Mooching, walking, climbing, bludgeoning
Hey ya'll.
I left Christchurch ages ago, and I've been having a variety of adventures since then, but not many of the have involved civilisation or internet.
Out of Christchurch Mica and I went walking, and spent about 16 days out of 19 on trails and tracks around the place. We waled the Dusky track in Fiordland, which is a really well respected track - people think you're failrly tough if you do it. We got weather and it turned out to be a cruise which we did faster than we were supposed to. Oh well. I climbed a bit in Wanaka, which is the cool town for the "real" outdoors folk to hang out in, but it's filling up with trendies, and I hitch-hiked from Te-Anau to Christchurch to Queenstown (the equivalent of Sydeny-Melbourne-Canberra in just over two days, meeting a vareity of strange and wonderful people and getting rained on.
I just got out of 8 days in the mountains climbing big snowy and icy peaks. It's pretty intense stuff - the guys who are good climb 80 degree slopes covered in deep snow unroped and think nothing of it. The mountains are beautiful though - it's pretty awesome going plces that can only be gotten to on foot.
I'd better go, I'll try to write with more detail in the next few days.
john
