New Zealand - There and Back Again

June 22 - Milford Sound - The Hurricane Cometh! We woke around 7:15 AM and laid in bed until about 7:40. Last night was the warmest night so far. I remember looking on the thermometer outside the lounge building that it was 13 Celsius, which is in the mid-50s. We went inside and had our breakfast. We ate cereal, a banana, and had hot chocolate. We were only paying per day at the Milford Sound Lodge because we didn’t know how long we would stay there so before we started the day we paid for another night. We each paid for ourselves since we had each paid once the previous two nights,. After breakfast we planned to do the Lake Marian Hike. It is down the same gravel road as the Humboldt Falls trail we did the day before, but only 1 kilometer off the main road. The past two days the weather was perfect, but today it was really cloudy and looked like it would rain. It may have been better to do the lake hike the day before when the weather was great because you don’t need such nice weather to see a waterfall and a chasm. In fact, those two things would probably be better after rainfall anyway. We considered going down to Milford Sound before we planned to head off to the Lake Marian hike, but decided that the weather wasn’t very good and it wouldn’t be worth it. We started our drive around 9:30 AM. We didn’t stop along the way at all, but I did film out the window occasionally. We made it to the beginning of the trail around 10:15. One other car was parked at the pull off. We think it was a guy we had seen the day before near the bridge we hiked to after the Humboldt Falls Trail. We packed our bags with a few snacks, I took an apple and a granola bar, and then were ready to begin the hike of the day. The trail starts with a long swinging bridge that crosses the river below. We did a couple of gopro videos from various angles. Just after the bridge the trail leads into a forest with a lot of mossy trees. The first portion of the trail is marked very well. The day before we had seen a group of workers parked in the car park laying down gravel. They must have been using some on the trail because it looked like fresh gravel had just been put out. The first part of the hike leads to a series of waterfalls, but we planned to continue on to Lake Marian, which was 1 ½ hours further. We read that the trail was poorly marked the further you went. We were going to see for ourselves what that meant. It was basically flat for the first 20 minutes of the hike with only slight climbs uphill. Which was nice since it made for easy walking. We filmed a whole lot of shots in this area, probably too many considering how long the overall hike was supposed to be. It was very scenic though. One portion was paved with boardwalks as it curved around a rock wall. A few minutes past that there is another boardwalk section as you approach the waterfalls. I wouldn’t really describe it as a waterfall, but more of rushing water that dropped off a few feet as it passed through some large boulders. One part was a little bit of a drop off, maybe 4 yards. As we approached the guy that had been at the parking lot with us was taking pictures. We started before him, but he ended up passing us, and we had caught back up to him. We didn’t see him again until we started the other part of the trail that goes all the way to the lake. The trail itself was raised up from the water and seemed to be hanging to the rock wall edge to the left of us. It was a pretty cool little trail for this part. We did a whole lot of gopro shots, but most of them were just of myself. Andy was taking forever with pictures of the waterfalls. He was doing long exposure shots to make the water appear blurry. It started to sprinkle at this point of the trail while I was waiting for him. He caught up to me around the corner on another part of the boardwalk and told me what he had been doing. He showed me his pictures and explained how to do it. He had a tripod that could attach to the railing, but I had to just rest mine on the railing. In order to make the pictures come out correctly you need to use a timer on the camera, otherwise you will shake it slightly and make the picture come out blurry. We must have spent 40 minutes in this one area alone. The pictures we took came out well, and it was a neat place. At this point we were the only ones in the area. It was raining harder and most people don’t do the longer hikes, especially ones that claim to be poorly marked. We began the portion of the hike to Lake Marian around 11:45. We managed to make a 20 minute hike last over an hour. We didn’t really have anything else planned for the day so it wasn’t a big deal to go fast or slow. It was also very cloudy and raining off and on so maybe a little later it would be clear at the lake. The sign post to begin the Lake Marian hike warns that it isn’t marked very well and we had previously read that it can be slippery when wet. The beginning of it is a little bit steep, but covered by lots of trees. If it was raining we couldn’t tell because we never got wet. Most of the trees are covered in bright green moss. It makes for really neat pictures, but we didn’t do a whole lot. Instead we did a ton of gopro videos of the trail. The trail itself was very rocky. Unlike the first part of the hike these were slightly larger rocks though. Many of them spaced out, but sometimes one after another. Most of the trail included slightly uphill climbs, but due to the fact that it was rarely flat it made it a more difficult hike. It was also very slippery in some parts. The uphill portions tended to have a lot of rocks you would have to step onto and navigate slower than usual so you didn’t twist your ankle or fall down from stepping on a wobbly rock. We filmed a lot at the beginning, but not so much the further we went. I was pretty tired and starving and just wanted to get to the lake to have my snack and get some pictures. I figured we could do any missed filming opportunities on the way back down. I try to only film portions of the trail that look cool or the scenery changes to give the general idea of how the hike looks. Due to the fact that the scenery wasn’t changing that much I didn’t feel the need to stop too often, although I did make a few mental notes of places I would like to stop on the way back. There is one portion that goes out of the forest and into the open. This area is a rock slide zone. Before you go in a sign warns you for the next 200 meters to not stop. It is basically medium and large sized boulders that obviously have fallen down the mountain. Many of these rockslides are intentionally started by dynamite so that any loose rocks don’t fall while hikers are on the trail. This portion is also where the signs marking the trail become trickier. At first there were a few stakes with orange tops marking the way. After about 80 yards on the rocks we returned to the forest. I was thinking that was a fast 200 meters, and was hoping that was the whole rock slide area because that would mean we were closer to our destination. To enter back into the forest we had to look around for orange triangles on the trees. It took a minute, but we were able to find it. After a few more minutes we were in the rest of the rock slide zone. In order to get to this portion we had to basically scale the side of a cliff wall. It was only about 15 yards above the rocks below, but in order to get down we had to hang on to exposed tree roots. It was pretty cool, but nothing like what we were about to experience. The next portion of the trail was across some rocks, and again we had to look for a minute to see where the trail was going. We saw the orange marker and then walked towards it. In front of us was another cliff wall, only steeper and higher than the previous one. This one was about 30 yards above the rocks. Almost the whole way up we had to grapple onto tree roots for balance and support. At the top there were three trees. The first tree was skinny and on the left. It was basically impossible to pass through it since the other side was too steep and against a hill. The middle two trees had a small gap between them that led to the trail. Basically at this point in order to pass through we were standing on a tree route holding on to the trees we were attempting to squeeze between. One false move and you would fall backwards, 30 yards to the ground below with nothing to cushion your fall. Andy went through first and I was a few yards behind. I had taken a step incorrectly so my feet got tangled up. I ended up just having to hold both tree trunks with each hand and lift myself up and then step down. We made it through one of the more difficult parts of the hike. Getting down wasn’t going to be fun. Especially if it rained more and became slippery. We walked for another hour with very little filming stops. The closer we got to the end the more narrow the trail became. It was also becoming steeper, muddier, and rockier. There was one part in particular that was a narrow waterway. It was about a foot wide on either side and about 6 feet tall. We weren’t sure if it was the trail, but we walked down it anyway. Bushes were hanging over on either side so we were getting wet and muddy as we passed through. It was neat, but on the way back in this part we saw that the trail had actually gone a little to our right, on a nice clean path. There was another section near the end that was similar, but this time the passage way was shorter, but still involved mud and wet plants. It wasn’t that big of a deal though because our pants could protect our legs and they dried fast. Besides, the real wetness hadn’t even begun. As we went further the trees started to clear and the trail became rocky again. We could see the lake ahead. The last part of the trail was downhill and mostly muddy with a few rocks along the way. When we got to the lake it was very cloudy. We could see mountains around the lake, but only the base of them. Occasionally the clouds with clear up slightly and we could see portions of the tops of some of the mountains. The lake looked really neat in pictures and similar to mountain lake I had been to in other parts of the world. This one was a darker color though, not the bluish green color you see sometimes. On this day the lake wasn’t very pretty. Surrounding the lake are a lot of huge boulders thrown around, probably caused by a glacier that used to be in this area during the last ice age. Andy took a picture while I held the umbrella above him for protection. It had started to rain a little bit. We were wondering if it had been raining all day and the trees protected us, or if it just started raining. I was going to get a picture too, but after 5 minutes of him getting the right shot the clouds have covered the mountains again. I did get some pictures of the lake and rocky area around. At this point I began looking for a place to sit down on the rocks to have my snacks, I was starving and dying of thirst. I didn’t want to stop along the way to eat because there were not places to stop really, and I wanted to just get to where I was going. As we were looking around it was starting to rain a lot harder. I saw a huge rock that was surrounded by trees about 100 yards away and thought it would be a good place to sit and be covered. Andy was ahead of me a little bit and said the spot was no good. The rock was actually against a hill and we would have to climb on top of the rock just to get into the trees, and then there was nowhere to sit. We continued to walk around the lake in the same direction, being careful on the rocks. This part of the trail was barely marked by anything more than some grass that had been flattened by either animals or the few people that do the hike. Parts of the trail led straight into the rocks, so we had no choice but to cross them. We saw a few more large boulders that looked like they could be shelter, but nothing great. One was a really big rock that leaned slightly, but there wasn’t much room for sitting and we would only be protected slightly. A couple of others looked similar. By now we had walked 300 yards or so looking for a spot to sit. It was raining a lot harder too. Andy had an umbrella, I had nothing. We had passed two different sets of poop. They didn’t look like a dog, a person, or a rabbit, so we didn’t know what they were. I guess it could have been sheep, but it didn’t look right for that either. There is some type of mountain goat thing that lives in New Zealand, but we haven’t seen any. About 30 yards ahead of us I saw two large rocks resting next to each other, underneath was a space that looked pretty dry. It was only about 3 ½ feet tall, but looked like enough room to sit. As we approached we saw a spot where someone had created a fire. We were thinking it was a caveman and we were in his home. Andy went in first and just squatted and said it was uncomfortable. He got out and I squatted while leaning forward and said it was perfect. He ended up going behind me and resting his umbrella at the top of the two rocks where it was able to block the rain. He crawled to the point where the rocks met each other and sat on a rock. His spot was pretty well covered. In front of him wasn’t covered before he put his umbrella up so it had gotten wet. Next to where he was sitting there was a small rock, about 4 inches tall and about a foot long. It was perfect. I had to wiggle the rock around a little bit to get it out of the mud and move to a spot where I could sit on it. It probably weighed about 30 lbs, but leaning over and having just walked with no energy made it tough at first to get. We put our bags under the big rock we had originally tried to squat under. I sat down and had my snack. The first thing I did was drink a little water. I then had a granola bar and my apple. The apple was really good even though I had had it in my bag for the past 4 days. I kept it there as a snack for a hike, but never wanted to eat it. I don’t usually like apples that much. This one was good though because it was juicy and provided me with some water. We sat there for about 20 minutes waiting for the rain to stop. While we waited I set up my gorpro for a few shots of us eating our snacks. Andy said he thought the umbrella was only covering me and not him at all, but he had a more comfortable seating spot it looked like, but mine was fine too. We decided we had sat around long enough. I decided I didn’t want to wait for the clouds to clear to get a picture of the lake with the mountains since it was raining harder. We beginning hiking back around 12:47 PM. I was getting soaked as I tried to cross the rock mine back to the trail. I slipped a few times, but nothing major. We got back to the muddy trail and walked pretty fast to get out of the rain, hoping and thinking that the trees would protect us the way they protected the hobbits in Lord of the Rings. Maybe they would carry us too. My snack was good, but I was still wanting some real food. I also wanted to get out of my wet clothes and warm up. The worst part was my gloves were soaked so it was making my hands cold. My feet were also soaked as well. I was thinking that the one thing you learn from the movie Forrest Gump was to never let your feet get wet in the army. Anytime it rains I think of that if I’m walking around in it at all. The majority of the trail was uphill on the way, so it would be downhill on the way back. I had thought of a few spots to stop to film so I was looking for those. We tried to do a few different shots then we had before. Since the trail was muddy we put the gopro down next to a puddle so it would show only our feet as we stepped directly into it. We tried that on a footbridge and in a puddle. I didn’t want to do it too often due to the fact that I didn’t want to be getting my feet wet when they didn’t have to be. We probably stopped about ten times to do videos. All of them should be good, but the best ones were when we climbed up and down the two steep cliffs by holding onto the trees. I didn’t feel like hiking either of those portions again after the first time in fear of falling, but we ended up climbing them both about 4 or 5 times each in order to get various shots. Some of them I filmed Andy going down, some he filmed me going down, and some he wore his gopro going up and down. We also did shots of ourselves going up. In order to get back faster we ran a few times. It was wet and there were rocks so we didn’t run as often as we normally would. At one point I stepped funny and felt my foot bend inward completely to where I was standing on the outside of my foot. Basically the same thing that happens if you jump and land funny. It stung kind of bad at first, but I just kept running. The cold weather plus the constant moving helped. Within about 2 minutes the pain was gone. It never bothered me again on the trail. I have pretty strong ankles anyway and they don’t get hurt even when I twist it like that. That is probably due to soccer and yoga. The great thing about uphill hikes is that the way down is much easier. We got back to the car just after 2:30 PM. It was pouring down rain, and for a lot of the hike the trees did protect us, but the rock slide areas were exposed and a few other portions were as well which made us get drenched. The hike itself was really cool. The lake wasn’t much on this particular day, but I’m sure with nicer weather it would be worth it for sure. We got back to the car and had to take off our jackets in order to get in and not get everything wet. My camera bag stayed dry from my rain cover, but the straps were wet. I quickly opened my door and through my backpack cover on the ground where my feet go in the front seat. I put my bag on top of it. I took off my jacket and draped it over my seat, with my hood resting on the top. We had some things in the back so we had to move those so they wouldn’t get wet. I wanted to change socks so I grabbed out a different pair and took off the ones I had on. The socks that got wet were my warmest pair, so now I wasn’t going to have those to sleep in until I can wash them in a week or so. We also wanted to have lunch so we had to get out the things we waned to eat. I made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and we sat in the car and ate a picnic while it poured outside. We had chips and a cookie for dessert. I finished off the rest of my water bottle. We were ready to get back to the lodge and take showers and warm up. All of my clothes were wet that were exposed - my shoes, hat, gloves, rain jacket, and socks. We got back to the lodge around 4 PM. We couldn’t drive too fast because of the road being so steep and having sharp turns, plus with the low visibility and rain making things slick. At the lodge we loaded up the things we wanted at went to the showers. It was the first shower I had in 3 days. I wanted to take one the night before or even in the morning, but good thing I didn’t since I just got wet and muddy anyway. My towel doesn’t dry fast enough to allow for two showers in the same day. It would be too cold and wet to bother. The shower was really big and felt great. It always feels good to be clean and warm after freezing your butt off. After my shower I changed my shoes and put on my toe shoes so my other ones wouldn’t get anymore wet and they could dry out. I had left them on the porch full of newspaper to dry out. We went back to the lounge and charged our batteries and wrote in our journals. Because of the bad weather there were a lot of people in the lounge. Most of the previous people that were there had left. There was a lady sewing something by herself. There was also a group of 6 or 7 kids and a lady playing random team building games. I thought they must have been criminals on parole or doing community service of some kind to learn how to behave with other people. It made sense to me. Some of the games seemed ok, but a little corny. Each kid had to get up and explain their game, sometimes they had a partner, and then the other kids had to do them. Afterwards the person that had chosen the activity had to say what they thought of the way the kids worked together and why they did the game. They all basically said the same thing. Stuff like, “I thought you all worked well together in a difficult situation and you communicated.” It was pretty stupid actually. After like the 8th game I could tell some of them were tired of it. I was tired of listening to it. Some of the games included holding hands in a circle with them twisted up, then trying to unwind themselves without talking. There were a few games where they had to be blindfolded and then give someone directions on how to get to another part of the room. The kids were obviously high school, I think one of them said they were a sophomore. Most of them sounded British, but I’m pretty sure one was American. After the games the lady in charge was talking to them about what they were going to be doing the next day. She picked out two of them and said they would be dropping the anchor or tying and untying something each day, so I assumed she meant the anchor. Based on the things she said I figured out it was another scuba diving class. They must do those a lot at this lodge. They had to be up at 8 AM for the days activities. They also had to make a sack lunch since they would be out there all day on the boat. If they forgot anything they could have asked me, since I was listening. They finished playing their games around 6:45 or so. During this time the sewing ladies husband had come in. He was talking to one of the workers at the reception desk and asking about weather. They said