New Zealand

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Things from home seem so important at the time and when you leave you realize its not the things at home, its the people. The people who stand by you and wish you luck and send you love from around the world no matter what time of night are the ones you find you miss and wish could see what you are seeing. It is this thought that follows me throughout the trip of NZ and it is this thought that I continually had runing through my head as we made our way south from landing in Auckland, NZ to Wellington to sort out passports and then onto the south Island. It is without a doubt a beautiful country and yet the odd things are so similar to home its hard to explain to people. The snow capped mountains that role into the green grassy hills which eventually give way to the crashing ocean is beyond words and yet holds a similarity to British Columbia its hard to portray in words. Besides sheep being a major population booster in the country the 1200km of land that makes up NZ is beautiful and full of delightful people. I took an adventure to a family run horse trek business only to be secluded from town on a mountain side with a petting farm and one britishgirl as company. With no cell coverage, computer to check emails and check in and tourists coming sporadically i chose to come back to town. Allison and I planned a new form of attack and are in waiting for her passport, which as of today has arrived in Wellington and hopefully will meet us in Kaikoura or wherever we are next. --- Allison's passport came in just in time for us to head south from Kaikoura November 14th so we could head to christchurch for some sightseeing, relaxing and fun before heading onto another smaller town of Oamaru to work at another hostel. The place is just above Dunedin and is close to drive to a few cool sights along the way like moeraki boulders, elephant rock ( location of Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe filiming) and shag point to see seals and penguins. Our treks to see penguins however did come up short as there were no penguins in the areas told. However our attempts to see them were granted praise as we were lucky ( unforunately not lucky for the penguin itself) when we were driving home from the Penguin club after a night of live music and good company to see a small blue eyed penguin lost and wandering through the historical section of oamaru late that night. The town itself had Victorian Days where the entire town turned back centuries to envelope the lucky tourist and transform the town into the loveliness that would have been then. The old stone buildings were back in their hay day and we watched horse carriages, penny farthing races ( old large wheeled bikes) along with a carriage ride through the park for a victorian tea party. It seemed the entire town waited for this week to come every year just to dress up. New friends are always a great chance to talk to other cultures and we got to meet some great Americans, Germans, Irish, Taiwaneese and of course British. While this update has been slow coming, not very informative and very sporadic I can only say that New Zealand offers far more than its size would make you think and has such beauty that it is hard to believe.

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Photos

Auckland, NZ
Skytower