Beijing

Beijing is insane. Like nothing I could have imagined. Compared to New Zealand, this truly feels like I am on a different planet. After a fourteen hour plane ride that was delayed four hours I finally arrived here Thursday the 24th. From the moment I stepped off the plane the gawking and staring began. People really get a kick out of me walking down the street which is very funny to me being as I am a good foot taller than every Chinese person around. After navigating the subway I was able to find my hostel, which is more like a hotel, that I booked online for about 5 USD, or around 35 Yuan. Everything is very cheap here, but they try to take advantage of English speakers. For example, as soon as I arrived I went next door to my hostel and got lunch, just riced, chicken, and a beer (beer is very popular because the water is not drinkable). Once the waitress saw me she immediately switched the menu to the English version. I ended up paying around 7 USD for lunch, which is almost four times what any Chinese person would pay. Average meals run from 2 to 4 USD. You live and learn I guess. Luckily, when I returned from lunch I met some of the travelers who shared my room who all turned out to be Canadian. After talking for a while about things to do and see, they invited me to go to one of the large markets and then dinner. The markets in Beijing are essentially six story warehouses where every seller has a small stall where they hock fake designer goods for ridiculously cheap prices. Gucci wallets, nike shoes, north face jackets, soccer jerseys, ipads, laptops, jewelry, anything you could ever want. One of the guys who I was with showed me the ropes on how to haggle with the Chinese sellers who are very aggressive. They know small amounts of English and will yell at you and grab your arm as you walk by. "I like you, good price for you" and "You handsome, I give good price just for you" are stape lines used. Usually, I found out from my friends, they quote a price which is actually 6 times what their actual bottom line is. For example if they say 60 Yuan (a little less than 10 USD) that means they will sell at the bare minimum for 10 Yuan (a little over 1 USD. It is actually somewhat of a game to haggle with them. Quite fun. I decided that I needed a day pack so I went to the luggage section and found a north face backpack to my liking. The woman quoted a price close to 80 USD and after some cunning back and forth banter I got it for 140 Yuan, or just about 20 USD. I felt good about my purchase and first attempt at bartering. After a great dinner at an authentic Chinese restaraunt with dishes such as cashew chicken and some sort of fungus cucumber dish I went to sleep to catch up on my sleep. The next day myself and the Canadians went to the Temple of Heaven, which is a temple where the royalty of China would go to pray up until recently. The funniest thing about the temple was that at one part we decided to take a group photo and asked a Chinese person to take it. As soon as he went to take the picture, literally six people got behind him and took a picture of the white people in China. I laughed pretty hard about that. Quick interjection about Canadians. Almost all Canadian travelers sew the Canadian flag onto their backpacks to show they are not American because Americans get treated much differently abroad. Kind of annoying. Anyways after sightseeing we went and had lunch at a restaraunt that serves hot pots, the most popular food in China from what I can tell so far. Hot pots are essentially pots of boiling hot flavored water placed in front of you in which you put various meats, vegetables, and other fungus and potatoes. Every person got their own pot and plate of ingredients. I literally sat there eating for almost two hours. Their was so much food to put in the pots. So delicious. After being exhausted from eating for so long and not even full, we went shopping again. This time I had my eye on a Chelsea jersey. One of the Canucks and I got a package deal and paid around 7 USD each for two jerseys with matching shorts. Sometimes we would haggle with sellers even if we did not want to purchase anything just to see how low we could go. That night we traveled a long distance to go to the Olympic park which is very beautiful at night. We hoped to go to the Olympic swimming park, which is a giant blue cube, that got transformed into an indoor water park. Sadly, it was closed. Even so, just seeing how much the Chinese built for the Olympics was amazing, and at night it was truly a spectacle. Everything has been great so far, except for this morning I woke up with snow on the ground which is dissapointing. In the next few days I will be going to see some of the major sights, as well as the Great Wall, so expect a new post in the next coming days. And one last final note about Beijing: everyone hocks loogies everywhere. It is disgusting. You cannot walk down the street for two minutes without hearing someone hocking up a lung, both men and women. Disgusting. Anyways I am off to brave the cold and eat some crazy things like scorpions and cobra blood. Until next time...

Earthquake

For the record I am not in Christchurch right now. I am in Auckland on the north island so I was not affected by the quake. Kind of scary though because where I was staying in CC only 5 days ago got rocked by the quake. Scary stuff.

