In sunny Nelson, where it rains all the time.
Don't be fooled by imitations, New Zealand weather is truly shite. I'm, in Nelson, the sunny bit at the top of the South Island (I won't really be going to the North Island - I'm pressed for time on one island as it is) where it's raining and cloudy and humid and shite.
Nelson is step up from other cities I've been in that there are probably about 28 actual, real, genuine New Zealanders here. Other towns (Christchurch - the token big city on the South Island, or even worse, Queenstown, the token tourist shithole) share about 3 native kiwis between them, everyone else you talk to is a german backpacker or a brit who's working at their own youth hostel for free board. These people never seem to leave the cities, which begs the question, why not simple live in relative poverty at home, where the weather is probably better and you might be able to scam government benefits.
Unfortunately, I'm having a lot of trouble finding boots in Nelson. I snapped the sole of my old ones, which is quite a catastrophic failure on their part. It was sad to put my much loved and even more abused boots into a bit in Fox Township, but I'm not stupid enough to carry the bloody things around from pure sentimental value. Of course, I can find boots here, but not the boots I want. You see, good boots must be more than just boots, they must be beautiful, and the boots they have here simply aren't.
This story is, of course, not very exciting to anyone at home who doesn't appreciate nice shoes. I'll try to think of something more exciting...
Mountaineering sounds exciting at least. As I might have mentioned I spent 8 days in and out of a hut about the size of your living room prancing around with the biggest, hugest, clunkiest boots I've even worn with sharp pointy bits sticking out of the bottom. Pictures of mountaineering make it look really sexy (well, probably not, I suppose, unless you've got some wierd fetish) with people swinging ice axes willy-nilly and hanging over cliffs and climbing in storms with spindrift everywhere etc.etc.
In the real world, mountaineering is not like that unless you are really good, stupid, or Australian. Being Australian is a lot like being stupid, only it's not as suprising for people who don't know you very well. It's much more like tying bricks to your feet and walking around in sand in an enourmous refrigerator. This is not really all that bad. The problem is that understanding the mountain environment is not actually physiologically possible. All the old guys up there are just pretending to know what's going on, and if the weather doesn't do what they expect or the avalance conditions are better than they think they just nod sagely and pretend they knew that all along.
So, you walk around with your huge boots and your crampons on, walking like John Wayne with your feet at least 30cm apart at all times so you don't stick a crampon point into your own leg (this is bad. It rips your very expensive pants and sometimes your less expensive skin. Skin grows back though, pants do not), and you desperately hope that an enormous quantity of snow doesn't fall out of the sky and bury you or sweep you off a cliff or into a crevasse etc. Or that you don't trip over and slide hundreds of meters to your death, or that you don't fall into some enormous crevasse and get hurt. Crevasses are not like they are in movies (as in, not there at all). There are lots of them. You can usually see where they are, even when they're covered over with snow. You cannot usually tell whether or not you will fall through the snow into a crevasse and have to climb out (or become incapacitated and have your partner haul you). I can usually tell, because I fall into a lot of crevasses. This is usually suprising and a bit worrying. Often, you fall in so fast you don't have time to become scared. That's good, because it doesn't help anyway. Getting out of crevasses is not very much fun. It's kindof like wrestling an enourmous, cold, slippery giant. It's bigger than you, it's slippery, and it's got a definite height advantage. On the other hand, staying in them is cold and lonely, so it's best to work your way out one way or another. They're pretty beautiful too. It's like nothing you'll see anywhere else, it's just that you're hanging from 8mm of stretchy rope over an abyss that can be hundreds of metres deep with someone's ass, shoved into the snow, as an anchor. With this in mind, it's best not to hand around.
Mountaineering also involves lots of sitting in a hut. The guided group that was up there while I was referred to this as hut skills. Another group of Australians flew into NZ, up to the hut, sat inside for a week of shit weather and avalance danger, then at the first sign of good weather they had to fly out to catch their flight home. The most sophisticated card game these guys knew was UNO. Yes, UNO. I couldn't believe it either. Anyway, by the end they were real UNO masters. Patience and a tolerance to body odor are an essential part of successful mountaineering.
I'm running out of money for the internet, so I'm off to try and find Mica, who's hitching to a nearby town and back to collect some gear she left there before a hike while I was sitting in a hut in the hills. I might try to post some hitching stories next time, since it's a mix of incredibly cheap and incredibly frustrating.
Have fun guys,
John
