Thursday, December 24, 2009

I'm watching the 4th season of Friday Night Lights.

It's a good one. So much TV to catch up on!

Don't Think Twice, It's All Right

Bob Dylan

It ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe
It don't matter, anyhow
An' it ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe
If you don't know by now
When your rooster crows at the break of dawn
Look out your window and I'll be gone
You're the reason I'm trav'lin' on
Don't think twice, it's all right

It ain't no use in turnin' on your light, babe
That light I never knowed
An' it ain't no use in turnin' on your light, babe
I'm on the dark side of the road
Still I wish there was somethin' you would do or say
To try and make me change my mind and stay
We never did too much talkin' anyway
So don't think twice, it's all right

It ain't no use in callin' out my name, gal
Like you never did before
It ain't no use in callin' out my name, gal
I can't hear you any more
I'm a-thinkin' and a-wond'rin' all the way down the road
I once loved a woman, a child I'm told
I give her my heart but she wanted my soul
But don't think twice, it's all right

I'm walkin' down that long, lonesome road, babe
Where I'm bound, I can't tell
But goodbye's too good a word, gal
So I'll just say fare thee well
I ain't sayin' you treated me unkind
You could have done better but I don't mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don't think twice, it's all right

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Auckland afternoon.

Today I took a ten hour long bus ride almost all the way across the North Island. Generally, it wouldn't take 10 hours to drive this distance, but we stopped in every single small town in the countryside. And there are a whole lot of small towns in this part of the world.

Only two more nights until I catch the long flight home. Feeling a little anxious. I knew I would, so I left all of my Christmas shopping to the very last minute. Hopefully I'll be able to distract myself for the day. I get a little grumpy trying to find my way around places like LAX, one of the busiest airports in the world, after being squished into an airplane seat for 14 hours and missing a night's worth of sleep. Even after 3 hours on a plane I can be pretty out of it. I'll try to take a before and after picture for you, but not promises I'm posting it.

O! And I found a fantastic souvenier for myself! One of the local clothing chains made a series of locally-designed made-in-NZ organic cotton t-shirts with proceeds going to the Make a Wish NZ Foundation. And one of the designs just happens to be based on the work of Ernst Haeckel, the biologist and artist who drew the prints I used in the header of this blog. Luckily, I found one in my size in the Wellington store because there isn't a store here in Auckland. I almost waited too. Pictures to come, soon!

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Wandering around Napier.

My dear blog readers,

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about you at all. I just haven't had a chance or the energy to upload pictures over the past few days. I've been keeping a list of all the posts I need and want to make, so you won't miss anything. This blog will be a complete account of my time down here, it just might not happen until a few days after I return home.

Right now I'm in a little town called Napier. The hostel I'm stayiing at is right on the ocean. I can see it out the window as I type. The town was destroyed in a 1931 earthquake and rebuilt in the Art Deco style. i love it and I've been snapping pictures all around town. My cousin, Jonathan, lives in the next town over (Hastings...which is right beside Havelock North...and now I wonder how those two names go together). He's coming up to Napier with Liz and little Oliver to meet me for dinner tonight.

Tomorrow morning I catch the bus to Auckland at 8:00 am. The bus takes the whole day to go to Auckland. Then I have two nights in Auckland, hopefully meeting friends from Australia on Friday to celebrate my last night in town, then catch the plane on Saturday evening.

I'll be back in Ontario so soon! You might hear from me before then, but can't make any promises....see you soon, Cass

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Lake Wakatipu poems.

In Queenstown, the adventure capital of New Zealand, there is a harbour with an old stone wall built around the edge. In the wall, a poem is engraved. I read the poem one day and it goes like this:

