Travel magazines love to publish articles about road trips around New Zealand. The reader can imagine themselves in a shiny new BMW, the top down, speeding across the lush countryside or along the Tasman Sea…
After four months in New Zealand, I’ve come to understand that most roads are less “German car commercial” and more “dangerous muddy mess.” Don’t let it stop you though… it’s a hell of a ride!
Leave a Comment November 21, 2009
Mt. Ruapehu is famous for its crazy nasty weather and I got a taste of it last Friday. At the base of the ski area, it was raining but at the top of the first lift, it was snowing with visibility limited to about 50m. We’d already missed two days that week due to bad weather, so we had to take what we could get. At least it wasn’t windy.
Despite how ugly it was on Friday, the forecast for the weekend was ‘blue as’… this will make more sense if you watch this video on YouTube… Kiwis seriously talk like that…
Continue Leave a Comment November 20, 2009
If I had written this email this morning, I would have said, “Hello from Sunny New Zealand….” But now it’s in the late afternoon, it’s no longer sunny, the wind they predicted is picking up, the rain is falling horizontal, and my fire is struggling to stay lit.
The school holidays are over, and I had a three day weekend thanks to a closed day last Saturday at Turoa due to limited visibility and wind. I spent much of Sunday chopping kindling and bringing in firewood to dry. Three weeks ago I was the worst fire starter in the world. These days, I’m practically a professional…
Continue Leave a Comment November 18, 2009
There are so many crazy and unexpected things about New Zealand that I simply could never have imagined!
Let me start with my flight, because it was perhaps the best flight I’ve ever been on. I left San Francisco on Air New Zealand at 9pm on Sunday night June 28th. The plane was in a word -beautiful. I had a window seat in a group of three, and the overweight woman on the isle had bought the middle seat for extra room so we were quite comfortable. Taking off from SFO at night is so cool… While we waited on the tarmac for a takeoff slot, and I just stared out the window at the continuous stream of planes landing. What would appear in the distance as a very bright star, eventually became yet another airplane, and they just kept coming. When we finally took off I could see all of San Francisco lit up like Christmas, and the Golden Gate Bridge too…
Continue 2 Comments November 17, 2009
(Abroad)
The thing about living in a small country in north-eastern Europe, is that no matter how much you love being there, you’ll always want to travel a lot.
It’s not as easy as it used to be though with FlyLAL going bankrupt, and Air Baltic routing all flights out of Vilnius through Riga. The bus takes forever, but fortunately the roads through Poland are slowly getting better. I dream of the day that there is a real four lane highway from Lazdijai to Český Těšín!
When you do manage to get out of town, the excitement will turn into an energy pulsating throughout your body, like a sparkler on the Fourth of July. As you cruise down the bumpy roads of northern Poland stuck behind a 19th century tractor, you’ll dream about all the wonderful things we don’t have in Lithuania… snow-capped mountains, the warm water of the Adriatic sea, department stores with glittering perfume counters, and Burger King. The big yellow letters of IKEA will stand out from the grimy city of Warsaw like a dream and you’ll think, “Why am I living in Vilnius?”
2 Comments November 16, 2009