New Zealand Nuptials

We love excuses to travel (although we rarely need them), and a wedding is by far one of the best (we have also traveled to Belgium, Italy and Korea for weddings ... along with countless Small Towns USA). When we heard our good friend Jim was getting married to his lovely girl Saun in our favorite country, we were there. Even more so when Jason was invited to be a groomsman, then upgraded to best man when Jim's brother was unable to make the festivities.

Jim and Saun did a wonderful job putting together 4 days of activities for their 33 guests, and they were treated so a phenomenally good bout of weather for their outdoor activities. They took us on a welcome drinks cruise of Lake Wakatipu, followed by a night of fesivities that some (ok, one) of us is still recovering from...

Lake Wakatipu from Queenstown

Jason & Jim on the boat

They treated us to a wine tasting, a delicious winery dinner at Amisfield AND a hot pools soak as part of the rehearsal festivities...

Big Daddy makes Saun laugh while Jim looks concerned

Petanque at the winery

Hot Poolin'

And of course there was "the big day"... it started off in a typically cloudy, cool, New Zealand almost-drizzle, but Jim & Saun were rewarded when they made the bold decision to stick with Plan A and have their ceremony at Moke Lake, a gorgeous setting with absolutely no shelter in case of emergency (i.e., downpour).

The guests head to the ceremony site

All dolled up

Awaiting the bride

A Maori blessing to start the reception

Jason's toast

The happy couple

The week was nothing short of high class all the way, with all the details thought out and all of us traveling guests (which was to say all of the guests) pampered, well fed, and thoroughly entertained throughout.

I highly recommend scrolling through this page - it has the professional photographer's pictures. Some good ones featuring the Best Man himself!

Take a Hike

I am risking the rest of the NZ stories getting away from me as we start having new stories to tell from our first days in Portland. And I've been delaying writing this particular post, as I worry I won't do justice to the topic/experience.  But here goes.

After making our way to Queenstown and gathering the last supplies we would need to be out on the trail for 5 days / 4 nights, we re-packed our bags, left what we wouldn't take at the Crowne Plaza (where we'd be returning at the end) and got a ride out to the start of the Routeburn Track.

The Routeburn is one of New Zealand's nine "Great Walks," beginning in Mt. Aspiring National Park and continuing west into Fjiordland National Park. In a country replete with truly great walks, these nine tramping tracks have been specially designated by the Department of Conservation (DOC) and receive extra attention: better maintenance, more "luxurious" huts, and as a consequence more trampers.

Very fresh trampers, at the start of Day 1

A little on the terminology.  A tramp is a hike. A track is a trail. What you are doing is tramping, but when you talk to other trampers, you call it walking.  As in "how was your walk?" or "have a good walk today!" or "are you walking out (leaving the trail) today?"

"Tramping track" on day 1

You may have noticed from the picture of us above that the weather seemed to be sunny and lovely.  This was true on the first day.

View from just above our night #1 hut (seen bottom right)

Days 2 and 3 were less than ideal.  In fact, due to the second day's weather at the outset, we put our camera far away into Jason's backpack and didn't take any pictures until later in the afternoon, after the rain cleared and we had dried off and warmed up at our hut.

Forecast at the hut on night #2. Fjiordland National Park is the third wettest region in the world.

These huts we stayed in were essentially bunkhouses, with rows of wooden bunks with mattresses, and a common area for gathering and eating. In these, we dried off, rested our feet, read our books, and chatted with other trampers from around the world from Spain to Montana and right back to New Zealand.

40 trampers' gear drying out, Day 2

Jason drying out, Day 3

Our bunks, Day 4

When we started out, we (ok, I) worried our packs would weigh us down too much and the weather would really put a damper on the experience.  And while we did get a little wet and our shoulders ached at times, these minor annoyances did little to detract from the sense that, at any moment, we might just trip over a hobbit. The sense of scale portrayed in the LOTR movies is not disproportionate to the true sense of the landscape; from enchanted mossy woods to cascading falls to vast plains with grazing cattle to other-worldly rockslides that we encountered over our 5 days on the trail.

In the end, it was a slow trudge to the finish as a running injury of Jason's flared up at the end of the fourth day, making the 12km (7.5 miles) on day 5 particularly painful for him.  He was a trooper (although he says, "What choice did I have?") and we emerged at the end of the Greenstone trail more than ready to hang up our boots for a few days.

Less-than-fresh trampers!

Rather than rushing back to Queenstown after our hike, we booked a night at Kinloch Lodge not too far from the end of the trail. On arrival at the lodge, we headed to the communal kitchen to clean our dishes and discovered an amazing gift from the universe on the "Free Food" shelf of the refrigerator:

Can you see it in there??

Cold beer!  FREE cold beer!

Three whole bottles worth. :-)

Be sure to have a look at the rest of the pix from our hike and some incredible sunrise photos from Kinloch, on the northwestern side of Lake Wakatipu.  The link is at right.