The Lonely Mountain

Mitch: Kiwis are some of the fittest people I've ever met. They're a different kind of fit than back home; They're endurance fit.  They go and go and go.  It's slightly ironic that they're always motivated to do some physical activity, yet they're as lazy as possible when speaking ("I could do that" = "could do", "I am interested in doing that" = "I'm keen", "this afternoon" = "this arvo")

We've hardly spent a night alone since our arrival.  It still amazes me how quickly we were included into the social circle here.  Nearly everyone we've met has exchanged numbers with us, and within the week we are receiving invites to do things.  Over the last two weeks I've participated in golf, tennis, cricket, strawberry picking, cow milking, marlin fishing (more on this later), park concerts, afternoon drinks, fish n chips on the beach, and, of course, hiking.  Our first hiking excursion was on our second day here- Vic texted us and asked if we wanted to go on a "quick walk" .  She took us to Paritutu, a dominant monolith protruding out of the port of Taranaki; It was the magma core of a long-extinct volcano, and when the husk of the volcano eroded away what remained was Paritutu.  The hike was short, but involved roughly 200 stairs followed by a near-vertical climb through a rocky crevasse.  It took about 30 minutes- or should I say, it took Jenna and I 30 minutes, and Vic about 15.  We were clearly a little out of shape.

Paritutu is the protruding monolith, just to the left of the smoke stack.

The climb up Paritutu; This is looking nearly straight vertical

A week later Laura, another coworker of Jenna's, invited us to explore the Whitecliffs Walkway with her and a few friends.  Sounds like a pleasant stroll, yeah?  Nah.  The "walkway" was a hiking trail that snaked up and down (and back up and down again... and again) over a coastal mountain range about 60 minutes from New Plymouth.  A third of the way down the trail you are given the option of returning to the start via the white sand beach.  We did not take that route. We continued over a cable footbridge and commenced our up-and-down adventure.  Luckily it was drizzling, as the heat would have killed me.  Despite our best efforts we were struggling to keep up to Laura, Bianca, and Bianca's kid brother Matheson, who was carrying a 45lb pack in preparation for a tour of the South island. Showoff.  The trip took us roughly 3 hours- quite a bit quicker than the predicted 5 hours that was posted on the trail sign.  Maybe we weren't so out of shape after all.

Mt. Taranaki

We've heard that climbing Mt. Taranaki is quite difficult, so we were planning on training throughout the year and attempting it in December, just before we return to Canada.  It turned out that Laura, Vic, Sarah, and two of Laura's friends, Renee and Emilee, were doing the climb three weeks after our arrival, and invited us to tag along.   We notified them of our plan to climb it in December but they recommended we reconsider, as the weather is quite unpredictable in the early summer.  Although New Plymouth has fairly mild weather, the mountain is a different beast.  It's the second deadliest mountain in New Zealand, primarily because the weather can change in an instant, and there's no shelter whatsoever above the tree line (Jenna: It's worth noting that the tree line ends not far from the car park, i.e. at the beginning of the climb! The Mountain face is pretty much all exposed rock).   After weighing the pros and cons we decided to go for it - but we agreed to not inform our parents until after the journey, just in case.  Sorry, Mom.

We planned to leave just after Midnight on Friday evening/Saturday morning.  We headed to bed around 10:30pm; Jenna managed to fall asleep rather quickly, but our female neighbour was loudly expressing her approval of her lovemaking partner, which kept me awake for a while longer.  Ninety minutes later and we were out of bed, collecting our belongings and our courage.   The sky was completely cloudless, yet it was still warm- so far we had picked an excellent evening, but all that could change in a matter of minutes.  We met up with the group at Laura's and headed to the mountain.

We arrived at the car park and clambered out of the car.  I looked up at the endless sea of stars above; even the cosmic dust of the milky way was visible.  A shooting star soared across the sky, leaving a temporary streak of white stardust.  A few seconds later there was another.   They were rather frequent,  which surprised me.  Quite a spectacle for this city boy.  We turned on our headlamps and set off.

A view from the start of our climb. It was a truly perfect night.

