Sunday, February 24, 2008

The Week's Events

Well, I'm looking at my watch and feeling that it's time to update on some of my recent activities. After our arrival home from Wanaka on Sunday we realized that the city was a completely different place from the quiet college semi-city we had left. The students had arrived. 20,000 undergraduate students arrive each year at Otago, and a huge number of those are "freshers."

The freshman or first years arrive for what is commonly called O-Week, Orientation week, which is an orgiastic festival of alcohol, debauch and free stuff. All the bars have specials, there's plenty of live music, and about 500,000 bottles are broken in the streets every night. It provides quite an interesting backdrop to our first few weeks in New Zealand, but luckily I was able to get away from the city a few times this week, which is the real subject of this blog.

On Monday and Tuesday I did errands and puttered around the city, going to Long Beach Tuesday for an afternoon in the sun. Long Beach is north of Port Chalmers, Northeast of Dunedin, and is a fine white-sand beach backed by large cliffs that screamed to be climbed. I am lucky enough to have friends here with plenty of climbing gear, so we have been able to do some sweet things. This album of Long Beach includes photos of the first day we were there as well as a few at the end from Evan Mikkelson's camera of Evan, Bart DiFiore, and myself climbing a crack at Long Beach. Pretty exciting but I was unable to get past the overhanging ledge crux. Bart and Evan both passed it and continued the 25m to the top of the route. Evan also is shown completing a side-section of the route that was rated two points higher, where he had to basically transfer from right to left with both his hands on a nonexistent hold above the ledge. All in all, some excellent climbing on that route, another that we all topped, and in an amazing bouldering cave.

On Wednesday, the International Office took all the recently-arrived International Students on the Taieri Gorge Railway, which is a scenic old-style railway leaving from Dunedin and passing through the aforementioned Gorge, a river valley with no roads that is only traversed by a railroad track. There were some incredible images along the way, and I enjoyed meeting and hanging with numerous international students (mostly Americans actually).

Evan and Rich and myself took a little side trip when we had about an hour break at the end of the Gorge. We trekked over some scrubby pastures, jumped a couple of fences, and scrambled down a gully to try to get close to the water. It was packed with stones and scrub brush, but we moved down towards the gully with relative ease. Rounding the edge of the bluff, we saw that it was much farther than we had realized, and turned up towards the top again. We walked north towards the rest of the students, and attempted to race down an open area to the river, but heard the train's whistle and headed back. The train went back down the same tracks, which provided an interesting reverse view of the Gorge. We stopped halfway down for a free BBQ, with lamb steaks, burgers, and ham steaks, all of which were delicious. The return to Dunedin was highlighted by a setting sun and views of the valley and city shutting down for the night.

On Friday, Rich and I decided that a trip was in order, with Danny Wasserman, from Colby, and Evan Mikkelson, another Midd Kid. We wanted to go to Aoraki/Mt. Cook but were worried about bad weather, so we went South to the Catlins Forest Park, a National Park south of Dunedin about 2 hours. The Catlins is not as "extreme" as Wanaka was, but beautiful nonetheless. We got to the area around 4 PM, stopped at the visitor center in Owaka, and planned out our evening. We drove quickly out to Nugget Point, where we hoped to see seals and penguins frolicking in the cold seas. The walk out to the lighthouse skirted a steep hillside, ending at a lighthouse that was built in the mid-18th Century. It had a full-time keeper until 1989, which would have been a fairly ridiculous job. We saw a good amount of wildlife, but not in the quantities we had hoped.

After Nugget Point, we headed to Purakaunui Falls, which is a twenty-foot high multi-level waterfall a ten minute walk from the road. The falls were wonderful, and there are some pictures HERE. After our fill of waterfalls, we went to Parakaunui Bay, towards the coast from the falls, where there is a $6 DOC campground. We quickly set up the tents, locked our bags in the car, and went for a jaunt up the nearby bluffs, hoping for a good view of the ocean before either weather or darkness set in. We hiked upwards through steep sheep-encrusted meadows, scattering ewes before us. All the sheep banded together and left the paddock we were walking through in long white lines, clearly visible from up above. It felt a little like watching wild migrations on Planet Earth, and we felt a little remorse at their terror before realizing that we were far more pleasant visitors than the barking sheepdogs they were accustomed to.

The views from the top of the ridge were well worth it, and we sat on the edge of a three-hundred-foot cliff overlooking the majestic Pacific. We decided to head back in the interest of hunger, and cruised down the hillside we had labored up half an hour earlier. Dinner was cooked by headlamp, but we began by eating fresh local blue cheese with apple slices, which was pretty amazing.

In the morning, after a nice sleep, we drove away at 7:30 to head to the Catlins River Walk, a 8-10 hour flat walk along the Catlins River, with numerous swing bridge crossings and rainforest surroundings. It turned into a nice day, and the long walk was good to stretch the muscles and enjoy the serenity of the forest. We were planning to stay out that night and camp at the trailhead, but realized that there wasn't as much to do in the Catlins as we had hoped, so we headed back towards Dunedin, with a short stop at an abandoned railway tunnel through a hill outside of Owaka. Arriving home in the city felt great, as did sleeping in my own bed after a string of five nights where I either camped out or went to bed too late and a little intoxicated. A sober, sane sleep was what we all needed.

We hiked up Mt. Cargill again on Sunday with the Otago Tramping Club, where they treated us to a free bbq and keg at the bottom of the hike. Classes started today (Monday), and maybe after I've had one of each class I will write a little update about that.

All for now,

Sam

3 comments:

KL said...

great post. thanks for the news. What a huge number of students on that train trip. Odd to look back and see so many people in what is, almost always, such an un-peopled landscape.
xx

David said...

your pictures and tone of voice are equally majestic.

Eric said...

Your poetic voice fills me with endless inspiration. I wish I could have been there for the orgiastic O-festival too. smoochies.