The Coming Home of a Trip

Returning home is hard, especially if the place you left often felt like paradise.

New Zealand looks like a paradise: white sandy beaches, clear water, high blue mountains and sunlit green forests.  Leaving that kind of perfection was very hard. But I missed my home, the things I grew up with. I yearned to be close to people I knew and loved for years, for a sense of stability that my transient, traveler’s life lacked. 

Stillman's Bay, Abel Tasman National Park

I boarded my plane in Wellington feeling bittersweet: happy to return, and wistful about all I was leaving behind. What I didn’t expect to feel was lost.

Reverse culture shock always sounded strange to me. I grew up in America, surely I should know what to expect upon my return. But if America and my friends and family hadn’t changed (which they had, of course) I had changed, and the culture shock of coming home hit me much harder than when I arrived in New Zealand.

Going to New Zealand was an adventure, and everything was new and interesting. I felt exhilarated, and my adrenaline overshadowed any shock I felt.  For my first few weeks in New Zealand, I stressed about looking for work or going to a new place. I felt hyper-aware when I met new people, over-analyzing their reactions to things I said and wondering if they would think I was weird or cool or too American. But those fears were gradual and expected; coming home, change flooded me, intense and all at once.

My first night home, I stood on a dark concrete curb, staring at a packed airport parking lot with a lonely fluorescent light and a highway overhang blocking half the sky. A guy on my connecting flight from LAX walked over and asked me what I was doing in New York.  I told him I was returning from New Zealand, he said, “Oh wow, cool!” And then, “Where is New Zealand?”

After he and the other passengers from my flight were all picked up, I wobbled under the weight of my luggage to the nearest payphone to call my parents.  They arrived awhile later, and as we exchanged warm hellos, my dad yelled that he needed to clear the pickup lane. My mom was having trouble operating the GPS, so after attempting a brief conversation about the trip, we all gave up, so my dad would stop yelling about the traffic or how he didn’t know which route to take.

My friends called and excitedly planned to do things with me, and I had been away from them for so long that I fantasized about our first meetings: the smiles and hugs, the hours spent sitting together, drinking wine while I regaled them with stories from my travels. I would tell them about the people and places I loved and show them my thousands of pictures. I felt so changed, that I wanted my friends to look at me and see the difference. I wanted them to listen intently, to relive my year with me and understanding my feelings.

Storefront in Nelson that reminded me of  home

Like in any good narrative, I wanted my return chapter where I come home from my conquest and share my discoveries..or something like that. But when I saw my friends for the first time, everyone tried to talk at once and our initial reunion was nothing like my fantasy. Their lives have changed too; they have formed new friendships in my absence. We need time to get to know each other again.

Now that I am home, I’m obsessed with little things that I missed while I was gone: Entenmann’s donuts, streaming NPR,  and brushing my teeth with an electric toothbrush. Friends look at me strangely, and I feel materialistic. Maybe I shouldn’t have admitted I missed internet and American food so much. Am I saying too much or too little about New Zealand? I have trouble putting things into words. I feel their boredom when I speak; I am over-analyzing again but with old friends this time.

I feel overwhelmed by all of the choices. In New Zealand, I thought countless times about the clothes I wished I’d brought or the things I would do at home when I had 24 hour, unlimited internet access, but now that I am home I don’t know where to start. Yesterday I spent an hour walking back and forth, going upstairs to list some items on ebay, then thinking no, I should apply for jobs because I need to work, or maybe I should read some books or watch the news or no, I need to clean out my room from all this clutter. I am cluttered.

Everyone I see is so full of purpose. They have jobs and career goals, hobbies and friends. They are entrenched; I am an onlooker. My parents both work two jobs to pay their bills. I spend most of my time at home alone trying to look for a new job, so I can begin to save money again. But I feel despondent, uninterested, and lonely. I don’t know if I should talk to my friends at home or the ones I just left in New Zealand. I feel a part of neither world now.

I thought when I left New Zealand that it would be hard to say goodbye to the place and the people I met there. It was. But it was more than that. It was my dream to travel there, to try new things, to think and explore free of stress and baggage. I saved money, quit my job, planned for and lived in that dream for two and a half years. Little did I know, I also defined myself by it.

And so this loss that I feel now, this sadness, is not for the place, or the people, or the wealth of happy experiences I had there.

It is saying goodbye to my dream, my sense of purpose, my driving motivation that is the hardest. I did not realize how much inspiration I drew from my trip until it was over. I never thought realistically about the coming home of the trip. And what I would do when I got here.

Leaving the South Island on the ferry to fly home on a cold, blustery day

Boarding to Live

In my life, I am always asking myself questions to make sure I am living to the fullest: Am I enjoying myself? Am I pushing myself to try new things? Am I taking advantage of every opportunity? These questions are a construction of the way I want to live, knowing I have accomplished things, had fun, and am always open for more things to try.

When I am snowboarding, there is no reason to ask questions. I am flying, living in the moment, drinking in the mountain and the miles and miles of farmland I can see below and feeling the sun on my back. The rush I get from barrelling down the mountain, smooth and controlled, is like riding a rollercoaster. Only I control the coaster, and I’m riding through a  vast, undefined course, up and down ridges, going sideways and backwards, and anything is possible.

