hard to explain something when you know what you are talking about and your audience has no idea! today was pretty chill after we got our camp set up. today i did some 800 meter sprints up and down the beach... it was real hot and everyone else thought i was insane but i had a ton of fun. we made supper and that was it. the tough part about this place is the heat/humidity and the sand flies. the sand flies are absolutely atrocious. unrelenting. if you are sitting still without a layer of clothing covering the skin you are in big trouble. they are the worst during the day. then the mosquitoes come out at night which are equally brutal. by the second day, holly looked like she had some desease... chicken pocks or something. her legs and arms were covered with literally hundreds of bites. it was astounding. Bill, one of the ed center's sponsors, referred to the level of holly's bites as a "flogging." i felt so bad for her. she itched for like two weeks after the island. there is also very little wind. so the sleeping conditions were far from ideal. option 1 was to sleep dripping with sweat in your tent with two other smelly kids and absolutely no air movement, the good side being you were safe from the mosquitoes for the most part. i tried one night of this and was it not successful so i chose option #2 for the last 3 nights. option #2 is sleeping out in the open on the beach where the mosquitoes congregate. that obnoxious high pitched hum as they fly into your ears made for an interesting lullaby. not to mention the invasion of sand everywhere... in the ears, eyes, nose, mouth. all unpleasant parts aside... the sound of the waves coming in was great and the stars were fantastic. i have never slept on a beach before and i have to say it was a cool experience.
Tuesday-Thursday, 3/1-3
The sun came up at about 6 am every morning so that is about the time i woke up everyday, being on the beach. The routine was first grab breakfast and then head out to the education center to receive our tasks for the day. Our camp was set on an isolated beach about 20 minutes walk via hiking trails to the education center which situated right next to another beach. The walk is pretty neat. There are all sorts of junctions so it was easy to get turned around. Lets just say that by the time we got back I had a pretty good feel for all of the tracks. There was one section of the track that we would pass each day on the way to the ed center that was filled with butterflies. I have never seen so many in one place. Most of them were sky blue and black in color, beautiful. And they would all start floating, the air completely filled with them around us when we would go through their space, pretty neat. On the first day I spent the morning doing some 'scrub-barring' or 'weed wacking' as I prefer to call it, around one of the maintenance buildings in the ed center. There was one ranger that we worked with on our volunteer stuff who was funded through the state of Queensland. He was about 6'8 really tall dude, in his 60's originally from the United States but has been in Aussie for the past 30 years. He went to college in Maine. Really nice guy. In the afternoon I had the privilege of going snorkeling with the Aussie campers that were at a week camp through the ed center. These were 7th graders or 'year 7' as they call it, so they were fun to be around. High energy for sure. These kids were all from the same school, and I guess it is fairly common for schools in Australia to dedicate a week of school time for the students to go to an educational camp like this one on North Keppel. I think that is a worthy idea. It was great being there with them because we being older students from the United States were like some kind of celebrities to them... they thought we were the coolest people ever. We could do anything or say anything and it would instantly be THE thing to say or do. I got a couple of them going with some fist pounds... we had some fun with that. As part of their educational experience, the camp took them out in small groups each morning and afternoon to some surrounding reefs to snorkel, see some wild life, and 3 of us 'young Americans' got to tag along each time they went out. The snorkeling was great, pretty amazing stuff. I got to stay near the back of the group and moved real slow so the fish that got scared away by everyone else started to come back out of the reef by the time I got to them... pretty cool. The camp supervisors are a hoot to be around. Really good with kids, fun loving, good natured people. There was a guy who everyone called 'Gillie' he was just a few years older than me and also an older guy in his 50's named Bill. Bill would make a great Santa Clause. He is a bigger guy, with a short beard who always has a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye. The kids all really respected him. He is the type that always has a simple way of explaining things, even a complex topic. After we returned on the Gundoo Spirit, the day was pretty much through so we joined everyone else back at camp. On Wednesday our task included picking up trash and debris on one of the beaches. Our ranger also showed us some of the wetlands in the area which were pretty interesting too. We also completed some weeding around the ed center. We were looking for a pest plant which produced prickly burrs for seeds. The ranger said at one time you could not walk without shoes on the island because the burrs covered the place, so they have made huge progress. Still fighting some off though. This evening was fun because the 'year sevens' had a camp fire and talent show around the fire for the evening festivity and we got to join them. It was sort of a creepy walk to the ed center tonight through the dark. We spotted and heard some bats over head as we walked. The darkness was also intense. It gets pitch black out here because the ed center is the only civilization on the island and it doesn't create that much light... so when the sun goes down, its real dark. The whole center is pretty neat because it is all powered by solar power. They have a big room full of batteries that are constantly storing the power absorbed by the solar panels. They have generators as back ups but rarely, if ever, use them. Very interesting. Another interesting fact... Aussies don't make s'mores, they make 'twisties.' to make a twisty you start with some basic dough, roll it in your hands, wrap it around a stick so it forms a bowl-like covering over the end of the stick, and cook it in the fire. When you got it cooked, you take it off the stick and put maple syrup in the indention where the stick was and you have yourself a nice little snack. Not near as good as a s'more, mind you, but still a pretty decent idea. It was intriguing listening to the camp leaders and the kids interact. Reminded me a lot of an educational environments that are found in the States but with its own different twist. To get the kids thinking, the leaders were telling jokes, riddles, and logic problems and seeing who could figure them out. The rules were you could blurt out the answer until everyone had a chance to ponder it. After he would ask the question or state the problem Gillie would say 'Have a think!' it was so funny. After the campfire/cooking twisties time it was the talent show. The year sevens were divided into small groups and each group had to come up with a routine or an act to perform for the rest. We as the Americans performed our own act for the kids as well. There were some very creative and quite wacky acts, very entertaining to watch. Good fun. After the talent show we played a game of spoons. Now this is not the same game that I first thought of when they said spoons. This game is played in a large outdoor area where there is two teams. Each team is given a giant spoon to hide and a flashlight. Only one person from each team can wield the flashlight and they must be blind folded. This person's mission is to 'tag' other opponents with the beam of the flashlight. The object of the game is to get the opposing team's spoon without losing your own. The rules are: absolutely no running. It also must be completely silent so only non-verbal communication can be used. Therefore collaborating with teammates on how to get the spoon as well as telling the person where to shine the flashlight is difficult. You can not touch the person with the flashlight to direct them. You also must get to the spoon and return it to your own spoon without being caught in a flashlight beam of the other opponent. If you are tagged, you must stop, drop the spoon if you have it, and return to your own spoon before continuing on. It is very much a strategy game. Pretty intense game, no doubt, and the kids got really into. It was fun. The highlight of Thursday was seeing the sunrise. Holly, Steph, Karen and I woke up at 4:45 and made the walk to the east side of the island to see it. It was captivating. When it first began we could still see some stars faintly overhead. It was a mystical feeling to watch the first light skim across the miles of ocean between us and the horizon. There was a wall of puffy clouds that stretched across our panoramic view and some of the light was bouncing off the clouds making some fantastic rays of light and colors. Golds, pinks, yellows, oranges, even a little violet... they were all there. The color change between the edge of the sunrise and the night sky was very cool too. We must have watched it for at least half an hour... amazing. It was crazy to think that these types of things go on all over the world each day... proclaiming God's glory. And we are not aware of 99% of them. We were just lucky enough to catch this particular miracle at this specific place and time... I am pretty sure we were the only ones on the island watching that sunrise. It probably looks that cool every morning, we just happened to be here this morning to witness it. The neat part about it was it kept changing. The clouds kept moving, colors kept changing, different rays would shine through different places, lighting changes... it was like watching a film. It was so quiet and peaceful sitting there. Nothing was really moving. The type of quiet that doesn't exist in a residential area or city. Once we set to work for the today, we began a project with the goal of limiting erosion of one of the beaches. Here there is a problem of the beaches just washing away because there is nothing there to stop the water from taking it out to see. One of the rangers dug trenches in the beach with a tractor and we filled the trenches with grasses, ferns, branches, trees, etc.which protruded out the top of the trenches after we filled them in with sand. This was to put some sort of anchor to keep things from slipping away. It was hard work. And we roasted being on the beach with no wind. Jumping in the ocean when we were done was a huge relief. The kids left camp today so that was a bit sad. We got lots of hugs! Amazing at the connection that can be made in a short time! Friday was cool because we had the whole place to ourselves. We helped the leaders clean up the camp and then they took us out for a 2 hour snorkel. We went to a huge rock, almost like a miniature island, sticking out in the sea a little further out that had reefs around it. Sweet place. The coral was definitely more alive here and the fish more numerous. Thousands of fish. There were these small blue shiny fish about the size of my index finger that would swim in schools. In some areas, if I was very still they would completely surround me.... underneath, around my arms, legs, and face... all just hovering in the water together, moving together, so much that I felt like one of them. I saw a small jellyfish swim by at one point... it was enchanting to watch its transparent body pulse through the water. There were also waterfalls coming down the sides of this huge rock and it was really cool to watch a waterfall from under the water. tons of white foam and waters exploding under the surface. When we got back to the boat they let us do some jumps off the boat. Gundoo Spirit is a fairly sizable boat... the place in the deck that we were jumping off was probably 8-9 ft above the water. Got some good back flips in. Before I knew it we were unloading all our stuff onto the mainland again and off to Emu Park, where we stayed before we came to North Keppel. Tonight was fun because the hostile was hosting a benefit BBQ for a girl that was raising money for cancer. In return for the pledges she received, she shaved her head. Interesting experience being a part of an Australian BBQ with a whole bunch of people we didn't know. Cool.
Saturday, 3/5
Travel day. About 6 hour drive from Emu Park to Hervey Bay. Everyone, including yours truly, is exhausted today from the demanding week and lack of sleep on North Keppel. This is never fun because tired travelers are often also grouchy travelers. Being packed in a van together, six hours in duration, also aggravates this already fragile condition. It is rarely boring :) Hervey Bay is an older smaller coastal community with an aged population. It is sort of a dumpy place to be honest... probably the least favorite of mine so far, the hostile was needing some attention as well. After a grocery run, I enjoyed some basketball with Trick on some random court where the hoops where about to fall apart. Basketball hoops are somewhat rare here so this was a treat. On the usual court, the best sound ever is the swishing sound of a ball passing through a net lacking any ring of iron. On this particular court the best sound is the same minus the swishing part. The sound is much like an air-ball in fact, except with added satisfaction of knowing the ball went perfectly through the net-less rim. This hoop was only about a 9 footer so we had a hoot with some dunks and alley oops. Trick is a bigger guy and has some hops so I was having fun feeding him the bread... we had one oop that was worthy of the top 10 plays on Sportscenter... if they could only have been there to see it! Impeccably timed and deliciously jammed. A thing of beauty I tell you. Like pancakes that have that perfect golden brown to them... hot out off the griddle... yeah. Laundry tonight was not an option. The stench was enough to bring a strong man to his knees. I have encountered a whole new level of odors on this trip. Exhibit A: compost toilets... need not go into any further detail there. Exhibit B: clothes... especially work clothes that have been soiled multiple times in insect repellent, mud, dirt, sand, drenched in sweat, that never really dried over the course of 5 wretchedly hot and steamy days. Blaaaah. Man and clothing smushed together that haven't seen a proper cleaning for days on end = unpleasant fragrance. So to the relief of all... the laundry was conquered. In the waning hours of the evening I was itching for a little run, to see the town a bit so I dialed up a route with the ol' map and sent myself a runnin to the edge of the beach and down the shore line. When I run I use certain landmarks to remind myself so I can find the way back. One such landmark was was little shack with a giant plastic model of a great white shark in the front yard demolishing a boat with jaws open wide. A landmark that is hard to forget indeed. It was a great run. What a gift the Lord has given me. Any time, any place... lace up the shoes and go.
Sunday, 3/6
Here is some fun Aussie vocabulary for you... they say 'mum,' we say mom. tomato sauce = ketchup, chemist = pharmacy, muck around = hang out, chill, mess around. They rarely use "good" or "great" but usually words like "excellent, ace, sweet as, lovely, brilliant" much more creative word choices than Uni Staters use... I like it. My other favorites include: straight away (immediately), oh sugar (disappointment or surprise), fancy a _____? Instead of "watch your head" its "mind your head." right-tee-oh (ok). The phrase "a bit" is used frequently. For example... "a bit of a drive isn't it?" Oh man I could go on forever with these little phrases, it's great entertainment.
