Review: Zatanna

 Zatana was billed as being written by Paul Dini, and she was one of the surviving members of DC universe's magic community after Alan Moore did in her father in Swamp Thing. Paul Dini had a good reputation and more importantly, the book was free on Amazon Prime reads, so I checked it out and read it.

Unfortunately, Zatana's magic lets her get out of many sticky situations without much effort. There's one scene where she gets injured in such a way where she can't speak, and that's about it. I was disappointing that there's really nothing very insightful about any of the stories. They're all light and easy reading, but you never get a deep insight into Zatanna, or even if there are any limits to her magic.

Review: Worlds

 I remember being at a Worldcon where a group of writers talked about fiction vs non-fiction. They asserted that since they wrote fiction, their works would never be obsolete and would sell year after year. Worlds shows how untrue that point of view is.

Worlds is set in a future where artificial satellites ("Worlds") orbit the earth, each a colony of hundreds of thousands. Yet these Worlds are still dependent on the Earth for hydrocarbons for which they exchange power from solar panels in space.

The protagonist, Marianne O'Hara, is a political science student who does a year on Earth in New York. The novel is written in the form of letters from her or entries in her diary. The point of view of the novel is as obsolete as you can get. For instance, the USSR is still in one piece, with several satellite countries and completely intact. Haldeman has his protagonist have to pay to send letters to her friends and lovers in space. She even buys the New York Times for $5 a copy to read on a transatlantic visit.

Similarly, New York City is just as dangerous in the far future as it was in the 1970s, with rape and murder a common occurrence. Haldeman couldn't imagine a future in which New York City was actually a safe place to visit.

As the plot unfolds, we finish the book with the Earth embroiled in a nuclear war, with plague weapons unleashed, while the remaining Worlds remain mostly intact despite sustaining damage. The writing is classic Haldeman, transparent and easy to read, but it's quite clear that science fiction becomes just as obsolete as any work of science writing or other non fiction.

Review: Batman/Catwoman

 Batman/Catwoman was on sale at a reasonable price, and I bought it hoping that it would be a great graphic novel. (Tom King's gotten many accolades for his handling of Batman)

The story flips between multiple timestreams. You have a future timestream when Batman/Bruce Wayne is dead, and his daughter Helena is Batwoman. You never really see Batwoman catching criminals or fighting criminals. She obviously has a beef with her mother, Selina Kyle, and spends a lot of time fighting with her.

Then there's the timeline of the past, when Catwoman/Selina has met Batman/Bruce Wayne, but they're not married yet. We get to see multiple pursuits, some sex, and a wedding ceremony, and even a bit about Helena's upbringing. Yet there's something missing --- we never see why Selina holds out on the Joker. We never even see what her motivation is for helping the Joker.

Finally, we get to see Selina's origins. Again, there's a shallowness there. We never see why she becomes a burglar. And given that she's actually good at her job, we don't see why she's still a burglar after all these years. Even more important, there's a central event in the story (one where Robin chases her down for) and we never get to see it. It's forever alluded to, never revealed, and never shown.

I'm glad I paid very little for this book. It's a lot of teasing, not a lot of showing.

Review: Navaris Long Handle Ti Spork

 My go-to freeze-dried backpacking meals are the Mountain House pouches. The flavors are usually decent, and the cooking easy. The pouches also double as eating bowls so you can reduce the amount of silverware you have to carry.

The biggest problem with the pouches is that regular length silverware can't reach deep into the pouch. So you end up with greasy, dirty hands at the end of the meal. When I saw the Navaris Long Handle Ti Spork, I knew this was what I'd wanted. At $10/spork, it's cheap enough to outfit a family of 4. They're light (hey, it's Ti), and come with a pouch so that you can keep the spork away from other dirty stuff in your backpack. The long handle ensures you can get every last calorie out of those expensive Mountain House pouches without getting your hands dirty.

There's nothing else I want out of sporks. Get these.

Review: GTYOPR Collapsible Cups and Bowls

 I've long been a fan of the snapfold cups, bowls, and dishes that Arturo was using on camping trips. They were really light, easy to clean, and seemed to work very well. But I was not a fan of the prices. At $17 a set, that was a lot of money for something that Arturo told me wasn't going to last.

I found an equivalent on AliExpress, but (1) the shipping took forever, and (2) what arrived wasn't what was described. Instead of a set, I got 4 of the same type. That's what you get for trusting AliExpress.  Luckily, it was the holidays and for $16 I ordered a dozen of the items I was missing from Amazon, a brand called GTYOPR. With Amazon shipping, it was fast and even better, I was protected if they didn't ship me what I wanted. It's no longer the holidays and that maker is no longer selling, but there are equivalent still available like ChenShuo.