The first leg of our journey was a gravel trail that snaked up the ever-increasing slope (Jenna: This part of the track is called "The Puffer". Heh.). There were several signs along the way advising hikers to check the weather forecast.  It took us about 90 minutes to reach the lodge, an 18-bed dorm which was just waking up with hikers who made the trek the night before.   Jenna and I were already gassed, though we stopped only long enough to retie our shoes and take a drink of water.  Although there were other parties headed to the summit that day, we were the first.

The next leg of the hike curved along an old lava flow (Hongi Valley).  Several staircases led us up alongside a looming cliff - our tiny headlamps did not allow us to see how high the cliffs were, nor could we see the top of the stairs.  This was probably a good thing- there were 498 steps.  By the end of them I was ascending 4 or 5 steps, then stopping to catch my breath.  My legs were suffering, and I was exhausted.  We arrived at the top of the steps, which ascended above the cliffs, and all that we could see was steep sloping gravel.  It didn't look too difficult; Nothing could be as bad as those stairs, right?

Jenna: I, on the other hand, had done my reading. Whether unfortunately or fortunately, I'm not sure, I knew what was ahead and was dreading it:

Mitch: The scree.  As rocky cliffs weather away, they create a field of debris under them known as scree, or talus.  This is extremely common on volcanoes, and forms what is called a talus cone.  The unfortunate part is that we were tasked with climbing up it.  The debris ranges from gravel to golfball sized stones, and is quite deep.  By this point in the climb we were on a considerable slope, and every time our feet dug into the debris it would slide.  We would constantly slip, resulting in being dragged down the mountain several inches, and your momentum would be extinguished.  It was exhausting.  This was, by far, the most tiring thing I've ever done.  It was still dark out, and we had no indication of how much further we had to crawl except for Sarah and Laura's headlamps glowing in the distance.  After seeing the size of the scree field in the daylight I am not entirely sure if I could have kept climbing, knowing how far there was to go.  Not knowing whether I had twenty feet or two hundred feet remaining, I plodded along.

The Scree.

Jenna: While Mitch climbed in the middle of the pack with Renee and Emilee, I hung near the back with Vic. Vic was being especially careful since she was climbing with a knee brace on a knee that underwent surgery only 8 months ago. Her and I struggled on the scree mightily. It was only after we were nearing the top of the scree (my only indication of the "top" was the others' headlamps where they had stopped to wait for us) that I realized that trailing directly behind Vic was actually not my best place. Often I would fall because Vic fell ahead of me. Now I'm not about to go and say that the scree wasn't hard or that I didn't struggle or even that I found it easy, but I will say that I was better at it than I thought. Perhaps it's because I tend to be light on my feet, but I decided to pull out ahead of Vic to see if I could conquer the beast any faster without someone ahead of me. I bolted up the rest of the scree, perhaps out of sheer exhilaration at being nearly finished with it. After completing the climb, I can definitely say that the scree, for me, was not the hardest part of the climb. Maybe I had built it up so much in my head that it wasn't as bad as I had thought it would be. I had done some reading about the track from previous novice hikers and their stories about the scree were not all that encouraging.

Mitch: (I had to take a break writing this as Vic invited me to go for a "walk", which turned out to be a 4 hour hike up one of the range mountains.  I'm exhausted again.  If a Kiwi invites you for a walk make sure you clarify beforehand.)

Sarah and Laura eventually stopped and waited for us.  At this point in time I was under the impression that the end of the scree was the summit, but I was extremely pleased to hear that this was not the case.   We had, in fact, reached the top of the scree; In total it took me about 90 minutes to claw my way up.

The next task at hand was the boulder field (Jenna: This part of the track is called "The Lizard").  This was the only true climbing bit of the entire journey.  There were a total of seven of us: Sarah and Laura were the experienced climbers and had been leading the way, and the remaining five of us had been doing everything in our power to not slow them down too much.  Unfortunately when you stop climbing at elevation you tend to get cold quite quickly, and we only had about two hours until sunrise.   Sarah and Laura didn't want to miss it, and during our ascent of the boulder field they got too far ahead of us.  Their lights disappeared.  The trail up to the summit ended at the bottom of the scree field, and what remained to guide the way were wooden stakes shoved between boulders, spaced roughly one every 30 feet or so.  In the dark these were nearly impossible to see; we would usually find a marker by climbing up beside it, rather than spotting it from a distance.  We were lost.  I figured as long as we kept going up we were going in the right direction, so I took the lead.  Occasionally I would lead us in a direction that ran us into an unscalable cliff, or a steep drop down to the snow field below.  We would have to turn back and attempt to find another route up.  This was increasingly frustrating, but we managed to find our way to the lip of the volcanic crater.

