Part Tres: The Road to Queenstown; and a Tangent of Mine

So we left the Catlins in the dust! We shortly arrived in Invercargill, where one of my heroes became a legend in the motorcycle community. Burt Munro! A short recap, Burt Munro was a Kiwi who lived in basically a cinder block shack where he spend all of his money trying to beat the motorcycle land speed record on many old bikes, primarily a 1921 Indian Scout. And he did it! His methods were, flaky one could say, but what this man accomplished from pure dedication has inspired many.

Driving around Invercargill it was funny imagining the people ridiculing this old man for tinkering around with these old motorcycles and racing on the beach against young folks to prove them wrong on their "new" motorbikes back in the 60's. I didn't go out searching for the Munro Special because I knew Ivana and Sophie would have been bored out of their mind. I had already bored them enough with motorcycle conversations. I'll go back in the summer on my bike to check it out.

Invercargill to myself was rather bland. I got a haircut for 10$! The barber said Invercargill is known for its partying at night, but I couldn't really see it. Including my haircut and shopping, we were out of Invercargill in less than two hours. We weren't here for buildings! We wanted to see mountains!
Bilbo: "I want to see mountains again, mountains Gandalf!"

So that's where we headed.


We stopped by Riverton's beach and had a nice lunch. Almost every beach we drove past or stopped by was remarkable in it's own way. I'm not much of a beach person back in the States but here, I could stay out on the beach all day. When it warms up I hope to sleep in a tent on the sand. Hopefully I'll get better at surfing then also. Attaching a surfboard to my motorcycle would be quite tricky. Collapsible snowboards? Turns out they have them! Gotta love Google.

More beautiful scenery came our way as we drove along the border of the Fiordland National Park. The Fiordland is the world's 3rd largest national park, filled with mountains, lakes and sounds going out the the sea. When I get adventurous I'll try heading out deeper into the park. The problem with driving in such a beautiful landscape, is that you really want to stop and enjoy every new beautiful view. But if this was the case we would be stopping every mile. We stopped quite often, about every 25-50 miles. My recommendation to fully enjoy the views would be on a motorcycle or bicycle where you are on your own time. The van was great to see New Zealand as a whole, and to know where to come back to.

Next Stop: Lake Manapouri! This beautiful lake was almost destroyed a few years ago when power companies wanted to create a hydro plant by adding a dam. Thanks to a huge battle by locals and environmentalists, the battle was won and the lake saved! You don't hear a happy ending like that often.
A short travel to Lake Te Anau, we realized finding somewhere to sleep would be hard to find. We knew Queenstown wasn't too far away, and so with no specific plans for this region, we moved onward!

We stopped at a little town called Kingston on the edge of Lake Wakatipu. Not like Kingston from back home! We parked our van parallel to the coast and had a phenomenal view of the lake and it's surroundings.


Yes, that's what I woke up to. I'm living the dream I always had of coming to New Zealand and seeing spectacular sights that even the best of these photographs can capture. Now that I've been to my dream vacation, what's next? Money first, being that it'll be gone by the time I get back. But after that!? I don't know. I'm starting to learn my favorite modes of traveling, which is being with some great people, having a loose plan and going with the flow. Megan Conroy once told me these types of people are "orbs" you can just tell their with whats really going on, and know how to experience life, have fun, go on an adventure.

Where to go? Mainly staying away from civilization, enjoying Mother Nature's creations and enjoying the simpler things of life. Most of all, to just slow down. New Zealand as a whole has a lower standard of living than the states, but they sure do know how to enjoy life. Your probably saying, well they live in a beautiful world down there. Yes, but in a different way. I find New York and the rest of the states as a beautiful place in different ways New Zealand can't match up to. It's just people are too wrapped up in society's demands. You'll probably find me up at Lew Beach (Located in the heart of the Catskills in New York State) when I get back, where things just move slower, the country-side is as beautiful as New Zealand, and where you can watch your family and friends let loose.
















And that's my homage to Lew Beach!