During the Kepler track hike, at the various huts, once in a while someone would ask me about them, because they looked so light, so easy to use, and easily flattened, taking no space in your backpack. Fozzils (the guys who invented the Snapfold concept) needs to stop being greedy and just realize that a product that's not made to last (and has plenty of Chinese competitors) isn't going to sell. I would have been willing to pay a premium to support the inventors, but a 4x premium is ridiculous.

Review: Justice (DC Graphic Novel)

 DC put a bunch of graphic novels on sale, and I noted that I'd never read Justice before, and the artist was Alex Ross, which made it a buy for me.

The opening of the novel is fantastic. The villains of the world got together and announced that while the superheroes have focused on fighting super-villains and preserving status quo, they'd never done anything to improve things that matter to ordinary people, like cure diseases or build housing for the homeless. And they proceed to do that, creating a miracle cure and offering the poorest the opportunity to move into newly built cities.

Of course, this being a graphic novel, the superheroes soon discover that it's a scam (how could it be otherwise?). The plot is convoluted, and we get a few interesting fights (far fewer than you would expect), but in the end our heroes prevail and we discover who the master villain is, as the various super-villains in the DC universe could never expect to cooperate with each other.

Unfortunately, the novel never grants our heroes the epiphany that they could make the world a much better place than just by preserving the status quo. In fact, at the end of the story we return to status quo, which makes it quite unsatisfying.

Re-read: Kingdom Come

 Kingdom Come is Alex Ross's beautifully painted story set in the future of the DC Universe that's non-canon. In this world, public opinion turned against the superhumans, forcing Superman to retreat to his farm and Batman's secret identity to be exposed.

Years later, we see that the effect of that superhuman ban is that the non-law-abiding superhumans have effectively created havok. Wonder Woman persuades Superman to come out of retirement, and he embarks on a war to bring those unruly humans back into prison.

Things go wrong, of course, as Lex Luthor and Bruce Wayne team up to keep Superman from becoming a dictator for the world. Of course, things don't go as they might seem, and we get a big fight in the end. We get apocalyptic visions, and of course the supernatural parts of the DC universe (Specter and Deadman) come into play.

You cannot beat Alex Ross's art. It is fantastic and a feast for the eyes. The plot is so-so, but as a result of the story not being canon, it gets to play games with the ending that you wouldn't expect. If only Wonder Woman could talk Alan Moore into coming out of retirement to work in comics again. Then we'd get great stories along with great art. But as a book, this one was decent fun. I even liked the ending.

Review: Jellyfish Age Backwards

 Jellyfish Age Backwards is a survey about the various state of our understanding about longevity and methods about preventing aging. It probably doesn't descibe anything you don't already know: eat less, eat more vegetables, exercise more, and supplements may have side effects that are actually deleterious to your health.

One thing that I did learn is that it might be a good thing to give blood on a frequent basis. That drains iron from your body and apparently excess iron is a bad thing.  It turns out that like everything else, the human body was designed to withstand minor injury and build back better, so this counter-intuitive action helps more than it hurts.

By and large, progress in various drugs, etc to improve lifespan have not panned out and has not worked. Progress is slow despite huge amounts of money being put into it. This book is a reminder of how hard won even those meagre gains are. Treasure your health while you have it, because history suggests once you lose it we don't really know how to get it back.

Review: Twitter and Tear Gas - The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest

 All through the COVID19 pandemic, Zeynep Tufekci was one of the smartest voices in the various places she was published in. Her article in the Atlantic was one of the first to recognize that unlike conventional wisdom, COVID19 was spread through aerosols. Despite her book, Twitter and Tear Gas, being only available in legacy format as a hardcover at the library, I placed a hold on it, checked it out, and read it.

I've long had a low opinion of Twitter (even before Elon Musk bought it), and I maintain that having one social network is all anyone ever really needs. I've tried and bounced off instagram, threads, and various others, and my BlueSky account is sadly neglected.

Tufekci explicates the reason that Twitter was used during the Arab Spring and had the ability to topple dictators. Unlike Facebook, which required consent on both sides before one person could read posts by the other, the default on Twitter was world readable. This allowed activists to @mention people who could reshare their point of view. She describes in great detail how 4 remote activists (who weren't activists before the event) worked on logistics to supply a field hospital during one of the Arab Spring protests that occupied a city square. The logistics were conducted using Google Sheets, while they managed to get everyone to tweet at them what they needed or what they could supply. It was amazing to watch.

I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion of how social media like Twitter and Facebook enabled information cascades that made people willing to go to a protest. There's a great exploration of why people join in person protest --- it's an entrance into the kind of world that people dream about. She describes a world in which kindness is the norm, where transactional relationships don't happen. One woman describes falling asleep at a park bench, and waking up to discover not only was her phone sitting next to her not stolen, someone had wrapped a blanket around her.