I am a beginner snowboarder; I only boarded one day before working on Mt. Ruapehu. But since I’ve lived on the mountain, boarding has turned into an obsession. With each day (or hour break I can get from work) that I snowboard, I become significantly better: I can tackle higher hills, go down steeper drops and let myself board faster and faster. When I first started out, I could only plow and feather down hills, but it was exhilarating to be able to control the board with my knees and hips. Any spare moment I get here, I am boarding. And each day I spend racing down the mountain, going up hills and drifting to the edge of the courses, anything to prolong this feeling…I become a bit more hooked.

Every few weeks on Mt. Ruapehu, they open the mountain after hours for staff only skiing. The lifts close at 4pm to the public and re-open at 4:15 to the staff, and they don’t close until the sun goes down. Last night was a staff only night, and I boarded down the mountain surrounded by co-workers and friends whistling and whooping at each other until the sun hid beneath us at 7pm. We skied and boarded for over 2 hours on a mountain entirely our own.

When I first arrived to work on Mt. Ruapehu, I have to be honest. I thought the people I met who were so obsessed with snowboarding that they talked about little else were a little weird. I wondered, “How much can you really talk about one sport?” But after three months here, I understand the obsession with snowboarding: on a board, you know you are alive. And although I’m not so in love that I am willing to live in endless winters, spending six months in each hemisphere like some skiers and snowboarders do, I feel a sense of accomplishment. I tried something new, and now I can add it to the long list of things I love about life and about travel.

The Joy of Hitchhiking

There is a thrill to hitchhiking: the thrill of the unknown. When that car slows down on the side of the road, nothing is set. I don’t know who is in the car, where they are from, where they are going, or even where I’ll end up. Sometimes it takes jumping in and out of 2 or 3 cars to get to my destination for the day, and some drivers have tried to convince me to join them wherever they were going.

Hitchhiking is like an adventure sport: the adrenaline, the small sense of danger, and the journey. My German friend Alex used to joke that if I was with him, he’d always get picked up. I was magic, he said. I suspect my only magic was being female, but I like to imagine I’d do well if it was a sport.

The first time I hitchhiked, it was out of need. I was living and working in Franz Josef Glacier, a town of 350 people, two tourist gift shops, a dairy (tiny NZ grocery stores that are closer in size to a 7/11), and a movie theatre that shows one film on loop about the glacier. When the weather started to get colder, my British friend, Sophie, (who loves adventure but who is even shyer than I am) and I found ourselves without a car but with a need for warmer clothes. We realized hitchhiking to the nearest town with a warehouse (similar to Walmart), Greymouth, might be our only option.

Since Grey is three hours drive, we knew we could not take the bus. We only had one day off from work. But our co-workers assured us that many people drive from Franz to Grey in one day. We would have no problem getting picked up, they said, because there is only one road from Franz to Grey—the winding two-lane State Highway Six—and it’s filled with trucks, campervans, and buses travelling through New Zealand.

I was nervous walking out to the road with Sophie, but we had already decided we were hitchhiking. There was nothing else to do, so I stuck out my thumb. Less than a minute later, a car full of Kiwis screeched to a stop in front of us. And five cars, two artists, one father, two guys that wanted a date, one invitation to stay the night in a woman’s spare bedroom, a night trip to see the glacier, and nine hours later, we made it safely to Grey and back, exhilarated.

I like hitchhiking, and that surprises even me. When I first arrived in this country my only experience with hitchhiking was from movies where people got abducted or robbed. I thought that anyone who would dare try hitchhiking was either crazy or stupid. But in a small country full of immigrants and travellers, hitchhiking seems like a normal form of transport. I hitchhike to the supermarket if the nearest food store is too far to walk, and why shouldn’t I?

I like hitchhiking for all of its possibilities. It allows me to meet to people outside of those in my daily life and throws me into a conversation with them because of the social contract we all live by. No one can get a free ride from someone and not at least ask them how they are or who they are, and the answers I get are always surprising and never dull. Need inspiration? Crave human connection? Come to New Zealand and stick your thumb out.

I no longer have any trepidation about hitchhiking in New Zealand; it left me that first day. The only anxiety a hitchhiker ever has in New Zealand is that the conversation will die. And that is something a hitchhiker never wants to happen because in my experience, the type of people who pick up hitchhikers all fall into two categories:

• People who relate to hitchhikers—either they hitchhiked themselves or they have kids and view helping you as aiding one of their own.
• People who are lonely—a really nice Czech girl picked me up once in a fancy rental car, and just as I was wondering why she had cared to stop for me when so many other people in nice cars passed me by she admitted she hadn’t been able to get a radio signal for the last 50 km, and she was so bored she was scared she’d fall asleep at the wheel.

When being picked up by either type of person, it is the hitchhiker’s responsibility to fill the car with conversation. Share your story, and listen to theirs. Since many hitchhikers in New Zealand are foreigners backpacking through the country, many people I’ve met wanted to pick me up to see what I thought of their country—how did it compare to my own? A few times I had nothing in common with the driver who picked me up. A few times I rode with a person who asked me if I was stuck working for those Indians in a way that I knew meant racism. And it’s those days when I arrive at my new noisy hostel, and think man, hitchhiking is hard work. And maybe the next day, I decide to take the bus.

