All You Need to Know About DREMP

2/23/10: Queenstown, New Zealand

I have loosely divided the days of our trip into one of five categories:

1. Doing
2. Resting
3. Eating (yes, we eat every day, but here our day revolves around a meal)
4. Moving
5. Planning

This is my DREMP model of world travel. (Making acronyms out of things is one sure-fire way to get rich – the people who made up PEMDAS, VESPER, SCUBA, etc. must have been rolling in the dough in their time.) Many days can be subdivided into more than one category (Eating, for instance, is almost always combined with Resting or Planning), and lo and behold, today was one of those multi-category days.

First: Doing. Zhou, having not quite come off her rush of sitting on the couch and looking up at people skydiving, was itching for more adventure. Welcome, Skippers Canyon Jet, a fast-paced jet boat ride through the narrow canyon river where they filmed Lord of the Rings. I’ll let our pictures take over from here.

Driving perilously close to the edge of huge cliffs was half the day's fun. Here is Lighthouse Rock as seen from our van.

We aren't sure what good the life jackets did since the water was only a foot deep.

Our sister boat – we rode inches from the cliff walls over 40 kph and did 360 degree spins to stop the boat.

A view of the river we boated on from a bungee platform up on the canyon walls. (No, we did not jump.)

It's not a day in New Zealand without fantastic views.

Second: Planning. In two days we’ll begin our second multi-day trek, this time the Routeburn track through the fiordlands of New Zealand. Having conquered the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal, we were worried that there was nothing left for us to accomplish as trekkers. Fortunately, the Routeburn provides us a new challenge: carrying all our own food and cookware. Today, we set out on our journey to obtain this food.

The goal was simple: eight meals (three breakfasts, three lunches and two dinners) and a plethora of snacks to keep our growing bodies growing. To keep costs down we decided we’d buy one pot and one pot only, and we’d eat straight from this pot using the plastic cutlery we’ve hoarded during our many plane flights over the past six months. This begged the question: what kind of food do two people carry that can be cooked using only boiling water? Here’s what we came up with:

Breakfast

• One dozen eggs (we’ll boil them before the trek starts)
• Six chocolate covered muesli bars

Lunch

• Two potatoes and a packet of instant cheese sauce
• Two cans of tuna and a box of Ritz crackers
• Two packages of Shin Ram Yun

Dinner

• Half a bag of penne (leftover from before) to be combined with instant cheese sauce and a can of tuna
• One Mexican Chicken freeze-dried meal for two

Snacks

• Four packets of instant chicken soup mix (in case any meal isn’t enough food)
• One bag of peanuts
• One bag of dried apricot snacks (for Zhou)
• One Toblerone and one Mars bar (for me)
• Six Nature Valley Oats ‘n Honey granola bars

I’ll let you experienced trekkers have a go at critiquing this list, and we’ll let you know if we run into any problems with it as we hike. Zhou’s first good catch: we were about to buy the cheap tuna that doesn’t have a pop tab and just before checkout she realized we don’t have a can opener. Phew!
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Picture of the Day: Life on the road: when you’re stuck with extra lettuce and extra pasta sauce, you eat lettuce dipped in pasta sauce. Mmmmmm.

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I’m Not a Gamblin’ Woman

2/22/10: Queenstown, Australia

K: Hey, so I was thinking…
Z: Yeah?
K: I found these $5 match play coupons for the casino. What if we go and each use one for a round of roulette? If we both win, we can put ten dollars away and then we would still each have five dollars to do whatever we want with.
Z: Can I buy a preemptive-winnings ice cream cone?
K: Ok.
Z: Then sure, I guess.
K: Really?

I think Kevin thought I would put up more of a fight, but he totally overestimated me. I’m quite easily bribed with food.

We walked into town and bought my delicious ice cream cone (one scoop dark chocolate, one scoop cookies and cream) and sat by the lake to enjoy the view. We discussed our strategy. Should one of us bet on black and the other bet on red on the same spin and make a (practically) guaranteed five dollars? Or should one go first and the other go next? We even threw the phrase “expected value” into the conversation. My statistics professor would have been proud.