The Lizard in the daylight, on the way down.

The crater is filled with glazed snow, which is extremely slippery.  In order to reach the summit we had to trod across the snow pack and up one last boulder field.  We looked back down the mountain and could see nothing but scattered points of light, indicating the location of fellow climbers making their ascent.  The horizon was beginning to show hints of orange and yellow.  We could see two headlamps making their way up towards the summit.  At this point excitement set in.   We scurried our way up the final stretch and found Sarah and Laura perched on the highest tip at the summit.  They were very apologetic about leaving us behind, but at this point we didn't care: we had made it!

Our team!

The Massive shadow of Taranaki

We spent the next two hours watching the sun rise, eating our lunches, and taking photos from every angle imaginable.  The mountain is typically cloudy, however we had been gifted a perfectly clear morning;  there wasn't a cloud for miles.  We could see the mountain ranges on the South Island, and on the other side Mount Ruapehu, which is located nearly 4 hours away in the middle of the North Island.  New Plymouth was but a speck, only locatable by the sugar loaf islands located just off its coast.  We could see for literally hundreds of miles in every direction.

Mt. Ruapehu off in the distance, middle of the North Island. (Over 200km away)

It took us nearly five hours to summit the mountain, ascending a total of 2518m in elevation (Jenna: to be fair, some of this climb was in the car on the way to the trailhead, but still stunning considering New Plymouth City is at sea level).  At the top we chatted with a few other climbers who arrived shortly after us; one gentleman took a few pictures of our group, and we chatted for a brief period of time.  On his journey down he slipped on the ice within the crater and severely injured his back.  He was unable to continue.  Someone ahead of us called for a rescue helicopter and we insulated him with our thermal blankets, hoping to keep him warm until help arrived.  (Apparently one of these thermal blankets got ripped away by the wind generated by the helicopter's roters and nearly got sucked into the engine... oops).  We have since been in contact with him, and although he is in a great deal of pain he is slowly recovering.  

The descent was quite spectacular as well.  We were finally able to see the terrain we had climbed up, and observe how far we actually came.  In the dead of night it felt like we were hardly moving.  I must admit, going down is more challenging than going up.  You don't have a goal in mind, other than the bottom (how boring), and your body is ready to be done with it all.  The round trip took us about 11 hours, and we arrived home just after noon.  We decided to make a day of it and headed to the beach - sky to sea, right?  I passed out immediately on my beach towel.  

Jenna: For me, I must emphasize the difficulty that is the descent. In the light of day, we had incredible views that we were unable to enjoy on the way up. I was happy to take it slow to enjoy the sights, but also because I knew that one wrong step could send me hurtling downward across the rocks in front of me, or turning my ankle on a loose stone. I was happy to be done with the Lizard on the way down, and I eventually "mastered" some sort of skiing technique to get down the scree portion. But I have to say, the most mentally and physically taxing time of the entire climb was the final few kms decsent on the Puffer track. It took everything I had to put one foot in front of the other at a controlled pace to get myself back to the car. At this point everything hurt: my ankles, my toes, my heels, my shins, my knees, my quads, even my shoulders hurt from carrying my pack all day. I wanted to both hurl myself down the slope in an out-of-control slide and also just stop walking, sit down, and wait for someone to carry me back. I knew I was so close to the end, but I really was at my breaking point for those last few kilometers. I was being a whiny baby about my toes hurting, and I knew it. I plodded into the car park, hands on my hips, head down, concentrating on not crying or screaming in frustration and exhaustion. I made it, but it was tough as hell for me.

Mitch: Taranaki.  Every time I look up at her I think to myself "I still can't believe I hiked that damn mountain." (Jenna: Or as Vic put it: We "finally knocked the bastard off!")

New Plymouth, New Home

Jenna: The city of New Plymouth has been our home now for almost three weeks. I think the HR manager at work said it best: "New Plymouth doesn't have a lot, but it does have one of everything." There aren't four McDonald's...but there is one. There aren't fourteen malls...but there is one. And one of everything is pretty much all you need. After all, it has one mountain, and one ocean...

