Hey -- 100 days!

I drove back up to Auckland to attend the Auckland Folk Festival. Basic festival scene, car camping, all set in a large fairground. But inna English style, where most of the people were camped in rows on little make-shift streets on a giant grassy area. Nothing like Live Oak and in comparison, even the Solstice festival in Agoura seems pretty darned sophisticated. It was mostly singer-songwhiner oriented w/ few if any high-caliber acts. But I mostly went for the sessions of course.

After traveling so long in session-free cultures it was really great to get together w/ other players for late-night sessions in the kitchen area, even if they tended to be rather big. I was fortunate to meet some wonderful players from Auckland as well as from Wellington, the latter which seems to be the place for Irish music in NZ -- at least from my observations so far. All in all it was fun, but definitely made me miss even some of the smaller, low key US music events...

This was the big Sunday night session. It started out small and sweet, grew to a very intense climax, and then as sessions usually do, like good drinks, distilled down to something mellow and groovy.



Gannets!!!!
There was a Gannet colony near the festival site. I'm not a big bird-watcher, but Gannets must be one of the most entertaining creatures on the planet to watch. I could write pages and pages about Gannets, but I wont. Basically, they are large, beautiful, seagull-like birds w/ a wingspan about the same as your outstretched arms. They build their nests on rocky outcroppings near the ocean where they rear their young. Once they learn to fly, the first thing they do is take off, unassisted by the adults, to Oz (Australia) for a couple of years and then fly back, find a mate, and rear their young. The pair trades off the work of minding the nest (pre and post hatching) while the other goes out fishing, sometimes a long way.

below: davetracker.com file photos

What sets them apart from almost any other animal I've ever seen is their interactions w/ each other. They do this indescribable little dance that involves bobbing their head up and down, from beak pointing to sky to head under wing. When a mate comes back from fishing, they do this together, along with a lot of beak-rubbing on the other bird's beak, down the neck and ... well, it's all pretty sensual. This all to the soundtrack of an even more indescribably noise. Of course they're incredible flyers. Better than any movie -- you can watch them for a lonnnng time.

If you want to see Gannets, I'd recommend the Napier colony as there are more of them and you can get a lot closer to them -- sometimes nearly stumbling on them, and they certainly aren't afraid of humans.

Back to Rotorua -- I left Brandy and Elaine in Auckland. I was completely "over" that city and really wanted to be anywhere but. The plan was to go to Rotorooter, slow down, get some work done, and ... get Kayak Lessons! Something I've been wanting to do for a long time.

This section is going to be pretty picture free. The camera doesn't get along w/ Kayaks very well, so what you get is another, better, picture of Kerosene Creek. Might hot water. A few encephalitis causing amoebas. A little way out of town. No one charging money for a geothermal hot tub.



So... Whitewater Kayaking: Like diving, this is something I've always wanted to do so much and just never found the opportunity. I tried to find someone to split a lesson with and am kind of glad I didn't.

Paddling a whitewater kayak is has *nothing* in common w/ the regular ocean kayaks that most people are accustom to. I'm (still) just amazed at how hard it is. And I don't even mean the whitewater part.

A river kayak is about as long as you are tall and has no ridges running down the bottom. You're sealed in w/ a neoprene skirt and you may as well be paddling on a giant saucer for how much directional control you have. Just trying to paddle in a straight line is an exercise in meditation involving arms, hips, knees and you still end up spinning around and going backwards. Doing things like ... turning, dealing w/ a little current only gets harder.

It's on par w/ learning to ski or windsurf. Only a lot more counter-intuitive. imagine that to turn right, you need to lean and paddle left. Then you need to lean and paddle right to keep turning right. If you want to stop turning right -- well, I'm close to figuring that out but not quite as I just keep spinning around (and I've been on the water 2 days now). Ok -- I guess technically, it's like a bicycle where to turn left, you actually have to lean and go right a bit (like a ?) before you actually go left, and then once you do it's more leaning than anything else. It's like that but w/ a lot more contradictions. Like you lean ... away from the current, even though every cell in your body wants to lean into it to keep from getting washed over or something.

So, anyway, I did a lesson w/ this guy, Kenny of Kaituna Kayaks (who I'll highly recommend as a nice guy, good teacher and definitely not someone who is going to tell you what a great job you're doing when you're not). It was a full day, part of which involved some tandem work so I could get a feel for how someone else balances and moves. We went down the same river as in the previous chapter and all I can say is that it's a ***LOT*** different in a Kayak.

According to the instructor and others, it's going to take me at least 4 days just paddling around on the lake and some really light currents to get a hang of the thing. Eskimo rolls (where you capsize and then flip yourself back up w/ the paddle and a big sit-up) aren't exactly a cakewalk either. And when you suck at them, you spend a bit of time, sealed in the boat, head pointed towards the bottom of the lake, flailing about. Most of the time you can at least gulp some air, but every once in a while, you just can't get it so you have to take the skirt off to get out (and breathe), paddle the boat to shore, drain it and then go again. Are we having fun yet?

