March 17th-24th

WANAKA and QUEENSTOWN

Wanaka: The place where dreams are made.

I had the pleasure of spending about 4 days in Wanaka. It’s an absolutely stunning place. I spent my night staying in a hostel, and I spent my days wandering the town, hiking, kayaking, and just a bit of shopping. Then I was off to Queenstown, where I did a bit more shopping, got a tarot card reading (very cool by the way), some more hiking, enjoying a REAL hot chocolate at Patagonia Chocolates, a gondola ride to the top of the mountain, and admiring the general splendor.

Needless to say, I took lots of pictures. So here some are:

March 14th

Brrr it’s cold here in Dunedin. At the moment I’m staying with a highly energetic woman named Pene. She’s extremely nice, and very busy so it works out well. She left for the weekend and left me at home with Isabella, her dog. Dunedin is a very cool city, full of beautiful architecture, rolling hills and the ocean. Its only downfall is the weather. It’s been cold, windy and rainy for most of my stay. Its ok though, I’ve been on the go for a while now, its nice to be a bit of a hermit.

On my way down from Christchurch I stopped at a beach that has these big beautiful boulders right along the shoreline. Due to water and weather the rocks have become symmetrical. It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen (I’ll post a pic).

From here (Dunedin), I’ll be heading up towards Queenstown/Wanaka. I’ve herd they are both beautiful and fun cities to spend a few days in. I’m attempting to find some spots to WWOOF, so we’ll see what happens.

March 9th Part Two

We spent quite a few night doing what we call here, freedom camping. Basically its finding a spot on the beach or even on the side of the road, setting up shop and spending the night for free. It saved us a pretty penny and we found a few great spots…and some not so special too. And with Adam along…there was no such thing as camping food. It was all gourmet (he got to ride in the front seat a lot :) )

Next we headed up to Golden Bay, where we spend the majority of out time. Eli had a friend that was renting a beach house on the ocean, so we fortunately got to much off of them and stay for a night. Another cool spot was Whreaki Beach (pronounced: Freaky Beach...and not spelled like that either). There’s no way to describe the beauty, so I’ll just post pictures. But there were baby seals that got trapped on land from high tide and they were maybe the cutest things I’ve ever seen…for real. From there we did a bit of hiking, reading books and drinking beer. We ended up in Takaka (this is where Eli chose to leave us to head back into the woods) at the San Suchi Inn. It was paradise….it included adobe buildings, lots of green grass, a hammock, a big kitchen for Adam to cook us whatever we wanted and incredibly nice people. We couldn’t leave, and then when we did leave…we came back again. To conclude our time in Golden Bay, we did a coastal hike in Able Tasman National Park into a Hut (where all three of us got ZERO sleep due to abnormally loud snorers) where we stayed for a night and hiked back out the next day. Then to begin out decent back into Christchurch (where Rachel and Adam departed from) we went down to Nelson Lakes, where we walked along the lake and camped in the most sandfly infested campground ever. We woke up the next day and continued south to Hamner Springs. There we ate Thai food, sat in hot thermal pools and laid in the sun all day…t’was wonderful.

Then this morning I dropped them off at the Christchurch airport and began my way south to Dunedin, where I’ll hopefully be WWOOFing with a woman named Lucy for a few days.

March 9th Part One

I haven’t properly wrote a blog in about three weeks (sorry if it’s a long one). There has been a very good reason for that. Rachel and Adam came to see me for a visit! It was so much fun to have them here. At times we annoyed each other just like always, but I think we’re growing up to be really good friends. The itinerary went as follows:

Three weeks ago I picked up Rachel at the Auckland airport and we headed straight for raglan to spend a few days on the beach. The weather wasn’t as ideal as we would of hoped…but don’t worry we got plenty of sun time. Then we headed to the Tauhara Centre in Taupo, where we exchanged some rigorous work (and you people think I’m just on vacation all the time J ) for three nights in the Chalet. The Chalet is an adorable little cottage, built over the edge of a cliff, that has one of the most picturesque views of Lake Taupe (or anywhere) I’ve ever seen. Catherine and Nassir were once again magnificent hosts and I’ll never forget Stan’s cooking.

Rach and I then took a bit of a road trip down to Wellington, where we enjoyed a drink overlooking the harbor, before hopping on the ferry to the South Island. The ferry left at 9:25pm, so we got to Picton (entrance city to the SI) at about 1am, where we then had a most enjoyable night sleep in the car. The next day we drove down one of the most scenic road you could ever imagine to Christchurch, where killed two birds with one stone by picking up both Adam and Eli (our cousin in law?…something like that…Wendy’s nephew). The four of us piled into Steve (I still don’t know how we managed) and headed north to a town called Kaikoura. We stayed in a little self contained room just across the street from the ocean. The following day we did a really cool walk around the shore at low tide and came across tons of seals lounging about on the rocks. It was one of the cooler sights I’ve seen (along with the baby seals…but I’m getting to that).

March 2nd

Here we are in Wellington. At the time we took this picture, Rachel had been here for one week...and she still looks like a Minnesota winter white girl. we crossed the ferry from the north to the south island that evening and picked up both Adam (rachel's hubby) and Eli in Christchurch the next day. since then we have been hanging out, enjoying the beautiful weather, and playing with baby seals. It's been a treat to have fun people to travel.