"Are you know about sex"

On my last day in Barcelona an Indian man who looked like a tourist came up to me and asked for directions. I gave him the directions and waited politely for a few seconds because it looked like he had another question.

"Are you alone?"

He was twice my age. I nodded, expecting a lecture about traveling alone. His next question took me completely by surprise.

"Are you know about sex?"

I ended the conversation and walked away. I didn't feel immediately threatened by him. Kenpo has given me some confidence in my ability to deal with out-of-shape middle-aged creepers, and the neighborhood was not completely deserted.

Not feeling immediately threatened is not the same as not feeling threatened at all. I'm twenty-one years old, healthy, and generally capable of taking care of myself. I was spending my last day in Barcelona walking in the Park de Montjuïc so I could see places from Carlos Ruiz Zafón's books. I was wearing converses, jeans, a t-shirt, and my black jacket. I had my blue backpack on my back, full of books, and the only thing on my mind was whether I wanted to stop for a croissant and a cup of coffee.

In other words, I was having a normal day. I had started to talk to this man because he needed help (directions) and I could help him. Somehow the conversation turned into him asking me about sex. Somehow, in his mind, it was okay to come up to me on the street and ask me, "Are you know about sex?"

I chose to travel alone in Europe rather than in India or Nepal because I knew that it would be safer for a young woman alone. That is, I let reasonable concerns about my safety stop me from traveling somewhere completely new. I wasn't happy about it when I made the choice, but I knew that it was a rational one to make.

Don't get me wrong: I've enjoyed Spain immensely. I just don't enjoy being here for the wrong reasons. It makes me angry and uncomfortable to have those reasons confirmed.

I also don't have a lot of things I can do about this. I could swear at him--escalating the situation without accomplishing anything. I could punch him--tempting, but also a terrible idea if he hasn't laid anything more than his eyes on me. Or I could walk away and spend the next two blocks looking over my shoulder to make sure that he isn't following me, because I am not sure what to do if he is. I could walk away and make sure that there are other people around, and know that it is the correct thing to do, and hate feeling like my best option is to rely on other people for my safety because if I rely on myself alone and I'm wrong the consequences could be so bad.

Nobody touched me. I wasn't harmed. But the utter lack of logic to what happened still makes me feel less safe. The only way to make it logical is to say that it was a result of being alone and talking to a stranger. The only way to make it so that I could have done something to avoid this is to say that it was my fault to be who I was, where I was, and that I should have changed one of those.

You could tell me that I shouldn't have told him I was alone. You could tell me I shouldn't have engaged in a conversation with him. You could tell me that I should not have been alone.

I don't believe any of that. The fault lies with him, not me. If the only way for me to avoid such conversations is for me to always travel in a group and to not go places that aren't full of tourists, I'll take the weird conversations. Better would be for a question like "Do you know about sex?" to be just as unthinkable for a stranger to ask me as it would be for me to ask it of him.

Home!

I have lots of homes.  I'm lucky that way.  I get to be at home at Slav, in Bellevue, and at 776.  I'm excited whenever I get back to any of my homes, I call them all home, and everybody gets confused.  Sometimes I call Bellevue "home home" to make it clearer, and then people become even more confused.

With that disclaimer out of the way: I'm home!  I'm back at 776 University Avenue, where there's an espresso machine and the best couch ever and my Nathan.  I got back last night at 8 pm and had udon that Nathan made for dinner.

From my journal, here was a partial (and not actually ordered) list of things I wanted to do when I got back:

• Hug Nathan
• Fall asleep on couch
• Fall asleep on couch while watching How It's Made with Nathan
• Go to Whiskey Friday
• Eat awesome food at 776
• Cook awesome food at 776
• Make bread
• Make cookies
• Go to kenpo
• Fall asleep in my own bed
• Eat pie

So far I've managed the first, the fifth, and the second to last.  Could I make that sentence easier to understand?  Probably, but I prefer to leave it as a puzzle.

The only bad thing about coming home was finding out that there is no flour and no milk (and now no more eggs) and the kitchen needs cleaning.  This is not actually a surprise when I consider that finals week here just ended.