There's the dark side of social organization over the internet through Twitter, etc. Tufekci contrasts the civil rights movement with the Arab Spring or the Occupy Wall Street movements. By the time the bus boycotts in Montgomery or the Civil Rights Marches had happened, the organizations involved had spent years building up their organizations, negotiating on directions, agreeing on leaders, and setting up trust between the rank and file and the representatives. That gave them the ability to pivot and make decisions quickly when things were going their way, and also gave them obvious representatives for the establishment to work with in order to get what they wanted, both politically and socially.

By contrast, the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street movements were essentially flash mobs organized through consensus. Their marches and occupations were huge, but they entered what Tufekci calls Tactical Freeze, where they had nowhere to go when the establishment tried to negotiate and try to give them what they want, because they didn't know what they wanted, and they couldn't agree on a process to come to any agreement. In fact, the Occupy Wall Street movement explicitly didn't want any leaders or representation. Tufekci points out that this isn't completely irrational. Not having leaders meant that the government/opposition couldn't just murder somebody and stop the movement cold. Nor could the leaders be bought off or corrupted if there wasn't any leadership. But in the case of the Arab Spring many of those movements succeeded in toppling a regime only to find them replaced by an equally brutal one because there was no organization in place to put in a better regime. In the case of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Tufekci descibes an incident in which John Lewis (of the Civil Rights Movement) wanted to come and give a speech to support them, and mendacious facilitator manipulated the crowd into disallowing him, even though only one person objected to Lewis giving a speech. That kind of behavior led to the Occupy Wall Street movement not having any friends.

The modern successful movement that organized via social media turned out to be the Tea Party. Following the protests, they had an organization (probably funded by the rich people who stand to benefit from this) that worked within the political system to get lower taxes.

The book ends with the modern reaction to social media generated protest movements. The status quo establishment learned that attempting to censor the internet (unless you're China) doesn't work. Instead, however, you can (in Steve Bannon's words) "flood the zone with shit." Misinformation, distraction, and cries of "Fake News", it turns out is a very effective way to dilute the credibility of activists or people working against a dictator or corrupt regime. Tufekci points out that even China doesn't censor criticism of the government. Instead, their army of propagandists simply flood the internet with unrelated stories to drown out the criticism.

I'm usually proud of myself for saving money by checking a book out of the library instead of paying for it. In this case I feel like a dummy lamb. I should have bought it for the kindle because I would have highlighted so much of this book and been able to quote it on this review. Next time I want to read this book I won't be so dumb. I'll just go out and buy it.

Review: EOS EF-M 55-200 4.5-6.3 IS STM

 The thing with the Pixel Pro 8 and 9 is that the phone cameras are now so good that pulling out a bigger mirrorless camera is more cumbersome while hiking. On top of that, the dumb camera makers took out what I consider essential features like GPS-tagging, so I felt punished every time I took a picture, got home, and then wanted to know where that photo came from. For an experiment I tried using the Canon Connect app to log a hike and map it back to the photos using a plugin, and it ate up a good 50% of the phone's battery for a 5 hour hike!

For anything beyond the 5X optical zoom on the Pixel 8 Pro, however, the EOS M5 still had a purpose, but I wasn't enjoying carrying the bulk of my EF-S 55-250 plus the EF-M adapter! I thought about buying a whole new camera and setup, but of course, newer cameras aren't supported by my Lightroom 6 perpetual license, and nothing is easily available for less than $2000, which is quite expensive for something that gets used only for special occasion.

So I bit the bullet and bought an EF-M 55-200 from eBay. It cost $255, which felt expensive for a used lens, but after selling the EF-S 55-250 for $100 on eBay, it didn't feel too bad. I ended up saving 240g for about $155, and the reduced bulk also made the camera far easier to carry on a Peak Design Camera Clip. 

The lens is sharp and the resulting photos are very impressive. Some day I may upgrade my camera gear, but as one of my friends pointed out, the EOS-M setup is probably the most bang for the buck today in photography gear, mainly because it's been orphaned! 

2025 New Zealand: January 5th - Epilogue & Conclusions

 It was raining by the time we put everything in the car and drove up to refuel it. Arriving at the airport, we found the New Zealand checkin counter. We got our bags checked all the way into San Francisco and then bought some more chocolate and ate breakfast before going through the very understated and uncrowded security line for the flight to Auckaland.

In Auckland, however, things were super confusing—the international terminal necessitated that we walk out of the domestic terminal we were in and then redo our checkin. Fortunately, Xiaoqin found someone who whisked us right to the front of the Fiji Airways domestic counter who re-issued our boarding passes after the passport check, and then told us that since we were frequent flyers we could board immediately after the first class passengers.

