is this trip over yet??

We are so over this trip! Vacationing is one thing, traveling around by Greyhound bus in an expensive country is another! Well, actually it would be really cool if we were in a country that was more interesting and not so y hot! There isn't much history and culture to see in Australia, it's pretty new and, along the coast, the towns are so much alike. They're touristy but not as cool as the beach towns of Southern California. Apartments and hotels and over-priced restaurants. We finally said "to hell with it" and got to Sydney a week early so we could rent a car and head out on our own for a week. For the price of getting a hostel for the week we got a little car and headed out to the Blue Mountains. The 1st place we decided to camp was back down a dirt road for about 7kms. We didn't expect to find anyone back there but, low and behold, we drive up at 3:30pm just as the last stragglers of an all night rave were winding down! There was a DJ still pumping out rave music and people slowly packing up and leaving. There was trash everywhere! We didn't stay at the official camping area but moved a little down the road to a better, more private place. At least the people who put the rave on were cleaning up, but it took them all afternoon and they were still at it when we left monday around 10. At least they were quiet that night, I can't say that much for the birds. This country is filled with the loudest and most annoying birds!!!

The Blue Mountains weren't what we expected. It's actually kind of like the Grand Canyon (they even have an area called the Grand Canyon) but it's not desert. It's hot and dusty fields and gum trees that cover the mountains. There are a few pines as well, but mostly eucalyptus trees. The 2nd night we camped at an area that looked down out into the canyons and it was actually quite beautiful and, best of all, no loud birds at all hours! We stayed until about noon on Tuesday jsut relaxing and reading. Too bad that meant that we were headed out to sightsee in the hot HOT day. I think the temps were between 35 and 40C (that's around 100)!! Not to nice. We went to some caves to tour the caverns and it was actually nice and cool, but there wasn't a good camping area that we expected so we kept driving after that....and kept driving...and kept driving. Ok, not all night or anything, but we finally happened upon a random "tourist park" around 6:30 that night and for $20 we got to camp, have a little outdoor kitchen and a great hot shower! Oh yeah, I forgot before, we hadn't had hot showers since the Friday before!...or was it Thursday...I can't remember. Anyhow, after our first night and on the way to our second camping area we passed a comunity pool in this big, country park so we decided to have a little soak and shower...too bad the showers turned out to be freezing! Oh well, at least we were clean!

This brings us to tonight, our 4th night...Daniel came down with a cold and just wanted to have a good place to rest and sleep in a nice bed, so we stopped at a McDonalds to check for hotels...as it happens, in this country, you get FREE Wi-Fi at ALL McDonalds,.How cool is that?! So we found a nearby Holiday Inn and used up some more rewards points to book it for a few nights. Turns out it's not a bad joint. It's connected to the local RSL (Retired Services League Club--or Returned Services...something like that) It's got a casino with slot machines and a few restaurants and cafes and a gym. The hotel has a nice pool so it'll be nice place to relax for a few days before hitting up the city.

On Saturday we'll head to our hotel in the city, well, in the outskirts of the city. With Marriott rates at $54 a night it's great! Hostels in the city would run about $50 a night for shared dorm room so this is much better. They have a great rail and ferry system that runs into Sydney and it's only about a 20min ride by rail. We're actually going to be staying by the Olympic Park in a cool little town. It'll be so nice to have a place to call home for a week without sharing it with roommates. And on Thursday we'll finally move into downtown Sydney and stay in some Marriott luxury for the last few nights before flying home. Only a week and a half away and we can't wait!!!!! I'm at an internet cafe right now and the RSL Club so I can't upload any pictures, but when we get settled in at the Courtyard we should have good internet and be able to let you see how our pretty little mugs are tanning and doing. Well, I'm still pretty, Daniel has turned into "Mountain Dan" since he hasn't cut his hair since Cabo last April or shaved since we left for New Zealand! Get ready for a treat when you see him in person!!