Today we headed to Frasier Island. The mode of transport on Frasier is a large 4x4 vehicle which seemed to resemble some sort of combination of half jeep, half bus. It sat 14 of us. The guide, Simon, came and picked us up in this vehicle at our hostile. We caught a vehicle ferry across and were off cruising along the beaches. its crazy. There are no highways here... its all off roading stuff. The beaches are the closest thing to a highway... it even has speed limit signs posted. mostly tour vehicles like ours were driving the beaches but I saw a couple personal vehicles. There is a small village/town on the island where you can eat, purchase supplies, stay in some hotels, etc. It was here that Trick recounted with large amounts of laughter to me the story of how when he was little he didn't go to pre-school. One year he said he had a routine of watching all three of the original Star Wars movies every single day. All three movies. Every day. For an entire year. WOW. What a story. And I thought I was a fan. THAT is dedication. There are so many wild and crazy facts about Frasier I could write all day about them. One fact is the island is inhabited by dingoes... a dog-like animal who have been known to be aggressive around people. For this reason it was strongly encouraged to never be alone on the island and risky to go out at all in the night. Frasier is the largest sand island in the world... its completely composed of sand. It is the only sand island with rain forest growing on it. The eastern side is composed of mostly one long beach... they call it the 75 mile beach. Sharks are known to be in the waters around Frasier but the most dangerous part of the waters are the rips and currents. Simon told us of how one American decided to go swimming at night and was found face down in the sand the next morning, having drowned. I've noticed that is fairly safe to travel in these parts if you are smart and paying attention. I have also noticed there are a lot of ways to seriously or fatally hurt yourself if you are not paying attention. we visited two lakes on the first day. These were both tea-tree lakes. Tea-tree lakes are a unique brown color... it really looks like a big glass of iced tea. You can see a good 8 feet down if the sun is shining. Tea tree lakes have special trees growing around them that give the lake its special color. These lakes are said to have healing properties. Simon said... ha I feel like this is a game (Simon says)... he said that he had heard of a guy that had skin cancer and the guy made a point to swim in the lake every day for a year and by the end of the year the skin cancer was gone. Interesting. The particles of sand here are perfectly round so if you rub the sand on your skin and hair it makes them feel really really soft. You can also clean jewelry with the sand. Really nifty. Frasier is a crazy place because it is so diverse. It has lakes, rain forest, sand-blows (which are pretty much sections of desert with big sand dunes) long beaches, ocean... crazy. After Lake Wabby, we took a 45 minute walk through a section of rain forest. Amazing. After the walk, Simon prepared some sandwich fixings and fruit for lunch. It's clever how it works because he stores a lot of the food in a specially made compartment in the back so he can bust out utensils, food, a table to set it on, etc. and we can have lunch anywhere on the island. He made all of our breakfast and evening meals as well. We ate extremely well. Simon used to be a cook before he started giving tours on Frasier. I wish you could hear Simon say the word "Frasier" it never failed to bring a smile to my face every time he said it. I can't even describe it. Almost like "Fraziah." And he was passionate about it. Very knowledgeable. Tonight we stayed in the Dilli Village, it is a fenced in area with a kitchen & dining facility and dorm-like units to stay in. They host lots of groups here, and university students commonly do research here.
3/7, Day 2 Fraser Island
We left Dilli Village early for more 4x4 beach driving. First we visited a place called the Kirrar Sandblow which is a desert looking portion of the island with huge sand dunes which were fun to climb and run back down. We also had fun drawing things in the sand. In some parts the sand would be one color on the surface and another color below the surface which made for some groovy sand drawing. At one point I stared towards the coast and admired in this order, all within my field of vision: 1. the ocean... obviously a huge body of water. 2. a fairly wide portion of thick lush green trees... which formed a line in front of the ocean. 3. a desert of sand. Three things that should not logically be this close together but they were all right here. Very cool. After the sand exploration, we went to the waters edge and visited a ship wreck that was half submerged in the beach. All that remains is the large rusty frame protruding from the sand. It has been here since 1935. The S.S. Maheno once served as a luxury ocean liner as well as a hospital ship in World War I. The story of how it ended up on the beach of Fraser Island is pretty interesting but unfortunately time is short. After taking some marvelous photos with the Maheno, we stopped to admire the Indian Head rock formations. After that we went to a place called Eli Creek. This place dumps fresh water into the ocean at some crazy rate of like 4.4 million liters of water per hour. It is a popular place to go because it isn't very deep, pretty wide and one can simply float along and let the current take you down the creek... a natural lazy river. Returned to Dilli Village for supper and sleep. Buttered Fish with white gravy for supper... real good. Simon makes excellent gravy, you can tell he was a cook. Very interesting to talk with Simon after supper, he had a very unique story to tell about where he has been and what he has done in his life. A great day.
3/8, day 3 Fraser Island
This was my favorite of all days on Fraser. First of all we had a breakfast fit for royalty. Eggs, bacon, toast, and the best watermelon, pineapple, cantaloupe (or rock melon as they call it) and honeydew that I have ever had. I don't know what it was but every single one of these was fantastic! Today we visited Lake Boomanjin and Lake Mackenzie. If you ever go to Fraser Island you MUST go to Lake Mackenzie. It is the most beautiful body of water I have ever set my eyes on. This place was magical. The sand was completely white, very fine and powdery. The water was crystal clear. As you looked out on the lake there was a beautiful color change. Out in the middle it was a dazzling royal blue color, as the water got closer and the lake shallower it gradually changed from a blue to a pretty aqua green color and the water closest to the beach was completely transparent so all you could see was the white sand below. Just beautiful. There was a smaller beach away from the larger main beach that we hung out at and it was fantastic. We played some volleyball in the water which was fun. I also went for a 20 minute swim out to the middle where it was so quiet, calm, and peaceful. Pristine. It was definitely a "wow, God" moment. This lake is surrounded by beautiful green trees. The day was perfect, sun shining with white puffy clouds and a baby blue sky. I did multiple 360 degree turns while treading water trying to soak it all in. I could see my feet clear as day under the water. So cool. The water was so unbelievably clean. I felt refreshed just by being in it. There was no sound except the occasionaly light breeze and the water gently moving around me. It was like a dream. I could see rocks on the bottom, probably at least 20 feet below me. Just nuts. After Lake Mackenzie, our visit on Fraser Island came to an end and drove back to the ferry which took us back to the mainland. We returned to Hervey Bay and I experienced a run on the beach the I will remember for a very long time. More on that in the next entry... coming to a blog near you soon!!!
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
in other news...
so i almost forgot to tell about maybe one of the coolest things that has happened so far. ok. on the way back from the infamous 'big night out' in Queenstown, to which i arrived late and left early... i am walking back by myself at around 1:30ish am in the dark through the wharf area by the water and i here this random voice inquire from the shadows beneath some trees... "do you have a smoke?" i turned, slightly startled, and answered the voice that i did not have a smoke and it wasnt an activity that i participated in. a young man with dark skin of a nationality i could not identify, not a couple years older than me, was approaching out of the shadows by this point... and he said 'good for you.' he asked me what i was up to and i told him i was coming back from hanging with my 'mates' (trying to sound offical of course). so our conversation began. he didnt have anything else to do so i invited him to walk with me on my way back to the hostile. ended up having an extremely fasinating conversation, and in my view, a devine appointment. he was from brazil and had been working in new zealand for a better part of a year. his name was jules and it took me a long time to figure out what type of guy he was. an odd character for sure. he seemed like a nice enough kind of guy but i still couldnt get over the creepy question in the dark about a smoke. we talked about topics all over the board... family, politics, faith, life in brazil, life in the u.s. his background and aspirations, etc. he was most interested in U.S. politics and immigration. he complained it is entirely too difficult to get into the U.S. and get citizenship... apparently he had friends that had tried many times and not gotten through. he seemed fairly well informed on the recent happenings in congress and president obama's dealings. its sad. sometimes i think these foreigners know more things about what is going on in our country than many americans do. and sadly i cant count myself out of the 'lame americans' bunch much of the time. anywho, back to the dude. so i ask the question: what is going to happen to you when you die? and he preceeds to make me think he doesnt have an opinion. so asks me what i think... i begin to explain what i believe... simplfied version... in a Creator God who made man, man separated himself through sin/wrong doing, God desired to redeem the relationship with man so he sent his son, Christ, who took the punishment of sin in order for a just and holy God to be reconciled with sinful man, and whoever should give his life to Christ is therefore re-connected with the Father... by grace through faith... and its through the gift of Christ and Christ alone that I will be able to experience the King of Kings here in this life and also forever in eternity. long story short he is a member of the baptist church and was witholding information just to see where the conversation would go, what i would say. at one point he laughed and said 'i cant believe we are having this conversation'... i didnt understand at that point why he thought it was so funny but looking back i understand. come to find out he had very good knowledge of the scripture and it was his goal to go study theology in canada in the next four months and ultimately do missionary work. we had very interesting conversations of the struggles of knowing the truth and trying to express it to others... wanting so badly for others to know the hope that you know but standing helpless when it comes to their decision that THEY must make. and it becoming especially difficult when they even know it is the right way... yet choose to be apathetic about it or continue to deny it in their life. not that i am saying i am much different... there are many times in my own life, too many to count in even a single day, where i KNOW what is right and true yet i still fail to act on that knowledge. but just because we all struggle in this same way... failing to seek the truth or act on it is not ok, acceptable, or easy to watch/experience. i walked away thinking about this paradox, as well as being completely amazed at what i just encountered. WOW. what a crazy turn of events. some creep in the dark ends up being completely different than i expected. conversation was mind blowing. to find another dude that loves Jesus... when so many that i have met on this trip have little care or knowledge of Him... was SO encouraging. it reminded me of the power of the church meeting together... being in fellowship together regularly... it just encourages you, keeps you accountable, keeps you going in the right direction, reminds you of the path you are seeking to travel and why you are on that path. such good stuff. we ended the conversation in a joyful embrace and wished each other well... probably never to see each other again in this life, but with all hope in the next.
oh and earthquake in christchurch... how could i forget that? it happened while i was in milford sound oddly enough, and the prime minister has called it one of new zealand's darkest days. its was all over national and local news... paper, radio, TV the whole works for days. reminded me somberly of 9/11. lots of these crazy stories from all these different people who went through it. your heart just breaks for the people that lost loved ones, homes, etc. tough stuff no doubt. the hostile we were going to be at was in the heart of the mess. it happened on a tuesday and we were scheduled to stay in christchurch on friday night. just a few days different and things could have turned out a lot differently for me. i am very grateful. so if you reading this in a stable part of the world and are having discouraging, frustrating, or bitter thoughts today, let us count one blessing that you were not in any earthquakes or tsunamis.
oh and earthquake in christchurch... how could i forget that? it happened while i was in milford sound oddly enough, and the prime minister has called it one of new zealand's darkest days. its was all over national and local news... paper, radio, TV the whole works for days. reminded me somberly of 9/11. lots of these crazy stories from all these different people who went through it. your heart just breaks for the people that lost loved ones, homes, etc. tough stuff no doubt. the hostile we were going to be at was in the heart of the mess. it happened on a tuesday and we were scheduled to stay in christchurch on friday night. just a few days different and things could have turned out a lot differently for me. i am very grateful. so if you reading this in a stable part of the world and are having discouraging, frustrating, or bitter thoughts today, let us count one blessing that you were not in any earthquakes or tsunamis.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Wellington continued... plus Kahurangi National Park, Nelson, Sky diving, Nelson Lakes National Park, Franz Josef, Queenstown, and Mt. Cook!!!
