Glaciers & parrots, of course

Last week we did the avalanche peak hike at Arthur's Pass, in the Southern Alps on the south island. The "town" of Arthur's pass (40 permanent residents) is about a 90 minute drive from Christchurch, and it's definitely worth it if you get some nice weather. We got quite lucky and got a beautiful day for the hike, made all the more important by the dire warnings against attempting the hike in poor weather. The ridge lines certainly could be dangerous in poor visibility or high winds.

After you climb the 3600 vertical feet up avalanche peak, you're greeted by two spectacles: Crow Glacier



and perhaps 30 highly-entertaining kea. The kea is an intelligent and curious mountain parrot, and they've definitely figured out that it's in their interest to visit the top of the mountain at lunch time, when all the hikers stop to eat. They will definitely take any food (or perhaps rubber) that you leave unattended, using a very loose definition of "unattended". As long as they only try to nibble your boots, though, they're very entertaining.

(in)flexible flight search

I've come to rely heavily on websites which advertise various flexible flight search options, like nearby alternate airports and flexible date options. For just these reasons, plus nearly always the lowest-price result, I've been recommending kayak.com unreservedly. At least for international searches, there are serious shortcomings with both kayak, and my second-favorite site, orbitz.com. Yesterday, I did a flight search on kayak, and I've repeated it today, for which ticking the "include nearby airports" box results in the lowest-priced result being $900 more expensive. Surely including additional airports shouldn't omit the original search! Similar things happen, unfortunately, with the flexible date option.

I suspect I understand the problem, which is that properly searching for flexible dates and/or airports is a very time consuming process, and your average user simply doesn't have the patience to wait for good results. So the sites don't bother with that, they just return mediocre results quickly. The point is easily illustrated on orbitz. They've got a very handy, in theory, feature: search for a flights which result in a trip of a flexible length, across a range of days. Perfect! Tragically, it simply doesn't return good results. When I searched for a 10-12 day trip from SEA-AKL, between 15 Jun 09 and 15 Jul 09, Orbitz flexible date search feature dutifully (and quickly) returned a lowest price of $1819. However, by doing a traditional search (i.e. departing on a fixed date and returning on a fixed date), on orbitz, and repeat it across the dates which were part of the flexible search, you get much improved results, by about $250! The moral of the story is that if you're thinking of visiting NZ (or the UK, and you should be!), you'd look at the former, rather than the latter... Hopefully at some point there is a flight search site which can do flexible and accurate searches quickly, or perhaps just one which takes a while but emails you the results later?

dates 06/15/2009 to 06/26/2009, price $1,826
[...]
dates 06/16/2009 to 06/28/2009, price $1,819
dates 06/16/2009 to 06/29/2009, price $1,586
dates 06/17/2009 to 06/28/2009, price $1,819
dates 06/17/2009 to 06/29/2009, price $1,568
dates 06/17/2009 to 06/30/2009, price $1,826
dates 06/18/2009 to 06/29/2009, price $1,599
dates 06/18/2009 to 06/30/2009, price $1,826
[...]
dates 06/20/2009 to 07/02/2009, price $1,826
dates 06/20/2009 to 07/03/2009, price $1,599
dates 06/21/2009 to 07/02/2009, price $1,826
[...]
dates 06/23/2009 to 07/04/2009, price $1,826
dates 06/23/2009 to 07/05/2009, price $1,617
dates 06/23/2009 to 07/06/2009, price $1,586
dates 06/24/2009 to 07/05/2009, price $1,599
dates 06/24/2009 to 07/06/2009, price $1,568
dates 06/24/2009 to 07/07/2009, price $1,826
dates 06/25/2009 to 07/06/2009, price $1,599
dates 06/25/2009 to 07/07/2009, price $1,826
[...]
dates 06/30/2009 to 07/11/2009, price $1,826
dates 07/02/2009 to 07/15/2009, price $1,827
dates 07/03/2009 to 07/14/2009, price $1,820
dates 07/03/2009 to 07/15/2009, price $1,820
dates 06/30/2009 to 07/12/2009, price $1,618
dates 06/30/2009 to 07/13/2009, price $1,587
dates 07/01/2009 to 07/12/2009, price $1,600
dates 07/01/2009 to 07/13/2009, price $1,569
dates 07/01/2009 to 07/14/2009, price $1,827
dates 07/02/2009 to 07/13/2009, price $1,600
dates 07/02/2009 to 07/14/2009, price $1,827
[...]
dates 07/04/2009 to 07/15/2009, price $1,827

