The Home Stretch
Well hello there people. It's Tuesday the 21st of June here and I'm almost done my trip. It's been a long 6 months, and I must admit I'm excited to get home. I was wondering today just
why I'm so excited to get home, and I thought maybe it was missing my friends and family, maybe it was Kraft Dinner (Oh man I can't wait for Kraft Dinner), maybe I just miss Canada as a whole. As it turns out, I think the main reason I'm excited to get home is that I simply miss
being at home. Being able to leave my room as untidy as I please, being able to raid the fridge, being able to walk outside and recognize the neighbors - things you just can't get anywhere but home. I suppose this is one of the biggest lessons I've learned while traveling, is that - not to sound cliche - well... There's no place like home. Still, I'm sad to be coming to the end of my travels, and I will surely miss the freedom and energy I've been accustomed to while living out of a backpack halfway around the world. I know I'm very lucky to have had the opportunity to travel like this, and I've tried to make the best of it. I'm going to miss trying to decipher and understand random accents. I'm going to miss the ability to just pick up and move on at a moment's notice. Most of all, I'll miss all of the people I've met, from all over the world, that have had an impact on my trip. I've made some good friends over here, and though I'm sure I'll lose touch with most of them, they're the reason my trip has been so good. The best scenery in the world seems dull in contrast with something as simple as laughing with a new found friend. Hey, there's another reason why I should get home - I'm starting to get even cheesier than I was before... I can't wait to see everyone I've been missing all these months, and I've got a lot ahead of me in Canada. Thanks to all you readers who've kept up with my blog all this time, it's been a pleasure keeping this website up. I'll be making one more post in Canada, where I'll showcase some of my favorite pictures from my trip, and favorite memories from my travels. Until then, Kia Ora :) Spiker
Two Weeks Left!
Hey everyone! Apologies for not posting very often of late, I've been incredibly busy for a change! I've only got two weeks left, as this post's title suggests, and I've still got to do the entire south island of New Zealand. Things will be tight, but it can be done! Let's just hope I don't get stuck somewhere and spend a lot longer in New Zealand than I was hoping... I'd love to show you guys some pictures of the amazing things I've seen over the past week, but this computer is a pile of dung, using windows 98, and it can't figure out my camera. Stone aged piece of... Anyway, I can still tell you a bit about my travels, which is not nearly as cool, but all I can manage given the present situation. Hey, at least the net is free! And thank God for that... I used it last night for about 5 hours, getting my university courses in order, planning, registering, changing my mind a few times, and finally giving up and going to bed. This has been the lowpoint of my last week (Though I'm glad it's over, I can forget about university for a little while longer now!), as I've been rather busy, climbing mountains and bussing around the country. The coolest thing I've done is hike Tongariro crossing - What a fantastic time! It wasn't nearly as gruelling as I expected, and I got to climb almost all the way up the top of a very famous mountain, or so I'm told - Has anyone seen that movie, Lord Of The Rings? Kay, well
apparently there's this mountain called Mount Doom in this movie (Can't say any of this rings a bell, honestly...), and
apparently that's the mountain I climbed. I got some amazing pictures of it too... Stupid windows 98... I'll show them to you guys later on, when I get a free day to putz about the internet and throw some pictures up. On the way down the mountain, though, was the very best part. Someone further up dropped their water bottle, which went whizzing past me at about 100 mph, flying down the steep icy hill as fast as gravity could allow. Luckily we were provided with clamp-on spikes and such, to keep us from doing the same. And then I thought... You know... Why the hell don't
I launch myself down the hill at 100 mph! Having so much sledding experience from so many childhood winters in Canada, I decided to give it a try. I asked the guide first, of course, if there were any dropoffs or cliffs or... Polar Bears... or anything that might slaughter me were I traveling at 100 mph. he told me there was nothing there but snow, but he didn't think that launching myself headfirst down the hill with spikes on my feet and a bag on my back was a good idea. I, of course, took no heed of this warning and began my slide. Absolutely fantastic. I passed about 20 people on the way down, all of which I'm sure saw the Canadian flag on my back and thought "I guess they do this after they build their igloos...", but eventually some of them tried it too. I ended up at the bottom of the hill, about 300 meters down from where I started, and all I wanted to do was climb back up and do it again. So I did! I can tell you, I slept well that night... And the experience reminded me a lot of my time down in Elbow Park, sledding with my best friends Riley and Dan. Can't wait to see you guys, by the way. Well, with that, I'm off to visit a large museum in Wellington, of which I know not the name or contents... The girls are dragging me out. *Sigh*... It's a hard life kids, it's a hard life. Don't get too comfy over there in Kelowna, I'll be crashing that party in T-minus two weeks! See you then! Spiker
East As
Kia Ora! That means hello, in Maori, if you hadn't already guessed as much. I'm now in a tiny town of about 500 people called Te Kaha, which means The Strength. This town is, as they say here, Sweet As, which basically means as sweet as anything else that's ever been sweet. Yesterday we went to the most easterly part of the country, and were amongst the first few people in the world to see the sun ride (though certainly not the very first). The hill is a sacred Maori place - it's something to do with one of about 827435234 Maori legends - they've got a story to explain absolutely everything (From the shape of New Zealand to the reason their noses are flat). I'm really enjoying myself here, and I'm going to stay on for a few days to work for some much needed New Zealand funds. The internet on this computer is incredulously slow, so posting pictures would be an overnight event... I guess you'll just have to be satisfied with my incessant ramblings :) Today I start fruit picking, and fruit packing, and I'll be here for a few days, maybe even 5 or 6, depending on when the next bus comes around to collect me. Yesterday, though, I got some unbelievably bad news - my Ipod glitched out. As you may or may not know, my Ipod is not only the source of all my musical entertainment, it's also where I store every single one of my pictures from this trip... Essentially, there are three things that I absolutely cannot lose before I come home - my passport, my plane ticket, and my Ipod. So, when I turned my Ipod on to find that it had wiped itself, I was slightly upset, though optimistic that it might just be an error that wouldn't let the ipod read data, without the data being erased. Basically, I was hoping it broke the
right way, instead of the
really really shitty way. Thankfully, the latter was the case, and all the data is still on the Ipod, which I can exchange for a working one when I get home (Thank god for future shop extended warranty ;D), after I take all the pictures off. I won't be touching the bloody thing until I get it home - computers are evil things, and it might break even more. Other than that brief but ghastly scare, things have been fantastic for me, as usual! New Zealand is a raw and beautiful country, but with a softness that comes from the green fields and trillions of sheep, coupled with the lovely local Maori population. I'm staying in a small hostel (Well, not really a hostel, it's a guy's house) here in Te Kaha, owned by Paul O'Brien, who's quite a character, and a warm and generous host. I think he may teach me to do the Haka... Which would make my entire trip worthwhile. Anyway, fruit picking is starting soon, and I'm off to earn my 10 bucks an hour :) Not much more than three weeks till I'm back in Canada, land of Kraft Dinner, pine trees, maple syrup, and the endless barren wasteland we call the prairies. Much Love from New Zealand! Kia Ora! Spiker
