Sabbatical

As my fellow nerds already know, New Zealand is where Lord of the Rings was filmed. You can see it pretty much everywhere you go, in all the rolling hills, forests, winding rivers, and almost constant mountains in the background. It really feels like you are walking around Middle Earth at times. Which is pretty awesome.

Well due to copy write reasons almost of the sets from Lord of the Rings was destroyed after filming. Because of that sadly there are very few places from the movies still around. You can get a tour and see where certain scenes were shot. But most of the sets have been torn down.

While there were doing this, Frodo and Bilbo’s home town, Hobbiton in the Shire, was being torn down and there were massive rainfalls. They had to delay tearing down the set for a few weeks. During that time, the sheep farmer who owned the land got a ton of calls asking if they could see the set. It occurred to him that maybe they should keep it up for tourist. After several years of contact negations they were allowed to keep any of the hobbit homes that were not torn down already! There were strict rules, there couldn’t be any doors or other props around, but at least the homes where there.

Well as my fellow nerds probably also probably know, the prequel to the The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, is currently being shot in New Zealand. Because of this they shut down Hobbiton for tourist which meant we almost missed the hobbit holes.

Luckily they day before we left Rotorua they wrapped up shooting and Hobbiton opened the next day! We were in the first tour group to get to go though the shire since The Hobbit was filmed.

Because we were in the first group we got to see it like nobody else has before. It was almost entirely the way it will look for the move. The props were out, the doors were on, the grass was the right length! It was pretty neat to get up close and see how much detail they put in for the movie. Only some of the homes were actual size. A lot were miniatures (about half the size) that were just used for filming landscapes.

We got to see Sam’s House, Bag End (Frodo and Bilbo’s house), the Green Dragon, and five new hobbit holes for the new movie. We were allowed to take pictures, but signed an agreement not to post anything online until the second move comes out. So if anyone wants to see them let me know.

Here are a few things I can show since these were taken before we went on the tour.

Also it was a sheep farm. So I can add baby sheep to the animals I have touched this trip!

And this is from their website. What I got to see was a lot more realistic!

When they filled The Hobbit they struck a deal with Peter Jackson to make Hobbiton a permanent thing. Everything they rebuilt for The Hobbit will stay there permanently. For example the Green Dragon will is an actual building that visitors will get to walk though. They will change things around quite a bit in order to host a bunch of tourist though. Because they just reopened we didn’t get to see everything but because we were one of the first groups we got to see it in a way no one else will get to!

After Queenstown we flew up to the north island and into Rotorua. The city is one of the earliest settlements in New Zealand because of the many hot springs and geothermal activity in the area. You can imagine when the first people came to New Zealand they settled in a spot with built in heat for cooking and bath water.

Due to the hot springs the whole area has a sulfur smell to it. You kind of get use to it, but it always hits you especially going near a hot spring.

It is also home of the largest geyser in the southern hemisphere! It can reach up to 30 meters high. We saw it go off, but think it was closer to only 20 or so meters.

The geyser is locate in a village called Tewhakarewarewatangaotepetauaawahiao (means the gathering together of the war party of Wahiao), shortened to just Whaka Village for tourists. It is still an active Maori village (the indigenous people of New Zealand). We ate some corn cooked right in the thermal pools and saw a Maori show.

We also got a chance to bath in the hot mineral water. It is suppose to have therapeutic properties, and one of the big attractions in the past was a hospital mainly for people to come and bath in local water. The hospital was turned into a restaurant, then a night club, and finally into a museum.

The other big event that happened in 1886 was a major volcanic eruption happened burring several of the surrounding villages. Dave and I got a chance to tour one of the cities that was buried. This city had about four feet of volcanic mud and ash on it. We were told that some of the closer villages had about twenty meters of extremely hot ash! There were no survivors of those villages, but the one saw did have some.

Rotorua is a pretty interesting place with an interesting smell. It’s crazy to see how many different effects the geothermal activity has had on the area.

While in Rotorua we took a drive out to Waitomo where you could go through glow worm caves!

Unfortunately we couldn’t take our cameras down, so I don’t have any pictures of them. But we did get to go tubing with the worms! We got wet suites and climbed into an underground river. The water was freezing but the wet suits helped a lot (despite some holes in them). We walked though much of the caves and the guide told us to turn off our lights and above us were hundreds of little green lights. We took a walk in the cave completely in the dark except for the light of the glow worms.