Often though, hitchhiking forms friendships, relays wisdom, or at least provides that simple human need for good conversation. I’ve met locals who tell me what they like about living in New Zealand, details about the country’s history, industries, weather, cultures, some who offered me a free place to stay or a job. I’ve met other travellers who shared tips about the best places to visit, hiking trails, or stories about their homelands. Most of the people I’ve met will share whatever they have to give.

When I return to the United States I think I will miss the community of hitchhikers and all of the people who pick us up. But I cannot imagine hitchhiking in the U.S., especially if I am living in a large city like Washington, DC. So when I return, I will try to find another way to connect with travellers and foreigners living in the United States. I want to give back to people the way so many Kiwis went out of their way to share themselves and anything they had with me in New Zealand.

Recipe edition: Making Mexican food in New Zealand

A travel blog I read made a great point about people when they travel. The blogger, Lauren, wrote that since we are always moving to new places and people, we serve as our own anchor, our own home. Travelers can only know themselves well to feel comforted and at home.

Whenever I find something when I am traveling that I know and like I become obsessed with it. It is a small piece of home in a foreign place.

At home, I like Mexican food. Here, I am a missionary for the cuisine, talking to everyone I meet how good it tastes.  But there are not many Mexican immigrants in New Zealand, so when Abe and I arrived here we were disappointed to find that even Wellington, the capital and 2^nd biggest city in NZ does not have a Mexican restaurant.

As the weeks passed we visited many cities and towns all with no Mexican restaurants, so we decided to take matters into our own hands. We scoured the grocery store shelves for any Mexican-looking ingredients we could find, and planned to feast that very evening. Grocery-shopping for Mexican food is no small feat in New Zealand because supermarkets (or as Kiwis say, "dairys") here do not even sell tortilla chips. You have to go to a natural or organic foods store to find them, and there aren’t very many of those in NZ either.

But we were motivated, like most travelers ravenously cooking up a storm in hostels, by an intense desire for a slice of home. The result was a masterpiece worth sharing. If you are in NZ, you need to try this (you’ve been missing out), and even if you’re somewhere in the US surrounded by lovely burrito carts or even Chipotles, you will love this recipe too.

Things you need:

White long grain rice (or your favourite kind is fine too, since Abe and I have quite different opinions on rice)

3 small gold potatoes (we snagged these from an organic vegetable truck that visits our hostel each week!)

5 or 6 white mushrooms

1 can Mexican-style tomatoes (these are diced and seasoned)

1 can black beans in chilli sauce (oddly all black beans in NZ come in this sauce)

2 avocados

Shredded white cheddar cheese (since NZ doesn’t call cheese by the actual name, you will find it under “Tasty Cheese” here)

Black pepper

Your favourite all-purpose seasoning or beloved Goya seasoning, but we can’t get that here

Jumbo tortillas

Cooking oil

What to do:

Chop up your potatoes and throw them in the frying pan with some oil, black pepper and all purpose seasoning. Let the potatoes cook until they’re soft and golden. Throw in chopped mushrooms next and allow to cook for a few more minutes. Add the beans, chopped avocadoes, and tomatoes and cook until all ingredients are mixed in and sizzling. Shred some cheese over a tortilla and slap your delicious cooked mixture on top. And you’re done! This recipe is clearly perfect for backpackers since we hate to wait, but it is also extremely tasty.

UPDATE:
If I had been lucky enough to be friends with my lovely Kiwi friend, Tessa, (who is a fantastic guide to all things Kiwi, by the way) when I was in Wellington I could have satisfied my Mexican food craving with a visit to the South American restaurant The Flying Burrito Brothers. Thanks, girl!

Feeling at home in Dunedin

A few weeks ago, before Abe and I ventured to Christchurch, we stopped off in Dunedin--the southern most city on the South Island. I did not want to write about the city until now because I felt conflicted. I spent almost a week in Dunedin and loved the city, but I felt a bit guilty when I thought about why. Because I think the reason I liked it so much is because it reminded me of Brooklyn or of the blocks surrounding University of Columbia in New York. 

The first time I went to Brooklyn to visit my friend Ashley, I absolutely fell in love with it because of the stores and restaurants. I got a wonderful feeling I’d never had before: like a future déjà vu. When I would pop into a restaurant or store, I would think “This is the exact restaurant that I want to own!” or “everything I would ever buy is all in one place”. I felt the joy of being surrounded by strangers who must be kindred spirits. Store and cafe owners who liked the things I liked, and maybe in another life we’d great friends. Brooklyn and New York have felt to me like a kind of home to me, even though I’ve never lived there, because they house some of my favourite things in the world all in one place: independently-owned unique cafes, artsy shops, and loungy spots to see live music. These are all of the things I loved about Dunedin too, but I feel it’s unfair because I loved them about New York first.

In Dunedin, there were cafes and coffee spots on every corner, and each morning I felt overwhelmed at all of the terrific options for breakfast. Café and bar names were short and sleek like: Governor’s, Good Oil, The Fix, Ra, or Craic. The décor in almost all of the shops and restaurants were either modern and artistic—some even had university student work on the walls and most places had art for sale—or beautiful old buildings with stained glass windows, high arched ceilings, or exposed brick walls.

