Bryan's 1st Guest Appearance

It has been an interesting week for us here on the trail. We have had a lot of highs and lows, both in regards to elevation and emotions. The greatest of these came on Thursday. We spent that day hiking through the Raetea forest. This was very much unlike any of the forest or hiking that we had done in Minnesota or anywhere else. This hike included twin summits of 540 meters, which may not sound that high in the grand scheme of things, but I assure you it is, when you have big packs and boots that are caked in mud. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Before we arrived at these points of high elevation we had to be in the lows of the horribly muddy and thick, with vines and brush valleys.

I'm sure you will or have read about it from Rachel's entry, but I want to express how impressed I was with her performance. Although this part of the trail was completed fuming with rage, dripping wet from condensation (and some tears) and covered to the hip in mud, I can honestly say I would not have wanted to be there with anyone else. We didn't just beat those summits, Rachel, namely destroyed them. And on of them twice due to some confusion with the arrows and which set it was that we needed to follow.

I was afraid however that she was going to fall off one of the summits when she was ahead of me in thick brush that you could not see anything infront of yourself, though to the sides there were amazing views over the edges that I wish that would could have captured on film, but as it turns out our camera is substantially less than reliable. However, she did not fall off the edge, she was just too angry to care to linger for even a moment.

Because we are usually set up and ready to go to bed at about 7 o'clock every night, we have been reading a lot. and it was here that I found a quote that describes somewhat the feelings that I have experienced when we reach a check point, or finish a particularly difficult section of the trail. Our journey is not nearly as perilous as the journey that Ernest Shackleton had just experienced, and I hope that we are never in mortal danger as many times that he was but I feel that it reflects the sentiment that I want to have on this adventure. But I also hope that you all will have an opportunity to share in this kind of feeling at some point in time, or will be able to look back at a time that falls into this kind of experience.

That was all except our wet clothes, that we brought out of the
Antarctic, which we had entered a year and a half before with
well found ship, full equipment and high hopes. That was all of
tangible things; but in memories we were rich. We had "suffered
starved and triumphed, groveled down yet grasped at glory,
grown bigger in the bigness of the whole." We had seen God in
his splendors, heard the text that nature renders. We had reached
the naked soul of man.
-Sir Ernest Shackleton, South: the Endurance Exposition

Bryan

resting in kerikeri

hi friends and family! i'll update in detail tomorrow (i believe bryan is also preparing a guest blog), but we just wanted to let you know that we arrived in kerikeri this afternoon with some very muddy gear and bodies that were much in need of a long...very long...shower. if my rough calculations are correct, we have completed about 125 miles in 11 days of hiking - much less than the 15 miles per day that we originally and naiively hoped for, but still a total that we're proud of. i'll leave you with one story that sticks out in my mind from this last section (ahipara to kerikeri):

the night before last, we were in the middle of a 23-mile section that was almost exclusively road-walking, meaning no campsites or hostels at which to park ourselves for the evening. we finished an adequate number of miles for the day along an old gravel logging road and, with dense bush on both sides and having seen no one on the road all day, pitched the tent on the side of the road in a grassy spot. around 10 pm, we heard a loud, explosive sound which sounded like a shotgun (though, to be fair, i take every loud noise to be a gun) and male voices coming up the road towards us. we stayed huddled in our sleeping bags, hoping that they wouldn't spot us, but as they passed our way, a teenage voice shouted, "what's that over there? is that a pup tent? who the hell would be sleeping out here?" and flashlights streamed in through the tent's thin nylon walls. when they asked if anyone was in the tent, i shouted a brief reply, and they soon stalked off down the road again.

