Skies and Sands

Today (April 15) I’m writing sprawled out on my back in a hostel in Montueka desperately trying to digest one of the largest, most delicious burgers I’ve ever had. I would love to share it with everyone but it’s in one of those hard to reach places of the world, so here are some pictures. Just imagine trying to keep a hold of this colorful burger as large as your head while beet juice runs down one arm from the thick slices of beet on top of the burger (genus!) and egg yolk runs down the other. It the best challenge I’ve ever had to overcome, and overcome it I did!

 The Fat Tui burger trailer

Blurry but colorful. This burger had a beef patty, caramelized onions, cheddar, fried egg, some kind of special white sauce, purple and white cabbage, tomatoes, some kind of special red sauce, parsley, carrots, soft butter lettuce, deep purple beets, and some kind of grain sprinkled on top. It was so freakin delicious.

 Jessica and me unlocking our jaws to get it around the behemoth burgers. Jess joined Dan and me in Punakaiki for four days of our adventure. She is an old friend of Dan’s from when he lived in NZ when he was young, and she’s an excellent addition to our travels.

Although we demolished the burger, three hours later it is still kicking me in the stomach.

All this was after an epic round of mini golf played in the nearby town of Kaiteriteri (pronounced ki terry terry – pretty much exactly how you’d expect). At the sixth hole, Jess got sixteen strokes and Dan and I made endless fun of her. On the eighteenth hole, both Dan and I scored sixteen strokes. Karma baby.

Although we suck, we still looked mighty fine.

Now let me rewind a few days back to April 10, which will now and forever be called Jump Day. As I said last post, we arrived in Wanaka on April 9 from Stewart Island. We had reached yet another gorgeous town with beautiful mountains plunging into a glittering lake, and tall, bright green trees blowing in the wind.

 The creatively named Lake Wanaka.

These trees are everywhere around the South Island, and I really like them. They are so tall and straight they almost look like huge blades of grass.

The night of April 9, Dan told me the weather was going to be beautiful, and would I like to skydive tomorrow? Throughout the vacation, I’ve been waffling about whether I wanted to do this because I don’t like jumping off of high things, and I never met a roller coaster I wanted to ride. Then I remembered skydiving was something I’d written down on my Kiri’s Life Goals list, so I couldn’t not do it. I mean jesus that list is written in black sharpie, which as everyone knows can’t just be crossed out or erased! Once something is written in sharpie, it is basically carved in stone. Too dramatic? Maybe, but that is actually how I convinced myself to face my fear of falling, and agree to jump out of a plane at 12,000 feet.

The next morning around 10:30, we headed out to the airport in Wanaka, and it was a sunny and clear day, perfect for skydiving according to the hostel receptionist. When we got to Skydive Lake Wanaka, we watched an introductory video telling us our picture and video options and how to safely jump out of an airplane. My hands were shaking and sweating as I signed the forms acknowledging that I might die. In a daze of fear, I had to pick out the music for my video that a separate photographer who would jump with me was to shoot. They gave us suits, clipped us into our harnesses and suddenly we were walking out to the tiny plane that was going to take us 12,000 feet into the air. The easy to open pull down door rattled crazily as we took off. I straddled a bench in front of my instructor, from Slovenia (all these guys were foreign), and stared out the window. I wasn’t scared anymore because it couldn’t possibly be real; there was no way I was about to jump out of this moving object that was so high off the ground. Ha ha! Planes are for convenient travel, not for some ridiculous idea of a sport, ha ha! The instructors and photographers messed around the whole time, making lots of sex jokes and generally trying to stop the suffocating shadow of fear from blanketing their clients. For me though, I was just happy looking out the window at the beautiful landscape below us – patchwork farmland, lakes, a gracefully winding river, and peaks that were soon at eye level. “Ok, lean back,” said my instructor, and I was strapped within a centimeter of circulation to my beautiful stranger (as Skydive Lake Wanaka calls their instructors, and most were, in fact, beautiful). The door was thrown open, I was shuffled to the gaping hole in the side of the plane and GAAA he flipped us out. In the video, you can see the total fear on my face. It is odd how quickly the human body gets used to something because after about five seconds, I did not feel like I was even falling anymore. I screamed my head of the whole time though just in case I got really scared again.

Look at how beautiful the world can be!

Bizarre shapes against the sky.

