Start-light, Start-bright, HOLY COW this Land is Beautiful

I got some time off from WWOOFing, hopped on a few buses and headed South to explore a few places that I had yet to see. I spent my first few nights on my route down south staying in the “adventure capitals of the world,” Wanaka and Queenstown. Ski resorts galore and skydiving and bungee jumping companies flood the area, drawing thousands of adrenaline-seeking 20-something tourists. Although I, myself am also an adrenaline-seeking, 20-something yr old tourist at times, I chose to stay clear of this scene mostly, and rather hung out in parks reading and eating a plethora of granola-filled yogurt containers as my meals while taking cat naps under trees. Am I boring? Maybe. But my hearts desire was to see Southland, and I chose to save my money to continue my journey to one of the most beautiful spots in the world. I am sure I’ll plenty of time in my life to jump off high things anyways.
In order to reach my spot of destination, Milford Sound, you must journey across what is said to be the most dangerous highway in the world due to its almost 90 degree surrounding mountain slopes, cascading waterfalls, and extremely high amounts of snow and rain year-round. Luckily, I got through without any avalanches (although the entire next day the road was closed due to avalanche maintenance), and settled into my lodge nestled amongst the mountains. This spot is visited by tour buses each day, but very few actually stay overnight. Glad to stay the night and soak in the views on my own and take photos free of a few hundred Japanese tourists, I spent my first few hours on the bank and watched dolphins swim in shallow waters next to me.
Milford Sound is a World Heritage Site (like the Grand Canyon, Macchu Pichu, etc), and there I was sitting in a World Heritage Site completely alone. How often does that happen?
I guess when you’re in New Zealand in a place only reached by avalanche-covered highways. I was quite pleased with my decision to see this place on my own, as it was just myself and the most majestic mountains ever, mirror-reflecting waters, and dolphins just swimming about (okay, and the sandflies..horrible biting things not worthy enough to write more about).
Once I finished soaking in all the zen that I needed, I succumbed back to joining other tourists and hopped on a nature cruise through the sound. I was not disappointed as we explored waterfalls, spent time watching dolphins, penguins, and seals! Wee! Each waterfall was filled with rainbows on the sunlit day. Our boat tour was hypnotized as we drifted slowly into a pair of falls filled with rainbows called “fairy falls.” A version of “Over the Rainbow” was played over the loudspeaker, and we were caught in a trance watching the magical waters cascade down the cliffs of the Sound. Unbeknownst to us, the crew was giggling to themselves as the captain slowly steered the boat into the waterfall directly over touristy couples taking photos and holding-only to be disrupted by a nice cool shower. (Luckily I was a safe distance away, and both I and my camera came out dry.)

My last day in Milford Sound, I had to take an important matter in my own hands. With no other tourists around, how was I supposed to get a picture of myself and the Sound-or more importantly a JUMPING picture!? To my delight, a large log had been perfectly positioned in the middle of the beach, obviously set up by the camera Gods, complete with a patch of moss growing to set a camera on. My self-timer and I have overtime become good friends, and I managed to snap a sufficient jumping photo before I journeyed on.
I stayed in another few youth hostels on my journey back up north, delighting in the fact that nearly everyone I meet can no longer tell where I am from. I don’t think my accent has noticeably changed, but my enunciation, vocabulary, and perhaps even my demeanor has changed, and after a small conversation people guess me to be English, Kiwi, or Canadian. Score! I suppose so many months of simmering down my Americaness while hanging out with so many Kiwis, has made a dent after all. I will most probably lose this demeanor within a week of being back in America, but mate, its fun while it lasts eh?

I ended my holiday staying with friends in Lake Tekapo, where the Night Sky World Heritage Site lies. I have been here before (see an entry from April), but chose not to pay the $90 to get a night sky tour. I’ve regretted it ever since, and miraculously-since then I’ve made the right friends and connections to have been offered to do the tour for FREE. I could barely contain myself as I climbed into the old Antarctic Researchers jackets, they gave us to warm our bodies while we gazed upwards on top of a mountain for hours late at night. We were shown around gigantic telescopes and pointed out twinkling constellations above our heads. I put my camera through a telescope to get this shot of the moon, and set my camera on world-class astro-photography tripods that rotate with motion of the Earth.
I looked at globula star clusters that showed over 1 million stars with help of a telescope. These globulas were between 10-12 million years old, about the oldest things that we know of in our universe. Can I say that again? I was looking at one of the oldest-known things in the known-universe with my own eyes. A cluster of a million stars just twinkling at me saying “look at how amazing this universe is..you only a MARGIN of its splendor!” I drooled over the different constellations in the Southern night sky, looked at Jupiter and its moons, and looked at a star so far away, that in order for us to see its twinkle, its light has been traveling towards Earth from around the time of Christ. Giggity! The stars have me mesmerized, and word on the street is that if I came back here in a few years I’d be offered a job as a night sky tour guide! Most of my time in this country, I walk around hyperventilating about the beauty of this place and all the possibilities of where life might take me. Don’t worry, my fellow Americans…you won’t lose me…but I am definitely coming back and hopefully with some friends and family…and maybe I’ll even be your night sky tour guide.

