Home Sweet Home

Well, after 325 days of traveling, we are home. We landed in Boston on the morning of July 7th after 5 sleepless hours on the plane from Vegas. Derek's parents met us in the airport and asked "so are you married?" They were relieved when we said no.

After visiting with them and meeting their new dog Cody, we headed over to my parents' house to see my dad (newly released from rehab) and my mom. We'll stay in the Boston area for 1 month in order to attend 3 weddings and the Faulkner family reunion / square dance.

Here are some totals from our trip:
* We travelled for 325 days.
* We stayed in 125 hotel rooms.
* We took 2,335 photographs, an average of 19 photos per day.
* We visited 13 countries.
* Together we spent (roughly) $25,000 dollars, including plane fares and other pre-trip stuff.
* India was our cheapest country, at $41/day, while Singapore was the most expensive place we visited, at $148/day.
* We took 34 bus trips between towns.
* We drove 5700 km in 40 days in New Zealand.

Derek and I both have enjoyed your comments on the blog throughout the year; it made us feel closer to home despite our surroundings. I hope you've enjoyed travelling with us through our stories and I promise we won't thrust one of our 20 photo albums on you when you come to visit!

Why Don't We Have That?

I've noticed a few pretty good ideas they have here in New Zealand and I can't figure out why they haven't caught on in the U.S. Here are a few:

• The half-flush All the toilets over here have two flush buttons -- one is just a half-flush, using half as much water, for those times when a full flush is just too much. Brilliant!
  
• The hot pot A plastic pot with a heating coil in it that boils water in no time -- much faster than the stovetop. Now, I had one of these in college and it was terrible, but every hostel we've stayed in here has a couple and they work excellently. Especially compared to all these electric ranges they have.
• Toilet seat sanitizer Pretty self explanatory -- disposable anti-bacterial tissues to wipe down the toilet seat with. Better than those rings of thin paper they have in all the California public toilets. This actually hasn't really caught on here too much, either, but it should.
• Supermarket scanner gun Some supermarkets here give you a scanner gun that you can carry around the store with you. You scan things as they go in your cart, then it only takes about 30 seconds to check-out. No more lines! Better than the self-check-out lines we have back home.
• The flat white This is an oddly named entry in the latte/cappuccino family that tastes like a strong cappuccino but is a bit more like regular coffee with milk in it. Ok, I already think that lattes and cappuccinos are redundant, and adding a third drink into the mix seems ridiculous, but Liz really seemed to like these things.

Of course, it's not perfect over here. There a few things missing that we have back home that I kept longing for:

• A single faucet in bathroom sinks Every bathroom sink has two faucets -- one hot and one cold. The hot is way to hot to wash your hands. The cold, in the winter, is far too cold. Why not combine them?
• Central heating No one has central heating. It gets down around freezing in some parts of the country. Those little space heaters in our rooms really don't heat anything. Is this to prove how tough the Kiwis are?
• A book publisher New paperback books cost about US$25. I can only imagine it's because they're importing all of them.
• Powerful radio antennas Our car didn't have a tape or CD player, so we were stuck with the radio. Every station would go out of range about 2 miles down the road. I don't think I heard the end of one song!
• Regular coffee None of the cafes have drip coffee, nor do most restaurants. The flat white is ok, but $3.00 price tag becomes tiresome. How about some cheap stuff?
  

Liz and I will be home soon to take advantage of all these things we've missed. Today we leave New Zealand for Fiji. We had a hard time finding a place to stay in Fiji -- it's very busy there at the moment -- but good old STA Travel fixed us up. We'll spend four nights there, then we fly into LA on July 4th. An appropriate repatriation date, I think. We'll re-adjust to American culture with 2 days in Las Vegas, then we'll be in Boston on the 7th!