When my instructor pulled his parachute, every swear word and an odd collection of other nouns came streaming out of my mouth. Behind me in the quiet that fell when we stopped falling, I heard laughing. “If I was taking the video, that would have all just been one big beep,” said my instructor. The parachute part was wonderful. There was no glass between what I was seeing and me, so I felt just like a leaf floating down from the tallest tree in the world. I looked above me and saw the pops of other highlighter orange and pink chutes against the clear blue sky. Too soon, we were back on the ground and I was kneeling on the grass, adrenaline coursing though my body. I gave my instructor the kind of hug I would have given someone who just saved me from death. Then I stumbled over to Dan and gave him the kind of hug that someone deserves when he holds my hand as I work up the courage to achieve another one of my goals.

 Although skydiving itself is badass, it’s impossible not to look like a total goon while doing it.

            When we got back to the hostel in Wanaka, Dan and I walked around part of Lake Wanaka to take advantage of the sunny afternoon, then went to get hot chocolate at the other Patagonia chocolate store that happens to be in Wanaka. It was delicious as the hot chocolate I had in Queenstown, but this time, we also tried the famous churros. So crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside, they were some of the best I’ve ever had. The dulce de leche and chocolate sauce completed the yummy snack. It was a surprising, scary, joyful, and shaky sort of day. I can’t wait to get back to Christchurch where I can cross off another one of my life goals. The other one I’ve achieved is completing the Tough Mudder, which I did with the help of an AMAZING team who I would run up mountains and through fire for if the need arose. Other ones currently on the list that I can remember off the top of my head are: go to Italy, have a sandwich named after me, spend months at sea again. There are also a couple others. If you want to help me cross any of these off my list, let me know because it’s much more fun than doing it alone. I already have my friend Anna signed up for Italy - I hope you haven’t forgotten about that, lady!

The next day, April 11, we headed over to Franz Josef for a very rainy night where we made a delicious stir-fry for dinner and chocolate chip cookies for dessert.

We got to Punakaiki on April 12 and after searching a while for our YHA, we found it tucked deep in the woods down a tiny gravel path. It is the funkiest YHA we’ve been to. No industrial kitchens or huge refrigerator space – it was much cuter and hippier. You could almost imagine pot growing in the front yard. Although it was kind of a weird place, I liked the change of pace. The only problem is that Punakaiki really is not a “town” per say, more like a collection of four buildings down the road. This means no grocery store, no gas station, no ATM, but it does have very pretty beaches and the Pacific Ocean right there, which is extremely comforting.

Walking on these smooth pebbles tickled my feet.

After we found our hostel and went to the beach, Dan and I decided to go back into “town” to see if there was any food we could possibly find. The answer was not really, but we did find something else: our friend Sarina and her family, who is visiting her from the USA during our time off! They just happen to be pulling into the same parking lot we pulled into because they were headed out to look at the Pancake Rocks.

 We walked with them and watched the sunset over these crazy formations of striated rocked.

Look how much we’re enjoying the rocks!

Yes, they looked like one crazy shaped pancake sitting on another. Yes, it made me want pancakes. We parted after our short walk, and we headed back to the hostel.

April 13 dawned rainy and cloudy. So Dan and I took the day to laze around playing cribbage and eating fresh baked bread that the workers at the hostel make for the guests to buy. Steaming pieces of brown bread studded with seeds can really make a dreary day brighter. That night Jess’s parents dropped her off at our hostel and the three of us pulled together the oddest dinner we’ve eaten on the trip so far. Since Dan and I were expecting to be able to go food shopping in Punakaiki, we either did not have or were low on everything. Jess brought with her some pasta and frankfurters and we had some emergency soup in our trunk and a tiny wedge of cheese. We threw everything into a pot and what came out looked like cat vomit and tasted like each of the ingredients. There was no melding of flavors, there was no variation in texture. The Top Chef judges would not have been impressed.

Before we left Punakaiki for Motueka (where I am now) the morning of April 14, we headed back over to the Pancake Rocks and blowholes so Jess could take a look.

Here you can see the layers in the rocks really well.

 Thar she blowsssssss!

Today was a special day, not only because I had an epic burger and lost horrendously at mini golf, but most importantly because my godmother and one of my best friends in the entire world got married today! Although technically Lenka and Craig were married at 5:30 on April 14, I watched it on Facetime on April 15 in the common area of my hostel at 9:30 in the morning. Ollie was an excellent guide and cameraman throughout the whole thing.

Here he is, my helpful host.

 The blurry but I know it was beautiful ceremony!

As we walked around afterwards talking to people, he and my parents would introduce themselves to someone and then Ollie would turn his phone around and say, “Um and this is Kiri.” It was great. Technology, man, it blows my mind! Anyway congratulations to the new couple! I can’t wait to hug you both in person. And everyone else, I’m looking forward to hugging you in person too.