WAIPOUNAMU
by David Eggleton

Hoisting history on his back like a sugar – sack,
The swagger strides along greenstone trails.
All night the crib creeks are humming home,
And drowned towns float in their canvas shrouds.
They are just the ghosts of their original selves,
An emotional investment looted by snow-melt for,
Schemes to answer the question of illumination.
To tap this yearning for a golden age,
Singing shepherds held wisps of tussock
Which curled like lighted Chinese joss-sticks
On the fan – tan tables of sly-grog dens,
Frozen in that glacier known as the past.
In the forgotten graveyards, hair grows into grass
While wind sifts the sweet vernal over ands over,
Like diggers letting gold dust pour through their fingers.
The Kingston flyer is chuffing
On the great Northern Railway to Wakatipu,
John Turnbull Thompson cut the run holders loose
With a panoramic survey and the confidence of a faith healer
In the middle of Queen Victorias royal century,
When the boom-time harvest of celtic place names
Seeded central like a nouveau-Hiberian dialect
From Balclutha to Glimmerburn to Glendhu bay.
Winter arrives on time in a glitz blitz of powdery snow.
The hoar frost in a Quartztpoils of ice crystals
Turning weeping willows into frozen chandeliers.
Some strung the coils of number eight into fences
As trail bikes took to the state highway with a roar
And the rain shower passed a plume
Over small towns that are hardly seen for hills.
Tarns prickle with bubbles from upland soakage
at the start of Wakatipu on mounts Humboldt and Forbes.
Pasture stands four- square
To the intersection of lakes Hawea and Wanaka, from where
Nat Chalmers shot the gorge in a flax raft with his guides
After descending Mount difficulty in flax sandals,
The first Pakeha to see Lake Wakatipu, for which he paid
Reko and Kaikora a three legged pot – Te Kohoa!
Viper’s bugloss is the honeyed heart of the hive and veranda shadows are dark as delphiniums.
The four-fold path of the farmer leads to hot and cold taps, the meat-safes a Muslim bag, but the kerosene lamp’s gone
The way of aunt Daisy’s and uncle scrim’s voices on the wireless
Or goals from the boot and pine-tree when rugby took a capital.
Braids of rivers run dreadlock plaits from a taniwha’s
Stone head, so his blind eyes spurt waterfalls
and his chest is the sucking valley of a mudslide,
when swollen rivers heave against mountain flanks
and sinkholes laden with silt roar old man floods here!
He’d ride the whaleboat molyneaux from its tributaries
To the sea, or disgorge the matau of its spears and hooks,
If they hadn’t drained the hydro-electricity, way back.
Rivers rule our lives, gurgling, puddling, dripping,
Working the lake country round like a greenstone,
Turning out a tiki of interlocking curves flowing
Into Waipounamu, which breathes its green glow,
Of purple grape froth trickling a ripe roses scent
And beetroot palate into our salad day memories.
Views of the lake in its many moods: sometimes quiescent,
Like a windowpane stippled with rain, behind which
Cucumber leafage and swollen twigs revolve, and you
Can imagine fridge-fulls of rare home brews,
Or spiced-plum brandy, tots doled out to travellers;
Sometimes waves snapping fierce enough to whip out
All the tent pegs in canvas-town, with a wind able to upturn a wedding marquess’s trestle tables tomorrow.
Days of wooden coach wheels bumping out of Ida valley on the old Dunstan road in journeys of the pioneers.
Days realising meteorological balloons into a delicate apricot sky
In this landscape we invent, as it invents us –
From rock flake and spring water, from a skiff of froth
Tumbling over a weir into the after glow of the Aurora

Friday, December 11, 2009

Morning tea.

I flew into Wellington airport this morning. It was the most horrible flight I have ever been on. The plane was really tiny so all of the turbulence felt much worse than it actually was, I think. A lot of the airports in New Zealand are difficult to land at because of the crazy weather patterns and constantly changing winds, but Wellington is known to be the worst. The airport's slogan is Wild at Heart. It doesn't even say Welcome to Wellington when you land it just has a huge Wild at Heart sign. Also, the runway is out on a peninsula into the ocean, which passengers can't see out the side windows. This makes it feel like you are going to land on the water. And when the plane is jerking all around and blowing sideways you actually think you are going to crash into the water.

The pilot apologized about 5 times for the flight attendants not being able to come through the cabin and serve hot drinks. That was the least of my concerns. O, but Mom, don't be worried about me flying around on airplanes.

Lemon & Paeroa.

The thing about New Zealand is you can be just about anywhere doing just about anything, driving, hiking, strolling along, and you end up looking down into these valleys of rolling green hills. The fields are generally designed by sheep, so they aren't really square patchwork pieces on the landscape, they are tiers of ancient footpaths carefully balanced along ridges between dark green forests and golden yellow broome and gore (it's called something like that, at least). The clouds are bright white and thick and they sit at the tops of the hills. The sheep are absolutely everywhere like little cotton fluffs. You can see so far away that the sheep are very very small sometimes. The rivers are either so clear you can barely tell they're there, or opaque and turquoise, you'd never find the bottom. The family here laughed when one of the other girls asked why the water was so blue. But, I knew exactly what she meant. I've never seen anything like it either. And, if you're luckly, wheverer you are you'll be able to see the top of Mt. Cook, always with snow, or the ocean in the distance, grey, blue, doesn't matter, still so beautiful. It can be a perfect spring day, a rainy, foggy morning, or the water can be coming down in buckets, it doesn't even matter.

O, and I know I mentioned that I purchased three hanks of wool from the lovely farm I've been staying at. We all know I sort of don't tell the entire story, sometimes, maybe, when it comes to wool shopping. And at that time I had already planned on buying 2 more hanks, so really I had 5 from this place. And then I bought 5 more (I couldn't have done it without your encouragement, Chris....just kidding, nothing really has an effect on my consistent, constant, yarn-buying habits).

Tomorrow I fly back to windy Wellington and the North Island for a bit.

See you soon! Cass

p.s. L&P is my favourite Kiwi pop. It's delicious and Kiwi As. And "world famous in New Zealand since ages ago!"

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Raes Junction.

Right now I am way out in the country in the southern part of the South Island.

The internet here is dial-up and I have a cold so I can't tolerate the lack of speed to put up posts here.

