Root, Root, Root for the Routeburn

2/27/10: Routeburn Track, New Zealand

I had only gotten ten hours of sleep when I was rudely awoken at 7:15 this morning. The unwelcome noise started as a friendly conversation between two people, but by 8am the bunk house had turned into a high school locker room after the football team had won the state championship. People were pulling pranks, shouting at each other, and I think I even saw one guy snap a wet towel at his friend. The craziest thing was, the noisy crowd was a senior citizen hiking group from New England. All of the younger trekkers were silently sleeping or packing their bags ready for the day’s hike. Who knew?

This abrupt start to the day got Zhou and me hiking a bit earlier than we had planned, so we passed by the next hut at 10am for our Shin Ramyun lunch. It was our final meal on the Routeburn – the last edible weight off our shoulders. One positive side effect of having to carry all our own food on the trek: every meal would not only re-energize us, but it would also lighten our load. It’s like getting upgraded to first class and then finding out your new seat is next to Halle Berry. Well, sort of…

This lunch spot rivals the view from my old office window in Charlotte.

Three hours after this not-so-trekker-friendly spicy instant noodle meal, we had finished the trek. Seeing the only comparison we’ve had was the 16 day trek through Nepal, the three days almost felt like they were over before they started. The big question is, were they worth it?

Yes!

Day two of the Routeburn was one of the nicest days we’ve spent on this trip. The skies were bluer than Elvis’ shoes, and I couldn’t have set the temperature better if I had a thermostat. For most of the morning, we walked across a ridge overlooking a valley that stretched all the way to the Tasman Sea. When we ran low on water, we simply filled up our Platypus at the next crystal clear stream. And as Zhou mentioned yesterday, the views from Conical Hill were simply incredible.

Although we spent days one and three below the treeline without much in the way of views, even those two days contained some pretty unique experiences. On day one we walked almost directly under a 174 meter tall waterfall, soaking us from head to toe.

Teletubby Zhou soaking wet from the waterfall.

On day three, we stopped once to sit by a stream and marvel at our surrounding environment, and once more for me to climb a maze of trees fallen in the river as if they were the playground at Leaps and Bounds.

But the most amazing part to me was how clean the entire track was. Unlike in Nepal where we used the trash of others to guide us down the right trail, here there is nothing but you and nature. Before the trek started we were given yellow trash bags to take with us, and it appears that no one in the history of the Routeburn has even let any trash fall outside of the yellow bags (ohhh, maybe Tokyodels are given yellow trash bags when they are born!). I actually regretted throwing my biodegradable eggshells in the woods after yesterday’s breakfasts.

In conclusion, I don’t think our Annapurna Circuit trek will ever be topped, so if you ever have three weeks free in the fall, I can’t think of a better way to spend them. However, the Routeburn is such a nice walk that is conserved so well by the New Zealand D.O.C. that I wouldn’t want to miss it either.

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Picture of the Day: Four separate people all recommended a local gourmet hamburger joint called Ferg Burger as if they would eat their last supper there. It didn’t disappoint.

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Views? Priceless.

2/26/10: Routeburn Track, New Zealand

Kevin collects views.

Some people collect baseball cards or stamps or little duck figurines. Kevin – he collects views. You’d think this wouldn’t be a problem on a trip like ours – there should be tons of places with fantastic views that would satisfy his thirst for them easily. He could pick up a few here, a few there, and we would move on quite happily. But it turns out that’s not the case.

The main issue (one of a few, I might add) is that Kevin is completely undiscriminating when it comes to his views. There’s no quality control when it comes to this collecting – it’s just a wild frenzy. Let’s consider an analogy. Suppose that you collect baseball cards. Suppose you already have a valuable card of a hall-of-famer (insert your favorite hall-of-famer here), and it’s in MINT condition. Now suppose someone says to you, “Hey, if you walk for two hours in that direction over there, then you can have the exact same card that you already own – except I’ve ripped off one of the corners! Doesn’t that sound awesome?!” While any normal person’s answer to this would be “Um no, not really,” Kevin’s answer, when it comes to views, is “Heck yeah, point the way!”

It is just totally bizarre.

So you can imagine what lengths we’ll go to chasing down these views. We will literally walk for hours uphill in order to reach some kind of view, even if we’ve already had a better view of the exact same scene. I think one reason that Kevin finds this exercise so satisfying is because he thinks of it as free. But, as Professor Buckles taught us in Economics 101 (which Kevin slept through, uncoincidentally), “there’s no such thing as a free lunch!” While Kevin might think his quest for views is free, I know better. Because it’s costing unsore legs! And time! Granted our time isn’t all that valuable these days, but still!

