Canyonz

Ok, so possibly the coolest thing I've done so far in New Zealand, right after dune-boarding, has got to be Canyoning. The trip, location, and company were all suggested to me by a friend, but I didn't have much of an idea about what exactly would be involved other than something about jumping off of waterfalls. Sounds good, right?
The company running the trip- cleverly named 'Canyonz'- picked us up right in Auckland city, practically down the street from where we live. There were ten of us in all who planned the outing together, and we were joined by six other individuals from Australia, France, and New Zealand when we were picked up in the city. Our guides, four Kiwis with a serious love of outdoor sports, drove us over to 'the shed' about half an hour out of Auckland where all the equipment was stored. As we drove, the surrounding scenery slowly changed from city to suburb to a scene out of Jurassic Park. The two lane road narrowed with every impossibly sharp corner we rounded until the bush on each side was scraping the outside of our little van. We finally pulled up to - surprise surprise - a shed. A very big shed, to be exact. With a goat pen next to it. and a dog. And a cat.

So we walked towards the shed/petting zoo and were given instructions on choosing our socks, shoes, helmets, harnesses, wetsuits, jackets, and shirts. All of the gear was still wet from use from the day before, and most of the shoes and socks were slightly worn down. But who needs shoes when you're jumping off 20-foot ledges.

Getting Ready

Two of our guides

When everyone had changed into bathing suits and their rash guard shirts, we shoved all of our gear into the body of the wet suit, made a makeshift back-pack sort of contraption, and stuffed ourselves back into the van. A few minutes later we arrived at the site where our adventure would begin. It was a parking lot. Or was it? Our guides led us to a barely noticeable path leading into the forest, and that's where we began our thirty-minute hike to where our canyon began. No sooner had the first person taken their first step that we began slipping and sliding everywhere. The path was narrow, muddy, filled with deceivingly deep puddles, and downhill. Hilarity ensued as we all tried to keep our balance and only a few of us completely wiped out. Twenty minutes later, the path took an uphill turn, and we struggled, panting, up the last bit of trail.

Ready to start the hike...we thought

Everywhere around us there was the sound of rushing water and yet there was no water to be seen. Finally, we went around a corner and came upon the source of the water. At first all we could see was an unimpressive little pool. Also deceivingly deep. After getting all of our gear on, we stepped-and fell- into the first body of water: the start of Blue Canyon. The thing about canyons is that there isn't much in the way of sure footing. You have to to your best to keep your balance and just laugh your ass off every time you fall on your ass. Which is frequently. But struggling to maintain my balance was a very good distraction from the FREEZING cold water we were submerged in. Our wetsuits did little to combat the shock as they were not all the correct sizes and left a lot of baggy room and holes for the ice water to creep into. Nevertheless, we pushed on like ungainly infants taking their first steps.
This is where we got to the good stuff. Down the river a ways was the first notable waterfall. Our guides explained the two types of jumps we would be executing: a controlled and a free jump. Free jump sites meant the water we jumped into was impossibly deep. Controlled jumps meant it was not. This first waterfall was a free jump, and we all did front flips, back flips, and an occasional flop. Basically, it was AWESOME.

Approaching the first waterfall

Backwards slide, anyone?

Over the next few hours, we made our way further down the canyon, and came upon our first abseiling, or rappelling, site. This action was slightly less awkward to carry out then our tramping waist-deep in the water, but was still made comical by the fact that our feet would not grip to the slippery slimy walls of the waterfalls we made our way down. As each of us made the descent, we did so jerkily as we struggled to let enough rope through our hands to lower us but not to drop us to our deaths (just kidding there was a back-up safety system). As the last of us newbies came down, we watched the much more experienced guides come down gracefully in a seemingly single motion.

Abseiling the waterfall

Before we knew it, it was lunch time! To my delight, there was chocolate involved as well as sandwiches and some strange hot tea to warm us up a bit. And then we were off again to do our final few jumps and abseils. Towards the end of the trip, I chatted it up a bit with one of our guides. He told us that he led these trips every day, and that is was an awesome job but it took the fun out of the actual activity a bit. I knew from experience that doing something, even if its something you love, for work, turns that activity into an almost meaningless thing. Still, I envied him and his profession.

A little meditation on the falls

And, sadly, our adventure came to an end. We piled back into the vans, exhausted from walking up the same trail we had come down by, and headed to the shed. Not one of us stayed awake for the short drive back, and our guides were nice enough to drop us off right next to our dorm, which was fortunate because I don't know if I would have had the energy for the walk home.

