whilest surfing the other day I buried my $5 walgreens flippity flops in the sand. After wowing everyone on the beach with my surfing skills I headed back to collect my flops.
Gone.
Just like my sneakers a week before.
Now Im walking around literally shoeless throughout New Zealand. No shoes.
I hope whoever stole my flip flops gets ring worm.
After 11 months on the road, literally walking through cow shit, foreign sidewalks, beaches, Macchu Picchu, salt flats, Hindu Temples, caves, glaciers, and the like…I have lost my shoes.
I’m heart broken.
I literally was going to frame them when I got home.
The van we are living in has a wonderful storage area under our bed. Perfect for throwing your shoes into when youre done for the day..if it had the net I wanted to install which would have kept said shoes from falling out of the van.
They fell out somewhere in the South Island of New Zealand.
The only thing keeping me from cutting my feet of is the idea Sabrina put into my head. She said “the shoes probably realized the trip was near its end and they decided they weren’t done traveling. So they left.”
I can get down with that. Good luck shoes wherever your travels may take you.
to not count your John Grudens before they hatch.
We’re having a bad day today. Just kinda beat down from traveling. You know being on the road for 12 months and all. We’re in Wellington, which is a spitting image of San Francisco (seriously they’re like carbon copies) and I think it’s making us a little home sick. Factor that in with the fact that most every New Zealander we meet is a complete uber asshole and we’ve decided to take our frustrations out on the following list. We do not mean to offend we just mean to get things off our chest.
Here are the things we’ve learned to hate (if only temporarily) in a year of traveling.
- people speaking with an accent
- looking at maps
- people. in general.
- foreigners
- wearing the same clothes every day
- walking around cities in flip flops because your shoes disappeared
- having to figure out where you are going to sleep every single night
- New Zealanders. SERIOUSLY.
- guitars
- having a headache
- losing my sunglasses
- people who don’t understand the concept of personal space
- having to pay for a shower
- having to pay for internet
- the phrase, “what do you want to do”
- the phrase “i dont know what do you want to do.”
- having to charge things daily because your batteries last 15 minutes.
- “sweet as”
- having the same conversation over and over again.
- being hungover
- not being drunk
- not being able to chill out
- not having our own space to chill out in
- people saying “blah blah blah when you get back to the real world blah blah blah”
- people honking at you when they pass as if youre not driving the speed limit.
- new zealnd radio stations
- john gruden, the miami hurricanes, the miami heat, jacory harris, and the entire national sports media
- losing the car keys
- losing the luggage locks
- losing my hair bands
- losing my ATM card
- losing the electric converter
- losing the phone charger
- losing the internet usb
- finding foreign currency we forgot to exchange
- looking for free wi-fi
- 10 am check outs
- money
- snotty hostel owners who look at us like were homeless because we sleep in van (by choice)
- the thought of getting a job again
- Ke$ha and the fact she spells her name with a dollar sign.
- facebook status updates
- waiting for pictures to upload
- counting megabytes
- not wanting to travel but not wanting to go home
- being fat
- being out of shape
- being constipated
- having the shits
- mosquito and sandfly bites that itch so bad you can’t sleep at night
- overpriced adventure activities
- overpriced gas
- overpriced beer
- peeing in a bottle (the novelty has worn off)
- I would say ‘peeing in the sink’, but that would require me to admit that I pee in the camper van sink.
- meeting people everyday you’ll probably never see again
- carrying a fucking backpack everywhere i go
- feeling like you cant afford anything, and always having to buy it anyway
- lonely planets
- being the new person in a hostel and having every upity ass traveler look at you like you have leprocy.
- having to listen to how many countries dude with a guitar and girl with dreadlocks has traveled to.
- meeting americans who make you hate america
I’m a bad parent. This is what happens when you leave your Jack attena ball unattended. Killer birds descend from the heavens and make him their lunch.
Sorry Jack.
I feel like I’m on another planet. Or maybe I’m dead. Or maybe I ate a really strong mushroom on one of our walks through the forest. It has to be something, because there is no way that these places I’m visiting exist. There’s no way this is the same planet that shares space with New Jersey. No freaking way. My mind has packed up it’s bags and said ‘Ill see you when you get back to reality’. My eyes explode every 3 seconds. I’ve never felt more alive in my life.
This place is insane. There are no words to describe how beautiful it is, so i’ll invent one. Redombulous. This place is absolutely redombulous. I want to throw my camera into one of these gorgeous waterfalls because my camera is an earthly camera and does not come equipped with the magic technology needed to capture these sites as they are. Ive never seen sky so clear. Never seen blues so blue or yellow so yellow. I think Ive probably seen 10 new colors I didn’t know existed. The water here is crystal clear…EVERYWHERE. Whether its falling from the sky, a 3000 foot waterfall, or running alongside your campsite in the middle of town. Crystal clear! The hills go on forever and ever and ever. Every rock face looks like it was placed for a specific reason. Theres no way this place happened by accident. I said to Sabrina the other day that ‘if god created the earth, he designed New Zealand.’ And I believe it. It fills me with this crazy pride Ive never had before for our planet. Seeing it as it is. As it was before we destroyed it. I like to envision this amazing thing flying through the vastness of space. It makes me laugh at the other planets. They completely suck compared to ours. Jupiter’s atmosphere will kill you. You’ll freeze to death on Saturn, and burn to pieces on Mercury. That blows. Somewhere out there I’m sure theres a planet that has flying cars and ray guns. They can have them, I’ll take these magic waterfalls.
Been a few days since I put digital paper to pen, so here’s my update for the last few days.
In that time we’ve seen insane cracks in the earth where ocean water rushes in through a small blow hole and crushes the surrounding rocks below. Insane. It’s 300 meters off the beach. It shouldn’t exist, I’ve never seen anything like it before. From bone crushing blow holes we ventured off to a rainforest that had one of the coolest waterfalls we’ve seen in a while. From there it was more mind blowingly gorgeous fields, beaches, mountains, and sky. This place seriously is the most amazing place I’ve ever seen.
Picked up our friend Morrison from LA, who has started his own little jaunt around the world. Then headed off to the small town of Invecargil. Went straight for the local microbrewery for a beer tasting. Seriously good stuff. After a few rounds of bowling we headed off for a pretty intereting and somewhat illegal night. Morrison has been sleeping in hostels while usually we park in the parking lot and sleep in the van. After checking into the hostel he realised that 1) he was only one of two people in an eight bed dorm and 2) reception closed after 8pm. Putting 1 and 2 together he figured we could just come into the hostel hangout, and then once reception closed move into his room for the night. Ingenious. After a couple hours of conversation and a few Do Bros to ease our fears of getting caught we decided to be rebels and sleep for free in the hostel! Next up for us grand larceny and kidnapping!!!
Fully refreshed from our illegal night in the hostel we set out for Lake Te Anau. Once again NZ didn’t dissapoint. Really small town surrounding a lake with all the needed amenities. We spent half the day being acousted by a senial old man who felt the need to instruct us on where to place our chilly bins (thanks grandpa), what hikes to take and which ones not to (ie do the ones hes done and not the ones he hasnt because he knows everything), how to use this crazy thing called the internet, and other general annoyances. We were having ourselves a nice little drinking and music session until old man river came in and without a word unplugged our charging computer and turned on the tv to watch the news…over or music!!! We were dumbstruck. Some people can be so freaking rude.
We met another traveler from Oregon, but I like to think he was an angel. A weed angel. Not 30 minutes after he met us he GAVE us a huge bag of some of the best weed I’ve ever had. I thought we had died or that I was making a deal with the devil, trading him this bag of weed for the souls of all the children in Africa. But nope. Just straight up gave it to us. So what did we do in return? Got high as shit and went to see a movie. The movie was shot from a helicopter all over the south land. It shows the area in all its glory. Just mindblowing stuff. Magic waterfalls that dissapear 3000 feet up in the air, cliffs that fall off into raging seas, mountains that seem to pierce the sky, and lots and lots of empty land. Sabrina was moved. Either by the weed or the movie, she proclaimed it to be 10 times better than Planet Earth, and definitly worth buying. So we bought it. Now I just hope we don’t run out of our wonder weed by the next time we watch it.
They say age is only a number. They also say you’re only as old as you feel. Well after hanging out with the local collegiate population in Dunedin I’ll say I’m pushing somewhere around 60. It’s amazing how old you can feel when you’re standing in a room full of kids nearly half your age.
It’s funny for so long I was oblivious to how old I actually am. People would ask me what my age was and I was always wrong. For three years I thought I was 30. It wasn’t denial, it’s just that I never really thought about it. I didn’t feel any different then I did when I was 13. I swear. I still laughed at the thought of me being responsible for another life form, be it a plant, dog, or child. I still felt like I could out drink anyone, until my hangovers kept me one step from the emergency room for the three days after.
That was how it was. Now…its starting to get a little different.
The thought of actually starting your night at 11pm is as foreign to me as walking on the moon. I think kids are super human that can do that. Me I need to be in bed by 11pm or be on some seriously hard drugs to make it past 11:30.
Most people are really annoying in bars. They’re loud. They aren’t funny. They’re way too aggresive. It’s just not my scene. I’d rather chill out at a local pub full of steamboat captains recounting their oceanic adventures or be sipping wine with my lady overlooking a park filled with frolicking puppies.
It’s sad. In fact it’s devastating. I blame most of it on Sabrina. She is constantly telling me how old I am. Pointing out my grey hairs or my grey pubes. I know it’s all in fun, but in a wierd way it’s brought age into my conciousness. I am begginning to now see myself for what I really am…a 33 year old. Yikes. Crows feet and all. I think I liked life a little more when I was oblivious.
I’m getting pretty good at bathing in freezing cold rivers.
I love when people are nice for no reason. Tonight we went to chill in some hot tubs. They’re really cool Japanese style wood barrels. Real fancy like. Upon arrival the owner of the place upgraded us to the VIP suite life. Hot tub, lakeside view, and sauna. Didn’t expect that to happen. In a place like NZ where everything you do is at least $50, it was nice to get a deal for once. We paid $60 for what should of cost $135. They say theres no price for kindness, I say there is…its about $75.
You know how they say New Zealand is the untouched version of Earth? No? Well they do. Ive heard them say it more than once. Anyhow. It is. And Mt cook and the surrounding areas are proof of that. Picturesque landscapes that are so insane they look photoshopped. Everywhere you turn greens brighter than any youve ever seen burn the cornia of your eyes. Blues so blue it makes you want to shove a crayola crayon into your brain. The colors are just jaw dropping.
This is the land of Lord of the Rings, and every single step you take feels like you’re walking through a movie set. I can’t explain exactly how beautiful this place is, but I will tell you if this is indeed middle earth I completely understand why those hobbits and wizards went after each other to defend it.
