So, I guess I haven't been too prolific with travel updates, but better late than never. Here's some random stuff:
I flew into Christchurch the first week of January and everything about the flight was super smooth. I got into the city to find the downtown section still fenced off from earthquake damage, though the parts of the city that were accessible were really nice. There were a lot of abandoned houses, but a lovely river/park corridor that runs through the heart of the city. I spent a long afternoon in the amazing Botanic Gardens that are really huge. I'll definitely hang out there more when I fly out in a month. I hitched from Christchurch to the NW part of the island where my friends were living. The hitching was pretty easy. The only time I had trouble getting a ride was when I mistakenly stood by a circular sign with two lines through it that turned out to mean "no stopping zone".
I got into Takaka in a couple days, which is were Craig and Marie were WWOOF'ing on a farm. I was there for a week and helped the farmers install a hydroelectric system generating power from a stream in the mountains above their house. Chip and Hess, (the owners of the farm) were great hosts, and they constantly were giving us homebrew and delicious food, much of which was grown on the farm. The work arrangement was pretty laid-back, just ~3 days of work a week, there was lots of time to explore the Golden Bay area. Some of the highlights were fishing and swimming at the river, seeing Pupu Springs (the 2nd purest springs in the world, losing only to a spring under the Ross Ice Shelf in Antartica), and going to Farewell Spit, which is an awesome strip of sand on the very northern tip of the South Island that juts out into the ocean.
So then we set off to travel around the South Island for the rest of my time here. Craig and Marie have a campervan that sleeps the two of them and there are lots of places to camp so we've camped every night and I sleep in my tent. After a short overnight backpack we started towards the west coast. Well, actually it was a great backpack. The weather was questionable as it often is here even in summer (because of NZ's latitude and proximity to the ocean) but we set off and it ended up dumping rain on us most of the hike. However, most people hike to one of the more than 900 huts located in the backcountry. So after slogging through rain and deep mud all day we arrived to a lovely, dry hut and started a fire in the wood-burning stove. It is a pretty big luxury to have a roof over your head while you're backpacking, and we've stayed at a lot of huts so far. You can buy a 6 month or 1 year hut pass for a very affordable price and have unlimited use.
So then we slowly worked our way down the west coast of the island, fishing, hiking, and swimming at every place we could along the way. One of the highlights was Oparara Basin, which had tons of limestone in the area so there were enormous rock arches and extensive cave networks. Also sorta in the area was the Inland Pack Track in Paparoa National Park. Most of the hiking was in beech forest, but the last few hours were walking in the streambed itself between huge limestone cliffs on either side of the valley. Erosion over many years had made amazing formations in some of these karsts. That night we slept under a huge overhanging rock wall called The Ballroom that could fit a couple hundred people underneath.
Moving further south we stopped at Fox and Franz Josef glaciers, which are huge tourist attractions, but amazing nonetheless. Both of them are enormous glaciers that totally fill up massive valleys. One day we hiked up to a point above bushline called Alex Knob that gave a great view down to Franz Josef glacier. Lot of tourists pay gobs of money to take a helicopter ride onto the glaciers, and the sky was filled each day with choppers shuttling people up and down from the top.
We're presently in a region called Otago and have started going on longer, more serious backpacking trips. The last couple have been in Mt. Aspiring National Park which is amazingly scenic. Staying in huts each night is really a treat too. Some even have flush toilets (not the cheap ones we stay in). Not sure if this counts as roughing it, though some of the trails have been pretty gnarly, Kiwis don't really believe in switchbacks, just straight up the mountain.
In other life news I've taken a job from March to May working with tortoises in the Mojave Desert. The position is with a non-profit called the Institute for Wildlife Studies which has a very reputation for conducting wildlife work in the western states. I had to push my departure date ahead a month, but I was kinda expecting that was going to happen. It'll be quite a drastic difference to go from NZ to Las Vegas, but hopefully it'll be a really cool job, and Vegas is not that far from a lot of cool places in the SOuthwest, including only 8.5 hours from Emily, who'll be in Yosemite from Feb-Apr. I'll be camping in the desert for a week at a time, so that'll be fun to really get a feel for life in such an extreme environment. I'm still working out jobs after that is done, hopefully in Montana.
I'll try to put up pictures as I can. Always love to hear how other people are doing too. Don't be a stranger!!! ps scroggin is what kiwis call trailmix