So here's a list of things I'm going to do today to enjoy being home:

• Listen to streaming music
• Enjoy 4G speeds on my phone
• Use a real keyboard to write emails--suddenly words are actually coming out the way I wanted them to
• Clean entire kitchen while making a list of all of the things I want to cook this week
• Steal car from Nathan and go on large grocery run
• Read books on the couch until I fall asleep, optionally while listening to streaming music
• Use the last can of garbanzo beans to make hummus, just for the heck of it
• Consider making cookies.  Defer the making of cookies until tomorrow.  Eat christmas cookies that I found in the kitchen instead.
• Go out to dinner with Nathan
• Smile a lot

:)

Working on my Spanish

One of my goals in Spain was to force myself to use my Spanish until it got better-the only reason I am not fluent is that I've been very shy about talking in Spanish because my accent is very strong.

In Madrid I made a sign that said (in Spanish) "I want to practice my Spanish. Do you want to talk to me?" I sat down in a Starbucks, put the sign on the table, and pulled out a book. Within half an hour I was approached by a Venezuelan girl who was in Spain visiting family. We talked for half an hour. As long as the other person is also trying to help, I can understand what's going on. It was really good to realize that, because up until that point I had been feeling like I couldn't communicate at all.

By the time I left Madrid I was able to hold conversations in Spanish with people at my hostel (it helped that many had American accents), ask for train schedules, and buy a train ticket entirely in Spanish.

People said that in Madrid most people don't know English, so I would have to speak Spanish. That wasn't my experience, at least in cafes and restaurants. Almost every waiter or waitress spoke English.

In Barcelona most people don't switch to English when I talk, so either I'm getting better at this or people here have enough going on with Spanish and Catalan, and don't need to add English on top. My accent has softened by being able to listen to so many other accents, and my confidence in my use of the language has gone up.

I've also been reading more in Spanish while I've been here, and even that has gotten easier.

Overall report on mission USE MY SPANISH: success.

One day in Madrid

This morning I went to the Museo del Prado and spent four or five hours wandering. There was enough to see there that I may go back in a few days, but I left when my feet got sore.

After that I walked around Madrid searching for a bookstore, bought a book in Spanish, and settled down to read in the Puerto del Sol. My resolve to stay there for the rest of the day was slowly eroded by the realization that everyone around me was smoking, so I gave up and went back to the hostel to read. The smoking here and in London bothers me a lot. I'm accustomed to very strict laws that essentially restrict smoking to designated areas. Here, everybody smokes.

After a quick siesta I headed out to look for a movie in Spanish. This was easier said than done: all of the movies I found were American movies that had been voiced over, and the only one that was starting any time soon was the Hunger Games. I elected to save my cash and keep walking. This was really lucky, because around the next corner I found a flamenco theater!

The show was excellent and on my way back I found a fruit stand and bought a pomegranate, then saw someone dressed as a minion and got a picture with him. It's been a good day so far!

I really like Madrid. I enjoy being able to walk around without standing out as a tourist-unlike Thailand-and it's warm enough that walking around is actually pleasant. The sun has been shining and churros are a reasonable substitute for breakfast here. There are a lot of parks. There are benches in all of the parks and open spaces where people are just chilling. It's a great city for people-watching.

Madrid has a lot of history and that is obvious in everything from the buildings to the layouts of the streets to the names of the streets. What it doesn't have is a fear of breaking that history by changing anything in the city. It feels modern and lively, even as I walk down cobblestoned streets. The buildings are beautiful, and I'm starting to get my sense of direction back-not being on a grid was a bit of a struggle for me yesterday when I was trying to find my hostel.

I'm excited about the museums. I'm definitely going to the Reina Sophia and the Naval Museum. I would also like to go back to the Prado if I have time. I haven't planned beyond tonight's dinner, but a definite advantage of traveling alone is that I don't need to have a plan or even a specific destination when I start walking.

Being alone also means that it is not immediately obvious that I'm an American. I am not walking around with a group chatting in English. This means that people always speak to me in Spanish. So far I have discovered that my spoken Spanish is often unintelligible due to my accent and my habit of mumbling when I am not sure if I am using the right word. That I can fix. The much harder problem is that it is very difficult for me to understand spoken Spanish. I can do pretty well if I have a good idea of what the person will be saying from context, but if I lose those clues I can only catch scattered words. I am not sure what to do about that, other than continue my habit of trying to follow conversations in the streets. It also doesn't help that my brain can't filter out background noise and keep only Spanish, the way it can with English. It makes me wish I could spend a few months living here and working to force that sort of practice. But I'll save that idea for after I graduate.