The gang

Walking the trail back

A Bit of Culture

During my stay in France last semester, I spent the first two and a half months participating in a home-stay, in other words living with a French family. This gave me the opportunity to not only develop my language skills but learn about French life and culture in the most pure and genuine way possible. My adventures in New Zealand, though perhaps more action-packed and outdoor-geared than those in France, have not afforded me a chance to learn about or interact with the native people of this country. As part of the Loyola program, we live in single room dormitories, in a building that houses mainly international students from the far East, with a scattered array of Kiwis on some of the eleven floors. The diversity is awesome, but you don't get much of maori culture from living in a place like this. Fortunately for us Loyola kids, our school had organized the New Zealand program with three built-in trips for us throughout our stay. Last weekend, we went on our second trip of our time here, which brought us to a Marae in the Northland. For those who are unfamiliar with what exactly Marae are, they are sacred meeting places for religious and social purposes or events. Although many of these places had been destroyed with the introduction of Europeans and Christianity to New Zealand, they still exist, mostly throughout the North Island, and help to retain the Maori sense of identity.

 I had visited a Marae once before, when our group of Loyolans travelled up to the Bay of Islands; there we were given a tour of the Waitangi treaty grounds and shown inside the Marae. It was explained that the 'house' was meant to be a Maori ancestor, with a carving at the point of the triangular roof representing the head of this individual, the two sides meant to be the legs. Within the house, the walls were lined with carvings also mean to represent ancestors and in some cases displayed a family's bloodline with the use of design and patterns which looked simply like works of art to the blind eye. Everywhere you looked there was beautiful dark polished wood and everything was perfectly clean. The Waitangi Marae was probably one of the most visited in all of New Zealand, and had an entire staff looking after it, so its needless to say that the place was in perfect condition.

With that past experience in mind, I had this very specific preconceived notion of what the Marae would be like in the Northland. I imagined a similar building to that of Waitangi, with the same set-up inside and the same look on the outside. After a four hour drive in the pouring rain from Auckland in a cramped mini-shuttle, we arrived at Te Huia, the Marae we would be staying at for the next three days. But this place was nothing like Waitangi; it looked like somebody's house, and it was in the middle of absolutely nowhere. I tried to remain positive as we walked down a gravel drive in the rain, which had lightened up, to a gateway which was the entrance to what looked like a little compound. There were two main buildings that were connected, and two smaller ones farther back. One looked like a storage shed and the other appeared to be a bathroom. The two women who brought us there let us know about the ceremony of welcoming someone into a Marae. The next thing we knew, someone was singing out in Maori from the larger building. One of our guides returned the song and we began walking slowly towards the doorway. We entered silently and were gestured to take a seat on the bench running the length of the inside.

This Marae looked nothing like the one I had seen before. There were no carvings or designs, and instead of beautiful wooden beams of support on the ceiling there were vents with built-up dust hanging from them and old-fashioned light fixtures hanging from the ceiling. But I tried to remain optimistic.
We were taken through the steps of being welcomed into this sacred place, including us having to sing a song together (we chose Aint No Mountain High Enough) and to choose someone to say a few words about the group. The woman organizing all of this was called B, and she explained a little about the Marae and how in the past 30 years it had been restored from a derelict, almost uninhabitable place to what it was now. We would be sleeping in the Marae on mattress pads and sleeping bags, and eating our meals in the kitchen, which was another building connected to the Marae. B told us that we were in a sacred place, and certain behaviors must be observed so that the tapu, or sacredness, of the place was preserved. For example, no shoes were allowed inside, and eating or drinking was absolutely prohibited.

With all of this new information buzzing around in our heads, we were told we could move on to the kitchen to eat dinner, which our hosts had graciously prepared for us. Afterwards, we washed our own dishes and filed back into the Marae, where we watched a Maori movie and wen to bed. The next two days rushed by. We woke at the crack of dawn, ate some breakfast, and were taken kayaking by one of the women who had driven us up from Auckland. The spot reminded me of the Bay of Islands, and we spent a few hours playing around in the kayaks off shore, and were provided with a very cute little picnic.

Catching some waves

Next, we went for a little drive and did about a 20 minute hike to the top of one of the many mountains in the area. We were not permitted to go all the way to the top, because of the Maori belief that the top of anything is considered tapu. The views from the hike were amazing, and we could see 360 degrees of pure breathtaking New Zealand landscape. 