After we decided on a plan of action and I finished my ice cream cone, we headed over to Sky City Casino, where the bouncer asked for our ids. We showed him our passports, which we had purposely brought in case people thought we didn’t look like we are over 20 years of age. I was pretty proud that I had thought of this before we left, and I whispered to Kevin, “Good thing I thought to bring our passports. You wouldn’t have been able to get in without me.” He replied, “If you weren’t with me, they wouldn’t have asked for id.” Ouch.

We traded in our match play coupons for tokens and took a seat at the roulette table. I bet on black and won. Then Kevin bet on black and won. Which means we each had five dollars to do whatever we wanted with. My five dollars was already spent on the preemptive ice cream cone sitting in my tummy, but of course Kevin decided to use his last five dollars to place another bet. He put his five-dollar chip down on black. And lost. “What should we do now?” Kevin asked, as if we hadn’t already agreed beforehand that we would ONLY play two spins. “What do you mean ‘what should we do?’ We’re leaving!” I said, and pulled him away from the table. We cashed out and left Sky City, Kevin forlornly glancing back at the casino every few feet.

As we walked away from the casino, one preemptive-winnings ice cream cone fuller and $15 richer, Kevin mused allowed, “I love to gamble. Gamble, gamble, gamble.”

[Mom and Dad, don't worry, he doesn't really gamble that much. Only in Vegas. And Queenstown, if we have coupons.]
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Picture of the Day: This mountain is real, I swear.

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This Town is Fit for a Queen

2/21/10: Queenstown, New Zealand

If I was given the chance to create my own city, here’s the type of landscape I would look for:

• A lake or bay with the bluest water imaginable
• Surrounding mountains taken from a Thomas Kinkaid painting
• Thick foliage for clean, breathable oxygen
• An abundance of rivers and creeks
• Grassy, green parks surrounding aforementioned trees and creeks

I could scour the earth for years and probably not come across such a place… or I can buy Queenstown.

It’s nice not having any expectations when traveling to a new city (other than the oft-mentioned “you’re going to absolutely love it there”). I pictured a busy metropolitan area similar to Sydney, combined with the cleanliness of Tokyo and including more adventure sports than one can count. Instead though, Queenstown is a tiny town (population: 13,500) surrounded by beautiful mountains and sitting on a lake with the bluest water imaginable. (Although the cleanliness does approach Tokyo levels and the adventure sports thing is definitely true.) My first impression of Queenstown: the “Zhou-sized” airport we flew into was in such a breathtaking setting that people were actually sunbathing by the terminals.

Zhou reading a map in paradise, I mean, at the Queenstown airport.

The best superlative I can use to describe how gorgeous this city is? After a nearly sleepless night in the seats at the Auckland airport, a normally-would-be-grouchy Zhou was so impressed that she gave up her nap to walk around the town.

…

Today’s travel tip: book your hostels in advance! Zhou mentioned the debacle last night thanks to that Tom Jones character, and today was almost as bad. We walked around for over an hour trying to find a place to stay, but everywhere was booked up. Given it was a Sunday with nothing particularly important going on in town (other than the fact that every day is the nicest day ever in Queenstown), we thought it would be easy to find a place. We wound up getting a couple of the last dorm beds available at a hostel at the top of a hill out of the main drag of the city. It turns out that this place suits us very well, but we did get lucky and it’s not fun to walk up and down the Queenstown hills with all our luggage after an awful night at the airport.

Our hostel, The Black Sheep.

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Puzzles for Postcards

Rhyme Time! (Solve all four of these Toblerone-inspired rhymes)

Give me a break from all the small talk about this candy bar
If The King named his daughter after one of his favorite candy companies
If Bart Simpson hit you so hard with his candy bar that it gave you a sharp pain
An artisan carves this “rainbow” candy with his trusty knife
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Picture of the Day: I know we usually play “Where’s Wal-Zhou?” but today it’s my turn to be found in the picture. Good luck!

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