Matt's Homepage

I’m spent the first day of my north island adventures in New Zealand’s national capital – Wellington.  We start by wandering over to the Te Papa museum – which is only 3 blocks from the hostel. We stop at a bagel shop which had some really cool lounge/ambient techno playing on it. Very strange music selection for a bagel shop early on a weekday morning; but was cool.

I’ve noticed that music in New Zealand is a strangely mixed bag. There are New Zealand artists, which without much loss of love – are not all that great. Think folk-guitar updated with modern back-rhythms. But the lyrics are decidedly …well… uninspired and simplistic. But the majority of the radio stations you turn on are a mix of 80’s and pre-grunge 90’s music. Personally, I liked this a lot; but I was from that era. There was no Britney/Emenen/or newer stuff, but there was lots of Queen, 80’s pop, even the odd Backstreet Boys. Most other travelers I ran into had stopped going out to local live bar musicians since most of the music was pretty badly done covers of above said tunes. I attended one or two shows, and that was plenty. I hate to say it, but New Zealand is just not a mecca for live music.

The only thing they did have, and had well, was ambient/lounge/downbeat electronica – and they did it well.  It’s and odd mix of late 80’s and early 90’s modern electronica?  There was also a strange variety of Jamaican/ambient music was really big at the time.

Anyway, we went to Te Papa and went to the Lord of the Rings exhibit. Te Papa is one of the better museums that I’ve been to anywhere. It would give any museum a good run for its money – modern displays, beautiful architecture, rich exhibits. The Rings exhibit had just returned to Wellington from traveling around the world. There is little else to say than this exhibit rocked. They had every major character’s costume, swords, jewelry, props, etc on display. Each character’s props also had several 3-5 minute movies that interviewed the character, told about the costuming, how they prepped, etc. It was amazing to be right next to Aragorn’s sword, to see Elendir’s broken sword, Legolas bow and arrows, the dresses worn by Arwen, the robes of Theoden, Sauran’s outfit, etc. They also had outfits used by all extras as well. The saddles and armor of the riders of Rohan, elvin boats, etc.

There were all the creatures and miniatures used in shooting there as well. Models of just about every major scene: Minas Tirith, Mordor, the tower at Isengard, etc. There were amazing concept paintings used by for color and mood studies. They also had full-scale models of the rock troll, Gollum, and every conceivable creature used in the movie. The displays on how they 3D scanned the models (handheld 3D scanners!), animated, then populated the film with thousands of these computer characters was interesting. While I understood the concepts, the best part was that the simulated characters would actually fight each other – using real fighting techniques.  Nothing was scripted, the computer would pit them against each other one on one.

There were sections of the display on how live swordplaying was done. There were 3 swords made for each ‘real’ one. There was the heavy, fully detailed/ornate metal swords for close-up shots, a duplicate aluminum version for medium shots or when riding horses, and finally fully hard plastic/very light versions for actual fighting so nobody would get hurt or worn out after 30 takes. They also had tons of prosthetics used on orcs, goblins, elvin ears, hobbit feet and every other creature part you care to see. It was a great display.

After that, we walked the length of the city and saw the shops, museums and government buildings. It amazed me again just how small the city was. It only took about 1 hour to walk the whole length (well, a bit longer as we stopped to see stuff).  New Zealand is just not a hugely populated country – and you still get a great homey/farm-like feel everywhere you go. There was also a college graduation going on, so there were tons of folks walking around in graduation outfits. At night, my British friends went to a comedy show that they’d previously bought tickets for, but found it a little less than up to par. We all went out for a bite to eat, and called it a night.

Finishing up my time in the south island. It is really surreal to drive away from a place and think that you might never come back – but then again you might. 🙂  Anyway, I got up early so that I could catch my afternoon ferry. Stayed overnight at the ‘Shortbread’ hostel. It was a delightful little house converted into a hostel. Met a couple neat people there – and the first 2 Americans of the trip. I think I enjoy the smaller/converted house type hostels because you can get to know others there much easier and sitting around the living rooms feel very family-style. Interestingly enough, everywhere I go, whenever people from many different countries try to pick a channel on tv – this same course of events keeps occurring.  It doesn’t seem to matter where the folks are from. If there are any number of females, they will inevitably want to see Desperate Housewives. If there is a majority of females, they will win and about half the guys will simply get up and go do something else (read book/internet/laundry). If the guys win, they will usually want to see a movie (since not much else is usually on). I’m surprised at the wide-spread appeal of the Desperate Housewives show – and that it’s this popular with women from many different countries (Aust/Europe/SE Asia/etc).

