Cardboard Boat Races!

We ended up in Pohara for an extremely awesome community event- cardboard boat races. The boats can be made of only cardboard and tape, with of course the requisite decorations. There is a course of buoys that the participants must maneuver around in the ocean. Various prizes are given out including: Most Dramatic Sinking, Best Bribery or Flattery of the Judges, and Most Seaworthy. As you can guess, a boat made of cardboard tends to fall apart when it hits water. The costumes and boats were creative and fun. There was the Eiffel Tower with a crew of Frenchmen wearing berets and garlic-string necklaces. Later that day, we found garlic floating in the ocean along with bits of cardboard. The Titanic and an iceberg also made an appearance. Coincidentally, they ended up sinking each other. All in all, it was a tremendously fun event. Good on ya, Pohara!

Luxury

Today I realized that I haven't slept in a bed in over a month. I walked past a campervan (there are heaps of them here) with a bed in the back, and that lumpy uneven mattress looked luxurious. Along with leaving behind a bed, I haven't used a pillow, sheets, or a blanket in that time period. Instead, my time has been spent on either a sleeping pad or boulder mat with a camping pillow, silk liner, and sleeping bag. Jake had a lifelong dream fulfilled by sleeping on a boulder mat instead of a bed. Yes, those are the types of dreams that my man has, and oddly enough, I support it.

Wrong Answer

When you don't know the answer to a question, it is best to just admit that you don't know. Otherwise, you may get yourself in a situation that you wish you had avoided. I learned my lesson when I told the woman at the Department of Conservation (DOC) that yes, I am a hardy tramper. Tramping is the kiwi version of hiking, but it seems much more hardcore than hiking in the States. Back at home, I feel that I am a "hardy" hiker. But in New Zealand, things are different. Trail signs and guides don't tell you distances, they tell you times. "It's a 4 hour hike to the viewpoint." This is because the terrain is pretty varied. I should have paid more attention when the DOC lady started talking about how Arthur's Pass is the most undeveloped national park in New Zealand. How there are not always trails. How there are no bridges. How there are places where it is so steep that you will have to grab onto a fixed line and lower yourself. Somehow, I dismissed all of those things. Instead, I heard things about endemic birds and beautiful terrain. It sounded great. So off we went for a 3-day tramp in Arthur's Pass. The first day was a 5-6 hour tramp. After hitchhiking to the starting point, we ran into our first stream crossing. Jake convinced me that we should take off our boots and wade across so that we could have dry boots. The water was cold, but at least I had dry boots at the end the crossing. A few minutes later, we came to the next stream crossing, and then the next, and then more. Every time, we carefully removed our boots, held hands, crossed the river, dried off our feet, and put our boots back on our feet. At the end of the day, our feet and boots were dry. The trail went through beautiful forest with waterfalls and streams.That night, we made it to the Edwards Hut and slept in our $40 tent from Kmart for the first time. That was when we found out that sand flies can fit through the mesh. Sand flies are just like mosquitoes. They suck your blood and it itches. We spent plenty of time killing sand flies in our tent. The next day was our longest day, a 6-9 hour tramp. There wasn't much of a trail for quite a while. We hiked through uneven grass and marsh for a while, and inevitably ran into a million pokey plants. Every once in a while, one of us would shout "Ouch!" We hiked up past tree line and came to the rubble that used to be a mountain before an earthquake in the 1930's destroyed it. It was lots of boulder hopping.Then we came to the really steep section. We picked our route and started upwards. I chose a few songs to sing in my head to pass the minutes as I traipsed up the incline. Eventually, the terrain turned to scree and slippery ice grass. I got scared, but Jake didn't seem to mind. He kept plodding along while I worked myself into a panic. Finally, as I saw him disappearing from view, I screamed, "Jake, you can't leave me!" These words have now become infamous in our relationship. Jake stopped, gave me some words of encouragement, and then took out his camera. I then screamed, "I don't want you to take my picture!" These words are also now infamous. Jake patiently helped me up the steep slope, and we came to a beautiful tarn at the top. Then we descended down a stream bed, up some more hills, down some more, up some more, and down a lot more. It was a really long day. The kind of day that made me re-think my answer to the hearty-tramper question. When we made it to our camp, I remembered that it was actually Thanksgiving day. We ate noodles, vegetables, canned chicken, and a gravy sauce packet. Not a typical Thanksgiving feast, but I was too tired to care. Also, I had wet boots. Somewhere along the way, I fell in a stream and then stopped taking off my boots and avoiding streams. I happily just tramped right through them and afterward listened to the sloshing and squishing in my boots. Try it sometime. Fill your boots with water and then put them on. You may be surprised how much water that gortex can keep inside your boot. The last day of the tramp was nice and easy. It was only 3-4 hours walking downhill. Overall, I think it was a good first experience with New Zealand tramping, but now when someone asks me about my tramping abilities, I am a little wary of answering. I'm not so sure that I am "hardy" but I did survive the experience so maybe I am a little bit hardy.

