We're alive

It's taken a few days to get up and running. We are having the time of our lives! But each night, I am too tired and bleary-eyed to write. It seems like we've been here forever already, so much have we packed into a few short days. Here's a very hazy, incoherent version of the last couple of days.

Wednesday, April 23: Fly to Auckland
Shalini and I meet at O’Hare. We will fly to L.A. first. Then continue on to Auckland. Our flight from Chicago to LA is pretty full. Shalini travels light as a feather, barely breaking a sweat with her dainty travel bag of pure essentials and nothing else. This is thanks, in part, to the fact that she has managed to pack three small children in the bag that she checks. The day before we leave, she actually decides that her current luggage isn’t big enough. So she has gone and bought a new roller suitcase that can accommodate a tiny village. I’m not kidding. When she puts that behemoth on the scale to check it, it weighs in at 30.5 kg. Nice work, Shalini.

I, on the other hand, slum it with my measly 20kg bag. I stuff it and stuff it before leaving for the airport until I can’t stuff it anymore, and I still have a ton of crap leftover that I am forced to put in a carry-on bag. Heavy shit, too. And of course, I have to keep checking and rechecking to see that I still have my wallet and camera packed in my backpack, even though I have just seen them five minutes ago. Zip. Unzip. It’s a rich tapestry of neurotica.

We sit in opposite aisle seats in the same row. We try to tame our excitement by reading Entertainment Weekly non-chalantly. We look at each other and chat every 15 minutes or so about how we are such New Zealand bad-asses. We talk about how this trip has fallen into place so fast…I had suggested it to Shalini just a few short months ago. At first, she wasn’t into it. It’s too expensive. She can’t take off from work. Blah, blah, blah. But within a few days, I have her all but ready to move there. She has been an amazing travel preparedness companion ever since, doing the heavy lifting in our hotel and car rental research. And her excitement about the trip is fabulous. Within a few more days, she is an expert on all things New Zealand. And the girl is more organized than anyone on the planet. By the time we leave, Shalini has all our reservations and plans---travel times, driving directions, cancellation policies, everything!—programmed into her beloved iPhone. I thought I was pretty organized, but this girl has me beat.

Our flight is about 20 minutes late arriving at LAX. Because we have bought separate tickets for our New Zealand leg, we have to claim our bags and then take a shuttle to the international terminal and go through security all over again. It is a royal pain in the ass. In baggage claim, Shalini’s bag arrives pretty quickly, but mine is one of the last ones to get spit out. It delays us even more. By the time we make it to the Air New Zealand terminal, we have just under two hours before our flight departs. We are starting to show signs of fatigue. The excitement and anticipation of our trip has worn off a little. We both have that not-so-fresh feeling—and we have a 13 hour flight ahead of us. I tell Shalini I am willing to blow anyone to get upgraded to Business. She laughs and thinks I am kidding. I am not. The guy at the Air New Zealand terminal who checks us in is nice, but he won’t let us blow him to get an upgrade. He looks at us curiously. Shalini will say later that he thinks we are “together.” She can just tell. I make a mental note that this will be a running joke throughout our trip. We are “together.” After this, we tell each other “By the way, she/he thinks we’re together” any time we come into contact with other people.

Friday, April 25: Happy Anzac Day!
Leave it to us to arrive in New Zealand on a national holiday. It’s Friday, which means we’ve lost a day crossing the international dateline—all on our 13 hour flight from L.A. The flight to Auckland is actually much better than both of us have anticipated. Air New Zealand legroom is surprisingly generous in coach, and they have a kickass selection of movies and entertainment. Shalini and I both sleep on the flight (even me!) and we arrive in Auckland not that much worse for the wear.

Getting our rental car is a breeze, but we are momentarily paralyzed because Shalini cannot get her iPod to work on the radio frequency. This is a girl who has an MP3 player in every room in her home practically. She cannot be without her music. We finally get it to work. Tragedy averted, but then we are met with the shock of what we have been told but are not quite prepared to accept: The steering wheel is on the right side in New Zealand. To make matters worse, they drive in the left lane here. It freaks us out in the beginning and we never really get used to it all day. Shalini, god bless her, drives the entire day, and we do a lot of driving, my friend. She is such a great sport. The site of cars careening right at you in the oncoming right-hand lane is unbelievably unnerving…especially since New Zealand roads are so curvaceous. You round a corner and see a car coming right for yours in what instinct tells you is the wrong lane. It’s so crazy. We have one mishap driving in the wrong lane, but otherwise Shalini drives like a champ.





Our plan today is ambitious as far as first days go: We will drive from Auckland to Rotorua (about 3 hours), where we will visit one of their spectacular geothermal wonderlands. Then we will drive another 3 hours to Tongariro National Park and get ready for our 8-hour hike of the Tongariro Crossing tomorrow.