it was going to be bad weather the next day, and snow as low as 400 meters. Based on the temperatures it didn’t seem likely it would snow. He seemed upset about something as if it was the workers fault the weather was no good. They decided they would leave the next morning before the bad weather came in. There daughter was also staying there and she had come in. She had just been taking a nap. Based on how she was talking it sounded like she had been traveling around the world and her parents had joined her for part of New Zealand. She had been to Egypt with her friend Heather, who was also in New Zealand. They had a mutual friend that lived somewhere that she was going to spend time with. It sounded like she was going to ditch her parents based on what I picked up. They were also looking at the computer and talking a lot about Lord of the Rings and where things were filmed as if they were going to go try to see them. Nerds. I was tired of writing in my journals and listening to dumb people so we decided it was time to have dinner. We had eaten our good food, so tonight we were going to be having ramen noodles with a salad. The ramen was chicken noodle flavor. The peas were kind of gross but the rest tasted fine. Dehydrated vegetables aren’t very good. The salad with carrots and cheese on the side was good too. We each had a cookie and some chocolate for dessert. The nerdy family had spaghetti, and not the cheap kind we keep eating. They had real looking sauce, with huge meatballs. They also had a spinach salad. These other people we keep seeing have better meals than I normally eat and they are on vacation. They must have had enough food for 4 or 5 people easily. While eat ate our ramen noodles in a cup they had a feast. The night before two French girls had ramen noodles while we ate our tuna and ham sandwiches and I felt like we were eating good. Now I know how the French girls must have felt. After dinner we went back into the lounge since it was raining outside still. At this point it had been raining from 10 AM until 7:30 PM with no sign of letting up. In fact, it had gotten much worse. The rain was coming down really hard, but even worse was the wind. This was the strongest wind I have ever seen. I would think it was a tornado if I was at home. It was dark so I wasn’t looking outside very much at it, but we could definitely hear it. Our campsite was covered by trees, so I didn’t think anything of it. That is until about 9 PM when the lady working at reception came over looking for Andy. They knew we were staying in a tent and asked if we had gone out to look at it. I assumed she was going to say it was destroyed, blew away, or was flooded. She said she didn’t know, but a few workers in the area said the weather was getting bad. Not wanting to go outside I sent Andy to check it out. He ran about 70 yards through the rain and into the trees to see how it looked. A few minutes later he came running back. He said it was really windy, but nothing was wet. That’s all I cared about at that point. The lady said she was leaving, but would be back at 10 PM to check on us. She said if it was too bad she would check us into a room. If she meant she would give us a room upgrade for free, I would do it. To pay more, I didn’t think so. We watched and listened to the weather while we continued writing in our journals, charging batteries, and uploading pictures. Andy transferred three of his cards and I transferred a few of mine. We wanted to have them clear for the next day since we were going kayaking. An hour passed and they lady came back with her boyfriend. He was cleaning off the tables in the lounge and talking to us about the things we had done in Milford Sound and what we planned to do. We told him we planned to go kayaking the next day. He was really excited to hear that. It turned out that he was going to be our guide. His name was Blake. This is when I figured out he was the other ladies boyfriend since he mentioned something about his partner working here. We talked for about 15 minutes, he told us he didn’t know what the weather would do in the morning, but if it was good we would go. He tried to make it sound like the weather was going to get better and we would have a great trip. He said we needed to pack some snacks or a lunch and he would give us drinks. Andy checked the tent one more time and it seemed ok. It was extremely windy, but there was still no water getting in. We were slightly raised up on a green mat that marked the site, plus a plastic ground cloth, another ground cloth that came with lot. The campsite was at the base of a hill, so if it rained a lot water could flood the area. They told us that the campsites do flood in heavy rains. At this point it wasn’t the rain so much, but the wind that was an issue. It must have been 90 MPH wind gusts. Inside the lounge it sounded pretty bad, outside it was ten times worse. The lady told us at 10:30 PM that we could have a key to one of the rooms if we needed to leave the tent in the middle of the night. She said she would only charge us $10 more per person for the upgrade, but we had to promise to tell her if we used the room in order to get the money we owed. We promised, but I was going to do everything I could to not have to pay that extra $10. The tent would have to start floating for me to change my mind. She also said in the morning we could use their dry room in order to dry our tent out. As Andy finished writing I plugged in my last camera battery to charge for the night. I would get it in the morning. I sat in a pile of bean bag chairs while I waited because the couch was hurting my back. I thought that I should have been using them all along and that I could sleep right there all night. We stayed inside until 10:55 PM, just before the lounge closed. Although there was nobody there to officially close it. We could have slept on the couch if we wanted to I’m sure. I had to get a few things from the car, which meant running 20 yards through the wind and rain. I needed to get my water bottle, my pillow, and my scarf to stay warm. I grabbed my dry bag as well to put hold my jackets so they didn’t get wet in the night and to have a way to transport my things in the morning if needed. I unzipped the bottom of my pants and separated them from my shorts so they wouldn’t get wet. I ran as fast as I could to avoid getting too wet. It was ridiculous how windy it was. I got my things and then sprinted back inside. I filled my water bottle with hot water and took off for the tent. It wasn’t very cold, but there were puddles everywhere. I was wearing my head lamp so I could see where I was going. Andy held the umbrella over my head while I opened my side of the tent. I through my things in and jumped in after them. He acted like he got soaked at that point while I was getting in. My side of the tent doesn’t unzip as easily so it took a minute to figure it out. The tent was perfectly dry on the inside. I was amazed. I put my hot water bottle inside the bottom of my sleeping bag. I was trying to get situated when I felt something burning my feet. I pulled out of my sleeping bag really fast and there was water at the bottom. My bottle wasn’t closed all the way. I used the bottom of my pants that I had unzipped and my hat to dry it out. I was able to get it fixed. I could hear the strong wind gusts, it sounded like rushing water. It was just after 11 PM, and I was hoping to make it to 7 AM.

June 23 - Milford Sound/Te Anau - Gail Forced Winds, Capsized Boats, and Torrential Rain! Needless to say we barely slept. It took me forever to fall asleep, and even when I did I didn’t stay asleep for very long. The rain was pretty hard, but that was the least of my concern. The wind was terrible all night. It would slightly die down for a few minutes, and then hurricane force winds would blow so hard the tent would fold inward from the top down. It’s normally about 3 ½ feet tall in the middle, but during the strongest winds it was about 2 feet. I kept thinking the tent was going to snap in half. The tent bending all over the place, the rain smashing against the tent, it was the worst camping night ever. The sound of the wind blowing through the trees sounded like rushing water from a river. I kept thinking that a river of water was going to come down from the mountains around us and wash us away. I was planning my escape route just in case, and was thinking that it would be hard to unzip a tent if we were being covered by water and floating away. It reminded me of people you see trying to drive down a road covered in water and then drowning. I think I woke up every 20 minutes. At one point there was a loud crash against my side of the tent. I thought I was asleep at the time, but I remember seeing something dark smack against the side. Maybe I could feel it or see it through my closed eyelids. Regardless, I thought that a tree branch had hit the tent or the rain fly had come un-staked. Andy looked out the window and said it was still staked down. I woke up at 6 AM and it was still very windy. It had been raining from 10 AM the day before straight through until now. I looked at the clock hoping it was later. I told myself I would lay there until 7 AM and then go inside the lounge. I would have made it through the night successfully. I fell asleep and woke up at 7 AM when the alarm went off. I was able to stay there until 7:30 AM. Longer than I thought possible. We made our escape route. I put in my contacts, rolled up my sleeping mat, packed my sleeping bag, put on my rain jacket and toe shoes, and stuffed my things in my dry bag. We needed to make it about 70 yards or so to the lounge. The first 20 yards was covered by trees, but then it was open with no protection from the wind and rain. I ran as fast as I could. There were puddles everywhere, but most of them weren’t as big as I was expecting based on the amount of rain that had fallen. Andy was in front of me. He had to unlock the car door so we could throw our things in. He left about 20 seconds before me. I never saw him. I got to his door, opened it, and threw my bag straight across his seat onto the foot part of my seat. I didn’t want my seat getting wet. I shut the door and ran the last portion to safety of the porch. I got there and stopped. There was still no Andy. I didn’t know where he went. He coming running up a few seconds later. I asked where he went and he said he came to the porch and never saw me so he ran back to the car. He claimed he ran right by me, but I never saw him. He said it was because he was running like a crazy person. I was soaked after just about 10 seconds. I went inside and stood by the door as I was trying to brush the water off of my jacket, but it wasn’t really helping. I needed a towel. The guy behind the reception counter heard me and through me a towel. I went back on the porch and dried off the front of my jacket and legs. Andy dried the back of my jacket and then dried himself off. We were somewhat dry. We went to the kitchen and started breakfast. I had cereal and hot tea. It was about 8 AM and nobody else was inside. It was raining really hard, but it was barely hitting the ground because it was so windy. It was basically going sideways. Out the back windows we could see the trees blowing. They were almost bent over horizontally. After breakfast we went and sat in the lounge. We needed to get our tent and start the drying process in the dry room, which we didn’t know where that was. At this time the sewing lady from the night before came inside to find out about the weather conditions. Her family was wanting to get out of town as fast as possible. I think she said they were planning to leave at 9 AM. She told me that the snow was coming around 4 PM, so if we were gone by 1 PM we would be fine. We told her we had been sleeping in a tent and she was amazed. She said she could hear the rain all night in her room and thought it was pretty bad outside. We told her it was. They were planning on going to Queenstown and then up the west coast, similar to our route. It was about 8:45 AM. More people had made it into the lounge. We went back out to the porch to watch the weather. We were hoping the rain would die down, or at least the wind, but that didn’t seem to be happening. I was ready to make a run for it. We planned our route first. Andy was going to take out the stakes while I grabbed the liner inside. We were going to take off the roof, lay down the poles flat, then fold everything in the tent, including the two outside mats. We thought about carrying the tent together, but worried the wind may catch it and rip it out of our hands. My boots were wet, Andy’s boots were wet. My toe shoes were wet, and his tennis shoes had gotten wet. We decided we would run barefoot. It didn’t sound that bad at the time. I thought the rain would make the ground soft. There were a few problems with this theory. Number one, the road we had to run down was gravel. Two, the tent site was mostly dirt, but the wind had blown down twigs and branches. Third, my shoes are toe shoes specifically designed for wet conditions. Why in the world didn’t I just wear them? I didn’t even think of it until later when Andy asked why I didn’t. My thinking at the time was that I didn’t want them to get more wet. What an idiot! This was the ideal time to be wearing them. Oh well. We watched the wind for about 3 minutes from the porch, waiting for a lull. It was probably gusting about 75 mph at least, probably harder. The wind died down to about 20 mph. We made a mad dash. I went first. I unzipped my door and started rolling up the interior mat. Andy pulled out the stakes. In order to keep the roof from blowing away he kept a few stakes in. We unclipped the sides of the roof, took out the poles completely and folded them up while we stood on the tent to keep it from blowing away. It wasn’t too windy since our tent was surrounded by trees, but the tent is obviously light enough that it would become a kite with no string in the wind. We quickly pulled out the last two stakes, folded the tent in half and I grabbed it up and folded it against my chest. I started running as fast as I could for the building. Andy had the stakes and poles. As I emerged from the trees the wind hit me with a force like a ton of bricks. I could literally barely move. The wind had caught part of the tent and was trying to rip it from my grasp. I held on tight and kept trying to move forward. Rather than run to the porch we decided to go to the side of the lounge and to the back down an outdoor walkway where the dry room was located. At first I turned that direction because I saw grass. My feet were hurting very bad, and I just wanted to get off the rocks and onto soft ground. The building shielded us for a second from the wind and rain while I recovered in the wet grass. Andy was right behind me so I continued on into the hallway. The hallway was covered on one side, the building on the other, and a roof. The ground in this section was paved, in rocks. It wasn’t as bad as the gravel road, but it was still hurting my already throbbing feet. It felt like someone stabbing my feet with knives. We made a few turns and found the dry room. It was right next to the laundry room. When we opened the door warm air came out. It felt great, considering I was freezing cold and in pain. Inside there were a few wet suits hanging and other random things. It must have been the dive school people’s things. I through the tent and all the other bits and pieces on the ground. We brought in a ton of water and dirt so it was pretty messy. In the middle of the room there was two clothes lines. We hung up the tent, the blue mat, and the roof. We put my green mat on the ground along with the outside gray mat. We went and got our pairs of shoes to put in the room as well. I was thinking I should have done this sooner. My shoes would have had a longer time to dry out, and they would have dried much faster than sitting on the porch all night stuffed with newspaper. I wanted to dry some of my other things too that I had thrown in the car. My sleeping mat bag had gotten wet in the night, and after I put my pat inside it got wet also. My sleeping bag case was wet too, which made my sleeping bag slightly wet. Of course my jacket was soaked, and the bottom of my pants and hat had been wet from the night before when I had to dry up the spilt water in my sleeping bag. I hung all of those things up to dry, including my hat and gloves. Andy hung up a lot of things too. We went back to the lounge to wait. We were supposed to go kayaking at 9:45 AM around the Milford Sound. It didn’t seem like that was going to be happening. Around 9:30 AM it seemed like the rain was finally stopping, but it was still very windy. Around 9:45 the kayak guide, Blake, showed up. He told us that of course the kayaking was canceled. He recommended that we try to do a boat cruise instead. He said that the best time to see the Sound is after a big rain storm. There would literally be thousands of waterfalls coming off the cliffs. We had seen some really big ones just off the mountains in front of and behind the lodge. There were no waterfalls the night before. I don’t know how that water never made it down to our campsite. Blake went to find out if there were any boat cruises going today and what time. He came back and said the first one would be at 12:20 PM and last about 2 hours. The one he recommended was $80 NZD per person and was the best one to do according to him. We thought about it and decided it sounded like a good idea. We were going to be reimbursed the money we paid for the kayaking, and that could go towards the boat cruise. The kayaking was $130 NZD and was supposed to last until 3 PM, so we were going to finish around the same time and save money. I had pre-booked the trip a few weeks before we left, so I paid with my credit card. That money would be put back in to my account as soon as possible. Andy ended up paying for the boat cruise. I had originally considered doing a boat cruise in addition to the kayaking, but decided they would probably be pretty similar in terms of the views. Looking back I guess we should have tried to reschedule to the days before because the weather was perfect. We went to the dry room around 10:30 to check on our things. The blue mat and roof were dry. Our shoes were getting better, and my other things were still pretty wet. We folded up a few things and moved some other things to help them dry faster. We went back to the lounge and sat around writing in our journals until about 11:20. We got up and went to the dry room to check on our things again. Most everything was dry, or very close to being dry. We folded up the tent and gathered the rest of our things. We wanted to leave for the boat dock around 11:50. It was only about 5 minutes away, but we wanted to be a little early to see the waterfalls by the water. Blake had said there were some big ones down there. We left right on time. We had to park about 500 yards from the boat dock building, which was the visitor center we had gone to a few days earlier. That was the closing parking for private cars. The few parking spots up close were only for buses. The hike over was the Lakeshore Trail which Andy wanted to do anyway. It took about 10 minutes. There were a few signs with information to read along the way, but we passed them up. Andy said he would check them out after the cruise. We got to the dock around 12:10 and checked in. We were the first people there. I was hoping we would be the only ones on the boat. We were doing the Mitre Peak Cruise. There were about five other companies in the building offering cruises, each selling candy. One I saw had two snickers bars for $3 NZD. They looked big and I was tempted to get them. I didn’t though. Too much money. We were told we should come back in ten minutes and someone from the boat would take us to where we needed to go. We went outside to look at a few waterfalls, we didn’t take pictures but we did do videos with our gopros. We didn’t want to get our cameras went since it was still raining lightly. We went back inside and waited. As we walked in a bus had pulled up and people were getting off with blue tickets. We had green tickets so I was hoping that they weren’t on our boat. We all sat in the same section to wait though. After a few minutes a guy showed up and said if we had a green or blue ticket to follow him. We had green tickets. We walked outside where the boats were docked. I didn’t see one that said Mitre Peak Cruises. I thought at first we were going to be using a boat with another company. We walked all the way to the end and the smallest boat out there was ours. We were told that because it is smaller it can go where other boats can’t. We handed our tickets to a girl as we boarded the ship. There were probably about 40 people total on board. I was surprised that people were willing to come down from Te Anau or Queenstown on a bus for a few hours in this kind of weather. That drive must have been an adventure. We went to the front of the boat. The downstairs is mostly inside, with a few spots outside on the deck. There was also a staircase to a second floor which was mostly outside with one covered part, but it had no wall to cover the back. It would be a good place to sit in nice weather, but with this weather you were just as likely to get wet as if you were just on the deck. We saw a few people go outside in the front so we followed. We took a few pictures and decided that the top would be better. We would be able to see both sides, the front only gave you views from the small part we were on