But on to things that matter. I got up early and went to Jens Hansen – the gold/jewelry shop of the fella who designed the One Ring for the Lord of the Rings movie. It’s a small shop, but he actually has replicas for sale for about $700-1200usd depending on the karats of gold it has. I stopped and talked with the designer’s son (the father passed away before the movie was even finished) and looked through their really cool photo book that told the story of how the rings were chosen/etc. I kept the stop short because of my limited time and the salesperson said that literally thousands of people come all the time to the place. You could tell she’d given that speech at least a hundred times herself.  I got a move-on because I had a two hour drive to Picton where the inter-island ferry was waiting to take me across to the north island – and I didn’t dare miss it.

Picton is a beautiful little port town in a narrow fjord-like channel. It had some wonderful little shops and the weather was perfect and sunny. It was hard to believe that the seas were so bad yesterday that they couldn’t even have ferry crossings. I had to drop my rental car off at the ferry pick-up spot – and found out how I was to get the new car on the north island.  As a testament to laid-back, relaxed nature of the average New Zealander, I was instructed to call a woman’s home cel number when I went to drop off the rental car at the ferry stop.  She walking over, read the mileage, and went “Yep”.  Wow.  After having the car for several weeks, there was no serious going overs with a comb for dents/etc. Eased my mind since some places get ridiculously over-protective of their rentals.

So I board the boat with all my stuff, go up to the top deck (this thing had 6 floors and a roof deck).  I then wait to leave – hoping all the while I won’t get desperately ill or that we’ll run into terrible swells. While up there, I run into the 3 English travelers that I had been playing tag with all along. We have a surprised and happy reunion and start catching up. Before I know it, we’re leaving dock and heading out into the bay of islands that leads out to the north island. The trip is about 3 hours and the weather and seas are perfect. The sun is setting and I get a couple of great sunset shots from the boat.

The ferry is just like riding one in Seattle, but bigger. There are trucks here hauling livestock, so if you go to the back of the boat and look down, you see trucks with pigs and sheep who look up at you with anticipatory glaces (got food?). One of the English girls wasn’t doing well with the rocking boat, so we all hang out at the back of the boat where it’s the least rocky and we passed the voyage without mishap.  We got into Wellington and one of the Sobering beer bottles had broken in my bag during transit; which meant my clothes were now soaked in beer.  We get to the hostel in downtown Wellington and I started a couple loads of laundry to get non-beer smelling shirts and pants. We all went out to eat at an Italian place and call it a night. Tomorrow I am really excited about going to the Lord of the Rings display at Te Papa – the national museum of New Zealand.

First off, the earthquake that happened across the sound wasn’t felt here in Nelson. It rocked Wellington at 5am, and I know we didn’t feel anything, because I was awake. I stayed at a hostel and one of the guys there was snoring like a log truck. Didn’t even feel a tremor.

After a huge day of driving I arrived in Nelson in the northeast corner of the south island after having been hailed on no less than 3 times on the way after another day of storms. But if you’re going to have storms, might as well have them while you’re stuck in the car.  What a difference a day makes though.  I headed out to Abel Tasman national park for some sea kayaking – the best way to see the park since there are no roads in the park proper. It was an absolutely gorgeous day. It started out pretty cold, so we delayed the start an hour.  Everything turned rosy once the sun got up.  Think a tropical paradise – what a difference from the west coast (and no sand flies). We paired up and took to our 2 person sea kayaks. After some instruction, we all hopped in and headed out along the beautiful coastline. The water was beautiful blue-green and tremendously translucent. It was like a tropical paradise. We pulled into a few beaches which were just wonderful golden colored sands. The wind had picked up and it was pushing us right along without needing to really paddle. Half of us were only doing a half-day trip while the rest continued on. You can do kayaking out and hikes back in all kinds of combinations – trips up to 3 days in length. I chose the half-day option with a return on the water taxi that run up and down the coastline.

The abbreviated kayaking tour freed me up for the rest of the day to catch a small site where a scene from LOTR was shot.  I then went down to Harrington’s Brewery outside Nelson that brewed all the beer used in the filming of the LOTR trilogy.

I picked up a six-pack and it is quite good. Wonder how I’ll get it all back into the states?