Since Dunedin is the host of the annual New Zealand Fashion Week, Dunedin does house some more expensive shops, but after about two blocks of those, you’re again passing “funk shops,” three second-hand bookstores piled floor to ceiling with beautiful old books, and a handful of pure Brooklyn shops. The stores that sell gorgeous, unique jewelry, art, home decorations, and knickknacks, a lot of which is handmade. The girls working in these shops are always helpful and artistic and sometimes mention asking the artists themselves if you have a question about a particular item.

My first day in Dunedin I got breakfast at Governor’s, a place recommended to me by my awesome co-worker, Rosie, who is from the city. She was actually so excited that I was visiting her town that she typed me up a list of things I needed to do. Governor's was one of the premier mentions on the list: “Their breakfast is AMAZING,” she gushed, and man, she wasn’t lying. While I was eating, I looked at the art bulletin board that covered one wall of the café, full of napkin art customers tacked up, and flyers advertising events. I leafed through the Otago Daily Times newspaper that was sitting on a nearby table and found out that a beatboxing champion was hosting a show at one of the bars that night. Uh oh, I was in love. 

When Abe and I walked around that evening, we found that not only was a beatboxer playing at one bar, but almost every other bar featured live music at least one night a week, and most had it more than one. The center of Dunedin is an octagon of stores and bars, and when we passed through it all of the bars had a different live band: some playing fantastic covers and others playing original music, but all of them had some people dancing. Other people were sitting on couches over coffees or cocktails, appearing deep in happy and stimulating conversations with friends.

The entire city had a romantic feel to it: the center of the city was in a small valley on the coast with the small hills lit up with houses surrounding it. My hostel was on one of these hills and it was in a tall, charming old building overlooking a stone cathedral, and it was named after the school in Harry Potter (Hogwartz). So clearly I have some kindred spirits in Dunedin too. Even though Brooklyn and New York City were where I had my first, “I want to drop everything and move here and make friends with all of MY people” experience, it does not mean I cannot have that experience again in a new city in a slightly different way. 

My newfound love for Dunedin will not cheapen my love of New York; I’ve decided not to be monogamous in my affairs with cities. I want to collect little homes all around the world where I can feel the joy of a few things I love most all in one place.

Christchurch in photos

Sometimes the photographs tell much more than words ever could. I wish I had a better camera here, and I wish I was a more practiced photographer, so I could do these places justice. Especially Christchurch. But no matter. The beauty and devastation of this city were eerie and moving, and I would like to share them.

A visit to Christchurch

We arrived in Christchurch about six weeks after the earthquake hit, devastating the city. It actually felt as if more time had passed since the disasters in Tokyo had long since taken over the news headlines, and Christchurch was the last natural stop on the north end of the South Island before Abe and I headed up to our jobs on the North Island. Neither of us had seen the city before the earthquake even though we had both wanted to visit. I wanted to visit the Arts Centre, a castle-like structure full of theatre, shops, and cinema, the town’s center Cathedral Square, and the town’s many café stops which were said to rival Wellington’s reputation as being the most “wired” city. Abe had his own list of things he wanted to see.

I knew a lot of the city had been badly damaged in the earthquakes and after-shocks, so I expected most of our tourist destinations could no longer be seen. The cathedral has fallen, after all. But I also knew that the city was no longer discouraging people from visiting, and Abe and I reasoned that our visit would help their economy.

It wasn’t until I arrived that I realized, this was my first time witnessing the aftermath of a natural disaster or some kind of war zone—because they must look awfully similar—with my own eyes.

Walking through the streets to our hostel, we passed what I knew were buildings now piles of rubble and a house with its walls crumpled beside it brick by brick to reveal a grotesque life-size dollhouse. When we were one street away we reached a big blue tent surrounded by construction cones and wire fencing, and I realized I was seeing my first ever military checkpoint. We walked up and showed ID and explained that we were staying in a hostel down the street through the yellow zone—which not surprisingly, is what they called the buildings surrounded the completely blocked off red zone in the center of the city.

They eyed us for a few minutes before letting us through with a warning to not try to pass through without a letter of residency in the future. It struck me odd that they needed to survey us so carefully.  I’m not sure what they were checking for? Are there really so many people trying to sneak into this area that they need it guarded? What would they sneak in to do? To loot? To enter their damaged houses to get their belongings so they can flee the city for good? Or to take pictures as we saw so many tourists and possibly citizens too do because really what else can you do when surrounded by so much awe-inspiring destruction?

We were greeted at the hostel by a smiling, blonde German girl who happily showed us around the warm, family-run place. But it too felt like a ghost town. There were three backpackers in the large kitchen, sitting drinking cider and talking quietly. We didn’t see any other guests that night. The German girl was talkative and helpful, showing us the spread of the hostel—which could clearly accommodate way more than 5 guests. Abe asked her if many people were coming to Christchurch lately. “No,” she said emphatically but quietly. “Christchurch used to be such a beautiful city. But there is nothing left.” She paused. “When people call to make a reservation with us at the hostel, and then we tell them about the cordone and passing through the military checkpoint, they never show up. Even though we have no damage here.”

It is hard doing business in a city ravaged by earthquakes.

As she showed us to our dorm room, (which turned out to be our private room since we were the only occupants) she told us there might be after-shocks. “We’re still getting them, but they’re not too bad. Don’t worry, this building is fine. The walls will move, but it is fine.”

The walls will move? I realized this was my first visit to an earthquake region too; I’ve never experienced any kind of natural disaster.