Mitch pretty much summed up what I felt upon coming to New Plymouth in his last post...I was nervous. I didn't know what to expect, but I DID know what I didn't want. I actually felt the same way as Mitch: what if our new home was too quiet? Too dirty? Too rough around the edges? What if we won't like it? I couldn't verbalize these fears because I was afraid if I said it out loud it would make them true.

I felt at ease the moment we settled in on a pub patio with Victoria and Sophie. It was a beautiful day, my coworkers seemed warm and welcoming, and the ocean was within sight while the mighty Mount Taranaki watched over the city. I already knew my fears were gone: this place was going to suit us just fine for the next twelve months.

My office building is located directly across the street from the ocean. My coworkers and I often eat at the waterfront at lunch time. Our temporary accomodation provided by WorleyParsons was just down the street of my office, making the commute short and exploring the city centre amenities easy. The main drag, Devon Street, is lined with shops, cafes, and restaurants. New Plymouth has a 10 km Coastal Walkway that stretches from the port all the way to Bell Block, a smaller community up the coast from New Plymouth. A tall red arching pole with a ball at the end called the Wind Wand stands watch over the walkway at the city centre. Every day the walkway is teeming with people out walking, running, biking, or just sitting and watching the surf break on the rocks. The Taranaki region, or "'Naki", is known for its large surf.

The first four nights in New Plymouth had us drinking half-priced cocktails on a private patio, exploring Pukekura Park by nighttime for the Festival of Lights (the large inner-city park is lit up in all different colors while bands play at various stages), and climbing Paritutu Rock (an old lava chamber that sits near the port) for a view of the harbour and the city before enjoying a swim at East End beach. By the time I started work on Monday morning, I felt as if the city and I had introduced ourselves to each other and become fast friends. As I write this, sitting in our flat that sits adjacent to Pukekura Park and five minutes' walk from work, it's hard to imagine that we could have ended up in a better place for us. I think, quite possibly, that it's going to be very hard for us to leave this little city by the sea.

The Newest of the Plymouths

Mitch: The bus ride to New Plymouth was long.  We found out later that there's a more direct route to take, but we decided to save money and go on the backpacker-friendly bus, which stops at 5 or 6 different towns along the way.  The 3-hour trip becomes a 6-hour excursion.  This involved being sat beside a late-teens girl and her (crying) infant child, and someone who really wanted to listen to music but felt that headphones weren't necessary.  Each stop was in a rather small town which didn't appear all that different to Whangerai.  I started fearing our arrival in New Plymouth; Was it going to be just another small, quiet town?

The ride wasn't all that bad.  We got some time to just relax, which was a nice change of pace from the previous week.  The scenery was exceptional, and one thing that I still can't get over is the appearance of the never-ending hills: Every single hill is horizontally rippled, like they were built out of 3-foot high Lego blocks.  Imagine an Egyptian stepped pyramid, but covered in grass (see picture below).  Apparently this is the result of a few hundred years of sheep grazing.  The sheep walk across the hills, creating a tiny plateau.  Over time they create numerous tiny plateaus, giving the hills a rippled appearance.  I still don't buy it.  The New Zealanders have a secret they aren't telling us.  EVERY hill has this rippled appearance, no matter where you go, and the ripples go from base to tip.  It's wild.  You're probably thinking I must be excessively bored if this is what occupies my mind, but it's very abnormal.

I've found a picture of said hills:

We got dropped off in New Plymouth at the bus stop, which is between the Centre City Shopping Centre (terrible name, if you ask me) and the ocean.  Our hotel is on the opposite side of the mall, so we walk down the street to circle around.  As we turn around the West end of the mall we are greeted by a small, immaculate park, filled with people enjoying the weather.  Adjacent to the park is a large, modern glass-and-metal building with huge letters reading "PUKE ARIKI".  It turns out this is a free museum, which is joined via pedway to the New Plymouth library.  The museum has a fancy second-story restaurant looking out over the coast.  Behind it is a street-side restaurant with a busy patio, complete with fireplace and sun shade umbrellas.  We walk two doors down to our hotel.  It's located on a street with double-wide sidewalks accompanied by several bars, cafes, and shops.  All the shops are open.  The cafes are occupied by people.  There was no dirt in the corners.

I was immediately relieved.

