UpdateNZ

Jan. 18, 2002

Hello from Kaikoura, New Zealand,

This is a beautiful country, but we've gotten more than our share of rain so far (already been soaked to the bone twice while hiking or walking.) Today we were supposed to go sea kayaking to a seal colony, but we've got that gray, misty kind of rain that doesn't look like it's going anywhere for days. So, we're taking it as a sign that it has been too long since we've written you an update.

Buenos Aires was fabulous -- a very clean, exciting city with a European feel. We had fun hanging out with Sherry's family and Argentine friends, and we ate lots of great steak. Dinner is always around 11 p.m. in Buenos Aires and you'll see families with children at the restaurants as late as 1 a.m.!

Afterward, we spent several days on a lake in northern Patagonia, hiking and biking and relaxing a lot. Then we flew on to Auckland, another fun city. Here we've exchanged steak for great seafood (the scallops in particular are yummy.) A few hours outside of Auckland is the geothermal region around Rotorua. The whole area smells, but it's worth it to see bubbling mudpools and spouting geysers. Everywhere you look the ground is hissing, steaming or bubbling. We also saw a Maori concert, which was very interesting.

Our youth hostel in Kaikoura has a co-ed bathroom. Feels like we're in Ally McBeal, except without Robert Downey, Jr. and lawyers' salaries!

Jan. 19, 2002

We're under time pressure because the internet is so expensive in New Zealand, so we forget some of the more interesting things we wanted to share with you.

First, many of you are probably wondering what it was like in Buenos Aires with the government in turmoil (I think the country went through three presidents in the two weeks we were there...) During the days, it was calm and normal -- everyone going about their business, shopping, etc. and lots of people were eating out in the restaurants at night. It was hard to imagine there was an economic crisis going on, except that many of the people we talked with told us it was really bad -- particularly the restrictions on withdrawing their money from the bank. This was evident when the restrictions were loosened and the lines at ATM machines were blocks long.

Also one night, one of the Buenos Aires soccer teams won the national championship and their fans partied in the streets for hours, setting off fireworks and stopping traffic. The very next evening, there was one of many protests along the same streets, with people banging pots and pans instead of setting off fireworks, and still stopping traffic. Partying one night, protesting the next... Another night, there was a pot-banging protest at 3 a.m. just outside our hotel. Argentina seems like a wonderful country, so we really hope things will improve there soon.

Another detail from Argentina: in Patagonia, we biked to a special forest with twisted, reddish trees that aren't found anywhere else in the world. They are the trees that reportedly inspired the drawings for Bambi.

Here in New Zealand, we also saw trees we have never seen before: the Kaoris, which can be 2,000 years old and have diameters of 30 feet.

Jan. 22. 2002

Our last email got cut short since we were using coin-operated email, a ghastly NZ creation. If you don't put your next coin in quick enough, it brutally shuts you down, just like that.

So, we didn't get to tell you about the cave full of glow worms near Rotorua. You ride a boat through the cave, and there are little dots of blue-green glowing all over the cave walls and ceiling. They look like constellations and are very beautiful (though they grow up to be flies with no mouths, which die within days.)

Now for an update on our South Island adventures... we started off on a bad note, when the generator on our train blew up and they had to put us all on buses to Kaikoura. Then, as we wrote last time, it poured for 48 hours. It did lighten up enough at one point for us to walk along the Kaikoura shoreline, where we saw dozens of seals lying on the rocks.

Since then, the weather has been fabulous. We spent three nights in Mt. Cook National Park, and kayaked on a glacial lake. Our youth hostel had a sauna!

Jan. 31, we head to Samoa (don't know if we'll have internet there.) Our project will involve mangrove conservation, and we'll be living with a Samoan family.

Jan. 28, 2002

After our quick email stop in Queenstown (did we mention they have a 134m / 400ft bungee jump?) we continued on to Te Anau, a quiet little lake town. Again, we stayed at the youth hostel, this time however the only room we had been able to reserve in advance was "The Cottage". This was a little house all by itself and for 4 days we enjoyed the luxury of our own space. While in Te Anau we took a boat ride to another cave system that, similar to the Waitomo caves, also had glow worms.

On our last day in Te Anau we went kayaking on Milford Sound which was beautifully spectacular. Milford Sound is actually labeled incorrectly as it is a fiord (fiords are carved out by glaciers, whereas sounds were created when the rising sea level flooded existing valleys after the last iceage.) We got to see a lone seal swimming alongside our kayaks, but unfortunately no dolphins or penguins graced us with their presence. At one point we had to paddle directly into the wind and waves and so got a feel for what real sea kayaking would be like. We still have sore muscles today (2 days later).

Many thanks to Net Planet in Dunedin, for helping us upload the photos and update our website.