Fiji Pics

Pics:

Tom - Main man and boat wreckerThe Whole Family oustide Tom's house

Kadavu Island
Ferry we rode to Kadavu
Nate and me tossin the coconut

Bah, me, Tom, Ryan, Chief Iokimi, random dude @ Cesar's Palace
Checkin out the jump!
Goin for it Baby!!!! Landed much further out than it looks
Beautiful Day...

The Shit Travelers Deal With!!!!

So this is a small taste of an essay I'm writing, a good bit of which is complete in my head but I'm waiting on Asia to finish it. You'll figure out why that is once you realize what I'm writing about. I will ask that no one take it or any kind of crap like that because I may potentially try to get this published by the end of it. It has the makings to be a funny good little read and it's all on point, 100% true. So here goes.... the introductory to my essay, Enjoy!!!!

The Shit Traveler's Deal With

When one uproots themselves from home and begins the tenacious life of a traveler they unknowingly give up one of the more comforting, serene, and habitual moments of our daily lives as human beings. By this I most certainly mean taking a shit or dropping the proverbial deuce in the comfort of a clean and familiar bathroom; preferably one's home.

When we take a shit in a place we find so comforting as our home, so familiar as our schools or our offices, or even as relatively familiar as somewhere in our own town there is a certain sense of security, of permissability, and even somewhat of cleanliness. However, contrary to these comforts of the mind, the shit of a traveler causes all sorts of demented questions and feelings to be raised.

The first obvious question a traveler asks themselves is "Where can I go?" The answer to this initial question profoundly determines the line of questioning that follows.......

Sweet As!!!! New Zealand

So New Zealand has cranked up and gotten into full swing since the last submission. Forgive me for the delay, no real good excuses other than I've been chillen out. Lots of cool shit has occurred and many beautiful landscapes have been seen. The van fiasco ended up pretty well. It costed us only $150 and we were set. She's been running great ever since.

Thus far we've walked through Kaori tree forests with the trees being over 1200 years old and 16 meters wide. Long ago when the British Crown handed out all the land of New Zealand everyone who was handed a piece of land immediately cleared it all out for farming, logging $, etc. Native New Zealand had beautiful, thick forests with massive Kaori trees. Everyone cut their forests down, while one man left his the way it was. This forest can still be seen today and we took an hour or so stroll through the 11 hect-acre plot. Not far up the road from this plot is where the 2nd and 7th largest Kaori trees in the world exist. This one is the 2nd largest: 16.9 meters across the base (around 55ft.)

Couple days later we walked a cave with a stream running through it and glowworms hanging from the cavern ceiling. We were the only 3 people there and walked about 1/2 mile off the road to get to Ivy Cave. We probably went ~100 meters into it and spent a lot of time with the lights off in order to see the glowworms. They were spectacular. It seemed as though there were thousands of little pinholes in the ceiling allowing light to penetrate the unbothered darkness. Thousands of them were there..... it reminded me of something out of Fraggle Rock for all you old skool kids. We happened into a cavern that was obviously where everybody decided to make their mark. People had been etching their names in the wall for over a century! The oldest dated signing that we saw was from 1882. Of course we made our additions to the place and headed back out to daylight.



The next eventful action that took place was one which could've been bad but worked out pretty well. We headed down to Lake Taupo which is in the middle of the North Island and to Turangi, a town directly south of the lake that is considered the Rainbow Trout Capital of the World. We were there because Tongariro National Park was close by and this was the place to get all the details worked out to be able to do the Tongariro Crossing, New Zealand's most beautiful 1 day walk. When we got to the information center it became painfully obvious that the weather would be shit for the next few days and that the only possible time to do the Crossing would be on Friday or Saturday. Considering it was Monday we had a few days to kill so we looked up a National Forest that wasn't too terribly far away and decided to hike it for a few days. We got all of our stuff together, got groceries and headed out. We drove to the place where we turned from the Highway onto the dotted line that this road was in the Atlas. The dotted line was a rutted out logging road that barely qualified as a road that our poor van was capable of having a go at. We took off down the dirt road and drove for 20km or so before the night sky fell upon us. Once it got dark we took a wrong turn or two or maybe even three due to the fact that we missed a small wooden sign pointing the way. We were 30km off of the highway and during our fiasco had managed to get extremely low on gas. So low in fact that we weren't sure we could even make back the 30 km to the highway, much less the additional 30 km to the nearest gas station. We finally found the sign, took the turn and parked the car to wait until daylight.