Sunday, Feb 6th, 2nd day in Wellington
Wellington, by the way is not a very big city. its about 180,000 people in the city and about twice that if you count the suburbs. its at the very south tip of the north island and sits tucked in on the edge of a bay that i dont know the name, which eventually leads out to ocean. there is a good amount of the city that is on the flat land right next to the water but also a good part that extends into the hills surrounding the harbor. a city wrapped around a large bay, extending into the hills. so in a lot of places, once you start getting away from the downtown area, you are going straight up hills for awhile. if this place had ice, people would be in big trouble with these hills. extremely beautiful, especially at night. i saw several professional panorama shots of it while here and its really great. today started in the Te Papa museum. The catch phrase for Te Papa is "our place" as it is NZ's national museum. Its all about new zealand, its history, its people, how it came to be, the culture, arts, sciences, you name it. this place was huge, the type of place you could probably spend a week in and still not see everything/read all the interesting stuff/interact with all the exhibits. it had 5 floors, maybe 6 actually, and had all this random stuff about it. very interactive based, very modern feel to the museum. this one exhibit had this fake house that had a blib about a massive earthquake in NZ awhile back and at the end it would shake to give you a feeling of what an earth quake is like, pretty cool. it also had the heaviest colossial or giant squid ever caught and one of the only ones on display in the entire world. it had a complete exhibit on the squid, this massive animal preserved in a tank for observing... eyes the size of soccer balls. it had a movie about how the squid lives, super interesting. it lives really deep in the ocean where almost no light is so having huge eyes helps it to see. crazy to think about all the things that live down in depths that almost all of us will never see... they all go on living down there every day, just like we go about our lives on the surface every day. it really gets me thinking about how big the world is, how many living things there are in it. amazing to think about God creating it all, how much creativity, power, imagination it must have taken. truly spectacular. one dislplay was "bush city." this was an outdoor area where they had all types of plant life that lived in new zealand all growing together in different sections. several levels to bush city, amazing to see the diversity of plant life in one place. it had lots on the maori people, so that was interesting, and we had the priviledge of eating some traditional maori food... a main component was mussels, not something i eat every day. it was actually pretty good. definately different yet good. one entire floor was devoted to this guy named brian brake... a renowned photographer from new zealand that traveled the world taking all sorts of pictures. very moving and powerful... just amazing all the life that happens on this earth... everything from an american doctor doing surgery on a young girl's skull in India, with only simple tools and local anesthetic, all while the girl's uncle has a hold of her ankles, kneeling by the make shift operating table (which appears to be in the middle of a market place) and he is crying... to President Eisenhower speaking at the first meeting of NATO. Pictures from all over the world of random things over 40 years. i finished today by climbing mt. victoria, which looks over wellingtion, it was rainy and cloudy today, so not the best views of the city but the park was beautiful. a massive park with multiple tracks stretching the length as well as leading to the top. this 'mountain' is not an actual mountain but its still pretty high. the park is where they filmed a couple sets of the Lord of the Rings. Since the sets have long been taken down it is sometimes difficult to recognize these places, so to see/find most you have to pay for a tour with special guides that get you to the place and sort of explain how the set was situated so you can kind of imagine how it was. i was pretty pumped to find 'the hobbits hideout' which is the place in the first movie, the fellowship of the ring, when they have just begun their journey, stolen veggies from a local farmer, and encounter the first black rider that comes after them. when frodo says: "get off the road!" and they hop down off the rode to hide. pretty neat to see what frodo calls 'the road' that they were on. the park also made for a great place for some reading and time with the Lord.
Monday, 2/7/2010
today was an early wake up, 4:40. we made our way to the south island today, very exciting. to do this we were at the water's edge at 5 am to take the 'interislander' a vehical ferry, to the other side. was about a 3 hour jaunt. the views coming into the south island from sea were incredible. once on land we made a pitt stop in Picton, which had many tourists, lots of elderly people hanging out. then we made the beautiful 2 hour drive to Nelson. it was perfect weather today, sunny and bright. this part of the country had many many vineyards and farms. wine country. vineyards would stretch on both sides of the road for miles, with large rolling bluffs, everything is REALLY green, all types of fruit trees, nursieries of different trees, the bluffs differing in colors, some golds, dark greens, light greens, short grasses, long grasses, scattered trees and bushes, stands of thick pines, man.... i cant describe it. some housing along the road but fairly spread out. small simple farm houses. got to our YHA hostile at noon. cooked a nice big steak for lunch, yea baby. a nice old man from from france saw how simply i was making it and loaned me some fixings, it was funny, he was like: aw you cant make it like that! my futile or crazy methods at cooking continue to amuse the people who see me in the kitchen. i get the job done, and have a laugh at it, so it works for me :) talked to a young gal from Japan for awhile who has been working here for 4 months. interesting story, a bit hard to understand, and very neat gal. this place is really clean and well kept, i have been very impressed with the hostiles. after lunch we went shopping for groceries for our next expedition. had a 45 min run on a path on the outskirts of nelson. absolutely gorgeous run. very nice path. a river ran right next to it. i dont think i have been on a run where i havent been right next to some body of water. the water was very clear and there were many stones big and small in the river so it made for some scenic rapid type things. at one point there was a small wall of rocks that ran the width of the river that the water fell over. very neat. on the other side of the trail was the backyards of residential houses. ALL of them had beautiful gardens and flowers along the back of their backyards, directly next to the path. so pretty. eventually i got outside of nelson and started to go into some hills when i turned around. i listened to one of my messages by paul washer on my ipod and was very convicted about the question: 'what does my faith cost me?' the more i thought the more i felt that my faith in many ways has become comfortable, convenient... that i have lost my willingness to become uncomfortable, to go the extra mile for the purposes God has called me to. ill sacrifice when i feel like it. ill be available to Him when it works into my schedule, when i get all the things i think i need to get done first... ill go out to lunch with that person... you know, that person that is not the easiest or most enjoyable to be around, but surely i cant give my whole afternoon to just spending time together... that would just take way too much time and inconvenience me too much. challenge my comfort level too much. i felt it had become a lot about what i want, a 'me first' type thing. i even saw this in the trip... i have been spending a lot of time on my own away from the group doing the things i want to do with our free time, seeing the places i want to see... regardless of what anyone else decides to do. how do i expect to have a positive influence in other people's lives if i never spend time with them? if i am always off in my own world doing my own thing? investing into them... only when its convenient for me. how about this: after knowing i am a christian and spending time with me, will Christ have a more favorable reputation because they met me or less favorable? i know i am not here to please man, but God... yet i also know that i am Christ's ambassador. so in short, i had a lot of things rolling around in my brain on that run. good stuff though. we had a nice supper together as a group when i returned and i met rachel and scott... the directors of pacific discovery for the first time. they live here in nelson. very neat people. scott is the epitome of chill. had some intense games of 2 on 2 fooseball in the lounge after supper... intense. we probably played for 45 minutes. dont tell anyone but... i had a loss column of zero. not that it wasnt challenged many times, because it was! we had fun doing celebrations... different handshakes, high fives, fist pounds, chest bumps you name it. it almost became more of who had the better celebration that the game itself.
Tuesday, 2/8
we drove 2 hours to kahurangi national park. set up camp. we met andrew and dawn, our guides through the park. very impressed by their knowledge and leadership abilities. new zealand has a lot of these bugs: wasps, sandflies, and bumble bees. every where. swarms of them. sandflies rival the annoyance of mosquitos. they are bigger than a gnat but smaller than a fly. they bite and leave really itchy spots that dont go away for weeks. bug spray doesnt work the greatest, the best defense i found is long sleeves and pants. the bumble bees are also thick. not too aggressive which is good. they are just very curious and they hover around you and your stuff, in your tent, all the time. these creatures were the topic of much of much groaning among the group. after camp was set, we geared up in overalls, and hard hats for some caving in blue creek cave. it took some doing to get to the cave, a walk through thick bush and across an steep incline to get there. the cave was amazing. we spent a good portion of the afternoon exploring it. at one point we shut off all the flashlights and it was pitch pitch dark. Kitty sang us an old irish folk song... it was sweet to hear her high, elegant voice echo through the cave.
Wednesday, 2/9
today was canyoning day. we learned how to do what they call abseiling... or repelling. the canyon was a thin long channel cut by water, very twisty, and had many fairly sizable drops... big enough that you could not jump down and steep enough that you could not climb down. that is where the abseiling came in. very fun. basically you have a harness around your waist, with a rope anchored at the top, sliding through a carabiner on your harness. you control the speed with your hands, and lean back and walk yourself down the slope with your feet. should your feet slip or footing is bad you face plant into the rock. so it becomes a challenge when the rock face becomes uneven and there is no where to put your feet. we repelled over 10 drops through the afternoon. its quite the process when you have to get 15 all safely down these places. this meant at times lots of waiting on others to get down. it is interesting to observe the emotional changes in myself and the group throughout the day. when we start getting tired or impatient. when our moods get into a 'blah' phase. this is discouraging... how you could possibly not be in a fantastic mood every minute of the day since we are in NZ... but unfortunately significant bouts of complaining and negative energy still exist at times. this is a challenge to me, almost wearing at times, yet a terrific opportunity to remain positive and encouraging of others. when your only happy when everything is perfect, what have you really gained? it also tests that unconditional love that i always desire to be able to extend more of. its easy to love someone who is nice to you. not so easy when they give you a snappy response or a poor attitude. the sun shining through the trees above the canyon and the mouth of the canyon itself, was beautiful. after we got through the canyon, i had a massive conversation with Kitty about the difference between protestants and catholics. we probably talked for over an hour. very deep. definitely gave me some things to think about, question, and explore. she is very knowledgeable about her faith and why she believes what she believes, more than any catholic i have ever met. a big topic of discussion was communion... she believes the blood and bread are actually Christ's body and blood... while i see it as a symbol of remembrance. we talked about the church, Christ's followers, how it should be organized, and ultimately discussed the role of the pope. we talked about the role of mary in the catholic faith and how/why they pray to other saints. very interesting. we discussed the origins of scripture, how it was written, who wrote it... whether or not Martin Luther made changes to / edited the scripture during the reformation... crazy stuff. i need to do some homework, and that is a good thing. it feels like so many of my views and perspective about pretty much everything are being tested right now and it is mentally exhausting to sort it all out sometimes! to give a fair look at ideas, possibilities that are presented as a result of being in a new place with new people. you start to feel like you dont really know anything and your perspective is so limited and small. to make a definitive statement about anything seems dangerous because if feels that someone or something you see/experience will expose a loop hole, exception, or provide facts or evidence that shows you are flat out wrong.
Thursday, 2/10
Today was day 1 of a 3 day trek through the park. our ultimate goal is to get to the summit of mt. owen. and return through some jagged rocks on the other side. the park is ginormous. it has been quite chilly in the mornings here... not what i expected for summer at all. it warms up fine, but it can be down right cold early on. we needed thermals, hats, gloves, everything. could see our breath. today was the start of living strickly out of a backpack: food, clothing, tents. the first 3 hours was up a long very steep incline, it was probably close to 45 angle of incline for some stretches. tough going with a 50 lb pack and loggs, bushes, rocks, all over the place. christina was sick today and ended up having to return down after lunch. sarah also stayed back in nelson. after that the way was a little more friendly for a bit, then we went down a section of steep decline called the devil's staircase. very steep. after that we went through an interesting stretch of forest called ghost valley. very interesting trees. we stopped at a small stream for some fesh water, so that was cool. also went through a section of trees... im not sure the scientific name but they looked exactly like some of the trees in Dr. Suess books. really cool. then was a section slightly up hill through a dried up creek bed, large rocks, lots of rock hopping. arrived at a place called granity pass hut and camped there for the night. we saw another lord of the rings site... where the fellowship characters hide from the crows that tried to spy on them in the first movie. sweet. they have lots of gray robins here, they and they are extremely friendly. when we move through the bush, they are attracted to us because we stir up bugs, which = food. i got one such robin, who i affectionately named 'rob,' to land on the tip of my boot. it was sweet. the forest is largely beach forest. beach trees are very thin and tall and their branches/leaves spread out very wide horizontally... they almost look like plates. very thin, small, circular, flat leaves. makes for an interesting canopy. lots of stringy moss stuff... like we saw on the islands. the evening in the hut was quite entertaining. we hung out with these guys from the north island... comedians. they were in their early to mid thirties i'd say. we gathered around a huge table in the hut and had a good time discussing culture and we sang a lot of classic, popular songs together. i am amazed at how much they know about the states. our media influence... music and film... is huge, not just here, but as i have come to realize, all over the world. i think a big reason is not many other places have the resources to develop and spread it like the U.S. does.
