Order up?

If your dream city is full of artists, muscians, actors, cool cafe's and vintage clothing stores, then Wellington is for you. If your dream city is by the ocean, near the mountains and full of hills, then Wellington is for you. Wellington is for me. That's all I have to say on that matter. I am a wee bit sad that i only have one day here, it is such a cool place.

After being at Martha And Patrick's place for over aweek, i was very short on food. meaning i had peanut butter and not much else. So i decide to go out for dinner. I found cool cafe called espressoholic and spent a while eating and writing. And who was in Wellington but....OLLI!! so i hung out with Olli for a bit, walked around the city and went to sleep. I know it sounds unexciting, but after a 10 hr travel day, i wasn't up for too much...long bus rides with smelly people take a lot out of you.

The hostel I stayed at provided free breakfast, which was good due to the afformentioned lack of food in all forms. I went for coffe at Fidel's cafe on Cuba street. Coolest place ever. It's decorated with cuban flags and pictures of Che and Castro stare at you from the walls. It's small, comfortable, the music is light the coffee is strong and the people are friendly. Yes, I am home.

I decided that Wellinton woulD be a good place to replenish/replace my existing wardrobe. Which meant i got to go BARGIN HUNTING!!! I love shoping for used clothes. It makes me all warm and fuzzy inside :) I have awesome clothes now...happiness.

The next morning i caught the ferry to The south island. I landed in the town of picton adn then took the bus to the city of nelson. It was an hour and half bus ride, and i spent the whole time talking to the american guy next to me. We were both rather excited to be talking to someone who wasn't German. No offence to the germans or anything, they are just so plentiful, ,it's hard to get away from.

I went for lucnh with a couple of girls from my hostel and then walked around the city a bit. Nelson seems like a pretty cool place. Lots of cafes and pubs and wandering hippies. My hostel is super cool and it's quite spacious (with the added bonus of free pudding every night). It's ab it of a walk to the city center, but they have bikes that we can use for free. I met up with Bretton and Aleah in the evening. It was good to see them and hear about what they have done for the past two weeks. Aleah and i stayed up fairly late talking and playing the guitar.

In the morning, i started my job hunt. I'm, going to be in Elson for two-ish months and I dropped of resumes at every single cafe and restaurant in city center. after four hours of pounding pavement, i walked out with a job. Yes, I am now the newest waitress as "the ale house" which is actually proving to be a lot of fun. It has been a bit tough for my first two shifts and they don't have me taking orders yet. I've been delivering foo dand running drinks and cleaning things up. The people that work there are most holiday workers like myslef, so they are all pretty cool people. One of the cooks seems like a bit of a smartass. Oh hi Sydney, my name is Adelaide...heard it...come up with some new material. I certainly started on an ...interesting...day. I get to work new years eve tonight which i believe will prove to be complete mayhem. Luckily, i only work until 11:30 so i can still go out with Bretton and (a newly legal) Aleah. There is a band playing in the main square so it should be a good time.

So life is good. I have a cool new home base, a (so far) fun job, and a lot of time to spend here. Should be a good two months.
Happy New year !
Love you all,
Sydney :)

A very Kiwi Christmas to all

Merry happy hoho to all.
I'm at my Aunt and Uncles house at the moment. They live in a town called Tuai.
Tuai:
Population: about 12
Location: 45 minutes from anywhere