When we woke up low and behold we had stopped and parked almost directly in front of the trail head we were searching for. We might have been out of gas but we had plenty of food and water. We had a couple options: walk to Minginui which was a town up north about 35-40 km through the Forest to get gas and hike it back or try to get the van as close to the highway as possible and run it dry before hitch-hiking somewhere to get the gas. We decided to hike a day and see what was going on in the Forest as there was a serviced DOC hut 6 km in. We got to the DOC Hut and of course there was no one there so we had to make a decision. We decided that we would stop there for the day and wake up early and head to Minginui. We found a 6.5 liter water jug and planned on getting the gas in it.

8:30 am the next morning we got up fixed breakfast and then Ryan and I headed up the trail at 10 am while Nate went back to man the car in case someone happened to show up at the trail head. Ryan and I were carrying 40 lb. packs (roughly) and hiked 8 km to a camp site, set up camp, fixed lunch and then left our packs there and took day packs with water, food, and some first aid stuff. We were back on the trail by 12:30ish. We then busted ass up and down hills over and through the mud and got the remaining 9 km done to reach the end of the trail head by 2:50 pm. We then walked another 7 km down a gravel road into the town of Minginui, picking up a ride from a 4-wheeler for the last 1 km. It was 4 ish and we had walked ~23 km and our feet were tired. The first person we saw was a guy named Willie. This was awesome due to the fact that I've never met a guy named Willie who wasn't a chill and genuinely good person. There were no gas stations in Minginui and after looking for gas at people's houses Willie drove Ryan and I to the nearest gas station another 25 km away. We got to the gas station and had to borrow a red gas canister as our water jug was clear and wasn't legal for gas storage. We got 8 liters of gas and got back to Willie's and put it in the water jug and an old ass milk jug Willie gave us. He was even nice enough to donate the pretty nasty yellow cream that had been forming for the last 5 months.

The mission had been accomplished, we'd gotten gas, now we had to lug it all the back to the van. Willie dropped us off at the trail head and we headed back into the forest to our camp 9 km away. We made it back to the camp around 7 pm with enough time to fix dinner before nightfall. We had just walked ~31 km (about 19 miles) in 9 hours (about 5-6 hrs walking time). Our feet were dog tired but we were happy to have gas. We slept in the next morning and walked the remaining 18 km back out to the car with our ~40 lbs. packs plus the gas. I was lucky enough to have a lot space in my pack so I got to hike the 6.5 litres of gas out that day.

Over 2 days Ryan and I had hiked 30 miles and 36 miles over 3 days including the first days hike. We got the gas in the van and successfully made it to the gas station, of course not without stopping at the first bar we saw and drinking a well deserved beer.

We managed to get out of that in time to get back to Turangi and get everything squared away with doing the Tongariro Crossing the next day. Sure enough, morning came and it had snowed a shit ton that night and the X-ing was too rough without serious alpine equipment and experience. We were taken to the southern half of the Tongariro loop and hiked about 19 km throughout the day walking through plains with a Volcano on either side of us. The plains had a small amount of melting snow but none that you could see anywhere but below your feet. The volcanoes however were covered with snow. It was pretty f'n amazing. We walked through the Plains of Gorgorath and hiked up to the edge of Mt. DOOOOM!!! (Lord of the Rings). Got some great pictures and enjoyed a beautiful day. My feet were really damn tired afterwards though considering we only enjoyed a one day break between the gas fiasco and Tongariro.

This is me peeing with Mt. Ruapehu in the background. Mt. DOOOM is right behind Ryan who took the picture. Nate and Ryan jumping over the mountains in kick-ass Guitar poses. And the top pic is of MT. DOOOOM!!! taken from a good bit away... the ridge to the lower left of the Mt. is where these two normal looking pics were taken.


