since there was no way to walk across the front to the other side. We stopped to take a few pictures from the back. I talked to the girl that had taken our tickets for a little bit. We she was from Christchurch and had been working for Mitre Peak for five months. She mostly worked in the office, but the past two months she was getting to work on the boat. She had to go do things and then went to the top. The views from above were really good. The boat was going pretty fast and with the wind it was causing some huge waves. A few times it seemed like the boat was going to flip over. One side of the boat would go up, and the other side would drop down and looked like it would take in water. I don’t know how it never did. I was sure it was going to sink. The guy driving seemed crazy. From the top it was even crazier. We had to hold on to the rails otherwise we would literally fall down. It was also extremely windy. So if the rocking boat didn’t knock us over the edge, the wind would. It was very insane. The wind in the morning carrying the tent was tough to withstand, but the wind on the boat was too much. It was like a rollercoaster, but I didn’t know if I would survive. I was sure I was, but there was a small amount of doubt. At the top was me, Andy, two Chinese guys, and a guy in a green jacket that looked German and some other guy. We were all laughing hysterically, holding on for our lives. We did a lot of videos and photos. The best part of the cruise was the waves and wind. It was probably even more of an adventure than just paddling around in a kayak. Who wants to paddle a little boat anyway? I don’t know how nobody ever got seasick. I never have that problem, but if I did this would definitely be the boat to cause it. It was raining off and on throughout the journey. There were a lot of waterfalls coming down all around us off the cliffs. A few of them we got extremely close and stopped next to them for people to take pictures. One in particular stop it seemed like everyone came on the roof to get pictures. We went all the way out into the open ocean. It is known as the Tasman Sea. It took a little more than an hour. There were a few bumpy portions, but the further out we went into the sound and closer to the sea the calmer it became. It also became more clear. People came to the top randomly and went back down. We made it to the farthest point and then turned back. The ride back was much faster, I guess because the current pushes towards the shore. We had gone out on one coastline, and headed back on the opposite. It was a huge circle. We only stopped a few times. We stopped to see seals on the rocks, but we could only see one and it was trying to hide. We also stopped under a waterfall. By under, I meant the boat seemed to go directly underneath it. Everyone from the top had gone back inside except for me and Andy and one really tall guy. We stood outside the protection of the small covering on the roof. I stayed slightly under it, but my shoes and leg got soaked. Andy was more in the open and got drenched. The tall guy just stayed inside and watched. After that we decided it was time to go back inside. We were freezing cold and wet. All the other people looked nice and comfortable, but most of them missed all the fun. We paid too much to just sit and watch from inside the whole time. There was free tea and coffee on board, so when we got inside we had some coffee. It wasn’t great, but it’s coffee so it never is. It warmed me up a little though. We stood near the back of the boat for the rest of the ride. At one point Andy went to the front to get some videos and pictures, I tried to go up there too, but couldn’t figure out the door. I think I pulled when I should have pushed. I ended up going out the back door. It was cold so I went back inside. The boat pulled into the dock and the 2-hour wild ride was over. We walked back to the car and Andy read the signs along the way. We sat in the car in the parking lot and had a quick lunch. We had sandwiches, chips, and a gross cookie. On the boat the captain and the girl working on board said that the Chasm Trail is best after huge rainstorms. We weren’t in a hurry really so we thought we would stop there and do the hike. Before the trail took about an hour and a half to complete, but since we were cold and it was raining we wanted to finish fast. The trail was about ¾ of a mile in length at most. We wanted to get it over with as fast as we could, but still see the rushing water. Nobody else was at the hike, but there was a campervan parked in the parking lot. They must have just been sleeping in the car or something. We put on our gopros on our headstraps. We ran the entire trail to make it seem more interesting. We made it to the end relatively fast, but the way there is mostly a slight uphill. It is boardwalks a lot of the way, but it was still a tough run. My throat was hurting and a few times I wanted to stop and rest. We didn’t take our cameras at all, just the gopros. We got to the end, filmed a little bit of the chasm and each other, and then started the run back. The way there I led the way, but on the way back Andy led the way. That way we would each be in the shots. The run down was much easier and faster. We got back to the car in less than 15 minutes from the time we left until the time we got back. We planned to drive straight through to Te Anau and camp in the same Top 10 Holiday Park we had stayed at before. We didn’t stop at all on the way back up the road except for once to take pictures over the lake with the mountains. We had stopped in this spot before, but now the skies were a little clearer. We made it to Te Anau around 5 PM. We didn’t want to sleep in the rain again and it seemed like it might rain. We asked how much the cabins were to stay in. It was more of a one bedroom with two beds. I said if they were too much we would just camp in the tent. They were $66 NZD. I didn’t want to pay that much. She asked how much we had paid to camp. We had paid $40 NZD. She said she would spilt the difference. I didn’t know what that meant. She got out a calculator and said it would be $53 NZD for the night. It was only slightly more for a real bed, not having to put up a tent, and we wouldn’t get wet. It sounded good to us. The room included a small fridge, a toaster, and a hot water boiler. It also had a heater and a queen sized bed and a twin bed. I took the queen sized bed. The floor seemed really wet for some reason and the heater didn’t go above 18 Celsius even though I set it to 25. We got out all of our things from the car and reorganized the food and our bags. Everything had been scattered randomly for weeks and I kept saying I was going to fix it, but never got around to it. It was either too cold, too dark, we were too busy, or I just didn’t feel like doing it. It took about 15 minutes for me to do everything. Andy took much longer. Afterwards we went and took hot showers. It felt great. We wanted to have the can of beans and meatballs that we had found at Mt. Cook. We also had a salad, a small piece of bread, and a cookie. I ate some chocolate since I was behind on my servings. The meatballs and beans was kind of good, but too expensive. We’ve seen it at the grocery store and for such a small amount of food it’s a rip off. After dinner we went to the TV lounge and watched TV. I had bought internet for $5 for 250 MB so I played on the internet for about 4 hours. I was able to check emails, play on face book, and sell some VISA stock in order to keep funding my trip. Andy wrote in his journals, but I never did. I got behind a little more, but I will be able to catch up eventually. I also transferred a few memory cards and charged my computer battery. There were only a few channels and the only thing worth watching was Wipe Out and Rugby. Wipe Out was a little different than normal and I didn’t feel like watching it. I turned on Rugby instead. New Zealand was playing Ireland and won 63-0. It was a blowout, the worst ever defeat for Ireland against New Zealand. We couldn’t figure out the rules. We weren’t watching it that closely, but it seemed like they just made up the rules as they went along. Afterwards Wales was playing Australia. We didn’t really watch that one too closely either. We stayed there until 11 PM. I was ready to go to bed, it had been a long and very eventful day. In the room I let Andy play on the internet to do anything he wanted.

June 24 - Manapouri/Queenstown I had a really nice night of sleep. The bed was comfortable and warm. It was good to be out of the elements again. I keep thinking I don’t know how Native Americans could survive in teepees their whole lives. Constantly packing up and moving, sleeping on the ground. It’s a hassle, especially if it’s cold or rainy at all. We woke up around 7:45. It was Sunday so we wanted to go to church. We had looked on the map the day before and seen that there was a Catholic Church about ½ a mile down the street. We had to pack up all of our things into the car and eat a quick breakfast before we could check out. I had all of my things nicely stacked so it was really easy. Andy had his things thrown out everywhere to dry so it took him a lot longer. I assumed church would be at 9 AM so I told him he needed to hurry and pack if he wanted to eat breakfast, otherwise he’d have to eat after. We got our things packed neatly and dropped off the key at the reception desk. We were out the door by 8:50. The church was tiny and just on the side of the road. There was nowhere to park really because a truck with a boat had parked sideways and took up about 8 spots. We had to drive down about 60 yards in front of a little coffee shop and parked there. We got to the church a few minutes before it started. When we walked in all I saw was old people. There was about 8 people already there and they were all sitting in the back. The building was maybe 100 feet by 50 feet. There were 10 pews on each side with one aisle down the middle. We sat in the third row on the left. I don’t like sitting in the back. Eventually 40 people showed up. One of the families wasn’t old people. Te Anau must be a retirement community or something. The priest was probably in his mid to late 40s. They didn’t have any instruments that I could see so the priest just said what the processional song would be and started singing. He was pretty good. The congregation was much better than the last church we went to. At the previous church they didn’t even seem to know the song the priest was having us sing. At this church they were still learning the new parts to the mass. They knew all of them except the songs during the breaking of the bread. During those songs an organ was playing one time, so I thought maybe there was one somewhere in the back or upstairs that I couldn’t see. The next song though was obviously a tape recording with instruments and singing. So I’m not sure if the previous song was recorded also or not. The service was basically identical to what we were used to except the end. For the final prayer the priest just stayed in his chair to say it. It was a very informal service. He made statements during his homily about something and asked a question and some of the people responded. I guess in a tiny town where everyone knows everybody that would be common. The service lasted about 55 minutes. Afterwards the priest asked if we were in town for some fishing thing. I guess there is a tournament of some kind going on or there is good fishing in the area. We told him we were there for hiking. He thought it was a little cold for that. We walked back to the car and got our cameras and took pictures of the church. It was set in front of mountains and the sun was shining really well on it. We ate our breakfast at the car. We had our last bananas and yogart. A lot of the mountains we were unable to see on our previous stop through Te Anau were now visible. We planned to head south about 20 kilometers to do part of the Kepler Track. The Kepler Track is a 3 to 4 day hike that involves staying in huts. We didn’t have time to do the whole thing, but we wanted to do a section from Rainbow Reach to the first hut going the opposite way that most people go. We wanted to see this section because part of Lord of the Rings was filmed here. The lady from the Te Anau visitor center had told us this the first time we stopped in Te Anau so we figured we would try to do it if we had time. Since we didn’t do the Milford Track and took out a few locations later on we were going to have time. The hike is supposed to last about 3 hours. Before we could get started we needed to get gas. My credit card is maxed out until I pay it off so Andy had to buy gas. The benefit to getting gas on a credit card is the free miles you get. I should have my card paid off on July 2. Last night on the internet I set it to withdraw at that point. We started driving south around 10:30 AM. We found the turn off which led us down a gravel road for a few kilometers. It was more bumpy than some of the other gravel roads we had driven on in New Zealand, but it was still not that bad. We got to the start of the trail at 11 AM. There was a sign that said to lock up valuables because thieves come through the area. Ordinarily people park there cars there for days, and it’s in the middle of nowhere, so their belongings are easily taken I guess. I was thinking that someone was going to steal our things. As I was packing my snacks in my bag another car drove up. It was a truck with a guy and a little boy, maybe 10 years old. They drove past, turned around, and then parked a few spots down from us. There were 3 or 4 other cars already there from people doing the hike. Andy was packing his things as well and finishing his breakfast. He still had some limbus bread left so he ate the last of that. I was looking up towards the trail and noticed that the guy and the boy were starting the trail. It wasn’t a big deal except for the fact that he had a rifle strapped to his back. We were in a national park so I was assuming hunting was illegal. I was thinking he was going to teach his son how to hunt, or he was going to rob people. Most likely us. I was now a little hesitant to do the hike. Not because I actually thought I would be robbed, but because he may see us from a distance and mistake us for an animal and shoot at us. Especially since there are literally no animals bigger than a rabbit in this country. If they are, they are cows, horses, sheep, or fenced in deer. It would be a great place to have wild animals, but they don’t seem to exist. Maybe he was going to hunt birds or something. I never found out, but I was tempted to ask him what he planned to shoot since there were no animals worth killing. At the trailhead there was a small shelter with information about the hike. One of the things I read mentioned a warning to hunters that park rangers rode bikes through the park at dusk and dawn. I thought it was going to say they would be looking for illegally hunting, but all it said was to be aware of this. Maybe so they wouldn’t be mistaken for an animal. There were signs that mentioned hunting was illegally in the park. Maybe they didn’t go on the trail and turned off before it started. Andy was taking forever to get ready. I was already apprehensive about the murderer and his boy on the trail, so I was ready to get started. I remember thinking that if they did go on the trail that they were going the other way than us. I guess I don’t really like seeing guns since I’ve never really been around them. Who wants to hunt for food when you can just go to the grocery store? I would rather just take pictures of animals. The trail begins with a long swing bridge. That seems to be a common thing in New Zealand. We did some filming and got some pictures. Andy was taking a long time to do this and I couldn’t figure out why. We had seen bridges like this a lot already. About 15 yards onto the bridge there was a spider web from a cable to the wood siding. It looked really cool because there was water droplets on it. It looked like silk. There was no spider though. We got pictures of it and then continued on. The hike is pretty wooded at first, but different than what we had experienced. It wasn’t really a mossy forest like the others. The trail was very open. It was like going for a stroll in the woods because it was very flat and very easy. We stopped along the way and did some videos and took some pictures. A few people with backpacks passed us. There was one old guy that was alone, then about 10 minutes later two ladies passed us, and then not far behind them were three ladies. We passed four more old people later. They were all heading out as they had completed the track. If old people can do the hike, than you know it’s easy. It’s one of the more popular treks, and it’s accessibility is probably one of the reasons. The first part follows the river from about 25 yards above. Most of it is about 30 yards inland from the edge of the cliff, but occasionally it led to the side for views of mountains in the distance along with the river below. The trail stayed flat for 99% of the time. There were a few downhill and uphill portions, but they were very minor climbs and descents. As we went further into the forest the scenery became more of what we were used to. The trees, rocks, and sides of the trail were mossy. Along the way there were four little sign posts. They were just numbered either 1, 2, 3, or 4. We didn’t know what they meant, but assumed that because Lord of the Rings was filmed in this area that they were something to do with that. One was next to a bridge, and another led down to the water’s edge. From what we had heard and read it seemed like this was the area where the elf girl ran with Frodo through the winds to safety. We passed a lot of small wooden traps. I was thinking maybe the hunter had set them and went to check on them. Then I was thinking that the park rangers were trapping animals to study the population or to get rid of something that wasn’t native. At one point me and Andy got separated. He was taking pictures and I was ready to continue on. I had walked ahead and out of the woods the hunter and his son appeared. As they saw me the guy started walking towards me, but his son sat down on the side of the trail. The guy turned around and told him to get up. They walked right on by. Andy was somewhere behind me, I couldn’t see him because the trail curved. I walked off as fast as I could. There were two boggy areas on the trail. The first we came to was a lookout of a small lake. The trail leading up to it branched off the main track and was a boardwalk. It looked like the place where Frodo may have fallen into the water. There were a few parts that looked just like it. I got there about 10 minutes before Andy did, so I just took some pictures and filmed myself. When he showed up we did some more pictures and filming. The other bog part was a boardwalk as well, but was just part of the normal trail. About half way across the boardwalk was a sign that explained the importance of the bogs. 90% of the natural bogs in New Zealand have been drained for farmland, which is the case in most countries. In the past people didn’t realize their necessity in times of heavy rains or drought. The bogs can trap lots of water so if there is lots of rain than they can keep it stored up and therefore there isn’t as much flooding. In heavy droughts that stored up water can be used. I learned that from reading the sign post. These two areas would be perfect for moose. I really wish they would have more animals in New Zealand. That is my only complaint so far, other than the fact that everything is way over priced. We made it to a fork in the road that pointed to two different huts. One was a 20 minute walk, and the other a 15 minute walk. We wanted to go to the closer one. It led down to a rocky beach surrounded by mountains on three sides. Most of the mountains were in the distance, but some were right across the lake. The lake was Lake Manapouri, which is the only access point to Doubtful Sound. We had wanted to go there, but during the winter there aren’t as many activities. In the warmer months there are kayaking trips. In order to get there now the only option is a cruise which costs over $250 NZD. We didn’t want to pay that much. At the lake we took a lot of pictures. I did a few self portraits. Andy wanted to do some jumping pictures so he set up his timer and did a few. I thought it looked fun so I had him take some of me. They turned out really well. We also did a video jumping shot with Andy’s camera. It turned out kind of stupid, but it will be something to work on in other locations. We spent about 20 minutes in this area. We weren’t to the hut yet so we had to walk along the beach for a few hundred yards than back into the forest. Off in the distance we had seen a small motor boat, so we assumed that’s where the hut was. We walked for another 20 minutes after a few stops for photos and then walked out of the forest back onto the beach. The motor boat was gone, but the hut was just ahead. It was tiny. It only held six people and was just a one room building. Outside there was a fire pit. In order to stay in the huts people must pre-book. Across the lake I could see the motor boat. I guess it was a ranger and figured nobody was signed up to stay there for the night so he went over to the other one. We walked a little further past the hut along the beach to a peninsula. I was hoping it would give views around the corner and we’d see more mountains. We didn’t see that many, but it was worth the walk. The tide was going