Not that this is a bad thing...They live right on the border of a national park, so i had a chance to do a bit of hiking. I even got to (gasp) drive myself to the trail head, which meant driving on the wrong side of a narrow windy gravel road. I figure that if I can drive here, I can drive anywhere.
It's been a quiet few days. I've watched a lot of Spongebob and Star Trek. But it was nice to sleep in a real bed (not a bunk) and be able to sleep in. Oh, sleeping in, how I have missed you...
So I awoke this morning, ate breakfats, drank coffee and opened my small stash of gifts. Keep in mind that i've been hauling them around around fro a while and I got...TWO FAIRTRADE JOURNALS and a bar of 72% dark chocolate. I didn't know they made chocolate that dark. It's rather fantastic. It's good that I was given journals, because I've nearly filled my first one. Now the test will be if i actually want to read it at a later date.
It rained yesterday, so the day was spent watching movie with a warm dog on my lap. Happiness is a warm dog on your lap. The dog is insane though. Every time you leave the room, she forgets that you exist, so when you re-enter, you are like a whole new person. It's good thing she's so cute.
It's been ncie to see my relatives. I haven't seen them in 6 years (or so), so this is sort fo a rare occurance. Somthing to do with them living in the middle fo nowhere. I had a chance to make a travel doll (all the Stokoes know which one I mean) For those who are un-Stokoe, he looks a bit like a hobbit and most of the Stokoes have one by now. His name is Milo, and he's a pretty cool dude. I guess this means I won't be travelling alone anymore :) Milo and I went for a hike the other day, although i had to do most of the walking. The guide book said it would take 6 hours. I finished in 4. The trail took me past 7 differant wetland areas and finally past a small lake. It was very beautiful, winding through the forest , over hills and around bogs. The forests here look almost magical. Moss and vines hang from the trees giving it a feling of ancient wisdom. It's very cool.
I have one more day here and then I'm off to Wellington. I wish I had more time in Wellinton, but i'm meeting up with Breton and Aleah in Nelson for new years. So I'll have to spend more time in Wellington on my way back through.
Anyway, I hope you all have a fabulous christmas, a glorious New Years and enjoy the snow!
Love you all
Sydney:)

Send Bail Money

So I spent yesterday in the Napier Prison...I swear, i didn't kill that guy...he had it coming anyway.

Seriously though, I toured the old Napier Prison yesterday. It has recently been converted into a hostel. I didn't stay there, i stayed at the cozy stables lodge backpackers which was (astonishingly) horse themed. anyway..the prison. This is New Zealand's oldest prison, it was open from the late 1880's until 1994, when it was abandoned. a couple of years ago, a local couple decided to convert it into a backpackers and have kept it as original as possible. Travelers can sleep in the cells, eat in the mess hall and meet a few of the old ghosts...allegedly. I took a one hour tour through the old cells. The place was ripe with morbid irony. The old hanging yard had been converted into the laundry lines, there was a stone wall built over the head of the grave of a man hung on site, and a sign in the showers warned "don't drop the soap". It takes a special sort to appreciate the humor. I laughed and laughed and took really cool pictures. The walls of the cells are still covered in graffiti form the men and women housed there. Mongrel mob members and minor offenders stayed together in the tiny stone cells. For those unaware, the mongrel mob is one of New Zealand's biggest and most dangerous gangs. I saw a member in town today. You can pick them out by the HUGE "Mongrel mob" jackets. Very Hell's Angels style. This prison was very easy to escape from, however, most people who broke out, broke back in a few days later. They would go out for weekend, pick up some drugs and break back in to sell them after they finished partying. I was entertained :)

The rest of Napier, though not so macabre, was also very interesting. The town was flattened in 1931 by an earthquake, and when it was rebuilt, they built it all in Art Deco style. Central Napier was very cool. There were lots of Vintage/Retro type shops, so i spent hours just looking at things and taking pictures. If only I had a million dollars and lots of suitcases, the stuff I could home with. So many awesome hats...I was almost in physical pain...

I am traveling alone now, i left Bretton and Aleah in Taupo. They are headed south to hike the Abel Tasman walk over Christmas, and I am currently north of Napier in a town called Tuai. The also couple of days on my own have been interesting. Not bad at all, just different. Luckily, someone I had met in Rotorua was also staying at my hostel in Napier. I have found it a little easier to meet people when i am traveling alone versus with others. You are more apt to talk to people. Georg, who i had met in Rotorua was a cool person to talk to. I ended up hanging out with a bout 6 or 7 Germans. We sat talking at the hostel talking for a bit and then the group moved down to the beach and watched the moon rise over the beach. It was nice to hang out with people. didn't matter who you were, where you'd come from or what language you spoke, we were all just sitting on the beach, having a few drinks and enjoying Napier. Sweet as.

