Fishing at Taupo... and arriving at Queenstown.

The fishing in New Zealand is amazing! My dad and I went with a guide named Paddy Clark for 3 days in a row fishing the back streams of the north island in the lake Taupo area. The rivers are surrounded by lush green jungles and are usually at the base of a 300 foot cliff. Even though it looks like Fiji the weather is strangely cool and the water even more so. The techniques used to catch these monster trout are not far off from the ones used in Montana. Their is just one small difference, these fish are VERY spooky. Meaning, if they see you at all, they will hide under a rock and not feed for several hours. The only was to catch them is to be very stealthy and fish from directly down stream from them. Wading up the center of the river and making long casts into slow moving pools. Before long, we had hooked into some of the larges trout Í've ever played on a fly rod in my life. These giant rainbow and brown trout ranged anywhere from 18-24 inches long and weighed in at 3-7 lbs! My dad and I each landed about 6-8 a day, we probably hooked about 12 a day, but they are just so big and strong that even the best anglor is bound to lose some in the sharp rocks and snags. For those of you who speak fishing... we were using 4x leader because the visibility was so clear, and double nymph rigs with one or no split shot, depending on the speed. I was using a 5 wt. 9 foot pack rod with a 5 wt. line. My dad had a 5 wt. 9 foot rod with a 4 wt. line. The fishing was great! I highly recommend it to anyone coming to New Zealand (Trevor... you could make your dad VERY JEALOUS!)

We just arrived today Dec. 1st, in Queenstown on the South Island. I have never seen anything quite like this place. The view is amazing... the town sits right on the edge of the lake, with beautiful mountains rising straight up off the shore, streching out toward the sky with snow capped peaks. It really is an amazing site. Our Motel stairs at a garden, the wrong direction, but it's alright because the price is right and a better view is only a quick walk down town through the small stone paved streets past the touristy yet cute cafes and gift shops. Paraglyders drift off of a small peak off of the back side of the town. A Gondolla takes tourists to the top to either bike, hike, or float down in a tandem paraglyde experience. Here are a few pictures from the last few days. Enjoy.

p.s. The picture of my dad holding the Rainbow trout, he's actually holding my trout. =) (True story)

It's not flying... It's falling with style!

Hey everyone... I only have a few minutes in the Internet cafe here, it's quite expensive here in lake Taupo. Anyways, today we went sky diving and it was amazing! The adrenaline rush is like nothing I've ever experienced. Russell got a video of his jump but I just couldn't justify the extra dough for the video. But I did get some great before and after pics, including some of me coming in for a landing. The ride up only took about 15 minutes and everyone is crammed into a tiny little plane. You are all lied up inside, and as you scoot forward, people start dropping out of the door. They line up, hang legs out, and look up, then wooop... it's out the door. I wasn't nearly as nervous as I thought I would be. As soon as you drop out of the plane you flop face first down toward the ground. Only at first do you feel like you are falling. After the first 15 seconds or so you feel like you are just hanging in mid air. The free fall lasts about 45 seconds and then BOOM, the shoot opens and you are dangling a few thousand feet in the air. (BTW, the jump was from 12,000 feet)It was a tandom jump which means you have an expert strapped to your back. Once the shoot opens, he asked me, you ok? I said, "Hell Yeah! That was amazing!" Then he went on to spin us around and show me some sites of the area while floating down. Before I knew it we were on the ground again.

The rush was amazing... nothing like I've ever felt before!
Here are a few pics of me and my partner Olli. He was difficult to understand, but knew exactly what he was doing... Thank god. :-P

Pics from Auckland

Hey everyone here are the latest pics from the Auckland. More to come soon

Land of Kiwis

So here we are in Auckland New Zealand. To be honest, so far I am not super impressed. Yes, they have bungie jumping down town, it is right on the water, and we do have and advantage with the currency. (0.70 US = 1.00 NZ) However the city looks exactly like Seattle, the weather is just like Seattle, and with prices jacked way up, it costs just like Seattle. So, with two days of rain and struggling to eat cheap, we've decided that after leaving the North West coast of the US, we've landed right back in the North West coast of the US!