Finally, I went to the museum of wearable art and classic cars. How does that work? Don’t ask – but it was certainly funky. Tomorrow I’m going to stop by the shop of the guy that made all the rings for the LOTR trilogy and then head to Pickton to catch the ferry to the north island. I hope it goes ok because they had a rare stoppage to the ferry service today because of 30 foot swells that capsized and killed several people in a small fishing boat. I won’t have to worry about capsizing, but apparently these ferries can turn into barf-fests in high seas. I’m going to rest up just in case and keep my fingers crossed.

There was a lot of worries about the weather before our flight. I arrived at the heli-hike at 11am, and we all awaited the go/no-go decision.  The clouds were rolling in and rain/deteriorating weather was scheduled for the afternoon.  Still, we got outfitted in our gear in anticipation. We used their socks, leather boots with special ice crampons, jackets and gloves.  This turned out to be fortuitous because the glacier is a ‘warm’ glacier and we got pretty wet.

The weather held and we got the ok for the flight. The flight up was amazing.  It was the first time I’d ridden in a helicopter and after we got into the canyon, the weather cleared up and we had beautiful clear skies. We flew up and around the top of the mountains to see where the glacier formed. Franz Josef is a rare advancing glacier – actually growing. The glacier moves at an average of 1 meter *a day*. It moves up to 5 meters a day some days. Amazing speed for a glacier.

The glacier top was also cool because that is where they filmed the mountaintops that were used in the Return of the King for the lighting of the beacons. We circled the top of the glacier and set down about halfway up on a flatter section. We spent the next two hours hiking through the glacier – climbing through ice caves and squeezing through crevasse barely wide enough to slip through. The ice is brilliantly deep blue in color and the hike was great; but it felt pretty short. There were two very slow people in the group, so we didn’t get as far as the might usually go. It started clouding over just as we got back around to the helicopter landing site and we flew down through the incoming rainclouds to get back to town.

Overall, it was amazing and I was really glad I got to go since it is rainy there more often than not.  I even got a shirt to mark the occasion of my glacier hike.  Another interesting thing about the west coast is how amazingly like Oregon’s coast it is. The same fern plants, evergreens, beautiful rocky coastlines, the same abundance of rain (though they seem to get more of it all year long – not just in winter). It was almost like deja-vu at times driving through it all the last few days.  Tomorrow should be a big day.  I’m driving all the way up the west coast and over to Abel Tasman National Park.

After a wonderful time at Queenstown, I drove up to the Fox and Able Tasman glaciers on the west coast of the south island. I first headed up through Mount Aspiring National Park. I was hoping to do a spectacular hike through the Matukituki Valley, but the weather had turned bad – really bad – raining buckets and the freezing level dropped to 500 meters. In fact, I had to rush through the coastal pass in case it snowed shut. I made it out to Haast in near blinding rain; which was an extremely tiny town on the coast. I was really bummed out because the next day it was quite clear and I saw all the beautiful mountains I missed being able to hike in. But considering how amazingly lucky I’ve been with the weather so far, I don’t mind missing a minor point.  After meet a couple of nice British folks, we found we had the same schedule heading north and have been catching up with each other as we reach stops together. One other guest I was introduced to was the sandfly. Small black flies that bite like nobody’s business. They leave welts that stick around for days and positively infest the west coast. Now I know why people don’t live there.

I headed on up to the Fox and the Franz Josef glaciers and skipped all the infested beach hikes (even though it was quite beautiful). I took a short walk up to Fox glacier, which was pretty cool. By the time I got to Franz Josef glacier it was dark so I confirmed the heli-hike I scheduled and got checked into the hostel. The fun British folks were there by then, so we decided to head out to the small brewpub.

After dinner and a few rounds of pool on a smaller than usual table, the brewpub had a little drawing so we threw our names in the bucket. Turns out it was a contest. I got chosen with one of the guys I was with and it was a team event. One person had to eat 2 Wheetbix bars (think dry shredded wheat breakfast bars) without using their hands, and after the first person got done – the second person had to pound a pint of beer. Well, I got stuck with the wheetbix.

Long story short – we won. So we won a $50 bar tab – so we ended up buying a whole bunch of people beers and turned into the stars of the bar for the night. Go figure. Well, tomorrow is the heli-hike, so best get some sleep in.