Oyster farms off of the wharf

As we recovered our breath at the top, B told us about some of the Maori stories and legends surrounding the area we were in, and showed us how to pick out the difference between native New Zealand plant life versus those introduced by settlers. We had been kept cool the entire hike up by cloudy skies, but as we reached the top of the mountain the clouds parted and our view became even more amazing lit up by the sun. By the time we made it back to the Marae that evening, we were all exhausted. After dinner, most of us went straight to bed and passed out. 

The next day, we learned the Maori stick fighting art of Taiaha. Although not used much in battle anymore, the martial art is still considered to be an important part of the Maori culture, and is kept alive and practiced in festivals and other gatherings. The authentic weapon consists of a five to six foot stick, with a blade at one end and a long flat wooden 'tongue' at the other. We were taught the basic positions, blocks, and strikes. 

Our last activity of the day, to my delight, was very arts and craftsy. We were given fast-drying clay with which to make a flute-like instrument used by the Maori people. It was very basic in design and played very similarly to how you would blow into an empty bottle to make noise. You could then add a few holes along the side to get it to play different notes. 

Loyola students attempting pinch-pots

We all made pretty, if not entirely functioning, little masterpieces, and by the time we finished we had to be on our way back to Auckland. We thanked our hosts, who in turn thanked us for the opportunity to spread some of their culture. Unlike skydiving, bungee jumping, or surfing, this was really an experience that we could not have had anywhere else but in New Zealand. 

Our Te Huia Marae

Tsunamis, Surfing, and Angry Hostel House Owners

Over the weekend there was an earthquake registering 8.9 on the richter scale off of the north coast of Japan. An 8.9 earthquake is massive and sends tsunami waves out for thousands of miles around where the quake occurs. Coincidentally, I happened to be spending the weekend on a trip to Raglan, a little beach town on the west coast of the North Island. It turns out a beach is not the place to be in the face of possible tsunamis but hey, what the hell you only live once.

We came to the tiny, super beachy, stereotypically-surfer-townish town of Raglan the day before, and spent the day hanging out on the beach and kayaking. We spent the night in the only available hostel left which was more of a house than a hostel but beggars can't be choosers. We also decided it would be a good idea to tell the owner that there were four of us staying there when we were in fact a group of six. Oops. But lucky us we were very sneaky and managed to go unnoticed with three people in each of the two rooms we payed for. And then it got exciting, as we found out about the earthquake when one of our friends woke us up at 3 am with plans of evacuating Raglan and moving to high land as soon as possible, never mind the 70 dollar surf lessons we had already payed and booked for nor the money we had pre payed for the other night in the hostel. Luckily, we all went back to bed instead of evacuating and woke up early the next day to find that there was a tsunami warning out for all of New Zealand as well as the west coast of the United States- bummer dude.
We went to see if our surf lesson would be on anyway, and when we met up with our instructor Surfer Steve, we were informed that there was a beach ban where we were meant to be going but would play it by ear because the ban was supposed to be lifted soon.
Lucky us, the tsunami warning continued but so did our lessons! Super Surfer Steve deemed it to be safe to surf so we donned our wetsuits and made fools of ourselves on foam beginner surf boards. But we all managed to stand and catch a few waves, and, as our instructor liked to tell us, we surfed a tsunami.

That night we played some cards in the hostel and were in high spirits until the owner of the house came down, realized how many of us there were, and proceeded to rip us a new one about how much we suck. Thats not quite how she worded it but thats more or less what I got out of her speech. So we had to pay a little extra for that nights accommodations.

We spent the next day fooling around on some real boards lent to us by a friend of a friend from the states, and only one of us injured himself with the new and improved hard boards. On our way home we stopped by Bridal Veil Falls, New Zealand's highest waterfall. We resisted the urge to try to jump from it into the pool below but got some great pictures of the place.

The drive home was super fun with six of us crammed into a Toyota Camry but 2 hours later we were back to home sweet Huia.

The Life of a Lost Tramp

Normally, calling someone a tramp might be considered slightly offensive or kind of weird considering the fact that that word hasn't really been used in the english language since the forties. Most people don't actually know what it means anyway (it used to refer to a homeless person). If you find yourself in New Zealand though, don't be offended or confused if someone invites you to go tramping with them; they aren't asking if you want to be a hobo. Over here, 'tramping' is the same as our american hiking. With slightly better scenery. Well, with ridiculously amazing scenery not at all comparable to anything you might see in the states.