out so we could walk out a little further. There were some large footprints of some kind of animal that led down to the water and disappeared. They reappeared again further down on the beach. Next to them was a trail of human footprints. Honestly the footprints looked like an elk, but I haven’t seen any except those that are in fences. Maybe this one broke free. I was thinking that the human footprints were from someone tracking it and then killed it. Maybe the hunter guy had walked that far. It was around 2:30 PM at this point and we were ready to get back since we wanted to get to Queenstown for the night, if not farther. Queenstown was about 2 ½ hours away, and we didn’t want to drive on the roads in the dark for too long since they could be icy and the roads twist and turn a lot on sharp curves. We began our trek back through the woods, across the beach, and back into the woods. We only stopped a few times to do some video shots and take pictures. We passed the bogs, and in a few places Andy stopped to take pictures of mushrooms growing on logs and trees. I took pictures of the mushrooms on the log, but I was just trying to walk fast. We even ran on a few parts to get back faster. We got to the point where I had seen the hunter come out of the woods. This was an area where there was a small stream that Andy wanted to take long exposure pictures of. We went a little bit off the trail and jumped across the stream. We sat up our cameras and did some pictures. The entire area is very mossy and looks like somewhere hobbits would live. We spent about 30 minutes in this spot. My pictures looked really good. Afterwards we started running a little bit more to get back faster. It was after 3:30 PM by now. We wanted to be done around 4 PM if possible. We stopped a couple more times to take pictures. We passed a big tree with an opening in the trunk at the bottom. Definitely a house where hobbits live so we took pictures. We only stopped one or two more times to take pictures of the mountains along the river. The lighting was different and some of the mountains were more visible than they had been earlier in the day. . We got back to the car around 4:15 PM. We had driven south to Manapouri, so we had to back track through Te Anau on our way to Queenstown. There were only two towns between Te Anau and Queenstown on the map. Neither were big towns and not ideal stopping points. We ended up driving all the way to Queenstown with the hopes of staying in a cheap Holiday Park, or settling on the Twelve Mile Delta Campground we had stayed in before. We hadn’t had lunch all day so we were starving. We were craving Fergburgers. Andy wanted to Big Al, which had two patties, bacon, two fried eggs, beets, and then all the normal things. I just wanted the same basic hamburger I had before. The sauce and buns are really good. We figured it would be enough food to fill us up. The drive back wasn’t too bad. It was mostly flat and straight, but the last 50 kilometers or so follows a lake and the roads constantly turn. A lot of cars were on the road for a Sunday night, at least a lot compared to what we expected. It was very few, maybe a few hundred for the whole drive, but it felt like a lot. It gets dark at 5:30 PM, so at 6:30 PM we thought it was late. We got to Queenstown around 7 PM. There was a winter wonderland festival going on. At least that’s what we called it. There was an outdoor ice skating rink lit up with people skating. There was a Samsung tent lit up. Tree trunks were wrapped in Christmas lights. There were lots of people out walking around as well even though it was freezing. For a small town of only 11,000 they seemed to all be out that night. Of course it is a tourist trap, so lots of those people were probably foreigners. We parked next to the little church we had before where the crazy guy kept backing into the car. We parked in front of it though this time. Being a Sunday night and after 6 PM it was free. We walked about 7 minutes through the cold to Fergburger. It was packed! There must have been 30 people crammed in this little building plus people sitting outside eating and waiting for their order to be called. We walked inside and got behind people that looked like they were in line. We only had to wait a few people to put in our order. We went to wait outside, but I was cold. I wanted to go inside. I pushed my way through the crowd and stood on the far side of the restaurant. Andy came in next to me. We had to take our bags off because it was so crammed. A lady and her daughter were sitting in bar stools in front of us. The lady threw away an entire thing of fries. They were $4.50 NZD. She then threw away her daughters. I was shocked. She should have asked if anyone wanted them first. I would have taken them. Her daughter than threw away half her sandwich. She was probably 8, to think she could eat that whole thing was nuts. I asked if they were done with the stools and the lady said yes and that they were leaving. She said it in a way like she was mad. I thought maybe she didn’t like the food since they threw it away and were leaving the way they were. We sat down in the seats and waited for our food. On a TV in the front was a blooper show of people doing skiing. They were crashing all over the place. It was pretty funny. We also leaned over and watched the guys make the hamburgers. They were caking them in sauce and other sides. Behind them was the grill and we watched the hamburgers cook. There were some with cheese, some with eggs, some with pineapple. They were huge. For some reason in New Zealand they like putting pineapple on hamburgers and chicken. Our number was finally called after about 20 minutes. Our burgers looked really good. Before we ate Andy got pictures of the burgers. We ate the smaller one first. We meant to ask them to cut them in half so we could share, but forgot. Andy had his pocket knife so he cut them in half. The first burger was easy because it wasn’t so huge. The Big Al was much harder to cut. Everything was falling out. The hardest part was cutting through the thick bun. Both of the burgers tasted good, but I preferred the normal hamburger. The bacon was good on the Big Al, but fried egg just seems weird to me. It’s not the right kind of flavor to mix with the other ingredients. There were also beets, which tasted fine, but it’s not a normal ingredient for anything. Both hamburgers were very messy. I kept spilling things everywhere and sauce was dripping out all over my hands. These things need to come with a plate, a fork, and a knife. We finished eating and cleaning up and started the walk back to the car. We wanted to see if the Holiday Park Campground near the Skyline Gondola was cheap since it was close and would have a kitchen where we could fill our water bottles to keep us warm. We really considered just going to the kitchen and getting hot water and then leaving to the cheap place. When we got to the Holiday Park it looked more like it was just a motel, but in the back we could see campers and a kitchen facility. The entrance to that section was blocked with a swinging gate. We could park and run over there, but we thought there may be cameras watching us. We decided to go inside and just ask about the price. I went in while Andy waited in the car. The lady was helping other people and took forever. After about 5 minutes I asked the price. It was $22 NZD per person. I didn’t want to pay that much so I told her I would go see if we wanted to stay here. We didn’t. We drove off never to be seen again. We just settled for the farther, junkier campground. The price was right. We considered going further down the road to Glenorchy in the morning so it would be best to be in that area anyway. In Glen Orchy a few scenes from Lord of the Rings were filmed there. At the Twelve Mile Delta campground the scenes where Frodo and Sam watch the elephants and riders fight against Gondor soldiers. We got to the campground just before 8:30 PM. A sign says to pay before 8:30 PM, otherwise to pay in the morning. We drove straight on through without stopping. We went back to the spot we camped before next to the bathroom. There were a few campervans in the area. It seems like they all park in the same vicinity even though it’s a big campground. It’s also the only campground we have stayed at where there aren’t trailers parked as if people are living there year round. This seems to be more for people just looking for a cheap place to stay for the night. I wanted to do a time lapse of us setting up the tent so we got our head lamps and left the car lights on so we could see and the camera could take pictures. Hopefully it turns out ok. It was cold, but not freezing like it had been before. It took about 20 minutes to get everything set up, including the inside mats and sleeping bags. I was trying to blow up my mat and noticed that a piece of the air bag was missing. It was the nozzle that goes from the bag to the mat. I had to just blow it up with my mouth. It was fine though because the bag isn’t very efficient anyway. I thought maybe I dropped it or it fell off in the hurricane. It also could be in my dry bag or somewhere in the car. I didn’t feel like digging around for it. We got back in the car and wrote in our journals for the next hour and a half. It was after 10:30 PM and I was tired. We went into the tent to go to bed.

June 26 - Wanaka We woke up this morning to cloudy weather around 8:00 AM. It had rained a little during the night. I slept pretty comfortably as it wasn’t too cold, even though we were warned it may snow during the night. If it snowed, it didn’t snow at our campsite at all. We had peanut butter and jelly toast for breakfast with milk. We were running low on groceries and needed to get more soon. We didn’t know if we wanted to stay an extra day originally so we only paid for one night. As we were leaving the campsite we had to stop and pay again. Andy went inside and paid. The lady asked what we planned to do today and he said the Rob Roy Hike near Mt. Aspiring. She said it may not be possible to get there and if so we would definitely need snow chains since part of the road is unpaved and at a higher elevation. We had snow chains, but I didn’t really want to deal with them. Apparently at higher elevations last night it snowed a lot. As we were driving back to town it was frosty everywhere and the mountains definitely had more snow than before. It was really cloudy and looked like it could rain. It was also pretty cold outside. It was around 9 AM and we didn’t know what we wanted to do for the day due to the news about the road conditions. We went to the visitor center in town for information on hikes in the area and weather conditions. We went inside and saw a wall of brochures. We looked at those a little bit and picked a few out for future locations we would be visiting. We went upstairs and found a few brochures about hiking in the Mt. Aspiring and Wanaka regions. A guy working behind the counter asked if we needed help with anything. We talked to him for about 20 minutes about the weather and possible things to do. He said the road to the Rob Roy Hike was most likely impassible. He suggested doing the Diamond Lake hike and a few pull offs on the side of the road. We had already done those the previous day. He then suggested we drive a little outside of town and do a hike called Sandy Point. The trail was about 2-3 hours one way. For us that meant 5 hours. He thought the weather would be clearer away from town and to the south. It was about 20 kilometers away, back in the direction of Queenstown near Luggate. We also asked him about hikes near the town of Wanaka and a little further up near our next stop, Haast. He knew a little bit, but was more knowledgeable about the Wanaka and Mt. Aspiring regions. We decided we would go with the Sandy Point hike and walk as far as we wanted depending on the weather and views. We purchased a few of the walking trails maps for Wanaka, Haast, and the Fox Glacier and Franz Josef areas. Usually these brochures would be free, but in New Zealand everything costs money. We needed groceries and the guy at the visitor center said there was a New World down the street. He gave us directions so we could find it. As we left the visitor center it was still really cold and drizzling rain. We decided rather than try to hike in that weather we would go stock up on the things we needed to eat. We spent about an hour in the grocery store finding the things we wanted. We bought more things than we had at any other stop. We bought enough meals to cover dinner for the next week and a half, plus a lot of breakfast foods and lunch meals. We bought a few ramen noodles. I had been wanting Chow Mein again. We got eggs so we could boil some for hikes and eat some for breakfast. We got more meat for sandwiches. Before we got a good deal on ham, but this time it wasn’t offered. We bought pastrami instead. It was more expensive, but was still the best deal. We also got more chips, lettuce, cucumber, carrots, and cheese. We have been eating a lot of salads. We also got fresh spinach since it was cheap. We can eat it plain, on salads, or sandwiches. We bought bread, milk, butter, and the good chocolate chip cookies we got the first time. We also bought a jumbo size chocolate bar. We got bananas and fiber one bars for breakfast. We also got spaghetti sauce since we still had noodles left from before. We spent a little more than $80 NZD for everything. We left the grocery store and started driving to the Sandy Beach Hike. It was out in the middle of nowhere on a back road with nothing but sheep herds and mountains. It took about 30 minutes to get there. We drove right by it the first time, but I thought I had seen a sign marking the trail head so we turned around a mile down the road and came back. The car park was a little fenced in area next to a farm. We packed a light snack, an apple and granola bar for a stopping point at the end of the trail. We started hiking around 11 AM. I just wanted to walk until about 1 PM. It was cold and I didn’t want to be outside for too long. The trail actually started about 200 meters down the road at a stile. Which is a step ladder that leads over the fence that keeps the sheep in the field. We then had to walk a few hundred more meters across the field to another stile. From there the trail follows the fence line for the next half mile. The trail was very flat and easy, but it was rarely traveled. Most of the trail was overgrown with bushes and grass. We weren’t sure we were even on the trail at one point, but I saw the orange stake ahead so we just walked towards that. Along the way we passed sheep bones and a skull a few different times. My feet were getting wet from the grass and rains that had been in the area. It was really only my left foot, but I was cold. Eventually the trail turned right into a valley. At this point it started to climb a little more, but it also became more clearly marked. It turned from grassy areas to gravel. The trail continued with a gradual climb for the rest of the time that we walked. The scenery was very short bushes and grass, no real trees. There were also a few mountains off in the distance in all directions. There were a few smaller mountains next to the trail as well. As we walked we took a lot of pictures. Although it had been rainy and cold in Wanaka it was becoming much warmer the more we walked. My foot was still wet, but it wasn’t bothering me anymore. The clouds were also starting to lift. We were able to get really good views of the valley below the higher we went. We could also see mountains past Wanaka in the north and Queenstown in the South. The trail was icy and snowy the higher we went. Some parts were completely covered in snow. It was around 1 PM and I was getting ready to go back. Andy wanted to keep going. I didn’t think we would see views any better than the ones we had. Also we wanted to do a few hikes back in town so I didn’t want to be out for too long. I knew if we did the whole hike it would take until 5 PM that we finished and got back to town. By then it would be too dark to do anything else. We kept going further and further. Again, the trail was becoming covered in snow. It was too the point that everything we could see from this point was snow covered. The bushes, the plants, the grass, the rocks. The trail turned from gravel back to grass. We couldn’t see the grass, but we could feel it under our feet. It was deep grass as well. We could see a lot of rabbit tracks in the snow. It was really cool to see how far it was jumping and where it went. There were also tracks of other animals. One of them had claws I could see. I assume it was trying to catch the rabbit since it was following the same trail. We stopped one time to take pictures and it began to get a little windier. I said it was snowing, but wasn’t sure if it was actually snow or just the wind blowing snow off the mountainside. As we walked up the mountain a little way further it began to snow a little more, and now it was no doubt snowing. We passed through a gate that had to be opened and closed to get through and keep the sheep in their pen. We only walked a little further from here. Maybe 15 minutes. It was snowing really hard now with big flakes. I didn’t really want to get caught in a blizzard, and that’s exactly what was happening. We could see fine, but I knew the views any higher wouldn’t be worth the effort to get to. It was getting cold, I was getting wet, and there was no point in going on. We decided we would go back. It was about 1:30 PM. During this hike we came up with a new video technique. I strapped my gopro to my backpack so it could film Andy as he walked up behind me. He did the same on his bag when I walked behind him. Once we decided to turn around it was snowing harder than it had before. We ran down the mountain. We put a camera on one person’s back, then the other. While that was happening the other person wore their gopro on their head strap. Andy ran down first and I followed him. When it was my turn to run first I ran as fast as I could. It was really steep and slippery. A few places I almost slipped and fell, but because my feet kept moving I was able to keep my balance. It was almost impossible to stop. With the sharp turns on the trail I thought I would run right off the edge. It wasn’t a straight drop off, but parts were pretty steep. The lower we got the less it was snowing. It appeared that it hadn’t even snowed near the bottom of the mountain we were hiking on. It wasn’t raining either. Just a few hundred meters higher was a blizzard, and down here it was fine. We stopped running when the trail flattened out. It’s not as fun to run on a flat trail, you have to actually work. We walked the last part along the fence line and my foot got wet again. They were already wet from the snow, but that was different. Actually stepping in puddles was much worse. We made it back to the car around 2:30 PM. We didn’t have our snack, so we were hungry. We sat in the car and made lunch. We had ham sandwiches with chips and a cookie, the good kind. We drove back to Wanaka. It wasn’t snowing at all on the way back, but it was cloudy still. We planned to do a few hikes along the shore of Lake Wanaka, but the road followed right along the path. There was no point to walk in the cold when we could just drive and stop where we wanted. This area of Wanaka has really big and nice homes. I filmed a lot out the window. We only stopped a few times. We already got pictures of the mountains the day before when it was clear, and most of them were covered by the clouds so there was no reason to stop too many times. I took my shoes off and wore my toe shoes. It wasn’t that bad, but it was cold. It was better than wearing wet shoes though. We walked a few hundred meters from a parking area to the lake shore trail, which was about 20 yards from the shoreline. There were a lot of people walking around with dogs in the town, and on this trail. To our right it looked much clearer in the skies. There were two mountains that the sunlight was shining on. We got back in the car and drove in their direction. We stopped again and got out of the car after driving down a gravel road closer to the lake. Again lots of people were walking their dogs. This is where the really big homes were with great views of the lake. I still had on my toe shoes when I ran across the rocky beach. It was sandy rocky, with some large rocks and moss covering them because the tide was out. We stayed in this area for about 30 minutes. I was freezing cold, but wanted to take pictures. As we stayed there the lighting was getting better so we had to stay longer. We ran along the beach to an area that had a lot of big rocks on the beach and exposed in the water. As we ran we were galloping like deer as we hopped over puddles and rocks. We probably looked like idiots, but it was keeping me warm. We finally ran back to the car and decided that it was time to go back to the campsite. I wanted to go drive around in the nice neighborhoods and look at the homes, but the streets said private property and to not go down there. I guess they didn’t want tourists bothering them. I just filmed them out the window of the car instead. Along the way we saw a mountain in the distance we wanted pictures of. We drove passed the turn off for our campground and down to the next town, Albertown. It was much smaller and the houses weren’t as nice as Wanaka, but some were ok. As we got closer to the town the views of the mountains weren’t as good as we hoped. The town was down in a valley and the mountains were obscured by trees, homes, and hills. There was a river that had a trail that led back to our campground from Albertown, but we never took it. We basically saw the end point though. The cliffs around the river were about 100 meters high and straight down. It looked like a place were landslides could easily happen. After driving for about 15 minutes we decided to turn back. We were low on gas and it was getting darker. We got back to the campsite around 5:30 PM. I went to the kitchen area where it was a little warmer to dry out my shoes and write in my journal. I put my hiking shoes and toe shoes by the heater, that barely seemed to work, to dry out. I just wore some new socks and filled my water bottle with hot water and stood on that. It wasn’t great, but it helped a little. We had a big lunch so it was too early for dinner. We saw that there was a TV above the refrigerator so we turned that on. Everybody Loves Raymond was on. As we were in the kitchen writing in our journals some guy came in and was cooking food. We watched that, then the news came on. They showed sports and one of the games was bucket ball, or something really retarded like that. It was basketball for girls, but there were short baskets with no backboard and it was a no contact sport. Sounds like something a girl would make up. One of the highlights was a girl catching the ball about 2 feet from the 8 foot basket, and the opposing player just stood there and watched her shoot it. She made no attempt to stop her from scoring. I was like what is this stupid thing. And the guy in the room said he didn’t understand it either but apparently kiwi’s are good at it. Kiwi is what New Zealanders call themselves. Then some show about consumer reports. They were doing undercover stories about car repair companies missing things. They set up problems with the car to see if they would catch them. Some of them got a few, but none of them caught all the repairs needed. It seemed like a show where they do these consumer reports on different companies each week. We decided around 6:45 PM to start cooking. We had spaghetti, a salad, and cooked spinach. We also ate a cookie and some of our new chocolate bar. It was a big and good meal. I had three full meals today, which is rare for this trip so far. As we were eating two other guys came into the kitchen and joined the first guy. They were talking about going fishing in the morning. They were being loud so I was going to go back to the car to finish typing. As I packed up my things they left so I decided to stay. I finished typing around 9:30 PM. The chair was horribly uncomfortable and was hurting my back so I was ready to leave. It was really dark and I didn’t have my head lamp so I couldn’t see well to get back to the tent. Andy was behind me with his headlamp, but the light wasn’t shining bright enough for me to use it effectively. It was pretty cold outside so I was hoping I wouldn’t get too cold during the night.