3 weeks into OZ and we finally update...oops

Well, we've been in the great expans of East Coast Australia for 3 weeks and am now just getting to an update. Traveling here hasn't been as easy as NZ because we're going by Greyhound and staying at hostels along the way. Our 1st few days in Cairns were hot, but relaxing after we got some winter clothes shipped back home (for a small fortune!). We took our 3 day dive trip out the Great Barrier Reef and completed our Advanced Diving course. We did 11 dives, including 2 night dives and saw tons of marine life. Got a start to our summer in the tropics with rain storms and muggy nights, but it was a good start. From Cairns we traveled down a few hours to Townsville and took a ferry over to Magnetic Island for a few nights. There we got to know the local tropical wildlife sounds of birds and bats constant through the night! We also finally saw exotic fauna in the wild...koalas! Even pet one while on a hike! After a few relaxing days on the beach there we headed back to the mainland and went south to Airlie Bewach. A party beach town with an awesome salt water "lagoon" to swim in. Like in Cairns, there isn't a good beach to swim at in these places so they make these man-made swimming lagoons that are sparkling clean with sandy beaches and shady grass areas. Nice when it's 100 degrees out!

From Airlie Beach we went south a little more to Rockhampton--and crossed the Tropic of Capricorn there. We only stayed here to visit some caves 15km north of town, but there was no transportation to the caves, so we were sorely dissapointed and spent the day in the sweltering heat roaming the botanic gardens before hoping on the next bus south.

We rode the bus all night and just to be let off at 5am "near" where we wanted to go--The Australia Zoo. Only problem was that "near" was 15kms away, Crikey! So off we went....walking. We walked for an hour and then got breakfast at a small gas station place, walked for a little more and found a nice park type place to nap on a picnic table, walked for a little more and by then it was getting hot and we had walked 8kms. 2kms later we hit the nearest town and knew we could get a bus from there. The next bus wasn't for an hour but the guy told us we could walk, it was only 3kms to the zoo! We decided to wait! Got breakfast and finally made it there at 10am. It was a fun day seeing the crocs, feeding the elephants, seeing the tigers and all the Steve memorabelia. Not a bad day....LONG, but fun. A bus picked us up from the zoo (luckily!) and took us straight on to Brisbane, only about an hour and a half away. Brisbane turned out to be a pretty awesome big city so we decided to stay about 10 days here. After 3 days we met up with some friends from the ski field and it turned out they were headed up the coast to a beach villa for the week and they invited us along....awesome! So it was back out of the hostels and up the coast...straight through the town we walked to! And from the highway to the town it was a 10 minute drive. What took us almost 3 hours to walk was a short buzz in the car! We spend three awesome nights on the coast just chillin and hanging out in luxury before coming back to Brisbane. Since we had pre-paid for a week at the hostel we got an extension for the nights we were gone and are finishing them up here. It's been fun, we've walked a TON but it's super hot and we're ready to go. The hostel isn't the greatest (diiiirty, cramped kitchen!) but we have a 4 person room with a private bathroom so it's bearable. There's only so much you can do on the cheap in a big city and we've done it. In 2 days we'll move on down to Surfers Paradise for 2 nights at a (free) Holiday Inn which is a super nice hotel there and we'll recharge and relax in the air-con until we move on again in a few days.

In all, Australia has had it's awesome moments, but it's super expensive. Things here cost so much more than in the states and we're eating through our $$ like a kid at Christmas. Only 3 more weeks until we get back to California and we can't wait. It's sad we missed Thanksgiving, but at least we got to talk to our families and "share" in the festivities over the phone. At least we'll be home for the Holidays. Check back soon for pictures :)

Goodbye New Zealand...Hello Australia!!!

