raffael

After landing in Christchurch, the announcement to double check and make sure to take all your hand luggage with you ended with:

… and if you do leave something behind, make sure it is something we like.

This is just a quick note: I am still alive! I went up Avalanche Peak with Michael.

We had great weather, but didn’t walk the whole route: We tramped up Scott’s Track and went down the same way. There was the even steeper Avalanche Peak Track, but since there was new snow from the day before, the DoC lady told us that no one walked it that day yet… but it would have been doable — other people made it.

The day before we were bouldering at Castle Hill.

We spend the night at a hut close to the road. There we met a nice couple with a baby and a bit annoying friend. They cooked there stuff over a fire — cool — and were a bit alternative. Avalanche Peak itself is a quite busy track: There was a swiss tourist group, a couple from Chch, some tough people who went down the other side, a guy from Israel who was looking for the “fucking snow”, a women who tramped in bra and no t-shirt, a guy with a ridiculous mesh undershirt… besides those more or less annoying people, my knee gave me a hard time on the steep parts. I guess I twisted it the day before…

Finally we went back to Castle Hill to do some more bouldering. This time with great weather… well, I am a little reddish in the face now and my lips feel as if they got a sunburn :/

I haven’t even finished my last posting… but there is so much stuff to talk or write about. So here is the next one: The Hunts Creek Track. It was a “medium” difficult track. What that means? It is pretty natural, walking in a river bed or some steep parts was difficult. Only a few river crossings, but I wouldn’t want to walk that track during rain. You have to walk/climb over trees and big rocks. At some points the track is invisible and you have to find your own way to the next track-marker. We stayed in the cosy Hunts Creek Hut, four bunks, five people, I won stone, paper scissors :)

I was tramping with a French couple. The adventure started a bit in a rush: 9pm, right after dinner with the tramping fellows from last week. We picked up two hitchhikers on our way out of Christchurch (almost dark). One Kiwi and one Canadian heading to Castle Hill, exactly our direction. Cool, well it was rather packed with five people in the car. And we made it only 35km before we ran out of gas… those gas stations out of Christchurch seem to close after 8 or 9pm…

So we had a pleasant overnight stay in Kirwee… had a little fire going… in between the road and the train tracks. Yes, trains passed us that night… four times, pretty scary.

Oh well, all cool. But I will propose a wish list, it’s Christmas soon^^

This posting is dedicated to the Queen (aka Sunny-Bunny) who motivated me to write about my experience in New Zealand.

Last Thursday a group of four started a tramping trip. It was planned to do the Routeburn Track. But there were avalanche warnings, so we didn’t exactly know if we could do the Routeburn. Our backup plan was either the Kepler Track or the Greenstone and Caples Track. So the four of us got up really early and drove the six hours to Queenstown. At the DOC office they told us that the Routeburn and Kepler were closed. Oh well, this meant that we had to hurry: Grab some lunch and find a way to the start of the track. Our choice was fast food and a transportation from Glenorchy. After some invasion of private driveways we found the transportation guy. After repacking our stuff, the first surprise: Instead of taking a car around lake Wakatipu for 40-60min, we had the pleasure of a 10min jet boat ride. This was handy, because we made up some time and started tramping around 3pm. On our first day we had a relatively easy hike and good weather. After 2-3h we had a break at Mid Caples Hut. There we met the first people on the track. One guy resting in his tent (sand fly protection) and the hut warden. He collected our hut tickets (we carried a tent, in case the huts were full or didn’t make it to a hut at night). Then we carried on to Upper Caples Hut, which took us another 1,5-2,5h. We had to cross some small streams, but wet feet are normal people say^^

Day 2: Friday
Upper Caples Hut -> McKellar Hut (5-8h)

Day 3: Saturday
McKellar Hut -> Greenstone Hut (4,5-6,5h)

Day 4: Sunday
Greenstone Hut -> Carpark (3-5h)
This day was special. Well, the night was short — that was not special! But we had a tint little bit of rain — That’s supposed to be normal, well normal is one day of rain — we didn’t need our jackets once… But once we were done with tramping, the real fun began:
First we had to wait two hours for our pick up and then we could _not_ take the jet boat back to our car!! Things could only go wrong from this point…
Well, we were happy to be back at our car and the plan was to eat a burger in Queenstown, but first we had to get gas… somewhere in Queenstown was a gas station, somewhere. We made it to Queenstown and after a while we found the gas station — on the other end of the town. We also checked the tires, we checked the oil already on the start of our tour… so back to the town center… 500m and steam started to come through the heating system, the engine was over heated, there was hardly any coolant left — cool! Since I had a similar problem on my way to the west coast earlier this year, I had no problems refilling the engine coolant with all water we had left… but it wasn’t enough. So two of us walked back to the gas station to get more water (I stayed with M. at the car). Done that, we kept going to the town center to get our Burgers! We didn’t care too much about the water dripping from the glove compartment into the passenger section… — The Burgers were great! — Now back to Christchurch.
There was not no more water dripping into the passenger section, at least not as much… all good? No way! Half way out of town the engine over heated again! F*CK! So we had to stay in QTown over night?! We managed to pull over in front of a Hotel. We wondered if they could help us… The lounge was packed with Asian tourists… I steped to the counter and the women on the counter called a mechanic for us. Too bad that he was in Christchurch at the moment. No luck on a Sunday… we could leave the car at his garage and his mechanics could take a look at it tomorrow. He told us that we probably blew something. When L. was about to call another mechanic, I received a call on my cellphone… it was MR.~X! No kidding, it was the nice guy I was in touch with through couchsurfing.com (if we’d done the Routeburn track, we would have needed accommodation for one night). Well he asked where we are and that we would have a pleasant surprise in 5min… Now I also read his txt-reply (I wrote him a message earlier, when we were stuck the first time): He was a AA-Mechanic/Tow-er! WOW. So we had a free towing service, accommodation and meditation the next morning! It was unbelievable!

I can just ask everyone to sign up with hospitality-exchange networks: bewelcome.org, couchsurfing.com, hospitalityclub.org

We had a great evening, including German Sauerkraut cooked by three German Girls!

Day X: Monday

I think we all had a pleasant night, no snoring grandfathers getting up at 5am! We got up at 7am for meditation — not kidding. It was an interesting and good experience. We picked up the car(s) and had breakfast. One of our fellows missed out on that and left early by bus. We had a nice 6h drive back to Christchurch — flat Christchurch.

lawnmower.

At least here in Christchurch — the Garden City — the lawn is mowed at least every week. I mean, once with a big lawn mower, with the driver sitting on top of it, and then these little noisy small mowers: the string trimmers. They usually start at 8am. So they wake me up twice a week because the lawn has to be mowed.
They also disturb you in the parks, because the grass is longer than 3,7 cm…