check it out:
www.bexanderic.com
more to come...
Thursday, October 05, 2006
where have i been you ask?
i spent the last four months working on a volcano*
i also spent the last four months learning to snowboard**
and i met heaps of great people.***
yay!
thanks guys.
and yesterday as eric and i drove home, mt ruapehu, distressed at our departure, decided to give us a bit of a farewell.
a wee cry? a wee rumble? a wee eruption!
i will post pictures v shortly.
* thanks to my ticket crew
** me and pahia even did a black diamond run
*** you know who you are
i spent the last four months working on a volcano*
i also spent the last four months learning to snowboard**
and i met heaps of great people.***
yay!
thanks guys.
and yesterday as eric and i drove home, mt ruapehu, distressed at our departure, decided to give us a bit of a farewell.
a wee cry? a wee rumble? a wee eruption!
i will post pictures v shortly.
* thanks to my ticket crew
** me and pahia even did a black diamond run
*** you know who you are
Monday, September 11, 2006
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
these days i live on a mountain.
well, not exactly. i live at the bottom of a mountain and every day i bus up the mountain to work.
if you recall (and it will be easy to recall if you scroll to the post below this!) eric and i tramped through tongariro national park in the summertime. now we are both working on mount ruapehu for the ski season.
he works in the rentals shop, i work in customer services selling tickets. it's a lot of fun working with people and dealing with customers from all around the world.
exciting adventures had so far:
i learnt to put chains on a bus.
we (staff and customers) got stuck up on the mountain when the snow closed the road and didnt get down until nearly 8pm (people had been waiting since 2pm).
i am learning to snowboard.
for those interested in the mountain itself:
www.mtruapehu.com
well, not exactly. i live at the bottom of a mountain and every day i bus up the mountain to work.
if you recall (and it will be easy to recall if you scroll to the post below this!) eric and i tramped through tongariro national park in the summertime. now we are both working on mount ruapehu for the ski season.
he works in the rentals shop, i work in customer services selling tickets. it's a lot of fun working with people and dealing with customers from all around the world.
exciting adventures had so far:
i learnt to put chains on a bus.
we (staff and customers) got stuck up on the mountain when the snow closed the road and didnt get down until nearly 8pm (people had been waiting since 2pm).
i am learning to snowboard.
for those interested in the mountain itself:
www.mtruapehu.com
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
pictures say a thousand words? since the start of this year, eric and i have tramped (overnight with packs - this does not count day walks...) over 240km! here's a bit of a view of what we saw...
we started in the summertime with our tent!
cape reinga walkway: 45km
then we journeyed into the mountains - of a volcanic variety.
tongariro national park: 45km
once hitting the south island we headed back to the beach.
abel tasman national park: 57km
we started in the summertime with our tent!
cape reinga walkway: 45km
then we journeyed into the mountains - of a volcanic variety.
tongariro national park: 45km
once hitting the south island we headed back to the beach.
abel tasman national park: 57km
the west coast has hidden surprises - natural hot pools just outside the hut!
welcome flats tramp: 34km
and then there was the 50km of hitch-hiking to the road end.
mount aspiring national park: 23km + 1000m vertical above the bushline
to stewart island on an 8 seater plane (i sat next to the pilot!) and to a place where the forest has never been touched since the dawning of time!
rakiura track: 36km
welcome flats tramp: 34km
and then there was the 50km of hitch-hiking to the road end.
mount aspiring national park: 23km + 1000m vertical above the bushline
to stewart island on an 8 seater plane (i sat next to the pilot!) and to a place where the forest has never been touched since the dawning of time!
rakiura track: 36km
Friday, June 02, 2006
ouch.
my apologies.
for the serious time lapse.
but let's be serious.
when internet time is $2 for 10 minutes,
and when there are glaciers to be climbed,
keas to stalk,
fjords to float through,
8-seater flights with me sitting next to the pilot to stewart island to be taken,
kiwis to be spotted,
mountains to marvel at,
games of cheat to be played,
roads to be driven,
penguins and sealions to be photographed,
and life to be lived...
well.
sometimes computer typing has to take second seat.
there is more to come. i promise.
my apologies.
for the serious time lapse.
but let's be serious.
when internet time is $2 for 10 minutes,
and when there are glaciers to be climbed,
keas to stalk,
fjords to float through,
8-seater flights with me sitting next to the pilot to stewart island to be taken,
kiwis to be spotted,
mountains to marvel at,
games of cheat to be played,
roads to be driven,
penguins and sealions to be photographed,
and life to be lived...
well.
sometimes computer typing has to take second seat.
there is more to come. i promise.
Monday, April 17, 2006
ONE
"My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now."
Robert Frost: After Apple-Picking (1914)
TWO
a maths problem for someone mathematical to solve:
each day i wear a bag that i put apples into. once when i was bored i counted how many apples it took to fill that bag. 100. once my bag is full i put it into a big bin. it takes about 20 bags to fill that bin. eric and i fill the bin together. over a day we would average about 9 bins. our record was 11. weve been doing this for 5 or 6 days a week for nearly two months now. thats a lot of apples eh?
how many?
heh.
THREE
so my orchard days are drawing to a close. its been a good experience - weve met lots of fun people from all sorts of walks of life who are all picking apples for very different reasons. weve worked in the hot sun, the rain and nearly in a frost (apparantly it was nothing like a frost but there was snow in the mountains behind us, i could see my breath on the air and the apples felt like ice cubes - or ice spheres i suppose). its been fun - ive learnt all about apples (how they sunburn and bruise and get punctured from stems and grow 1mm a day) and will never see them in the same light again! i will also never buy an apple from a supermarket again - they are in bad condition there! for casual work the pay is decent too - wed average $15 an hour easily, if not more like $18 an hour which isnt bad at all for my first experience on an orchard.
two days left! then eric and i head down the west coast to experience some real west coast wilderness and rain!
"My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now."
Robert Frost: After Apple-Picking (1914)
TWO
a maths problem for someone mathematical to solve:
each day i wear a bag that i put apples into. once when i was bored i counted how many apples it took to fill that bag. 100. once my bag is full i put it into a big bin. it takes about 20 bags to fill that bin. eric and i fill the bin together. over a day we would average about 9 bins. our record was 11. weve been doing this for 5 or 6 days a week for nearly two months now. thats a lot of apples eh?
how many?
heh.
THREE
so my orchard days are drawing to a close. its been a good experience - weve met lots of fun people from all sorts of walks of life who are all picking apples for very different reasons. weve worked in the hot sun, the rain and nearly in a frost (apparantly it was nothing like a frost but there was snow in the mountains behind us, i could see my breath on the air and the apples felt like ice cubes - or ice spheres i suppose). its been fun - ive learnt all about apples (how they sunburn and bruise and get punctured from stems and grow 1mm a day) and will never see them in the same light again! i will also never buy an apple from a supermarket again - they are in bad condition there! for casual work the pay is decent too - wed average $15 an hour easily, if not more like $18 an hour which isnt bad at all for my first experience on an orchard.
two days left! then eric and i head down the west coast to experience some real west coast wilderness and rain!
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
happy birthday dad and caisey!
where to begin, where to begin? okay the plan of attack for updating you all is as follows: today i will tell you day one of me and eric's 4 day journey up through tongariro national park with some help from my diary. then on another day i will tell you about our current employment on an apple orchard. and then on another day i will tell you about our abel tasman walk (which actually doesn't start until tomorrow).
day one:
"i sit just outside the oturere hut and when i look up I see mt ngarahoe! how serene and grandious - this weather, this scenery but most importantly - the vibe... it began on wednesday night as the sun dipped below the horizon, mt taranki rose from the mist until he dominated and cast his shadow upon the plains. then turning to the east, the full moon rose between the saddle of tongariro and ngarahoe, a bulb of glowing light separating and joining the mountains with a strange pulsing luminescence...
i felt like i was walking through a calender setting of new zealand's most beautiful landscapes - a boardwalk taking us across a meandering stream that trickled and moved at will... and then onwards and upwards to the dreaded satan's staircase - a 50 minute vertical climb and clamber over rocks and up to the saddle the moon had easily sauntered over the night before... the south crater lay eerily quiet and flat - a moonscape with a brown lake steaming with gas. on reaching the red crater - a detour was in order and we walked to the peak of tongariro - my tribe's mountain - my mountain - the first mountain i have ever climbed! upwards and into the land of mordor, the land of the orcs. i could picture it all so clearly - the landscape so desolate and smoking, so alien, the plateaus, the desert rock and sand, the harsh environment with no plant life, no animal life - the only life? small specks of people following a windy track to their final destination...
then we turned, downwards passed the incredible emerald lakes - downwards along a steep ridge and into an even stranger and bold landscape of large rock formations shaped like lions and apes, turtles and weird creatures - all frozen to stone at some time thousands of years before. everywhere was sand - moving and shaped into rivers and torrents, trickles and pools. boulders dumped unceremoniously by volcanic giants that still showed their power behind me. these boulders stood tall amidst the sand, proud and yet abandoned and deserted and cast into a land of dirt. the rocky desertscape continued but finally oturere hut appeared...
walking through this area - through the saddle of ngarahoe and tongariro, up tongariro, around the edge of these volcanoes, and through the pass between ruapehu and ngarahoe was a humbling experience and i would gladly walk it again."
where to begin, where to begin? okay the plan of attack for updating you all is as follows: today i will tell you day one of me and eric's 4 day journey up through tongariro national park with some help from my diary. then on another day i will tell you about our current employment on an apple orchard. and then on another day i will tell you about our abel tasman walk (which actually doesn't start until tomorrow).
day one:
"i sit just outside the oturere hut and when i look up I see mt ngarahoe! how serene and grandious - this weather, this scenery but most importantly - the vibe... it began on wednesday night as the sun dipped below the horizon, mt taranki rose from the mist until he dominated and cast his shadow upon the plains. then turning to the east, the full moon rose between the saddle of tongariro and ngarahoe, a bulb of glowing light separating and joining the mountains with a strange pulsing luminescence...
i felt like i was walking through a calender setting of new zealand's most beautiful landscapes - a boardwalk taking us across a meandering stream that trickled and moved at will... and then onwards and upwards to the dreaded satan's staircase - a 50 minute vertical climb and clamber over rocks and up to the saddle the moon had easily sauntered over the night before... the south crater lay eerily quiet and flat - a moonscape with a brown lake steaming with gas. on reaching the red crater - a detour was in order and we walked to the peak of tongariro - my tribe's mountain - my mountain - the first mountain i have ever climbed! upwards and into the land of mordor, the land of the orcs. i could picture it all so clearly - the landscape so desolate and smoking, so alien, the plateaus, the desert rock and sand, the harsh environment with no plant life, no animal life - the only life? small specks of people following a windy track to their final destination...
then we turned, downwards passed the incredible emerald lakes - downwards along a steep ridge and into an even stranger and bold landscape of large rock formations shaped like lions and apes, turtles and weird creatures - all frozen to stone at some time thousands of years before. everywhere was sand - moving and shaped into rivers and torrents, trickles and pools. boulders dumped unceremoniously by volcanic giants that still showed their power behind me. these boulders stood tall amidst the sand, proud and yet abandoned and deserted and cast into a land of dirt. the rocky desertscape continued but finally oturere hut appeared...
walking through this area - through the saddle of ngarahoe and tongariro, up tongariro, around the edge of these volcanoes, and through the pass between ruapehu and ngarahoe was a humbling experience and i would gladly walk it again."
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Monday, January 23, 2006
title: the northland experience
author: rebekah merriman
after two great mammoth christmas feasts - one out at parakai at rachel and regans, and another down in hamilton, eric and i headed to pak'n'save to stock up on a slightly different meal plan to take tramping with us on our four day hike.
we journeyed up to waitiki landing, the last pitstop before the very tip of new zealand. here we met up with approximately 4 million mosquitoes who greeted me with far more fondness and hospitality than i wanted.
the four day hike itself was a real highlight - to see completely deserted beaches with massive sand dunes on the horizon, to walk from sea level up huge cliffs around headlands and down into valleys, to clamber over such different environments from rock hard sand to farmland to gorse-scattered bush. the whole way we saw the sea, and the sea saw us.
backcountry camping involves boiling your own water, finding your own tent space out of the prevailing wind, watching the stars come out, and dealing with more mosquitoes. i thought mosquitoes didnt like the beach? i thought wrong. we met a couple who taught us how to make the local bush manuka tea - easy to do and handy as we would spend 5 hours a day walking past manuka to our next location.
a highlight that needs its own paragraph. the dolphins. after a 6 hour trek or so we finally came upon our destination for that day - a little beach called pandoras bay. erics first encounter with sea-life - a stingray floating past in ankle-deep water. but it was the next day when we were out in the breakers - about waist-deep - that we saw the teenage dolphins - having left their pod (which we could se further out at sea) - coming in to practice their surfing technique. only 10m ahead of us, on the next set of breakers, they dove, flapped their tails, leapt into the air, splashed and surfed the incoming waves with such graceful ease.
once back in civilisation where i could buy allergy medicine to stop the now 200 mosquito bites from winning over my sanity, we continued on our nothland adventure - visiting the hokianga harbour (where we rode horses), waitangi, paihia, kai iwi lakes and whangarei heads. we picked up my cousin brenda from whangarei and drove back to auckland, stopping in at goat island for a swim and a peek at the fish swimming around in the marine reserve.
i write this from auckland, but before the day is over we will have headed south towards tauranga... might as well make the most of this excellent summertime weather!
until next time...
author: rebekah merriman
after two great mammoth christmas feasts - one out at parakai at rachel and regans, and another down in hamilton, eric and i headed to pak'n'save to stock up on a slightly different meal plan to take tramping with us on our four day hike.
we journeyed up to waitiki landing, the last pitstop before the very tip of new zealand. here we met up with approximately 4 million mosquitoes who greeted me with far more fondness and hospitality than i wanted.
the four day hike itself was a real highlight - to see completely deserted beaches with massive sand dunes on the horizon, to walk from sea level up huge cliffs around headlands and down into valleys, to clamber over such different environments from rock hard sand to farmland to gorse-scattered bush. the whole way we saw the sea, and the sea saw us.
backcountry camping involves boiling your own water, finding your own tent space out of the prevailing wind, watching the stars come out, and dealing with more mosquitoes. i thought mosquitoes didnt like the beach? i thought wrong. we met a couple who taught us how to make the local bush manuka tea - easy to do and handy as we would spend 5 hours a day walking past manuka to our next location.
a highlight that needs its own paragraph. the dolphins. after a 6 hour trek or so we finally came upon our destination for that day - a little beach called pandoras bay. erics first encounter with sea-life - a stingray floating past in ankle-deep water. but it was the next day when we were out in the breakers - about waist-deep - that we saw the teenage dolphins - having left their pod (which we could se further out at sea) - coming in to practice their surfing technique. only 10m ahead of us, on the next set of breakers, they dove, flapped their tails, leapt into the air, splashed and surfed the incoming waves with such graceful ease.
once back in civilisation where i could buy allergy medicine to stop the now 200 mosquito bites from winning over my sanity, we continued on our nothland adventure - visiting the hokianga harbour (where we rode horses), waitangi, paihia, kai iwi lakes and whangarei heads. we picked up my cousin brenda from whangarei and drove back to auckland, stopping in at goat island for a swim and a peek at the fish swimming around in the marine reserve.
i write this from auckland, but before the day is over we will have headed south towards tauranga... might as well make the most of this excellent summertime weather!
until next time...
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