TSS Earnslaw

September 7, 2015

While living in Queenstown over the past year, there haven't been many days that go by without seeing the TSS Earnslaw on its daily route to Walter Peak. As it blows dark clouds from it's coal burning furnaces into the sky, it's familiar horn sounds it's arrival. The Earnslaw has become an icon of the Queenstown beachfront. Two screws move the vessel through the waters of Lake Wakatipu - the TSS standing for 'Twin Screw Steamship'. Mount Earnslaw, which is located at the head of Lake Wakatipu, is where the steamship derives its name. The TSS Earnslaw was launched in 1912, the same year as the Titanic, celebrating it's 100th birthday just a few years ago. It is also known as The Lady of the Lake.

Except for a few winter months, visitors can enjoy farm tours, lunch or dinner, or a simple ride on the Earnslaw across to Walter Peak, year round. Real Journeys runs the tours and offer great locals discounts currently during the month of September. My friend Lucio, his partner Crystal, and my flatmate Laura decided to take advantage of the deals and spent the afternoon together grabbing lunch. It was delicious food with great service in a fantastic location.

After lunch we were invited to walk across the grounds to a farm tour. We were able to observe how sheep dogs are used to herd the flock and respond to farmer's commands. The dogs are quite smart and assist the farmer as though playing a game. We even had the chance to watch a sheep sheering demonstration as our host explained exactly how sheering had evolved and operates. We had a great time all around and I couldn't recommend more the TSS Earnslaw lake cruise, farm tour, and gourmet bbq lunch.

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Cardrona Ski

August 28, 2015

Living in Queenstown, it seemed odd that I hadn't already taken advantage of the best ski season New Zealand has had in over five years. After hearing how great the skiing has been and receiving a little advice from a friend, my only choice was to finally make my way up the ski fields. I headed over to Cardrona Alpine Resort. Cardrona is one of the best places to hit the slopes in the Otago region - located near Wanaka, an hours drive from Queenstown through the Crown Range. I knew I could count on my friend Koko to make the last minute excursion with me - since I'd only made arrangements to borrow a car and rent skis late in the afternoon the day before. Since I sold my car just last week, if it hadn't been for a coworker of mine, Allison - offering without hesitation her Mazda wagon, we would have been dead in the water, er the snow. Needless to say, after picking our skis up at Outside Sports in town, we headed out to Cardrona. It was a blue bird day. Koko and I had an awesome time skiing and watching some slope style competition during the New Zealand Winter Games. Check out some of my photos below.

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Running of the Wools

February 9, 2015

This past weekend the Rural Games were hosted here in Queenstown, New Zealand. Events were happening right in town at the rugby field all weekend. From speed spearing championship to sheep dog trials and even wood chopping championship. Friday, getting things rolling for the weekend, there was the Running of the Wools. Hundreds of ram and sheep alike ran through downtown Queenstown. Friday also happened to be Waitangi Day, a national Kiwi holiday. It marks the day the Treaty of Waitangi was signed between the Māori and British settlers on February 6th, 1840. Needless to say, Friday was a big day and we quite enjoyed ourselves hanging out around town.

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North of Haast

January 15, 2015

I've been in New Zealand four months and it's been quite the experience. One of my favorite places isn't one particular location, but several in combination along the Haast Highway up the west coast of the South Island. It's not long before you find small gems alongside the highway. Places like the Blue Pools, Roaring Billy Falls, Thunder Creek Falls, and any number of seemingly random waterfalls along the way. The landscape is vast and changing. Within a few short hours you'll travel from beach, to river, to glacier peaks - together painting dramatic scenes only found in New Zealand. Traveling with one of my best friends since my childhood, Chris and I toured across the South Island our first two weeks in New Zealand. This stretch of the trip was one of our most memorable.

We had the chance recently to retrace some of that trek with a new friend, Sophia. Having met only days before through a mutual friend. We spent three days racing up the west coast exploring. Sophia is an avid adventurer and works planing and leading gap year experiences abroad. Adventures Cross Country, or ARCC where she works, is based out of San Fransisco and leads programs all across the globe. Tramping with a professional was quite fun and made for some fantastic conversations.

We were already in the high travel months of summer with our trip landing within a Kiwi holiday. With the high season in full swing, the weather turned against us, raining buckets, as they say. Every campsite we'd hoped to claim as our own was either rained out or occupied. Hotels and hostels had no vacancies and the ground was much to wet to begin setting up camp anyway. So we did the next best thing, camping under an outdoor pavilion! We found a grill area near the beach which seemed like a nice escape from the torrential downpour, making due, we pressed on the next morning.

