New Zealand

14/02/08
Wow, look at that kids, it’s St. Valentine’s Day! Well, I can’t say I’m doing anything romantic at all to mark the day, but rather, chose to hurtle myself over a canyon and fly through the same said canyon in a jet boat. Later on tonight, I believe my hosts and I will be doing somewhat of a pub crawl around Queenstown. Lucky for me, they don’t really celebrate Valentine’s Day, so I’m not really intruding. Otherwise, I would’ve just found my own entertainment for the night elsewhere. Today is another pseudo-rest day, with the most I’m doing physically is walking to town and back to get shuttle buses. The legs are recovering nicely, and I think I’ll be back on track with another day like this. Lucky for me, that’s exactly how I planned it out! Hee hee. Anyway, for today, I put together a map showing where I did things, but they are not my typical biking maps. Read on, and check out the pics too.

13/02/08
Hey gang, well, I made another valiant attempt at taking a rest day in Queenstown today. My legs were just basically shot from all the riding, hiking, canyoning, glacier climbing, etc. etc. I haven’t given myself a proper rest day, and I’ve decided that Queenstown, with its myriad of adrenaline-filled activities will serve as a vacation point for me. For the next few days, all the activities I’m undertaking are very low on the physical scale, but high on the adrenaline scale. I’ll be shuttled to various places to do all sorts of expensive things that involve me jumping off things, riding in high-speed vehicles, etc. However, for the first day, I thought that I’d just get sorted out, do laundry, catch up blogs, book activities, and just generally sit my butt on a couch. However, as is often the case with ActiveSteve, I made it a good bit of the day, but eventually, my itchy feet made me get up and head into town. No map today, but read on for a little about what I did, and hopefully the pictures will be up shortly.

12/02/08
Hello again blog-watchers. I’m writing this post to you from the adventure capital of the world, Queenstown! Yup, I made it to Julia’s place in one piece, after a nice challenging bike ride over the Crown Saddle via the Crown Range road. The weather was overcast to sunny for most of the day. The weather around here definitely changes in the blink of an eye it seems though. One second it seems like it’s going to rain down on you, and the next, the sun is beating you into submission. Crazy Kiwi weather. Now that I’m in Queenstown, I’ll be able to utilize all of lifes modern convenience like Internet, phone, laundry, etc, but the problem is that there is so much to do here. I’ve already spent all my petty cash, and am a couple days behind my blog posts, so I’ll have to try to be brief, although you all know just how terrible I am at being brief, don’t you? At any rate, check out the map and pics, and read on friends.

11/02/08
Hi one and all! Whew, another full and exciting day to report on from Wanaka. I spent the entire day wrapped up in neoprene and bouncing off rocks and in waterfalls as part of my Deep Canyoning experience.Yup, I forked over the bucks to be able to play in the canyons all day long. There were some great abseils, slides, jumps, and so on and so forth. I’ve tried to put together a map, but all you’ll really see is the route we drove to get to the canyon, and then all the pictures will be on one dot, as I didn’t have the GPS in the canyon with me. The risk was too high of breaking it. However, I did risk dragging in the camera, and that worked out okay, as you’ll see by some of the sweet shots. So, read on, and check out the pictures. I’ll probably also get them up on Flickr, as I’ll have access to Internet full time for a few days in Queenstown.

Hey gang. Just thought I’d make a quick blog post to let you know that I’m alive and well, but sadly, the blog posts haven’t been uploaded. On the plus side, you can check out the hundreds of photos that I’ve managed to upload while in Queenstown.

Rest assured, I’ve already got 4 posts and 4 maps set to go, but it’ll have to wait. At the moment, I’m in Glenorchy with just my day pack, about to do a 3-4 day tramping track called the Rees-Dart, along with the Cascade Saddle. Normally, they say it takes 4-5 for just Rees-Dart, but my plan is to do the main track in 2 days, and tack on an extra day to do a high alpine pass called the Cascade Saddle.

As you might guess, I have no computer here. When I was trying to upload the latest posts and maps, there was a problem with my server provider’s facilities, so the site was down periodically. Hopefully that’s straightened out, and when I get back to Queenstown, I’ll get the posts up, and maybe have another one for you to enjoy. Till then, enjoy all the pics!