In my two days spent in Christchurch, I never did feel an earthquake, though it’s possible I slept through a small one. I tried to prepare by asking Abe what I should do if we felt one. I would hide under a bed, in a doorway, or if I was outside I’d find a clearing, he said.

Since I did not make it to Christchurch before the earthquake, I never saw its buildings when they were still standing. I missed out. Every place on my list to visit was closed, badly damaged, or at least partially blocked off for safety measures. Abe and I enjoyed a really nice day walking through Hagley Park, but even there on the corner of the city, we had to zigzag around cones and walk through blocks of crumbling buildings on our way home.

Visiting the city overwhelmed me with questions, and I think Abe had a similar reaction. Maybe you0 cannot see that kind of destruction and obvious change with your own eyes without wanting some answers.

Will Christchurch businesses be able to start back up again? Will people return to this city or decide to live somewhere they feel safer? Will Christchurch return to the city is once was? Will it be different? Better? Only time will tell, and our German hostess told us the red zone will not come down until “maybe December.” So only time will tell. The Christchurch I visited looked a lot like a ghost town.

The day before we left, a sign in the hostel said that the nearby Beat Street Café was open for business. Abe and I went and chatted with the friendly staff and ate delicious food and coffee. We played Dominoes in the outdoor patio of mismatched antique furniture and bumped along to the funk music playing from within. Other people came and went from the café as we sat there, smiling and enjoying their food. It left me with a good feeling about Christchurch. People there are living their lives, and slowly they will try to rebuild and reopen the places that were and maybe even make them better. Some people will leave—who can blame them? But there is still something special that is alive in that city. I hope I can visit again.

Photographs of my second Great Walk: Routeburn

Thankfully, I did not accidentally delete my pictures of my second Great Walk on the Routeburn Track. This walking track is also in Fiordland National Park, but it does not wind around Lake Te Anau like the Kepler Track did. The Routeburn track is through the moutains, but because it is not around the lake the views are very different. So, if any of you are considering hiking in Fiordland, expect that all three of the Great Walks there--Milford, Kepler, and Routeburn--look very different.

I am obsessed with all kinds of water: oceans, lakes, rivers, and waterfalls are always my favourite to photograph. The mountains and plants in New Zealand are amazing, so I have pictures of them too. But my heart is always with the water (I blame it on those 15 years of swimming back in my childhood). Since the Kepler Track wound around the lake, I mourned my lost photos and thought sourly, "The Routeburn track can never compare."

Luckily, I was wrong. The Routeburn track is very diverse. We walked through forests, crossed old and new bridges, crossed open streams, saw dozens of waterfalls, and had views of a lot of the other mountain tracks in Fiordland including the most challenging Rees-Dart Track, which is a range of gorgeous snow-capped mountains (and though I love photographing snow-capped mountains I will not be hiking this track because I do not hike through snow if I can help it!).

The beginning

 My beloved water. All of the rivers I've seen on the South Island look like this. What have we done to our rivers in the U.S. to make them look so unlike this gorgeous sea green color? 

The beech forest, draped in a neon green lichen called old man's beard

The Routeburn Track takes hikers through a bunch of different valleys and breaks in the forest line or "bush line" as the Kiwis say. It's nice because you get to see the mountain lakes and rivers up close, as opposed to the Kepler Track, where you were always looking down on the water from great heights.

Night one: in my mummy sleeping bag on my bunk

Day two: the day of waterfalls!

There were a few lakes like this up high in the mountains. It is so cool to see these; I fell in love with them. The hut we slept in on night two was right next to a lake like this called Lake Makenzie. Sadly, it was much too cold to swim.

Day three!

On the Kepler Track, Abe and I were too exhausted to do any of the side trips except one waterfall walk. But on Routeburn, we decided to climb Conical Hill summit. It was extremely icy, and we had to get down on our hands and knees to climb some of it, but we made it!

At a couple points on the track, we were so high up that we could see the Tasman Sea!

This is the "orchard." It is just a huge clearing with trees that look like fruit trees, but sadly, they aren't. I was amazed by how many different kind of shrubs and ferns could be in one valley!

We saw many waterfalls that day, but the largest and most spectacular waterfall was Earland Falls.

On Lost Photographs

When I finished writing my lengthy blog post about surviving my first Great Walk tramping trip, I felt good. I thought I had adequately described the challenge this walk was for me, and I was excited to share my accomplishment with the world. But as I scrolled through my picture folders to find a few of my favorite shots to add to the post, my stomach sank. The picture folder I had named "Kepler Track" was empty. I frantically searched through other folders hoping that the photos were dropped in the wrong one by mistake. But they were nowhere to be found. I checked my camera's memory card, but as I suspected, I had deleted the photos from the card and somehow forgotten to paste the pictures to any folder on my computer.

I gave myself a few days to get over the loss of about 300 pictures that I took over those amazing three days. But even now, I am crushed. I'm not just upset because I had some beautiful shots--which I did since I was 1400m or 4600ft high in the mountains above beautiful Lake Te Anau. I am upset because I lost all documentation of my great accomplishment: my first Great Walk and multi-day hiking trip. I walked 37 miles in three days, and as I mentioned in my post about the track, taking pictures on narrow paths through the mountains where I was so physically exhausted that I more closely resembled Frodo or Gandalf than myself was my favourite part of the trek. Those photos were my trophy, my reward, for surviving.