June 27 - Haast We woke up this morning around 7:30 AM to decent weather. It was cold outside, but warmer than it had been in other places. I had a pretty good night of sleep. Our goal for the day was to head for Fox Glacier, or as far as we could get. The road was supposed to be scenic, icy, steep, and we had a few planned stops along the way. If they took longer than expected we may have to stop early in Haast, a small town near the coast. We took the tent down and went to the kitchen to make breakfast. We made three scrambled eggs with cheese on top and split them up. We also had a piece of toast with butter and jelly on it and a cup of milk and hot chocolate. The eggs were different than I was used to. They were brown and seemed smaller and the yoke was more orange than yellow. They were really good though. We left the campground around 8:45 AM. The weather was pretty clear so as we drove out of town we took the same road we had taken last night by the big houses and to the view of the mountains by the shore of Lake Wanaka. We only stopped for a minute to get a few pictures. We stopped at the BP gas station in town. We had a 4 cent discount for spending more than $40 NZD on groceries at New World. This is the second time we have gotten a coupon like that on our grocery receipt. The drive from Wanaka to Fox Glacier was supposed to be kilometers and take about two hours. We wanted to stop at three waterfalls between Wanaka and Haast, all of them very short hikes from 10 minutes to 30 minutes in length. We also wanted to stop at a few look outs. The first part of the drive followed Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawewea. The route took us through Albertown and down along the edge of Lake Hawewea for about 30 minutes. We stopped a couple of times along the way. The road signs said icy roads and chains may be required. Our first destination was the side of the road looking at the mountains on the eastern side of the lake. The sun was still rising so the mountains were slightly hazy. We continued on until we got a little closer to the end of the lake. We found a good spot and pulled over. The views were from the northwest corner of the lake looking back across to the mountains on the other side. The sun was a little higher now so the light was hitting the mountains pretty well. We stayed here for at least 30 minutes. Andy did a time lapse video and I spent a while taking pictures of myself from various spots. We wanted a spot looking straight back. We found a road that led down to the end of the shores of the end of the lake. We pulled off onto a gravel road that led down to the lake shore. The area was covered in large boulders and a muddy coast. A small stream ran from the mountain down to the lake and we had to jump across rocks to keep from getting wet. In the mud there were large tracks, they looked like they could be from a moose, but there are no moose in New Zealand. I don’t know what it could have been. They have a mountain goat known as a chamois, so maybe it could have been from that. The views from this point were really good. I took a view more pictures of myself, but it was kind of tough. I left my bag in the car about 200 yards away, which is usually what I use to hold my camera level and still. I had to just rest it on the rocks, which were slippery and wet. They were also slanted. I had to use the strap on my camera to make it even. I ended up getting it to work though. Andy went back to the car before I was done. I had gone a little further than him, but didn’t want to walk back through the water and mud so I walked a little further to stay on the rocks. I still ended up having to walk across the water slightly. We drove back up the gravel road and onto the main road again. As we turned the corner through a gap in the mountain road more mountains appeared across Lake Wanaka. The chain of mountains went on for as far as we could see. They lined the opposite coast of the lake. Most of them were mountains we had already seen from the Diamond Lake hike, but the views from this side of the mountains was spectacular. We must have stopped at least 4 times on the side of the road. It was almost the same view each time, but Andy kept wanting to get pictures. I took a lot as well. Most of the cars just drove by and didn’t stop. That seems to be how most of the people are. I guess they think stopping one time or just looking at them through the windows is enough. We hadn’t even gone 30 miles and it was already nearly 11 AM. We were nowhere near on schedule. We stopped one last time for pictures of Lake Wanaka. This time it was the last marked pull off, but it included a campground and picnic area. This angle was on the northeast side and was shooting back, rather than across the lake. We had to walk a short distance through the woods to the rocky beach to see the lake. The beach was mostly smaller rocks, but there were some larger ones as well plus some logs. We did a little gopro videos here since it looked cool. There was a random tree on the edge of the water line that was growing sideways about half way up. It looked similar to a tree I had seen in Yosemite about 10 years ago. As we were leaving we both did a 360 degree photo sequence. We took pictures every few feet as we walked around it. I did mine with my camera and Andy used his gopro. Mine looked really good. You just scroll through the images really fast on the camera and it makes it look like the image is spinning in a circle. We left around noon and we were finally done with the lakes. The road had been in the mountains, but now we were in a valley for of farms and sheep. We stopped a couple more times. These weren’t real stops, but just pulling off on the side of the road, usually on little gravel patches that led to people’s homes. Usually the farm homes have a fence a few yards passed the gravel turn off blocking the road up to their house. The first stop was on the side of the road where we saw a farm house with mountains in the back. We wanted to get closer, but no roads seemed to lead in that direction. We stayed here for about 20 minutes taking pictures and videos. Down the road a few miles we pulled off again when we saw more mountains. Every mountain we had been seeing Andy kept calling it Mt. Aspiring. The tallest mountain in the area is Mt. Aspiring and we didn‘t know which one it was. At this particular stop we ate one of the boiled eggs we each had a boiled egg we made. It was really good. I also ate a granola bar since we never had a real lunch. An Australian couple stopped at this picnic spot for pictures as well. We talked to them a little bit about where they were going and where they came from. They said the roads ahead were fine, just a little snowy, but chains weren’t required. They had rented a campervan and said it was $50 NZD a day and to stay in campsites was usually around $25 NZD. I had been interested in the campers, but that was way more expensive than what we were paying. Although they did have a warm place to sleep every night. After about 10 minutes of talking we continued on our way. We had to cross the Haast Pass and I wanted to get there before dark and the roads froze again from all the slush on the road. It was now around 2 PM and we hadn’t even gone 100 kilometers all day. The pass was only about 520 meters above sea level, not very high like you would see in Colorado or Montana, but because it gets lots of snowfall and is shaded by the trees it can be icy. It was a relatively flat and easy drive, but the area was very snowy. I was imagining it being much different than it was. I wasn’t even sure we were at the pass itself. It just seemed like any other road we had been on. A few miles down the road we came to the first waterfall we wanted to see, Fantail Falls. The parking area for this falls was on the side of the road and covered in snow. The trail was supposed to take 10 minutes roundtrip. It began by walking down a snowy path into the trees and across a small footbridge. The trail turns right and goes straight on a flat gravel trail for about 250 yards or so. The trail was clear mostly, but the trees and ground were snow covered. The trail seemingly ended at a bench looking out to the falls from a few hundred yards away. There were steps leading down from here, but there was no real trail visible. It was just a snow covered rocky area. Somewhere under that mess was the trail I suppose. We didn’t want to go out there at first because our feet would get cold, but we put down my gopro and Andy put his on his head and we ran for it. As long as we avoided the rocks that were showing it was ok. If we stepped on one we could slip or trip. I had to run back and get my gopro so it wouldn’t just keep filming. I went back out to the edge of the river where Andy was looking at the waterfall across the way. It wasn’t very big, but it looked neat, especially surrounded by the snow. We got some pictures and then ran back to the trail. The way back the rocks were more visible. Only one side of them had snow on them, and that was the side that we had come on originally. I stepped on a few and it was much harder to run. As we got to the trail I slipped running up the steps. Luckily I was able to put my hand down really quick so I didn’t bang my shin. That would have hurt. I jumped up and started running again. We ran a good portion of the trail back to the car. As we were getting back in the car some people asked if the falls were neat. I said it was and they should go check it out since it was only a few minutes to walk to. Another car had stopped, but they didn’t go on the trail. They just drove off. Being snowy come people probably didn’t want to get wet or fall down. We drove about 10 minutes down the road towards the next stop, Thundering Falls. Before we got there we crossed an old bridge overlooking a canyon below. The area was foggy and looked really cool. We pulled over on the side of the road and climbed down a little path to a trail below. There were huge boulders on the trail and in the water, which created a series of small waterfalls. We climbed around on the rocks a little bit and took pictures of the water and the bridge as everyone else just drove by again. Andy didn’t lock the car so we didn’t stay too long. We ran back to the car and continued driving a few hundred yards to the waterfall. Thundering Falls wa the tallest and most popular of the three we came to see. The parking area was larger and there was no snow at all on the trail except maybe a few patches in the trees. The hike was about 10 minutes round trip, just like the last one. It was very flat and went through the forest. Just before the end there is a platform looking out to the falls, which then leads to a series of wooden stairs down to the river. We got pictures and videos from the river. We also took pictures of each other. I did a few of myself too. It’s just more fun that way. It takes more shots to get it right, but when Andy is taking forever it gives me something to do. A lot of people were on this hike. Not a lot, but about 20 people caught up to us and passed us as we took pictures at the falls. We hiked back to the car and decided to walk back up the road a little bit. When we pulled up a group of Japanese women were taking pictures looking back the other way and we wanted to know what they saw. We didn’t see anything worth getting a picture of there, so we just hiked down to the river to get a different view of the waterfall. It wasn’t a real trail, it was just a bunch of large boulders that we had to walk across and around to get to where we wanted. This was obviously a rock slide area. Rock scrambling is fun, so we tend to do it whenever we see an opportunity. Some of the rocks were slippery, but we didn’t have any problems. We got some pictures and then went back to the car. The next stop was Roaring Billy Falls. It was now about 4 PM and getting darker because the sun was going down behind the mountains. We were surrounded on all sides, plus the trees made it shady on the road too. The drive to the last falls took about 30 minutes. The parking area was covered in snow. This was the longest trail, and it wasn’t very long either at just 30 minutes round trip. The start of the trail was covered in snow, but it quickly disappeared. We walked pretty quickly and ran for the end portion of the trail. It was getting dark so we wanted to hurry. The falls themselves weren’t that impressive for something named Billy. They were a little higher up in the mountains, but looked similar to the Fantail Falls, even the trail was similar in terms of the type of trees and layout of the trail. It was mostly flat and was an easy hike. Only one other group of people were on the trail. It was a guy and a girl. They got to the falls just as we were leaving. We spent about 15 minutes taking pictures and then ran back to the car. We did stop to take a picture of a tree with a hole at the bottom of it. Another hobbit house probably. We got back to the parking lot and were ready to get to Haast. We drove for about 30 minutes and watched the sun go down over the sea in the distance. The mountains behind us were turning pink at the top so we stopped for a picture. The road was really windy and followed the river most of the way on the mountains edge. It was a neat drive even though it was getting pretty dark. We got to the tiny town of Haast, 300 people, around 5:45 or a little before. We drove through the town in about 30 seconds looking for a campground. We read about a Wilderness Accommodation in the Lonely Planet Guidebook we had and it said it had nice rooms and a friendly staff. The rooms sounded good and the price was cheap. We had been sleeping in a tent for about 10 days since our last hostel so we decided we earned a good night’s sleep in a warm bed. We went inside and had to wonder through some halls passed the computer kiosk and rooms to find the reception in the kitchen and dining area. We rang the bell and on old man came out. We asked for the cheapest room, it was $28 NZD per person. More than we had thought it would be. There wasn’t much else in town that seemed available or open, most the stores were closed or closing soon. We went ahead and took the dorm room, which included two bunk beds. We were the only ones staying in the room. As the guy was checking us in and I asked questions he kept just saying “No Worries” over and over. It was funny. I hadn’t taken a shower in 4 days and I needed to shave. I got my things together in my dry bag to take to the bathroom. Andy stayed in the room to transfer some memory cards. I went to the closest bathroom down the hall. It had a door, and then inside a sink, then two small rooms inside. One was a toilet and one was a shower. I closed the main door because I wasn’t sure how it worked. Apparently I didn’t need to do that so other people could go to the bathroom while I was in the shower. The shower felt really good. I must have stayed in there for 30 minutes. The only reason I think that’s how long it was is because the light in the shower was on a timer. It had to be pushed every few minutes or it would go off and leave you in the dark. I found this out first hand. I didn’t know the lights were on a timer like that at first until it went pitch black in the shower. I thought someone had switched the light switch in the main bathroom and it turned mine off. I got of the shower and was able to feel the wall until I turned the lights back on. I got all of my things soaked that were on the ground. My shoes, toiletries, and dirty clothes. The things I needed were hanging up. I had to push the light switch at least 6 times. It was getting old. That was my one complaint about the hostel. After my shower I went back to the room. Andy was sitting on his bed reading and still transferring cards. His last card was almost finished. I noticed a bag on the top bunk that wasn’t ours. He told me we had company. Two guys had come in and would be staying in our room. I didn’t mind, but it meant I would have to be quiet in the morning when I left. We planned to leave really early so we would have time to do everything we wanted in Fox Glacier. We also thought the drive would take awhile. Andy went to the shower next and I typed things in my journal and fixed my bed. I was thinking about paying for the internet in order to transfer some money into my account to pay off my credit card bill. I never did get online though, it was too expensive. Andy took a quick shower. We went and put our things back in the car. I only kept out the things I would need so I wouldn’t have lots of things to pack in the morning in the dark. We got the things we wanted to have for dinner and went to the kitchen. We made spaghetti, cooked spinach, a salad, cookies, and chocolate. As we were making the food there were a few New Zealanders talking to the old man that worked or owned the hostel. They were discussing the economy of New Zealand and how expensive everything was and how it was hard for them to even survive. They were also talking about how foreigners come to their country and act entitled. Apparently if you get hurt then the government provides free health care for visitors. The people didn’t seem to like that. They discussed how China was propping up the rest of the world because the economies in the western countries were falling apart. They said that New Zealand would be broke in 10 years and China would rule the world by 2025. It seemed about right to me. They definitely weren’t very happy with the way things were going in New Zealand. They eventually left and our food finished cooking. The meal was pretty filling and good. The TV was on while we ate, but I didn’t really pay attention to it. The guys staying in our room sat at the table across from ours and talked really loudly in a foreign language, probably an Eastern European language. A Chinese couple came in and stood at the reception desk. They didn’t seem to have a clue. There was a sign that said ring the bell for help. We had to get their attention and tell them what to do. Maybe they won’t be taking over the world after all. The Eastern European guys went outside to smoke and I was thinking they were going to smell up the room when they came in. We cleaned up our dishes and went back to the room. I continued typing in my journal. I also needed to get caught up on expenses. I hadn’t written anything down since the first week. Andy was keeping track so he told me everything and I typed it in. I stopped typing around 11 PM. I was tired so I was ready for bed. The guys came in the room pretty late. I heard them open the door and saw them come in, but I immediately fell back asleep.

