Mid-Semester Adventure

Hello everybody!

So I just got home last night from my 10 day trip circumnavigating the south island of New Zealand. I traveled with three other internationals: Alan who studies in Berkeley, California, Emma from Ottawa, Canada, and Dani from ISU. We drove in Alan's car named Buckley, which is a 1984 Toyota Vista.

Here is a map of the general route:

Day 1: I woke up early this morning to get all my stuff ready. It was pouring rain outside so I bundled up into my rain jacket and headed off to Dani's flat. We decided that it was raining too hard so we reversed our original plan to go to the west coast first and went up past Christchurch that night. It was raining really hard and there was quite a lot of flash flooding. We barely made it past two roads that were already almost washed out. We picked up a hitch hiker in Timaru named Sam who was a health studies teacher at a girls college in Tiumaru and we dropped him off in Christchurch.

The destroyed front of the Christchurch Cathedral.

After that we got dinner and then made our way to a campsite about an hour outside of Christchurch. The campsite was made up of a bunch of old train cars transformed into little dorm rooms. I realized that night that I had forgotten my toiletries bag back in Dunedin so that was a bummer. Anyway, we made it out of Otago and safely up north.

Our room for the night.

Day 2: We packed up from the train and made our way to Kaikoura. It was a beautifully sunny day and all of us were feeling good. Dani, Alan, and I went fishing in the ocean off Kaikoura that night and caught mostly Sea Perch, Sea Cod, and Dani caught a Barracuda. The charter we took let us keep the fish we caught so that night we loaded up on ingredients and had our own fish fry at our campsite for the night. We tent camped that night and finished our fish fry at about 11pm. We still had a lot of fish left over so Alan and Emma we to put the bagged fish in the river close by so they would stay cold for the night and we could eat them again the next day.

The fishing boat with the Kaikoura coast in the background.

Me and my sea cod that I caught.

Day 3: Woke up to a beautiful moonrise over the hills we were staying in. We retrieved the fish bag early and realized that it had a hole in it so the fish had just been festering in the river all night. It smelled pretty bad. We couldn't leave it there so we took it with us to Kaikoura. It was Easter Sunday so Dani, Alan, and Emma went to a local church and I spent the morning hiking out on the peninsula and sitting on the beach. Around 2pm we headed out for Nelson and picked up another hitch hiker just outside of Kaikoura. His name was Levi and he lived and worked in Nelson so we said we'd take him up there. We had a few issues making it out of there because the road leaving had been washed out by a landslide and crews were trying to clear the road but had only managed to clear one lane. Anyway, we made it out and got into Nelson around 8pm. That night we stayed in a small home hostel near the city center.

Sunset over Nelson.

Day 4: We woke up and made our way quickly to the i-site so that we could book our route through Abel Tasman National Park. We decided to do the coastal track and booked our two camps for the night and our water taxi to get us out after we were done. Once we had that booked we went to go find a mechanic because one of Buckley's tires was wearing pretty badly on one side. It was a national holiday though so no one was open but we managed to catch a shop owner who just dropped in for a bit and got an appointment for the next day at 8am. Once we had that done we went to one of Nelson's famous beaches and then went wine tasting, although we didn't get to taste anything as all the wineries were closed. We went to a local bar and had some craft beers instead, I had a medium dark Scottish ale that was superb. That night we stayed at the Palace hostel which is located up a hill with a good view of Nelson and the surrounding hills.

View from our window at the Palace Hostel.

Nelson's beach.

Day 5: We woke up early and got all packed up and ready to go to Abel Tasman. We got the tires realigned on Buckley and it turns out they were 1800% out of alignment. 9.8mm off instead of 0.5mm. That's why the tire was wearing so badly, so we rotated the tires and everything was looking good. We got food for the trip and then made our way up to Marahau where we would start our hike. We got into Marahau at 1pm and were out onto the track by 2pm. It started out rainy but the day finished cool but clear. We stayed at Anchorage campsite that night and I went star gazing on the beach for a few hours before falling asleep.

The view from Anchorage camp.

Day 6: We woke up early and got started hiking. It was a beautiful day, sunny and 75 degrees. We hiked 3 hours to a beach where we ate lunch and tanned and swam for a few hours before continuing on to our campsite at Onetahuti which was another 3 hour hike. We got in and pitched our tent and ate dinner which for me consisted of a carrot, an apple, and a can of baked beans. Luckily another guide was at that camp and came over later to give us her crews leftovers, curry with rice, and half a brownie. We ate like kings that night. It was too cloudy to see anything that night so I just went to sleep.