Driving through New Zealand is a cumulative rush. The drive from the airport is more beautiful than any area near an airport that I’ve ever seen, but it isn’t THAT amazing. I immediately feel like New Zealand has been oversold to me. As the day wears on, however, this couldn’t be more untrue. Our encounters with the terrain will grow exponentially more gorgeous. By the end of the day, it almost hurts to look out the window, so beautiful is the landscape. This is stunning country and it defies all description. It is astonishingly pristine. What’s odd is that it feels strangely familiar, too. Something about it doesn’t feel foreign enough, and yet it’s utterly unique as well. Shalini likens parts of the drive to driving through Marin County in California. Sometimes you feel like you're in Seattle. Other times, it's nothing like anything you know back home. The roads are fantastic and the towns smack of sleepy little beach towns. It is such amazing land, so lush and green, but then it also feels so civilized as well. The mountains are profoundly majestic, and yet they don’t feel fake in the way that, say, the mountain ranges in Utah feel fake. You feel extremely alive looking at them. They roll and plunge and swallow you up in the valleys. It is autumn, and the trees are starting to change. They’re afire with yellows and reds. Just stunning.

The day is gorgeous—around 65 degrees and sunny. We have lunch in Rotorua at a place called Relish. Many restaurants are closed because of the holiday. We eat delicious wood-burned pizzas at 11am. I have a fabulous Tehu Pinot Noir (at 11:20am). I briefly wonder if I have a drinking problem and then return back to this delicious wine. Food is not cheap here. Lunch costs us around $40. We are on the road again by 12:30pm. It takes us about another hour to drive to the WAiotapu Thermal Wonderland, a tourist attraction filled with active volcanic formations and geothermal waters. The greener the water, the higher the arsenic content. It is so cool to walk by the different thermal pools. Many are literally bubbling and boiling with mud. Steam rises from the ground like heavy mist. The pools hiss and roar as you walk by them.

A geothermal wonderland in Rotorua...





The drive from Rotorua to Tongariro National Park is the most breathtaking drive I have ever taken. The park is a series of sacred volcanic mountains that rise up in the horizon and make your heart fall into your stomach. The core of the park consists of three peaks: There is Mt. Nguaruhoe, which is still active and the most difficult hike (You know this mountain as Mt. Doom in The Lord of the Rings). Then there is Mount Ruapehu, the highest mountain on the North Island. And finally, Mt. Tongariro, the lowest of the three mountains measuring in at 6,455 feet. Our stomachs turn inside out as we anticipate our hike (which will take us through Tongariro and Nguaruhoe) tomorrow with fear and excitement. Will we be able to do it?




When we get to our lodge in Tongariro, we are pretty knackered. We ask Scott at the front desk about weather conditions on Tongariro for tomorrow. He says it will probably be the last day of decent weather for a while, because "shocking" weather will be rolling in tomorrow afternoon. We don’t understand whether “shocking” means something good or bad for a moment. But then we get it. Complete the hike before the late afternoon or else!

We have surprisingly good energy in the afternoon. So far, the flight to New Zealand actually feels much easier than a flight to Europe, jetlag-wise. My body doesn’t feel much like it’s been tricked yet. Before going to dinner, we buy food supplies for our hike at a convenience store attached to a local gas station (the only place for rations…this is the off-season and many places are closed). The prices are astronomical. Did I mention New Zealand isn’t cheap? Our dollar is so weak. It runs on fumes here. We are astonished by how much we pay for deli meat and bread. Oh, well. The price you pay for breathtaking countryside. At dinner, we start chatting with a Kiwi couple—Scott and Camilla. They have driven up from Wellington for the weekend for an engagement party and are as nice as can be. Scott is a musician and talks about the good music that has come out of New Zealand, including The Pixies and Jean-Paul Sartre Experience. They give us a lot of good advice about traveling around NZ, but are just a tad fatalistic, sharing stories about how tourists get lost on the South Island all the time. They tell us to always tell someone locally where we’re going. Awesome.

We conk out at around 9pm. This has felt like the longest day ever, and that’ because it has been.