It's a pretty modern city, with lots of fun shops. I'm excited to go see some of the Vinyl shops and pick up some cool records. Today, Russell talked me into walking to the Museum. Which really didn't look to far away on the map, but add a tropical rain storm on top of that, and it makes any walk pretty miserable. By the time we got there, I was completely soaked and pretty cold too. I'm very suprised to see how cold it is here, even in the summer. I was expecting a much warmer season. The locals say that summer is just late this year, that it will warm up soon, but until it does, I will be cold and wet. After I got passed the shivering, the museum was pretty cool. Lots of old Maori (New Zealand tribes) weapons and history. It also had some interesting displays viewing New Zealand interaction with WWI and WWII.

In comparison to FIJI our hostel is very nice. It is a down town mid sized building, with 7 floors. We are on floor 3 in an 8 bed dorm. It's fairly pricey but considering how nice the bathrooms and storage is, it's alright with me. I am a little bit concerned with the ammount of money I am needing to spend here. Even though it is 0.70 to 1.00 dollars, everything is jacked up in price. I'm trying to live cheap, and I have to spend 27 a night on a bed, then 8-10 for a meal out (that's cheap too) and then 1-5 dollars on buses if I want to go anywhere. It starts adding up pretty quick. It seems like it's impossible to spend less then 50 dollars a day. I'm debating weather or not I wan't to take 3 hours a day and volunteer to help the hostel (cook, clean, scrub dishes, what ever they ask me to do) for a free night of accomodation. I guess i'll go a few days and see how I make out.

I'm excited for my parents to arrive, it should be pretty cool to go fishing all over the islands. Right now aside from better weather it's all I'm looking forward to in the short term. Long term I can't wait for Amy and Kala to come out and join up with us. It's going to be very exciting.

That's enough for now. I'll have some city pictures for you next post.

Mike

Pics from Fiji

Ok, I know you have all been dying to see how bad this Hostel we are staying at really is... so here they are, the pics from the Nadi Hostel and a few from the beaches.

Fiji

The flight was about 11 hours from LAX to Fiji. We landed in a rather small town called Nadi. Things here are quite different. At the airport we were bombarded with about a dozen hawkers all trying to get us to stay in their hotel or in their hostel or take a trip to the islands... they are very nice, but also a little bit pushy. We shrugged them off and figured out where to stay on our own. We ended up staying in a cheap hostel that is quite a dive. The room is AC'd but the bunks are kinda shitty. The showers have no heads on them and are just tile rooms and floors with no stalls. You just walk in, lock the door and shower... it looks a bit like a prison cell with a few tiles on the wall. The next morning we woke up and tried to shower and the knob to turn on the water was GONE! so we just used the sink to sponge bathe.

Our second night we spent at a small back packers resort. This place is very nice and not that much more in price. It's right on the beach and their are half a dozen hamocks to sit and sleep in. They even have some great big swings made out of bamboo seats that you can use to swing out over the waves. It's pretty neat and very picturesque. Although their really isnt' much to do their except sit around and read a book, journal, sleep, and eat. It's a really nice place to relax for a few days. We only stayed one day and decided to go to the islands where we can snorkel and maybe surf too.

Today we came back to Nadi to sleep in the Dive/crappy hostel :P (it's the cheapest place in town and we are basically the only people there.) This way we are sure not to miss our boat to the island at 9:30 tomorow morning. The beach house is about 2 hours and 30 minutes away from the boat, so it would be cutting it very close to stay another night on the beach. Besides, we can always come back to the Beach House for a few days after the islands.

I'm not sure if they have a computer on the island so it may be a few days before I can post again. Pictures are great, but need to find a shop that I can access the camera and put pics up.

Thanks to all of you that helped me get here and thank you for all your supportive emails and posts.

P.S. When does "Borat" come out again? I want to see that. :-P

Well, I'm all packed and ready to go. I'm currently sitting in Seattle at my brother's house waiting for the departure time to come around. I've been awake for a few hours now and it's only 9:45. I guess the anticipation is eating me up inside.

This world map is a neat little tool. I can mark on it everywhere I go and leave little comments about each one, like the date, weather, or anything really. I thought it would be a nice visual for all of you wanting to know where i've been so far.

I'll try and get some photos up as soon as possible. Technically the trip has already begun, I'm out of Bozeman. Step 1... Complete. And no, it wasn't as easy as you'd think it would be. Between building a house for my parents, packing up everything I own to go into storage, and hosting the coolest halloween party ever, well, lets just say I'm a bit tired and under the weather right now.

Please post some comments for me to read, it really is nice to hear a friendly voice while away for so long. Thanks for everything, your travelling friend . . .

Mike