4. Camped, then drove north to Waimate, and played with wallabies.  Baby wallabies, mama wallabies, papa wallabies, just-neutered, even blind wallabies.  Awesome. and somehow i just deleted the pictures of the wallabies, so you'll have to wait a week for those to be loaded. suckers.

5. Then we drove to mount cook, and had a great view, which is rare, and then we hiked up to a glacier, and meant to stay in a hut, but it got dark, so we stopped early and slept underneath the stars and prayed for the weather to hold out.  Luckily, it did, we saw some great shooting stars, sunrise over the snowy mountains, and then the clouds rolled in.  So we peaced out, and embark on the dusky track on Monday.

2. After the island experience, which was completely devoid of these so-called “ubiquitous” kiwis- ugh!  we decided our feet needed some time to heal, so we drove over to Dunedin and the otago peninsula for a day.  Cool things we saw included:

-       sea lions just hanging out on the beach

-       royal albatross flying around

-       an aquarium with pregnant sea horses and many varieties of small sharks

-       a 1000 year-old matai tree

-       and we didn’t pay $25 to see some castle, but saw a picture later and decided it looked lame anyways

-       and we jumped on a free trampoline in the botanic gardens

The next day, we went to the Otago Museum in Dunners, which is a pretty cool city, and saw prehistoric fossils.  Like a ginourmous pleiosaurus, the largest fossil found in new Zealand, a giant moonfish, and ancestors to penguins and whales and dolphins.  It was a highlight.

3.  We skipped the Cadbury factory (dang it!), and drove through the catlins again, camped on the beach again, stopped off at some 60 million year old lava boulders, and played in them, saw some more penguins coming in to tend to their nests, more sea lions lounging on beaches, more spectacular sunsets; typical day in the life.

i felt the need to pretend i was a dinosaur being borne from the rocks.  i think it had something to do with all the fossils... (we talk about dinos and sharks a lot)

ash was overhwlelmed

This post is going to be broken up again, sorry folks, but, here goes.

Well, it’s been a long, long time since I’ve checked in – so sorry, I know you are all waiting eagerly to hear about my adventures, so get ready, because adventures we have had.

1. On Valentine’s day, I sold my car, moved out of my flat and piled the back of a blue Subaru with all my possessions, minus a few Christmas decorations we gave back to the Salvation Army – salval really has been so good to us.  Then we had a delicious $10 lunch special of thai food with some lovely qt kids, and quietly snuck out of town.  Open road, here we come.  Or, Stewart Island, rather.  We made it to Bluff, booked a ferry, set up the tents for a night, and then hopped on the boat the next morning.  Then we trotted off on the Northwest Circuit track, a ten-day tramp around, you guessed it, the northwest part of the island.  It was so awesome!  Beaches that reminded us of the south pacific  (well, reminded mel and ash of the south pacific, because I haven’t actually been there), big jungle forests with ferns larger than we were that reminded us of Jurassic park, pink sunsets and purple sunrises, jagged mountains and islands that looked like lagoons in never-neverland, and lots of mud.  Actually, compared to all the crazy stories about the mud being the worst thing in the entire world, knee-deep and everywhere, the mud really wasn’t that bad.  After a few days, my feet started to really hurt - I misplaced my trusty duct-tape cure-all on day one, oops.  So then, I got the worst blisters and sores of my entire life, huge rashes all over my toes, unlike anything you’ve ever seen.  And my feet swelled up and hardly fit in my boots and rubbed in all the sore places and got worse, and by the end of day 7 I couldn’t really walk, even without shoes on, so that kinda put a damper on the last leg of the trip.  Luckily, there was a ranger at that hut who gave me some gauze and tape, and we caught a water-taxi out the next day.  Also unfortunately, ashley’s camera broke on day one, so our entire journey was undocumented.  But, luckily, there was a really stellar german kid named Frank who was on the same sched as we, and he agreed to give us some of his pictures, so as soon as we get those from him, they will be posted.  For now, you get just this one, of a huge skull we found on the first beach.  Sweet as.  

there is a chain from the mainland to the island, and this is part of it. 

what kind of skull is this? who knows.  my guess (wish) is shark. 

some more routeburn saddle.

a few more snippets of the past few days...

the water here is my favorite color ever. it doesn't look real.