My Overall Thoughts on New Zealand

As my 24 days in New Zealand is finally coming to an end I thought I would make a post about the various aspects of the country that I found interesting or noteworthy. Overall, New Zealand is an amazing place. Luckily, the bus company I was on took me on a loop around almost the entire north and south islands, so I experienced almost all that the land of the Kiwis had to offer. The people of New Zealand are incredible. Everyone is very nice and polite and always there to lend a helping hand if you need assistance in any way. They all speak English, which is also very helpful to myself as a traveler. With that being said, they also have a unique dialect with slang terms that I found very funny and interesting. My favorite being the word "choice". It is used in place of "awesome" or "cool". For example, a Kiwi (New Zealander), would say "that bungey jump was so choice bro." Additionally, I enjoyed the phrase "sweet as", which essentially means "no worries" or "that's fine". The food of New Zealand was nothing spectacular. It is essentially the same as you would find in any European country with cafes on every corner and typical European dishes because the country is a melting pot of various influences from around the world. I did get to sample a real Maori dinner when I stayed at a Maori lodge which was interesting. It consisted of baked sweet potatoes, fish, and chicken, with cole slaw and salad. Nothing too extraordinary. The landscape and views are what truly sets this country apart. With active volcanoes, glaciers, and pristine beaches everywhere you look, it is hard to pick the most beautiful spots in this small island nation. In my opinion, the south island was more beautiful in terms of sight seeing than the north. The south, with the Abel Tasman National Park, Franz Josef glacier, and the city of Queenstown, made my jaw drop to the floor everywhere I went. I was disappointed that I spent so little time in Queenstown because it is truly somewhere that if I lived a perfect life I would love to move to. From its beauty, the nightlife, the shops, and the extreme sports options, it was an amazing little city. It is also the home to bungey jumping, which is nice. I am also disappointed that I was not able to travel further south to the towns of Dunedin and Stewarts Island, which are both supposed to be amazing. Besides that though, I have no regrets about my time here and believe that I got to experience a large amount of what New Zealand has to offer. I definitely suggest New Zealand to any person who loves the outdoors and natural beauty along with outdoor sports. I'm sad that the time here went by so fast but it is time to move on. Onward to China.

Bungy

As I said in my previous post and from what you can most likely tell from my pics that I just posted, I bungee jumped for the first time yesterday. The jump site was called the Nevis and is located right outside of Queenstown. It is the highest jump in New Zealand at 134 meters, or 440 feet. Once on to the site we took a ride in a small cart suspended above the canyon floor for about a minute ride which was quite scary in itself because you could look straight through the bottom and see your imminent death that awaited you once your bungee failed. At the bottom of the canyon was a small river that was maybe waist deep, so not much help there if you do fall. Once we took our ride in the cart we were loaded into a suspended metal structure 440 ft. above the canyon with about six other jumpers. They go by weight so I was third behind a guy from Alaska and a buddy I met from Ireland. Waiting to jump is pretty exhilarating. They play some awesome tunes while you get to stare down at the drop that awaits you in a few minutes time. They played some Euro techno beat for me while I jumped. When it was finally my turn they make you sit in an old airplane chair and strap you in by your feet and harness to the bungee. They then proceed to stand you up and force you to walk little baby steps to a small platform outside of the structure. This is when you really start to realize that you are about to jump to your death. They give you a countdown and then you jump. I did so without hesitating, much like the rest of the people I was jumping with. The longer you wait the more hesitant you become. I did a dive straight out and immediately started to plummet. The first two or three seconds are unreal. Your entire body goes numb and your face feels like its melting because your body realizes what is about to happen if you hit the ground. After that point I caught my bearings and started to laugh uncontrollably, which I guess was attributed to me being absolutely elated. After around six seconds you are getting quite close to the ground and then all of the sudden the bungee catches and you are swung back up almost as high as you jumped. You bounced around three times before you are finally pulled up, which is actually very scary because you are still suspended downward. Once I was safe back up in the structure I could not stop laughing and my knees uncontrollably began to shake from the adrenaline. The high lasted for some time. Honestly, it was probably the best thing I have done in my life so far. Although it was only a short amount of time, the feeling you get of plummeting to the ground to your death only to be saved moments from that terminal moment is one that I will never forget. I highly recommend it for anyone looking to live a little.