Mountains upon Mountains

When I am not living in Diamond Harbour (my semi-permanent home right now) or evacuating aftershocks and earthquake rubble, I spend my days amongst the mountains of the Southern Alps at Mt. Cheeseman Skifield. Here, I’ve gotten to experience another New Zealand sub-culture. Ski fields are a bit of a New Zealand anomaly, run and owned by their few hundred members, providing a much more (I think) pleasurable skiing experience with no chairlift lines, fewer crowds, and a family-like feel between its members or “clubbies.” They are small ski areas, but have all the terrain you can ask for. Knowing the right people and having the right connections, I worked my way into the Cheeseman niche, dappling in the life of a ski-bum and, again, pulling the nanny card and working as part-time staff as “ski-nanny” (A word of advice: you can go anywhere in the world and DO anything you want to do if you’re willing to watch people’s kids).
My story here unfortunately starts as painful as it was exhilarating. Having learned to snowboard at upstate NY Greek Peak ski area for a few seasons during high school, I decided to take it up again. A month in, I discovered that re-learning to snowboard requires certain conditions which were lacking at Mt. Cheeseman Skifield. Firstly, it requires a certain amount of snow coverage. NZ winters are a hit or miss, and I spent most of the season learning on a very thin base of ICY, HARD-PACKED snow which made Greek Peak snow feel like the Rockies. Days of boarding (and falling, er a lot of falling), left my body looking so beaten and battered I chose to wear clothes into the swimming pool when I had to take my girls to swimming lessons so as not to broadcast myself to be what appeared an abuse victim. What beat and battered me the most, however, was the t-bar. Due to the smallness of the field, Mt. Cheeseman does not have chairlifts, but rather it has archaic-looking torture devices that are upside down metal t’s that you must slip through your legs, and if all goes well, pull you up a mountain.
Not so bad on skiis (note skier happily riding t-bar), but on a snowboard you must ride up the mountain sideways while twisting your body forward to see where you’re going, all while steering straight using your toe and heal-side edges, constantly stopping and gaining speed on different terrains. The first time I rode the t-bar, I ended up hanging from my arms with my legs dragging behind me, holding on to dear life until I reached terrain that was not so steep I would form a human avalanche rolling down. Week after week, my snowboarding improved, but my t-bar riding did not. I would fall off or get dragged in contorted positions so much that small ski-bunny 4-yr olds would ask me if I was okay.
At the beginning of the season, I was so thrilled to have found awesome neon purple snowpants for $3, but overtime discovered it is only awesome to wear neon colors on a ski field if you are awesomely good. Before my reputation had grown to full-blown, purple snowpants girl (mostly seen being dragged up mountain by one leg) I acquired a friend’s black pair. My confidence soared and my t-bar riding and snowboarding improved tremendously. Despite my sudden surge in competence, the season had left me with bruises covering entire body parts, a dislocated wrist, and the annoyance that snowboarding was only fun on ever-so-often fresh powder days. With the support of many friends of family, I decided to cross over to the other side. I learned to ski. Shivering in my boots that I was about to embarrass and hurt myself again for the next long few weeks, I set out with a friend one afternoon for a few hours, and miraculously ended my first session beaming. I learned to parallel turn my first day and was an intermediate skier by day 2. I was so happy the snow gods had granted me this new-found ability and I did not fall even once off the t-bar.
My job as a ski-nanny was an amazing experience that happened to fall into my journey, and will be one that I won’t forget. As a ski-nanny, I lived up on the mountain, skied and got lessons from Swiss instructors in the mornings, spent the afternoons in the lodge reading books to toddlers, skied a little more, and then played games with the kids at night. I became known as “Nanny McPhoebe,” and staff joked that I had become the most popular staff person at Cheeseman, as I was willing to take 30 children out of the lodge at night and play games with them in another building, giving both parents and staff some peace and quiet. Being a camp counselor never came in so handy as I played hours of ‘fishy, fishy, cross my ocean’ or whatever other games I had up my sleeve to cater to the wide range of ages 4-12 or so (Thanks mom, many Earth Arts games came in handy). The perks I received just for watching people’s kids were amazing, and I got to stay in honeymoon suites with glass doors opening up to the most holy of holy sunrises in the mornings.
I didn’t get paid with money, but I got paid with free food, spectacular mountain-view accommodation, free access to the ski-field, free daily lessons with some of the best Swiss ski instructors in the world, and the pure satisfaction of waking up, going to sleep and breathing every breath in-between amongst a pristine, alpine environment that people pay thousands for to stay at for a week. Just goes to show, that sometimes working hard and receiving payment in amazing opportunities and experiences is just as good if not better than a paycheck each week. Of course I would not be here if it wasn’t for money, but there is very little exchange of money currently in my life here, and in turn, I am living the fullest, most exciting days that I ever have. Looking after people’s kids wherever I go (and being very good at it), being able to help with anything, and making friends, has brought me all over this country, never without a pair of skiis or a snowboard to borrow, a car to drive, or a pair of black snowpants when you really need them.
The snow season is now over, spring has sprung, and New Zealand is once again drop-dead gorgeous. Trees are in blossom and lambs are EVERYWHERE throughout the countryside (I am entertained on long bus rides watching all the lambs frolic and play on rolling green fields). I’m continuing to work and live with the same family, and still call my home Diamond Harbour. But for now, I’m on a two-week solo holiday to the bottom of the South Island to see some of the most beautiful, un-touched sites in the world. I’m off to Fiordland-a place cut so sharply by glaciers, that it looks like nowhere else on earth. I am most looking forward to what Rudyard Kipling deemed the 8th Wonder of the World, Milford Sound. Anyways, I’m back to the backpacker lifestyle, eating baked beans out of a can, soaking in every minute of the 2 ½ months of New Zealand that I have left. Still so grateful to be here, and never weary of a new adventure in one of the most beautiful countries on the earth.