So here we are, our last full day in New Zealand. We've been here almost 5 months and have had a blast. Since our last post we have been quite busy. We left off in Christchurch and our anniversary. From Christchurch we traveled down the east coast of the South Island finding a few nice places to stop off along the way. We went inland a bit to Lakes Pukaki and Tekapo where the views are amazing, however, the weather didn't cooperate with us. From lake Pukaki one is supposed to see Mt Cook (highest point in NZ). All we saw were clouds, not to mention that the wind made it way too cold to even cook breakfast! From there we traveled back out to the coast and went through NZ's largest college town, Dunedin. While there we took a tour of the Cadbury chocolate factory and scored enough free chocolate to last us for the rest of our trip. We moved on to the Catlins Conservation Park in the south east corner of the south island. We found a nice place to camp on the beach, only to have it storm and hail that night. We woke up to calmer weather and decided to head to Invercargill and Bluff. This ended up being one of our longer driving days as we drove through Invercargill all the way to Fiordland National Park on the west coast. Once again, the weather didn't cooperate. All of our beautiful views included solid cloud cover and rain! A little put down by the weather we drove inland to Queenstown where we spent a couple of days in a hostel (warm showers and a kitchen). The weather cleared up and we had a couple of great days. After recharging our batteries, we headed north up the west coast to check out NZ's famous glaciers, Fox and Franz Joseph. They ended up being quite different from our ideas of calving Alaska glaciers. Instead of terminating in a lake or ocean, these glaciers only had a small stream running from them, and the ice was the color of rock! We stayed close by for the night and then continued north to Greymouth where we met up with 3 other Americans who we worked with on the mountain. They managed to find an american football while they were travelling, so we spent a sun filled afternoon throwing the football in a local park and writing post cards. That evening we took a tour of the Monteiths Brewery. It was short and informative, with multiple tastings at the end. We "camped" in the parking lot that night and the next morning traveled the remainder of the west coast and ended up in Abel Tasman National Park where we were lucky to have a day of nice weather. We spent an extra day around the Nelson area, where we booked our ferry crossing for the next morning. We made our early morning ferry crossing after spending two weeks in the South Island, most of it sleeping in the back of the car! Our crossing was quite interesting with rather rough seas in Cook Straight. Ashely was quite fine while I was a bit seasick, and spent quite a bit of the time outside getting sprayed with cold seawater! Back on the north island with most of the day ahead of us still, we traveled up to Napier on the east coast in order to take advantage of the one nice day of weather that was being forcasted for the next day. We woke up to sunshine and birds singing, and took off to taste some of the local wines. We spent the rest of the day and the next in the Napier area enjoying a bit of the city. From there we went to New Zealand's most sun-filled city, Gisborne, where it managed to rain the entire time we were there! I guess bad weather just follows us. While in Gisborne we posted the car for sale online, and decided to spend an extra day in Auckland to make sure that we had plenty of time to sell it. We decided to cut out a trip around the north islands northeastern tip and cut straight across to the Bay of Plenty. We spent a day here and then traveled to the Coromandel Peninsula. Coromandel is home to the famous Hot Water Beach and Cathedral Cove. At Hot Water Beach we dug a nice hole in the sand and let the superheated water (140 degrees F) seep up. Luckily our hole was positioned perfectly so that one end had cold water and the other hot, so as to make it the perfect temperature! From there it was straight to Auckland to get ready to sell the car and minimize our gear down to one backpack each. We printed out flyers and went to all the local hostels to post them on their bulletin boards. After about 2 days we had a couple coming from Australia look at the car and make us an offer of $1500 NZD which was exactly what we paid for it. So we basically managed to get a free rental for almost a month! Since then we've just been staying with friends of friends in the Auckland area and are now getting ready to fly out. We're moving to a hotel out close to the airport tonight since our flight leaves at 6:45 am. So that's about it for now. We'll be in Cairns for a few days before our dive boat leaves on its 3 day dive trip to the Great Barrier Reef! Hopefully we'll get an update out soon after we're in Australia!

pictures from vour 1st 2 weeks of "real vacation"!

Just some pictures from our 2 weeks of vacation so far. Seen some beautiful sights and scenery and have had some great times. One more week until we fly to Australia!!

vacation vacation vacation (ash)