Some of My Favorite Pics So Far

So I finally made it to Queenstown. Queenstown is the most amazing city I have ever seen. The best way to describe how the city looks is like Vail on steroids. The city itself is a ski town during the winter and an outdoor extreme sports wonderland during the summer. Every other store is either a board shop or a Bungy company. Literally anything you could ever want to do is in this one small town. The town sits on top of a hillside around a lake, so there are also many options for water sports which makes it literally the perfect place if you are into the outdoors. It definitely is going to be hard to leave. Speaking of bungy, later on today I am actually going to Bungy jump for the first time. I am doing it at this jump site called "Nevis", the tallest jump in New Zealand at about 140 meters tall. The free fall is almost eight seconds long. I think it is the second tallest in the world to some place in South Africa. Definitely excited about that. Bungy was actually invented by two New Zealanders and the one I am jumping at is still owned and operated by one of the two. But seeing as it has been a while since my last update I have some experiences to write about. Since I last blogged I have gone all the way from Wellington in the North Island to Queenstown in the South. I took a ferry between the two islands and traveled down the West Coast of New Zealand, which is known as being sort of the "Wild West" of the country. Not many people live in the area, but the amount of outdoor beauty and activities along the coast is amazing. We stopped in a few beach towns and enjoyed the nice weather and sights before arriving at Abel Tasman, which is a National Park. The park is essentially a large peninsula that runs along a number or bays in the Tasman Sea. The water in the bays is one of the most amazing colors I have ever seen, a mix between bright light blue and green in some places. I spent a few days there hiking along the trails that run along the cliffs of the bay and taking breaks to lay on the beach and go swimming in the perfect temperature water. After a few days relaxing and doing amazing day hikes I then proceeded on to Franz Josef, one of the two largest glaciers in New Zealand. There are more than 3,000 glaciers here so they are a popular destination. Myself and a group of other travelers hired a guide to take us up into the glacier. The day that we went was amazing weather, so we were able to get very high up on to the glacier. We wore crampons, or spikes on your boots, and traversed the huge block of ice for a few hours, taking breaks to go crawling through ice caves and sliding through crevices. It was not a day for the claustrophobic. In some spots we went so far down into the glacier that the ice turned a dark blue, almost green color, which is due to the compression of the air bubbles in the ice. The town itself of Franz Josef was also very cool because it say in a valley that looked up to the glacier and a few other mountains. Then after a few hours drive, here I am in Queenstown. On a side note, if there is one thing I would say to sum up my travels through New Zealand so far is that the country is amazing in terms of its topography and landforms. Literally everywhere you go there is something that is worth traveling miles to go see, but we just drive past on our way through the countryside. If I tried to take pictures of everything I saw I definitely would have filled up my memory card by now. Anyways, I have to go get some lunch before my jump later on today. Hopefully I make it back to blog again.

Been a while...

So it has been a few days since my last post so there is a lot to catch up on. I followed my day in Raglan with arguably my best day yet, although every day is pretty amazing. We traveled to the Waitomo Caves just south of Raglan. The caves are known to have some of the best spelunking in the world. A group of myself and nine others found a company that would take us abseiling, or what I call repelling, down a cave system that was located in the middle of nowhere on a farm that was filled with cows and goats. After a quick tutorial on how to properly abseil down the cave walls we set off into the caverns. As soon as we got into the cave we hooked in to our harness and swung out onto a cave ledge about fifty feet up (just an estimate since everything is in meters and I have no idea how many feet are in a meter). We spent most of the day fitting through tunnels just big enough to pass your shoulders through and repelling down water falls and crawling on our bellies through underground streams for almost four hours. At times members of my group would become quite claustrophobic as we would be packed into small areas getting drenched by waterfalls very frequently, but for the most part everyone had a great time in the caves. After almost four hours we finally saw daylight after rock climbing our way back out of the tunnels, which turned out to be much more challenging than getting down. If that was not enough for one day, we immediately got back on the bus and traveled a few hours into the middle of nowhere New Zealand and unloaded at a traditional Maori long house, or place of ritual. By the way, I have not mentioned yet that while driving around New Zealand all you see are sheep for miles and miles. Anyways, back to the Maori. The Maori are the native peoples of New Zealand and were here long before any European settlers. In recent years there has been an attempt to preserve Maori culture, so the language and customs are taught to all school children in New Zealand. The structure that we arrived at was a traditional place of ritual for the Maori and is still used by the Maori of the area as a spiritual gathering place. After eating a traditional Maori meal of fish and the New Zealand version of sweet potatoes, we watched the Maori people perform traditional songs and dances for us. After this excellent performance the group was told that we would be split up in to two groups, male and female, and both learn traditional Maori dances. We (the men) were forced to strip down to our underwear and put on traditional Maori dresses and learn the Haka. The Haka is the war dance performed by Maori men to intimidate other tribes on the battle field. Some people might know it because the New Zealand soccer and rugby teams perform it before their games. It is very intense and serious and they made sure that we had it memorized before they allowed us to perform in front of their people. It was actually so intense that I got bruises on my legs and scratches on my chest from the different dance moves. We actually performed so well that the Maori men were impressed, although they probably say that to everyone who pays them to stay there. Overall, the entire day was extremely exciting and  definitely my best day so far. The following morning we departed our spot in the middle of nowhere and traveled to Taupo, which is a relatively large city located on Lake Taupo in the middle of the North Island. We spent the day at a river outside of town that had hot springs flowing into it, making it a natural hot tub while others I was with went skydiving. I passed on the skydiving to save some money. Yesterday (Saturday in New Zealand, Friday in the States) we traveled to Tongariro National Park which was absolutely stunning. I spent the day hiking a trail that many guides call one of the best hikes in the entire world. The area is actually a system of erupted volcanoes and soon to be erupted volcanoes, the last one erupting only thirty years ago. The hike was only 20 kilometers long, but it was a very difficult vertical hike on the way to the summit of the highest crater. Not to mention the weather was miserable, rainy and windy the entire way up. Once we got to the summit though the weather immediately cleared up and turned into a beautiful summer day in New Zealand, about 75 degrees. We were finally able to see the terrain around us and see the area that was used in many of the Lord of the Rings movies. Peter Jackson, the director, is from New Zealand so most of the scenes were filmed here, with this certain park used for many different shots. I will be sure to put up some of my photos from the hike because it was pretty incredible terrain. After the weather cleared the hike down was a piece of cake. All together, the hike took around six hours to complete. Currently I am in the capital city of New Zealand, Wellington, and will only be staying here one night. Tomorrow morning I take the ferry to the South Island, which is supposed to be amazing. Currently there is some huge rugby tournament here so the streets are packed with people. Rugby is extremely popular in New Zealand. Anyways, it is around dinner time so I have to go get on that but check back for my next experience and I promise that as soon as a I have a free day, which I have not had yet, I will upload my photos. Until next time.