Friday, 2/11
today is granity pass to mt. owen, and down to lake bulmer. it was an early rise and another long steep climb to begin the day, climbing up a place called sentinel hill. today there was no bush, we are higher now, so plant life is very short, tough, hard, and sometimes even sharp. mostly short grasses and shrubs. a typical alpine environment. it was slow going climbing mt. owen today, but man was it worth it once we got to the top. great views of the surrounding mountains. the different varieties of rocks, cliffs, ledges, formations is amazing. we have a hiking game going on where someone was chosen by the drawing of leaves (one leaf was different than others) and this person is the hiking villain. this person's task is to 'kill' all the others in the group without being detected or accused. there is a sign that the villain shows a person that signifies that that person is dead. the person then must make a public act of their 'death' but it must be at least 5 minutes after the sign was made, so the villain has a fair shot not getting caught. if the person just dramatically died on the spot you could figure it out pretty easily. so there has been some rather interesting acting jobs. and the villain went undetected today. the way down mt. cook was pretty challenging. the rocks are very sharp and a lot of them with pointy edges pointing vertically. some are sharp like knives so a fall would result in a fairly bad cuts. we had to be careful. its hard to get around because you have to balance on rocks to get down, uneven surfaces, gaps in the rocks, places where you walk on points instead of flat faces, and you sometimes you cant use your hands to get a hold of things for balance or assistance because the stuff around you is too sharp to grab. there were a couple very steep declines where we had to go one at a time, pretty intense. one particular place there was a gap, no more than a foot and half wide, in the rocks. there was nothing for a long, long ways down below the gap. both sides of the gap where also exposed to a long fall. basically two big parts of the mountain coming together at a very skinny point. it was freaky. a slip of the foot and things could get real scary. so it was a challenge to get everyone across. not a big deal in all reality... all you really had to do is have one foot on one side, put the other foot on the other side and then shift your body/weight from one side to the other. a simple move, but man it was freaky. on this side of the mountain we did not have any type of trail we were just following andrew's GPS. it was a great challenge today, i loved being out where hardly anyone else goes. today we got to see where the LOTR characters exited the mines of moria. when we got out of the rocks, we went down a long wide valley with long slippery grasses, as well as some really sharp grasses called 'spainard.' after the valley we dropped down another very steep but short section of rock to a lake, lake bulmer. andrew says hardly anyone knows about this lake. it was pretty small for a lake in new zealand but very cool, completely surrounded by towering walls of rock with the exception of one end of the lake which is where the bush started again. we camped by the lake tonight and had a camp fire which was nice. cold in the evenings.
Saturday, 2/12 day 23
i really enjoyed today. it was back in the bush, still descending but way more gradually. we had two drops to get by... which we used ropes to help us down the drops, not near as steep as previous ones, fairly easy. the bush was thick and beautiful. moss covers everything... rocks, trees, fallen logs, etc. we moved very quickly today, much easier going. on several occasions we were on the edge of the mountain, with a huge wall of rock hundreds of feet above on one side and a single line of trees, bushes separating us from the valley below on the other side. fantastic views. once we were basically back down, we had go the rest of the way out of the park. this involved crossing small streams 7 different times. i was having quite a time keeping my feet today. slipping and losing my balance everywhere, but not completely falling. ironic because the rest of the trip, the most difficult parts, i had been extremely graceful. the rocks in the water were really really slippery so that made things interesting. i was at the back of the line with Trick and he had noticed my difficulties. at one point i was joking with Trick Kitty about how out of all the times id lost my balance, i was determined to not completely lose my feet, and about this point i reached up to grab a smaller tree, smaller but very sturdy looking, to help myself over a small section of water and it completely snapped from the very base, apparently rotten at the bottom. really funny moment. a short time later, i stepped on a patch of ground on the edge of the track with a deep ditch below to the side and the patch of 'ground' gave way, leaving one leg going straight down. i cant imagined what it looked like from the front or back of me. walking just fine then bam! my right leg just disappears... it was quite a deep ditch so i really didnt want to fall all the way down so i managed to save myself with my other leg and hands, doing a single leg squat up and out of the nice air hole that i just made. perhaps the funniest moment of all was our experience with a large horizontal log stretching across the path, just below shoulder height. it was a tough call, which way you should get through: go under or over. Tick decided he was going over. with a big pack on your back, it is a difficult task to go any distance vertically. and pulling yourself up is a quite a daunting task at times. he got one arm and one leg on the log easily. with about half of him on the log he looked like he needed just a little extra 'umph' to get all the way over, so i gave him a little push on his pack. just so happened to be about the same time that he got enough 'umph' by himself. now... he had too much umph. so: imagine a 6'4" dude with arms wrapped around a large mossy log, legs now straddling it, also wrapping around the log, now spinning around the log, at an impressive speed, holding on for dear life. Trick successfully went full circle around the log, going all the way underneath and spinning back up where he began. he ended up safely passing over. it was the most funny thing i have witnessed in a long, long time. it kept replaying in my mind and we were laughing so hard our eyes were watering. we must have laughed for 10 minutes about it. oh my. we finished the track out of the park and headed on back to nelson.
Sunday, 2/13, day 24
SKY DIVE DAY. about 7 of us went. 16500 ft. 70 seconds of free fall. falling the distance of one football field every 2 seconds. absolutely cool. on the way there austin plugged his ipod into the van and we listening to the likes of ACDC, Linkin Park, and eminem... you know... holistic, educational, calming music. after a short drive to the place, we got a short briefing on the jump, geared up in the jump suit, hat, eye wear, harness. loaded up the small single engine plane. this had no seats we just sat on the floor, it wasnt even big enough to stand up in. we took 20 minutes to climb to our altitude and jump point, final instructions, green light goes on, door goes open, we slide out onto the outside of the plane, stomach does a little flip, and we let go... the first 2 seconds was nuts... we did a slow 360 flip and i really felt the change from not falling to falling... very fast, kind of like that roller coaster drop feeling. then we got into our falling position, belly down, back up, legs bent, arms out. some people thought the free fall went by really fast, i felt it seemed way longer than 70 seconds. really cool. i could see so much. the ocean, some mountains, nelson. we fell through a cloud, that was pretty cool too. most of the falling felt more like flying its a very peaceful sensation. then the cute came out and we had a nice 5 minute float to the ground. the guy swung our cute around a few times, the horizon shifted around pretty good, kinda made me nauseous but it was sweet. landed safely. if you go skydiving dont forget to pop your ears, to equalize the pressure in them, as you are falling. i didnt and my ears really hurt afterwords. quick change in pressure = tough on the ears. austin threw up on the way back from the place... felt bad for the man. he was not feeling good. another interesting part of the day was a long conversation with some german ladies at supper. good day. crazy day.
Monday, 2/14 day 25
left nelson to go to nelson lakes national park, about 2 hours. first day of our second volunteer project. we spent most of the day planting native plants which they are trying to re-introduce into the area, while taking out other pest plants. pretty interesting to learn the background info about the project. after a few hours of planting native grasses and trees we had a good swim in rotoiti lake. huge lake fed by water running off from the mountains. this is a picture-esc place. large mountains in the distance coming straight out of the lake. usually the waters are calm, creating sort of a mirror image effect. beautiful, cold, clear, clean water. really cold. refreshing after a afternoon of hot planting. did some back flips off the doc. holly got a great air born pic of me with the mountains in the background. pretty sweet. took a 30 minute nap after the time in the lake and then went for a 50 minute run on the edge of the lake. a great dirt path with scenic bush on my right and lake views on the left. amazing run. really reflected on the path i have taken in the last 23 years and all the things that have happened. i think it would be unfortunate if the only time our lives flashed before our eyes is the time when we die. if we never think about such things we never have time to truly express our appreciation and thankfulness for the life, truly realize the amazing story each one of us has... and appreciate the author. i challenge you to take some time soon to reflect a bit. i started from the earliest day i could remember... went through pre-school, elementary, middle school, high school, college and now. thought about all the people that have been involved in my story, teachers, coaches, community people, family, friends, the places ive been, things ive seen, experiences, jobs, summers, winters, joys, sorrows, challenges, defeats, victories... on and on and on... and most of all... God's faithfulness through the entire journey. how the small details of life seem to add up and make sense in a bigger picture. we had some good supper when i got back and i ended my day by learning how to play cribbage. pretty fun game!
Tuesday, 2/15
Today our mission was to work on some water drains on a walking track up into the mountains. we climbed the track all day and ended our day by staying the night in an old shut down skii lodge. the views from this track were fantastic... it hardly felt like a work day. great views of the lakes, mountains, valleys around the park. amazing. we cleaned up a hut about half way up and made supper in the lodge. the lodge was an incredibly interesting place. it was shut down in the 1980s and looks like it hasnt been touched since then. fascinating, feels like you are stepping back in time about 30 years. we played a couple intense games of jungle speed and a team game of cribbage and called it a day. ah yes, i met the first people from the states that i have seen so far today. kind of a nice thing.
Wednesday, 2/16
had some great time with the Lord early this morning outside of the lodge with the company of the mountains. it did not take long to come down from here and we had some good time in the lake again today. today steph, alli, austin and i swam out to a bouy a good distance from shore... it was a really cold swim but really fun. felt accomplished to swim a good distance. then to warm up, karen and austin buried me in a pile of rocks on the beach. kind of funny looking.
Thursday, 2/17 day 28
did some more planting of some native vegetation again today. very satisfying work. the sand flys were the thickest ive seen them yet, but that did not deter us from doing some great work, having a great attitude about it, having some laughs, and enjoying our time together. today my mind was in a goofy place, i kept thinking of these silly connections. so my job today was digging holes for the plants, mainly trees today. others did the planting, and others did watering and put up these protection net type things around the plants. so there is a pop song out and the chorus goes "ive got a feeling... that tonight's gunna be a good night..." so instead of having a good feeling about the night, i had good feelings about the holes i was digging. singing... out loud... "ive got a feeling... that this hole's gunna be a good hole..." very stupid, but very entertaining. help keep the mind of more unpleasant aspects of the work. i read Ephesians 5&6 today and i had two goals... love like Christ loves... unconditionally... (well, a good attempt at least) and to give thanks in all circumstances. Ephesians 5:20 says "Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God." thats the king james. interesting to have the KJV for my Bible, never got into king james much but i like it. more swimming in the lake after our work, and a relaxing evening! Great weather the all week.
Friday, 2/18 day 29
i got up early today for some time with the Lord. time in prayer was great... i prayed for many things and many people. the biggest prayer today was to become more like Christ. that He would increase and i would decrease. this trip has been very humbling... a lot of character flaws exposed. im sure many of them have always been evident but ive just never realized it, until this unique opportunity has allowed me to look at myself through fresh new lenses. it was some what of a desperate prayer... knowing my own feeble will power is not enough to slice through the thick walls of the dark selfishness strongholds of my being. i have become clearly shown that i can NOT make the necessary changes on my own and am dependent on His work in me, as well as moment to moment decisions on my part, to make it happen. your either going forward or backwards... very few moments you are standing still. we left nelson lakes today after a short morning of work. it was a sad day, i liked this place a lot. i will miss the lake. we drove to Punakaiki, about 2 hours. our hostile was very unique... it was named Te Nikau and it was more of a house/condo style. our group had it all to our selves. very scenic place... it sits in the middle of the bush, 5 minutes away from a beautiful section of beach. it had a huge rock/boulder built into the floor of the kitchen... had a very unique, yet cool style to the place. there was a nice trail, the Truman trail that went through the jungle as well. very neat. i went down to the beach with austin and manisha, meeting ali on the way. we had fun jumping in the water and crashing against some oncoming waves. real cold water. nachos for supper tonight... 5 pans of beans, refried beans, beef, and tortilla chips. all you could eat and more. the cheese heeping. condiments were jake's home made guacamole which was excellent, sour cream, and salsa. all of this topped some warm tasty rice & sauce. i dont know how they did it but it was so good. it had the quality and taste of a really nice restaurant. certain members also completed the push up challenge... P.U.C. for short. pronounced 'puck.' this has been an comical part of our trip... it was an idea came up by austin, trick and i to keep in some sort of shape. what PUC is: a latter of push ups done in a group. where the first person does 1 push up, waits for the others. then he does 2 push ups, until everyone has gotten to 10 push ups.... the latter is fifty some odd push ups and probably the most difficult part is holding the push up position while the other people complete their push-ups, no breaks. so many inside jokes have come from our various PUC sessions. hilarious. we have determined that PUC is done to prevent the softy. the softy is a person who has the quality of being soft. not chiseled. out of prime form. being soft is often linked to excessive amounts of time spent on the couch, and folding of the hands. if softy is used in the plural form... softies... it refers to those happy parts of the body that tend to be the first to show extra weight that may be obtained. this is different for each individual but usually includes but is not limited to: the belly, sides of abdomen, buttocks, thighs, ankles, upper arms, chin, cheeks, and/or neck. we joked that tonights meal could open the possibility of "the return of the softies." the joking about this keeps going on... it is so ridiculously stupid but for some reason we find it extremely comical. i had a hard time not laughing, just writing this. when i attempted explain PUC and softy(ies) to Holly in the most serious of tones, she looked at me like i had lost my mind. it was SO funny. we laughed for minutes. the type of laughter that requires the pounding of a nearby object with a fist, in this case, a table. i am also having a good time with my hair... on top of the head and the face. i have not shaved my face in 19 days now. looking a little nasty, shaggy, thin attempts at a beard/go-tee. its made progress but its still not my style. in addition to the weak attempt at a beard, i also sported a fo-hawk today (fake mo-hawk). all i can say is, its nice to be in a place where no one knows you. its been great to open my mind to other possibilities and to get creative again on how to mix it up a little. i am convinced that life is not meant to be boring. there are too many possibilities of activities, food, entertainment, service, relationship, i could go on, to have life be boring. one day i will probably have to re-read my own writing to remind myself, but it is true. i just have to get my mind right to see it. easy in a different place, not so easy at home in the regular routine of things. sometimes i think i will have to force myself to mix it up... just for the sake of remembering that life is not supposed to be boring. that it is my choice to make it that way or make it another way. life can be made un-boring in the most simple, mundane activities... even things we do repetitively. the mind must simply be open to seeing the small miracles that make up our daily existence.