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Cool Photo

On Brighton Beach outside of Dunedin I played around with the lighting of the moon, stars and light pollution while relaxing on the Beach around 10-11pm. 15-seconds exposure, 10 second timer so I could get into position. My camera is a Canon Powershot SD950, a 12.1 mega pixel hand held camera. I love this camera! I just wish it had a better telephoto lens. This is about as typical shot of Luke Stover as it gets, I have my Wurtsboro airport cap on and my leather jacket on. The cherry on top would've been my Fox racing sweater, but that was sadly in too poor shape to bring



Macro is great too! This a common symbol of New Zealand known as the Koru, based off the silver fern frond symbolizing new life, growth, strength and peace.It is an integral symbol in Māori art. The circular shape of the koru helps to convey the idea of perpetual movement while the inner coil suggests a return to the point of origin. Thank you Wikipedia!



-"Lukey" Stover We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. -- T.S. Eliot

Spring Break: Part II: The Catlins!

If someone asked me to go to one place during their stay in New Zealand, I would probably The Catlins. Comprised of the south-east coast of the southern island of New Zealand, The Catlins have beautiful coastlines, temperate rain forests, and rolling farmlands. Every 10km you say, "hey, were in Ireland!" and then another 10km, "Were in South America?" and then "Hey we made it to the Caribbean!".

After we left Dunedin we headed south to the Southern Scenic Route, which took us along the coast all the way to Invercargill. We actually stayed on this route through the Fiordlands, but ill get to that soon.

Our first stop was Nugget Point, we passed the sign, and in a "spur of the moment sure whatever" we turned around. Luckily we did, It was my favorite spot in the Catlins!
On the way Sophie spotted these Sea Lions, and we got as close as we were comfortable with, about 5 meter. These guys are huge, and we didn't want to disturb, plus you never get this close to one of these unless your behind a pane of glass at the zoo!


Nugget Point is a lighthouse lookout, and it's a good thing they put one there, check out these rocks!


The water was so blue, it felt like a scene out of the pirates of the carribean, this didn't look real.





We decided to have lunch on the side of the road, where a nice outdoor dining set was made out of some old wire spools








We kept driving on, checked out a nice waterfall on a
short where I snapped this cool photo:

At this point we were driving through a temperate rain forest, looking down at long, green, rolling hills. I don't really know what to say to be honest, the pictures tell the story for themselves



Because we were driving through some back roads, Sophie (who couldn't drive here otherwise because she didn't have her license) gave me a rest from driving which allowed me to view some of the scenery. I snapped a video of us touring the country. Cool countryside, a typical driving conversation we would have.



Come sunset, we arrived on a beautiful lookout, and decided to snap some cool photos:



Here we met a french traveler, around our age who had traveled from France to here through turkey, the middle east, Russia, the Himalayas and everything between! He had traveled mainly by foot, carrying about 60-80 pounds on his back, or various means of travel, such as horseback over the Himalayas. New Zealand was his last destination before he returned home in 2 weeks. He said he was tired, just wanted to go home. I can't blame the kid, most of his travels (which i think was around 8 months, maybe 12) was while he was alone. Well, he put us to shame. We were living in style in this cramped van/bed/kitchen! haha.

After the sun set we proceeded to slope point, the southern most tip of the southern island. Unless you go to the Stewart island south of Invercargill, this is as close as your gonna get to Antarctica. We slept here on the side of the road and crossed over a sheep pasture to get to the coast. A pretty cool feeling to be this far south of the world.


This sums up our trip to the Catlins. Yes, we only spent one day in my favorite place in New Zealand. You could easily spend a couple weeks here, and you couldnt take in all of the wide range of beauty offered here. Well, theres still the summer!

Spring Break: First to Otago!

So I begin in an attempt to document my spring break. Sure, 12 days, cant be that hard Luke! Well it is. Over those 12 days we almost covered the entire perimeter of the south island!

Well, first day we used the van to go shopping for the trip, driving through the city of Christchurch was quite nerve-racking with this large van with many blind spots (not to mention I've only driven on the left side of the road for a total of 1 hour before this trip.