about a half hour later, we heard the voices coming closer again, and waited to see if they would let us sleep (our bedtime is, at the latest, 8 pm) this time. just as they rounded the bend to stand on the road just above us, i heard another shot, close at hand, and someone saying "shoot, i missed". at the same time, the flashlight beams were targeted at our tent again and a young voice began quizzing us about whether we were tourists and where we were going. i expected another shot to pierce our tent walls and kill us there, along jackson road, at any minute. fortunately, bryan answered their questions satisfactorily and they eventually wandered back off into the night with a few shouts of "stay off our land!" they didn't return again, at least not while bryan kept watch (another 3-4 hours, i think - waking me up every time he bolted upright at some new unfamiliar sound).

what we've pieced together from our best guesses and a friendly interaction with, we think, a couple of the same guys the next morning is that they were just possum-hunting teenagers from the nearby maori settlement who happened to spot a possum near us on the road, which they shot at and missed. in the dead of night, in the isolation of the kiwi backcountry, and with the limited analysis that drowsiness provides, this casual encounter seemed like deadly peril.

hope you enjoyed our drama :) again, i'll update in more detail tomorrow. hope you're enjoying your labor day weekend!

rachel

5 days down.

i have just completed 5 of the most miserable days of my life. please remind me never to do that again. while we're incredibly proud to have walked the length of ninety mile beach (again, remember it's just 60 miles) and are pleased to see the looks on peoples' faces when we tell them where we have walked from, my feet HATE me for having done so, and so we are spending an extra day at the adorable Endless Summer Lodge in ahipara to rest up. here's the day-by-day of our last week:

wednesday, august 26
cape reinga to twilight beach - 5 miles
we ditched the rest of the bus tour group at the cape and at 12:31 pm officially began our hike. unfortunately, the thick and mysterious fog prevented us from seeing the clashing of the tasman sea and pacific ocean, so no pictures for you guys there. sorry. there were, however, some beautiful views as we climbed down from cape reinga to the beach, a grand start to the hike that made us overly excited for the days to come. in the first half hour of the hike, we met a german guy (everyone we meet is german - the three others with us in the current hostel, the hostel owner, two girls on the bus with us, 4 people in the auckland hostel...) who was just finishing his walk of ninety mile beach from the south, giving us hope that it wasn't completely insane to try it. after a long wait for a receding tide to make one point passable and an extremely frustrating accidental detour through what felt like a post-apocalyptical wasteland, we made it to the "campsite" (just a flat area right off the beach) and set up the tent minutes before it started pouring.

thursday, august 27
twilight beach to the bluff - 18.25 miles
this was a long day, leaving my feet aching and blistered from walking on the compacted sand. we consolidated what we had planned as 2 days into 1, but now i understand what i've been reading about beach walking being hard on the feet and am second guessing our decision. we had a short spell of hiking off the beach, across the steep and muddy scott point, an enjoyable monotony breaker even if it did come early in the day. so far we've seen 2 dead seals on the beach :(
we stopped about 3/4 of a mile short of our goal, the bluff, as the sun was already sliding under the waves and we didn't have a clue where on the bluff the campsite was located. we climbed over the sand dunes and found a decent spot out of the wind. we wasted lots of time trying to start our stove during what turned into a 2 hour lunch break.

friday, august 28
the bluff to "the nest" - 14 miles
we initially wanted to hike 20 miles today in order to get off the beach by saturday night, but my miserable feet wouldn't allow it, and we had to be satisfied with 14 miles. the highlight of the day was in the morning (low tide) when the tour buses stream up the beach and we get to wave victoriously at the faces pressed against the windows. one van stopped and the driver chatted with us for a vit about wher we were coming from and where we were headed. spent the night on the sand dunes again, in a bowl that i dubbed "the nest". we're beginning to get tired of our supply of muesli bars, which bryan has accidentally but humorously been referring to as "mussolini bars"