But I'm not trying to give a vocabulary lesson in old english here.

I had my first real experience in tramping last weekend when I and about seven other kids when we decided to take the ferry over to Rangitoto Island, a small volcanic island right off of the coast of Auckland and a convenient twenty-five minute ferry ride from the city. It ended up being a pretty bold decision to go; we met on the ground floor of our dorm pretty disgustingly early for a sunday morning. Activities of the night before didn't ease the wake up. Especially not the 2-for-1 shots.
We managed to leave almost on time, which is usually defined by being less than twenty minutes late from our previously decided time of departure, and after barely making it on the 10:30 ferry, we pulled into a bay in Rangitoto. It was cloudy but had stopped raining since we left the city, and armed with sneakers, a map someone grabbed out of the tourist brochure pile, and probably not enough water, we started walking. The map looked a little like a fourth grader had made it and seemed to be missing a few key paths that we ended up going by during the first part of our walk, but we figured out where our ferry had just come in, at a point marked in the south of the island, and kept in mind where some of the main paths went so we stashed it, content with Louis-and-Clarking our way around the island instead.
The trails were parked with painted signs adorned with little arrows to lead trampers on the right path and an estimate of how long it would take to get to any given destination.

Our Arrival Point on Rangtitoto

We had our hearts set on going to the summit first, mostly because it sounded cool and there were bound to be some crazy photo ops. The handy dandy navigational signs informed us that the hike would take 40 minutes from where we were; not bad. A light drizzle and the cloud cover kept us cool as we walked uphill for what seemed like a very long time, and the walk was made slightly more tedious by the fact that the road we were following was nothing special, and went not through forest or mountains at all but was very man-made looking and flanked on either side by plain black crumbling rock. We were all less than impressed, especially after what we had seen during our Bay of Islands trip, but the path became prettier and soon we were making our way into a much more natural looking area.

Either the sign-writer was a horrible estimator of time or the estimates were made by an olympic athlete, because after about an hour we were still not at the summit. We came to a fork in the road, with one path leading us ever uphill on the same type of man-made road, and the other path that grew thinner and lead into more dense wooded area, and, according to the signs, led to lava caves. Deciding it was about time for a change of pace, (literally, we were practically running up the hill at that point) and because 'lava caves' sounded badass, we took the road seemingly-less-travelled. Very Frost of us, I know. It turned out to be a nice break, because the sun had started to force its way through the clouds and we were all getting a little overheated, and the small path we were now following was cool and covered by the canopy of trees overhead. And it smelled different. None of us could really explain it, but the air seemed fresher and cleaner in that little path, as cliché as that may sound.

The start of the new trail

We walked up slippery natural staircases formed by tree roots and rocks, until we reached a point in the trail where we assumed the lava caves were located, because there was a steep drop to one side. To my dismay, there weren't any giant craters in the ground with rivers of bubbling boiling liquid magma, but on descending to the side of the trail we saw some of the small caves. At first glance they looked simply like indentations into the earthen wall, as if a giant hand had started to hollow out a space into the side. When we came closer, we realized that you could squeeze through and continue underground through the tunnel, which, after becoming smaller then widened into standing height. It was a short ways through the pitch black but we still had trouble making it through without slipping and sliding on the rocks and roots we couldn't see, the experience was definitely worth it though.

The entry

The light at the end of the tunnel

Inside wall of the cave

After our short caving trip, we continued on to the summit, stopping in a little clearing for lunch where sections of logs were strewn about to be used as makeshift seats.

Finally, we made it to the top, where we were rewarded for our efforts with an amazing view:

And then began our long walk back to the ferry dock, which turned out to be longer than we expected. Thanks to a bad map and a group mentality of assuming we always knew where we were going, we got lost. And not just a little lost. Lost an hour and a half walk away in the opposite direction of where we needed to go. Which normally wouldn't be an issue, except for the fact that the last ferry back to Auckland left at 5pm and it was 3:30 by the time we arrived at the wrong end of the island. So, exhausted as we were, we hauled ass back to the correct side of the island, making it back with time to spare. We lied down on the sand near the ferry dock and finally relaxed.

Our feet were aching and our legs were sore but by that time the sun had come out and it ended up being a beautiful day as we took the ferry back home.

No Time for Down Time

I am about to spend the next five months of my life living halfway around the world in Auckland, New Zealand.