Out of the city, we head to Dunedin! No problems at this point, although I had to be reminded a couple times by my fellow passengers I was driving on the wrong side of the road. Most of the roads outside of town centers are 100 kilometers per hour, or 60mph. I'm used to 60mph, but the "Main Highway 1" of New Zealand is usually as wide as my home street which is usually 30mph! The rental company said they just completed this national highway last year. A little different from our road infrastructure eh?

Our first stop on the way to Dunedin was the quaint town of Oamaru, where we saw yellow-eyed penguins.

Next, the Moeraki Boulders! These were strange perfectly round rocks along the coastline huddled together.

We arrived at Dunedin at dusk and we now began our next challenge: Trying to find a place to sleep... for free. We were able to find a nice campground on Brighton Beach with a clean set of toilets! Score! We braved through our first attempt at cooking and sleeping, and it worked out surprisingly well!

The next morning we went to the beach and enjoyed some oatmeal. eating mediocre food in awesome places seems to make the food taste better

So we hit the city! Home of the most photographed building in the southern island, the Dunedin Train Station!

Then off to the art gallery, which was quite nice.

Because we didn't want to be spending any money, that was about it for activities in town.
So we headed out to the Otago Peninsula! where we saw some sheep (they're everywhere), albatross, and Shags

and... that was about it for Dunedin.

Breaking News Update: I Have Bad Timing When I Travel Abroad

That's right, there was an earthquake.

7.1 magnitude, 41km west of the City center, it was around 4:30am when I woke up.



I thought someone was shaking my bed, so i was yelling "stop stop stop, I'm trying to sleep!" until i heard my flatmate yelling I realized hmmm, I think this an earthquake!


Standing in the doorways feeling the aftershocks, we decided to get out of the building. (it took about 2 or 3 minutes to wake Prateek up, having watching the exorcism a few days ago, he thought it was the real deal. Jj on the other hand, was trying to find high ground for the possible Tsunami) Maybe I shouldn't have waited to get on all my clothes, but it was cold out!(some people were in their boxers waiting outside while i had my flannel shirt, my wool sweater and my thick leather jacket, i was happy!


Waiting outside with a bunch of Ilam residents, you could look up at the stars with no light pollution due to the power outage. not as good as the west coast, but cool to see the stars so bright in the city. Ilam apartments didn't really think this through, and we were waiting around outside while they tried taking attendance of hundreds of people with no electricity for their database of residents. So my flatmates and I decided to head back, told our RA we were good, and left.

In this desperate time of need I did the brave act of finishing my flatmates ice cream because of the freezer melting.

Going back to bed was tough, due to the excitement and just when you were about to go to sleep, another aftershock would come. Usually there are 2 to 3 aftershocks. Even today one day after it happened, were still getting strong aftershocks. they've reported over 45 til now, and some were as strong as 5.2 magnitude.





In the morning, I was able to survive on no electricity by eating a can of spaghetti-o's (well spaghetti in a can, they don't know spaghetti-o's here. what do kids eat here then?) along with a beer. Hey! no judging, its natural disaster and I cant drink the water supposedly due to sewage and fresh water lines breaking. I'm starting to like natural disasters.






I took a walk around to see the damage, and it was such a lovely day! Not many people outside, not a lot of cars on the road, quiet. Man, I wish I was a brick-layer because I'd be in business now! almost every other chimney i saw had either cracked or fallen down.








I walk to the school and... campus is closed! I decided to walk around anyway, trying to avoid the security guards. The campus seemed quite okay, other than the library.








Windows cracked, lights and ceiling hanging down, and bookshelves that looked like dominoes knocked over. I thought, I'm not having school on Monday. In fact, later on I discovered schools closed til the 13th! Spring break, extension by 9 days!

I didn't walk down to the city center, but due to the state of emergency granted to police, you were not allowed to enter anyway. a lot of the brick buildings had collapsed, and many roads were impassable. An Indian restaurant near my flat that i wanted to check out, had its roof caved in.


well, that's about it for now, overall the city was very lucky. No fatalities, only 2 people severely injured. electricity was restored sooner than expected about 7 hours late, and the water and sewage is still an ongoing problem. The aftershocks are still happening, which some you don't know if its the start of another earthquake, which there is a 10% Chance.



p.s.

to my exes, please stop sending natural disasters