4 days in NZ, 1 day climbing, so far...

Nothing like international travel to bring you up to date on the romantic comedies you've been missing out on. Eric and I arrived safely on May 3rd (skipping May 2nd completely) in Christchurch early in the morning. After getting our mega cheap rental car, we quickly went to work gathering food/supplies for our upcoming month of camping. It's actually quite sad how much destruction was caused during Christchurch's recent earthquake. It seems that the quake exclusively targeted churches, knocking out what normally would have been an impressive array of stained glass.

The first few days of our trip have been pretty boring. The weather has prevented us from doing anything cool. I promised myself that I would do some super rad New Zealand stuff and not spend an entire month abroad staring at rocks, BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT...

...this weather effing sucks and I'm going to go crazy from the lack of climbing and sunshine. Also, boy oh boy, am I gonna be fat when I get back. No climbing + a jillion cookies and heaps of cheap nz beer = SUMO RYAN!!!

As far as culture shock goes, I can't even tell that I'm abroad aside from left side driving and world's hardest to understand English speaking residents. Seriously, are they really speaking English? Are they really?

Sooooooo, we rock climbed. Oh yes. Ryan is happy. The sun came out after we were quite certain that our flight had landed us in a Pacific Northwestern winter. This place really is quite amazing. Check your ego at the door, cuz you're gonna get spit off everything. I knew this coming into this trip, but dang yo.

Friction?

Nope.

Feet?

Ehhh, kinda.


View from the top of Spittle Hill.


Eric waltzing up the buckets on one of New Zealand's coolest higball slabs.

Hopefully the weather shapes up. Unfortunately, if the weather is awesome, I will not be posting because I'll be having a kick ass time greasing off nasty slopers in an area that people film fantasy movies. Unfortunately again, if the weather sucks I will be posting, it just won't be about anything that anybody cares to hear.

Also, isn't it weird how inaccessible Mexican food is when you leave California? Weird.