Y is for...

You Only Live Once

Cliche I know, but true nonetheless.  In recent years, I have slowly but surely come to the point where I will attempt almost anything at least once.  I say almost because I'm not stupid and I'm not going to try drugs and death-defying stunts and what not.  I mean, trying new foods and stepping out of my comfort zone.  You only live once, so why not try everything?  The main thing that I get out of this is to live your life with no regrets.  I don't want to be 80 years old and look back at my life and say, why didn't I do that while I had the chance?  Or, why did it take me so long to try this food or go to that city?

This is very close to the post I did for N- New Experiences.  But the differentiating factor between YOLO and New Experiences it that living life with no regrets doesn't necessarily have to be trying new things.  It can simply be living everything that you are doing to the fullest extent possible.  Make the best out of every occasion.  Work at the job you love, or at least can tolerate until you find another one.  Don't worry yourself to death!  Sometimes you just have to accept the fact that everything happens for a reason and if something didn't happen, then maybe it just wasn't the right time.  Things like that.

There's Platinum in These Hills!

My oh my.  How the time is speeding by.  It’s June!!  It’s just surreal to me.  What do you mean I’ve been here for four months?  What kind of joke is that?  *sigh*  As you can probably tell I’m just a little frazzled by the complete lack of time I have left here.  22 days.  The past 31 have gone by in the blink of an eye!  And I can tell you already that this next month is going to do the same. 

Tomorrow is the last day of classes here at Massey Palmerston North.  Next week is a full week dedicated to studying and the two weeks following belong to exams.  You know what that means?  I have exactly three days within the next three weeks that I have plans.  June 14, June 16, and June 18.  The last two on which I have two exams a piece.  This free time would be absolutely awesome except for my complete and utter lack of money.  That’s alright though; it just means spontaneous activities are more plausible now.  Oh!  And I need to pack.  I guess I’ll devote my last two days here to that.

To steer away from that depressing (at least to me) topic, I will tell you about my most recent weekend.  On Saturday May 28 I went with a portion of MUAC (Massey University Alpine Club) and did a tramp into the nearby wilderness.  If you can call it wilderness…  Anyways, we walked the Sledge Track, about 20 minutes from campus. 

I don’t have a whole lot to say about the whole trip.  I can tell you there were around 700 stairs one way (yes I counted), it was super muddy, and it took us around 6 hours to complete the circuit.  The first stopping point of the trek was at a river.  There were some really nice boulders there, which I decided to climb.  I was doing well until I slipped and bashed my knee on the top of it.  That would have lasting effects throughout the day.  I had a nice view of the river, though.

Like a Kid in a Candy Shop

4/26/11     Dunedin -> Bluff

If you don’t already know (I’m not sure why you would) we are, as a group, terrible at planning things.  The ultimate result of that, at this stage in our trip, is no set plans on hostels, activities, food, or travel times.  Our general idea for the day today was to tour Cadbury World, their factory in Dunedin (Pronounced Duh-knee-din if you were wondering) or to tour the Speight’s Brewery.  After that we were to hit up the steepest street in the world, then drive to Invercargill/Bluff, find a hostel or campsite and hang out in town the rest of the day.

As general plans go it was a good one.  We did our tours, I went for the chocolate (obviously).

After that the chocolate group wandered the city for a while waiting for the beer group.  Once reunited, around 11:30, we drove across the city to find Baldwin Street, the steepest street in the world.  We found it.  It did help that we plugged it into the GPS, but whatever.  This street just looked unrealistic.  And, of course, us being us, we walked all the way to the top.  Once there, due to the grade, you couldn’t see the actual street, just the very end.  It was just insane, I can’t really think of a better word.

When Men Were Men and Sheep Were Nervous

4/22/11     Lake Mahinapua -> Franz Josef

Our departure times have steadily been getting later.  Today it was 9:30.  We took a quick jaunt down the road to the Bushman’s Centre.  Here we watched a video on helicopter deer recovery.  It was really interesting.  These guys were pretty nuts, jumping out of helicopters onto deer before inventing net guns.  The movie even featured some Top Gun music.  Classy.  After the video we wandered around.  There were three possums (alive), two eels, two big ass pigs, a goat, a wallaby, and some deer.  I read some articles about the deer recovery and did the whole tourist in a gift shop thing.

After a brief breakfast we all trooped back onto the bus and resumed our journey.  Our only other stop along the way was at Lake Mapourika for a brief look.  After that it was straight into Franz Josef.  We stopped at the glacier company’s center so those people doing the hike tomorrow could be briefed.  I went inside a souvenir shop.  Kristen lost her phone.  It was a very eventful time.

Our next, and final, stop was the Rainforest Retreat, our hostel.  We were placed in the last open room they had, a 6-bed dorm.  We later determined it must have originally been a 4-bed and they just stuck in another set of bunks.  Overall that room just smelled bad.  The only time it didn’t was when there was no one in the room to say it did.  So basically the room was small and smelly.

Nora, Kaleb, Tony, Travis, and I decided to hike up to the Tatare Tunnels Walk.  The path led to an old gold mine which we trekked through.  Being an old mine the floor was covered in water, enough to reach the ankles in most places.  I decided to go barefoot and save my shoes.  Unsure of how far the tunnel went we just kept walking.  Due to the whole tunnel being pitch black without our torch light thing, we managed to spot some glowworms.  Sadly the pictures of them glowing didn’t turn out.  The pictures of their web things did, though.

Mt. Doom Today, Not a Bad Place!

Yes.  Here it is.  The first of the cliche references to Lord of the Rings.  I doubt it will be the last.  I was actually criticized by a kiwi the other day when I named a photo album with a LOTR reference.  My only defence?  It took me almost three months to get to this point.

So last weekend I took a trip with the alpine club (hereto referred to as MUAC) to go tramping up at Tama Lakes.  (tramping = hiking)  What I didn't know, and didn't bother to find out before hand, was where exactly this was.  I honestly didn't care, I just wanted to go.  Anyways, come to find out, we were to be tramping across Tongariro National Park to reach the Tama Lakes.  We started our day by gathering at the bus terminal at 6:45 in the morning.  Yay.  From there it was a three hour drive to the Park.  It was an extremely scenic drive.  The back of my eyelids were gorgeous that day! 

Upon arrival, everyone suited up, or down in this case since it was a wee bit warmer than expected, took a quick look at the map, and headed out.  It didn't take me five minutes before I was tripping over myself.  Once I got over that, and we got out of the brush, we were greeted with this lovely view...

That there is Mt. Ngauruhoe.  This beautiful volcano played Mt. Doom in LOTR.  And we were hiking towards it.  Woo! 

After walking for about an hour, we reached Taranaki Falls.  First we walked over the bridge at the top of the falls and admired Mt. Ruapehu in the distance for a little bit...

And then we headed down about 80 stairs to see the falls themselves...

I hope you agree with me on how pretty the falls are.  If you don't, I don't really want to hear it. :)  Anyways, we spent a good ten minutes admiring and taking pictures of the falls, as well as sitting down and taking a little break.  From there we climbed back up the stairs and headed out on the two hour trek to the Upper and Lower Tama Lakes.  Somewhere during this two hour time span, I slipped and fell into some mud which was hiding some lovely sharp rocks or something.  We'll just say I was a bit scratched up.  But moving on!  Along the way we saw such things as...