Cambridge

Cambridge is old.  Anyone who lives here will tell you how old it was.  Then they will tell you how old each building is, which colleges were built first, which monarchs were responsible for each chapel, and which scientific discoveries were announced at the pub that you are walking by.  The place has so much history that you would be forgiven for thinking that it is no longer an active university, but of course it is.  The students live and eat and work and sleep in rooms that are centuries old, but they are still university students and they do the things that all students do.  In the case of Cambridge this includes biking like madmen--they rival Stanford in this regard--and, oddly, punting along the river.

 

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

They also have a strange obsession with keeping people off the lawns.  Apparently only the Master of the College is allowed to walk on the lawn, and only in his College.

I commented that at my university we would be playing Frisbee on the lawns and was rewarded with a rather frosty "And which university would that be?"  When I said Stanford the response was "Oh, I suppose that is a rather good school."

Incidentally, every time I hear someone with a strong accent speaking I tack a little something special onto their sentences in my head: "Quite."

In my time in Cambridge I went to the Fitzwilliam Museum (art and history) and the Sedgwick Museum (natural history and stories about Darwin's travels).  I went to both museums twice because they were very enjoyable.  The Sedgwick Museum has skeletons of Irish Elk and Wooly Rhinoceroses, as well as a very comprehensive collection of rocks (okay, fossils) and a small exhibit, tucked away into the back, that explains some of the chemical and physical characteristics of gemstones, including why opals contain so many colors and why diamonds are so hard.

Science!

I spent a lot of the rest of my time in Cambridge in bookstores and libraries, including both the public library and the Wren Library.  The Wren has the first edition of Winnie The Pooh and a handwritten draft of it; unfortunately I was not allowed to take any photos or take books off the shelves.

Is there any other kind?

I also went to the King's College Chapel, once for a tour and once for Evensong.  Each college has a chapel, but the King's College one is beautiful both inside and out.  It also reminded me that I have not seen a single menorah while I've been in England, which is rather strange considering that there have to be at least a few Jews around here.  I'm hoping for better luck in Spain.

The King's College Chapel

British things, museums, and the British Museum

I spent two days in London hanging around, going to museums, and drinking beer.  I spent most of my first day at the British Museum with a brief trip to the Cartoon Museum at the end of the day to clear my head.

Explanatory note at the Cartoon Museum

 The outside of the British Museum

 

 

The first thing I went to see at the museum

 

One of the most exciting parts of going to British Museum was definitely getting to see the Rosetta Stone.  The script on it is much smaller than I expected--small enough that I'm very impressed with the people who carved it.  Speaking of which, hieroglyphics do not look like they would be easy to carve, especially repeatedly.   Check out how elegant the curves are on the birds on this stela:

Carved in stone

This bird is also elegant, but rather wall-eyed

Next I went upstairs to check out the mummies.

Unwrapped mummy

Well-wrapped mummy

Small crocodile mummies (?!)

By the time I had gone back downstairs to look at the Elgin Marbles and gone through several centuries of British history, I was rather footsore and all of the coins were starting to look the same.  Fortunately for me I found the "Clocks and Watches" exhibit, and I proceeded to lose track of time in those rooms.

My favorite clock by far was the one which used a ball rolling down a zigzag course to set the interval between ticks.  Every 30 seconds the ball reaches the end of the track and flips a switch, and the track tilts to make the ball roll the other way.

 



Tick.........tock.........

On my way back to King's Cross I found this place and spent a very pleasant hour drinking down a pint of very dark beer and reading.

I was tempted to try it

My second day in London I spent much more time outside, wandering around.  I went to a winter carnival at Hyde Park, watched the Guardsmen walking crisply to and fro at Buckingham Palace, went to Westminster Cathedral and looked at the outside of Westminster Abbey, and listened to Big Ben chime the quarter hours.  I kicked autumn leaves in the park and looked up at the London Eye then hurried on to the Tate Modern, where I was baffled by the exhibit that included a mirror on one wall and a very large black square on the other.

I also found the Kirkaldy Testing Works.

FACTS NOT OPINIONS

And finally, I got a picture at Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross!

I was stunned and disappointed to learn that train lines 9 and 10 don't actually have a platform between them, but I'm glad they have something there to commemorate Harry Potter.