I have learned how to spin on a wheel and have already made a toque out of the wool I spun. They have huge industrial wool carders here and make all sorts of rovings for spinners. The past few days have been black merino and silk. It is so beautiful and I wish I could have a huge bag of it, but it would take a year to spin it all on a drop spindle at home. The grandfather has been running this place for years and he does all the dying too. This week he dyed a bunch of hanks of spun merino pink, purple, and blue. Not really my colour combination, but I did find some I liked. He sold me 3 HUGE hanks of light heather grey, dark heather drey, and light heather purple for $10 each. There is enough to make a giant sweater. I'm going to make a normal sized striped raglan sweater and still have a ton left over. I haven't figured out how I'm going to get it all home yet. I'll probably leave some other things behind.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Queenstown to Raes Junction

Today I'm on my way out of town to a tiny little spot in the countryside. About a week wwoofing on a sheep farm and hopefully learning how to spin on a wheel, then I'm back to the North Island and homeward bound.

Just wanted to let you all know I'm still here....just very busy!

I've got to post about my trip to Milford Sound and my time here in Queenstown.

Talk to you soon!

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Fox Glacier.

So, as you all know, I went hiking on Fox Glacier yesterday. The whole experience was incredible. Another one on the ever-growing list of coolest things I've ever done. I took enough physical geography courses at school and had a basic idea of how glacial processes work, but I realized yesterday that I didn't really understand at all. First off, the main part of Fox Glacier is the size of Christchurch City. I couldn't see it, but you can take a helicopter ride up there and see it then hike on the top. I will have to come back some day and do that when I'm very rich. The part we hiked on was basically a little drip of ice that comes down out of the mountains where the melting occurs. Also, the glacier is not smooth at all (I thought it would be...). It's all giant chopped up pieces. The surface of these huge chunks of ice melts in a speckled pattern, like a giant golfball. It's really quite difficult to walk around on. We had to wear crampons and the guide was constantly chopping steps into the ice for us.

We all met at the guiding building at 9:00 am. There are only about 4 places to stay in town so several of the people were at the same hostel as I was. Everyone in the group was really nice. We all had to listen to the introduction and put boots and gear on. The company supplied wool socks and mitts and rain gear, if you needed it. The bus left Fox at 9:30 am. It was only about a 10 minute drive to the base of the glacier where the river came out. We then had to hike into the glacier through the spillway, up 800 (ugh) steps and over a narrow trail along the bluff wall beside the glacier. This area is a rainforest and it was SO hot and humid in there (and we were all dressed quite warmly). I found a lot of cool orchids, but wasn't allowed to take pictures because your hands had to be empty to hold onto the chain so you wouldn't fall off the cliff. You can't go near the face of the glacier because ice is constantly melting off and it's very dangerous. That is why we had to climb up and around and onto the ice. At the edge of the ice the guide gave us all alpinestocks (walking sticks with points on the end to dig into the ice) and crampons for our boots. There were 11 people in my group including 4 other Canadians and one that had graduated from Guelph the year after me. They were all really cool. Also, one of them was celebrating her 25th birthday, so that was fun too.

The rainforest we walked through. This area gets 10 m of rain a year. That's 3 more metres
than the Daintree Rainforest gets! It rains 200 days out of the year. It sprinkled on us, but just a little. There was a strange warm breeze coming off the glacier and the guide said it was probably an indication of a strange weather event about to occur. Then, all of a sudden, the clouds were so thick. We heard the the heli-hike people might be stuck at the top of the glacier because the helicopters couldn't get in to pick them up. They were rescued though when the sun broke through for a few minutes.

On ice. A fitting way to spend December 1.


Our group walking up the glacier. Sort of like Gordon Street in February.



While we were up there, Malisa told us that we had actually crossed over a major fault line where two tectonic plates meet. There is generally a huge earthquake there every 200 years. Right now they are 260 years overdue for a 'big one'. When it happens, the westcoast will most likely be seperated from the rest of NZ for 7 months. No one will be able to get through on land. They have had a lot of meetings regarding this and there are some big hospital ships that will come from Australia to rescue the survivors. I'm sort of glad I'm not over there anymore. Though if the big one happened, all of NZ would shake.

Grade A glacial mud. They collect this for expensive spas. It is very smooth, but I don't really see the appeal.

Climbing up out of the moulon we took turns exploring.

Trying out the ice axe. I don't know how the girls do this all day long.


The ice looks very blue because over time the oxygen moves to the top layer and goes into the atmostphere. The dense ice reflects the blue light and that's what we see.



The rock fall at the side of the glacier. The ice is carving away the mountains and whenever it rains a lot the mud holding the rocks in will let go and the rocks will slide down the side.


The ice features are constantly changing as the glacier flows. The rocks that get mixed into the ice cause all sorts of crevasses and moulans (holes) to form.



Our guide, Malisa, a local girl who grew up on a farm in Fox, and the view out over the front of the glacier down the valley.




We returned to town at 6:00 pm and we were all so exhausted. I went out for dinner with the Canadians and had green mussels and chips and Monteith's Apply Cider. yum. We then went over to the cornerstore and picked up a case of beer and ice cream cake then went back to the hostel to hang out in the room and fall asleep talking about how cool Canada is and how many weird things the Aussies and Kiwis do. I think I convinced them all to come down to Guelph for Hillside Inside and I'll definitely be attending a Toronto Football Club game next summer.










o