Off into the Bush

Tomorrow we are headed off into the wilderness on the Dusky Track for 10 days.  It is going to be pretty sweet, as long as we don't get caught in a flood.  The track is prone to flooding and we can get stuck out there if it does.  We have packed three days extra food and have a mountain radio that we can set up to contact people if we need to be rescued.  So basically it is going to be epic, except for the fact that we are carrying easilt 50 lb packs.

Let you know when we make it out!

On Our Way South

We have rented a car and are charging south to Queenstown.  Checked out some rafting companies in Merchesen and talked to them about possibly working or just getting on a trip and it sounds like it might work out.  We also saw a sweet water fall that is totally runable right next to the road.

It is also very cold in New Zealand which we didn't really account for.  On the way south we are climbing to the Mueller Hut by mount Cook and going to Lake Tecapo as well as stopping in Christchurch.  Then once we get to Queenstown we are embarking on the Dusky track in Fiordland, which is one of the longest and hardest tramps in New Zealand.  Should be sweet.

Soth Island New Zealand

We have made it to the south island!  We are staying with Brice's aunt right outside Abel Tasman National Park near Nelson at yet again a beautiful house with an awesome vegitable garden. 

On the north island we went to Raglan hoping to score some surf, but of course it was totally flat.   But you could see the potential for the points to be absolutely firing lefts.  Which tortured me even more!  Then we went to lake Taupo, which is essentially the Lake Tahoe of New Zealand.  Here we did a 19 km hike, the Tongariro Alpine Crossing and climbed mount Doom, or Mt Ngauruhoe as it is rightfully called.  This added another 700 meters of climbing to the 19 km hike but was totally worth it.  We can say that we climbed the real mount Doom in the heart of Mordor!  But the most epic part was that it took us about an hour to climb it and literally about 10 to 15 minutes to get down.  This is because it was like climbing a 700 m sand dune and we ran down the whole thing, taking hill running to a whole new level!

We then made our way to Wellington and across the straight on the ferry and now we are here and about to set out on the real adventure.  We have to go to the DOC office to narrow down the treks that we are going to do but we are getting ready to take off into the wilderness.  I hope to run the Perth river down here too, which really does exist even though most locals I talk to dont believe me.

Running away from floods

Queensland Australia is under water right now so naturally we have been trying to go north to Byron Bay and surprisingly all the roads are closed and we can go nowhere and this was our plan for the remainder of our time in Australia.  So we are running away to the safety of New Zealand!  We now are going to have another month of time over there which should be pretty sweet but if we follow our plan that we have formulated it is going to be really intense.  We are going to be there for about 3 months and in that time we are essentially doing nothing but bike touring, backpacking and river rafting.  We will all be jacked by the time it is done!  We are doing multiple 5 to 10 day backpacking trips and many shorter ones, running rivers in Rotorua and hopefully the Perth River on the South Island, and riding tour bikes from Queenstown to Nelson.  Also taking a surfing break in Raglan. 

I would like to say that I am totally healthy before embarking on this but I attempted a mighty feet of jumping over a saggy volleyball net on Manly beach the other day and failed.  I now have a volleyball size bruise on my thigh as a result of the gnarliest dead leg of all time.  But it is ok because I looked really cool doing it.

We are all stoked on this change and we are leaving this Friday the 15th to fly over and leave civilization for a while.  Hope everybody is well!!

Back In Manly

We have returned to Manly Beach from our road trip down the coast to Melbourn!  The trip was a lot of driving but was totally awesome.  On the way down we drove every scenic tourorist rout we could which was pretty but took super long.  We camped at a randome campground the first night which was good because it had a covered kitchen area and it was pouring rain.  The next day it cleared up somewhat and we went to the town of Eden which was pretty cool.  From there we drove out some dirt road for into a National Park and camped next to some river out in the middle of nowhere, which was super nice and pretty.  The next day we charged all the way to Melbourn and went to a Hostel in the Saint Kilda district, which was a nice place that kind of reminded me of San Fransisco in a way.  We ate at this cool Indian food co-op which had really good food and where you pay what you think the meal was worth , or simply what you can aford to pay.  Back at the Hostel it was a a raging party, and we came to the conclusion that we were the only ones there that were not from Australia and many people seemed to be living there.  This was kind of weird but fun.

The next day we left Melbourn and started back north.  We ended up driving out another dirt road for around 40 km to a remote section of coastline which had a packed camp ground but still hardly any people.  This was also the first part ofthe trip that I seriously regretednot having a surfboard.  We saw some guy catch a huge ray surf fishing and that was cool.  Finally the next day we climbed Pigeon House Mountain which was a pretty gnarly hike straight up this peak (Australians haven't discovered cutbacks yet) but had a sweet 360 view from the top.

Now we are back and no longer living off bread, nutella, and cheese and we area soon going to leave to head North this time. 

Oh yeah and Lucas and Brice played in a vollyball tournament yesterday and Brice hit an European International player in the face, which was awesome, but they still lost.