Finally done on the mountain and we're back in the swing of things with vacationing and traveling. Packed up all our gear and headed out on Monday Oct 12th in a car of 2 friends also headed to Wellington. It was like 'Country Comes to Town' when we finally got to the city! We shared a hostel room with the 3 guys from St. Louis and all 7 of us went out to explore the city and grab a few beers at the Mac's Brewery. First thing I did though was walk straight to Starbucks and get a raspberry mocha. Heaven! I knew I missed Starbucks, but it was even better than I expected! Can't get too used to the pampering though, we need to stay on a budget to get through 2 months of traveling without working. Tuesday we walked around the entire city taking in the sights and sounds. Biggest city we've been to in over 4 months! It was a tiring day but very fulfilling. We made dinner with Darran and Laura at the hostel and hit the hay early. Wednesday we hopped a bus around 10am to go across the harbor to look at a few cars. After another few hours of walking around we finally got to the one we originally went to see and bought it. 1996 Mitsubishi station wagon! What a big moment, our first car we've bought together and it's a POS we've now named the Gray Goblin. We'll call her Gob for short. So far she's served us really well because we've spent three nights or 'camping' and sleeping in the back. It allows us to get somewhere and scope out the area and chose a spot to camp at later.

Thursday we were in the Marlborough region so we spend a good, full day wine tasting. The area is known for it's whites, specifically Riesling and Pinot Gris. Whites aren't our normal choice to drink, but it was a great day and educational. We hit the road in the late afternoon so we could make it to our next stop before dark and we finally hit the coast and the Pacific Ocean. What a beautiful sight! Driving along there were snow capped mountains on our right and a sparkling blue and turquoise sea on our left. We stayed in Kaikoura for the night after cooking dinner at a picnic table over looking the small town and expansive coastline. A beautiful setting to wake up to! After a (fun) day of driving in the misty rain we went to some thermal pools in the mountains, such a needed relaxing afternoon!! Drove on a bit further to camp at a campground in the mountains outside of Christchurch. Would have been nice if the weather cooperated, but the misty rain was refreshing and we woke up early and headed to Christchurch....it's another big city, but nothing spectacular. We splurged on a nice hotel room and fancy dinner to celebrate our wedding anniversary and we've just enjoyed staying in and watching tv and enjoying the finer things in life that we've missed over the past few months.

Got to get up and get going today now. We'll head out on the peninsula near by to do some sightseeing and more of what we do best, travel around and relax!

starting the home stretch of work

Well, time is almost up here on the mountain. The snow is dying a slow death and people are starting to head to the beach instead of going skiing. We hiked to the crater 2 weeks ago and got fresh tracks down the mountain and I got to work as a lifty on a T-Bar for the day...unfortunately it rained, snowed, was windy and sunny and cloudy all in that same day and it wasn't too busy. Many of our co-workers who were contracted through Oct 11th have been let go early and will be leaving on the 4th instead. The beginners area, Happy Valley, is the lowest area on the mtn and will be closing after this weekend. All of a sudden we'll go from around 50 lifties to about 25! I'll be the last ticket checker standing. Just like Connor MacLeod, "There can be only one!". Anyhow, we're starting to figure out what we'll do on our travels across the country and beyond...never much for planning ahead I guess! We've had a great time up here but just can't wait to get to the beach and relax and then go out and explore and see the beauty everyone says exists around here.

Our plan is to leave here and head down to Wellington, which is the southern coast of the North Island. From there we'll catch a ferry across to the South Island and head down the eastern coast back up a little on the west to see the glaciers then back up to where we started. The plan is to do this in about 2 and a half weeks. With our other week and a half we'll travel back up the North Island's east coast up to the far north before flying our of Auckland on Nov 6th. We hear there are some great beaches up there!

Not sure if we'll but a car before the ferry or not (it costs about $200 to take it across each time) but we'll do a lot of car camping and living on the cheap so we can spend our money on the fun stuff like bungee jumping, zorbing, diving the Great Barrier Reef and all the fun stuff we'll do in Australia! We'll try and get wireless internet where we can so that we can stay in touch. and we'll try and be a little better with updating this so that you all know what's going on in our world. We hope you'll keep in touch too and send us updates!!!

finally a new update

It's been a month since we updated...oops! Hasn't been to eventful in the past month. Not much to report. We've had a few bad weather days that kept the mountain closed with bad wind and no vis. Then we both got colds and are still trying to get better. Ashley did the video report for the mountain website on Friday morning. You can find it at www.mtruapehu.com Bottom right of the home page there's a "video and pics" box to click on. It's a quick snippit, but it was fun. Thursday night we had our lift operations mid season "jug night" which had a "punter" theme. Punters are basically the people you see up here in retro gear and/or inappropriate clothing. Such as jeans shorts and flip flops in the snow. You'd be surprised to see how many people come up to sight see in warm weather clothes and even high heals!! 90% of these peopel are asian and don't speak english and it's just so funny to try and get them on and off chair lifts!!