I'm staying at my Aunt and Uncle's house right now, and I'll be here until Christmas. They live in the teeny town of Tuai outside of the slightly less teeny town of Wairoa, which is north of the city of Napier. I haven't seen them in about 6 years, so it's nice to see them again.
Merry Christmas to you
Love you all
Sydney :)

A Blonde, a Brunette and a curly haired girl were in an airplane...

So, skydiving...basically the greatest thing ever.
Yes, yesterday was a glorious day, the sun was shining brightly, the birds were singing and I was free falling from 12,000ft. It had to be on of the most incredible experiences I've ever had. I can't say that I was particularly nervous at all, somehow, I managed to disconnect from what was going on. There was a point in the plane when we were strapped together, and i could feel his heart beating through teh harness, feel his chest rise and fall. I wondered how he felt about doing this. Was it old hat by now, or did he still feel the exhileration every time he jumped?One minute i was sitting with my legs dangling out of small plane and the next i was falling, wind whipping at my face as I plummeted earthward at 200 km/hr. I think i started laughing during free fall, but it was hard to tell because all I could hear was the rush of the wind. So here I was , far above the earth, strapped solidly to a man I had met 10 minutes previous, falling face first towards the earth. My question...How does one land a job like this.
It was the COOLEST thing i have ever done. It's very...dare I say ..spiritual, to be so free. So alone in the world with only the wind and the clouds and the earth below. falling...falling...falling...falling slower? Right! The parachute. After about 45 seconds of free fall we were at 5,000 ft. above the ground and the chute had to be pulled. Now i really started laughing. Laughing at the absurdity of the situation, at the exhilaration of have fallen so far, at...I'm not really sure what, but i was having fun.
On the parachute ride down, My Tandem Pro and I chatted about climbing and weather and all sorts of things. He asked me if I ever got nervous at heights climbing. I thought it was a bit of an ironic question to be asking seeing as I was currently 5000ft above the ground. He told me about someone he knew who recently fell climbing, and is now paralyzed. Our landing was smooth and despite being the first one out of the plane, I was not the first to touch down again. I was super pumped and wanted to go again.
Aleah had been fairly nervous the whole day. While we were taking off, my tandem guy actually leaned in and said "your friend looks pretty nervous...is she ok?" I looked over at Aleah a nd she was quite pale and nervy looking. I flashed her the OK sign and got no response. On the ground, i asked if she had fun. She said "well, that's one word for it."
So, $290NZ later, I have a free fall experiance and a new T-shirt. call it a success folks. Oh, and if i can land a job at a skydive place, um...sweet as?
The rest of the day was uneventful. It sort of felt like the world should have changed, but we arrived bcak at our hostel a couple hours later and it was same same.
Love you all,
Sydney :)

I suppose we can take you back after all

Ok ok , nature, i suppose you can have your job back, those last two days were fabulous...no! that does not mean you can have raise!

I'm in Taupo at the moment, having spent the last two days in the mountains. The weather cleared up , so we were able to complete the tongariro crossing. However, due to time constraints, we were unable to complete the full northern curcuit. So we walked over the crossing one day, and back the next. The crossing is heralded to be New Zealand's best day hike. I can understand why. I had to start making up words to describe how beautiful it was. It certainly wasn't an easy walk, especially with the gear we had to carry to spend two nights. WE ascended a pass and then walked across a large volcanic crater. There was a mist blowing through the crater, which made it look otherworldly. Seriously, so cool. I've got these great pictures of Bretton and Aleah walking away from me through the mist. I'll try to post it in a few days, so stay tuned :)
From the crater, we could look straight up at Mt. Ngauruhoe, which was used as mount doom in LOTR..I know I know I said that Taranaki was mt. doom, but it turns out that I am FULL OF LIES. Where were we, hobbits, orcs, mt doom, look alikes...right! looks alikes... one of two things have happened...either everyone I know has come to new zealand and are ignoring me out of spite, or i was missing home, because I thought I saw about 4 people that I knew from home...it was a little freaky.