June 28 - Fox Glacier I had a good night of sleep. There was only a sheet and a comforter, but it was really warm. We got up this morning at 7 AM. It was still dark outside. I only had to pack up a few things and then we went to have breakfast. We were in a hurry, but decided to have eggs with cheese on the top. They had a cheese grater so we used that. We each had a piece of butter and jelly toast and a cup of hot chocolate. We returned our key through a little slot at the reception window. We left at 8 AM, a little after when we had wanted to go. The drive to Fox Glacier was supposed to take about two hours. We had read about a little town called Jackson Bay, about 30 minutes south of Haast on the coast. It was the last town on the road. Since the weather was clear we thought it would be a good place to go. There was supposed to be unforgettable views of the Southern Alps and the possibility of seeing a special kind of penguin that is only found in this part of New Zealand, the Fjordland Crested Penguins. They have weird feathers on their head. We got stuck behind a slow truck for a little while, but were eventually able to speed past them. We got to Jackson Bay around 8:45 AM. The roads were a little icy in parts and the road turned a lot at the end which made us go slower. I wanted to be back in Haast by 10 AM, so that meant we needed to leave around 9:30 AM at the latest. The town itself wasn’t much. There were only a few buildings near the harbor. There were about 10 boats on the water, but it looked like people were only on a couple of them. We took a few pictures and then walked down to the beach. There were a few hikes in the area, but we didn’t want to do them because of time. We basically just wanted to look for penguins and see the views of the Alps. The beach was very rocky and the tide was out so we walked out a little ways onto the rocks. I wanted to walk along the beach around the corner of the cliff to see if it would give a different view of the ocean and the sun rising. It was much farther than it looked because I never made it to the end. For some reason the sun was rising over the water, which made no sense to me. I thought it would be rising in the mountains since that’s where I thought the northeast was. I looked on a map later and realized that New Zealand is actually in a diagonal position almost horizontal, not vertical like I always thought. Therefore, the sun rising over the water made sense after all. We wondered around on the rocks for about an hour taking pictures. The Southern Alps did provide great views like we had read. With the boats in the foreground it was even better. A few of the boats were moving around as guys were doing some kind of work. Other than that nothing was going on in the area. We were the only ones out walking around. The longer we were out there the more the tide started coming in. I was in the process of trying to take pictures of myself and jumping from rock to rock when I noticed that the rocks I was jumping across were no longer visible. The water came rushing over them. I could tell that if I didn’t start moving quick I would have no escape route. I moved back a little bit closer to the shore and within seconds all the rocks I had been jumping on were under water. It was neat to see how fast the tide was able to rise. We started heading back to the car. We had previously crossed a small stream of water that was running from the forest to the sea. I didn’t know if that same stream of water would still be as small as it was or if we’d need to find another way. The stream of water had grown, but it was still only a few inches deep and enough rocks were sticking up to cross. We got back to the car and took a few more pictures of the harbor and then headed back towards Haast, hoping to see some penguins. We pulled off on a side road that was called Neil’s Beach Rd. We thought that may lead to the beach so we turned. After about half a mile the road turned to gravel. A sign warned that the road was unpaved and to travel at your own risk. Just a few hundred meters further and there was a huge puddle of water covering the road. The road was sandy and there was no way through. We turned down a side road and thought maybe we’d get down to the water that way. It didn’t happen. The road was a dead end to an old factory building of some kind that didn’t seem to be used anymore. We had to turn back and just continue down the road. We didn’t stop anymore and saw no penguins. We tried to see them from the car to the shores below, but we had no luck. We got back to Haast around 10:30 AM, a little behind schedule again. I wanted to get to Fox Glacier around 12:30 PM since we had a few hikes we wanted to do. It was only 120 kilometers so I figured at 100 kilometers an hour driving we could make it. Along the way we stopped at a few pull offs to take pictures. It was just views off a cliff of the sea below called Peter’s Point. It only took a few minutes and then we started driving again. There were a lot of palm trees on the drive since we were near the coast. I thought the road would be flat, but just half a mile inland there were a lot of hills and mountains. There was even snow on the ground. Parts of the road went down into valleys, but than others climbed into the mountains. It was a very scenic drive. We made it to Fox Glacier just before 12:30 PM. We ended up being on schedule for once. We wanted to do the Glacier Valley Walk which was a 1 ½ hour round trip hike. We figured that would take us a few hours to do. When we approached the town we stopped one more time to take pictures of a one lane suspension bridge just before we crossed it. We turned down a gravel road towards what we thought would be the start of the Glacier Valley Walk. It was very narrow so it looked like it was one way. We stopped at a viewpoint along the way. It was lunch time and we were starving so before the hike we made sandwiches. We had bought pastrami so we made that for lunch with spinach on top. We also ate some chips and a cookie. We were ready to start hiking. Nobody else was around at the time. We went to look at the trail sign and the names were different. We weren’t in the right spot. We looked on the map and we had turned down the wrong road. The road we wanted was just down the main road a few hundred meters. Rather than drive back we decided to do a short walk through the forest that provided views of the glacier. It was called the River Walk. It was only a 15 minute hike so we thought it would be worth checking out. There were other hikes that started at this point, but they were much longer. One went to a historic bridge and the other to a mountain chalet. The hike was pretty short and easy. It was well marked through the forest along a river. The trail had a few downhill parts just before the end, but other than that it was flat. We stopped a few times to take pictures along the trail and stayed at the lookout for about 15 minutes. A few other people passed through and took a picture or two and left. There was a little path that led down to the river next to the trail that I walked down. It didn’t go all the way to the river’s edge, but it was cool. There were little waterfalls coming down off the rocks and five feet beneath mossy log that acted like a bridge connecting both sides of the river. I wanted to try to walk across it, but Andy said it was too dangerous. We got back on the trail and back to the car. It was about 2 PM and we were ready to drive to the Glacier Valley Walk. We could see cars driving down near the glacier from the lookout on the trail, and I thought that might be where we would be driving to next. The drive was really short. It took about 15 minutes to get to the trailhead. There weren’t a lot of cars there, but there were more than most trails we had gone on. I think there were three cars. There were a lot more people though because of tours that were taking place. The people came on buses and were dropped off. The tours go onto the glacier itself. We would be doing one of these all day tomorrow. Across from the parking lot was a river flowing from the glacier. On one side of the river was the parking lot and trail, and on the other was a huge cliff hundreds of meters high. There were trees and mossy plants growing out of it’s side. The start of the trail crosses a short footbridge over a tiny pond of water. The water provided a pretty good reflection of the mountains behind the glacier. The rest of the trail was covered in gravel. It was basically a straight line and flat for most of the walk. There were a few moderate switchbacks near the middle of the trail. After the short climb the trail flattens out again, but it became more sandy and less rocky. There are a few small streams that must be crossed by stepping on a few rocks, but nothing too difficult. On the hills to the left there were a few waterfalls pouring down. One of them was a little bigger than the others. The best one was very rocky and was a serious of very small falls. This is also the spot where we had to step across a few rocks to pass. We walked pretty quickly down the trail. A tour group had just started after we began walking. They stopped a few times to talk, and they were able to slowly catch up and pass us. They branched off onto a different trail that could only be used with a guide as we walked towards the base of the glacier. We were able to get about 200 meters from the front. The distance is always changing based on the weather conditions and other factors. We stayed at the lookout for about 45 minutes to an hour taking pictures. While we were there a Chinese guy came running up to where we were. He was looking up at the tour group waving to them. The guide and all the group had stopped and was pointing for him to go back to go up the trail. He had no clue what they were saying since they were about 100 meters above us. We had to tell him where to go to get up to where they were. A few minutes later we saw him running up the steep trail to join them. He then ran back down the trail. The group was still waiting. A few minutes later he appeared again with three other Chinese people, an old guy and old lady. The group began to walk ahead as the Chinese people were struggling to get up the hill. It was pretty funny to watch. I’m not sure why they were behind, but my guess is they were supposed to be on the tour and arrived late and needed to catch up. At the lookout where we were standing another Asian guy with a guide showed up. There were also two other guys, one that sat down to smoke, and another one just standing around. I’m not sure if they were all together or not, but none of them seemed to be taking pictures of the glacier or going anywhere. The guide that came with them climbed under the ropes and ran off up the side of the hill where the other group tour had been standing waiting on the Chinese family. The Asian guy was on some kind of tour, I think he may have been trying to catch up with the other group and the guide went to go see if he still could. He was kind of fat so I don’t think he was going to be running after them very quickly. We had been there for about an hour so we were ready to head back down. We never saw what happened with the Asian guy waiting around. As we walked back we had a few places picked out that we wanted to stop. The stream crossing was the main point of interest. Before when we crossed a tour group was passing by and we didn’t want to go off the trail or do gopro videos with them nearby. We didn’t want to look too stupid. The stream crossing was pretty cool. Andy tried to do a new trick. I walked across the rocks one way, and then back the other. He took pictures really quickly one after another. Scrolled quickly it looked like I was just walking normally. I did the same thing for Andy when he crossed. There were a number of small waterfalls a few inches tall rushing over the rocks in the stream as it came down the mountain. I picked out a good waterfall and set up my camera. My plan was to do a long exposure picture. It would blur the water, but everything would be clear and in focus. Andy did the same, but lower down. He ended up seeing the waterfall I had chosen and then joined me. The pictures I took turned out really well. Since Andy had a tripod he was able to get a few different angles. I have to just rest my camera on my bag so I was limited on where I could stand. While he was continuing to get pictures I walked back to the other side of the stream and up a little path. There weren’t good long exposure pictures to get, but I was able to get a few good pictures of more of the stream. We didn’t film anything else on the way back from this point. It was around 4:15 and we still had one more hike planned to do. We wanted to drive to Lake Matheson and do a short hike before sunset. The hike provides a reflection of the mountains where Fox Glacier is located. The drive over was back down to the main road, and then through town, and another 10 minutes down a back road. We got there a little after 4:30 PM. There was a café there, but it had just closed. There were a few cars in the parking lot when we arrived, but a few of the people were just leaving. The trail starts behind the café. The lake isn’t very big and it’s located in a big field. Not really what I was expecting. I thought it would be at the base of some mountains. There are two ways to go since the trail is a loop. To get to the start we had to walk next to a pasture for a few hundred yards that provided views of the mountains to our right. As we walked into the forest we passed a few groups that were finishing the hike. We chose to go left at the fork since there were more lookouts on that side. We were just looking for the best view before sunset. The trail starts out really flat and then slowly starts to climb in a few spots. Andy wanted to run so we could get further faster. The whole trail was supposed to take about an hour to complete and we didn’t have that much time. We had about 30 minutes at most. We got to the first lookout after about 10 minutes. It was just a bench looking out to the water. They were good views though. We came to the next one, the Jetty Lookout, after about 5 minutes of running. This one had a wooden platform with stairs that led down to it. The views from here were pretty good as well and the light was still good. We got a few pictures and took off for the next point. The trail was still mostly flat, but included a few wooden boardwalks. One was next to the rocky wall to our right, and the other crossed the end of the lake. It wasn’t really crossing the lake, but more of a bog area that was covered with very shallow water and plants. This particular portion was icy. As I was walking across I could hear people behind me. It was a guy and a girl and they were running. I think they were trying to get to the views quickly too. The next stop just past the boardwalk was another lookout. This one was up a flight of wooden stairs mixed with rock stairs. We ran up it and it was pretty tough after all the other running we had done. This particular point was called the “View of Views.” Real original. Sounds like something I would make up. I figured it would be really good, and it was, but not great. It was a higher viewpoint and the reflection wasn’t as good. It did allow the opportunity to see Lake Matheson with the mountains in the back, but we were now looking for a spot to do a time lapse with the mountains and their reflection on the lake. We took a few pictures and the other couple showed up. They got their pictures and took off back down the trail. We soon followed. At the bottom of the stairs was a sign that listed the walking times based on where you could go for a few of the stops. The route we took said it was 40 minutes from where we were standing. We made it in 20 minutes with lots of picture stops. It was about 5:05 PM as we began to run to our next lookout, Reflection Island. The sign said it would take 5 minutes, running we figured we would get there in less than 2 minutes. The mountains were turning pink at the top from the sunset, so we needed to hurry. I was thinking there would be an island, but there wasn’t. The island must have been the point we were standing on. The trail was a boardwalk again that led to a flight of stairs that went down to the water. It was basically a dock. The Jetty Point didn’t even have a spot for a boat, whereas Reflection Island did. I think they got the names mixed up on their signs. The other pair was their as we arrived. The girl was taking pictures of the guy in front of the lake. We walked down the stairs and began setting up our cameras for the time lapse. I put down my gopro almost immediately, it was about 5:08 PM when I started it. I had to get my controller out to start my time lapse and fix the batteries. The thing doesn’t have an on/off switch so to keep from running down the batteries I have to put one in backwards. I had to flip that around and choose the proper settings. By the time I did that it was 5:12 PM. Andy had to do the same, but also change a battery and memory card. He finally got his going at 5:17 PM. He had missed most of the clouds moving and the colors changing. Mine started out really well, but I probably started the settings too dark. I had it taking pictures every 8 seconds, the gopro was taking them every 5 seconds. As we were sitting there letting the pictures run we could hear loud gun shots and see and hear birds flying through the air. I was surprised that there was hunting going on so close to a National Park and tourist destination. I watched my time lapse from my good camera after I stopped it at 5:30. It was a little dark by the end, but it was still pretty good. The clouds and water moved really well. I haven’t seen the gopro version yet, but the others I had seen that it did looked good so I’ll assume this one will be too. Andy started his late, but he had the proper settings. His was pretty good too from what I could see. I was up the stairs on the platform watching from above as he scrolled through so I couldn’t see it really well. It was now getting pretty dark and we still had half the trail to walk. The sign said it would be about 30 minutes from this point back to the start. I walked fast hoping to be back in 20 minutes. It was getting dark and colder. We had to get our headlamps out for the whole way back. Mine worked well, but Andy’s batteries were dying. His was pretty useless. It was hard to tell if his was even on. Eventually he just turned it off completely. It wasn’t totally dark for the first 5 minutes, so I kept telling him that’s probably why he couldn’t see if his was working or not. As we went deeper into the forest and the sun went down behind the mountains it was much darker. We had to rely mostly on my light to navigate. This side of the trail was flatter than the other, but it included a lot more wooden planks and footbridges to cross. It was