Saturday, April 26: Hike the Tongariro Crossing








We wake up at 5:15am this morning so we can take the 6AM shuttle to the Tongariro Crossing. It is about an 8-hour hike that takes you through steep volcanic terrain. Tongariro Crossing is widely known to be one of the best one day hike in all of New Zealand. It takes you through spectacularly diverse terrain…not just volcanoes but through raging springs, boiling mud pools, craters and, as if this weren’t enough, lush native rainforest and cacti-like flora and fauna. It is a challenging hike, and considering the fact that Shalini and I have never hiked before (they call it “tramping” in NZ), we are more than a little nervous. We’ve seen the size of the volcanoes we will be hiking from the night before. These are no sissy mountains. We ride in silence on the shuttle bus with about 20 other people. It takes about 10 minutes to get to Mangatepopo, which is one of the more popular places to begin the hike. The driver waits until everyone is out of the shuttle bus. He then tells us that the hike clocks in at 5 hours without stopping, but will probably take us between 6 and 8 hours total (accounting for stops and lunch). Everyone will be walking at their own pace without a guide. He warns us to take particularly heavy caution on the steep descent to the Emerald Lakes. It’s very rocky and slippery and there are parts of the climb that are pretty steep. This makes my bowels rumble. But we have to be brave. It is still dark when we start the tramp, but climbing as the sun comes up is one of the most breathtaking experiences I’ve had. The weather is crisp and dry, with more sun than clouds. I am fine in just a long sleeved shirt with t-shirt over it, but we have been warned to pack for severe weather. Weather on the Crossing can change on a dime, and we learn this to be true very quickly. Our back packs are filled with waterproof jackets and pants, fleece coats, 2 liters of water, Cliff Bars and sandwiches.

Still, there is no shortage of under-dressed people in shorts and sneakers instead of hiking boots. A rescue team will go out when someone does not make it back to their bus. Still, for about the first hour, I feel good in the clothes I am wearing. But as we continue our ascent, the winds start to howl. They gust through us to a shockingly strong degree. We have been warned. Still, the winds are a little scary. We quickly find ourselves up in the clouds. They cascade through the mountains, bringing with them a complete 180 in weather. All of a sudden, it’s totally foggy and cold. We have to put our heavy jackets on now. It’s freezing. Out. Of. Nowhere. But the trail is very well marked and it’s almost impossible to get lost. Not that this is a problem, because there are just enough hikers ahead of you and behind you to get annoying. I thought it would be comforting to have others behind us, but it makes us unconsciously try to speed up instead of hiking at our own pace.

Then, as if out of nowhere, the sun comes out again. It’s amazing how your heart soars when the sun comes out, and when it despairs when the fog rolls in. This weather pattern repeats throughout the hike…foggy, cold chilly air sweeping in, and then sunny patches again. Our spirits alternate with the weather. Some hikers do not make it up the steep 45 minute ascent up what is called The Devil’s Staircase. We tread on heavy volcanic rock and parts are very steep and slippery. I cringe looking at the people who are just wearing sneakers with no ankle support. There are more than a few times that I feel like if I take one wrong step I will hurl myself down the mountain.

But I don’t. And when we get to the top of a particularly grueling stint, the sight of Red Crater awaits us. This is a still active and steaming vent. It is stunning, and the track’s highest point. Beyond Red Crater, we have to travel down (more like slide the entire way) an extremely slippery slope of volcanic rock that takes us to paradise—the Emerald Lakes. These are green pools of shining water that take your breath away. From here, the terrain changes and grows much greener, with cactus-like flowers and moss covering the mountains. This part of the journey seems to last forever. Shalini and I start to grow pretty tired. But then the route changes again, skirting into lush Amazonian-like forest that is so thick you cannot see through it. Birds whose sounds we have never heard before chirp in the trees up high, and raging springs start to rush through our pathway (at one point, the waters block our trail and we freak out for a moment, but manage to balance on the narrow strips of mud to pass through it). Going downhill is almost as difficult as going uphill. There are so many experienced hikers who seem to treat this trail as child’s play. A few guys are even jogging through many parts of it. It’s is unconscionable. Every time a new group of hikers gain on us, we move out of the way for them and they mutter “Cheers” as they pass by us.

Finally, seven hours after our start time, we arrive at the end of the trail, some 18.5 kilometers in all. We are exhausted but exhilarated. This has perhaps been one of the most amazing experiences of our lives. We replay the different terrain we’ve seen in one day over and over in our heads. It seems impossible, like a dream.

We get back to the lodge around 3pm. We cannot believe it is only 3 in the afternoon. Our muscles are already starting to tense up. As we step out of our car, Shalini proclaims, “Every step: agony.” It hurts to laugh. We get in our room and collapse on our beds. We are still stuffed with adrenaline from what we have just been through and cannot nap right away, even though are bodies are screaming for rest. But then, somewhere around 4:30 we fall asleep. I wake up at 6:50 and mutter to Shalini that we have 30 minutes before our dinner reservation. She mutters “Mmm hmmm” and rolls over and goes to sleep. I can’t argue with her. The next time I wake up, it is 10:30pm. Shalini is still OUT. I get up to pee and then go back to sleep. I do not wake up until 5am. Shalini sleeps through the night completely.

Sunday, April 27: Day of Rest (aka feels like we’ve been gang-banged by 500 men)
Sunday brings with it searing pain. Shalini wakes up and the first thing she says is, "Ow." Our calves and glutes have tightened up something fierce. When we try to walk, we look like we have muscular dystrophy. But we don't care. We did it! We finished the Crossing! We are so stuffed with pride and awe that we can hardly stand ourselves. But we can't gloat for long. Today, we must drive 5 hours back to Auckland. Tomorrow, we fly to Christchurch.