Tomorrow I'm going to Spain!  I'll be leaving bright and early for Stanstead and I'll be in Madrid in time for lunch.  Can't wait!

Blogger is broken

I apologize for not posting about Cambridge or London yet. I updated to KitKat and now almost every app crashes regularly with null pointer exceptions. In the case of Blogger attempting to add photos or publish posts causes crashes. I'm waiting for an update to fix this bug.

Transportation: trains

We took trains three times in Thailand: from Bangkok to Uttaradit, from Uttaradit to Bangkok, and from Bangkok to Chumphon.

The first train we took was an air-conditioned second class sleeper. Each section of a sleeper train has two seats facing each other on each side of the center aisle. When you want to go to sleep you convince the person in the other chair that they also want to sleep, then fold the two seats into a single mattress and pull down the shelf containing the upper bunk. When we got on the train we idly poked around to figure out this arrangement, but we didn't have to do any of the actual work: one of the train employees came down the aisle, gestured for us to get out of the way, and made the beds appear as soon as he saw any interest in sleeping. He also made the beds for us (clean sheets!) and generally provided great service for a second class train.

(Pic: Look at all that art!)

The only problem we had was that Wesley was quite a bit taller than his bunk. This situation was exacerbated by the fact the he had his backpack on the bed so that he could keep track of it during the night. After he pulled his curtain to go to sleep the rest of us amused ourselves by making guesses about what sleeping position he was presently trying out, then pulling back his curtain to check if we were right.

(Pic: so little room for activities.)

Wesley, on this game: "Guys, I haven't moved for the last three rounds. How is Rachel still getting it wrong?" I claim that I had a poor perspective during the reveal, of course.

(Pics: the view from the top bunk.)

We were also right next to the automatic door between compartments, so we got to watch everybody come up and struggle to open the door while the door considered whether it was really in an opening mood. Anna, who was closest to the sensor, took the role of magician and made the door open at her will.

Our second train was like the first one but without AC, at least according to the tickets. Somehow this also translated to the lights not working and the door falling off the compartment when I tried to open it to find the bathroom in the middle of the night. That train was substantially shabbier, but we were taking anything we could get because all of the people who had been in Chiang Mai for the lantern festival were trying to get back to Bangkok right when we were.

Our last train was a completely uneventful day train, which afforded us a lot of time to listen to music, play cards, and watch Thailand go by.

Lanterns in Chiang Mai

We got ourselves to Chiang Mai to be present for the peak of their lantern festival, which was a brilliant decision.

At this festival people buy paper lanterns, light some sort of fuel at the bottom, and let them fly away as hot air balloons. All of the schools in Chiang Mai had students out selling lanterns for fundraising so we bought a few and sent them off ourselves.

The sky was completely full of lanterns flying away and the river was covered in small rafts of flowers that people would set on fire and place in the water. On one of our nights there we ate a fancy dinner by the water and watched the lanterns and the boats.

(Pics: all of the dots in the sky are lanterns; all of the dots on the river are rafts.)

Since anybody and everybody could send lanterns off, there were many failed launches. If you didn't wait long enough before releasing the lantern it would not ride enough, and would instead drift over the crowd, on fire, and start sinking toward people. We learned to avoid those lanterns by ducking whenever we heard a lot of screaming behind us.

Another failure mode was to hold on for too long, usually when people were trying to take too many photos. The lanterns would start to smoke and eventually catch fire in people's hands.

Somewhere in Thailand is a stranger with a photo of me posing with her friend in front of the remainder of her lantern, giving a giant thumbs up. This was a worthwhile photobomb in my opinion.

To add another later of fire and smoke to the festivities, there were fireworks for sale. Most were small, but there were quite a few that were large enough to be in a real fireworks show back home. All of them were being launched by people in the streets and on the bridges. There were also special lanterns with sparklers attached to them that looked like rockets as they rose. Darren tried to get some awesome fireworks and ended up with a stick that crackled for a while and then sent of tiny clouds of sparks with a very defeated popping noise. His other fireworks failed to launch, and his face when realizing this was priceless.

(Pics: Big fireworks; Darren and his fireworks; more lanterns; modern lanterns with no fire and no explosions.)

Transportation: tuk-tuks

Tuk-tuks are hybrids between motorcycles and taxis. A tuk-tuk is powered by a scooter but has two wheels and a row of enclosed seats on the back that can comfortably fit three and uncomfortably fit five. In Bangkok they tend to have a lot of blue LEDs; in Siem Reap on our last trip we took one that was decorated as the batmobile.

