The Waitaks: NZ's Greatest Park for the People?

I have got used to the back of Labour now. I'm not going to miss Helen Clarks humour or Michael Cullens humility. I'm looking forward to change and the increased and more widely based political debate this may bring. National has some good ideas, but at least one is a lemon. National proposes to investigate making the Waitaks a National Park. The grumpy Brian Rudman rails against it here

I remember my first visit to the Waitaks, the boys called it the adventure run, now part of the well-known Wild Turkey running race. An hour or so up the Paraha gorge, big pools, rock scrambles, beautiful native bush. I have returned there many times often introducing new people to the area. I have also explored several of the other valleys, with others and alone. Crazy waterfalls and gorges, sometimes open, sometimes choked with boulders. You can run hard for a day in these places and see no one, while just over the hill lies New Zealands big, beautiful city.

The park has been amazingly well preserved. From Muriwai and its Gannets in the North to the rugged windswept landscapes of Huia in the south. Its a great example of an area with a very strong environmentally conscious community, perhaps if anything too close minded to change. The work Rudman mentions to remove predators from a part of the park is a more recent development I look forward to benefitting from in the future. Small government only changes things when they need changing, why is National contemplating fiddling with this success story?

My travelling companion has split!

The friend always by my left shoulder, the one that understands the prices the shopkeepers murmur, the one that makes sure we have a purpose, the one with a beautiful smile, the one thats always up for adventure (as long as we have plenty of water), the one with the cheeky eyes, the one that likes tramping in the rain, the one that puts up with travel even though she would prefer to be working...helping people, the one that helps me and is my constant amazing companion, she split.

Heres a photo of her splitting.

It all happened so quickly, one day we were riding a tandem on the Xian city wall, singing Foux de fa fa .

The next day we were on top of an amazing holy mountain and now we are on different sides of the Hong Kong border, chatting on the internet! Its times like these I need a guitar to bash out a few chords. Miss you babe!

The One That Got Away: Yading!

Where we to have our time in China again the no1 thing I think we would both like to do is trek Yading. The three sacred mountains of Yading, Jospeh Rocks Shangri-La are located north of Lugu Lake and south of the high hinterland of Sichuan, we saw their snowy tops in the distance from near the top of Haba Snow Mountain.

A trek was on the cards when we rolled into Lige, the ugly tourist hub of Lugu Lake, but we didn't really know where to go, or how far it was. Some locals said 8 days. Neither did we have any food, pepper spray (those Tibetan Mastiffs aren't encouraging, or really the mojo. On our way out of the area, at the much nicer main town beside the lake we found this in an informative guesthouse. Hope it might help someone in their plans!

Xian

Sitting up late in our hostel in Xian trying to get a job application finished. Less than a week now till I will be back in New Zealand (Penny is visiting friends in Darwin for a few days, so is back a bit later). We arrived in Xian on a less than inspiring train ride from Xining along the Yellow River. 2000 years of civilisation sure puts some pressure on the environment, exhausted and ruined soils sift out of ancient terraced hillsides. Motorways and railways cut through hillside and flow down catchments.

Xian is a nice city, the inner part at least, plenty of interesting street food (allowing a lovely progressive dinner tonight as we walked across town), a bustling Islamic market, bright neon lights and interesting older style architecture including a vast square town wall.

Today we visited "the eighth wonder of the world". The Terracotta Army. Catch bus 206 from near the railway station to get there. The Terracotta warriors themselves were only rediscovered in 1974. They stand in giant filled pits some distance from the mausoleum of one of China's Ch'in dynasty Emperors. (Ch'in being the word that China is derived from). The lines of soldiers stand in narrow tiled corriders between thick walls of packed earth. The walls over the centuries have carried the weight of giant timber beams lined with matts then covered with soil. The beams can still be seen where they have sagged and slowly turned to stone.

I couldn't help thinking about the circumstances that may have lost such a treasure from the historical record for so long a time. Were the terracotta warriors covered over when the great Emperor die, or did work continue under some passionate collector until the House of Ch'in fell soon after. As the great unwashed rose to tear down the Empire, how were the terracotta warriors protected or hidden, or why weren't they looted and broken further? What human tragedys were played out in the defense of this, the greatest army of earth? Tomorrow (or today really) we plan to visit Hua Shan, the most deadly 'mountain hiking' route in the world. We will see. Its quite apt really, we have visited one of the holy mountains of Tibetan Buddhism (Kawa Karpo), one of the sacred mountain of Chinese Buddhism (Emei Shan) and now we will visit one of the five mountains of Taoism. One last natural scenic adventure for us in China. (update: we delayed Hua Shan a day to focus on job applications and other organisational tasks, we can't wait for a bit of exercise and scenery!)