As the weather finally started to let up and the clouds began to separate, we set out to explore Franz Joseph Glacier. We hiked up and over glacier melt and hidden ice caverns covered in gravel to find ourselves surrounded, by tourist. I'd brought my tripod not knowing if we'd run into any DSLR shooters to snap our photo. It turned out that people really respect tripods. As soon as I began setting it up for a quick shot of the 3 of us, a large group of Asian tourist patiently waited, encircling me unbeknownst to myself. I snapped the shot and broke down my tripod to a crowd swarming to take a group photo. Chris offered to help them, taking a group shot for them as they thanked us for our friendliness. And we made our way back down to the glacier valley. It was beautiful even amongst all the tourist and helicopter rides over head.

We ended the day in Punakaiki where we found ourselves back at the Pancake Rocks. The rocks over time have been worn down by the ocean and rain, washing out sediment wearing the stone left behind. The natural formations are interesting and its easy to see where they get their name. We got to see the blow holes again as well, although we went at low tide when they weren't blowing as high. Our small adventure was fun and enhanced even more by the accompaniment of our new friend, Sophia.

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Goodies from the Gorge

December 31, 2014

Being handy is important, especially for guys, or at least that's what we're lead to believe a lot of the time. Whats great about the idea of being handy for me, is that it embellishes a desire to learn more. More than what I know now and more than what I'll probably know tomorrow. I always want to know more, to keep learning.

Several weeks ago, I was invited by my friend Dani out to Goodies from the Gorge. Goodies, is a quant little farm run by Dani's dear friends David and Jenny.

Something had come up at the farm and my friend Chris and I were requested to assist. David needed some prep-work done for planting his seasonal tomatoes and Chris and I were more than happy to oblige. In order to get their tomatoes planted, before it was to late in the season, we needed to string up bamboo to help support the tomato vines. It was hard work; but a lot of fun. I've wanted to know more about whats needed to manage and produce my own food, and more importantly, how to do so naturally. David only produces food that qualifies as all natural organic and is very popular among Otago's local chefs. Even though the work wasn't easy, it was more than rewarding seeing our progress.

Though we learned a lot, we had to figure some of it out as we went along. You might say, we were handy. David and Jenny were happy with the work we'd done. Knowing we had helped them in some way made the work that much more satisfying. Dani showed us a few more chores - picking cherries, pulling weeds, and even feeding the pigs, which was my favorite. Dani even found bird eggs in some of the plants..

With all the work done, we made time to cut down a couple Christmas trees. The winery across the street let us pick them out along the river next to their property. We used borrowed hand saws to cut down the trees and drug them back to the farm. They would become the center piece of our Christmas decorations.

After our work, Jenny treated us to dinner. While she cooked, we sat outside and pulled weeds, drank wine, talked about life, and the day's work we'd finished. Dinner was amazing and very fresh. All the vegetables were grown right on the farm. Even the wine was made from grapes Jenny and David had grown themselves. In a word, it was... impressive! In the end, the day was long and our work hard. Our bellies were full of food and laughter. New knowledge was gained and friendships formed - all on Goodies from the Gorge.

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Thus Far...

December 21, 2014

I've been living in New Zealand for 3 months now, and it's been amazing! For the first month, my friend Chris and I traveled all around the North and South Islands - discovering for ourselves what makes this place so special. I've found that keeping up with a blog on the road - camping without Internet or power - can make it difficult to keep pace with all that we've been doing. So I've decided to create a series of future posts outlining some of the amazing places we've already seen, starting them with the title, "Thus Far..." I want these to be short, media driven, educational posts that allows you to see, hear, and be a part of my journey. The goal of course is to keep this place clean and up-to-date going forward, with a few past adventures sprinkled in along the way.

The view behind our apartment In Queenstown.

Dani & Chris getting ready for Christmas at our apartment.

We started all of this in Christchurch, on the east coast of the South Island. There we met some really great friends. We moved south around Queenstown, up the west coast through Haust, upward toward the most northern part of the South Island to French Pass, and over to Nelson. After two weeks alone we could have stopped and been satisfied with all the beautiful sights we'd seen; but, we regrouped again in Christchurch.

We decided to head north to Aukland, to find our own form of transportation. We wanted more of New Zealand, and the freedom of having our own vehicle, made sense. What follows throughout my blog and my website will hopefully catch you up with where I've been and what's going on along my journey.

Thanks for following along and welcome to my blog!