We checked in and found ourselves in a rather fancy two-room apartment, accompanied by stainless-steel appliances and a wall-mounted flat screen TV.  Comfortable, indeed.   An hour or so later we we met Sophie and Victoria, two of Jenna's soon-to-be coworkers, and headed out for a drink at the aforementioned street-side restaurant.  The bar was filled with young professional-looking people.  Sophie knew one of the bartenders, and a local heading back from the coastal walkway said hi to Vic.  We had the typical "what's different between here and Canada?" conversation, and chatted about the to-do's in New Plymouth until it was dark and our new friends remembered they had to work in the morning.

That was 10 days ago.  Before arriving I was worried we wouldn't make friends for a while, and it might be a bit lonely at the start.  I was wrong.  I think I'm going to like this place.

Finding "Home"

Mitch:  The first two weeks of our adventure were certainly enjoyable, but I kept getting an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.  It took me a while to figure out what it was: when our Auckland/Northland travels were done, we still weren't going home.  Travelling in a foreign land is a very exciting and rewarding experience, but it became daunting when I was reminded that "I live here now".  We were- or should I say we ARE far away from home, and we aren't coming home any time soon.  That's intimidating.  Also, I read a newspaper about the Air Asia disaster and I dread flying already, so that didn't help.

I admittedly didn't enjoy Auckland as much as I should have.  I kept thinking of what I was doing one year ago, and how long ago that felt.  One year is a long time.  Jenna continuously reminded me that we can only take life one day at a time, and to not worry that much.  It was true- at that point in time I wasn't missing home an enormous amount. I was in a beautiful city, in perfect 24-degree weather, with my favorite person in the world.  What was there to worry about?   My nerves began to settle, though it took some time.  

So now that my fear of not returning home for a year is subsiding, it was time to find something else to terrorize my thoughts.  We traveled to Whangerai and got dropped off in the central basin.  The basin is quite nice; a cobblestone walkway snakes along the waterfront and beside several cafes.  A wide, artistic walking bridge crosses the stream flowing down from the mountains, and on the other side is our hotel.  The only problem is everything seemed a little old.  And I don't just mean dated; everything could use a coat of paint and some TLC.  I traveled to Costa Rica in February, a gorgeous country where geckos and spiders roam freely indoors, and indoors is a loose term that has nothing to do with if a building actually has doors.  Nice place to visit, but I certainly wouldn't live there.  Now, I'm not going to tell you NZ is like Costa Rica, but everything had the same dirt-around-the-edges-and-thats-okay feeling to it.  Most of these cafes and shops had faded signs, aging window dressings, and home-made signs in the windows.  Nothing really screamed modern comfort.  I started worrying that THIS is what my new home would be like.   We headed out for dinner; Destination: Downtown Whangerai- certainly this would be a little more comfortable, right?

Right beside the town basin is "downtown" Whangerai, or what was supposed to be downtown Whangerai.  This consisted of 3 or 4 blocks worth of shops.  Every shop was closed, and about half of them were closed permanently.  The place looked like a ghost town.  We learned three things that day: January 2nd is a stat holiday in NZ, restaurants which stay open on holidays add a 15% surcharge to your bill, and Whangerai is having some troubles.  I later read in the paper that local businesses are leaving town faster than Redskins fans at a home game.   I started worrying that I would be living the next year of my life in a do-nothing ghost town.  

We spent the next four days enjoying the nature around Whangerai, which is fantastic.   There's a brewpub in the town basin which is built to look like a pirate ship which is equally fantastic.  Afterwards we headed back to Auckland for an evening.  We stayed in a hotel overlooking the harbor, which was occupied by two large cruise ships and one extremely large cruise ship.  It was taller than the adjacent Hilton hotel, and was the largest cruise-liner in the world when it was first unveiled in 1999.   We tried to board it, but it turns out they have decent security on those things.  Sigh.  

After an evening of attempted-piracy, craft beers, and ice cream, we slept for a couple hours then boarded an early bus to our new home: New Plymouth. I told Jenna it felt like an arranged marriage. "Whelp. Here she is. This is what you get! No backing out now!".  Yeesh.  I was nervous. "I hope she's pretty" I said to myself.

An Adventure Begins

Jenna: Hi there, and greetings from New Zealand! I meant to get this started weeks ago, before we left Canada, but of course I didn't get around to it. As a result, I now have a lot of catching up to do. Where to even begin?!