A beach in Abel Tasman.

The beach we ate lunch at.

Day 7: We woke up to make our final push to our final destination where the water taxi would pick us up. We explored a sea cave because it was low tide and then began our 2 hour hike to the Awaroa tidal crossing. This part of the track can only be crossed for a two hours before and after low tide and it consists of a few tidal rivers with some mud flats covered in mussels and sand crabs. After the crossing we had  another 2 hour hike to the beach where we would be picked up. The water taxi ride took about 45 minutes to take us back the same distance that took us three days to walk. In total we covered 42 kilometers of forest and beaches. What a great experience. We left Marahau at around 4pm and made our way out to Farewell Spit, the northernmost spot on the south island. After that we grabbed dinner in a small town called Takaka and then drove 6 hours to Greymouth getting to our campsite at 2am.

The beach at sunset at Onetahuti Camp.

Long fin Eel in a river in Abel Tasman.

Day 8: I woke up at 5am to an incredible thunderstorm. Lightning flashes followed one second later by huge rolling claps of thunder that shook my bones. The storm abated somewhat by around 8 and I got out of the car to see that one of our back tires was flat, we found nail in the edge of it. So we changed the tire in the rain and made our way to Hokitika to inflate the spare, which turned out to be a full sized tire. We also got it patched at a mechanics so we could use the old one as a spare. We left Hokitika and made our way down the coast to Franz Josef Glacier. That evening we hiked out to the Glacier and then spent the night in the hot tub relaxing.

Rainbow over the valley of Franz-Josef Glacier.

Franz-Josef Glacier

Day 9: We woke up on this morning and drove the girls out to the airfield to go sky diving and then Alan, myself, and a girl from our hostel named Mel went to Fox Glacier to hike. It took us about 45 minutes to make it to the closest point to the glacier and man was it worth it. The glacier flowed down the hill between two peaks and met a waterfall where they mixed. We could see huge ice chunks floating down the river and I touched one so I technically touched a glacier. After the glacier we drove south through Haast pass to Wanaka. We ate dinner at the first Mexican restaurant I have been to in NZ and went to see a movie at a local theater that had couches instead of seats and served fresh cookies.

Fox Glacier

Striations in the ice at Fox Glacier.

Day 10: We had a late start to the day and went wine tasting at a local vineyard. We had a Sauvignon Blanc, a Rosé, two Pinot Noirs, and Reisling, and a Gewürztraminer. After that we decided to head back to Dunedin and I got in around 5pm yesterday. It was an exhausting trip but very fun.

Lake Wanaka with fall colors and mountains.

The view from the tasting room of the winery looking over Lake Wanaka.

Well that's been my life for the past few days. Only five more weeks of class, then two weeks of finals and then I'll be making my way back to the Midwest! I can't believe that much time passed so quickly, nor how long it has felt.

Unacceptable Behavior

A quick aside. Last night riots broke out at Iowa State University injuring one student when a light pole was knocked over by rioters and fell on his head. Recent press releases say he is in critical but stable condition at the moment. There is already so much content on the interwebs about this that mine will be brief. I think President Leith did the right thing by cancelling VEISHEA. For those complaining that he is punishing the rule followers I say that it was his only real option to calm down the situation. I am beyond appalled at the conduct of these ISU students and VEISHEA attendees. I have been hyping VEISHEA all semester to my international friends and you select few managed to ruin it within three days. VEISHEA is supposed to be a celebration of the knowledge, creativity and community of ISU not some excuse to wreck property and hurt people. I have never before felt ashamed to be a Cyclone but I am today. There is a fund being raised now to help pay for the damage to the Ames community along with helping the student who was injured and his family. Click this link for the page: #5forISU

The other reason for my post today is the senate blocking the passage of an act that would have increased income inequality between men and women in the U.S. While not necessarily mandating equal pay the Paycheck Fairness Act would have stopped companies penalizing their employees for discussing salary information and that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has access to salary information to assess the level of inequality that exists in a company. This seems like a great first step to diminishing the income gap between the male and female working populations. According the the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2010 (the most recent data I found) on average women working full time made 81% of what their male counterparts made. That's an almost 20% gap and amounted to a deficit of 155 dollars per week. (Males made 824$/week versus women who made 669$/week.) That to me is horrifying. A women can work the same job for the same amount of time as a man and be payed 20% less for no other reason other than that she is a woman. We say we are a country built on the principles of equality, equal opportunity, and freedom. Doesn't really seem like that to me.