Saturday, 2/19
today was great. we drove from Punakaiki to Franz Josef and had a kayaking adventure half way in the middle. we also saw a park containing the pancake rocks... a very interesting group of rocks formations that look exactly what their name implies. tall relatively skinny columns of rock cut by wind and water with thousands of indentions on the sides and through the width of the rocks to look exactly like really tall stacks of pancakes. lots of columns of pancakes. this was close to the coast so some cool views of the water and coastline as well. we kayaked out to a place called okarito lagoon. it is the largest unmodified wetland in new zealand. there are some extremely rare wild life that live here, such as the white heron. this is the only place in all of new zealand that this bird lives, and we were fortunate enough to see one! there are a lot of mountains and glaciers in this part of the country so the water is a really light blue color... almost like sky blue but a little different, hard to describe, really beautiful. in some places the water is a really light gray or even white because of all the sediment in the water from the glaciers. when we got to franz josef we took a hike for a couple hours to see the glacier... very very cool. never seen a glacier before. hard to even begin to describe it. we saw the tip of it coming down between two mountains. white snowy, icey looking with some brilliant light blue parts in it. ive been told that it is very rare to see glaciers come so close to the coast. beach and glacier in close proximity = cool. i guess its 8 miles long and flows over 3 ft per day. the walks to the sights here are almost just as good as the sight itself. beautiful landscape. there are lots of stuff to do way up high on and by the glacier... lots of ice climbs and other hikes that would be fun, but we just dont have time. every place we go it seems i could spend at least 3 or 4 days doing all the things to do here. some places a whole week. and still not see and do everything. it is overwhelming to decide!
Sunday, 2/20 day 31
big travel day... franz josef to queenstown. drove down the west coast today... beautiful drive, the west coast is very scenic. we stopped at some random cafe in the middle of no where and it was an interesting feel, reminded me of home... you had the old folks all having breakfast together, newpapers out and coffee steaming, just chatting away. looked a lot like small town nebraska. stopped at a place along the road called knight's point... it was a look out spot where you looked straight out into the ocean, and i guess from this point there was no other land mass between you and Antarctica... just miles and miles of water. we also stopped at a place off the road called thunder creek falls... about a 5 minute walk through some beautiful bush and wal-ah. very amazing water fall, one of holly's favorite in all NZ. pretty cool stuff. more driving. lots of sky blue waters, towering mountains, small farms, pine trees, ocean views, pebble beaches and stretches of jungly bush. one particular part is a freeze frame in my mind... on the left side of the road picture a field thick with yellow flowers with a neat wooden fence around the field. at the end of the fence imagine a neat line of tall skinny dark green pine trees, neatly arranged. the green of the trees making a great contrast to the yellow of the flowers. on the right side of the road was open farm land, bright light green very short grass, like that of spring, with a couple small farm buildings in the distance, cattle and sheep scattered about in the fields grazing peacefully. the back drop to all of this... looming in the distance, as well as sitting in front of a long stretch of open road leading on before us, are the southern alps of new zealand. breath taking. we stopped in wanaka for lunch. i had a peice of elephant fish from a street vendor. it was very good. a popular meal here is 'fish and chips.' you can find fish and chips joints pretty much everywhere you go. (sounds more like 'fush and chups' sometimes) you get fried fish usually and thick french fries. quite the meal. upon leaving wanaka we picked up a german hitch hiker named christov. christov was a technician of some kind, not more than a few years older than me, and very nice. a funny story about him was... he was telling us he had met this guy from japan who had been biking around new zealand for 2 years running. pretty impressive. it is very common to see travelers biking... all their packs loaded onto their bikes. i wouldnt want to climb some of these hills on a bike, so hats off to them. anyways... when we were driving to queenstown from wanaka we saw this guy riding his bike up a massive hill and he had a japan flag flying from a small poll at the end of his bike as well as a japan biking jersey on. christov said he thought it was the same dude he met earlier in his travels as we passed the biker. we stopped at the top of the hill to give the van a breather and take some pics and the guy caught up to us. he stopped to take a picture too. so we were like... man christov, you should go over and say hi!! so christov did and it turns out it wasnt the same guy he had met earlier! bummer. it was so funny cause the biker guy had no clue what was happening. good stuff. the last 20 minutes or so to queenstown we spent driving by a huuuuuuge lake called lake wakatipu. beautiful lake, with mountains coming straight out of it. really really light blue color. what is cool about queenstown is its built around an inlet on the lake. nice place to have a town, very scenic, really a sweet place. the home of the first bungy jump. random fact... ive heard many new zealanders call a jacket a jersey. odd. anyhow, two words come to mind first when i think of queenstown... energy and excitement. it is a tourist town, holly said at any given time, tourists may make up 1/2 of the population. pretty crazy. very nice feel to it though, surprisingly. queenstown is also famous for its crazy night life. so tonight we went out to a nice authentic mexican restaurant where i paid $26 for a mediocre burrito. i split a liter of kiwi margarita with christina and trick, which was priced at $53... $18 a piece. it was served in the typical small glass... maybe holding a standard cup of liquid. i had one and half of these. it was the most expensive one and a half cups of beverage i have ever had. but i guess you have to live a little. the margarita though was real good. the best margarita ive ever had...(better have been for $18!) it was frosty cold with thousands of tiny frozen bits in it, very refreshing. after supper we visited two local pubs... willies bar and the buffalo club. i had two unique drinks throughout the night, fun to try my first new zealand beer... one was a drink called Monteith Brewing Co's Radler Bier and the other called Tui East India Pale Ale, from the tap. i am not a big fan of beer but this stuff was really good. good of flavor to it... light and smooth, goes down with a warm feeling. both of these were light beers, dark beers far out number the light. we were fortunate enough to be there during happy hours as well so one was $3 and the other $4... usually they are at least double that. clutch. the guys stayed out the latest tonight so i had some good man time with austin and trick. i dont know where jake was. also talked to a guy from Connecticut tonight... he takes people sky diving for his job. i asked him if he had experienced any scary moments and e told me he has been doing it for a long time and has had to rely on his back-up shoot about 15 times. the back up cute is the last resort, so pretty scary times. the funny thing about it is the people never know when this happens, he just acts like nothing is wrong. crazy. i got tired the fastest of the three so i said my goodbyes and headed back to the hostile, and had some good time with the Lord on a bench by the lake. i saw it, and it was so peaceful looking in the dark so i just had to do it. the sound of the water lapping the bank was very soothing.
Monday, 2/21
this was catch up day. laundry, cooking, emails, blogging, taking a look at the budget and financial situation, trying to contact some people in Australia for scuba diving, etc. we also had a great couple of hours at queenstown's gondola and luge. the gondola took us up the side of a really big hill/small mountain where we got great views of the city and the lake, mountains. real cool. and the luge was really fun. i didnt even know what it was... basically these little karts that you race down the hill on a curvy track... really fun to race people. definately had some wipe outs. good stuff. my favorite part about today was my run. ran by the lake on a track going out of town called the sunshine by track, great scenery of course, lake on one side, jungle on the other... cant beat it. love the running here. absolutely dig it. it definitely fits me like a glove. the was the way back... back into town... turn on your eye of the tiger music. i dont know what it is but this town just gets you excited. as i was entering the city limits on the lakefront i imagined myself winning a big international race of some kind. ive never been in boston or ran the marathon there but this place definitly has the potential to hold the same kind of electric atmosphere i imagine that race having. i was hauling it of course by this point, full throttle... i could just hear someone saying: "And the American... from some no name town in the state of Nebraska... is in the leeead! on the home stretch in the queen's city!..." needless to say i got some suprised... almost startled looks as i continued running into town trying to calculate my path and anticipate where other pedestrians wouldnt be... great times.
Tuesday, 2/22
free day number 2 in queenstown was a marvelous one. i booked a trip to milford sound, a world heritage site. you gotta be one of the best natural wonders of the world to be a world heritage site, and this place definitely lived up to its classification. all i can say is, if you go to new zealand, you MUST go to this place. its a glacier carved fiord. HUGE mountains coming straight out of the water. awesome. i left early for this thing and we had a 5 hour drive on a coach to get there. the drive was amazing. we stopped in Te Anau for a toliet break and snacks then the drive got interesting. just outside of Te Anau is where Fiordland national park is... this is one of the most beautiful places in all new zealand and the world. you could spend months in this place. thick rain forest, only see 100 sunny days a year here, 7 meters of precipitation (a meter is over 3 ft.... thats like 22 ft of rainfall) you got the southern alps all over, some of the most dangerous roads in NZ, over 40 potential avalanche sites... the weather gets so nasty in the winter that they shut a good portion of the park down, its got four types of beach forrest, sits directly over multiple fault lines... this place is nuts. it is home to the world famous Milford Track... one of the most beautiful hikes in the world. to even get a chance at the milford track you have to reserve spot over 1 year in advance. i wont even begin to describe it. there is a certain awe about the place that you cant experience unless your there. even the best of pictures (and there is some real good ones... look up milford sound somewhere) dont even touch it. and what do you know... only 100 sunny days in the year and we caught one today! nice work. the drive through the small portion of the park that we saw was stunning, then we got to the sounds and had a nice 2 hour boat cruise through them with a ginormous buffet lunch. on a boat, good food, in one of the most beautiful places in the world. a small slice of heaven. then we booked it back to queenstown. arriving at 8 pm a little over 12 hours after leaving this morning. had an amazing night run through the queenstown gardens tonight and along the lake front... beautiful to see the city lights on the water... the gardens sit on a peninsula into the lake so you can look out over the lake and see the city strech onward along the waters edge... amazing... the gardens had a beautiful gazebo in it and a spectacular sprinkler type thing that shoots the water of one of the ponds into the air... that was all lit up. running through the wharf was sweet... seeing couple through the windows of nice restaurants enjoying a nice dinner together... just gives you the warm fuzzies every time :) i was exhausted but for some odd reason, to top the night off, i joined the others who were mid way through a pub crawl in the down town area... 6 bars, 9 pm to 2 am, an organized thing called the 'big night out' lots of dancing and loud music bars stayed open specifically for the event... i didnt have anything to drink but it was fun to tag along through 2 of the bars. since bump and grind dancing is not my style, i just danced like a foolish man (the best type of dancing) with some drunk people who didnt really have a good grip of what was going on... and had a great time with it. came late, left early, and slept hard.
wow that was heeps of writing and the crazy part is i left most things out of the story! wishing everyone well from NZ. im andrew laflin.... good day!