We spent a day at an awesome beach and watched another beautful sunset. The wind was blowing pretty damn terribly which made it a bit chilly. The cool thing was that the wind was blowing a mist, consisting of nothing but sand, over the top of the beach only about 1 ft. high. It created the coolest looking effect I can remember seeing in quite some time. The pictures don't do it justice but it was amazing. The beach was probably 300 yards from the ocean to the end of the sand with lots of tree stumps and other gnarly wooden fragments in it. This is what the "mist" was blowing over. Add on the golden sun in the background and it was magical.
















We spent a couple days in Wellington, which is quite the blustery place. Winds there were pretty ridiculous, sometimes gusting upwards of 120 kmh. Cool place nonetheless. We went about 5-10 km south of the city to a point that supposedly had a seal "colony." We saw about 6 seals which was cool but was a bit of a dissapointment. We enjoyed another beautiful sunset there and stayed the night in the parking lot/gravel area. We had quite the interesting night with seven 15-16 year old little stoner kids.
















The night in hindsight doesn't surprise me as it's right up our alley considering how random and awesome it was. These unforgettable types of things always tend to happen to us when we travel and meet people. These crazy kids desperately wanted to hotbox the van, which we let them do, and then they proceeded to take us to the abandoned building we were parked beside. I'd picked up on them saying something to the effect of them trashing the building earlier but didn't really know what they were doing in there. When we walked in it was absolutely crazy. It was a war-zone replica. These kids were absolutely beating the shit out of this building. It eerily reminded me of the guys from Clockwork Orange at how they seemed to be on a mission to inflict as much damage as possible. They were going at it with fists, feet, wood, steel and anything else they could muster that would bring about destruction. Seeing as how I (we) completely disapproved of what the little bastards were doing we didn't really do anything but walk around and watch in disbelief. At that point my senses came to me and I realized that if the cops showed up it wouldn't even matter if I had done anything or not, I'd be screwed anyway. At that point I picked up a steel pole about 8' long and took out a stairway bannister. In hind sight this was really immature and stupid, didn't set a good example, and illegal nonetheless. We got the hell out of there pretty quickly and told the crazy ass kids to leave us alone and that they were gonna get themselves in trouble if they kept up with their antics. Nonetheless, it was a fun, random, and crazy night that will stay with me for quite some time.

A couple of days after that night we left Wellington and headed to Martinborough where we were put in touch with the owners of Murdoch James Estate, a vineyard here in the popular wine town. Many of the vineyards in New Zealand are here in Martinborough. We've been here for a week now and will be leaving tomorrow. It's been a great experience and we've been blessed with wonderful hosts. We've worked for 4 days pruning the bottom halves of the grape vines. "Bud Rubbing" as it's called. It's not hard and we've had great weather so it's been fun. It's been a nice, relaxing break from the travel and I'll definitely miss the vineyard. The wine here is great and the people and atmosphere are even better.

We have to go to a nearby town tomorrow morning as American Bob has a court date for his incident that occurred the other night. Sparing the details, he spent the night in jail for driving when he wasn't supposed to be. Will be heading towards Wellington afterwards.

Hope everyone at home is doing well... I think of you and pray for you all often. Love life and live it up!!!!

New Zealand

So we've been in New Zealand for 2 weeks and not much has gone on. We spent 12 days in Auckland looking for a van and hanging out in the city. We've been doing pretty well on not spending money but nonetheless this is a crazy expensive place. Beer at the grocery store is usually around $20 for 12. At the very cheapest you still pay $1 a beer, so we haven't been getting too crazy. It's a beautiful place and the most green I've ever seen. We visited a beach two days ago to watch the sun go down and were the only people on the black sand beach. No structures or artificial anything anywhere in sight. Only us 3 guys, big sand dunes, and a roaring Tasman Sea. Quite a surreal moment!

So we've secured a vehicle and it's a pretty awesome van. It looks like a pretty big P.O.S. but it's big enough for all of us to sleep in comfortably which will dramatically cut down on accomodation costs. We've gotten a stove to cook on and have been cooking our own meals so we're being quite efficient as we speak. We're getting some work done on the van now and will get rolling towards the south when we can hit the road. The van's got some pretty kick ass spray-painted golden fish and starfish on the side with brush guards on the front and back. It's pretty damn sweet I must say.

We still can't upload pics but are working on that every computer we get to. We'll probably have to use a personal computer before we can get em on.

Cheers Everyone!!! Miss you all!!!