In response to the outcry after they voted down the bill, some conservative senators defended the bill saying that it would have wasted companies time and money with "frivolous" lawsuits. "Frivolous" was the actual word used by one of the senators. I am having a hard time even responding to that because of the incredible amount of things wrong with that one sentence. Not only are they saying corporations are more important than women, they are saying that women fighting for equality are wasting everyone's time. They're also calling fighting for equal pay frivolous as well as giving corporations the "thumbs up" to keep right on doing what they're doing. Various commentators have said that this is just a ploy to get the support of women ahead of an election. I tell you what, when you dismiss providing equality to your citizens as an attempt to gain popularity you need to go stick your head in the sand and have a good hard think about your personal values and the way that you are constructing your political party. You want to know why it makes Obama more popular? It's because it makes the lives of this countries' citizens better and that will always be popular.

The Affordable Care Act

Alright folks, time for another opinion post.

The Affordable Care Act was passed into law exactly 4 years ago yesterday and I am absolutely sick of hearing complaints about this law. Almost every other developed country has some system of national healthcare that provides for its' citizens. Here in New Zealand it's called the ACC. These systems of healthcare provide innumerable benefits to the citizens as well as create a much more cost effective solution than privatized insurance. I actually find it really surprising how many problems the ACC solves that aren't just related to actual health insurance. For example you cannot sue a company if you get injured at one of their facilities because you just go get taken care of by the ACC. It also gives incentives to the medical industry here to advocate for preventative health procedures instead of waiting for something bad to happen and then dealing with it. I don't think many Americans understand the magnitude of the difference between those two options and the cost savings involved in the use of preventative measures. For example bike helmets are required by law to be worn at all times while riding bikes because the ACC knows it will just have to pay more when someone gets hit by a car without a helmet on. It's just the little things that make a huge difference.

Now, why doesn't the U.S. already have something like this when every other country seems to have figured out a system that works for them? Well first off America is built on greed, sorry, I meant capitalism. We love to rake in as much cash as we can as cheaply as we can with as little effort on our own part as we can. As John Keynes once said "Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone." So before "ObamaCare" insurance companies could deny you coverage for a laundry list of reasons that meant most of the people that really need health coverage (i.e. the unprofitable ones with preexisting conditions) went without it and the people that don't have a large need for it at the moment got it. This meant that the costs were unevenly distributed towards the medical facilities that have to provide care to these people without insurance. So what happens then? Either the poor patients get saddled with monumental amounts of debt or the medical centers have to take a hit in the wallet and go without pay and the insurance companies stay nice and happy making money. I don't know about you, but that sounds like a piss poor excuse for a health care system to me.

So why are we still fighting the Affordable Care Act? Well, some politicians believe that every American is entitled to the right to roll over on everyone else and make the whole country worse. They believe that the Affordable Care Act infringes on the right to choice by making people acquire health care and by making insurers accept everyone. But wait, wouldn't having everyone be covered by insurance spread the costs out more evenly across the public thereby creating a more efficient and plausible system while allowing Americans to live more healthy and enjoyable lives? Why yes, yes it would.

As of the deadline of March 31st 7,000,000 people had signed up for health coverage provided to them under the affordable care act. That's despite the fact that the website was crashed for the first month and the fact that there are continuing problems with the technical systems. SEVEN MILLION PEOPLE. If that's not enough to convince you of public interest in this program you need to go back to the fifth grade and relearn why empirical evidence is. That's roughly 2.3 percent of the total population and about 15 percent of the uninsured population and they aren't even done signing people up yet! Now THAT is a mandate from the people.

Now, I am also not saying that the Affordable Care Act is perfect. I think that there are quite a few flaws not only in the actual implementation of the law but also within the structure of the law. HOWEVER, THAT DOES NOT MEAN IT SHOULDN'T BE DONE. We have to work to fix the flaws in the system, improve participation in the markets, and increase efficiency. The constitution was originally written without the bill of rights and some of the opposition to the Constitution said that we needed a guarantee of rights. So what did we do? We fixed the already existing system to suit us (i.e. adding the Bill of Rights) and we have continued to do so for the next 230 odd years (the other 17 amendments) that it has been the law of this land. I am confident that all those things will come in time and soon people will look back at these politicians opposing national health care and laugh at how backwards they are.

If you want some history on the progress or U.S. healthcare check out this video from Barack Obama's Facebook page: Click Here (It is a bit biased but hey, it's an opinion post so I can do that)

Cheers everybody!