Tramping around Mavora Lakes

Two weekends ago I finally got out of the city and went west for some tramping. The timing was perfect as we were able to avoid the disgusting rain that had been pelting Dunedin for the past several weeks. The weather was perfect, not too cold, hardly any wind, and even the sun decided to grace us with its presence. The trip was through the tramping club, which is basically just a group of people that leads hiking and backpacking trips around New Zealand. The trip was small, just me and three kiwi guys, who were all friends, which together did make the trip a bit awkward at times, but overall it was pretty good. The trip was filled with immature guys and their often questionable sense of humor, but the scenery was fabulous (I'm talking actual scenery here, the guys were nothing special, unfortunately).

The drive up was pretty cramped (4 people, 4 packs, small car) and we had to stop at the side of the road to let the car cool down at one point. We got to the trail head at around 930pm on Friday and hiked into the hut, getting there around midnight. At the hut we found Rob, a hunter out for the weekend. We were hoping to have the place to ourselves, but at least it was warm. I've only stayed in one hut so far but I absolutely love the hut system here. It's so nice to be able to sleep in a hut after a long day of hiking. One of the guys carried 20kilos of coal up so we were able to keep it nice and warm too (not sure why he felt the necessity to carry 20 kilos though, as we used about 5, tops). We stayed at Careys hut for both nights and just did a day trip on Saturday up cold peak (which you can just barely make out in the photo), around a 1000m climb. The view was spectacular, and the clouds lifted just as we reached the top which was fantastic! The way up was pretty tough though, especially since I hadn't done anything in the way of exercise in New Zealand until then, and we had to climb over tussocks, spaniards, and some awful spiny plant, each of which were shoulder tall annoyances to maneuver around. For dinner we had chili, couscous, steamed veggies and roasted pumpkin with garlic and butter, it was amazing! Breakfast the next morning was equally impressive, fluffy pancakes with jam and cream, yum! I have never eaten so well on a trip.

On the way back the guys insisted we stop and pick swedes from some farmer's field, They're similar to turnips, and range in size from a softball to my head. Jaz and Max assured me that they were the most amazing vegetable ever. George's silence tipped me off to the fact that their slight oddness might be the main contributing factor in this opinion. Also, after tasting the flavorless white chunk, Max informed me that they're mainly used as sheep food, great! I have seen them in the grocery store since then, so I guess others do eat them too, but I can't really see why you'd pay for one. Jaz and Max are planning a trip later this year where they'll live off of swedes. They've figured that given the nutritional content of the veggie, they'll pretty much have to eat constantly the entire time...like sheep. Definitely won't be signing up for that one.

The rain is finally gone here, at least for a little while, though we did get snow on my geology field trip last weekend. The trip was huge, 60 or 70 students and 10 demonstrators. We all stayed in some church camp and spent our days running tests on some nearby farmland. We're using gravity, magnetics, and current to look at what's under the surface. It was pretty neat getting to actually use the equipment that we've been learning about in class, and I actually understand what's going on now, which is good. There isn't much more to tell without me boring you with physics nonsense, so I'll just leave it at that.

Other than that my time has been spent writing papers and reading for classes. The semester here is almost half way over, which I can't believe, especially since classes haven't even started back home. I've been doing quite a bit of cooking and baking, especially since Hailey (the most amazing person ever!) sent me the biggest bag of chocolate chips imaginable (the don't have real chocolate chips here, it's really sad). I was so surprised! Since then I've made cookies, chocolate covered ice cream sandwiches, banana chocolate pancakes...I'm trying to slow down now though to make the goodness last. Bye for now,
love you all,
Sarah