April 25, 2006
Kiwi cool
Its a rainy day today (the first truly rainy, grey and cold!), so I have time to write my blog. It is also yet another public holiday here (ANZAC day, I think, it has something to do with war victims commemoration and the day of nationhood. People wear red poppy badges on their chests (don't ask me why, only funny explanations come to my head, I guess I should do more research to give you the real explanation.. :) And all the shops are closed again. Again. AGAIN. It takes a bit of time to change our 24/7 round the clock Asian mindsets and remember that sales people also need some rest. We were quite horrified when the supermarkets closed at 6:30pm in Christchurch on the first day when we arrived. But it used to be quite the same in Finland and we didn't quite starve to death..
We've been keeping ourselves very busy here. Right now we're slowly traveling up North from the very South of the island. North is good. South is bad. The traditional European mindset has to change - "we traveled as far South as we could get, why is it so cold?!?" Northern wind is good and warm, Southern wind is cold and bad. Doesn't it sound completely insane to you? The sun also travels the wrong way. It raises on your right and sets on the left. And listen to this: at noon it is in the North! South is bad. North is good. Totally confusing, isn't it?
From Catlins we went North to Te Anau town. It is the starting point for a couple of famous hiking tracks, such as the Kepler Track. We're not ready to do multiple day trekking, we don't have equipment and tents (and neither do we have guts :), so we decided to go up to the first hut, where the real hikers sleep overnight and... yes, listen to that, we went down the same way the same day.
Thats a bit crazy, don't you think? We ended up walking 8h and 28km trip to the 1500m summit. 3/4 of the trip were ok, the last bit we just zombied out.
And the next day we already have booked kayaking trip in Milford Sound (sound is something like a fiord, but, I think it is much more sheltered and has sweet water)
So we ended up getting up at 5:30am and driving 2 hours in pouring rain to Milford Sound. But it was worth every minute of our sleep. I've never seen anything that magnificent - the rain caused hundreds of huge waterfalls to pour all over the mountains and rocks. The pictures can't really convey the breathtaking scale of the mountains.
Maybe here you can see a tiny little car making its way up the road and the huge waterfalls behind, the mountains here must be at least some 800-1000m high!
Here's some Kiwi fashion for you. Looking cool in New Zealand for beginners: put thermal underwear (longjohns), shorts on top, sandals and huge rain jacket (optional). We got suggestions to dress like that when we were buying our gear: "no need to buy rainpants, just wear some warm underwear and shorts on top, thats the best!" and we've seen a lot of people doing that.
After this kayaking trip our hearts started warming up to the Kiwi style. It is truly comfortable and warm. And besides it looks cool!
The kayaking was really great. We got very close to the fur seals that were lying on the shore trying to sleep and waving sandflies away. The weather, although cloudy, was otherwise perfect. The rain stopped right at the moment when we took off and started again when we got out of the water.
Milford Sound is notoriously wet and rainy, so we really had good luck. After 8 hours walking we did almost 6 hours kayaking, so our lower and upper body muscles were equally exercised after these 2 days. Wah... And no sauna anywhere in sight...
And some more fashionable moments at the waterfall. It was also huge, but you can't really see that in the picture.
We were happy to do less walking and kayaking, more driving next day.
Even more so, because the landscapes were really amazing on the way.
As we were going higher up to the mountains, the autum colours were getting more intense.
Until we reached the proper ruska in Arrowtown.
I have experienced 2 autumns during last year. One in Japan, another here. Not a single spring though... :(
Driving through central Otago is truly exceptional experience not only because of its beautiful colours and amazing apple orchards.
The road that we took is also known as Otago wine trail. And we took some advantage of that.
We're not so refined when it comes to wines (mostly we're very excited that the wines that we used to buy for 25-30$ in Leijonakaupunki cost around 9$ here!!!)
Some of us didn't want to leave.. :)