Anyway... we ascended a bit higher out of the crater to the rim of the aptly neamed "red crater" yup...it was very red... it was also COMPLETELY GORGEOUS. I mean supergorgtasterific. Beyond description. I attempted in vain to capture it in photo, but i couldn't do it justice. I hang my head in shame :(
Of course getting down the other side of Red Crater was bit interesting. It was a bit like a sand dune, which woudl have been no problem with proper boots and a day pack, but I had runners, offering no ankle support, and a large pack throwing off my balance. I managed to descend unscathed, but it took awhile.

From there, we walked a short was to the (also well named) emerald lakes. Which are really more like Emerald sulphery-puddles. from there, we ascended, up to the larger (what is it with obvious names) Blue Lake. Seriously... have some creativity here. The walk from there to our hut was uninteresting. Our hut was basic, but nice. We walked back the same way the next day. It was nice to see the view from the opposite direction, although we had to fight the throngs of Day hikers a bit. We were told about a short cut, so we didn't have to walk back up the red crater sand hill of death. It was nice to avoid that little bit of misery. We got to the top of Tongariro today. We hit a bit of snow, whcih was fun on the way back. We didn't have any issues (as professional boot skiers) but it was quite funny to watch some of the day hikers struggle to get down. The walk back wasn't too bad, but i was still quite tired by the time we got to our hut for teh night. The hut warden was the strangest nerdy little man, who seemed a bit antisocial and awkward... I felt sort of bad for him, almost like we were intruding on his space by staying there.

This morning, our shuttle bus picked us up from the trail end at 8 am, which meant an early morning as we still had a short walk to get there. We bummed around the hostel for bit, then bummed around a cafe until our bus picked us up. we had to stop over in Tarangi on our way through to Taupo. Who did we see there...Olli!! Olli, our Finnish buddy from Rotorua. we hung out with him for a couple hours while we waited for our bus. It's so cool how we keep bumping into people that we've met before.

well that's pretty much it, in other news, I got to go climbing and sort of wrecked myslef right before our hike, but i've basically healed by now, my wisdom tooth is coming in, which could be ...interesting... and i want new music but can't afford it. I've also spent way more money than i've thought and need to seriously consider getting a job soon. I'll be travelling alone in about 4 days, which will be weird. Not bad weird, but interesting nontheless.

Lov you all
Sydney :)

Memo: Nature is fired, please act accordingly

You know what nature, i've had enough of your back sass. You are fired.
No, i don't care if you have a family to feed, get out of my office. Seriously, the one day I ask you not to rain, and what do you do, you go and rain anyway. Fired. Yes, I can do that. What did I tell you? I told you, hey, Nature, by the way, we're going to do the northern cicuit of Tongariro this week, it would be really cool if you made it nice and sunny and such. So much for my four day hike of glory through the glorious volcanos of glory.
Fine. I'll give you one last chance nature. It had better be sunny and glorious tommorow or you're done.

I would appreciate it if you would all join me in hating nature. It is pouring down rain and i am trappewd in my hostel. I was supposed to be hiking today. You can't even see the mountains there is so much cloud. I may go insane.

Luckily, there is a climbing wall in this hostel, so I may take out some of my anger on pretend rock.

I am also nearly out of food and there is no real grocery store here. I only brought enough foo to survive hiking. I don't really want to eat my backcountry meals in the hostel. They are very expensive and if we end up being able to hike tommorow, i will still need them.

So guess i'll be eating muesli for the next few days, becasue that's pretty much all i have left. so much muesli. Dry muesli at that beacsue i am out of both milk and yogurt. grrr. My coffee has gone stale so it tasted like crap this morning. I woke up early to try to catch a shuttle to the mountain only to find that the shuttle wasn't running because of the weather. So far today has sucked.

I want new music but i can't afford it. Aleah introduced me to Andrew Bird, who she is actually in love with. I can understand it, he is amazing. You all need to listen to him.

I love you all
Sydney

So I've sold my soul to the cell phone monkeys. Yes, taking into consideration that my last phone call home cast my over $7 for a 20 minute call, i figured it might be more economically appropriate to get a cell phone. So i am no the owner of the cheapest piece of crap phone money can buy. This doesn't mean you can call me though.