saturday, august 29
"the nest" to waipapakauri - 15 miles
another painful day of walking :( towards the end of each day, i am literally hobbling along, often with one hand on my walking stick and the other in bryan's hand - out of love, but mostly for support :) the hostel in ahipara was constantly in our thoughts. we could have stayed at a motor lodge at waipapakauri tonight (just 1/2 mile farther), but we don't want to spend the money and it feels a bit like giving up early. saw more dead creatures today - another seal (but also 2 live ones), a number of pufferfish and birds, and, most interestingly, a small hammerhead shark. we had a wonderful morning break with a can of coca-cola, courtesy of a friendly family that was spending their saturday morning dirt biking on the beach and sand dunes. also experienced our first cadbury crunchies - honeycomb coated in chocolate. a bit strange, but it's chocolate, so there's no real problem there :)

sunday, august 30
waipapakauri to ahipara, 11 miles
had a longer day than we were expecting, as our hostel turned out to be a mile and a half out of town. it was worth it, though - the hostel is in an adorable restored old villa that's so cozy, we've decided to spend a second night here. it's right ont he beach, but we don't plan to do any more beach walking for the next 20 years or so, and will have to be satisfied enough with the beautiful view. we have contented ourselves with hot showers, beds, and reading australian gossip mgaazines (that's my vice, not bryan's). my favorite is the column in women's weekly, in which a curly-haired thirtysomething shows the public how to make ugly crafts. her latest featured a sparkly jewelry box - she didn't make the box; she just spray-painted it silver and added self-adhesive rhinestones in a floral pattern to the knobs. gross. dad, you'd be glad to hear that we've been playing some uno, though it's just not the same without you. looking forward to a meal at the fish and chips shop in town.

tomorrow, we'll head out for 8 or so miles of road walking before heading into the forest. wish us luck!

rachel

greetings from kaitaia!

if you remember our map from a few posts ago, you can find us in kaitaia, at the base of ninety mile beach in nz's northland region. the hostel that we're staying in is MUCH nicer than the auckland one - it's cleaner, roomier, quieter, and it even has a tv with a dvd selection. makes us feel like home :) we watched whale rider last night, a film made locally that new zealanders are quite proud of, and for good reason. besides the lord of the rings, new zealand also boasts about the piano and once were warriors, neither of which we have yet seen.

sunday was our last full day in auckland. we visited a presbyterian church a block from our hostel and met a nice family that took us home with them for lunch (our first experience with meat pies!) and then out to a gorgeous beach on auckland's west coast. the husband has recently started working in the chapel on auckland university's campus, trying to restart a fledgling christian community there. we had a great time with them and their 4 kids, and bryan is now in love with the word "jandals" (flip-flops) after hearing them use it so frequently.

yesterday morning we hopped a bus up to kaitaia, a 7-hour trip that made bryan feel pretty queasy on its steep serpentine roads, and tomorrow morning we will take a tour bus to cape reinga. it takes the paved road one way and the beach road (literally just the hard-packed sand) the other, and we're hoping that the tides allow us to take the paved road up so that we can see the sights along the way, as we will be hiking back down the beach for the next 5 days or so and don't feel the night to drive that route. cape reinga is where the tasman sea and the pacific ocean meet, and on good days you can, apparently, actually see the two bodies of water collide at a point below the cape's lighthouse. it also has a spiritual significance for the maori, as legend calls cape reinga the spot where spirits depart for hawaiiki, their homeland.

we're off to swing by the local a/g church and to send off our bounce box, which is filled with extra supplies (powdered milk, dry socks, hand sanitizer, etc) and will "bounce" ahead of us to a town a week or two away. sorry there are still no pictures - unfortunately, it will probably have to be from kerikeri, 12 days away.

later, gators!