Labo(u)r-day weekend

We'd been planning for some time to spend the first bank holiday weekend we've had here hiking in the Coromandel, a penisula about two hours drive to the east of Auckland. We'd been told the traffic over there would be really awful, so decided just to do two days, avoiding the Friday night/Saturday morning traffic. This turned out to be a rather good plan, due to heavy rain most of Saturday. The rain continued into Sunday, making our drive out of Auckland less than pleasant. However, the forecast was for the weather to clear, so we continued on undaunted.

The nice man in the Kauaeranga Visitor Centre was clearly very bored, but he promised us the weather would clear, so we collected our hut passes and started on our way. The hike up was fairly steep, with many steps hewn into the rock, and we got a little damp, but by the time we arrived at the Pinnacles Hut all forecasts were correct and the sky was beautifully blue.


After a quick cup of soup in the hut, we made our way up to the top of the Pinnacles themselves. More a scramble than a hike, the last portion of the walk was well worth it - at the top was a secluded spot with wonderful views, fit for any very special occasion...

Long-distance voting

I sent in my absentee ballot for the US election this morning, doing my small part. Not that it will make any difference. I've linked to pollster because they have state-by-state pages, which cannot be said of the otherwise superior fivethirtyeight, which currently projects WA to Obama by 14.6. Not exactly a squeaker. Speaking of your vote mattering though, those same clever guys at 538 have an interesting analysis of how likely it is that your vote will matter. Tragically, for some of the most strongly-opinionated people I know, that chance is identically zero, as many of those most interested in the outcome aren't US citizens at all...

Disclaimer: geological activity may affect features on this map

The New Zealand ski season is surprisingly long, so last weekend we headed down to Mount Ruapehu for a weekend of skiing on an (active) volcano. The weather the first day needed a little improvement - visibility was low, to say the least. But on the second day the forecast of unlimited visibility held true and much good skiing was there to be had:





There are several differences between skiing on the Alps or the Rockies, and skiing on an active volcano. First of all, especially this late in the season, when much of the snow has melted, it looks somewhat like you're skiing on the moon. There are warnings signs about what one should do in the case of an eruption (the last major eruption was in about 1995), and you have in the back of your mind the strange knowledge that the aforementioned geological activity is not on the timescale to which we are usually accustomed.

Our chariot

Photos have been promised to many -- at long last, here they are.




One of our early tasks was to find a car. While we don't need it for commuting, as the ferry is much easier, we decided that a car is by far the easiest way to explore the island. We (and by "we", I mean "I") settled on this 01 Toyota Corolla. Glamorous it isn't, but I'm satisfied we made an excellent choice. Besides, it's not easy finding a manual in NZ!

Golf

I've read or been told that New Zealand has the highest per capita rate of golf courses in the world, and it doesn't surprise me. A bit of research/googling seems to indicate that NZ is second, or perhaps tied for first, though there are lots of claims to the highest rate. Anyhow, the result is a good situation, lots of good, cheap golf. The Waitakere Golf Club is a nice spot to play -- the course is in reasonable shape, very affordable, none too crowded and about a half-hour drive from the city. The scenery is pretty impressive, though you can certainly get your workout walking up and down all the hills.



Now if only I could hit the ball from an uphill lie...