We then trekked further in the cave and got to ride along the river in the dark looking at the glow worms. It was pretty neat to get to go walking/floating through the caves in the dark. It was incredibly quiet and peaceful as you did that. At one point we got to climb through a tunnel on our hands and knees in the dark. This was not for the claustrophobic! I thought the whole thing was a pretty neat experience.

We learned that the worms’ lights attracted bugs that got into the caves by accident because the bugs would mistake the light as a way of the cave. They didn’t excrete any waste; instead they burned it giving off the glow. We also were told that because they would turn into flying insects there were actually maggots, not worms. But because “Glowing Maggot Shit Caves” didn’t pass marketing so they are called them “Glow Worm Caves” instead.

While in the south island we took trip down to Doubtful Sounds. It is located in the fjords on the south east of the south island. It was as far south as we went in New Zealand. We took a two hour bus ride from Queenstown, then a boat, then another bus ride and finally got on the cruise boat. It was safe to say we were in the middle of nowhere.

Originally thought to be a harbor, Doubtful Sounds got its name because the wind flows into it and the first explorers were doubtful they would get out. Later it was renamed to Doubtful Sounds after they discovered it wasn’t a harbor. Actually they are not sounds, they are fjords because they were created by glaciers not by running water. The best description is to probably just see a map.

The scenery like the rest of the New Zealand was incredible. The whole area is a giant national park so there is very little out there. The weather would change all the time from sunny to rainy and back again. The wind comes in from Antarctica and gathers in the mountains and forms rain clouds which is why the west side of the south island is so raining. When we got out to sea you could actually see the clouds forming as they entered the mountains.

Because of the remoteness of the islands and conversation efforts there are native penguins and seals there! Every land mammal in New Zealand was brought here when humans came. Before that the only mammal on the islands were bats. This meant that a lot of the birds around the area do not have any natural predators. When the invasive species came in there caused major damage to the indigenous species, most notably the kiwis. Another bird that has had problems were the penguins. We were fortunate enough to get a good look at them from the boat as well as seals. Unfortunately it was near impossible to get any good pictures with a point and shoot.

I promise those white dots are penguins!

The trip was a lot of fun and really interesting to see. We got a little lesson on the history of New Zealand, how it formed and how humans changed the animal life and a chance to be out in the middle of nowhere for a little bit.

Hi Mom! Hi Bailey! My! You both look very nice today! I know you both are very busy and really nothing exciting has happened to me lately, so you might want to just skip this blog post entirely. Don’t you guys have doctorates to get or something? You should probably just do that. I’m just going to talk about computers or something.

No really, you probably should just skip this blog post. It will be boring.

So I have been thinking about the major difference between the C++ and C# programming languages. Of course the memory management in C# is….

Okay I think they are gone. So, everyone else listen up. I have a confession. I’m not going to talk about programming. The title of my post wasn’t totally a lie. What I did was technically not bungee jumping, it’s called a swing. It was by the guys who originally did the bungee jump. It’s basically like a giant swing you did when you were little, except it’s on the side of a mountain and it starts with a 30 ft free fall.

It was probably the craziest thing I have ever done. It started snowing in Queenstown and the swing/bungee site was up a giant ski hill where there was a bit more snow. Dave went first and after he is swinging out over the mountain the operator turns to me and says, “Good it worked! I always am nervous on the first swing of the day.” Really a confidence builder. I was next to go out.
They hang you out over a ledge.

Then they tell you when you are ready and then you pull the pin keeping you in place.

You are suddenly falling about 30 or so feet and the rope catches you and you swing upwards almost to the same height you started at. I was probably about 150 feet above the ground but it overlooked the entire city of Queenstown so it felt a lot higher than that. It was pretty incredible!

I'm pretty sure I thought I was going to die.

You got two moments of free fall. When you first started, then like a swing, once you hit your peak height there is another moment of free falling. It was a lot like skydiving but you were the one who pulls the pin.

Okay, I have another confession to make. The title of the post is actually a lie. I did bungee jump. It was a package deal… so it would have been stupid not to do both! Right?
The bungee jump was on the same spot on the mountain. There are two main differences between the bungee jump and the swing. First, you free fall about 47 meters (154 ft). Second, instead of just pulling a pin you have to actually run off a ledge.

