Recap of the north (written on Thurs)

A quick recap of Easter break:

We left Thursday evening to get up to Christchurch for some free floor space on our way up north, only to find that our master plan of driving through dinner and just grabbing food at a supermarket once we got there had been foiled by the fact that in NZ, Easter lasts about a week. Apparently, stores close at 8 instead of 11 on Thursday since the next day is Good Friday, and don't re-open till Tuesday (the Monday after Easter is a public holiday too...what?!). We thought we'd go to a 24 (they call places open 24-hours two-fours here), but turns out that's just a Dunedin thing: only college students require food at all times of day in New Zealand. Thankfully, I'm a huge fan of car-snacking and had filled up on trail mix and apples, so I went to bed comfortable while the rest of the group starved.

We woke up early the next day to drive up to Nelson Lakes Nat'l Park, which was gorgeous. Unfortunately, Caitlin has to go to the bathroom about once every twenty minutes (not exaggerating...she sucks down water like none else, and doesn't slow down even if she knows she'll be in a car for a long time!), so we got there later than we thought we would and we didn't get to do the long hike I wanted to do. Still, we hiked around the lake a bit and saw some eels in there. I played with some very cute 4-year-old kiwis and gave their dad a break from chasing them around. I hiked up some other large hill which was essentially vertical, only to find that there was no view. What? No view after climbing a large mountain? It was blocked by the trees, I was sad. A sign warning us might have been helpful. Oh well, climbing down was fun. We drove back out to Nelson to stay in our adorable hostel and ate delicious Thai food which I had been craving for quite a while.

The next day, we explored the Queen's Gardens, shopped at the Nelson Farmer's Market, checked out the Nelson art deco cathedral, climbed up the hill to the center of New Zealand (though we're still confused how they know it's the center...do they draw a box around the perimeter and then find the center? Or is it just the vertical center of the two islands?), hiked around the edge of a mountain through tons of sheep poop to the Japanese Gardens, only to find out that they're about the size of my living room. Seriously, there was a tiny pond (without koi! Every Japanese garden has koi!) and a square of rocks that looked like they were trying to be a zen garden, and that's it. There was also a kid that had somehow constructed a sword out of some bamboo that was running wild, terrorizing a lost bird. On our way back, we stopped off at the Founder's Brewery, the first organic brewery in NZ which is located in this creepy mini-town of Nelson. It's apparently a giant tourist attraction, and it's kind of like Ft. Vancouver except instead of being a re-enactment, it's just a miniature version of the entire city circa-sometime a long time ago, I'm not sure when. Actually, it's not really like Ft. Vancouver at all, it just has to do with the history of the city. We ate dinner at a sports bar (the only place in the entire city that was open, since it was Easter) and called it an early night.

Day 3: driving out to Motueka and navigating the windiest roads EVER. After driving 11k on a 1-car-width gravel road, we made it to this forest where part of LOTR was filmed and hiked through it to Harwood's Hole, the deepest cave in NZ. It was a gorgeous trek out there, and the cave was pretty cool, but kind of hard to see how big it was. It more just looked like a giant hole with no bottom and lots of trees. Then the other girls tanned while Jake and Dan and I hiked out to this river at the bottom of a mountain. Since it's the end of summer, it was more of a stream than a river, but it was still quite pretty and had the classic bubbling sound that you hear on those sound machines that help people sleep, it was incredibly peaceful. We drove back to Motueka where we stayed in another adorable hostel and I ate the best falafel I've had since I left Israel. It was seriously delicious, the man making it asked if I liked garlic, and I said yes, and he squirted on the most delicious garlic hummus and garlic tzatziki EVER. Delish.

Day 4, we caught the sunrise over Kaiteriteri Bay and took these really awesome water taxis out to Tonga Bay. On the way, we passed a seal colony on the rocks and since it's fall, the mothers had their babies about 3 months ago and they were swimming and playing around and being just adorable. We hiked all the way from Tonga to Anchor Bay and caught some absolutely gorgeous views. We ate lunch on the whitesand beach of Bark Bay and we went swimming in the crystal blue-green water. I just can't get over how cool all the tramps are in NZ: they're so varied in scenery, on this one hike we got rock climbing, picturesque beaches, waterfalls, estuaries, bays, incredibly dense foliage, rainforest foliage, rugged rock...it's so cool! I also saw a guy from Oregon on the trail, turns out he's from Eugene. We had a split-second Northwest moment of appreciation and then split our ways.

Day 5 was spent driving back THE ENTIRE DAY. I drove from 7:30 AM till 4:30 across really windy roads, through tons of construction and traffic, and along really narrow roads, and as soon as I handed off driving responsibilities to Dan, the road miraculously turned straight and wide. It would. Still, I had Dan quiz me on my ed. test while I was driving which made the drive go a bit faster and helped in the test-studying department too.

Now it's Thursday and I have both my papers that aren't due till tomorrow finished (I am incredible) and my education test is behind me--it's a giant relief to have a quick break from all this academic thinking. Now it's on to plan this weekend's adventures: maybe the Catlins to go blokarting (half go-karting/half sailing..sweetas!) and camping perhaps? The adventures never end! And then in about a week, the parental unit arrives in Dunedin for their joyous trip to see what all the fuss is about over here. I love how over here, there's never any shortage of things to look forward to.