The Tyranny of Queen Charlotte

The Queen Charlotte Track is known through New Zealand as the lazy-man's tramp. (By the way, "track" is Kiwi-speak for trail, and "tramping" is hiking.) The walk takes 3 or 4 days; you take a boat to the the trailhead, and the boat carries your pack to that night's accomodation. And by accomodation, I don't mean campsite; although those are available, so are hostels, B&B's and resort hotels. These are conveniently spaced out for a day's walk. At night, you can drink beer in the pub (or wine that you've stowed in your pack) and have a home-cooked meal at your choice of accomodation. In the morning, you set off for your walk, the boat comes to get your pack, and the the whole thing starts all over again.

Seeing as we have no sleeping bags or tent or "cooker", the QCT was ideal for us. What we didn't fully acknowledge before the hike was how much walking we'd have to do each day. You see, there's a reason they carry your bags for you. The distances are as follows:
Day 1: 14.5 km (9 miles)
Day 2: 12.5 km (8 miles)*
Day 3: 24 km (15 miles)
Day 4: 21 km (13 miles)
* Many people combine the first two days into one long day of walking.
For some reason, we thought it would be no problem to walk these distances in sandals.

On the first day, we took the boat from the nearest town out to the start of the track. The track climbed steadily for about an hour, through towering silver fern trees. At the top, there was an absolutely stunning view. The QCT is along Queen Charlotte Sound, a series of bays framed by rolling hills. The water is an amazing hue of turquoise blue, and the hills are a deep green even in winter. After we caught our breath and took a few photos, we headed onward, downhill on the trail.

The trail proceeded to climb up another hill past blissfully mellow sheep and then down the other side. By the time we reached the first day's stopping point, we had abandoned all hope of pressing on and accomplishing the second day's distance. We took a boat transfer to a beautiful hostel tucked away in a bay. John and Anne, the owners, rewarded us with chocolate-covered fish candy when we arrived. There were 3 other people staying at the hostel with us: Martin, a bird-obcessed 70-something-year-old from England who was walking the track on his own; and Murray and Chris, a Kiwi couple who were sailing and mountain-biking along the track. Dinner was beef stew (veggie casserole for me) with chocolate cake for dessert...mmm.

On the second day, we walked back along the portion of the track we had skipped. It was not too difficult, but it was quite muddy. When I related this to Murray and Chris that night, they said "Naw, that's nothing! Last year we were up to our knees in mud!"

Knowing we had about 9 hours of hiking ahead of us (and 9 hours of daylight), we set off early on the third day and walked fast. After about three hours of power-walking, were surprised to find that we were on schedule for the "slow walker" pace. We really couldn't walk any faster! We ate a hurried lunch and walked on. As we huffed and puffed our way up and down several hills, we were rewarded with the most amazing views of the whole tramp. We passed only two other people that day; they were carrying hunting rifles and had big friendly dogs in tow.

I remember a particular moment of despair as we were walking. My feet were on fire, and we were trying to reach a particular landmark on the track: a campsite which was labeled as being 2/3 of the way to the end. I thought we'd pass it around 1:00 pm, but it was getting on 3:00 when we finally reached it. This would mean we'd reach the hostel around 6 pm, a hour after dark! Needless to say , we were pleasantly surprised and relieved when we arrived at our destination around 4 pm. (I guess the signs were just really off in their distances.) At the hostel, we were greeted by Deidre, and Irish girl who'd hiked so fast she already had time to drink a beer before we arrived, and Sonja, a German girl who was too tired to get off the couch to greet us. We all staggered over to the pub to watch the rugby game and share a few pitchers of beer.

On the fourth day, Queen Charlotte continued to taunt us. We woke up and it was raining. "Oh, bugger," said Deidre, and went back to bed. She took the boat home later that day. Derek and I donned rain coats and went for it. The track was really muddy, and it climbed straight uphill at the start. Our feet slipped down with each step and our socks were soaked through in no time. It was pretty miserable hiking; there were no views, and the wind was whipping over the ridge. So again, we were power-walking to the finish.

Thankfully, the trail was flat for the last 4 hours of the day. We arrived at the boat pick-up and staggered on board. All I could think about was the hot tub that was waiting for us at our hostel in town. And the apple crumble served up at 8 pm...mmm.