Greetings from New Zealand,

Currently as I type this I am in a surf hostel in Raglan, New Zealand on the western coast of the north island. Two days ago, after careful consideration, I decided to book a bus tour with a group called "Stray" that travels all the way around both the north and south islands of New Zealand. I decided this because it is quite hard to get from place to place in New Zealand and it is rather expensive for my budget. This also allows me to meet other travelers and get ideas of things to do. The bus is unique because you can get off an on whenever you want and are not committed to doing anything you do not want to do in any place, so for instance if I get to a certain place and want to stay there for a week, a new bus from Stray comes and picks me up whenever I want to leave. This gives me good flexibility in my itinerary. The makeup of my fellow travelers on the bus is, for the most part, European. Mostly British, Dutch, and Swiss. There are two Canadians and then I am the only American. Needless to say, there is a lot of talk about soccer and current state of English football, and not much talk about where we are going to watch this Super Bowl. Be that as it may, everyone is very nice and down for everything which is very nice. Everyone is around my age too which is nice. Our first stop was the beach town of Hahei on the east coast of New Zealand. We spent the afternoon swimming in the South Pacific and lounging on the white sand beaches. A big change from the 20 degree weather and snow I had experienced just three days prior. The water was cold but the temperature outside is around 75 degrees so it is definitely nice to just lay on the beach. I even got to see a fair share of Euro Man thong wearing by old New Zealanders which was great. We then had an authentic Kiwi barbecue with sweet potatoes, sausages, and steaks cooked by our bus driver, whose name is Digger. After some time socializing, we took a fifteen minute drive to a beach that sits atop a geothermal spring. It was around 11 Pm at night and there was barely any moon out so the stars were the most bright and vivid I have ever seen in my life. The point of the beach is that when the tides are low, which they were when we arrived, you walk around the beach looking for "hot spots", or areas where the sand is hot. You then proceed to dig and make yourself a pool that fills with the hot water from below. In some spots the water is absolutely boiling hot and unbearable so it is important to get a happy medium between the hot and cold water. We sat in our pools for an hour or so and looked at the stars which was very peaceful. This morning we departed Hahei and drove a few hours to the surf town of Raglan. Apparently it is world-renowned for surfing. I am about to walk down to the beach and watch the professional surfers for a while and then take a boat out into the harbor. Tomorrow we are driving to Waitomo which is an area south of Raglan that has a large amount of caves to explore. Myself and a few other friends I met are going to be repelling and rafting in one of the larger cave systems in the area. When I have a little more time, most likely in a few days when I arrive in Wellington, I will be uploading pictures of everything so far. Until next time!

Cheers