We're still hoping for some September snow storms here because we've had a lot of rain on the mountian lately and are already dealing with slushy, spring skiing conditions. We need some snow to keep the mountain open until mid October so we can finish out the work season!

We've finally booked our flight to Australia in November. We're going to spend a month in NZ after the season ends (OCt 11-Nov6). 3 weeks touring the South Island then a week back up in the north near Auckland and the Bay of Plenty and the coastal beaches. It will be so nice to get back to the sun, sand and ocean!! In Australia our plan is to fly to Cairns (upper north) and start our trip with a week's dive trip on the Great Barrier Reef. Then we'll make our way by bus down the east coast to Sydney. We have some friends here that are either from Australia or have spent a lot of time there so they're helping us plan our trip. Should be a great experience and a lot of fun. We'll make sure to work on our tans so that we show up at Christmas nice and gloden.

We haven't yet heard anything final with our plans back in the States but we're still thinking Charlston, SC is where we'll end up. Hopefully we'll spend 2-3 weeks roadtripping from CA and stopping for a few ski breaks along the way! Christmas and New Years in Tahoe this year again finally!!! Then off through Utah to visit some friends working in Park City, then across Colorado and through the middle of the US ending up in FL to see family, pick up our stuff from storage and move. Hopefully that'll put us settled down by February.

:-) Hopefully it won't be too hard to settle down after all these adventures!!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2265130&id=6406809&l=fd38c0936 (facebook photo link)

where we live

found a link about where we live right now and thought it's an easy way to share and show what it's like here:

http://origin-www.newzealand.com/travel/destinations/regions/ruapehu/ruapehu-towns.cfm/nodeid/291.html

We had some more crappy weather last week and Daniel got the flu so was out for a good couple of days. Finally we got beautiful bluebird weather days for our 2 days off this week and I went to Turoa (the ski area on the opposite side of our mtn) and then Daniel and I went to our resort yesterday (monday) and boarded with friends all day. Had a really good time, the weather was clear and sunny and the snow not too icy! They don't get powder like we do back home, they're lucky to get a meter of snow base and most of it is solid ice now! Oh well. Time to get back to work and poor weather for the rest of the week. I'll post some pics soon from our sunny days off. The 2 here are of a typical snow making morning and a typical "ice" sign that one will see posted all over teh mtn!

1 month into life here (By Ash)

The 2 week school holidays are finally over and thank god for it! The past 2 weeks have been filled with long busy days, and lots and lots of people visiting the mountain. We've finally had a few more snow dumps so we've been able to open more of the mountain up and it's finally starting to look more like a ski resort than just a rocky mountain with just a little bit of snow! Last Tuesday, our first day back after our 2 days off, brang in a mib snow storm. All day it had been rain/sleet/snow and finally around 2pm the big, fat flakes started to fall and so did the temperature. So the snow started to stick on the roads and got icy and we told people to start headind down, especially all 2 wheel drive cars---but did they listen? NO! People go to the snow and leave their brains at home. Within a span of 5 minutes we had 5 car wrecks, a few single car slide but a few were 3, 4 and 5 car pile ups!! It's a steep mountain road and, since Mt. Ruapehu is the only mountain that gets snow in the North Island, people don't know what they're doing. Especially since a lot of them are asians and a lot of Indians from Fiji. So, we started a road evacuation 3pm and got done by 10. Luckily the snow was pretty light and there wasn't wind. We, the lift operations staff, turn into roadies when things like this happen and we turn into chain crews. "Workin on the chain gang"! As fast as we could get the accidents cleared and start getting all 4 wheel drive cars out, we got them going then brought out the chains for everyone else. Our of the 75 2-wheel drive vehicles Daniel and I had to chain up in the 2 parking lots we were dealing with, only 2 had their own chains! And one of those was a big bus/van thing and they had no idea how to put them on!