I know many other people who have lost treasured photographs on trips, and I feel a kind of solidarity with them now. It is devastating that I misplaced some of my trip photos because I learn so much more about different places and about myself when I am travelling. I feel like losing those pictures robbed me of the memory of myself in a period of significant growth. And yet, I know I will always have my memories, and the evidence that I have changed is right here for everyone to see.

Let me blow your mind: the drive from Franz Josef to Wanaka

We had to pull over many many times on this drive to take pictures of the mountains and lakes. I would be so content to live here, as I can imagine most people would.

Surviving my first Great Walk: The Kepler Track

Since I’m only in New Zealand for 6 months, or possibly a year if I decide to extend my trip, I examine everything I do much more than I would if I was living at home in the United States. I want to use my time here well and only do things that I’m really interested in. It also helps that most things in New Zealand are so expensive that you have to choose well, or you’ll be out of money in a week. Think it’s hard to spend $1000 in a week? Come to New Zealand; it’s not.

I listened to an NPR story about seasonal workers a few weeks ago, and it mentioned that since we are all working in positions for such short periods of time, seasonal workers never stop examining how much we like or don’t like the work, the industry, the company we’re with. We never settle in and accept the day-to-day hustle because we’re not in a job long enough. In New Zealand, seasonal work is pretty common, but only if you’re working in an industry like tourism or farming.

But I wish that all jobs could be seasonal, so we could all go through life trying out new things and companies and cities, and examining our choices as we make them. Maybe we’d all be happier.

Since now I do live that way and am constantly stopping to examine my choices, when Abe revealed his desire to hike all 9 of the Great Walks in New Zealand, I was a bit wary. The Great Walks are the most popular tramps in New Zealand, but the difficulty levels vary and all of them are multi-day hikes. Before coming here, I had never even considered doing a hike for more than a day. “Going on a hike is fun, but the next day I want to wake up clean and dry in my own bed,” I reasoned. But Abe wanted me to try a hike with him, and I felt like I should give what was clearly one of his top interests—camping and hiking, or tramping as they call it here—a real shot. So, he suggested we hike the Kepler Track, a three day-two night tramp around Lake Te Anau and up the mountains. “It’s supposed to be gorgeous,” he said. “I guess I’m doing this,” I thought.

Reading the NZ Department of Conservation brochure on the track made me nervous again. Their list of things you needed to bring on this hike was long and included things like emergency blankets, waterproof matches, and thermal underwear. And then I read about the weather on this tramp:

“Be prepared for at least one wet day or more on your trip…. Centred at latitude 45° south, Fiordland National Park lies in an area of predominately westerly airstreams, known as the Roaring 40s, delivering high rainfall and changeable weather patterns to the area. Cold temperatures, snow, strong winds and heavy rain can occur at any time of the year.”

Um, hmmm. I read further down, and there were separate sections on Hypothermia, Infections, Floods, Avalanches, High Winds, Getting Lost, and Heat Exhaustion. Crap. Now I was just flat out scared. Abe chuckled at all of my concerns, saying we would bring all of the right things, so I shouldn’t worry. But I was already nervous that I wouldn’t be able to hike for three days straight, especially if I wasn’t getting great sleep: we were planning to spend one night in the DOC huts—I wasn’t sure what to imagine for those—and one night camping in the wilderness.

My worry increased when Abe and I had dinner with our two friends here who also happen to be Girl Scouts, and they teased me about not knowing how to build a fire or pitch a tent, and asked me kiddingly, “What will you do if something happens to Abe, and you have to do all of this stuff yourself?”

I knew they were kidding, but it still bothered because I really didn’t have any idea how to do this stuff.

Our first day hiking, it rained. And the wind blew. And since we got a late start the sun was also setting which meant it was really freaking cold. We were just getting out of the woods, about an hour away from our hut that night when the rain turned into a downpour, and I started to lose feeling in my fingers. “What the fuck am I doing?” I thought. “I just want to go home, and I have two more days and nights of this.” But I couldn’t go home, and so I tried to carry on. Hiking with a big backpack was way harder than I expected too, I felt I could barely make it up each hill. A fellow hiker gave me her walking stick on her way out of the track, and I leaned all of my weight on it while I tried not to cry. “Can you walk a bit faster?” Abe asked me since we were getting wetter and colder with every minute that passed. “Actually, no! This is as fast as I can go,” I practically wailed. And it was true; I was dead on day one.

We made it to the hut about an hour later where we had access to gas stoves, and little mattresses on wooden bunks. Thankfully, this hut was really nice. I thought I might never be completely warm and dry that night, but after a few hours in my awesome mummy sleeping bag—I totally found it in the Salvation Army in Wanaka for 20 bucks!—I was actually sweating.

Day two is when I changed. We had hiked so far uphill day one, that day two seemed like a piece of cake. Yes, we still had some uphill, and yes, some parts of the path were frighteningly narrow despite being on top of the mountains, but I felt like a pro at this point. AND it was only raining intermittingly which meant from the gorgeous mountaintops we could stop and enjoy the breathtaking views of Lake Te Anau shrouded in wispy clouds and take pictures of each other looking like Frodo and Gandalf from Lord of the Rings. Abe even taught me how to pitch our tent, and I cooked our dinner on our mini spider gas stove. I could do this! And actually have a lot of fun.