The flight to Nadi was easy, but then there was awful long wait at the Nadi airport. It was 10:00pm and late before we were boarded. I must have slept a bit during the flight home because it didn’t seem that long. We picked up our baggage from the carousel with no problems, zipped through customs and border patrol because of the MPC app (even faster than the folks who were waiting in line for their global entry interview) and were soon at home. Our trip was over.

Conclusions

A lot of Americans like New Zealand. My conclusion is that much like Australia and the USA, it’s a country where there’s no public transit and you have to drive everywhere, so that makes Americans feel comfortable. The scenery is gorgeous, as expected, and I wish we’d had more time to visit places like Abel Tasman National Park, and obviously the system for getting Great Walks definitely makes planning a New Zealand trip a factor in how good you are at getting through their DOC system.

2025 New Zealand: January 4th: Hokitki to Christchurch

 The sun came out again as we left Hokitika in the morning after breakfast, which was bought by walking to the supermarket in the morning. The drive up to Arthur’s pass was dramatic after the initial flat section, with a 16% grade near the summit and even a gallery. We found the parking lot for the hike up to the Arthur’s Pass Lookout after crossing over Arthur’s pass.

The hike was nice, but a little bit undramatic after the previous hikes we’d had this trip. We did the Bealey Valley Track as well to the viewpoint, but it too didn’t feel as spectacular as all the hikes we’d done before. Both hikes took 2 hours altogether, without a lot of visitors. As we left the parking lot we saw that more cars had shown up, indicating that we were just early.

At Arthur’s Pass village, we stopped by the DOC visitor center to discover that the Bealey Valley Track was designated “The Hike of the Day.” There were two more water fall hikes, but each would take about 2 hours round trip, so we bagged it and drove to Christchurch instead.

The drive to Christchurch was spectacular, a microcosm of New Zealand all in the space of 2 hours. We saw what looked like Texas, California, England, all in the space of several minutes. I was quite impressed. We got into Christchurch and our motel around 2pm, checked in and saw a couple of cyclists prepping their bikes in the parking lot. They were from Canada and were planning a ride around the island while mostly camping. Their plan was to first take the train over to the West Coast and then start riding.

We went out to the Korean fried chicken place for lunch. It was as fried as anything you saw in the US, and we couldn’t quite finish. After that, we walked downtown through the botanical gardens. The gardens were quite pretty but not even as spectacular as what we saw in San Jose.

Downtown Christchurch looked dead on a Saturday. I was nowhere prepared for that. It looked like the family in Wanaka that told us about the depressed economy was true. The church for instance was still under repair. The shopping malls looked surprisingly empty. It was disappointing. We bought some ice cream and walked back to the hotel for a quick break.

We saw that there was a large Costco sized supermarket nearby and decided to walk there to buy chocolate and honey to bring home. The walk there took us past a huge diversity of restaurants, many of which looked really attractive. I realized that New Zealand is a lot like the USA. The downtown has been hollowed out because everyone just drives everywhere. When we got to the supermarket it was in a huge American-style mall, and it looked like Costco inside. We bought some honey, and what seemed like a large amount of chocolate (though in practice within 2 weeks of coming home we’d ate it all, so it clearly wasn’t enough!).

We ate at a Vietnamese noodle shop on the way back for dinner and then went back to pack everything up. The wind blew and it started raining. I successfully checked into the Fiji Flight from Auckland back to Nadi and then San Francisco but couldn’t check into the Christchurch to Auckland leg because that was ran by Air New Zealand.

Review: Platypus Quickdraw Filter

 Our Katadyn BeFree water filter was getting old, to the point where on a recent hiking trip it was an intense amount of work to get water through it. I asked Arturo if there was a better alternative nowadays and he mentioned the Platypus Quickdraw. There was an Amazon sale on the filter just before the New Zealand trip, so I bought one.

The device is light, fairly intuitive to use, and most importantly, fast when used with clean water like what we had at the various Kepler Track huts. Because it never got that hot, we never needed to use the filter on other days. On the one day it got really hot, we got tired long before we ran out of water.

I had a couple of accidents with the bottle, each time it was due to not screwing in the water bottle properly. When I remembered to do that, the filter was absolutely fool-proof. It was light, fitting into the small titanium pot I'd brought along for the trip. That it actually did do filtering was noticed at the Manapouri hut, where the tannins in the water did get filtered out.

Can't complain about something this easy to use and waterproof, other than the price.

2025 New Zealand: January 3rd - Alpine Junction to Hokitiki

 

We woke up to cloudy skies and a hint of rain. As we put the luggage into the car it started drizzling on us but the roads were still dry. By the time we drove past Lake Hawea, it had started raining in earnest, though we could still step out of the car to take a picture or two. By the time we got to the Lake Wanaka Lookout, the wind was so strong that being out of the car was unpleasant.