It may sound like it was hell, but it was actually pretty fun. It was a good feeling to be so useful and helpful for people. The next day, which was a beautiful day, I had people coming up to me and remembering me by name and tahnking me. Even some young kids remembered and now they say hi to me and are excited every time they come through my line. It's funny because I think back to all the times I skied at the same places back in Cali and I never got to know any of the employees....maybe it's just me and my sunny disposition ;-)

Most of you will never believe this, but I get up before 6am every day (escept our days off--then we get up at 7 for breakfast)! Daniel has to be up at 5:30 to be with the de-icing crew first up the mountain, so I get up and have a nice, long hot shower (which you can't get after work since everyone uses the hot water) then I hop online to chat with friends and catch up on the news and stuff before breakfast. I even have time to make coffee and enjoy it! Which I'm doing right now :-D

It's just about 7am and I have to eat breakfast and get going. Hopefully this had helped you all see a little into our lives here. (There's more to it, but I'll get Daniel to write more later) We miss you all back home--just like we miss real Diet Pepsi, BBQ sauce and fried chicken! Write us and send pictures and let us know what's going on back in the good ol' US of A.

(The pictures are of a fun sled ride after work, sunset from our 'back porch' and few sunrise pics from riding up a chairlift at work)

2nd week in review

One more week down and the season's finally really here. This week marks the start of school holidays and the opening of the rest of the mountain. The first week was good practice with smaller crowds and now the next 2 weeks will be filled with large crowds and busy days. Ashley got to use her loud vocal skills down at the bottom of the bunny slopes doing ticket checking and queue control on the beginner lift. What a long, loud day that was! You'd think after watching the few hundred people in front of you make their way onto the lift correctly that people would learn themselves and have it down by their turn...WRONG! Even after doing the same thing over and over again they still couldn't get it right. Amazing! But it was a fun day, and helping the small kids was a great experience.

Daniel finally got some good de-icing practice clibing towers and getting used to the methods. Now he's ready to get going with those early, cold, windy mornings.

This past weekend brought us some fun 4th of July patritisiom and we bonded with the other 6 Americans here in Staffies. Ashley wore a small US flag tucked into the front of her jacket and got a lot of comments and "Happy 4th of July" wishes from the locals. Even met a few more Americans---one from Novato, CA even! (that's only 15 minutes from Petaluma) We ended the night with a few cases of Budwiser hanging out with all the other staff living at staff quarters. Even all challenged the nationalities to singing the national anthems of all their countries...you'll have to wait to see the video on that one!

We've had the past 2 days off; our normal schedule will give us Sunday and Monday off, so we've been resting and relaxing. Took a hike to a nearby waterfall and read a few books. Enjoyed the winter rain and snow and a few movies. All in all, a good winter weekend :-D

Hope you all had a fun and safe 4th of July weekend. Enjoy that sunshine and don't forget your sunblock!

1st week in review (by Ashley)

1st week is about done and it's been really fun! Got moved into our lodging and started work training. It's quite an international place...we work with people from all over and a few of the girls I work with in ticket checking are from Finland, Chile, France and 2 or 3 from NZ. I've been placed as assistant supervisor over ticket checkers, and I'll be supervisor when our manager's day's off :-) Moving up in the world! Ticket checkers are part of lift operations and the "lifties" as they're called. That's what Daniel is when he's not de-icing. You should really YouTube "deicing at Whakapapa" to see what that entails...it's some crazy sh*t!! All the lifties had yesterday off while the de-icers and ticket checkers did individual training. All ticket checkers are girls (for the obvious reasons that they're nice, have more patience and people are less likely to be confrontational with a girl if there's a problem with their ticket--ie: they get caught with someone elses pass). Well, since we finished training early and the de-icers had a full day planned, we had to wait for all them to get done before getting a bus down the mountain....so we all got the task of digging out the load and unload ramp for the main lift that's opening tomorrow. We had about 2 feet of snow and ice to dig down through to get to the unload platform and then started on the load ramp...but, unfortunately, these small girls aren't the most experienced with snow/ice shoveling and using pick axes and all. It was quite comical at times, made my heart race at times when I caught them doing some kinda dangerous stuff like swinging the pick axes WAY too close to eachothers heads, but we finally got a lot done and today I'm sore!! As a bonus during the season for each person we catch that results in them getting their ticket pulled (like using a copy, fake, someone else's for instance) we get a $50 bonus. Not bad eh?