Wellington, by the way is not a very big city. its about 180,000 people in the city and about twice that if you count the suburbs. its at the very south tip of the north island and sits tucked in on the edge of a bay that i dont know the name, which eventually leads out to ocean. there is a good amount of the city that is on the flat land right next to the water but also a good part that extends into the hills surrounding the harbor. a city wrapped around a large bay, extending into the hills. so in a lot of places, once you start getting away from the downtown area, you are going straight up hills for awhile. if this place had ice, people would be in big trouble with these hills. extremely beautiful, especially at night. i saw several professional panorama shots of it while here and its really great. today started in the Te Papa museum. The catch phrase for Te Papa is "our place" as it is NZ's national museum. Its all about new zealand, its history, its people, how it came to be, the culture, arts, sciences, you name it. this place was huge, the type of place you could probably spend a week in and still not see everything/read all the interesting stuff/interact with all the exhibits. it had 5 floors, maybe 6 actually, and had all this random stuff about it. very interactive based, very modern feel to the museum. this one exhibit had this fake house that had a blib about a massive earthquake in NZ awhile back and at the end it would shake to give you a feeling of what an earth quake is like, pretty cool. it also had the heaviest colossial or giant squid ever caught and one of the only ones on display in the entire world. it had a complete exhibit on the squid, this massive animal preserved in a tank for observing... eyes the size of soccer balls. it had a movie about how the squid lives, super interesting. it lives really deep in the ocean where almost no light is so having huge eyes helps it to see. crazy to think about all the things that live down in depths that almost all of us will never see... they all go on living down there every day, just like we go about our lives on the surface every day. it really gets me thinking about how big the world is, how many living things there are in it. amazing to think about God creating it all, how much creativity, power, imagination it must have taken. truly spectacular. one dislplay was "bush city." this was an outdoor area where they had all types of plant life that lived in new zealand all growing together in different sections. several levels to bush city, amazing to see the diversity of plant life in one place. it had lots on the maori people, so that was interesting, and we had the priviledge of eating some traditional maori food... a main component was mussels, not something i eat every day. it was actually pretty good. definately different yet good. one entire floor was devoted to this guy named brian brake... a renowned photographer from new zealand that traveled the world taking all sorts of pictures. very moving and powerful... just amazing all the life that happens on this earth... everything from an american doctor doing surgery on a young girl's skull in India, with only simple tools and local anesthetic, all while the girl's uncle has a hold of her ankles, kneeling by the make shift operating table (which appears to be in the middle of a market place) and he is crying... to President Eisenhower speaking at the first meeting of NATO. Pictures from all over the world of random things over 40 years. i finished today by climbing mt. victoria, which looks over wellingtion, it was rainy and cloudy today, so not the best views of the city but the park was beautiful. a massive park with multiple tracks stretching the length as well as leading to the top. this 'mountain' is not an actual mountain but its still pretty high. the park is where they filmed a couple sets of the Lord of the Rings. Since the sets have long been taken down it is sometimes difficult to recognize these places, so to see/find most you have to pay for a tour with special guides that get you to the place and sort of explain how the set was situated so you can kind of imagine how it was. i was pretty pumped to find 'the hobbits hideout' which is the place in the first movie, the fellowship of the ring, when they have just begun their journey, stolen veggies from a local farmer, and encounter the first black rider that comes after them. when frodo says: "get off the road!" and they hop down off the rode to hide. pretty neat to see what frodo calls 'the road' that they were on. the park also made for a great place for some reading and time with the Lord.
Monday, 2/7/2010
today was an early wake up, 4:40. we made our way to the south island today, very exciting. to do this we were at the water's edge at 5 am to take the 'interislander' a vehical ferry, to the other side. was about a 3 hour jaunt. the views coming into the south island from sea were incredible. once on land we made a pitt stop in Picton, which had many tourists, lots of elderly people hanging out. then we made the beautiful 2 hour drive to Nelson. it was perfect weather today, sunny and bright. this part of the country had many many vineyards and farms. wine country. vineyards would stretch on both sides of the road for miles, with large rolling bluffs, everything is REALLY green, all types of fruit trees, nursieries of different trees, the bluffs differing in colors, some golds, dark greens, light greens, short grasses, long grasses, scattered trees and bushes, stands of thick pines, man.... i cant describe it. some housing along the road but fairly spread out. small simple farm houses. got to our YHA hostile at noon. cooked a nice big steak for lunch, yea baby. a nice old man from from france saw how simply i was making it and loaned me some fixings, it was funny, he was like: aw you cant make it like that! my futile or crazy methods at cooking continue to amuse the people who see me in the kitchen. i get the job done, and have a laugh at it, so it works for me :) talked to a young gal from Japan for awhile who has been working here for 4 months. interesting story, a bit hard to understand, and very neat gal. this place is really clean and well kept, i have been very impressed with the hostiles. after lunch we went shopping for groceries for our next expedition. had a 45 min run on a path on the outskirts of nelson. absolutely gorgeous run. very nice path. a river ran right next to it. i dont think i have been on a run where i havent been right next to some body of water. the water was very clear and there were many stones big and small in the river so it made for some scenic rapid type things. at one point there was a small wall of rocks that ran the width of the river that the water fell over. very neat. on the other side of the trail was the backyards of residential houses. ALL of them had beautiful gardens and flowers along the back of their backyards, directly next to the path. so pretty. eventually i got outside of nelson and started to go into some hills when i turned around. i listened to one of my messages by paul washer on my ipod and was very convicted about the question: 'what does my faith cost me?' the more i thought the more i felt that my faith in many ways has become comfortable, convenient... that i have lost my willingness to become uncomfortable, to go the extra mile for the purposes God has called me to. ill sacrifice when i feel like it. ill be available to Him when it works into my schedule, when i get all the things i think i need to get done first... ill go out to lunch with that person... you know, that person that is not the easiest or most enjoyable to be around, but surely i cant give my whole afternoon to just spending time together... that would just take way too much time and inconvenience me too much. challenge my comfort level too much. i felt it had become a lot about what i want, a 'me first' type thing. i even saw this in the trip... i have been spending a lot of time on my own away from the group doing the things i want to do with our free time, seeing the places i want to see... regardless of what anyone else decides to do. how do i expect to have a positive influence in other people's lives if i never spend time with them? if i am always off in my own world doing my own thing? investing into them... only when its convenient for me. how about this: after knowing i am a christian and spending time with me, will Christ have a more favorable reputation because they met me or less favorable? i know i am not here to please man, but God... yet i also know that i am Christ's ambassador. so in short, i had a lot of things rolling around in my brain on that run. good stuff though. we had a nice supper together as a group when i returned and i met rachel and scott... the directors of pacific discovery for the first time. they live here in nelson. very neat people. scott is the epitome of chill. had some intense games of 2 on 2 fooseball in the lounge after supper... intense. we probably played for 45 minutes. dont tell anyone but... i had a loss column of zero. not that it wasnt challenged many times, because it was! we had fun doing celebrations... different handshakes, high fives, fist pounds, chest bumps you name it. it almost became more of who had the better celebration that the game itself.
Tuesday, 2/8
we drove 2 hours to kahurangi national park. set up camp. we met andrew and dawn, our guides through the park. very impressed by their knowledge and leadership abilities. new zealand has a lot of these bugs: wasps, sandflies, and bumble bees. every where. swarms of them. sandflies rival the annoyance of mosquitos. they are bigger than a gnat but smaller than a fly. they bite and leave really itchy spots that dont go away for weeks. bug spray doesnt work the greatest, the best defense i found is long sleeves and pants. the bumble bees are also thick. not too aggressive which is good. they are just very curious and they hover around you and your stuff, in your tent, all the time. these creatures were the topic of much of much groaning among the group. after camp was set, we geared up in overalls, and hard hats for some caving in blue creek cave. it took some doing to get to the cave, a walk through thick bush and across an steep incline to get there. the cave was amazing. we spent a good portion of the afternoon exploring it. at one point we shut off all the flashlights and it was pitch pitch dark. Kitty sang us an old irish folk song... it was sweet to hear her high, elegant voice echo through the cave.
Wednesday, 2/9
today was canyoning day. we learned how to do what they call abseiling... or repelling. the canyon was a thin long channel cut by water, very twisty, and had many fairly sizable drops... big enough that you could not jump down and steep enough that you could not climb down. that is where the abseiling came in. very fun. basically you have a harness around your waist, with a rope anchored at the top, sliding through a carabiner on your harness. you control the speed with your hands, and lean back and walk yourself down the slope with your feet. should your feet slip or footing is bad you face plant into the rock. so it becomes a challenge when the rock face becomes uneven and there is no where to put your feet. we repelled over 10 drops through the afternoon. its quite the process when you have to get 15 all safely down these places. this meant at times lots of waiting on others to get down. it is interesting to observe the emotional changes in myself and the group throughout the day. when we start getting tired or impatient. when our moods get into a 'blah' phase. this is discouraging... how you could possibly not be in a fantastic mood every minute of the day since we are in NZ... but unfortunately significant bouts of complaining and negative energy still exist at times. this is a challenge to me, almost wearing at times, yet a terrific opportunity to remain positive and encouraging of others. when your only happy when everything is perfect, what have you really gained? it also tests that unconditional love that i always desire to be able to extend more of. its easy to love someone who is nice to you. not so easy when they give you a snappy response or a poor attitude. the sun shining through the trees above the canyon and the mouth of the canyon itself, was beautiful. after we got through the canyon, i had a massive conversation with Kitty about the difference between protestants and catholics. we probably talked for over an hour. very deep. definitely gave me some things to think about, question, and explore. she is very knowledgeable about her faith and why she believes what she believes, more than any catholic i have ever met. a big topic of discussion was communion... she believes the blood and bread are actually Christ's body and blood... while i see it as a symbol of remembrance. we talked about the church, Christ's followers, how it should be organized, and ultimately discussed the role of the pope. we talked about the role of mary in the catholic faith and how/why they pray to other saints. very interesting. we discussed the origins of scripture, how it was written, who wrote it... whether or not Martin Luther made changes to / edited the scripture during the reformation... crazy stuff. i need to do some homework, and that is a good thing. it feels like so many of my views and perspective about pretty much everything are being tested right now and it is mentally exhausting to sort it all out sometimes! to give a fair look at ideas, possibilities that are presented as a result of being in a new place with new people. you start to feel like you dont really know anything and your perspective is so limited and small. to make a definitive statement about anything seems dangerous because if feels that someone or something you see/experience will expose a loop hole, exception, or provide facts or evidence that shows you are flat out wrong.
Thursday, 2/10
Today was day 1 of a 3 day trek through the park. our ultimate goal is to get to the summit of mt. owen. and return through some jagged rocks on the other side. the park is ginormous. it has been quite chilly in the mornings here... not what i expected for summer at all. it warms up fine, but it can be down right cold early on. we needed thermals, hats, gloves, everything. could see our breath. today was the start of living strickly out of a backpack: food, clothing, tents. the first 3 hours was up a long very steep incline, it was probably close to 45 angle of incline for some stretches. tough going with a 50 lb pack and loggs, bushes, rocks, all over the place. christina was sick today and ended up having to return down after lunch. sarah also stayed back in nelson. after that the way was a little more friendly for a bit, then we went down a section of steep decline called the devil's staircase. very steep. after that we went through an interesting stretch of forest called ghost valley. very interesting trees. we stopped at a small stream for some fesh water, so that was cool. also went through a section of trees... im not sure the scientific name but they looked exactly like some of the trees in Dr. Suess books. really cool. then was a section slightly up hill through a dried up creek bed, large rocks, lots of rock hopping. arrived at a place called granity pass hut and camped there for the night. we saw another lord of the rings site... where the fellowship characters hide from the crows that tried to spy on them in the first movie. sweet. they have lots of gray robins here, they and they are extremely friendly. when we move through the bush, they are attracted to us because we stir up bugs, which = food. i got one such robin, who i affectionately named 'rob,' to land on the tip of my boot. it was sweet. the forest is largely beach forest. beach trees are very thin and tall and their branches/leaves spread out very wide horizontally... they almost look like plates. very thin, small, circular, flat leaves. makes for an interesting canopy. lots of stringy moss stuff... like we saw on the islands. the evening in the hut was quite entertaining. we hung out with these guys from the north island... comedians. they were in their early to mid thirties i'd say. we gathered around a huge table in the hut and had a good time discussing culture and we sang a lot of classic, popular songs together. i am amazed at how much they know about the states. our media influence... music and film... is huge, not just here, but as i have come to realize, all over the world. i think a big reason is not many other places have the resources to develop and spread it like the U.S. does.