Past Lake Wanaka, the road went uphill towards Haast Pass, but strangely enough the rain actually stopped. Past Haast Pass, we stopped Fantail Falls and Thunder Creek Falls, both falls being interesting to look at, but ran out of patience and skipped Roaring Billy Falls as we drove at full speed towards the West Coast. Once on the West Coast we stopped at Ship Creek to stare at the Tasman sea once more. There were walks but we started getting bitten by sandflies and decided to bail out and keep driving.

The big attractions on the West Coast are the Fox Glacier and the Frans Josef Glacier. However, the roads/trails to both glaciers were closed and the only option was taking a helicopter assisted hike. That was expensive and we’d already touched glacial ice on this trip (and walked on the Athabasca Glacier in 2023), so we altered our plans to take the Lake Matheson Walk instead.

Arriving at the town of Fox Glacier, we refilled with gas and then went to the Lake Matheson Cafe for lunch. The walk was of course disappointing. All the pictures you see of Lake Matheson are taken in the early morning or evening when the wind dies down. In the afternoon during a storm with the wind blowing the lake has no reflections to speak of. It was just a much needed excuse to stretch our legs.

After the walk, we drove to the Fox Glacier lookout for a grand view of the Fox Glacier. Xiaoqin and I were impressed but the kids weren’t. It started raining as we left the lookout, and in fact, just before the Waikukupa River, the rain came down in sheets, driving visibility down to less than 30 feet and forcing me to slow down despite the windshield wipers going off at maximum speed. It was a short thunder burst, however, and after that harrowing section things went back to normal. We drove past the Frans Josef glacier, once again eschewing all those ads for helicopter tours on a day when it didn’t look like helicopters were going to leave the landing pads.

Arriving at Hokitika at 4:30pm, we checked into a very strange hotel where the reception was a bar. They showed us our two rooms, which were tiny with no AC, with shared bathrooms. The place was cheap and we paid cash. We walked out to dinner at the Hokitika Club, which looked like a bar with a dinner attached to it off to one side. We sat down and ordered the food, which came in generous portions but weren’t anything special to my taste.

By the time we were done, it was 6pm, which was still enough time to drive to the Hokitika Gorge for an after dinner walk. The drive there took 40 minutes, getting us there at a time when the parking lot was pretty empty. We started the walk and it felt nice and deserted though there were still a few other walkers about. The color of the gorge water was remarkable, being blue due to the glacial flour in the water.

The walk was normally a loop but the bridge on one side was broken so it was an out and back. The water looked inviting but it was in fact quite cold being recent glacial melt. We opted not to swim and hiked back to the parking lot where a Buff Weka was walking around looking for leftover hiking food. We visited the other side of the broken bridge and then went back to the hotel to shower and go to bed.

Review: Hydrapak Flux Collapsible Water Bottles

 Having given up on Hydration Packs, I'd been carrying reusable water bottles for hiking, usually insulated ones. However, those are heavy, and the forecast for temperatures in New Zealand when we were going indicated that they would never get that hot. In addition, on a 4 day backpacking trip, you're not going to get a chance to put ice in the water bottle anyway, so insulation is just extra weight for no good reason.

There was a sale on the HydraPak Flux over the holiday period, so I bought two of the 750ml bottles. They weigh 94g each, or about a quarter the weight of a Hydraflask of the same capacity. The cap was surprisingly well designed. You give it a half turn, flip open the cap, and then you can drink like from a water bottle. There's the usual plasticky flavor at the start, but bottle cleaning tablets got rid of the taste right away.

The biggest concern with such light bottles is that they could tear a hole easily and then you're out a water bottle. (That's why I bought 2!) But I dropped them multiple times and not once did they develop holes. The cap design also ensured that it never spilled. Surprisingly, the bottle did not change shape when not full --- there's enough air and the bottle is air tight that the bottle retains its shape, so it kept fitting nicely in the water bottle pockets of my backpack.

For a day hike on a hot summer day in California, you're not going to beat the insulated metal bottles. But for winter hiking or a multi-day trip where every ounce you're carrying matters, these are the ones to get!

2025 New Zealand: January 2nd - Diamond Lake and Rocky Point

The wear and tear of doing so much hiking was showing on everyone. When I planned our trip to Wanaka the thought to myself was that to do the 10 mile Roy’s Peak Track. But a 10 mile 4300’ elevation gain hike today would have drawn everyone’s protest, and to be honest we woke up a bit too late for it anyway. We decided to do the DIamond Lakes/Rocky Point hike, which was fairly close and quite short.