Day three it rained nearly all day again. At first I didn’t mind because it wasn’t as cold as day one, and hey, it was our last day. Abe and I had a private room in a hostel in Te Anau waiting for us, and we had already planned out our dinner for the evening once we got back. I could get through this last day. But as the rain poured on, it wore on me because it meant we couldn’t stop to rest and take off our packs because the ground was wet. And what were once pristine paths were now mudslides. When we stopped at a picnic area where we could have lunch, we found that we were swarmed with sandflies—think tiny mosquitos whose bites actually hurt and then itch for two weeks and then scar—so we didn’t stay there long. But what really got to me was that the land we were hiking through in this rain was all forest. Sure, occasionally the forest would change from being completely moss-covered to being full of huge ferns I thought were only found in some kind of South American rainforest, but really, there wasn’t much new to look at. And this was after day two when there was so much to see that I had to pull my gaze away from the scenery long enough to make sure I wasn’t falling off the side of the mountain.

Right when I started to complain that I seriously could NOT take any more of this forest, Abe and I crossed a bridge that looked eerily familiar. “Weird that they would put two bridges like that over the forest clearings,” I thought. And promptly forgot about it. About 30 minutes later we hit a sign we had already seen, and we realized we had somehow changed directions and just walked back to the hut we departed about 45 minutes before. That is when I really lost it. I had to trek through 45 minutes of the SAME forest I was dying to get out of? Fuck no. We should have been close to finished by then, and instead we now had over an hour of tramping to go. A few minutes after we turned around, my knee started to ache. Then my toes started curling up, and then my shoulders started refusing to straighten. I told Abe I wanted to sit down on the forest floor and just make the DOC personnel come pick me up. It seemed like that forest was never-ending, and the worst part was we could not see anything past trees and more trees.

But somehow I kept walking. I told myself to push forward because even though I could not see the end, it was somewhere. It was today. And eventually, though it seemed like hours instead of the one hour it was, we reached that ending sign: Rainbow Reach. And that was it: I had completed my first Great Walk on the Kepler Track.

It’s pretty amazing to me how adaptable humans are. I really thought I was going to freeze to death on day one, but I pushed myself through it and even got up on day two without complaints. I wanted to sit down on that forest floor and go crazy to myself until someone carried me out of there on day three, but I didn’t. I kept walking, and I found things to think about to get me through it. And though I told myself many times throughout the track that maybe I just wasn’t meant to tramp and that I’d never do it again, I was already composing a list of things to do differently for the next track. I wanted to go again, and I wanted to do it better. I felt physically dead upon completion of the track, but emotionally I felt strong and confident. If I can do this, I can do anything!

And so, even though Queenstown—the home base for most of the Fiordland National Park hikes including three of the Great Walks—is best known for “adventure sports” like bungee jumping, canyon swinging, and skydiving, I think it is much more adventurous to go hiking. I think it takes way more endurance, strength, and guts to push yourself through tests for 3 days or more in the wilderness than it does to have one moment of courage and say yes to jumping out of a plane.

So, fuck skydiving, I survived the Kepler Track. And my new gutsy, confident self is hitting the Routeburn Track next.

Sex in hostels: as in, please do not have it

Abe and I have been in New Zealand for about 2 months now, but we've only stayed in 3 backpacker hostels so far, since we were working in Franz Josef for the bulk of this time. In 2 out of the 3 hostels, we have been, what in college we would have called "sexiled." People had sex in our rooms. But in college, no one has sex with someone while their roommate is in the room, they make them wait outside until the sex is over. In the backpacker world, however, I am discovering that it is quite common for an intoxicated backpacker to bring back their chosen sexual partner for the evening and have sex with them in a multi-bed dorm room. Even if this room is full of 6-16 other people, and even if these people are awake.

The first time I witnessed hostel sex, I was horrified. It was loud and seemed to last for an eternity—what began as whispering and kissing slowly progressed to giggling and heavy breathing, and I kept thinking, “This is not going to happen. This girl will never say yes to having sex in a multi bed dorm room in a hostel. She is going to say no.” And then the creaking noises began. So, apparently she said yes.

I couldn’t find my headphones that night, and I was so paralyzed with shock that it was even happening that I listened to the entire thing, including the girl letting herself out at the end. Needless to say, I was traumatized for a few days, and just a bit angry.

My second time as a witness, I was prepared. I had already fallen asleep on a top bunk of an 8-bed dorm room when I woke up to someone accidentally turning on a light and laughing about it. Another voice, a girl, laughed and slurred, “Are there other people in here?!” Crap, this is going to happen again.

I had my headphones on and Radiohead’s new CD blasting just as the first bout of heavy breathing began. Fortunately, I had been meaning to give this new album a close listen since I bought it a few days before just hadn’t found the time. Now the time had found me. After my first listen I tepidly removed one earphone to see if all was quiet yet. I heard moaning. And I decided this album was really deserved of a second close listen at full volume.

Somewhere during that listen, the sex concluded and the girl went home. I looked down at the backpacker guy sprawled out on a bed below me like a caveman: mouth wide open, dirty-looked hair matted, legs and arms hanging off the bed, and wondered, “Who ARE these girls?!”

