A quick foreword: my laptop is at the shop right now so I am writing this post on my iPhone so please forgive any errors or brevity.
On to the good stuff! So this past weekend I was supposed to go to Queemstown with the snow sports club but it turns out that trip is this weekend and so I decided to go hiking/camping with some people from my complex. We drove out to Wanaka which is about five hours northwest of Dunedin. From Wanaka we drove 50 km into a mountain range to get to Mt. Aspiring national park. Once we got to the trail head we loaded ourselves up with all our gear and hiked nine km into the park. It is one of the coolest things I have done so far. The park is so picturesque from almost every angle. We walked through a valley enclosed on both sides with peaks shrouded in forests and grasses. In the center of the valley ran an ice blue river of glacial run off that meandered its way through the grasslands between the hills. Of course we had to get in and swim in it so we spent a bit of time messing around in the water before continuing our trek. This valley that we walked through was also where they filmed the golden plains in The Lord Of The Rings films. I will post pictures once I get my computer back, but for now words will have to do. Once we got up to the lodge we were going to stay at we pitched camp and began making dinner. Once the sun went down I decided to go see what stars I could see and I was not disappointed. I could clearly see the Milky Way for only the second time in my life and just about every other star visible to the naked eye. It is amazing to see how much there is in the sky when we aren't blotting it out with light pollution. I saw Orion in his upside down orientation from the Southern Hemisphere, I saw the southern cross which is on the NZ flag. I also saw Draco and a bunch of satellites. Normally you can only see the bigger ones like the ISS, but out there I saw so many little ones it was crazy. In the morning we got up and packed up and headed back out to our cars. The only negative part of the experience was getting bitten by sand flies about 30 times and realizing I am a little allergic to them after my hands and legs swelled up a bit from multiple bites. I have to remember to bring bug spray next time. I'm fine now, I took some anti-inflammatory meds and am right as rain now.
I also secured a position volunteering at a nature center in Rochester this summer so I am pretty excited about that! I think I will be helping out with a rock climbing class and doing some restoration/conservation work on the land around the center.
Anyway, Queenstown this weekend and hopefully my laptop will be fixed soon so
I can upload pictures! I'll just add them back into these posts and let you guys know when that's done.
Fall is definitely here and the trees are starting to drop their leaves. It's a weird feeling when everyone else is clamoring for spring.
I also am acclimating so well to NZ when I was watching a video on YouTube this morning I thought to myself "why is he on the wrong side of the road". It's gonna be weird when I get back to the states for a few weeks.
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