Before I get on about that, though, I think its important to mention how I've been spending the previous five months of my life. It's been hectic, to say the least. Last semester I studied abroad in a tiny little city in France called La Rochelle. But I wont go into all of that now.

I left France at the end of December, to spend a week in London before returning back to the good 'ole USA. Thanks to psychotic winter weather patterns, that didn't happen. I ended up getting back to the states just before New Years, giving me a few days to pack before leaving again to spend the next month in St. Thomas, where my dad lives. I came back to the states for an entire four days before leaving again for my next adventure- and now we're getting to the important stuff- in New Zealand.

I wasn't left with much time to think or process what I was doing, and the act of packing was made easy by the fact that I'd been living out of suitcases for quite a while at that point hadn't really unpacked. So that was one less thing to worry about. And so began the 22 hour trip from JFK airport to Auckland. The  6 hour flight from New York to Los Angeles wasn't too bad, the 3 hour layover was fine, and the 13 hours to New Zealand was...well it was long. But we made it! 11 of us from Loyola left the east coast of the United States and made it to the other side of the world in one piece. Needless to say I was somewhat exhausted by that point, but the show goes on.

The next few days were a blur of introducing us and moving into our dorm, Huia, taking walking tours of the city (which seemed remarkably clean in comparison to places like NYC), shopping for the necessities, and getting a not-so-small taste of the nightlife. Three days went by in the blink of an eye, and the next thing I knew we were getting on a bus heading for a weekend trip to the bay of islands organized by our home University.
That trip got off to an interesting foot; there was some slight confusion as to which hostel room our group of girls were supposed to be in and lets just say the management wasn't too happy with us. Not to be discouraged by minor setbacks, we walked a little ways down the road from our hostel and took part in one of those 'really fast boat rides' which may have been supposed to be a thrill ride but seemed more like a tour of the bay of islands via the sea. In any case, it was awesome, and for a minute I thought I was back in St. Thomas.

The 'Hole in the Rock' in the Bay of Islands

 

The next day, we woke up ridiculously early to get on another bus which brought us to some of the most picturesque places I've ever seen. First stop: Te Rerenga Wairua, the mythical Maori departure point for spirits heading back to their homeland of Hawiki.

 

After a quick hike, our group came to the top of a cliff edge, where there was an amazing view of the point where the Tasman Sea meets the pacific Ocean. From that point, we could see the rolling grassy countryside of New Zealand behind us, the patches of desert to our sides, and a few beautiful looking beaches along the coast.

The Tasman Sea on the left meeting the Pacific on the Right

From there, we were brought to a place bearing a striking resemblance to a scene out of Arabian Nights- giant sand dunes that went on for miles. And what else would you spend your time doing in the company of giant sand dunes than dune boarding? This was definitely a highlight of the bay of islands trip for me, despite the difficult trek up the dunes that was required in order to boogie-board back down them. Unfortunately we only had time for 3 or 4 rides, but by that time I think most of us were ready to pass out anyway.
After all that hard work, we were rewarded with a quick trip to 90 Mile Beach (which is not, in fact, 90 miles long, but more like 60 or so). We had time to run into the water and attempt to wash off some of the sand that had accumulated and clung to pretty much every inch of our bodies.

 

Our second day in the Bay of Islands ended with fish and chips, which, little did I know, would become a somewhat major staple in my diet.
We were lucky enough to sleep in until 8 am on the last day, and mounted the bus yet again to head home. On the way, we made a stop at Waitangi, the famous treaty grounds of New Zealand where the native Maori people gained Independence and support from the British. We were given a tour of the area and introduced to a Marai, which is a sort of meeting place for the Maori. From there, we made one more stop at a small but pretty waterfall, where the boys climbed up trees with some locals and managed to do a backflip or two into the water. No one was injured. More or less.
Finally, we were back in Auckland. But we didn't take much time to stop and chill in our tiny dorm rooms. Nearly every day of the next week or so was filled with floor meetings, errand-running, and orientation activities set up by the University of Auckland. Our days were spent running around and meeting new people, and our nights were filled with things that not everyone can fully remember. Our group from Loyola stayed tight, and we spent time sunning at Mission Bay, a nice beach that we could get to by bus and which also has one of the best ice cream places around that I've seen so far. Later on in the week, the University clubs started setting up in the quad, and a few of us decided to take part. I joined AURAC, the rock climbing club, as well AUTC, which is more of a outdoor hiking club. And just when I thought I would have some time to do nothing, classes started.  But who wants or needs downtime when there's so much else to do?