maybe more scenic in the forest, but there were very limited views of the lake. We made it back to the fork in the trail around 6:00 PM. It was completely dark by now. We could still hear gunshots. I was wondering what they were shooting and how they could see it in the dark. After a few more minutes of hiking I saw something about 20 yards ahead. I shined my light on it and it was two orange eyes staring at me from the side of the trail. It wasn’t a cat or a dog, their eyes don’t look like that. I couldn’t really see what it was since it was against a tree. I was trying to tell Andy to look at it, but he couldn’t see it at first. After about a minute he finally saw what I was looking at. He thought it was a possum. The animal just kept staring at us. I figured it would run away. We barked at it a little and made noises, but it didn’t go anywhere. It just walked back and forth on the trail looking for something, and looking at us. I thought we were going to have to throw things at it or go a different way to get back. It walked off the trail for a second and I thought we could make a break for it, but it quickly came back. I think we sat there for more than 10 minutes waiting for it to leave. Finally it walked off the trail and we walked really quickly to get by. I never looked back. I was thinking it was a wombat, it seemed too bushy to be a possum. Maybe their possums are different than what I’m used to seeing. Possum fur is very expensive and popular in New Zealand, so maybe they are more bushy. It’s funny that an animal that is abundant and dead all over the roads could be worth so much. In the U.S. I don’t know of anyone wanting to wear a possum as a garment. We got back to the car around 6:30 PM and still had no place to stay for the night. We had passed a few places and had seen a place in the Lonely Planet that sounded good. We chose to go to the Ivory Towers, a hostel that had camping back in town. On the way we drove passed a Holiday Park Campground and had it as our back up plan just in case. We found the hostel pretty easily. A large bus had just showed up before us and dropped off a couple of people. We parked on the side of the road and I ran up some stairs to the reception building. The place seemed pretty popular since there were lots of people inside the kitchen area and the reception. When I got inside there was a guy and two girls in front of me. The guy was getting an in depth description of everything to do in Fox Glacier. He didn’t know anything about the area it seemed based on the questions he asked and the things the lady suggested to him. It took at least 10 minutes. I just wanted to know how much camping or a room was for the night. He needed to hurry up. Finally he got all the information he wanted and left. One of the girls had gone to sit down in a chair outside and the other one stepped up to ask about using the facilities without having a room. The lady said that wasn’t an option. I don’t know why they would just want bathrooms or a kitchen, but not a place to stay. I don’t know where they intended to go. The girl also asked about a room. The price was $25 a person for the night. She didn’t seem to want to pay that. She asked if there was camping, but she said that she couldn’t offer camping officially since the place next door was a campground. I don’t know what that meant, but she did say camping was $18 a person. The girl went outside to talk with her friend about it. I asked about the camping and she said that they don’t do camping at this time of year. I asked if the place next door she mentioned did and she said no. She said it would be too cold to camp at this time of year so she just doesn’t offer it. I told her my sleeping bag would be warm enough, but she didn’t seem to care. She was kind of rude. I said I’d ask my brother if $25 for a room was ok. I ran back down to the car and told him the story. We drove off. We headed for the Holiday Park. The Holiday Park was $19. We would save a little bit of money by staying there. It had the kitchen we needed for dinner and hot water for our bottles. It was pretty cold outside, but we thought we could manage it. The lady at the counter said we could set our tent up anywhere we wanted. We chose a spot near the kitchen which was actually a powered site, but we didn’t think anyone would be coming plus there were plenty of empty spots still. We were pretty hungry and wanted to have dinner. We set up the tent really fast and went to the kitchen. We wanted to have spaghetti, with a piece of butter bread, a salad, and spinach and our normal cookie and chocolate for dessert. We had a glass of milk as well with some hot chocolate. Once again a Chinese group of young people were in the kitchen making a huge feast. I don’t know what they had, but there were 5 of them. It was three girls and two guys that were staying in a cabin I believe. The Holiday Parks often include tent camping, campervan spots, and cabins or rooms of some kind. The cabin was basically a room with beds, but separate from each other. Nothing fancy. Whatever they were eating it included scrambled eggs, French fries, some kind of chopped up meat, and a ton of vegetables. I don’t know if it was all mixed together or not, but it smelled really good and looked like a ton of food. Our food was good too, but there’s looked better. We cleaned everything up and then went next door to the TV/Computer room. I needed to check to make sure my money was being transferred so I got on the internet. I bought an hour worth of time for $5. It was way too expensive, but I figured if I was going to get on the internet I may as well get enough time to do what I needed and see what else was going on in the world since I have been clueless for the most part without a TV or internet. The order I put in for my Visa stock to sell didn’t go through. I had to redo it, but this time as a market order, which meant it would sell at whatever the going rate was. Before I tried to set a price limit and the limit wasn’t hit so the order was cancelled. This meant I was going to need to get on the internet again to transfer the money to my bank account was the money was made. I was done with everything in 20 minutes, but still had 40 to waste. I got on Facebook, read some emails, and then read about the upcoming Healthcare Law decision by the Supreme Court. The decision is supposed to be made tomorrow. I guess I will read about it tomorrow since I will have to get on the internet again to transfer some money. As I was playing on the internet the Cleveland Show was on followed by Good Burger. The Good Burger show is hilarious. I was listening to it and couldn’t stop laughing. My time ran out on the internet just as it ended. I needed to write in my journal so I went and set in a chair near Andy. There were 4 rows of chairs lined up, each with about 10 chairs in them in front of the TV, the computers were in the back of the room. We watched South Park while we wrote. One of the Chinese guys came in the room and sat down in the front row of chairs a few down from me and watched South Park. After the show ended Cops came on. I don’t ever watch it and didn’t pay that close attention as I was typing. The Chinese guy got up and left a little bit after it started. We stayed in the room until about 11 PM. We got our water bottles filled with hot water in the kitchen. A girl was in there washing dishes and I talked to her for a minute. She was staying in a campervan. We went to the tent and saw frost on it. The tent had gotten wet in Wanaka from the rain and never fully dried out. We hoped it would dry out since we didn’t use it in Haast, but I guess it didn’t work so well. When I opened the door a little of the frost fell off onto my sleeping bag. I laid down to go to bed around 11:30 PM.

June 30 - Franz Josef/Hokitika We woke up really early this morning hoping to watch the sunrise at Franz Josef Glacier. I think it was about 6:45 AM. It was another freezing night. I slept alright though, but outside it was extremely cold. We didn’t want to spend a lot of time making food so we ate a banana and we each had a piece of peanut butter toast with hot chocolate. We then quickly took down the tent. Andy didn’t wear his gloves so they wouldn’t get wet and I warned him his hands would freeze since that’s what happened to mine before when I tried that. His hands were of course very cold. I had to fold the rain fly on the tent since his hands were too cold after rolling up the tent. We wanted to take showers since it had been a few days and I needed to shave. I got my things and went to the bathroom. I took the first stall, but realized there was water all over the ground so I moved a few of my things to the second stall. I had to use the bathroom so I did that real fast. I heard someone come in and thought it was Andy. I walked out and it was some old guy. He wanted to use a shower so I told him I needed to move my things. Andy would have to wait to get his shower now. I was freezing cold so I wanted to take a shower and not have to wait around. I took a nice long shower and it felt really good. Andy only had to wait a few minutes to get in because the old guy was fast. Andy was already done by the time I got out. We left the campground before 7:30 AM to do a few hikes in the same place we were at the day before in the Franz Josef Glacier parking lot. It was only a short 10 minute drive or so through town and to the trail head. Andy had read about a hike called Peter’s Pool that had reflections of the mountain that the Franz Josef Glacier was on. It was actually part of another longer trail, but to get to the pool it was only a 20 minute round trip hike and was really easy. Afterwards we wanted to do the Franz Josef Glacier Valley Walk which was in the same location and if we had time we would redo the Sentinel Hike since we didn’t get any video of the trail itself. When we pulled into the parking lot there was another car already there. Two guys were getting dressed in warmer gear and another guy came walking up to them, I think he was in the bathroom. We packed a few light snacks for the hike since our breakfast was small. I just had a granola bar. We left on our hike before the other guys. The Peter’s Pool hiuke was very short and very easy. We got a few videos along the way and it still only took 10 minutes to get there. It had a few moderate climbs, but nothing too difficult. The trail was very icy and covered in snow in a number of spots though which made it slick at times. The pool itself was frozen, which meant not very good for reflecting. It would havae been perfect though since the skies were blue with few clouds and the sun was shinning brightly on the mountain. We stayed at the pool taking pictures for about 15 minutes. The sun was just rising and it caused the mountains to be a little pinkish at the top. We saw what we came to see and then walked back down to the parking lot. When we got back a few more cars had arrived. It was about 8:30 AM at this point. We walked over to the start of the Glacier Valley Walk and proceeded down the trail. The beginning was the same path we took the night before on the Sentinel Rock lookout up to the part where there was a fork in the road. The trail was still very icy and even more slick than the night before. We were slipping and sliding all over the place. Although it was really cold outside the sun was shining on us through the trees so it felt kind of warm. The first part of the trail after the fork was part of a forest walk so naturally it was in the trees. There wasn’t really much to see in this part. The trail was supposed to be wheel chair accessible. When I hear or see that I assume it will be paved or have a boardwalk, or something to make the wheel chair have access to the hike. This trail was not wheel chair accessible at all, unless the person in the wheel chair wanted the ride of their life. It was snowy, icy, rocky, and steep on parts. Whoever had to push that thing wouldn’t have enjoyed pushing a wheel chair up the semi-steep path and the person riding in the wheel chair would have had a bumpy ride. After about 15-20 minutes of walking the trail leaves the forest and opens up to a river that was flowing from under the glacier and through a rocky area that had been carved out by the glacier over thousands of years. This area was under the glacier as recently at the 1970s, but due to changes in the environment it had melted quite significantly. It is projected at this pace to be completely gone by 2050. The trail itself that leads up to Franz Josef Glacier is somewhat similar to Fox Glacier. The difference is that at Fox Glacier the trail is a little more scenic and turns a little more. The hike up to Franz Josef is pretty straight and flat and just passes near the river and through an area of huge boulders. Many of them were placed there by the glacier, but many more have fallen off the sides of the surrounding mountains from rock slides. At this point in the trail we seemed to be two of five people walking. The three guys we had seen earlier in the morning were ahead of us by a few hundred yards. I assume it was them, but I’m not sure because I figured they would be further along than they were. They may have stopped, not left as early as I thought, or went somewhere else first. The trail was marked with stakes that were about 3 ½ feet high that were spaced out about 40-50 yards between each one. My goal was to film myself walking towards the glacier by putting the gopro on top of every 4th or 5th stake. I wanted it to be from behind so it would make it look like I was jumping ahead really fast as I pieced it altogether. The first thing we did when leaving the forest was cross a small footbridge. I got some good pictures at this particular spot. We walked a little further and I put my filming plan into action. We did this for about 3 or 4 times until we came to a second footbridge. There were two footbridges separated by an embankment of rocks that looked like they had been placed there. They were mostly medium sized rocks that separated a small streambed and another small dried up stream bed. The first bridge had water going underneath it, created by a series of waterfalls coming off the mountain. The second streambed was dried up. . At first I only saw the one, but as I walked further around the corner a few more appeared. The trail continues on straight and around, but we climbed onto tje embankment and took pictures of the waterfalls. We were passed by two younger Asian looking people probably in their early 20s. At this point Andy took about 10 minutes to get pictures. I had seen the falls and was ready to continue on. I left him behind and kept walking. I continued to do my plan, but no longer was I placing the camera at every 4th stake. Instead I started putting it at every 3rd. I continued to do this all the way until the end of the trail. . I looked back a few times and saw that Andy was finally coming behind me. Another couple was coming as well. The boy went running towards one of the waterfalls. I don’t know if he went under it or just up to it, he was too far to see that closely. On the right there was a neat looking mountain with trees and mosses growing out of it. It looked jagged in portions as if large junks of it had eroded away or fallen off from rock slides. I took pictures of this point. As I got to the end of the trail I saw two of the three guys that I had seen earlier. They were sitting next to the trail with a telescope pointed towards the mountain to our right. They both had rifles on their backs. Again hunters in a National Park with lots of tourists around. That seems kind of dangerous to me. I was thinking maybe they were park rangers trying to shoot animals that were introduced to New Zealand that they didn’t want. Our guide at Fox Glacier said there are mountain goats, called Chamois, in the area. Hunters often shoot these and barbecue them and the government wants to control the populations so they allow hunting. Off the trail and to the right there was a huge mound of rocks in the shape of a pyramid. I assume it was a rock slide area. It was fenced off, but the third guy I had seen earlier was coming down a trail at the top of the mound. The Asian couple I had seen had walked up to the trail area, and climbed under the ropes that blocked this section. The hunter didn’t say anything as he passed them, so I guessed he wasn’t a ranger after all. I never saw the Asian people again so they didn’t go up the steep trail. They may have just turned back and left. At the end of the trail there are a lot of huge boulders all around. I stayed in this area for at least 10 minutes waiting for Andy to catch up. There were more people getting to the end of the trail so I had to stop my gopro shooting aat this point. Andy finally arrived. Everyone was gone so we did our last gopro shots. Andy had been doing something similar to what I had done with the gopros on the post as we walked towards the glacier, but I think he did a few other shots as well. I remember thinking that the people behind me on the trail must have thought I was strange since I would walk forward 20 yards or so and then turn and walk back. I was in the process of setting down my gopro for a neat shot, but Andy had his gopro on his headstrap and was walking to the end of the trail where the barrier was so I had to wait. There was a cut out sign of a guy with his hand out stretched that said “Stop” and he walked up and gave it a high five. I was just about to do that same thing. After he finished I did it anyway. I was basically done getting videos with my gopro and taking pictures of the glacier so I spent the next 15 minutes just taking pictures of myself. Andy went back up the trail about 20 yards and started taking pictures with his telephoto lens. He finally finished taking pictures and saw what I was doing and asked me to take a picture of him. He doesn’t like doing self portraits as much as me even though he does do it every once in a while. I don’t know what he started doing, but I was done looking at the glacier so I started walking back. There was a barrier that went from the river all the way to the mountain to keep people from getting too close to the glacier without an experienced guide. There wasn’t a trail that went up to the mountain, but I had nothing else to do really so I just walked up the rocks along the yellow rope fence until I had a higher view of the glacier. I probably walked about 150 yards or so. I looked at the glacier for awhile and got a couple of pictures. I went back down to the bottom where Andy was after 10 minutes and asked if he was ready yet. He said he almost was. I told him I had gone up a little further and he asked if it was any good up there. I told him it was, but he shouldn’t go up there. I knew he would want to take lots more pictures since it was a better spot. He said he didn’t even realize there was a trail there and I told him