Changes in Latitudes

From Greymouth we drove south along the west coast of New Zealand. This was the only day we had bad weather. The rain poured pretty hard, and I was a little bummed because Mount Aspiring National Park was what I was really excited to see and get in some nice hiking, but we still stopped along the way through the park for short (30 min) walks in the rain. The road that goes through the park is called the Haast Highway ...our stops included Fantail Falls, Blue Pools (not pictured), and Makaroa before we called it a day. [Rain on the GoPro ...looking at Franz Josef glacier] [cairns in front of Fantail Falls] [Marius adding his cairn] [We are big fans of picnic lunches when we're on a road trip] [soup, bread, cheese, rice crackers, hummus and coffee] [Entering Mount Aspiring National Park] [We were supposed to see Aoraki/Mount Cook really well from this side, but the clouds did not let us] [Cell phone service is really spotty and often nonexist...

New Zealand is known for nature, and the Department of Conservation (DOC) has found a great way to get people to see the best of the best. Thus, the 9 Great Walks of New Zealand: Abel Tasman, Milford,  Lake Waikaremoana, Tongariro Northern Circuit, Whanganui Journey, Heaphy, Routeburn, Kepler, and Rakiura. So far I can say I have done three of these: Milford, Tongariro and Abel Tasman. We walked the Abel Tasman with our good friend, Divya. They recommend using 3-5 days to do the trek, and we did it in three...but we like to brag that we rather did it in 48 hours. We flew to Nelson on Monday morning with Divya in tow, and a shuttle picked us up at the airport and drove us to Marahau, the start of the Abel Tasman Coastal Track. The weather was predicted to be perfect for the whole week and we were excited to experience this unique part of New Zealand. At 12:30 we began walking and we had to walk 24 kms to make it to our accommodation. We managed to get to the hut at Bark Bay...

We did a lot in New Zealand in a short amount of time, so I'll write entries in chunks. [Enjoying a cup of noodles on our Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong] [Neat live camera feature to see our plane from above] On February 24th we landed in Auckland in the morning after quite a long haul of plane flights and layovers (Bergen - Oslo - London - Hong Kong - Auckland). Between London and Auckland we had a total of 22hrs of flight time, probably round it up to 25 hours with the layover. We landed just before 8AM and were picked up by my old flatmates, Dominic and Beau, whom I lived with when I was living down there. They hadn't changed a bit, and chatting with them made it feel like I had never left. It was hard to believe that I hadn't seen them in nearly 6 years. We had breakfast at Mission Bay, a local beach that we frequented and got caught up. Marius and I felt very pale and were eager to get a shower and a nap. We got to our hostel (YHA Auckland City) and dr...

I finally got around to editing my footage from when we went to Iceland last September. We rented a car and drove the Golden Circle, and the next day we visited the Blue Lagoon.  I'm not too happy with the quality of it, but maybe it means my GoPro is outdated. GoPro even has a new editor to make a sort of 30-second teaser. Pretty cool! Iceland 2016 teaser from Justine Diaz on Vimeo . The Golden Circle and Blue Lagoon from Justine Diaz on Vimeo .

Last weekend (the first weekend of September), Marius and I were invited to join REN (Marius' old employer) on their annual trip. Previous trips that we were both included in were St. Petersburg, Paris, and Rome. This year was Budapest, and it happened about a week after the refugees and migrants made their way into Hungary. It was definitely adding a different perspective to the trip while we stayed in a 5-star hotel and ate a 5-course dinner. Pancho spent the weekend with one of my colleagues who also has a dog. It isn't too hard to find puppy-sitters right now since I work with animal lovers. And who doesn't love puppies? So Marius and I got in on Friday night and took a cab to the hotel with another couple on the trip. The European Cup soccer qualifier was that night, so our driver tried to go around the soccer hooligans and the possible chaos at the train station, but it was pretty quiet. We ended up driving by the train station a couple of times, but it wasn...