So the plan for the time being is to hang out here until I make some progress. There are other places in NZ to learn kayaking, but none w/ water this warm. And for the time being, I'm going to be spending a lot of time flailing about, being completely lame, in the water, so warm is good.

This hike is widely known as New Zealand's most beautiful day-hike. A longer route can be done in 4 days, but this is the best of it.

The weather hasn't been so great. A bit of rain, hard at times, a lot of low clouds. Not good weather for hiking, much less stupendous views. According to the weather page, it looked like a nice break was coming up for that area, so I headed down there. Not without a lecture from an uppity, opinionated Australian woman about how you shouldn't plan things around the weather here. Even more opinionated than certain Germans who shall remain nameless (you know who you are). Before I started this section, I just showed my pix to a couple who did the same hike, yesterday, in bad weather and they were very sad. Moral of the story. Plan around the weather, even if you have to drive way out of your way to do it.... Before I shut up and get to the pics, I'll note that I went and stayed in National Park. It's confusing until you realize that that's the name of a town. Stayed at Howard's Lodge. Ate at Elvin's Cafe Wine Bar. If you get a chance -- check it out. Best food in NZ so far. The owners are a couple of ex-speed-skiers-turned-foodies with some pretty mind-blowing stories to tell. Great wine too.

I'll note that most of these pics were taken w/ multiple photos and then glued together w/ this panorama software that I have and am in love with...

All of these mountains are volcanos of one sort or another, and some active as recently as 1975. The hiking is mostly though volcanic rock, and craters. It's hard to imagine (or describe) how beautiful this can be. The pics make it come out looking like Mars. And it does, but in a really visceral, incredible way. They say this is NZ's best -- I've done some beautiful hikes and this one is definitely near the top of the list.

above: Mt. Ruapehu

above: Mt. Ngauruhoe ("Mt. Doom")

Climbing this volcano was *really* hard. It was considered a "side" trip of the main trail. Only some people opted to do it. I actually wasn't sure if I could but was inspired by another guy from San Francisco. After already hiking up about 1500', it was 1500' more straight up though loose sand and scree up to the top. Like hiking yosemite falls, except for the second half of the hike being through loose sand.

The crater at the top of "Mt Doom", with Ruapehu overlooking (2287M). Below: three portrait photos glued together. It's hard to get a sense of the scale, until you note the person standing on the ridge.

below: looking North to Mt. Tongariro.

right: It took about 1 1/2 hour to get up, but you could "skree-ski" down in about 15-20 min. I had hiking poles, so I could really go fast. The glass-sharp rock is pretty unforgiving for falls though. Here I fell, and bleeding a bit, snapped a picture of the slope.

above: looking back, one volcano, w/ it's top conviently blown off, so you can see the one behind (Mt. Ngauruhoe).

Feeling lonely / out of sorts
So, for some reason, after this hike, I managed to hit the bottom of some kind of depression or funk that's seems to have been trying to set in for a while. Granted 3200' and 14 miles on 2 mangos and a can of oysters doesn't make for keeping your energy up and I did feel better after eating.

But for some reason it's seeming really hard to "find my people" here. Most (as in 95%) of the people traveling here seem to be in their 20's. Some couples in their early 30's. A large percentage of them are either local or from Australia. And what can I say? They're just really different and in a different groove and time-frame than the people that I've been meeting other places, especially compared to India. Other than that there are some people that seem to be in their late 50's and seemingly so little in between. And I only think I've met a handful of people -- 2 or 3? -- traveling alone that haven't signed up with one of these 3-week bus tours.

So, it's been getting a little lonely, and the most so for this entire trip. I've been warned about this by several people and am seeing what they mean. And that's hard because I always seem to be amidst a bunch of people, but just definitely not on my wavelength, on a number of different levels. If only I were a 23 year old surfer-type. :-) It doesn't help that the weather has been pretty questionable (the sun makes such a big difference). And having my computer being broken (it boots, but just takes 5-10 min to do so) and, so far, Sony not wanting to honor the Warranty (Vaios are fast, powerful and pretty, but I'm sorry I bought this one), combined with work stuff really ramping up.

Aside from lonely, there's frustrating: A lot of things, believe it or not, are just harder here. Everything is so expensive, even compared w/ the States. Beer, for example, US 11.00 for a six pack of something simple. My same computer, US 2000 in the states, US 3000 here. Wireless is almost non-existent and way too many internet shops won't let you hook up a lap top. Heck -- even finding outlets in the places that you stay in is a huge challenge! The Kiwi people are known as being really laid back and .... well, they are, in that way that they don't seem to give a ##@* about anything which can be hard if you are depending on them for something more than taking your $50-$70 to do tourist activity X. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a scary part of the American deep south. In a lot of ways, Thailand was more first world than here. I know, I know, expectations kill. I'm readjusting. All part of travel and a good lesson.