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Fiji Time

September 13, 2014

We flew Fiji Air from Los Angeles and decided to do a stop over for a day. They, like L.A., had been in a drought for nearly 4 months when we arrived. We landed around 5:30AM and would begin our island hopping at 7AM.

We met some new friends as we took the bus from our hostile to the harbor. Some people do a couple of days at each island as they make their way up the island chain. We decided to disembarked at Octopus Resort, on Waya Island, taking a water taxi to the beach. We were greeted by a small guitar band and lead to our free island fruit smoothie in the resorts open air bar and restaurant.

We spent a good portion of the time snorkeling and watching fish swim in and out of the coral reef just off shore. After snorkeling for a good bit we shared a nice lunch with a couple from Auckland, New Zealand. We shared a few stories of adventure seeking and where we were headed to next. After eating we did some lounging in hammocks by the beach. Needless to say we had a great time on our day long vacation in Fiji. Now it was time for us to be on our way to New Zealand.

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SpaceX, the (New) Final Frontier

September 11, 2014

Falcon 9 Rocket & Dragon Capsule - Photo Credit SpaceX

We got to see what the future of space travel looks like when our friend Drew Hess took us on a private tour of the SpaceX hanger in L.A. Staying in L.A. at our friend Drew's place was a precursor to the rest of our journey. Traveling is something I've always enjoyed, especially when getting to experience new places, people, and things. Drew is one of those people I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know and was the first of many people I'd meet along my way. Interestingly enough, I didn't actually meet Drew until the morning after my first night at his place.

You see, Drew is an engineer for SpaceX. If you haven't heard of SpaceX, you may have heard of another brilliant company, Tesla Motors - both run by Elon Musk. SpaceX is an amazing company, leading the way in space exploration. Many late nights have been spent trying to achieve the high goal of creating rockets that can land themselves and be reused over and over again.

A large airplane hanger right outside L.A. where SpaceX is headquartered. — A large airplane hanger right outside L.A. where SpaceX is headquartered.

This simple enough idea has the ability to save millions, possibly billions, of dollars in cost building new rockets every time someone wants to get to space. They're currently getting certified by the U.S. Air Force and will hopefully open the door for additional military contracts and funding.

Crs 4 Dragon Orbit 2 - Photo Credit SpaceX

Drew took us on a tour of the facilities giving us a brief history of SpaceX. I'm a huge fan of science fiction and getting to see the real thing was like going to Disney World! Needless to say I had an amazing time hearing about the things SpaceX has done and is trying to accomplish.

Let the new space age begin!

Chris & I outside SpaceX after our tour with Drew.

Falcon 9 is a two-stage rocket designed and manufactured by SpaceX for the reliable and safe transport of satellites and the Dragon spacecraft into orbit.

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The Adventure Begins...

September 10, 2014

I've officially begun my journey to New Zealand. Flying out of Augusta, GA early in the morning yesterday at 7AM local time. It was quite the flight, ridding next to the propeller on our small prop plane was like flying in a massage chair. And I even managed to get a nice look at the Savannah River as we passed over, in the haze of sun rise.

It was a simple enough beginning for the first part of my travels as I landed in Los Angeles, my first time ever. My friend Chris picked me up from the airport and off we went. I'll outline how I decided to do this crazy trip later; but this is where I am now. Arriving in LA was a little underwhelming. LA, and California in general, have been suffering a major drought. Drought, that has left the land scorched and dry.

Even still the land is vibrate in other ways. The neighborhoods of Hermosa Beach I've been able to move through are alive with people. As the ocean breeze cools the air, the warm dry 82 degree heat is quite nice, especially when contrasted with the South's dripping humidity.

The first chore when arriving was a quick workout to prepare for our true adventure. Being physically fit for our journey is going to be especially important. After finishing our workout we headed to the beach, only blocks away, for a quick swim in the Pacific's refreshing water. We made time to grab a healthy lunch at a local eatery, Paradise Bowls. I've never enjoyed a bowl of fruit as much as I did here! Frozen acai berry covered with fruit and honey!

We spent the day planning and checking off our gear list, making sure we hadn't forgotten anything. I experienced for the first time watching the sun set into the Pacific atop my new friend Drew's apartment. Drew is a friend of Chris' he met on another trip - more on Drew later. The town of Hermosa Beach is compact and very community oriented. It has great locally owned shops and restaurants, all within walking distance of our location. I've only here a day and a half and would definitely want to come back for longer. California has started to call me home.

Next stop, Fiji.

On top of Drew's apartment just as the sun set into the Pacific

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