You hail a tuk-tuk like an ordinary taxi, let the drivers quote you an exorbitant fare, argue them down to a reasonable fare, and then add that you want to fit five people in one tuk-tuk. Only once did a driver object to this arrangement, and that was when we had all of our bags.

In Chiang Mai we were picked up by a lady tuk-tuk driver and her dog, who apparently rides along with her every day. They had matching haircuts and the dog didn't hesitate to hop from the front seat to the back to check us out. With five people we were a very heavy load and the tuk-tuk didn't want to accelerate, but she made up for the lack of haste by making Mario Kart noises all the way back to our hotel. We checked with a GPS and found that our max speed was 30 kph after she had been flooring it for more than a minute.

Darren insisted on calling them duck-ducks the entire time we were in Thailand.

On our last night in Bangkok we caught a tuk-tuk across town and enjoyed the sights. I wish I had good photos of us in a tuk-tuk, but we were always crammed so tightly together that I couldn't get photos.

From writing this blog post I have learned that typing tuk-tuk on a phone keyboard is difficult.

Transportation in Thailand: buses

I'll be posting about Thailand for a few days as I settle into Cambridge for a few days. Here goes:

One of the most exciting parts of Thailand has definitely been the transportation. So far we have taken tuk-tuks, trains, silver and gold class buses, free buses, and rented motorbikes.

In Bangkok we mostly got around on foot or by taking the bus. Bangkok has legendarily bad traffic, so the buses are never on time. They also don't quite follow the routes that Google says they will follow. As far as we can tell each bus driver is given a set of stops and told to fight his way through the traffic to each stop. How he gets there is up to him.

Even if you are at the correct stop you still have to wave down the bus you want: they don't stop unless they need to. On our second day in Bangkok we had to catch a bus that was making a detour down a one-way street. We stood at a bus stop that didn't say which buses stopped there and jumped up and down to get the attention of the bus driver. As Golshan tells it:

"When he saw us his eyes widened, as if to say 'That's not a bus stop!' Then he relented: 'Oh, okay, it's a bus stop' and pulled over to be only one lane away from the curb."

The doors were on the other side of the bus and there was traffic everywhere, so we had to run and dodge across to the other side of the bus. The bus driver had decided that we were friends and spent that time swearing mightily at anybody who dared to honk at us.

Our next Bangkok bus was even better. When we got on we all noticed the speakers everywhere and the subwoofer at the back of the bus, but there was no music. We settled in for a ride and watched the antics of the guy who walked up and down the bus taking fares.

These antics included leaning out of the bus to direct traffic when people wouldn't let us merge, and even jumping out of the bus to go buy something, then running to catch up and get back on.

We all assumed that he had jumped out to get food, but it turned out that he had been buying batteries. As soon as he got back onto the bus he put batteries info the remote for the sound system and started blasting American music through the bus! We rode the party bus all the way home, and we were sad to have to leave.

Beach bummin'

I'm lying in a bamboo bungalow listening to the rain pouring down. When it lightens up I'll go grab breakfast on the beach, maybe with a Thai iced tea. When it stops raining I'll go rent a boogie board and go swimming in the ocean. Then I'll come back and get a beer and read my book. They'll play comfortably numb and time as the sun goes down, and after it gets dark we'll play card games like jackass. I'll do really well for the first couple of rounds and then, aided by a continuous infusion of Chang beer, I'll end up as the jackass. When we finish playing I'll claim one of the hammocks as my own and rock gently in it until I fall asleep. I'll wake up four hours later, and walk carefully across the sand to my bungalow. I'll fight with the mosquito net until I'm all the way into my bed, and then lie there with my hands behind my head and smile at the ceiling. I won't have worn shoes the entire day.

Thailand: beginnings

We arrived in Bangkok at midnight and passed through the nonexistent customs with no trouble. The only problem was that somebody had picked up my bag instead of hers, so I left the airport with a much smaller load than everybody else and consequentially got stuffed into the jump seat in the back of the taxi with the rest of the luggage.

Before I went to sleep I checked Facebook and found a message from the derper who didn't thoroughly check which bag she was taken. I went to sleep with the relief of at least knowing the exact address of my towel, even if it was not the same as my address. In the morning we got food and wandered around the neighborhood, and within 12 hours my bag had arrived by courier from the airport. Emirates did an excellent job on that.