Greetings from the opposite hemisphere again. I kind of adopted Queenstown as my resting camp for a day or two. Queenstown started as a gold-mining area (they were the richest rivers per kilometer in the world) and is the launching point of every extreme sport you can imagine. It grew again as the birthplace of bungee jumping; so I went out to watch some of the crazy folk throw themselves off bridges. They have canyoning, climbing, jetboating, paragliding, 4WD tours, and all kinds of stuff. The weather is almost exactly the same as Oregon, and there are lots of wineries down here. It is fall down here and the whole area is beautiful. I just missed the peak colors, but there are still lots of gold, yellow and red leaves around so I took a drive out to the old mining town of Arrowtown to see the old settlements and trees.

After that, I went out to Te Anau, which is right on the edge of the fjordlands. The fjordland area in the southwest corner of the south island is amazing. It’s a strange place full of glacially formed fjords. It was formed by the Australian plate forcing up the Pacific plate at a rate of 1cm/year – which is absolutely lightning speed in geological terms. There are tons of multi-day hikes out there. Easily enough to spend a whole summer.  This includes the Milford hike which is considered one of the best in the world. However, right now the huts along the track are shut down and pickups to and from most of the bigger tracks are shut down so I won’t be doing any of them. Cruises are the next best way to see the fjords, so I took a cruise out in Milford Sound – all I can say is that it was spectacular. The drive out was equally amazing with near vertical 3000ft granite walls. It was freezing cold in the morning, a fact some backpackers learned the hard way when their car hit a wet, icy patch and they rolled their car. They were fine, but it took them most of the day to get their car towed out.

On my way back to Queenstown I caught a few Lord of the Rings filming sites – the edge of Fangorn forest where the orcs were killed in movie 2, the beach where Frodo takes off across when the Fellowship breaks up, the attack on the fleeing Rohans, and a few others. I’m now back in Queenstown and plan on doing some horseback riding tomorrow in Glenorchy. After tomorrow, I’ll be heading up the west coastline thru Mt Aspiring National Park.  Looking forward to seeing Franz Joseph glacier and maybe do some heli-hiking.  That’s where they fly you up and drop you on the glacier to climb through the crevasses – if the weather is good.

Well, hello all again, First off, there were no problems with the earthquake that happened down here. Nobody in New Zealand felt it, and the tsunami wave was only like 2 feet tall. I was at Mt Cook, which is the highest and one of the most central points on the south island. I didn’t even hear about it until I was driving out and coastal folks on the radio were complaining that they were forced to evacuate when nothing really happened.

I got to Edoras/Rohan. Oh man, it was extremely cool. We got to ride up the mountain itself and sit on the spots where the buildings were. The tour guides brought along some of the authentic sword replicas and we got to have ‘mock battles’. I got a picture fighting with this crazy French guy. Also on that site is the canyon of Helms Deep. I managed to get over close to it, lined up with the aerial shots from the movie and took a few shots. Extremely cool. I spent a day and a half at Mt Cook – the highest point in New Zealand – and it was absolutely stunning. The weather was perfect and I got a few great sunrise pictures of the mountains. Mornings were freezing cold in the high elevation camp – perfect. I did a great hike to the glaciers – which crossed over the glacial-melt rivers via these cool walking suspension bridges. We kept hearing landslides and avalanches all day. I heard at least 7 of them. It’s part of a whole range of mountains, so they were happening in places we couldn’t see (thankfully). Saw a bunch of other little towns in between and a few movie sites.

The land of New Zealand is very diverse, green, and gorgeous. It reminds me very much of Oregon. Right now I’m in Queenstown – the birthplace of bungee jumping. The town is very small in size, but full of every extreme sport you can imagine. The whole town is one big jumping off point for with hippie touristy adventure: bungee jumping, jetboats, steamers, taking 4wd’s out for a spin, mountainbiking, canyoning, paragliding, skydiving, skiing/boarding, and stuff I’ve never even heard of.  I’m trying to get on a huge Lord of the Rings tour. Queenstown is where they filmed a great majority of the scenes, and it turns out that taking this one tour gets you to most of the most beautiful spots around here and is cheaper than going on individual ones. After this I’m heading down to Te Anau and then Milford Sound – some of the most remote and most beautiful parts of the south island. I’ll probably spend 2-3 days there before returning to Queenstown. Both those locations are really out in the middle of nowhere, so I might not have email contact. Internet access is sometimes hard to come by and often very slow; so I probably won’t be putting more than a picture or two up on my site until I get back.