Friday, 2/11
today is granity pass to mt. owen, and down to lake bulmer. it was an early rise and another long steep climb to begin the day, climbing up a place called sentinel hill. today there was no bush, we are higher now, so plant life is very short, tough, hard, and sometimes even sharp. mostly short grasses and shrubs. a typical alpine environment. it was slow going climbing mt. owen today, but man was it worth it once we got to the top. great views of the surrounding mountains. the different varieties of rocks, cliffs, ledges, formations is amazing. we have a hiking game going on where someone was chosen by the drawing of leaves (one leaf was different than others) and this person is the hiking villain. this person's task is to 'kill' all the others in the group without being detected or accused. there is a sign that the villain shows a person that signifies that that person is dead. the person then must make a public act of their 'death' but it must be at least 5 minutes after the sign was made, so the villain has a fair shot not getting caught. if the person just dramatically died on the spot you could figure it out pretty easily. so there has been some rather interesting acting jobs. and the villain went undetected today. the way down mt. cook was pretty challenging. the rocks are very sharp and a lot of them with pointy edges pointing vertically. some are sharp like knives so a fall would result in a fairly bad cuts. we had to be careful. its hard to get around because you have to balance on rocks to get down, uneven surfaces, gaps in the rocks, places where you walk on points instead of flat faces, and you sometimes you cant use your hands to get a hold of things for balance or assistance because the stuff around you is too sharp to grab. there were a couple very steep declines where we had to go one at a time, pretty intense. one particular place there was a gap, no more than a foot and half wide, in the rocks. there was nothing for a long, long ways down below the gap. both sides of the gap where also exposed to a long fall. basically two big parts of the mountain coming together at a very skinny point. it was freaky. a slip of the foot and things could get real scary. so it was a challenge to get everyone across. not a big deal in all reality... all you really had to do is have one foot on one side, put the other foot on the other side and then shift your body/weight from one side to the other. a simple move, but man it was freaky. on this side of the mountain we did not have any type of trail we were just following andrew's GPS. it was a great challenge today, i loved being out where hardly anyone else goes. today we got to see where the LOTR characters exited the mines of moria. when we got out of the rocks, we went down a long wide valley with long slippery grasses, as well as some really sharp grasses called 'spainard.' after the valley we dropped down another very steep but short section of rock to a lake, lake bulmer. andrew says hardly anyone knows about this lake. it was pretty small for a lake in new zealand but very cool, completely surrounded by towering walls of rock with the exception of one end of the lake which is where the bush started again. we camped by the lake tonight and had a camp fire which was nice. cold in the evenings.
Saturday, 2/12 day 23
i really enjoyed today. it was back in the bush, still descending but way more gradually. we had two drops to get by... which we used ropes to help us down the drops, not near as steep as previous ones, fairly easy. the bush was thick and beautiful. moss covers everything... rocks, trees, fallen logs, etc. we moved very quickly today, much easier going. on several occasions we were on the edge of the mountain, with a huge wall of rock hundreds of feet above on one side and a single line of trees, bushes separating us from the valley below on the other side. fantastic views. once we were basically back down, we had go the rest of the way out of the park. this involved crossing small streams 7 different times. i was having quite a time keeping my feet today. slipping and losing my balance everywhere, but not completely falling. ironic because the rest of the trip, the most difficult parts, i had been extremely graceful. the rocks in the water were really really slippery so that made things interesting. i was at the back of the line with Trick and he had noticed my difficulties. at one point i was joking with Trick Kitty about how out of all the times id lost my balance, i was determined to not completely lose my feet, and about this point i reached up to grab a smaller tree, smaller but very sturdy looking, to help myself over a small section of water and it completely snapped from the very base, apparently rotten at the bottom. really funny moment. a short time later, i stepped on a patch of ground on the edge of the track with a deep ditch below to the side and the patch of 'ground' gave way, leaving one leg going straight down. i cant imagined what it looked like from the front or back of me. walking just fine then bam! my right leg just disappears... it was quite a deep ditch so i really didnt want to fall all the way down so i managed to save myself with my other leg and hands, doing a single leg squat up and out of the nice air hole that i just made. perhaps the funniest moment of all was our experience with a large horizontal log stretching across the path, just below shoulder height. it was a tough call, which way you should get through: go under or over. Tick decided he was going over. with a big pack on your back, it is a difficult task to go any distance vertically. and pulling yourself up is a quite a daunting task at times. he got one arm and one leg on the log easily. with about half of him on the log he looked like he needed just a little extra 'umph' to get all the way over, so i gave him a little push on his pack. just so happened to be about the same time that he got enough 'umph' by himself. now... he had too much umph. so: imagine a 6'4" dude with arms wrapped around a large mossy log, legs now straddling it, also wrapping around the log, now spinning around the log, at an impressive speed, holding on for dear life. Trick successfully went full circle around the log, going all the way underneath and spinning back up where he began. he ended up safely passing over. it was the most funny thing i have witnessed in a long, long time. it kept replaying in my mind and we were laughing so hard our eyes were watering. we must have laughed for 10 minutes about it. oh my. we finished the track out of the park and headed on back to nelson.
Sunday, 2/13, day 24
SKY DIVE DAY. about 7 of us went. 16500 ft. 70 seconds of free fall. falling the distance of one football field every 2 seconds. absolutely cool. on the way there austin plugged his ipod into the van and we listening to the likes of ACDC, Linkin Park, and eminem... you know... holistic, educational, calming music. after a short drive to the place, we got a short briefing on the jump, geared up in the jump suit, hat, eye wear, harness. loaded up the small single engine plane. this had no seats we just sat on the floor, it wasnt even big enough to stand up in. we took 20 minutes to climb to our altitude and jump point, final instructions, green light goes on, door goes open, we slide out onto the outside of the plane, stomach does a little flip, and we let go... the first 2 seconds was nuts... we did a slow 360 flip and i really felt the change from not falling to falling... very fast, kind of like that roller coaster drop feeling. then we got into our falling position, belly down, back up, legs bent, arms out. some people thought the free fall went by really fast, i felt it seemed way longer than 70 seconds. really cool. i could see so much. the ocean, some mountains, nelson. we fell through a cloud, that was pretty cool too. most of the falling felt more like flying its a very peaceful sensation. then the cute came out and we had a nice 5 minute float to the ground. the guy swung our cute around a few times, the horizon shifted around pretty good, kinda made me nauseous but it was sweet. landed safely. if you go skydiving dont forget to pop your ears, to equalize the pressure in them, as you are falling. i didnt and my ears really hurt afterwords. quick change in pressure = tough on the ears. austin threw up on the way back from the place... felt bad for the man. he was not feeling good. another interesting part of the day was a long conversation with some german ladies at supper. good day. crazy day.
Monday, 2/14 day 25
left nelson to go to nelson lakes national park, about 2 hours. first day of our second volunteer project. we spent most of the day planting native plants which they are trying to re-introduce into the area, while taking out other pest plants. pretty interesting to learn the background info about the project. after a few hours of planting native grasses and trees we had a good swim in rotoiti lake. huge lake fed by water running off from the mountains. this is a picture-esc place. large mountains in the distance coming straight out of the lake. usually the waters are calm, creating sort of a mirror image effect. beautiful, cold, clear, clean water. really cold. refreshing after a afternoon of hot planting. did some back flips off the doc. holly got a great air born pic of me with the mountains in the background. pretty sweet. took a 30 minute nap after the time in the lake and then went for a 50 minute run on the edge of the lake. a great dirt path with scenic bush on my right and lake views on the left. amazing run. really reflected on the path i have taken in the last 23 years and all the things that have happened. i think it would be unfortunate if the only time our lives flashed before our eyes is the time when we die. if we never think about such things we never have time to truly express our appreciation and thankfulness for the life, truly realize the amazing story each one of us has... and appreciate the author. i challenge you to take some time soon to reflect a bit. i started from the earliest day i could remember... went through pre-school, elementary, middle school, high school, college and now. thought about all the people that have been involved in my story, teachers, coaches, community people, family, friends, the places ive been, things ive seen, experiences, jobs, summers, winters, joys, sorrows, challenges, defeats, victories... on and on and on... and most of all... God's faithfulness through the entire journey. how the small details of life seem to add up and make sense in a bigger picture. we had some good supper when i got back and i ended my day by learning how to play cribbage. pretty fun game!
Tuesday, 2/15
Today our mission was to work on some water drains on a walking track up into the mountains. we climbed the track all day and ended our day by staying the night in an old shut down skii lodge. the views from this track were fantastic... it hardly felt like a work day. great views of the lakes, mountains, valleys around the park. amazing. we cleaned up a hut about half way up and made supper in the lodge. the lodge was an incredibly interesting place. it was shut down in the 1980s and looks like it hasnt been touched since then. fascinating, feels like you are stepping back in time about 30 years. we played a couple intense games of jungle speed and a team game of cribbage and called it a day. ah yes, i met the first people from the states that i have seen so far today. kind of a nice thing.
Wednesday, 2/16
had some great time with the Lord early this morning outside of the lodge with the company of the mountains. it did not take long to come down from here and we had some good time in the lake again today. today steph, alli, austin and i swam out to a bouy a good distance from shore... it was a really cold swim but really fun. felt accomplished to swim a good distance. then to warm up, karen and austin buried me in a pile of rocks on the beach. kind of funny looking.
Thursday, 2/17 day 28
did some more planting of some native vegetation again today. very satisfying work. the sand flys were the thickest ive seen them yet, but that did not deter us from doing some great work, having a great attitude about it, having some laughs, and enjoying our time together. today my mind was in a goofy place, i kept thinking of these silly connections. so my job today was digging holes for the plants, mainly trees today. others did the planting, and others did watering and put up these protection net type things around the plants. so there is a pop song out and the chorus goes "ive got a feeling... that tonight's gunna be a good night..." so instead of having a good feeling about the night, i had good feelings about the holes i was digging. singing... out loud... "ive got a feeling... that this hole's gunna be a good hole..." very stupid, but very entertaining. help keep the mind of more unpleasant aspects of the work. i read Ephesians 5&6 today and i had two goals... love like Christ loves... unconditionally... (well, a good attempt at least) and to give thanks in all circumstances. Ephesians 5:20 says "Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God." thats the king james. interesting to have the KJV for my Bible, never got into king james much but i like it. more swimming in the lake after our work, and a relaxing evening! Great weather the all week.
Friday, 2/18 day 29
i got up early today for some time with the Lord. time in prayer was great... i prayed for many things and many people. the biggest prayer today was to become more like Christ. that He would increase and i would decrease. this trip has been very humbling... a lot of character flaws exposed. im sure many of them have always been evident but ive just never realized it, until this unique opportunity has allowed me to look at myself through fresh new lenses. it was some what of a desperate prayer... knowing my own feeble will power is not enough to slice through the thick walls of the dark selfishness strongholds of my being. i have become clearly shown that i can NOT make the necessary changes on my own and am dependent on His work in me, as well as moment to moment decisions on my part, to make it happen. your either going forward or backwards... very few moments you are standing still. we left nelson lakes today after a short morning of work. it was a sad day, i liked this place a lot. i will miss the lake. we drove to Punakaiki, about 2 hours. our hostile was very unique... it was named Te Nikau and it was more of a house/condo style. our group had it all to our selves. very scenic place... it sits in the middle of the bush, 5 minutes away from a beautiful section of beach. it had a huge rock/boulder built into the floor of the kitchen... had a very unique, yet cool style to the place. there was a nice trail, the Truman trail that went through the jungle as well. very neat. i went down to the beach with austin and manisha, meeting ali on the way. we had fun jumping in the water and crashing against some oncoming waves. real cold water. nachos for supper tonight... 5 pans of beans, refried beans, beef, and tortilla chips. all you could eat and more. the cheese heeping. condiments were jake's home made guacamole which was excellent, sour cream, and salsa. all of this topped some warm tasty rice & sauce. i dont know how they did it but it was so good. it had the quality and taste of a really nice restaurant. certain members also completed the push up challenge... P.U.C. for short. pronounced 'puck.' this has been an comical part of our trip... it was an idea came up by austin, trick and i to keep in some sort of shape. what PUC is: a latter of push ups done in a group. where the first person does 1 push up, waits for the others. then he does 2 push ups, until everyone has gotten to 10 push ups.... the latter is fifty some odd push ups and probably the most difficult part is holding the push up position while the other people complete their push-ups, no breaks. so many inside jokes have come from our various PUC sessions. hilarious. we have determined that PUC is done to prevent the softy. the softy is a person who has the quality of being soft. not chiseled. out of prime form. being soft is often linked to excessive amounts of time spent on the couch, and folding of the hands. if softy is used in the plural form... softies... it refers to those happy parts of the body that tend to be the first to show extra weight that may be obtained. this is different for each individual but usually includes but is not limited to: the belly, sides of abdomen, buttocks, thighs, ankles, upper arms, chin, cheeks, and/or neck. we joked that tonights meal could open the possibility of "the return of the softies." the joking about this keeps going on... it is so ridiculously stupid but for some reason we find it extremely comical. i had a hard time not laughing, just writing this. when i attempted explain PUC and softy(ies) to Holly in the most serious of tones, she looked at me like i had lost my mind. it was SO funny. we laughed for minutes. the type of laughter that requires the pounding of a nearby object with a fist, in this case, a table. i am also having a good time with my hair... on top of the head and the face. i have not shaved my face in 19 days now. looking a little nasty, shaggy, thin attempts at a beard/go-tee. its made progress but its still not my style. in addition to the weak attempt at a beard, i also sported a fo-hawk today (fake mo-hawk). all i can say is, its nice to be in a place where no one knows you. its been great to open my mind to other possibilities and to get creative again on how to mix it up a little. i am convinced that life is not meant to be boring. there are too many possibilities of activities, food, entertainment, service, relationship, i could go on, to have life be boring. one day i will probably have to re-read my own writing to remind myself, but it is true. i just have to get my mind right to see it. easy in a different place, not so easy at home in the regular routine of things. sometimes i think i will have to force myself to mix it up... just for the sake of remembering that life is not supposed to be boring. that it is my choice to make it that way or make it another way. life can be made un-boring in the most simple, mundane activities... even things we do repetitively. the mind must simply be open to seeing the small miracles that make up our daily existence.