Dave went first again. I saw him run off the ledge then heard him yelling! He came back up a few minutes later and in one piece which gives you at least some confidence. Next it was my turn. Because of my ankle I did my jump feet first instead of diving out head first. They take you to the ledge take your picture and look down. It’s a pretty never racking experience. I had trouble just going to the edge! Then you back up about 6 feet and they tell you to just run and jump off.
For a moment I actually thought to myself that I don’t have to do this. I can still back down. Every bit of my instinct was telling me not to go near the ledge. But after triple checking that I was in fact suppose to jump now, I finally got the courage.

I ran.

When you start off, you don’t see the ground below you and it’s easier. But as a certain point, you look over the edge and you can’t ignore what you are doing. By the time that happens you are jumping and you get a free fall feeling that I have only felt while skydiving. Then just as suddenly the bungee catches and you are going back up in the air reaching the top you your recoil and dropping again. Just dangling.

The pull you back up. This point was also scary too because you are just helpless. You get to the top and your nerves are buzzing and you have so much adrenaline pumping though your body that your hands shake uncontrollably. This lasts for about fifteen minutes.

You also find out what you will say when you think you might die. In my case I would yell, “Oh My God!” since that is exactly what I said both times. The operators where echoing it back making fun of me. Poor Erin who was watching thought something might be going wrong when she heard the operations yelling, “Oh my God! Oh my God!” but they were joking with us the whole time so I knew what they were doing.

The main difference with the bungee and sky diving was really that moment when you had to counter all your instincts and all your fears and just jump. It’s truly amazing what you are capable of making your body do.

There is also video of this. Let me know if you are interested in seeing it.

One of the sky diving brochures had a picture of a girl doing a tandem jump. She had her palms facing out and on them was written, This Is Life. You don’t need to jump out of a plane to experience life. But I do think it’s in the moments you try something new. When we truly stretch ourselves. When we do something we thought we were incapable of.

I am incredibly fortunate to this opportunity to live life uninterrupted for a month.

I miss you all back home and can’t wait to see you all soon.

Glaciers!

We made it to New Zealand without too much problems. We flew through Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to get to New Zealand and had about 20 hours in the country. So we did get out and look around a little bit. We had to go in two cabs to the hotel and my driver took me to the wrong hotel. After convincing this very nice but very confused old man who didn’t speak English that “All Seasons” was not “Renaissance” (they do kind of sound the similar if you say them right) he found the correct hotel. I think DP and Erin were happy I wasn't lost in Kuala Lumpur without any money. Probably, because I booked the hotel.

We are starting on the South Island of New Zealand. We landed into Christ Church but after the earthquake it sounds like they are still having a lot of problems so we didn’t stay long. We got on a train through a scenic route over the mountains in the south island.

The scenery out here is pretty incredible. There are mountains ever where and the weather seems to change very minute. The clouds are constantly drifting in and out of the mountains. We got a car in Grey Mouth and ended up in Franz Josef. Well apparently they drive on the left side of the road… and apparently they want you to do it all the time. Also they have odd one lane bridges (you just have to wait until there is not on-coming traffic). And DP ran into cows on the road shortly after we started out.

The next day DP and I went out on the glacier in Franz Josef! I have had a lot of first lately and this was the first time I have ever seen a glacier!

The hike was really great. I was a little worried about my ankle (it’s defiantly not fully recovered yet) and I didn’t know exactly what to expect. After a 45 minutes hike we put on our cramp-ons which are spikes that attach to your shoes. They let you walk on the ice pretty easily. A few times I touched the ice and was surprised how slippery it was and how well I could walk on it.

You can see the people in this one to get a sense of the size of the glacier.

The glacier changes nearly every day. For example there was a crack in the ice that wasn’t there the day before. There are all sorts of valleys in the ice and we went through a cave.

The ice becomes blue when the oxygen get’s squeezed out. That is why the surface is white, but the inside of the glacier is an incredible blue color. The hike was a lot of fun and probably the hardest thing I’ve done since hurting my ankle. The views both up and the down the glacier were amazing.

The next day we got in the car and drove down further south to Queenstown. Home of the bungee jump!