My adventures on the South Island and beyond!

So I'm going to try and write at least something about my "spring" break travels before I get too consumed with work/lazy to not do so. Wish I had the space to just bring my laptop and write myelf a little jounral entry each night (hostel internet is expensive) but oh well, wouldn't have wanted to risk travelling with it or having to lug it around everyday.

Ok so some general thoughts:
1. Although some people say the South Island is more scenic, I think its jsut a different kind of scenic...more mountainous and remote coasts. More immediately stunning, if you will. Definitely really, really, really gorgeous, like unbelievably so. Wish I had pics to show you all BUT...

2. While trying to change the megapixel size of my pictures 2 days before the end of the trip, I ended up instead reformatting the memory card and deleting all my pictures. I am in the process of stealing pictures from my friends and other people I met along the way, but the days where I was by myself (ie: crossing the southern alps after the first snows GAH) are pretty much lost. LAME.

3. My favorite days were the days I was by myself. I love my friends, but there is always going to be drama and tension when you are always with the same dozen people everyday, and everyone has their own ideas about travel plans. And travelling with my "cousin" was really good, but I guess I felt responsible for some of the problems we encountered on Stewart Island; completely in my head but thats just how I am. I did really enjoy hanging out with the "cousin" btw, good bonding times with fake family...never had a friend/cousin who was also a geology person.

4. I've said it before, but NZ is just the best place for nature-nerds/natural scientists like myself. Hands-down. I loved being in the glacial valley/fjord around Milford Sound b/c it was geologically younger than glacial features in NY, etc; everywhere else there were caves and glaciers and other cool geological features. Penguins would just show up around boats, albatrosses followed our fishing boat, the flora and fauna of the temperate rainforest in Fordland was incredible, seals were just chilling on rocks waiting for their mommies to come back from sea...it got ridiculous how these things were just commonplace down there.

5. Although I doubt I could afford these travels with my parents, there are easy ways to travel cheaply down here. My roundtrip plane tickets were 140NZD, buses were usually only around 40NZD, there were hostels everywhere. It only gets expensive when you go for the adventure activities or other touristy things (like bungy jumping, kiwi tours, etc). I am not a huge fan of spending 300NZD on a 4 second free fall (although I would like to skydive, its cheaper here than back home, for sure) so I avoided most of these things.

6. The one downside of hostel/bus travel: it can be horribly taxing on a forgetful person like myself. When you're sleeping somewhere new everynight and packing up in the dark to catch a bus before dawn, you tend to forget at least one item. I lost two adapters (although the second one was after I lent it to someone...), a piece from my ipod charger, my umbrella, my 2$ water bottle and a bottle of conditioner along the way...and I thought I had left my camera at the alpine hut on the Kepler track, only to discover I had for some odd reason shoved it in the pocket of my pack where the rain covering lives. Yeah, when I return to that mode of travel, I intend on taaaaking my time as much as possible then to avoid these problems.


Anyways, I'm going to try and write a bit about my trip each day. 

Starting tomorrow at some point (oh procrastination).