Brent is World Champion!!

One of our best mates BrentEdwards (along with the rest of Team Orion Adventure; Anna, Stu and Wayne) became a World Champion yesterday on a Brazilian beach, winning the Adventure Racing World Champs. Penny says 'awesome' Brenty.

Read more here

A couple more photo quizzes!

Heres a couple more photo challenges, what if anything is going on here. One is an historic photo from our Indonesian traipses the other more recent.Although they are kind of related!

And I can confirm (or at least hope) that the answers for the questions a couple of weeks ago are buckwheat and lattices!

UPDATE: and yes the lesson is never go to the toilet on an indonesian fishing vessel if you are over 80kg and 5 foot 5, and if you own yaks collect their poo to burn in the winter by slapping it on your wall.

Yushu and Xining

(We are now safely in Xining, the million strong capital city of Qinghai province. Tomorrow we have train tickets booked for Xian. We arrived this morning and have had a pleasant day mooching around town and another very good Hostelling International set-up. This one has goldfish and a guitar with six strings.)

We are sitting now in an internet gaming room inthe southern Qinghai town of Yushu, the prospect of a 20 hour sleeper bus ride to the provincial capital of Xining looming. We have had a quiet couple of days in Yushu. Pennys not really sure why we came here, and I don't really know either. It seemed a good idea at the time, and in retrospect may prove to be an interesting experience.

But anyway, straight out of the bus from Serqu and we were quickly found by a random english speaking dude who helped us find the bus station, then a hotel, but then proved hard to dislodge. Nice guy but we were tired and ready for a period of Chineselessness. The hotel he found us was sort of nice at first glance, but its grottiness grew on you like bamboo sprouting on a fertile slope. Nothing like opening the toilet in your room to find the last occupants festering shit.

The next morning we went strolling to find a new place to stay, and to have a little walk. The first highlight was the very impressive statue of King Gessar of Lind. King Gessar is a Tibetan and Central Asian folk hero and he lived somewhere around these parts. He is a sort of Jesus like figure sent by the Gods to address some evils then reascended back to heaven. Although given that he was around about 700AD there is very little evidence of him actually existing as a person. His epic story, the longest in the world at about 60 million words, has being passed down orally to this day, which is quite an impressive feat, although you have to wonder at the Chinese whisper effect! For more on King Gessar, wikipedia isinformative.

I had a thought that maybe King Gezar was an example of Tibetan entymology creeping into english with the word "geezer", but upon investigation, this word, dating back to the 19th century, is apparently from "guise" and further back "wise", although its quite possible I reckon that the Gezar allusion contributed to its adoption...

We then caught the no2 bus (which does a handy L shape from the bus station down to the centre of town that out east past the hostel I will shortly recommend then to the mani wall) out to the famous mani wall, home to a pile of 2 billion stones with prayers engraved in them. Theres a whole lot of hopes, dreams and wishes in this vast collection of rubble. We joined the locals and pilgrims for the now familiar circumambulation.

Catching the bus back into town we spied a Hostelling International sign. Very lucky. The place is cheap (60 yuan) and clean and friendly. (its in a three story pink building on the main road out of town below the monastery). It also boasts a worn copy of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy which Penny eagerly devoured. We went to grab our bags and witnessed the "Dead Yak Bus".

That afternoon we wandered up past the monastery and its styly toilets,

past the transmission towers and prayer flags, to the Yak pastures high up on the hills with a near aerial view of the city. With a full day a nice loop could be had, up this ridge and circling back to town via another. I forgot Pennys family history of cattle death and got her on edge by telling her this yak was looking at us funny.

It was a pleasant spot up there, and oh yeah there were vultures circling and soaring. They are massive graceful birds when you are two far away to see the small head and beady eyes. Dare I say their flight reminded me somewhat of the Royal Albatross on Campbell Island!

The next day we had a sleeper bus bound for Xining booked for 1pm. We finally got out of town at 4pm but still somehow seemed to arrive on time. The bus was a somewhat surreal experience, lying down chatting with each other across the corrider as our window froze over and our bus crept along frozen roads. Around 11 we awoke as the bus stopped and had a big feed of fried vegetable and chilli chicken peanuts at a roadside restaurant in the middle of nowhere. The whole experience was somewhat surreal but the stars were amazing.