But I go along with this quest because (and Kevin doesn’t know this) each hour we spend pursuing views, I’m mentally rewarding myself with one ice cream cone coupon to be redeemed when I see fit. And if the walk is especially strenuous, I’ll give myself a two-scoop coupon. I think if he knew that I’ve been doing this then maybe he wouldn’t consider this view-hunting to be quite so free, especially since I’ve still got three mental ice cream cone coupons left unused. But I think he should be happy that I’ve come up with such a system for myself, because this means I’m quite satisfied forgoing a nap in order to chug along up a hill or through a field or wherever he sees fit for us to go on his crazy view-quest, since it means I’m getting myself an ice cream cone after it’s over.

Today I earned myself an ice cream cone (two scoops!) to be redeemed at a later date. Because when we got to Harris Saddle, the highest point on the Routeburn Track, to eat lunch, Kevin saw a sign pointing up a steep and rocky hill that stated, “Conical Hill: 1 – 2 hour return.” Well, of course then we had to climb that trail, especially after someone who had already gone up and come down said, “It’s worth the trip – there are some fabulous views.”

And I have to admit it – it was indeed worth the trip, and the views were indeed fabulous. (And my two-scoop ice cream cone will be fabulous too!)
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Puzzles for Postcards

Where Am I? Name the temple.

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Picture of the Day: Not a bad place to do some reading, huh?

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But We Have an Asus!

2/25/10: Routeburn Track, New Zealand

[Happy birthday, Alex!]

As I sit typing this, there is a couple sitting near us eating steak. Steak with peas and mashed potatoes. We finished our dinner already. Would you like to know what we had? We had pasta with instant cheese sauce and a can of tuna. But do I envy those steak-eaters? No! Because I have a netbook! And I get to write the blog! Hey, look at me go, writing the blog, whee! Boy, I bet those steak-eaters are pretty jealous right about now, looking at me and my fancy netbook typing away…

Sigh.

We discovered in the hut kitchen today that there’s a certain hierarchy that is somewhat correlated to age. There are the pros – the steak-eaters, if you will. They have pots and pans and cutlery and tiny spatulas and hey, do you remember those spoon-forks I wrote about way back when? Yep, they’ve got those too. In an entire rainbow of colors. They have plates and kettles and tomatoes and mushrooms and mugs full of tea.

Then there are the minimalists – they don’t have all the extraneous gear – just one pot, a bowl or plate, a spoon, a fork and a mug. But don’t let this fool you – the minimalist we cooked next to today made pasta with real tomato sauce and vegetables (broccoli!) on the side.

Then there’s us. Sigh. We’re so sadly pathetic that we got our own category. We have one pot. We bought it because it was only one dollar more to buy one versus renting one. We also have some plastic cutlery that we stole off of our last Dragonair flight. Luckily, that cutlery also came in a plastic wrapper with little salt and pepper packets, which meant we would have something to flavor our meals with and make our dining experience feel just that little bit more upscale. “Would you like freshly ground pepper on that?” “Why, yes, please! That would be delightful!” It would be just like eating out! Unluckily, when we went to use the salt and pepper earlier today at lunch, we discovered that the packets had broken open and spilled everywhere in the wrapper.

Sigh.

We don’t have plates. We don’t have bowls. We don’t have mugs. We do have one pot. In hindsight, perhaps we should have also gotten one bowl. That way we wouldn’t have been forced to eat all of our meals hunched so closely together over our one little pot, like two hungry little hobbits. Instead, one of us (Kevin) could eat hunched over the pot like a hobbit and the other person (me) could eat out of the bowl like a normal person. But as it is we’re forced to huddle next to each other, tilting the pot one way and then the other so we can each scoop out one last spoonful of the instant cheese sauce that’s left inside.

Sigh.

I suppose given what we had, we did make the best of the situation with our tuna/pasta casserole creation, though Kevin lamented the absence of peas, and I lamented the absence of, well, flavor. But, folks! Not to worry! We do have a netbook, which is better than plates and almost as good as a spoon-fork. At least I’m trying to convince myself that this is so. This post – it was brought to you by an envious stomach.
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Pictures of the Day: We walked through these crazy moss-tree forests today.

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