We started the hike at 8:40am, when the parking lot was relatively empty. On the way to the parking lot, I noticed that the Roy’s Peak parking lot was already full, with cars spilling out onto the road. We got started in the relatively cool air, but once we got around Diamond Lake the climb started in earnest and we took off our jackets.

At the Wanaka Lookout, we finally saw sheep. On my first visit to New Zealand in 2000, one of the remarkable sights while hiking was sheep wandering the hills, but this was the only time we saw sheep on hiking trails. We also saw big jackrabbits below us. The view was truly fantastic. There weren’t even obtrusive large clouds blocking the views of the surrounding peaks, just enough fluffy clouds that lent atmosphere to the hike.

As we got higher, the views of Wanaka Lake got better and better, and Roy’s Peak looked bigger and taller. With a short hike, we took our time, taking plenty of photos and taking in every side trip or viewpoint in as we could. This hike was relatively exposed, but the day was also relatively cool, with both the climb and descent relatively steep but short. When we were all done it was time for lunch.

I followed the tripadvisor directions to the best rated restaurant in Wanaka, Big Fig. There was a long line but it moved relatively quickly. Bowen and Boen got different dishes while Xiaoqin and I shared one. The setup was that you’d order one meat and 3-5 vegetarian selections from a deli-like environment. The restaurant (and it seemed like every other restaurant did the same thing) charged an additional 15% to compensate the workers for working on a holiday. I enjoyed the food, but Xiaoqin was unimpressed. Both Bowen and Boen were also unimpressed.

After lunch, we went to a local gelato shop and bought some ice cream, but this time all of us were unimpressed. We walked along the lake shore where there were paddleboards and canoes and kayaks for hire, but none of the kids were interested. We’d have had to go back to fetch swim suits anyway or just live with getting wet if we fell in the water. Nearly everyone on the water looked like an rank beginner though. I felt like any of our kids would have outperformed nearly everyone on the water.

When we checked in the previous day, we saw an ad in the lobby for Hook Wanaka, a restaurant where they’d give you a rod so you could catch your own fish for dinner.  The receptionist had responded that the place was pretty good, but you had to go early. We decided that 2:00pm was early enough and drove there. The parking lot was pretty full, but when we walked in they had fishing rods almost immediately available for rental.

We paid for 2 fishing rods, and the boy renting them to us gave us a pointy tool to kill the fish when we pulled it out of the water, as well as buckets to place the fish and bait. $20 looked like a pretty good deal. They pointed us to a video showing us how to use the reel, but upon playing with it everything seemed straightforward. These were all Shimano fishing reels and had that quality Shimano feel to the action.

We went out to the lake and after a few tries hooked two Salmon in quick succession, which we thought was more than enough for dinner. Not bad for the first time—though the receptionist had assured us that we were guaranteed to catch the fish, we didn’t think it would happen so quickly! The restaurant had a “no throwback” policy, so any fish you caught had to be killed and eaten.

At the checkout counter, we realized that in addition to paying for the fishing rod, we also had to pay to get the fish prepared, and the cost was based on the weight of the fish caught, so the total bill came out to over $100. We had the fish prepared sashimi style for takeout, but due to the volume of orders there was at a 40 minute waiting period. So that was why we saw so many families sitting down and eating non-fish food at the restaurant. They were all waiting for their fish to be prepared takeout, but they were too hungry to wait the 40 minutes. Suddenly having lunch+ice cream before arriving at the restaurant didn’t seem like such a bad idea!

We sat down with a Chinese family from Auckland with two kids. The father had moved to Auckland for high school, and now they were on their summer break vacation. They shook their heads about the poor economy in New Zealand and the inflation, but remarked that we must have been feeling pretty good since the US dollar was high. I thought about trying to make them feel better by mentioning that our kids were subject to school shootings while theirs weren’t, but decided that wasn’t appropriate.

We went back to Alpine Junction, put the sashimi into the fridge, went out and bought salad and ice cream, and then had a shower and started the laundry. There was a huge amount of sashimi. One of the fish was 1 pound, and the other was 1.4 pounds. But it had been a while since we had Salmon sashimi so we ate it all up with no leftovers.

With that huge meal we had to do a post dinner walk. Fortunately it was quite cool at this point, and the walk was mostly flat. Clouds were building and the weather forecast for rain the next day seemed much more believable than in the morning.

We charged everything and went to bed. We had just two nights in New Zealand left!

2025 New Zealand: January 1 - Milford Sound to Alpine Junction (Wanaka)

Xiaoqin woke up early, around 6am, and we got up in time to capture Alpenglow photos of the surrounds. It struck me then that the overnight cruise boat probably has the best view. The land resort would have trees nearby, while we were far enough out on the water to get excellent views of the surrounding mountains, and yet be far enough away from land to avoid the sandflies.

