Now That Jan is Over…

…I can continue writing, I think.

January was actually kind of insane. I worked 50 hours a week in addition to taking care of a house and two dogs and trying to enjoy the short amount of time I had off and take care of my body, etc. Hence why writing took a side line for a bit. I’ve slimmed down my resume to just one job and a living situation where I pay rent and so I think my life with simplify enough to leave room for keeping up with the blog.

As I said above, I have been able to get out a do a bit of climbing here and there, which has been awesome! I found a couple of nice people to climb with who have ropes and cars, which is really all you need! When I first came to the Wakatipu valley I was under the false impression that there is not all that much climbing here. There are actually several perfectly nice areas for climbing, some practically in Queenstown itself.

I live 20 mins away from Queenstown by car, which is pretty inconvenient without a car, but I’ve still managed to make it out to some local crags by bus, which is pretty amazing. There’s Arawata Terrace, which sit just above Queenstown. It took me almost an hour and half to get there from Queenstown via bus then feet, but it was well worth it thanks to the lovely climbers I met that day. Plus, this is the view from the crag:

Then there is Gorge Road, which is basically in Queenstown. There is only one bus hourly from Queenstown to Arrowtown, which I learned the hard way after climbing at Gorge Rd. I ended up getting home at 11:00 instead of 9:00 thanks to messing up the timetables, but it was again worth it for the super climbing at Gorge Rd., which I currently do not have pictures of!

I’ve been climbing with my friend, Johann who currently has more free time then me and so is super flexible with his schedule. With Johann I’ve been able to go up to a place called Skipper’s Canyon, which is in the mountains and very cool. Skipper’s road is apparently one of the most dangerous roads in New Zealand, which I fully believe.

• 

• 

With Johann I was finally able to get over to Wanaka from Queenstown. In order to get there, you have to drive over the mountains, which I was more than happy to do. Since I’ve done very little traveling around New Zealand I still have trouble getting a sense of the scale here. We were trying to local a climbing area in a place called “Hospital Flats” outside Wanaka which, as you might be able to tell from the name, is a flat area in the midst of the hills.

Looking at the map I fully intended to see a massive flat space like many of the valleys I’ve become used to. Hospital Flat, however, was much smaller in reality than is was in my mind’s eye. Until I do more moving through the landscape here, I think I’m destined to perceive small things as large and large things as small. New Zealand is definitely throwing me for a loop this way.

She’s also all over the place with weather. It will me smoking hot one day, a breeze with come in, dump rain, and then be 32 degrees the next moment! It’s still gorgeous and summery here for the most part, and you can’t beat the freshness of the air.

I’ll be finishing up my working stint here soon, and hope to be able to report more moving forward.

Until then,

Cheers!

Molly