Finally today we've got the day off and they've organized a bus for us to go to Taupo(the nearest large town) so we can go shopping and go to the bank and post office and set up our tax numbers so we can get paid. For all of you who laughed at me for bringing my French Press coffee maker will be happy to know it's me who's got the last laugh now! I can only take so much of the instant coffee until I crave a good home brewed cup in the morning. We have good coffee up on the mountain, but when we're getting up at 6am every day, a nice hot cup will be so nice. Please, anyone, feel free to send Peet's! ;-)

The past week has been absolutely beautiful up here, sunny and clear, but the clouds came in yesterday and it started raining last night. Not sure if it's snowing up on the top, hopefully it is since they ski field starts a good 2000 feet higher in elevation than us. We need some good dump days to get the season going. And, since we have Sunday and Monday off, we want to get some early season boarding in and get our "sea legs" back!

For a time reference for everyone, it's now 8:30am Friday here, and 1:30pm in CA Thursday (3:30pm Central Thursday) For those of you with Facebook, I've posted pictures online from our last weeks in the States and our 1st week down here. This link should also work for everyone: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2265130&id=6406809&ref=share WARNING: There ARE party pics in this album--view with care ;-)

Finally made it!

After what felt like a week solid of traveling we finally made it to New Zealand and our final “home” on Mt. Ruapehu! Our journey started Wednesday night at 11:30pm when we took off from LAX on the HUGE Qantas A380 airbus...a full 2 story plane! Inside it felt normal until you started thinking about the fact that there was an entire level above you! Ashley took a little journey around and walked up the stairs once in the back to take a look but didn't see much. 15.5 hours is a looong flight. Even with the great personal entertainment systems at each seat and the extra leg room and wider seats, there just isn't a way to sleep comfortable (or, in Ashley's case, at all). We both watched 4 different movies each and a few tv shows and played some video games. It was really strange for it to never get light until right before we landed. We were basically running away from the sun the entire flight and it finally caught up in Australia! We had a 8 hour lay-over in Melbourne, and after the run-around of having one bag make it through to baggage claim and finding out the other 2 (supposedly) were checked all the way through, we headed to downtown Melbourne city and walked around for a few hours. It's a large business city with many different 'precincts, city sub-sections, of different nationalities and personalities. We enjoyed walking around a sampling food from all over the world and were surprised to find out that the area has a large Asian population. Guess that makes sense since Asia is so close.

After wearing ourselves out walking for about 4 hours we went back to the airport only to find out our flight had been rescheduled to leave an hour later than planned. By now, we had been up for almost 2 days and were just ready to get here and sleep! The 3 and a half hour flight to Auckland was a bit cramped, but at least Qantas has really good food, and free wine (on both flights)! So we were able to survive. Making it through immigration was a breeze for Daniel since we had our visas already processed, but didn't think about the fact that Ashley got a new Passport a month ago and her visa was processed on the old one...oops! Right then and there we found out how nice New Zealanders are, everyone was so smiley and friendly and took care of processing the visa quickly and we went right through after maybe a 10 minute delay....just to find our bags the last lonely bags on the carrousel but Ashley's snowboard nowhere in sight. In our traveling the past few years we've found it's never a good sign when the baggage assistance people know your name! They were waiting for us to tell her the snowboard hadn't even left LA with us! I guess it sat there for about 10 hours before hoping a flight straight here and arrived sometime Saturday morning and was delivered to the hotel while we were out exploring Auckland Good thing is that we didn't have to deal with carrying it on the shuttle to the hotel at 1am :-D

Finally, we got out to explore Auckland and hit up the Vodafone store and purchased a local prepaid SIM card and get a local number. So our phones are now officially off. Daniel's for good, and Ashley's number is on hold until December 20th when we get back. Our new number is +64211750191 and, for probably $5 a minute, you can call us all you want!! jk, ok so we won't expect many calls, it costs us about $.50/min so we'll call when we can. We'll also try and update this blog as often as possible with photos and video, just depends on how much this internet actually ends up costing. We have wireless here at the staff lodging and it's costs $.10 per MB of usage...whatever that really adds up to!