Stream Bash #2


We went for another stream bash with our friend, Ed. We walked along a beach, played on sand dunes, and then hiked up a stream. The scenery was stunning, and Ed and Jake lived up to their boyish traits. We slung algae at one another, slid down a river rock slide, and the boys wrestled at every given chance. There was bouldering, cliff jumping, and tree climbing. As usual, I am covered in bruises and scrapes from slipping on the rocks and falling, but it's totally worth it!
There are amazing tree ferns, giant flax plants, and towering kauri trees in New Zealand. Notice the bare feet. Kiwis like to go barefoot.

Jake climbed up into this tree. Below him was a stinky, muddy swamp. He had a lot of incentive to not fall in.

Ed was hanging upside-down and trying to figure out how to flip over, only he couldn't tell which was to go. Apparently hanging upside-down really messes with your equilibrium.

Jake and Ed bouldered above the stream. The holds were pretty mossy and slippery so they ended up falling in.

Stream Bashing

On Christmas Eve, we went "stream bashing" with a group of Jake's mates from Auckland. It was definitely one of the cooler things that I have done here in New Zealand. We hiked up to the top of a waterfall and then abseiled (a.k.a. rappel) down next to the falls. Then we proceeded to hike down the stream where the falls ended. Maybe hiking isn't the right word. We swam, scrambled, and did some more abseiling. The rocks were slippery, and I only fell down four times during the trip. I consider a fall to be when my butt hits the ground, so it doesn't count all of the near misses, and there were a lot of those. The purple-green hue of bruises can be seen on various places on my hips, shins, knees, and elbows.

This photo is of me abseiling down a little canyon with a water pounding me. It was a strange feeling to slowly lower myself down with an insane force of water pummeling in the same downward direction. Jake and I have noticed that we are wearing the same clothes in almost all of our pictures. I swear, we have other clothes. We just seem to wear the same ones everyday...

“I saw that on tv. I didn’t think it was real.”

I am used to having a machine that dispenses drugs. You use a username and a fingerprint to get in and then you have access to a list of your patients’ medications. You just tell the machine which drugs you want, and a drawer opens up and an individual pocket with that specific medication opens up. In New Zealand, these machines only exist on television. A nurse actually told me that she had seen those machines on tv and hadn’t believed that they were real. Instead, the drug room has shelves with bottles of pills in alphabetical order. No fingerprints, no locks, no computer telling you which drug to give. I have had to come up with a new way of doing all of my checks before administering medications.

CODE BLUE

One of many differences that I have discovered in my nursing clinical is what to do in the event of a cardiac arrest. When a patient is not breathing and does not have a pulse, we call it a code blue in the US. There are several different color codes in the hospital that signify different things. Code red is a fire, code black is a bomb, etc. Here in New Zealand, they don’t use the color code system. If anything happens, you dial the hospital operator and tell them the problem and then they page whomever is needed. If a patient goes into cardiac arrest, you press the call button (each patient has a button that buzzes and a light turns on to tell the nurse that the patient needs assistance) three times and throw a pillow out the door. This can create a problem when a patient pushes the call button more than once when obviously she is not in cardiac arrest because it would be hard to push the button if you didn’t have a pulse because generally you are unconscious when this happens. Throwing a pillow into the hallway is also a rather antiquated method. In the US, there is a blue button in each room to push especially for a code blue situation that then pages the code team to the specific room. No confusion there. Blue button = code blue = code team come now.