We've spent the afternoon alternately planning and eating, and tonight we are going to go to a night market. Thailand looks like it's going to be awesome.

(Note: this concludes the last of my catching-up posts. I wrote this on November 11th in Bangkok. This post also marks two months outside of the United States.)

Persian relatives

The last thing we did in NZ was visit Nathan Golshan's Persian relatives in Christchurch. When we were in NZ after the 2011 race they welcomed us to their house with more food than we could imagine or understand, all of which was delicious. We had been telling stories to Anna and Darren but it was certainly hard to convey how wonderful that had been.

This time we ate better while hiking then last time, but the food at their house was still amazing and filling. We had lamb souvlaki for dinner, and a full and delicious breakfast in the morning.

They have two kids, Mona and Barzeen. Barzeen remembered us from last time, when he was five, but Mona had been a baby and this time was very shy when she met us-at least briefly. By the end of the night she was asking her dad whether we would still be there in the morning to play.

(Pic: those are some cute kids.)

All of their grandparents were there too, and their grandfather taught me how to play backgammon and then roundly beat me at it. Anna, Darren and Nathan played piano and Barzeen played violin. It was wonderful to be welcomed and made to feel so much like s part of their family after spending so much time away from mine.

In the morning we went to the Air Force Museum and Riccarton Bush, which is a plot of land that has been preserved in the state that it was in before European settlers arrived. Then we whisked off to the airport and we were on our way to a whole new country!

(Pics: the NZ air force logo has a kiwi on it!)

Last hike: four days of fords

Our last hike was a four day outing on the Gillespie Track, near Wanaka. As usual we started late in the day (3 pm for a 14 km day), and this time we were further hampered by a braided river that we needed to ford. It was all of 100 feet from the car.

This was our first ford. Wesley put on his water shoes and walked through while the rest of us winced our way across barefoot before deciding that it was worth wearing flip flops in the water, even if they made it easier to slip.

Next we had a few kilometers through a bog full of very vocal cows, then a jaunt along the bank of the river that involved a completely excessive amount of up and down to deal with boulders and creeks. Night fell and we were still hiking because we wanted to get to the hut that was at the end of the river valley.

There was only one problem, and that was the river.

Kiwis are rather casual about things like river crossings. We knew that the river was there, we knew there was no bridge, and we knew that we would need to cross it. But the ranger at doc had given no sign that this crossing would be anything to worry about.

The river was not high when we were ready to ford, but it was certainly not a gentle stream or a babbling brook. We decided that a late night crossing without even the aid of moonlight would be a bad idea, and instead settled down in our tents directly across from the hut.

In the morning Anna and I awoke to the gentle pitter patter of a hundred sandflies inside our tent and bailed to find the sandfly repellent. When we could finally stand still without being bitten we could see the hut across the river.

Wesley ate breakfast in his hermetically sealed tent-he definitely wins when there are sandflies and it's not raining-and Nathan Golshan packed up faster than he ever has. We were on the trail by 8:30 am-a feat that is much easier when you are camping a scarce meter from the trail. We didn't tell Golshan how early we were moving until we were sure he was awake, but when he found out he said indignantly, "I've been scammed!"

The next day we had a mellow seven km up to Siberia Hut. No fords, so the title of this post was sort of a lie. Golshan went fishing and the rest of us swam or hid from the sandflies in the hut and read in the sunlight. I particularly enjoyed being absorbed in a book and looking up to see snow capped peaks close enough to hike and a river close enough to swim in.

The third day we forded a river early and then hiked up to Crucible Lake with just day packs.

Darren converted the top of his pack into a stylish fanny pack while Anna wore hers as a messenger bag. Wesley took his backpacking pack but emptied it out until it was feather light. Golshan smugly pulled out his lightweight day pack, and I conveniently discovered that my sleeping bag bag turns into a brilliant day pack with the addition of a few straps for my shoulders and my tent's tyvek floor as a back sheet.

Crucible Lake was still covered in ice and had small avalanches falling into it on the opposite side of the lake. This didn't stop Wesley from jumping in for a quick swim, on the grounds that "You can't go to a lake without swimming!"