Sunday morning, bright and early (well, DARK and early—before the sun was us) we boarded the train south for our 7 hour journey to National Park. It took longer than normal because of a small engine fire and a lot of track work...nothing serious right?! lol! Our new boss picked us up and the train station and drove us about 15km to the staff lodging in Whakapapa Village, our "home" for the next 4 months! We've started to meet the other staff and they come from all over the world. Quite a few Americans actually, others from Australia and New Zealand obviously and from other places such as France, Germany, England, and even Latvia (shout out to all the Lennon's out there!) We were taken up to the mountain today and got our uniforms issued, got our bearings, bought a few last winter clothes supplies and came back down to chill at “home”. Daniel bought some new snowboard boots and a used board so he's all set to go! Work starts bright and early Tuesday with our induction and training and the ski field opens Saturday! Time to get back to the working world! http://www.mtruapehu.com/

It's finally Monday afternoon here...I think it's Sunday night back in the states...the date and time here is still a strange concept. We left Wednesday night, arrived in Melbourne about 15 hours later FRIDAY morning, and got to our hotel about midnight Saturday morning. To calculate our time here, just subtract 5 hours from CA time, or 7 hours from Central time...but then ADD a day. It's 3:15pm Monday here, and about 9:15pm/11:15pm Sunday back home. Start thinking too long about the time warp and you'll go crazy! we finally both got dual time zone watches so we don't have to keep converting time. Ashley set her second time for PST and Daniel set his for CST...we'll never NOT be confused with that now!

Hope you all keep in touch with us and keep us updated on summer life back in the Northern Hemisphere...we're off to enjoy a snowy winter!!

Pre-NZ travel timeline...our final weeks in the US

So many flights and travel arrangements to remember!

*Monday June 8: Delta TLH-ATL-SFO 5:30a-10:30a...Spend monday night in SLO (Courtyard)...one last hurrah with the college peeps! (While also prepping house to hand off to a property management company for new renters)

*Tuesday 6/9: Return to Nor-Cal by way of a night in San Jose with Mom.

*Wednesday 6/10: A night with family in Berkeley.

*Thursday 6/11: P-Town for a night... a nice relaxing day of getting out stuff done, packed, stored and ready to go.

*Friday 6/12: A night with family in Santa Rosa...who's down for a tri-tip BBQ? Need I even ask!?

*Saturday 6/13: Day in San Francisco and pick up Jess from airport in the evnening for a night of city fun (Union Sq Marriott)

*Sunday 6/14: fly to So. Cal. Virgin America 12:45p-2:15p...BBQ in Huntington Beach--can't wait to see everyone!!!!! (Residence Inn HB/Fountain Valley)

*Monday 6/15: Beach day...finally back to the great Southern California beaches...no more hot sticky days at FL shadeless beaches with their sugar power sand that sticks to everything and blows everywhere in the slightest winds of a sneeze! (not a fan, can you tell?!)

*Tuesday 6/16: A night with family in Buena Park

*Wednesday 6/17: Our LAST day in the states!! ...can someone say ride to airport?

We leave Wednesday night from LAX for a 15.5 hour flight to Melbourne at 11:30pm...how do we fill that one last day? Suggestions welcome :-D

Tminus two weeks and counting

Off to New Zealand we go! 2 weeks from today we'll be stepping on the Qantas A380 from LAX-MEL. After a day in Melbourne we'll board our flight to Auckland and then finally arrive in New Zealand. After a weekend in Auckland we'll take the train down to National Park where we'll somehow make it to Whakapapa Village (read: hitchhike) and our home for the next 5 months. Can't wait to get there and keep you all posted on our journies!