I know I could be wondering who are these guys too, but it just doesn’t seem as hard to fathom. I have seen far too many male backpackers around who look like they haven’t showered in weeks (even though all of the hostels I’ve stayed in have great showers) and are on their 15^th country on their world tour or something. I can just hear them in my mind telling stories to their friends when they get home about sleeping with girls in every country in the hostels. And if any of their friends bring up the fact that other people sleep in those hostel beds and probably listened or saw these sex acts, they would laugh and say, “Hey, I hope they enjoyed the show.”

No. We are not enjoying the show. But maybe I’m not being fair because after all, guys are people too. So, I’ll just say this:

If you are having sex in a multi bed hostel, yes, all of the other people in the hostel are awake, and yes, they hate you. Please stop. If you are thinking about having sex in a multi bed hostel, don’t. Man up and pay for the single room, it’s only a bit extra, and many, many people who got to go through life without witnessing sex in a hostel will thank you in the long run. And I will thank you right now because I still have a few months of staying in these hostels to go.

Seasonal Work in a Small Town

About one week after coming to New Zealand I got an offer to work as a seasonal worker in the small town of Franz Josef Glacier. I have now worked in Franz as a waitress in the hotel’s tour group restaurant--meaning my life consists of phrases like “Soup or Salad?” “Lamb or Fish?” “No, Hari Hari is a small town in New Zealand, not a type of farming,”--for seven weeks. Working at a hotel in a small town is like working at an even smaller town within the small town. Everyone works together in the 2 hotels and lives together in 3 different staff houses, so there is no such thing as separation. Since I have only lived in a large suburb and cities, when I first arrived, I was excited to try small town life. When I first got here, I felt very important because true to the small town, word got around I was coming before I arrived, and people were excited to meet me. Most people wanted to know everything about me. I quickly learned though that the downside of the small town is also true: anything you say or do is known by everyone instantly: dating habits, your past, that time you got way too drunk. And if you piss off the wrong people in the small town, you will very quickly feel excluded from everything.

Since Franz Josef Glacier is a tourist town that most tourists only stop in for one day and night--they see the glacier, have dinner, have breakfast the next morning, and they’re gone—it makes this small town feel even more prosaic. The majority of the businesses here are targeted toward those 1 day inhabitants: the gift shops, the adventure tour places, and the entire strip of hotels. No one in the world seems to think this town is worth spending more than one day of their lives in, and yet, we live here. When I first moved to Franz, I thought I would love talking to the tourists that came through about their adventures; after all, I am a fellow traveller. But I soon realized that talking to the people who come through here is awful because it’s the same routine every time. When I walk into one of the two bars in town, Monsoon or Blue Ice Café, and am immediately approached by at least one guy who wants to “hear your story.” They then launch into their story about backpacking around New Zealand and possibly a few other countries in Southeast Asia, or maybe they’re even on a “world tour” visiting some odd 15 countries or more. They wanted to see the world, do something different, or have an adventure. They are really missing everyone in their hometown or everyone at home is missing them. They’re just looking for a good time for their one night in Franz. But I live here now, and even if I was single, I wouldn’t want to be their good time for one night.

Living in a small town, there is no anonymity. I always know the people in the bar, not just the bartenders and bouncers but all of the patrons. One of the first weeks we were here, a few of my friends and I chatted up a waiter we thought was cute at The Landing, the more popular of the two restaurants in town, and in the next few days following we realized why you can never do that in a town the size of Franz. We saw him at the bar, Monsoon,  one of two bars young people go to in town, at the supermarket, and every time we wanted to go back to The Landing. A few weeks later we found out he also worked at the Kayaking Tour place, so we couldn’t go there anymore either.

When I first arrived in Franz Josef, the HR Coordinator at the hotel was conversationally telling me what kinds of cars people who worked here drove. I thought it was very odd at the time, but I quickly realized why she would recognize everyone’s car. Any time you walk anywhere in Franz Josef you will have at least one car pull over next to you to make sure you don’t need a ride somewhere. Even on a nice day when you want to walk or really don’t want to run into someone, there will always be a friendly face pulling up beside you to say hello, what you are doing and to find out if you need a lift.

I think what surprised me the most about working a seasonal job here was how close you can get to people. Since everyone who works at the hotel lives together and works together, I was expecting to be really sick of everyone here in a short amount of time. It seemed like too much exposure to each other. But I really found the reverse was true. Living in such close proximity to people allows you to form close relationships really quickly. You cannot live in the same place and work the same long hours with someone without finding out all of the weird intricacies of their personality. I quickly learned who liked the same music as me, who told great stories, and who made the best Chewbacca impression. I developed weird jokes that wouldn’t make sense to anyone not working in this hotel in this small town because you need to laugh a lot to work in a town this small and in the tourism industry.

My co-workers and I all joke that a person does not have to work here long to go crazy, and that “Everyone does go crazy eventually.. look at you, you were so normal when you arrived here,” my co-worker Luke teases me. But I think we all secretly love how crazy we’ve gotten. I have known the people here for less than two months, and we have no inhibitions with each other anymore. When else can you say that? Although I really miss the amenities—and the sunshine since this small town happens to be in the middle of the rain forest—of city life, I will miss the family that I have started to develop at the hotel in Franz Josef. I don’t think I could have hoped to get to know people this well on my vacation, but I’m so glad I do.

My town:

My people: