The journey begins...

After years of fantasizing about this trip to the Pacific, I have finally arrived. With my biomedical engineering classes officially finished and a med school acceptance in hand, it's probably best that studying abroad didn't work out until now. When others are taking engineering courses and science labs, I get to take environmental politics and island biogeography, complete with field trips! It's pretty nice when your biggest worry is laundry.

After a 5-hour flight from Atlanta to LA, 12.5-hour flight from LA to Auckland, 1-hour flight from Auckland to Wellington, and a bus to the Weir House at Victoria University, I settled into my awesome room, then set out for the town below with 5 new friends. We soon realized that there are a lot of hills in this town. And by "hills," I mean little mountains. Something tells me we will be experiencing a lot of these in the next 6 weeks. There is a quaint little permanently-angled red cable car that goes straight up the hill for a small fee of $1 NZ, but with about 20 different ways to get down the hill to the city, it's more interesting to walk anyway.

The first day was gorgeous, although pretty windy. To our dismay, the next few days turned out to be fairly gloomy with only sporadic patches of sunlight peeking out. Speaking with Kiwis (New Zealanders), it turns out that this is the coldest summer they've had in awhile, which they didn't seem too thrilled about either. Despite the cool weather and clouds, the UV index here is 11 on a scale from 0 to 10. Unfortunately, I learned the hard way that I'm going to need to wear sunscreen every day. Hello again, pink nose and freckles. The air stays in the 60s though; I can't complain.

After a couple hours of wandering around aimlessly in the city and by the water, taking silly pictures, and foraging for something cheap and decent, we ended up with Chinese mall food. Go figure. Oh well, I'm not here for the cuisine, that's for sure.

Sheri, Matt, Tomas, and I decided to spend our first weekend backpacking ("tramping") on the Queen Charlotte Track in the Marlborough Sounds. Thursday after classes, Sheri and I trekked to the ferry terminal for the couple-hour ferry from Wellington to Picton on the South Island. We all stayed in a hostel, then got up bright and early, hit up a delicious bakery, and headed to the water taxi to take us to Ship's Cove, the beginning of the 71 km (~44 mi) Queen Charlotte Track. It was a gorgeous morning, but clouds soon covered the sky. This cold summer actually turned out to be a blessing, for our weekend at least. The shade, wind, and occasional mist made for absolutely perfect hiking weather. As someone who uses backpacking solely as a means to an end - a cave - the trail was a little tougher than I expected, but not terrible. We made good time with roughly 7-8 hour days. The trail had nice variety between the coast, ridgeline, lookouts, areas with only one type of tree, and grassy fields. For almost the entire trip, you could see bays and little coves for miles. The view was incredible from almost anywhere, although the highlight for me was on the second day. After a long stretch of hiking up, we took a sidetrack that was pretty much a straight shot to the top of the mountain. The picture does not nearly do justice.

Sunday, we got an early start to make sure that we made it to the end in time for the water taxi pick-up. The sun decided to show up on the last day and made for a perfect ending. Even with breaks and a wonderful lunch by the water, we made it to Anakiwa 2 hours early and napped laying on the grass by the beach and basking in the sun.

Alas, I am back in school for the week, but I'm already pumped about this coming weekend, which we'll leave for in a couple of days... Man, life is tough.

I'll try to do weekly updates with tales from my sweet weekends around the country. More pictures from my trip are uploaded here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2224701&id=12811794&l=9181b54f45

Of course, my dreams were only made a reality through the neverending support of my parents, for which I am truly grateful. I love you all and miss you dearly!