-rachel

going broke in auckland.

hello all! just wanted to let you know that we're alive and well in auckland. "well" might be a bit of an overstatement - i picked up a cold somewhere on the flight between LA and Auckland (stress? lack of sleep?) and the cool weather here is not helping matters. while the hostel works just fine for us, we're sleeping in a mixed dorm with 4 other guys (yes, all males) and we're both antsy to be alone on the trail, in our cozy tent-home.

we've done some exploring of downtown auckland - yesterday we wandered through the beautiful auckland domain (a huge public park not far from the city center), visiting the on-site auckland museum and taking a nap in the grass on the top of the hill afterwards. the museum used to be dedicated solely to NZ's involvement in the wars, but when the auckland city museum closed, their extensive displays were moved to this building as well. bryan especially enjoyed the exhibits on the weapons of pacific islanders, and i believe he's trying to find an excuse to carry a shark-tooth-tipped spear. i'm finding that it's almost comforting to do things that are purely touristy (please don't tell anyone i'm saying this!) because i can acknowledge that i'm completely out of my element. i feel very "green" among the others in our hostel, since it caters to long-termers who've already spent months exploring and working in nz.

i came very near to some tear-shedding this morning, when we realized that our chosen mapping method would only work if we had a computer to download the mapping software to. since internet cafes obviously won't let us do this, we gave in and bought a gps, spending about $500 more than we'd planned on. fantastic. everything is adding up so quickly! we've been surviving on a diet of sandwiches (pb & jelly for lunch, pb & banana for dinner) and leftover plane snacks, so trail food might even be a bit of a luxury for us :)

speaking of the plane - we are in love with qantas. as soon we boarded, we started acting like giddy little children, giggling about everything - the two free meals ("dinner" was served at the equivalent of 4 am eastern time, but you can bet i ate it anyway), the impressive variety of movies and tv shows to watch, the after-dinner hot chocolate served with a single marshmallow, the hot towel to freshen ourselves with, the snack bag...it justified the cost of the flight a bit. the 12 hours rushed by, since only the last hour of the flight was in the daytime. leaving LAX at midnight, we chased the night on its westward path, letting the sun rise just in time to watch our descent.

hopefully we'll be able to post pictures soon - we weren't planning to stop in the internet cafe this morning, so we don't have the camera cord with us.

miss you guys. really. a lot.

rachel

one day left.

one day left in the U.S. - here's what we've been up to:

-visited south county church , a church plant in lorton, va, where many of my friends from high school are now on staff. the lovely complimentary breakfast spread would definitely keep me coming back :)

-got tricked into seeing district 9, a movie that only boys could possibly enjoy, about alien refugees living in slums in johannesburg (jo, you would hate it). i usually enjoy watching the trailers before the feature, especially with oscar season so quickly approaching, but this movie's trailers included the vampire boy-hating film jennifer's body, cirque du freak: the vampire's assistant, and zombieland. gross.

-we hiked up bull run mountain here in virginia with my parents. it's only a 4-mile loop, but there's rocky outcropping at the top, from which you can see shenandoah national park and the appalachian trail. there's some good hiking to be had on the east coast. our white oak trail hike with chris and daniela last year introduced us to some of the wonders of backcountry travel - the highlight was a series of natural waterslides and pools hidden back in the shenandoah mountains. fantastic. wish us luck - the next post should be from new zealand! - rachel

love/hate

today i loved: exploring auckland via google street maps. we planned the route from our hostel to the nearest supermarket and "walked it" in advance.

today i hated: this quote from nzbackpack.com
"who is the typical backpacker? you no longer need to carry a backpack to be a backpacker! being a backpacker is an attitude, not a stereotype."

not that i can really consider myself a "real" backpacker yet, considering that i've only really done a few weekend trips, but i'm still taking offense at the idea that you can be a backpacker without actually carrying the weight. in new zealand, it's popular to travel via backpacker buses, which, as far as i can tell, are just party buses for the 18-30 crowd who may or may not be doing any hiking.

i thought i'd leave you with a picture of a kiwi, new zealand's national bird, which i happen to think are adorable. images of kiwi birds, kiwi fruit, and the silver fern (the symbol of the national rugby team, the all-blacks) are found on everything that a tourist could possibly want to buy.




-rachel