Saturday, 2/19
today was great. we drove from Punakaiki to Franz Josef and had a kayaking adventure half way in the middle. we also saw a park containing the pancake rocks... a very interesting group of rocks formations that look exactly what their name implies. tall relatively skinny columns of rock cut by wind and water with thousands of indentions on the sides and through the width of the rocks to look exactly like really tall stacks of pancakes. lots of columns of pancakes. this was close to the coast so some cool views of the water and coastline as well. we kayaked out to a place called okarito lagoon. it is the largest unmodified wetland in new zealand. there are some extremely rare wild life that live here, such as the white heron. this is the only place in all of new zealand that this bird lives, and we were fortunate enough to see one! there are a lot of mountains and glaciers in this part of the country so the water is a really light blue color... almost like sky blue but a little different, hard to describe, really beautiful. in some places the water is a really light gray or even white because of all the sediment in the water from the glaciers. when we got to franz josef we took a hike for a couple hours to see the glacier... very very cool. never seen a glacier before. hard to even begin to describe it. we saw the tip of it coming down between two mountains. white snowy, icey looking with some brilliant light blue parts in it. ive been told that it is very rare to see glaciers come so close to the coast. beach and glacier in close proximity = cool. i guess its 8 miles long and flows over 3 ft per day. the walks to the sights here are almost just as good as the sight itself. beautiful landscape. there are lots of stuff to do way up high on and by the glacier... lots of ice climbs and other hikes that would be fun, but we just dont have time. every place we go it seems i could spend at least 3 or 4 days doing all the things to do here. some places a whole week. and still not see and do everything. it is overwhelming to decide!
Sunday, 2/20 day 31
big travel day... franz josef to queenstown. drove down the west coast today... beautiful drive, the west coast is very scenic. we stopped at some random cafe in the middle of no where and it was an interesting feel, reminded me of home... you had the old folks all having breakfast together, newpapers out and coffee steaming, just chatting away. looked a lot like small town nebraska. stopped at a place along the road called knight's point... it was a look out spot where you looked straight out into the ocean, and i guess from this point there was no other land mass between you and Antarctica... just miles and miles of water. we also stopped at a place off the road called thunder creek falls... about a 5 minute walk through some beautiful bush and wal-ah. very amazing water fall, one of holly's favorite in all NZ. pretty cool stuff. more driving. lots of sky blue waters, towering mountains, small farms, pine trees, ocean views, pebble beaches and stretches of jungly bush. one particular part is a freeze frame in my mind... on the left side of the road picture a field thick with yellow flowers with a neat wooden fence around the field. at the end of the fence imagine a neat line of tall skinny dark green pine trees, neatly arranged. the green of the trees making a great contrast to the yellow of the flowers. on the right side of the road was open farm land, bright light green very short grass, like that of spring, with a couple small farm buildings in the distance, cattle and sheep scattered about in the fields grazing peacefully. the back drop to all of this... looming in the distance, as well as sitting in front of a long stretch of open road leading on before us, are the southern alps of new zealand. breath taking. we stopped in wanaka for lunch. i had a peice of elephant fish from a street vendor. it was very good. a popular meal here is 'fish and chips.' you can find fish and chips joints pretty much everywhere you go. (sounds more like 'fush and chups' sometimes) you get fried fish usually and thick french fries. quite the meal. upon leaving wanaka we picked up a german hitch hiker named christov. christov was a technician of some kind, not more than a few years older than me, and very nice. a funny story about him was... he was telling us he had met this guy from japan who had been biking around new zealand for 2 years running. pretty impressive. it is very common to see travelers biking... all their packs loaded onto their bikes. i wouldnt want to climb some of these hills on a bike, so hats off to them. anyways... when we were driving to queenstown from wanaka we saw this guy riding his bike up a massive hill and he had a japan flag flying from a small poll at the end of his bike as well as a japan biking jersey on. christov said he thought it was the same dude he met earlier in his travels as we passed the biker. we stopped at the top of the hill to give the van a breather and take some pics and the guy caught up to us. he stopped to take a picture too. so we were like... man christov, you should go over and say hi!! so christov did and it turns out it wasnt the same guy he had met earlier! bummer. it was so funny cause the biker guy had no clue what was happening. good stuff. the last 20 minutes or so to queenstown we spent driving by a huuuuuuge lake called lake wakatipu. beautiful lake, with mountains coming straight out of it. really really light blue color. what is cool about queenstown is its built around an inlet on the lake. nice place to have a town, very scenic, really a sweet place. the home of the first bungy jump. random fact... ive heard many new zealanders call a jacket a jersey. odd. anyhow, two words come to mind first when i think of queenstown... energy and excitement. it is a tourist town, holly said at any given time, tourists may make up 1/2 of the population. pretty crazy. very nice feel to it though, surprisingly. queenstown is also famous for its crazy night life. so tonight we went out to a nice authentic mexican restaurant where i paid $26 for a mediocre burrito. i split a liter of kiwi margarita with christina and trick, which was priced at $53... $18 a piece. it was served in the typical small glass... maybe holding a standard cup of liquid. i had one and half of these. it was the most expensive one and a half cups of beverage i have ever had. but i guess you have to live a little. the margarita though was real good. the best margarita ive ever had...(better have been for $18!) it was frosty cold with thousands of tiny frozen bits in it, very refreshing. after supper we visited two local pubs... willies bar and the buffalo club. i had two unique drinks throughout the night, fun to try my first new zealand beer... one was a drink called Monteith Brewing Co's Radler Bier and the other called Tui East India Pale Ale, from the tap. i am not a big fan of beer but this stuff was really good. good of flavor to it... light and smooth, goes down with a warm feeling. both of these were light beers, dark beers far out number the light. we were fortunate enough to be there during happy hours as well so one was $3 and the other $4... usually they are at least double that. clutch. the guys stayed out the latest tonight so i had some good man time with austin and trick. i dont know where jake was. also talked to a guy from Connecticut tonight... he takes people sky diving for his job. i asked him if he had experienced any scary moments and e told me he has been doing it for a long time and has had to rely on his back-up shoot about 15 times. the back up cute is the last resort, so pretty scary times. the funny thing about it is the people never know when this happens, he just acts like nothing is wrong. crazy. i got tired the fastest of the three so i said my goodbyes and headed back to the hostile, and had some good time with the Lord on a bench by the lake. i saw it, and it was so peaceful looking in the dark so i just had to do it. the sound of the water lapping the bank was very soothing.
Monday, 2/21
this was catch up day. laundry, cooking, emails, blogging, taking a look at the budget and financial situation, trying to contact some people in Australia for scuba diving, etc. we also had a great couple of hours at queenstown's gondola and luge. the gondola took us up the side of a really big hill/small mountain where we got great views of the city and the lake, mountains. real cool. and the luge was really fun. i didnt even know what it was... basically these little karts that you race down the hill on a curvy track... really fun to race people. definately had some wipe outs. good stuff. my favorite part about today was my run. ran by the lake on a track going out of town called the sunshine by track, great scenery of course, lake on one side, jungle on the other... cant beat it. love the running here. absolutely dig it. it definitely fits me like a glove. the was the way back... back into town... turn on your eye of the tiger music. i dont know what it is but this town just gets you excited. as i was entering the city limits on the lakefront i imagined myself winning a big international race of some kind. ive never been in boston or ran the marathon there but this place definitly has the potential to hold the same kind of electric atmosphere i imagine that race having. i was hauling it of course by this point, full throttle... i could just hear someone saying: "And the American... from some no name town in the state of Nebraska... is in the leeead! on the home stretch in the queen's city!..." needless to say i got some suprised... almost startled looks as i continued running into town trying to calculate my path and anticipate where other pedestrians wouldnt be... great times.
Tuesday, 2/22
free day number 2 in queenstown was a marvelous one. i booked a trip to milford sound, a world heritage site. you gotta be one of the best natural wonders of the world to be a world heritage site, and this place definitely lived up to its classification. all i can say is, if you go to new zealand, you MUST go to this place. its a glacier carved fiord. HUGE mountains coming straight out of the water. awesome. i left early for this thing and we had a 5 hour drive on a coach to get there. the drive was amazing. we stopped in Te Anau for a toliet break and snacks then the drive got interesting. just outside of Te Anau is where Fiordland national park is... this is one of the most beautiful places in all new zealand and the world. you could spend months in this place. thick rain forest, only see 100 sunny days a year here, 7 meters of precipitation (a meter is over 3 ft.... thats like 22 ft of rainfall) you got the southern alps all over, some of the most dangerous roads in NZ, over 40 potential avalanche sites... the weather gets so nasty in the winter that they shut a good portion of the park down, its got four types of beach forrest, sits directly over multiple fault lines... this place is nuts. it is home to the world famous Milford Track... one of the most beautiful hikes in the world. to even get a chance at the milford track you have to reserve spot over 1 year in advance. i wont even begin to describe it. there is a certain awe about the place that you cant experience unless your there. even the best of pictures (and there is some real good ones... look up milford sound somewhere) dont even touch it. and what do you know... only 100 sunny days in the year and we caught one today! nice work. the drive through the small portion of the park that we saw was stunning, then we got to the sounds and had a nice 2 hour boat cruise through them with a ginormous buffet lunch. on a boat, good food, in one of the most beautiful places in the world. a small slice of heaven. then we booked it back to queenstown. arriving at 8 pm a little over 12 hours after leaving this morning. had an amazing night run through the queenstown gardens tonight and along the lake front... beautiful to see the city lights on the water... the gardens sit on a peninsula into the lake so you can look out over the lake and see the city strech onward along the waters edge... amazing... the gardens had a beautiful gazebo in it and a spectacular sprinkler type thing that shoots the water of one of the ponds into the air... that was all lit up. running through the wharf was sweet... seeing couple through the windows of nice restaurants enjoying a nice dinner together... just gives you the warm fuzzies every time :) i was exhausted but for some odd reason, to top the night off, i joined the others who were mid way through a pub crawl in the down town area... 6 bars, 9 pm to 2 am, an organized thing called the 'big night out' lots of dancing and loud music bars stayed open specifically for the event... i didnt have anything to drink but it was fun to tag along through 2 of the bars. since bump and grind dancing is not my style, i just danced like a foolish man (the best type of dancing) with some drunk people who didnt really have a good grip of what was going on... and had a great time with it. came late, left early, and slept hard.
wow that was heeps of writing and the crazy part is i left most things out of the story! wishing everyone well from NZ. im andrew laflin.... good day!
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