Here comes the sun, little darling

Back again from another wonderful weekend vacation, this time with Los Padres accompanying me! We totally lucked out weather-wise, it was perfect each day for what we were doing! We went out to the caves in Te Anau to see the glow worms, which were really quite cool: we got to take a boat ride through Lake Te Anau, and then in the caves there were these impressive waterfalls and standing water. The glow worms themselves look like little green LED lights on the top of the cave. Only the females glow, and only when they're really hungry. They spit out these sticky webs to catch the food and paralyze it, and then they reel it in to eat the prey. We went out to "the cathedral," this really dark, empty area of the cave on a wooden boat, and the glow worms seriously surround you. It was a quite cool experience, especially considering there's very few other places in the world that have glow worms.

We had a great dinner (Greek salad and Greek pizza...mmm...) and then met up again the next morning for our drive out to Milford Sound. The view along the drive out there is just as cool--we made stops to look at the incredible mountains (old news by now), the Mirror Lakes with the coolest reflection of the mountains and the greenery, and to go out to the Chasm to see a waterfall shape the rock formations and all the moss growing on it. All of it was incredible and it makes me feel so spoiled to drive through such incredible landscapes and have to remind myself that not everybody gets these awesome views. To get out to Milford, you have to drive through this one-way tunnel that has a traffic light that changes every 15 minutes. In the tunnel, it goes straight down the entire way, it feels like you're driving to the Earth's core or something--so cool! Once we got out to Milford, we took a scenic cruise of the sound (to be accurate, the fjord). Milford is arguably one of the most gorgeous places in the world. I can't think of anywhere else where the mountains literally come right out of the water (Dad, note the proper use of the word "literally") so majestically. We saw seals playing in the water too! Our boat driver took us right up to a waterfall so we all got sprayed and we saw the coolest, most vibrant rainbow. The weather was perfect for a boat ride--sunny and warm and not too windy. We got so spoiled--Milford gets the most rain in all of NZ! Major kudos to the parents for hanging out with a bunch of 20-year-olds the entire weekend and treating us all to some delicious food and drink. I'm so pleased they got to see such a cool area of NZ with me and that they got a taste of my life abroad.

On Sunday, we drove out to The Divide and hiked up to the Key Summit at the end of a track called the Routeburn. We had an amazing view of the glacier by Mt. Christina, of Lake Marian, and they had a self-guided nature walk where we learned about the plants and rock formations and such. For about half of the hike up, there was this awesome stream running down the mountain through jade rock--imagine a 6 inch wide stream of crystal clear water over vivid green rock. It was so picturesque and almost made you forget that you were climbing straight uphill for about and hour and a half. To keep us from getting cocky, these two older women booked it up the hill carrying toddlers on their backs in packs and carrying all their kids' stuff with them too. And we thought we had it rough carrying our water and rain jackets and snacks! The views were to die for though, and again, we lucked out weather-wise.

After an uneventful drive back minus a stop for peanut M&Ms, I came back to a delicious meal of veggie pasta (I love coming home to pre-cooked food and not having to worry about it!). Evan and I went for an adventure after dinner and raced his old station wagon Sheila up Baldwin St (the steepest street in the world), only to stall at the top. After barely making it down (his brakes are a bit iffy), we went up again, this time in second gear. We barely made it, but it was pretty sweet. Again we stalled (so embarrassing, since people had watched us zoom up the hill and were laughing at us), but still, I was impressed that he could start the car on the steepest street in the world. We drove out to the Dunedin reservoir and hiked down the path to see the Dunedin glow worms. It was cool to see them in the wild, instead of a tourist cave, but there weren't nearly as many. Still, they glowed really bright and it made them seem more real. We finished off the evening with a night screening of Airplane! which goes by Flying High in NZ. It's quite possibly one of my favorite movies, so it was great. Now I'm back to the day-in-day-out grind of classes and work...ha! I don't have class till 3 today, and I don't have a paper due for another two weeks. I love NZ.