Thursday, February 19, 2009

Travelling south.

The last few days have been full of adventure and fun. After the kiwi burn, we went to the Mount and hung out for a couple of days. We then went to Waitomo to see the caves and glowworms. We repelled 47 meters down to the cave entrance, hiked half Kilometer into the darkness and turned off our lights. Then it was lit by bioluminescent bugs. Cold and wet but very fun. Then we drove to Taupo to Bungie jump into a blue river. Later that day we ran 6 k to a hot water stream where it enters the cold blue river. It didn’t mix that well so it was hot on top and cold by our feet. We jumped into the river from anything we could. That after noon we drove out to the west coast to find the three sisters. They are small islands right off the coast. It was raining when we got there, but we hiked 10 minutes out to some beach caves. We ran around wet and shirtless in the rain on a beach with nice view but it was getting dark. We then drove down to New Plymoth. That day we had a blowout on the hiway only to find out the spare tire is for a small car and wont even fit around the brake caliper. We talked about hitch hiking into town, but then I tried to put it on backwards and torque the lugs on. It got us down the road to a tyre shop. That night we found a beach that was also a road. So we parked out on the beach. When we woke up we built a hut out of driftwood. Then drove down to Wellington. We had a ferry to catch at 2:30 am that night so we just played around in the big city. Went to a couple of clubs and visited a friend I had met in gisborne. The ferry was a big boat that had a deck for cars on the lower level and cafeteria up stairs, but we brought out cookware and food up and cooked some really good food ourselves. We got to the South island around dawn and just parked and slept till one. Then we drove to Nelson, and saw people walking on stilts on the side of the road we got to walk on them. Then we went to the beach and ran into a friend from Taraunga. Julia and Stephiane. We hung out with them drank some beer spun some poi and did some flips in Nelson and slept there at the park. The next day we went up to able tasman but it didn’t look like that much fun so we headed back south. To Greymouth where we found Montieths brewery and we took a tour. Tired in the afternoon we parked in some farmers farm he woke us up knocking on the window of the van. The Franz Joseph Glacier was a international park but the last tour had already left by the time we got there. We decided to come back tomorrow, and found a indoor ice climbing, where Josh and I had no problem learning to climb ice for the first time. Confident we could handle anything we decided to climb the glacier without a guide against the advice of all the towns people. It was a national park and we had the right to be there so when some guy told us to leave we went past him and kept climbing the glacier. We got some really cool pictures and saved $150
We Drove for hours on the south island because the cities are few and far between. Finally arriving in Queenstown which was nice because it is free of mosquitoes and it is the adventure capital of the world. They don’t like campers here, we were waking up by a city council man banging on all the vans threaten us with a $400 fine. Its raining today here in Queenstown and josh is doing the sky swing. I am out of money, so I will just have to lay low for the next couple of weeks. We have to get to Christcurch by the 27th so josh can fly out. I will remain there just long enough to sell my van and then it will be time to go home to So Cal.

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