there wasn’t, but I had seen other people go up that way earlier so I wanted to check it out. He went up to the point where I had been and I started walking back to the start of the trail. I wanted to get down to the river and needed to find a good spot. I also had to go to the bathroom and since it was later in the day a lot more people were on the trail. I had to find a good hiding spot behind the biggest rocks and they were down near the river. As I was walking I found a little pathway down to the river’s edge. There were some big boulders so I went in between them. There was a large one to my right with another big one on my left that was leaning against the other rock which blocked the view from the trail mostly. Then there was a smaller rock in front of me so together they formed a triangle shape. I’m pretty sure I was well covered, but just as I thought I had found a good spot I looked up and about 50 yards away was a lady playing around near the water. I don’t think she could see me, but I had to wait. There might have been a few other people about 500 yards away that could have seen me if they looked in my direction. I decided my hiding spot was no good so I just kept walking along the water. It seemed like there was nobody around so I hid behind some large rocks and just peed. Andy was still taking pictures so I did some rock scrambling and took some pictures and did some gopro videos of myself. I must have spent about 20 minutes down there waiting. I looked back to where he was and I could see that he was finally packing up his things and moving towards the trail. I saw a big waterfall coming off the mountains that we had passed earlier on the hike so I figured I would go walk towards it. It didn’t look that far and I thought by the time I got to the falls he would be getting back to the general area that I was in. I started walking and passed by two other people that had gone off the main trail to walk around in the rocks. I thought the falls was about 400 yards away, but as I walked towards it I didn’t think I was getting any closer. Andy was about 20 yards to my left, but couldn’t see me since I was behind some rocks. I was going to try to go around behind him. I climbed up on top of them and he looked over and saw me. I joined him on the main trail and we started walking back. We had spent about 2 hours on the trail by now. The whole thing was supposed to take an hour and a half round trip. Andy wanted to get a few pictures and videos on the way back by the waterfalls that we had passed. I thought we had enough pictures and videos of that area, but he wanted some of us walking the other direction. We stopped a few times to get some pictures and do some videos before we got to the waterfalls. We also did a few shots of ourselves walking through a snowy area with the glacier behind us. At the waterfall Andy wanted to get a few more pictures so I did too. We walked a little further past the waterfall and made it back into the forest area. The walk back was a lot more icy then I remembered in the morning. It was also steeper than I remembered. There were a few places that we almost fell down. We made it back to the car around 12:30 PM and were ready for lunch. Andy wanted to do a hike that was an hour and a half long called Canavan’s Knob. I didn’t really want to do it, but we drove a few miles down the road to the trail parking lot. We decided we would eat lunch and then determine if we wanted to go on the hike. We made ham sandwiches and ate chips and a cookie. During lunch I said I didn’t care to do the hike. We had planned to drive about 30 minutes down the road to a town called Okarito on the coast and do two hikes there. They were an hour and a half and a 30 minute hike. We then had to drive another two hours to Hokitika, the place we wanted to camp for the night. I knew that if we did the Canavan’s hike that it would probably take two hours and we wouldn’t have enough daylight to do the other hikes. I also didn’t feel like driving late at night. The roads are in perfect condition, but they often times go through the mountains and people in New Zealand drive way too fast around sharp curves. The roads are similar to what we have experienced in Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Peru in terms of how much they turn, how steep they are, and how they are always in the mountains. They seem to intentionally avoid the valleys and easy routes possible when building roads. I felt like they put lots of turns in them just to keep people from driving too fast. Maybe it was to make them look like cooler drives. I felt that the Canavan’s trail wouldn’t give us that great of views. There were two big hills in front of the glacier and mountains from where we were in the parking lot and there weren’t any high areas around us so it didn’t seem to me that the hike would be worth the trouble or time. Instead of doing Canavan’s Knob trail we just walked around in the parking lot since there were lots of randomly placed boulders next to it. There was a six foot wall of little rocks that we had to get over first. We walked down about 30 yards to a place that looked a little more stable and not so steep. We hopped around on the rocks for about 20 minutes taking random pictures and videos of ourselves. There was one part where the rocks were about 3 feet apart and I had to jump across it to get to the other side. I had to jump up slightly because of where the rocks were placed and I couldn’t get a running start. It was pretty scary, but I had to do it. Not really, I could have walked about 2 feet over and just gone an easier way, but that’s not as fun. There was one rock that stuck up above the rest. I called it “Pinnacle Rock.” It was slanted a little bit, and flat on the surface so it made it a little tougher to get up without slipping off. We each climbed to the top of it. After our little made up hike we got back in the car and drove down the street. We stopped after about 30 seconds next to a light pole to get a few more pictures of the mountains. We had to get gas before we left Franz Josef because we weren’t sure where the next gas station would be and we had less than ¼ a tank. The gas was about $0.30 more per litre than we were paying in other areas so we just got half a tank. On our way out of town we stopped on the side of the road one more time for pictures. We didn’t stop again until we got to Okarito. The town is very small, maybe 100 people at most. I doubt even that many. We went there because the hikes were supposed to give great views of the mountains we were leaving, as well as many others. It also had good views of the wetlands area and the Tasman Sea. Once we got to Okarito it was easy to find the trail. There was only one road in the town and it was right off of it on the left. We were the only ones parked in the parking lot as usual. We loaded up our things and set out on the Trig Walk. The first part of the trail is part of a longer multi-day hike that follows the coast, but then branches off to a lookout point, which is what we wanted to see. The trail starts out flat and crosses a wetland area on a boardwalk that is about 60 yards long. It winds around like a snake for no apparent reason. We then entered into the forest and the trail continued to be flat for about 50 yards. After this it seemed like a steady climb for the next 45 minutes. There were portions where it was flat, but they didn’t seem to last very long. The trail was well shaded in the trees, but it was warm and we were working hard enough that we were sweating. There were a couple of lookouts along the way of the wetlands we crossed and the ocean. We stopped one time and a guy and a girl passed us on the trail. We made it to the fork in the road and turned left to complete the Trig Trail. A sign said it was 40 minutes to the top from here. We had already been walking for about 30 minutes, but that included a lot of stops. All of the times for trails are based on walking only, and not any extra time for taking pictures or resting. It’s strange because in the U.S. the times are based on how long it might take to do everything. The middle of the trail was the longest stretch of flat ground, but just before the end the trail becomes pretty steep again to get to the lookout. At the top there is a wooden platform that gives 180 degree views which included the coast on the left with wetlands along the shore, and a continuous chain of mountains that stretched to the other coast to our right. As we arrived at the top the guy and girl that passed us before were just leaving. We climbed up on the railing, which was only about 2 feet tall to get better views over the trees in front of us. Although most of the trees weren’t actually blocking our views. There was also a square shaped block in the middle that we could stand on for slightly higher views as well. From here we did a lot of panorama shots. Andy wanted me to do a time lapse with my gopro since his battery was low since it could do a wide angle shot and the mountains were so long. I tried to climb in a tree to connect it, but it wasn’t working very well. He ended up putting it in another tree and we let it run for about 15 minutes. The clouds weren’t doing much and the lighting stayed mostly the same, but it may have turned out ok. I haven’t watched it yet to know. As I climbed into the tree to get it out an old man and younger looking lady showed up. I had just finished peeing next to the trail so it was a good thing they weren’t a few minutes earlier. I was climbing in the tree trying to get my gopro down and almost dropped the camera when I unclipped it. It wouldn’t have fallen that far anyway. We decided we were ready to head down since we had another hike we wanted to do. We stayed at the top for at least 35 minutes, but probably longer. We ran down the first half of the way back since it was pretty steep and running down is easy. Once we got to the flat middle section we started walking. It felt like the flat section on the way back was longer than it was on the way there, but it may have been because we did the running portion so quickly. We got back to the first overlook portion and we stopped. We had a view of the boardwalk and Andy thought it would be a cool video of me walking across from a really high angle. He could zoom in enough with his camera to make it look cool. I ran ahead for the last few hundred yards to get down there. As I came out of the forest I was waving my hands in the area like a crazy person that just got chosen to be on the Price Is Right. I don’t know if he was filming at that point or not, but I did it long enough that he could have easily pressed record if he wanted to. I stopped acting like an idiot and began walking across like a normal person. I then stopped and jumped to do a heel click. I did a couple of those while walking and then he yelled for me to walk back the other way. He was probably 400 yards away on the side of the hill, but because I was in a valley surrounded by trees and cliffs there was a loud echo. It was kind of cool. We got the shots we wanted and Andy came down to join me on the boardwalk. This area is supposed to have a special kind of Kiwi bird that is endangered, but we didn’t see any. We got to the car and saw there was a campsite across the street. We decided to go look at it to see if it was somewhere we wanted to stay for the night. It was a self registration campsite and was pretty cheap at only $10 per person a night. We drove in and there was one campervan with a guy starting a fire. All the campsites we had been to had banned fires, but I guess this one didn’t. We drove to the end of the road, which was about 150 yards, and saw the kitchen area. We went inside and there wasn’t much there. No way to cook food other than a boiling water dispenser. We wanted some real food so we decided this wasn’t going to cut it for the night. We drove on and went to the next hike on our list. Along the way we saw a body of water that looked like a lake, but it may have been part of the ocean, I’m not sure. There was an old dock building and a reflection of the mountains in the water so we stopped for some pictures. There were some wooden posts sticking out of the water so I got some pictures of those as well as the reflecting mountains. We then walked to the side of the building and took pictures of it with the water in the background. We kept walking to get another angle, but it seemed like we were walking in an area usually covered by water since it became muddy. A campervan pulled up and a lady jumped out and took some pictures and then they drove off. We got the pictures we wanted and then went back to the car. It was about 4:45 PM at this time and it was starting to get dark. We didn’t know where the trail was exactly, but Andy thought it was close by. Looking at the map I thought it was at least 10 minutes down the road. We drove until we found it. Of course nobody else was doing the trail. The whole area of Okarito seemed pretty deserted. We got out of the car and went to the trail. We stopped at the beginning because we could see the mountains in the distance and thought it looked neat. The first part of the trail had a little snow on it, but after a small section it was clear. We were in a hurry so we ran up the trail. It was pretty steep, but it was a short trail. It was less than half a mile one way probably. I didn’t run the whole way, I was too tired. At the top there was a platform with railings that were about 3 ½ feet tall. The views from the area were of the mountains on one side and the ocean to the other. The views weren’t really that great. The trees surrounding the platform pretty much blocked the mountains. In order to see better we had to climb up on the wooden railings. It was not very safe at all. Andy climbed up first and got lots of pictures. I tried to climb up, but the railing was wobbling too much. It was about a 10 foot drop off from the railing to the ground. I got up for about 2 seconds and decided that wasn’t a good idea and jumped down. There was a wooden box type thing in the middle of the platform similar to the one at the previous hike so I stood on it. It wasn’t very high, but it was better than nothing. Andy decided to get down so I climbed up to where he was. I was shaking a lot and didn’t feel comfortable so I got back down after a few pictures. The sun was going down so the mountains were turning colors so Andy wanted more pictures. He put on his telephoto lens to get some. He climbed back up on the railing. I just took pictures from where I was with my zoom lens. I did some gopro videos of Andy standing on the ledge, and then I climbed up on the railing in the back. It was even more wobbly so I jumped back down from that. I was done seeing the mountains so I started taking pictures of the sunset over the ocean. The clouds looked really neat. Andy started doing the same. We had seen enough after about 25 minutes and went back down. By the time we got to the car it was starting to get dark. He stopped one more time to get pictures at the first place we stopped and I went back to wait at the car. I heard something rustling around in the bushes and got scared. There are no predators in New Zealand though, so I thought it was just a bird of some kind. Andy got back to the car a few seconds later and I told him there was a bear in the woods nearby. Every time we get separated and he catches up I tell him there is a bear and to not go any further. The drive to Hokitika was our final journey for the night. There were no cars going north on the road. Every car we passed was going south. We went through a few small towns along the way, but most of the towns only had a few hundred people. One town in particular, I don’t know the name, seemed like everyone was at the local bar. There were a lot of cars in the parking lot. I always think people are out late since it gets dark so early, but really it’s like 7 PM. The road to Hokitika is supposed to be a scenic drive, but because it was dark we couldn’t see much except the other cars passing by. The road is mostly through the mountains and winds all over the place even though there was clearly a valley that the road could have easily been built through. The worst thing about driving at night besides the roads is that a lot of the people drive with their bright lights on and don’t switch them off. That is the most annoying thing ever, especially when driving on roads that curve around every 50 yards. We got to Hokitika around 7:30 PM or a little after. We wanted to stay at a campground for the night so we found the Holiday Park. It wasn’t as nice as some of the others, but it was fine. It was right next to a huge milk factory. Hokitika is the largest town we have seen for awhile, it has about 7,000 people and is on the west coast. Most of the other towns we had been staying at recently only had a few hundred people. Hokitika is known for it’s Jade and glasswork factories as well as a gorge just outside of the town. We planned to check out the gorge and Jade factories tomorrow and maybe buy something if it’s not too expensive. At the Holiday Park I told the lady we wanted to camp in a tent. She seemed to think we were crazy, but said we could camp in the grassy area, but to not park in the grass because the car may sink. I guess it had been raining recently. It was only $15 a person to camp there. I paid the money and she said “Good as Gold.” Best saying ever. I will start using it more often. We found the area she was talking about and decided to put our tent in the road since the grass was soaking wet. It wasn’t as cold as it had been in other places, but it was still a little chilly. We put our tent up right in front of the car so that if someone else were to come by they couldn’t run us over in the night. We went to the kitchen area to make dinner after we were done with our tent. We had Chow Mein Ramen Noodles and a salad. It’s the easiest meal to make and it tastes pretty good. It’s not very filling though. For dessert we had cookies and chocolate. We had the last of our hot chocolate as well. We watched Spiderman 3 while making dinner, eating, and writing in my journal. Probably one of the dumbest movies I have ever seen. Around 9 PM a guy opened the door to the kitchen and asked if we had the heater on. I said we did and he said “good one.” I thought he was going to say we shouldn’t turn it on or something. The people in New Zealand have funny sayings that make no sense. It’s like they have these corny sayings, but to them they are real things to say. The stupid heater didn’t even seem to work. I was pretty freezing in the room. At one point it started blowing out cold air. I finished writing for the night because I was too cold and couldn’t remember some of the things we had done. We went back to the tent around midnight. Our tent was covered in frost. I had my warm water bottle so I was hoping to stay somewhat warm for the night.