Over Easter Break I went to New Zealand with a group of 13 students. Most of us live together and we were all Americans or Canadians who wanted to see New Zealand.

New Zealand is divided into two islands, the North and South. The South island is where most of the tourist action is, extreme sports and beautiful scenery mostly.  New Zealand, now famous for the stunning filming location of the Lord of the Rings movies is a beautiful country. We ended up driving most of the island tallying up roughly 3200km (~2000 miles) over the course of a week.

Driving on the “wrong” side of the road is certainly interesting as first but you quickly get used to it, the weirdest part is that some cars have windshield wipers/turn signals reversed (ours did) and that was definitely interesting getting used to. I wish I had a motorcycle or high end sports car, as these would be the vehicles needed to do the roads justice.

Our week was a fun filled road trip, we split our nights between camping and hosteling. The stars are amazing, the Southern Cross (the stars on the Aussie flag) are so easily spotted amongst a sky absolutely busting with stars.

Milford Sound is one of the most beautiful places (the album image below is from there) I’ve ever been. Mt. Cook, one of the famous mountains was beautiful as the backdrop to lakes. Even shooting with a DSLR, the pictures can’t do the beauty justice. Driving through the mountains and gazing on the sites with your own eyes is … undescribable.

Queenstown is the extreme sports center of the island.  We had Mario Kart style luge races (ski lift-esque picture) with 13 of us bashing into each other barreling down a mountain. Flips, blood, sweat, and tears were left out there. Well, maybe not tears. It was a great way to spend an afternoon with friends. I got to go horseback riding for the first time in awhile which was really great essentially cantering through the fields of Rohan. Our guide realized that two of us knew how to ride and gave us decent free reign. Our group ended up fording a river that was probably ~4 feet deep, it was quite an adventure and a great time.

We then headed to Franz Josef glacier where we had quite a journey determined to touch the glacier. Despite a rainy day, and countless warning signs, a small group of us decided to stop at no less than touching the glacier. Our trek involved hiking up a waterfall, around ridges, and countless slips. We scared several tour groups by our motley crew appearance… Perhaps it’s a story better told in person…

We eventually made it to the north side of the island where most of us went skydiving. Wow. It’s quite an experience, it’s a pretty interesting feeling knowing you’re about to jump out of a functional plane. It was a pretty wild experience, and not actually as terrifying as I had thought it might be.

It was a great trip, it was wrapped up in appropriate fashion when I had a plane that landed at 8:00AM Melbourne time (NZ is +2 from Melbourne) and an exam at 9, I flew through customs grabbed my bag hailed a cab and cruised into the lecture hall just as my one exam of the semester was starting.

New Zealand

33 Photos

I went to the Formula 1 Grand Prix in Melbourne this weekend. It was quite an experience.

The sound. The noise is pretty incredible and probably the most indescribable experience of the race. It’s loud, but powerful and actually pretty entertaining to hear. With redlines of ~18k RPM, they rev a lot higher (~3x) than your average car, which means their exhaust is more of a song than virtually any car. This high revving passes almost every other vehicle, my motorcycle redlines at ~13.5k, and the Trans Am at 5.5k, as mentioned the pitch is quite exhilarating.

The actual F1 race is around an hour and a half, but the festivities are a day long event (really, 4 days if you go to the other races and practices and timing sessions). This means that there are several races throughout the day and lots of other cars to see in the meantime. The other cars to see were as much a lesson in history as the current F1, there were cars from throughout racing history which was certainly impressive.

The Grand Prix takes place on roads that are shut down around Albert Park lake. I hadn’t visited here before, but it’s a quick tram ride and a pretty nice area. The panorama below captures it nicely, think I’m a sucker for palm trees.

The GT race was exciting because it was road cars racing, this means high end Ferrari’s and Lambo’s fighting Porsche 911’s, a stray Corvette or two, and several others. It’s refreshing to see high end exotics doing what they were made to be doing. There was also a Mini Challenge where Mini Coopers, which appeared to be mostly stock, were raced. Unfortunately, I think this race was one of the other days or before I arrived, but certainly would have been interesting. There was also a V8 race of cars that I didn’t get a great chance to identify, but was also exciting.

Unfortunately, the race ended under safety car, after 3rd place went for a pass with just several laps left resulting in 2nd and 3rd wiping out. Jenson Button racing in a Brawn car had been wiping up the field all day though and coasted to a relatively easily victory. Somehow, Lewis Hamilton, reigning world champion, after starting in the rear managed his way to 4th place by the time all was said and done. Richard Branson who just endorsed the Brawn team has had incredibly good fortune as they landed him a 1-2 finish. I believe he was quoted as saying something to the effect of “I’m the luckiest man alive.”

It was a great experience. I don’t think it would become my new favorite hobby, but I’m really glad that I went. Now if I got to drive, it might be a different story…