The next day was the last day of hiking in New Zealand, and we celebrated it with a long 22 km of hiking. By the end Anna said she was eating trail mix not because she was hungry but because she was bored: 9 km of cow pastures was rather trying on sore feet.

I chose to do all of the fords on the last day with my boots on to make my feet feel better. My boots are pretty amazing. I walked at least 10 km in soaked boots after the first ford and didn't get a single blister.

We ended the day with celebratory fish and chips in Wanaka and fell soundly asleep in our tents.

Milford Sound and the Fiordlands

After Mt. Aspiring we drove to Queenstown to eat Fergburgers and shower. Darren performed a hat trick and ate Fergburgers for three meals in a row, while Wesley went mountain biking and I wandered around in search of a down coat. We also ran into every other solar car person who is in New Zealand: one group had the room next to us, and we ran into another group while getting burgers. (In case you couldn't tell, burgers are a major attraction in Queenstown.)

We drove down to Te Anau for a night of camping, then along the Milford Road for a day hike up to Marian Lake-one of our few day hikes on this trip. On our way out we saw two people in chest-high waders running down the road and thumbing for rides, so we pulled over. They said they had been out kayaking and just needed a ride a few kilometers up the road to their car. We wanted to give them a ride but all of the spare seats in our van were packed with food and gear, so we opened the sliding door and told them to hold on to the roof rack. They cheerfully obliged, saying "we were born to hold roof racks!"

A few days later when we went on a cruise on Milford Sound we went up to the bridge to talk to the skipper and found out that he was also a kayaker. I mentioned picking up the other two and he said "Oh yeah, that must've been Ricky and Gonzo!"  Gonzo was the one with the ridiculous mustache, and the name fit him perfectly.

(Pics: Ricky and Gonzo; Milford Sound is too big for my phone to comprehend; we're on a boat!)

On that same Milford Sound cruise the skipper put the nose of the boat under a waterfall and we stood under it. We also saw waterfalls that had stopped falling because the wind was so strong; seals flopping around on the rocks; and penguins.

(Pic: under a waterfall.)

The penguins were awesome. They're very rare and when they swim they look like porpoises: they pop out of the water every few feet for air, then duck back under. Or should I say penguin back under?

(Pic: the only evidence I have that I saw a penguin. Can you spot it?)

Milford Sound is amazingly, overwhelmingly large. It's actually a fjord, not a sound, because it was cut by a glacier. It has towering walls on both sides and becomes almost invisible when you go out to the Tasman Sea, because it turns right before it meets the sea.

There are trees growing on many of the cliffs, and every now and then there are tree avalanches. There is almost no soil, but instead moss attaches to the rocks and trees grow on that. Every now and again a heavy rainfall adds too much weight to the trees and moss and they slide down into the sound.

(Pic: one of many waterfalls.)

Snow, continued

After a cold night outside the hut we headed for our next hut in the next valley over. We hiked straight uphill on tussock in the snow until we got to the ridge, where we were greeted with a snowball ambush by the kiwis from the hut. While we were up there Golshan also built a snowman, and Anna dressed it up to look like her.

(Pics: "okay guys, now pretend you're friends"; Golshan being proud; a well dressed snowman)

Then we descended down a slope steep enough that Darren and Anna decided to just sit down and slide, and found our next hut in a river valley.

Since we had a long time left before sundown, we all just did whatever we do when we're chilling: Anna sketched, Nathan Golshan fished, Darren tried to dry out his boots, and Wesley sat still for ten minutes and then got up and started chopping wood.

(Pics: mountains!; home sweet hut; this is how exciting New Zealand is)

The next day was a fairly chill hike down. Most of the snow had melted off and it was yet another beautiful NZ day. Our snowman of the day before had fallen over and his head had melted out of existence. Wesley and Anna, obviously driven crazy by the snow, decided to go swimming in the river.

(Pic: why would you do that?!)

Table bouldering

...is a game you play in NZ huts when the day's hike didn't wear you out enough.

You start either on top of or underneath a table, and the goal is to get back to that surface of the table by going all the way under or all the way over the table without touching the floor. It takes a fair amount of muscle and a good table.

Wesley had the easiest time of it in our hut, because he has such long arms and legs. Darren used pure muscle to get around the table, and turned his face bright red with the effort. Anna tried very hard but failed, as did I. Golshan cooked dinner and lulzed at us, and also made a few attempts at the table. Photos below: