Is Not Chicago

Ann Marie has just update her blog with photos and impressions of Queenstown, New Zealand.

moseying-along.blogspot.com

And check out her pictures

Merry Christmas to everyone! I need a break from the Guitar Hero we’ve been playing all day, and we’re waiting on my dad’s prime rib to finish cooking, so I figured this would be a good time to wrap up my NZ posts.

As I said last time, I enjoyed the previous day’s canyoning, that I couldn’t help but sign up for another day. This day’s venue was Routeburn Canyon, about 45 minutes outside of Queenstown, and the trip would last the whole day.

The company was nowhere near as good as I had bid everyone adieu to continue on their separate adventures. But I have to say, the canyon itself was superior to the one near Queenstown. This was the original location and the other one seemed a little more contrived. It makes good business sense for them since it allows them to offer trips at a lower price and a shorter time commitment.

After the initial hike in, the jumps, slides, and abseils were one right after another. There were a few moments for relaxing and enjoying the pristine river and forest. The water was so clean I was even able to drink it to stay hydrated. That was some cool, tasty water (and no I didn’t get sick from it).

And the only way to exit the canyon: floating:

And now my Adventure Down Under comes to a close. The only thing left was a long flight home and being greeted by 8 inches of snow.

More photos…

Since being back and talking with people, I realized something: some of my friends don’t know my other friends. Some of you don’t know who these random people I referred to and took pictures of are. So here it is, the Cast of Characters, the people that made my trip amazing:

Jason (Me):

Ewen and Victoria:

Two years ago, Brian (my travel buddy for past trips) and I were aboard a sailboat in the Greek Isles for eight days. Ewen, a professional travel photographer, was also on board taking photos for the travel company. A year later Brian and I attended his wedding to Victoria in Phuket, Thailand. If you’re interested in learning photography while traveling to awesome places, I recommend looking at his photography workshops on his website.

Erik:

Erik is one of my best friends from Northwestern. We began in band together and sat in calculus freshman year as our professor made a fool of himself. We lived together in Wrigleyville after graduation. Erik has been working NZ since about April and will continue to do so until his visa runs out in April.

Ann Marie:

Erik’s girlfriend. She currently lives and works in NZ with Erik. I’ve known her for a couple years now. She rules.

Gwen:

Gwen is Erik’s friend from high school I have also known her for several years from when she lived in Chicago. She is also awesome.

Emily:

Emily went to college with me, but I didn’t have the lucky privilege of meeting her until years later halfway around the world. Her connection: she went to high school with Erik and Gwen. Another kick-ass person in the Queenstown group.

There you have it. Now you know who these people are.

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time in airports lately: ORD, ATL, LAX, MEL, SYD, ZQN, AKL, MDW, and soon LHR all within about a month. And now I’m stuck at O’Hare with a three hour delay leaving me time for another post. I’m almost caught up here, and hopefully I will be fully caught up before I leave for London on Thursday.

My penultimate day in NZ (it’s just fun anytime I can use that word). Everyone else’s final day. My personal favorite activity. I enjoyed it so much that as soon as we were done I signed up to do it again the next day.

It was time for canyoning, also known as canyoneering. Wikipedia defines it as “is traveling in canyons using a variety of techniques that may include walking, scrambling, climbing, jumping, abseiling, and/or swimming.” Abseiling is what we Americans call rappelling. And that’s pretty much what it is.

Hop out of the van, and get suited up. The wetsuit is a necessity as all the water we’ll be moving through is snow melt, so it’s damn cold.

(Us before the canyoning)

It does make you feel a little like James Bond in that gear.

Then on to hit the canyon. Start with a little hiking in, then some zip-lining.

Got some jumping in. It’s amazing the difference between 6 meters and 8 meters. And then again 10 meters. (10 meters = 32.8 feet). And you definitely hit the bottom of the pool when you land.

(That’s the 8m ledge up there)

I think my favorite part was where we ziplined halfway out into the canyon, then free rappelled down into the pool below. It’s been years since I’ve rappelled, but somehow still managed to remember how to do it. It was incredibly humorous watching the people that had no idea. If only there were videos of it.

And finally us at the end:

I’ve decided that if I ever move to Queenstown, this is the job I’m going to get: leading canyoning tours.

Even more canyoning photos…

And then off to the bars to celebrate the end of our adventure in Queenstown (well, I still had one more day, but it was kind of the end of an era. If an era is six days long.

Oh yeah, gotta include the chest bump:

I know many of you have been confused about me being back home. I am, in fact, back in Chicago. I’ve actually been home for about a week, but as I haven’t exactly been happy about being back to work and winter, I haven’t made a big to-do.

While I was in New Zealand I was too busy doing all the exciting things you’ve read about that I didn’t have time to write about them while I was there. That has forced me to write the posts from home to try to catch up. And I still have about two days worth of posts to write. That’s how awesome it was.

Now to the big news: it’s already time for another trip. My boss had previously decided to give us Monday through Wednesday off of next week for Christmas and Monday and Tuesday of the following week for New Year. We’ve also been looking to repaint and recarpet the office. This has led to us closing the office for all of next week. Naturally, all I could think about was going somewhere.

I’ve been thinking for a while on where to go, and today it finally came to me: London. I found out that a couple friends will be in London for New Years (completely independently, but they coincidentally are friends as well–I bring people together across the world). Ashley said I should go as well. That was all the coercion I needed. I called up Brian and talked him into it as well (he didn’t need much forcing, either). So now we have plane tickets and will once again be gallivanting across the ocean. This is definitely the most spur of the moment trip I’ve ever been on.

So be prepared for even more. And my plan is to get the last two days worth of photos and stories up before I leave for Atlanta for Christmas….