The crew got up onto the deck, and I had a chance to chat with the skipper, Jimmy McKay, and I had a good chat about the boat (I noticed the bow thrusters and he realized that I had some experience sailing). The kids woke up and while we ordered breakfast, the Fiordland Jewel weighed anchor and took us on a second tour of Milford Sound, this time in the morning light.

The cruise was much shorter than in the morning, as the boat had to arrive back at the dock by 9:00am for a 2 hour turnaround for the lunch cruise. This was a very hardworking boat! But we had breakfast, and got more gorgeous pictures in the morning sun. Jimmy told me that after we docked we needed to walk down to the last pier to get a picture of Bowen with the boat known as the Lady Bowen.

Indeed, in the time it took us to pack, the boat was already docked. I got a video of the first mate Jack docking the boat with just the controls on the port side of the boat—and he never needed the bow thrusters, which was how practiced he was.

We got off the boat, got a picture of Bowen with the Lady Bowen, and then hiked back to the car. From there, we reversed yesterday’s journey out to the Routeburn Track to hike up to the Key Summit. While Lake Marian was also an option, I noted that the Routeburn Track started higher and would likely get us better views from the Key Summit.

Indeed, the walk was fairly easy (we did not have a load), and when we got to the Key Summit we took the nature walk all the way to the far end, where we got a nice view of Lake Marian! The view was hard to find, and we were lucky that there were other hikers who told us where to stand and where to look.

We hiked back down slowly, taking pictures of the spectacular wilderness all around, and then got into the car to drive to Te Anau, where we had lunch at Miles’ Better Pies again and put more gas in the car.

We then drove back onto the Queenstown Road, but now instead of stopping at Queenstown, we kept going towards Wanaka. Just before the Crown Range  road there was a crash between an SUV and a Station Wagon, which stopped up the road. Fortunately, the crash was pretty recent and we made it past before getting stuck for very long at a traffic jam.

The Crown Range Road was astonishing in grade and narrowness, steeply climbing at 20% before cresting at 1121 meters. 1121 meters is not very high for California, but that was sufficient to make it the highest road in New Zealand! From the top we stopped for photos before descending into the Wanaka area. We actually couldn’t find any lodging in Wanaka, and instead stayed nearby, at Alpine Junction Apartments at Albertstown.

We arrived at 5pm and it felt hot! We checked into our apartment, and realized that it being New Year’s Day, there weren’t many restaurants that were open. We ended up buying pizza at the supermarket (which was open) within walking distance and cooking it and eating it at the apartment, which thankfully had both laundry machines and AC.

Review: Covacure Collapsible Hiking Poles

 We bought a pair of Covacure Collapsible Hiking Poles for the New Zealand trip. While we have full sized hiking sticks for use at home, they don't pack well. These sticks are very light, so much so that I was worried about fragility. They are composed of 3 aluminum sleeved sections, which snap together like a tent pole. You assemble the 3 sections and then pull on the main section to take up the slack on the shock cord, which then makes the stick flexy but not in a bad way.

We used these sticks nearly every day on the New Zealand trip. They assembled and disassembled very well, taking up little space in the small car we rented. They fit nicely into the checked bag that we have. We never used any of the accessories that came with the sticks and for a weight-limited trip I'd leave the accessories behind.

The stuff sack the sticks came with was very fragile. We destroyed them by the end of the trip. That's a minor nit. I'd highly recommend these sticks for anyone.

2024 New Zealand: December 31st - Queenstown to Milford Sound

 

We got up, packed everything into the car after breakfast, and then drove to buy cough medicine and fever medicine for Boen. The pharmacist asked if it was a dry or wet cough and Boen demonstrated that for her, and she immediate said, “Dry.” She gave us the appropriate cough medicine, and some fever medication as well. However, we discovered we’d forgotten the CPAP battery and had to go back to the hotel to get it, where it was lying on Bowen’s bed.

After that, the drive to Te Anau was no big deal. From Te Anau, we drove towards Milford sound and the scenery began changing dramatically, first with the Eglinton Valley views that were spectacular, a long flat plain backgrounded by mountains that invited you to spin around like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. At the far end of that valley at Lake Gunn, there was a turnout where we found large groups of lupines backed with pine trees also with a grand views of the mountains behind them.

At the next lake over, Lake Fergus, there was an opening where you could see the river just flow down from the mountains onto a rocky lakeshore. That was beautiful as well. It made me wish that we had an RV and could just roam the area camping wherever we liked and enjoy the scenery at leisure. Of course, that would have made the drive much harder and slower.

