China

I've made it to China. First impressions...it's busier & smoggier than New Zealand (shocking, I know). Unfortunately the internet connection is painfully slow, so I won't be posting too much. The current plan is to visit the Forbidden City tomorrow, the Great Wall on Friday & then take off for Tiger Leaping Gorge on sat.

NZ must want me to stay...

because my flight was cancelled this afternoon... so i'm spending another 24 hours in the land of the lone white cloud...gives me a chance to see a little bit of queenstown I suppose.

The last days in NZ

I've spent the past couple of days just hiking around Wanaka. More ambitious plans fell apart either due to the weather (flight to the fjords at Milford sound) or lack of snow (heliskiing), but it's been nice to relax in the beautiful scenery of the southern alps.





Tomorrow it's time to ship the vast majority of warm stuff back home, then catch a bus to a plane, and start the long way to Beijing, which appears to be a cool 88 degrees this week (down from 100+ last week).

I'll miss this land down under :)

Ice Climbing

Ice climbing was great, super, amazing, exhilarating, tiring, exciting...in a word awesome!

We started the first day with a beautiful drive to Fox glacier, and then did some basic crampon, ice ax technique. The 2nd day was really a highlight...after hiking in two hours into the Franz Joseph glacier, we did some ice bouldering, easy toproping, and then I got to do an ice lead! It was on easy ground (ice :) but nonetheless, very exciting and a bit tiring. After learning to build anchors, and a few rappels, we did an overhanging toprope. Around midnight onto day 3 it started to rain heavily, but no fear, because Franz Joseph has an indoor(!!) ice climbing wall (3rd biggest in the world, apparently the biggest is in Scotland). So we spent a few hours there before the long drive back to Wanaka.

My guide, Marty near a wall on Fox glacier.
On approach to the climbing spot at Franz Joseph..

Overhanging toprope...not particularly good form :)
Better form.
On the top!!
I have more pictures, but they'll have to wait until I'm back in the states.

Overall, I must say the rock climbing experience helped quite a bit. A lot of the technique is very similar (keep you weight on your feet, etc etc). But also helping a very experienced guide (he's leading a trip to Everest in a few months, if anyone is interested) all to myself was wonderful!

Now I'm back in Wanaka where it's been raining all day, and is scheduled to rain for the next couple of days. I was hoping to get a chance to go heliskiing (weeeee), but it may not happen due to the weather, so I'll probably just end up going skiing.

In the end, two thumbs way up for ice climbing.

Wanaka

After some adventures after my flight got canceled this morning, I am in Wanaka. The south island is simply gorgeous, albeit a bit chilly. Most people are here to ski, so everyone is hoping for snow. I'm going against the grain, hoping for sun, as ice climbing in the snow is no fun (i presume).

Another day, another rainbow

I know I've been obsessing over them, but this is simply ridiculous. This image doesn't do it justice, but this is the closest I've been to that pot of gold...The road went right by the right end of the rainbow, but by the time I got there it started raining and the rainbow was gone.

I was thinking a lot today about traveling off season. Sure, some things are closed, some towns seem (or are) completely dead, and the weather is more often rainy /too hot / too cold/ etc. But then, you get that perfect day (weather wise), but because it's off season there's absolutely no one else around. This is what the first half of today was like - a gorgeous sunny day. So I headed up to the beach on the east coast and did some light hiking with only a handful of people joining me. Alas, not too many pictures from there, but I stopped by a waterfall on the way back.

One second a nice, quiet, peaceful waterfall.


The next, a bunch of whitewater rafters flying down it. (In case you were wondering, I was not one of them )


Tomorrow is a travel day, and then the ice climbing begins. I just got a note saying my course was moved from the mountains to the Franz Joseph glacier, so no waterfall ice climbing, but rather glacier ice climbing :)

More adventures

Well, first the promised pictures from yesterday...I have no access to photoshop or picasa to touch these up, but they should give a sense of what i was talking about.

The rainbow:


Sheep dotting the landscape:


Today I went to see one of the geysers that Rotorua is famous for. It erupts (or rather is induced to erupt with some soap to loosen to surface tension) daily at 10:15. As you can tell it's a little windy here :)


In the afternoon I decided to be a big tourist and saw a sheep show :) which culminated with a guy shearing a sheep on stage... it was just as touristy as it sounds, but I'll save you from the pictures (for now).