I've spent the last two days in Egmont national Park. We attempted to climb Mt. Egmont aka Mt. Taranaki aka Mt. Doom. There was still a lot of snow at the top and you needed crampons and ice axes and stuff to get up. considering that i was wearing running shoes, we figured it might not be in out best interest to make a summit push :) The mountain was gorgeous and I have lots of really cool black and white photos of it. Our hostel at the base of the mountain was really basic, but it was quite nice. However, we had to share our room with a mildly obnoxious German guy. He had instant noodles for dinner.

not too much happened, i had coffee yesterday and sat writing for bit. Bretton and Aleah wanted to to a longer hike, but i felt like crap and was quite dehydrated, so i took a shorter track after my coffee. I ended up at an alpine hut up on the mountain. i couldn't get in the front door, but i wanted to sit on the balcony, so i climbed up the balcony supports and sat up there for while writing. The mountain has a neat weather pattern. It can be sunny and warm on minute, and the next, a cloud bank is passing over and you are surrounded by this eerie mist. It's actually a volcano, so it's freestanding. It controls the weather for the whole region.
We will be hiking the Tongarriro northern circuit for the next few days, so i won't be around a computer, but I'll send updates when i get out of the bush :)
Love you all
Sydney

Little did they know, it was actually maggots.

Waitomo
Population: 12, 30 million sheep/cows/goats, 3 billion glow worms, lots of tourists
You can't get lost in Waitomo. There is one road. It is the highway. Waitomo is a cafe and a few caving companies. That is literally it. The buses don't run to Waitomo. Waitomo's sole source of entertainment is glow worms in caves.

So...glow worms... they sound so sweet and innocent, beautiful even. Beautiful yes, sweet and innocnet...bahahaha..haha. No way. First of all, they are actually MAGGOTS! Maggots who eat each other and have glowing poop. Basically their life consists of eating their siblings so they have enough energy to spins little fishing lines. Sticky webs of death, as our cave guide put it. The glowing excrement is meant to attract all sorts of little bugs, and occasionally..gasp...their parents. yes, if mommy and daddy bug are dumb enough to fly towards their children, they get eaten. More interesting facts for your day : The adult version of the glow worm is a fly, but it has..get this...no digestive system...yay! So the fly can only live long enough to reproduce before it dies of starvation. So, imagine you are fly egg, you are born, gorge yourself in a cannibalistic fashion, eat your parents and then after all that, you become a fly, and CRAP you can't eat anymore.

But they are pretty to look at. We tourists are so ridiculous. Really, I just paid almost $200 to freeze my ass off in a cave and look at maggot poop. Yet I still got out of the cave thinking it was worth it, so that has to mean something. We spent about 3 hours in the caves, rappelling and zip lining and drinking coffee. yes, they served afternoon tea and cookies in a cave. Neither hell, high water, nor caving will ever get in the way of afternoon tea.

Our guides kept trying to freak us out, talking about the eels that lived in the water and going on and on about this one 8 ft eel and blah blah blah. One of them (Josh) tried to catch and eel and ended up thrashing around in the water like a fool. The two Irish girls on the trip were pretty freaked out..i was entertained :)

We ended up seeing someone we had met in Rotorua, our roommate Olli, at the start of the trip. We hung out with him for a couple hours, which was cool. It's so neat that we keep running into people we've met earlier. maybe you only talked to them once, but you greet like friends anyway. It's really cool. Of course, there was this one mildly obnoxious American guy that we met in Rotorua who we saw in Raglan. He greeted me as "hey Canada". We didn't like him very much.. he liked himself enough, he didn't need our help.


I'm, in New Plymouth at the moment, taking advantage of FREE LIBRARY INTERNET! We rode some rented bikes along the coast today, and then Aleah and I had a nap in a park. We were very nearly killed by ducks. Yes, I nearly saw a small child devoured by ducks, before they descended on us. I kept telling them "really, i have no bread for you...let me eat my Popsicle in peace" but apparently they didn't understand English.
Must learn to speak duck.

Quack quack quack.
Love you all
Sydney

AND MORE PICTURES ARE UP ON FLICKR www.flickr.com/sydsquid so enjoy :)