At the Pop’s View Lookout, we stopped for a view of Lake Marian. We would have to pick either Lake Marian or the Routeburn track hike to do the next day. The road soon routed onto to a traffic light that controlled traffic into the single lane tunnel. This light actually had a timer that told you how long you had to wait, and there were two lanes for the wait, enabling me to avoid being stuck behind an RV.

The tunnel wasn’t very exciting, but the road after the tunnel was nothing short of amazing, a video game drive if there ever was one, with steep descents and grand views that made me wish someone else was driving so I could enjoy it. Even so, I didn’t ever feel like I’d rather be cycling the road as the thought of badly driven RVs coming up on my tail on these narrow roads with high speed limits filled me with fear.

We stopped at the Chasm Bridge viewing area. To our disappointment, the bridge itself was closed. Having run out of buffer time, we drove to the Milford Sound Cafe, where I dropped off everyone else, before driving back out to the free parking lot. The short walk from the park to the Cafe was only 15 minutes, and I arrived to find that the actual ferry terminal was another 10 minutes away. We ate a quick lunch, and then hiked over.

The Milford Sound Cruise terminal serves multiple cruise lines, and ours was the smallest, with a passenger limit of 18 people. Despite that, it was fully booked except for New Year’s Eve, which is why I had ended up driving back and forth from Te Anau to Queenstown and back rather than going straight from the Kepler track to Milford Sound, which would have been the most logical thing to do. We checked in, got our boarding badges, and then waited to get onto the boat, the Fiordland Jewel.

Once aboard, we were given the customary safety briefing, and then boat immediately left the dock, driving past Lady Bowen falls. Of course we had to get photos of Bowen with the falls in the background. The day was beautiful and the skipper celebrated New Year’s Eve by giving everyone onboard a free drink. I picked a low-alcohol beer that was surprisingly tasty, while Xiaoqin picked the Apple Cider, not realizing that it had alcohol in it. The kids grabbed fruit juices.

The nice thing about being on the overnight cruise is that the skipper doesn’t have to be in a hurry, so we took a leisurely cruise, exploring many nooks and crannies, including waterfalls that only are seen when it’s been raining recently, a seal rock, and watching a team of climbers attempting to climb one of the cliffs before heading out into the Tasman Sea.

On the way back, one of the highlights as that the skipper would drive the boat straight into Sterling Falls bow in, giving us a chance to shower in the falls. Boen bowed out of it, but the rest of us did it, and it was much less dramatic than advertised (for a cruise like this would they really let you do anything too uncomfortable?), but I got a photo of Bowen with a rainbow halo, which looked great.

We then returned to Deepwater Basin, where the boat anchored for the night and we got in line to Kayak. Kayaking on Milford Sound was one of those activities where when I inquired about it from various outfits, they required a minimum of 10 or 14 years old and wouldn’t make an exception for Boen. The Fiordland Jewel was the only exception and another reason we picked the overnight Cruise rather than trying to stay at the only lodge in the area, which was likely booked up anyway.

The Kayaking was fun and Bowen even got to see a seal up close and personal. After the 45 minutes of Kayaking, we got back onto the Jewel and were coached as to how to jump off the boat into Milford Sound. The water was cold, but we had to have the experience. We then showered and sat down to a 3 course dinner followed by a short show about the Fiordland Jewel’s winter expeditions to other sounds in New Zealand, as well as footage from the underwater drone that’s part of the research program.

To round out the night, we also got first dibs at the hot tub on top of the vessel. The adult passengers probably preferred the hot tub only after dark so they could do star gazing, so they were happy that the noisy kids got out of the way.

Returning to our cabin, I discovered that the outlets were too far for my CPAP machine to reach, so I was very happy that I brought along a CPAP battery and ran my CPAP machine that way.

We’d packed a ton of activities into one day, but it was clear that the medicines we’d gotten for Boen worked. He stopped coughing, slept well, and didn’t need medicine for the rest of the trip. I, unfortunately had caught his cold, and would intermittently be coughing until we got home. We slept well, not waking up until the next morning.

Review: Osprey Daylite Plus Daypack

 The Osprey Daylite Plus daypack is something my brother has used for years and he loves it. The MSRP is incredibly high, so we waited until it was on sale before we bought it. The reason to get this daypack was that the REI Flash did not have provisions for side pockets for water bottles. While hydration bladders are great, I couldn't really get my family to like them, so the Daylite plus with its twin outside water bottle pockets and small size that fit my wife and Boen was what we ended up getting for New Zealand.

The organization of the pack is pretty good, with a main compartment, an outside compartment for small items, and an external zipper pocket just right for the Kindle. The pull strings on the zippers are also well done, and the hip-pack means that if you have to you can use it while cycling as well.

For larger persons the Deuter Speedlite is better. Otherwise this is the one to get.