Mitch and I left Canada on December 27th and, after travelling through space AND time (kinda) arrived in Auckland on December 29th, just in time to ring in the new year on kiwi soil. It was incredibly hard to leave home, as we knew it would be, but we knew we were embarking on an adventure that would be worth both the anguish of leaving and the anguish of homesickness bound to inflict us in the coming year. Leaving home is always hard. But never knowing what we might have missed? That's probably harder. So off we went!

We had zero time in the weeks before our departure to think about our time in New Zealand past our arrival at the airport. Between packing and the Christmas holiday, finding time to plan a vacation just wasn't available. So, as it was, we landed in Auckland knowing we had four nights at a downtown hotel booked, and that we had to be in New Plymouth by January 7th (mode of transport still unknown). That was it. No other plans or details. But hey, sometimes that's better, right? It opens up a lot of possibilities...

Lesson One: Don't take a taxi from the airport. We learned this the hard way. We were tired, and some nice gentleman suggested we take a taxi instead of the shuttle because our extra bags were "likely to cost a lot". Yeah, right. Anyways, unpleasantness of paying too much for a taxi aside, at least were at our hotel. After a much needed nap, we took to the city to explore a bit. We walked around the waterfront and grabbed a bite to eat at a little place we found that ended up being my favourite place to eat and drink in the city. This first day included a lot of discomfort at being so far from home, but we managed to get through it and enjoy most of our day. I got a sunburn...yes, even after knowing how powerful the New Zealand sun supposedly was. And yes, it IS as strong as everyone says. Wear your sunscreen, people!

We explored Auckland over the coming days, walking lots and taking in the city. We explored the waterfront, the Auckland Domain, and the university grounds. On New Year's Eve we took a ferry across to Devonport and climbed up Mount Victoria to watch the fireworks launch off of the top of the Sky Tower. We spent another day on Waiheke Island, sampling wine at different vineyards using their "hopper" bus to go from vineyard to vineyard. I'd definitely recommend doing this - it filled our day and was a great way to enjoy the weather and the wine for a fairly reasonable cost.

By our last day in Auckland, we were ready for a change - neither of us would consider ourselves "big city" people, so the idea of heading somewhere smaller and quieter was appealing, especially considering New Zealand's reputation for stunning scenery and countryside. On recommendation from both past and future coworkers, we booked a bus ticket to Whangarei ("fong-a-ray"). We tried to go further north to Kiri Kiri or Paihia to stay in the Bay of Islands, but it was booked solid (it was still summer holidays for many New Zealanders, and this is a popular spot for many to vacation). Whangarei was a decent compromise and still allowed us to be close enough to the coast that we could explore a bit.

Whangarei was alright - very quiet and not very lively, but provided us the opportunity to do some hiking to see waterfalls and large Kauri trees. Ferns are everywhere, and as you get closer to the water, Pohutukawa trees are also plentiful. These trees are also known as the "New Zealand Christmas tree" because their red flower blooms in December. I decided I wanted to have a beach day so we inquired at the local tourism office how we could get to the Tutukaka Coast. We found out that there were no busses that went there, but there was a guy called the "coastal commuter" who runs a business shuttling divers and other folks out to the coast for a nominal fee for the day. Much more expensive than a bus, but much less than a taxi, we decided to go for it. Chris turned out to be a pretty good tour guide, and it was pretty hard not to like him. After dropping off a few divers at the marina, he took us up to where we could access Whale Bay, and told us he's pick us up at a shop in Matapouri, which was just a 15 minute hike away. Whale Bay was beautiful, and we hiked up to a lookout that looked over two different bays and the ocean extending away forever. We spent the rest of the day at Matapouri beach and rented a couple paddleboards for an hour after grabbing fish and chips and later ice cream at the local shop. All in all, a very successful beach day if you ask me! Complete with, once again, sunburns...for Mitch, his lower back, and for me, the tops of my feet and forearms...ouchie.

I'll try to post some pictures later. That's all for now...we will try to write about the next chapter - coming to New Plymouth - shortly. Hopefully we will keep up with this in order to update everyone back home who's wondering how life here on the other side of the world (in the future!) is going. Thanks for reading. We miss you all.

Cheers!
Jenna