as you may remember, we went to a 48-hour outdoor music fest last weekend. it was incredible. and incredibly hot. scorching, might be the right term.  this is the only picture we have, but i really like how we are all making the same exact face.  not even on purpose ;)

a few days ago, one of the rafters took us on a day hike up the routeburn saddle - a nice little day hike. this is looking down on the valley part way up.

waterfalls and a rainbow! oh boy!

my gurrls<3

we went on the greenstone-caples track a few weeks ago, and finally uploaded the pics. enjoy.

also, we realized we all match. adorable.

mooooooooo

waterfalls, waterfalls. gotta love 'em.

well, i know i receive a failing grade in the art of blogging, so i will try to redeem myself and give you a succinct, but nevertheless enthralling, update on the past month.  shit, it's been a month already! so, just before miss tatlow abandoned me in a foreign country, we made a quick little trip up to wellington, hands-down our favorite city in the country.  We went to the zoo, and the national museum and saw a preserved giant squid, and stayed with a friend of pete's, who was generous enough to let us crash on his pull-out couch.  all too soon our time together came to an emotional end, where tatty walked through the international terminal and i cried a lot and fell asleep in a big red chair.  

 upon my return to queenstown, and to my job (ugh), the girlies told me about this  killer music festival a few hours away, so we bought tickets and are going this weekend.  yay! it's called area 9, is chock-full of hip new zealand bands, and just about every person i know in this town is going.  we get to camp out and jam out for the better part of three days.  oh, and it's on the beach. stellar.  also, right after i got back, mel and ash and i embarked on our first little tramp - a two night, three day clomp around the greenstone-caples.  the greenstone river is famous for flyfishing, and we met some people who were out doing that.  it's a beautiful, clear, turquoise river with lots of little falls and babbling spurts over rocks.  the caples track wasn't nearly as picturesque, although we did hike up the saddle and walked by a really big lake.  photos will be posted just as soon as they are loaded.   

that was a welcome distraction from the same-old same-old of little old queenstown.  then ash and i asked for the days off for area 9, and our boss said no, so we gave our two weeks notice. hah.  and then we each got two shifts the next week.  ouch. but, karma kicked in, and one of the new girls they hired quit before she even started, so we got another shift, but then the next week we each only got two shifts again. lame. but, little miss karma is truly on our side, because another girl who they hired never showed up for her first shift either, so they fired her.  tomorrow night is my last shift, and i couldn't be happier.  it's so much more fun to have an entire day to just enjoy the lovely summer weather instead of dreading going to work all day.  and that is precisely what we have been doing.  with all our free time, i'm doing some day hikes, reading, walking around the botanical gardens, and increasing my chances of getting skin cancer by about a thousand percent.  

as luck would have it, we were having a few beers in the afternoon sun a few days ago, and a group of rafting guides came in to the bar where mel works.  now, a few weeks ago, they promised to try and take us rafting, but we hadn't seen them or heard anything from them in so long that i had all but given up hope.  but, we mentioned something about it to Deano, who is a wild character, and he said, "Well, I'm the trip leader tomorrow, so come by and we'll see if we can squeeze you in.  No promises, but if there's room, you're on."  We tried really hard not to get out hopes up - the chance of there being an extra three spaces seemed highly unlikely - but we roused ourselves at 7 on Monday, and drove our groggy little selves down to the river.  When we got there, Deano told us there wasn't room.  Bummer.  But, he told us to stick around and wait because they couldn't be sure until the very last minute.  Well, the last minute came, and he gave us the go ahead.  I was so excited I squealed and did a happy dance.  The guides found that entertaining.  So, we get suited up in wetsuits and anorak jackets and booties and pfds and and helmets.  and then we drove down the most terrifying dirt road to the river, got the safety talk, and jumped in.  it was pretty fun; i haven't been rafting since i was in honduras, and we hit all the things in the rapids that you try to avoid in canoes - surfing on holes, spinning in eddies, dropping down little falls, and, at the very end, we got to raft through a tunnel and then go over some falls.  and the best part was, we didn't pay a cent!  ah, the perks of being a bartender.   Deano even dropped off a pack of photos for us later that day, so we will upload those soon as well.  

Sorry this was the longest and wordiest post ever; there was just so much to tell!  I hope you are all enjoying the twelve feet snow being dumped everywhere.  ciao!

xoxxxxxx

-d