I’ve been extremely lucky with the weather, and it has been nothing short of miraculous. At 3 different places folks were saying, “It’s been terrible weather around here the last week, but it just got clear today”. So lucky – so I guess I’ll keep the prayers up. The north island is getting pounded with rain this whole last week – what a difference a change in latitude makes. Best get to bed – have an early day tomorrow and a lot of driving.

I made it to New Zealand with ‘no worries’. It was a very awesome flight. I managed to score a row in the plane which had nobody else in it. 3 seats all to myself. I folded up the armrests and slept for 7 of the 12 hour flight (11 hours and 55 minutes was the final tally). Flying overnight in an empty row to stretch out gets my 100% seal of approval.

I got into Auckland at 7am, caught the connector, and then arrived at Christchurch at 10am. It was raining buckets – not a hopeful sign. Took a while to get the rental car and everything sorted out; but it came off without a hitch and I checked into the hostel I’m staying at. Wonderful place.

Christchurch is wonderful city – not very big – has the feel of a college town to it. It was sunny and warm today – did a lot of walking around. Got to see Rutherford’s Den – the tiny lab where Ernest Rutherford did all his grad research (he split the atom with the famous gold foil test). Saw lots of galleries, botanical gardens, museums, etc. Went to the cathedral for mass today (it was in town and a 5 minute walk) and they said it was the local bishop – but he didn’t move diagonally even once while I was watching. 😉

Driving in New Zealand?  Ok – what do you say but wild.  You drive on the ‘wrong’ side of the road. The steering wheel is on the ‘wrong’ side of the car, the shifter is on the ‘wrong’ side of where you’re used to.  Everything is in km and km/h. But I checked, and they still have a quarter-pounder at McDonald’s (not a Royale with cheese).  Right of way rules are different; but logical.  I went out to Akoara today on a 100km drive and it was a blast. I think I’m getting used to it, but I’m taking it real slow and careful. Once you get out of town (think the size of a little smaller Lafayette, or maybe smaller Salem) you get out into farm country. Tons of cows and sheep grazing on these wild hills. Very rural, felt a bit like home.  Many farms do have programs where you can volunteer to work for a day for free place to stay/food – but I won’t have time in the itinerary. Maybe I’ll just stop by and talk with some folks.

Tomorrow I’m headed out to the filming location of Helms Deep and Rohan/City of Edoras in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The only way out there is a day’s trip by 4wd and knowing where it is. So, I got a guide to take me for the whole day. Should be great. Outside of the filming location for the Shire (which is up by Auckland) this is *the* place I wanted to see.

I bought a book that shows you where and how to get to most of the major filming sites for the Lord of the Rings.

Hopefully I’ll catch as many of them as I can as I go.

Tuesday will see me on my way to Mt Cook which promises spectacular scenery if the weather is good. Weather turned for the better after a scary first day of torrential downpour. Thank goodness for that. I’m really hoping for good weather tomorrow.

I’m working on fixing up my webpage and I’ll be adding this content. Found an internet joint that allows you to bring in your own laptop and plug it in – which is cool. It looks like I’ll only be getting internet access every couple days or so. Other than that – it’s an awesome trip so far.

New Zealand accents are awesome. The folks are super friendly. I’m doing really well and it’s nice that the time difference is only about 4 hours (+1 day) so the jet-lag was minimal. Though it did still take a day for me to shrug off the airplane compression/decompression  thing. Seems 12 hours of that got to me after a while. Well, that was a bit rambly, but that will suffice for today since my time’s almost up. I’m headed home to get a good nights sleep for tomorrows activities!

Happy Easter! I know, it’s be another long time since an update. I’ll keep this one short and add more later.

I’m taking 6 weeks off of work (a Easter miracle in itself!) and will be going to New Zealand. An amazing stroke of luck has given me this time off, so I’m going to go enjoy it and then return to the mundane work-a-day world when I get back. I’ll be gone from April 19th – May 30th. The plan is to rent a car, and drive through both the north and south islands. I’ve got a rough itinerary down, and now I’m getting it more solidly planned. Hopefully I’ll be updating this blog and maybe opening a flickr account to make my picture updates easier.  I also went out and dumped a ton of money into a Canon 5D. Yes, the 5D is the first really ‘affordable’ full-frame digital SLR (aka full-frame at less than $8000). I’ve only been using it a few days, but it is so amazing. Now I have all the glass from my expensive lenses back (as opposed to the EF-S style cropped sensor).  I’ll be taking that baby along with me and you’ll be seeing the results of those photos during my trip.