Easter vacation, the real story

Edit: This post is finally done and pictured up. Glee.

Alrighty then, I'm back in Palmy with the necessary internet acess (and time) to actually give you guys details and stories about Ben and my little jaunt to the South Island.

April 7th:
I woke up about 40 minutes before Rodrigo was set to help us actually start our journey. I finished my last minute packing, threw my crap inside of the trunk of our BAV, (Bad-Ass-Van, but how we got the name is a different story, and will be told at another time.) joined Ben, and we set off for Wellington, and the first leg our our trip. The ride went by quickly, and in two hours we were in Wellington. And here began a series of events that we were to experience in nearly every town we stayed at: We wandered around city center, found some quick food, kebabs, and went to the isite in Wellington. For those of you who don't know what an isite is, allow me to explain: An isite generally consists of a counter nestled in one corner, one that looks very much like a McDonalds counter, a lot of open walking space, and a literal mountain of brochures. Honestly, we collected so many leaflets and brochures in these isites that I think I heard the forest shriek in fear when I entered. Anyways, carrying on. Behind the aforementioned counters, and in front of the assembled tree-corpses, there are people waiting to answer any questions that you may have: What should I do in this city? Is there a free hostel anywhere in this town? Will you bear my children? The best part though, is that they'll call around the town to see if there's any accomodation actually free in the city, something that saved us a lot of trouble that night, because for some reason the city was booked up. She eventually found us a spot at the Webb Street Backpackers Hostel on, you guessed it, Webb Street. So we carried our luggage through the city center, deposited it in the hostel, and realized that we had no idea what to do with the rest of the day. Oh, and when I say carried, that really only goes for Ben. He decided that he would bring a nice hiking backpack that can actually be carried from place to place comfortably. I decided that I would bring a suitcase. So, naturally, I rolled around town, ignoring weird looks, and eventually left it in the hostel. This was when Ben remembered that we had something to do.

He had to ride a whale.

Actually, in Te Papa, the city's main museum, there's a little kid's spot, with little rides scattered here and there for the amusement of children, and the irritation of parents. Well, one of those rides was called "Whale Rider," (yes, like the movie) and Ben had to ride it. So we walked to Te Papa for the express purpose of watching Ben ride a whale:

Now that Ben was happy, we realized that we really didn't see the entire museum during our last visit to Wellington, so we explored the upper floors of the museum. Oh, and by the way, I hate modern art. I'm going to go off on it about 3 posts from now, but for future reference, I'm really not a fan.

Without a doubt, the single most frightening thing that it has ever been my displeasure to view:We even missed Te Papa's gorgeus Marae:

So, after visiting the museum, I had an epiphany. I realized that we hadn't booked any hostels for our trip, and we thus likely to not actually be able to find accomodation for a night, and I didn't bring a sleeping bag. This had to be remedied. So we took a quick jaunt to a Warehouse (think WalMart, but Kiwi) and bought me a New Zealand All Blacks King Size Sleeping Bag. About that time it was nearing up to late, so we went to a grocery store, bought chicken, bread, and hummus, and returned to our hostel. We consumed our gourmet dinner in the common room of the hostel to the melodious music of Jet Li's Fearless. We planned out our next day and went to sleep early, so as to be rested and lucid when we got up at 6:30 in preperation for our ferry.

April 8:
So, I've discovered that I'm too nice to sleep in a room with 7 other people. Every time I would move or breathe, I made a noise. And every noise that I would make my mind amplified so that it seemed that the rustly my blankets made was like playing the 1812 overture at full volume. Luckily, when I fall asleep, I'm a corpse for 10+ hours. At about 1:00 I realized that I had to pee. But, if the rustling of a sheet is the 1812 overture, then what would me jumping out of the top bunk feel like? I ended up having the two sides of my brain fight this out for about 30 minutes before I realized that I wasn't sleeping either, so it was pee time. I did a ninja jump out of the bed, thumped to the ground, and snuck my way into the contiguous restroom.
In other words, I really didn't sleep all that well.

Luckily that really didn't matter because we were waking up early. So I got up at 6:30, took a shower, made sure that everybody else was awake, and with my travelling companion, left the hostel in search of the railway station. Luck was with us, and we made it to the railway station just in time to catch the shuttle bus to the ferry terminal. At the ferry terminal we saw one of our fellow Americans from Massey, Meg, so we talked for a bit until it was time to take the ferry. This ferry, the "Interislander" was huge. It was quite possibly the largest ferry that it has yet been my pleasure to ride. The ride was beautiful. In case you don't believe me, here's some pictures:

There, now do you believe me?

But, unfortunately, throughout the ferry ride there was always a little nagging fear in the back of our heads: I booked the car online, did it actually go through? Would we really be able to drive out of Picton in our own little vehicle? Ben told me he wouldn't be excited until we were actually in our own vehicle. So we finally landed at Picton, and it was time to answer those questions. I found the guy from our rental car company, and he took us to their office. And, to my utter surprise, they actually knew who I was. They gave us a car and some directions, and set us off on our merry way. Naturally, this was quite a shock. I'd been fully expecting a series of confused arguments, at least a hissy fit, but a pat on the back and a "good luck?" No, that was the last thing I expected.

Thus Ben and I finally got inside of our car, and you know what? I realized just how much I like driving. Back in the US I'll do anything short of sexual favors to avoid being the driver, but I still got to drive whenever and wherever I pleased. This had been denied me since I got to NZ, and I didn't even know how much I love the freedom that a car brings. I had this crazy grin on my face for so long that I even missed the first turn for the highway that was going to take us where we wanted to go. Not that this really mattered, we were both so happy to be on our own in a foreign land, that the pleasure of exploration far outwieghed the pain of a missed turn. Plus, while my missed turn may have taken us away from Nelson, our target, it did take us through Haveford, a small town in the northeast that is the Green Muscle Home of the world. We stopped at a nice little restaurant in Haveford, and partook in the town's namesake. I ate a mussel chowder that was truly awesome. Oh, and just before we reached Haveford, we figured out what one of the warning lights in our car meant. It was this little red exclamation point just to the left of the odometer. I asked Ben, "hey, what's this mean?" Hesitantly Ben replied, "the high beams?" "No," I said, "that lights usually blue or green or something. Oh, hey, is it me, or does the car ahead of us smell like brakes? Weird. I love this car, but I wish it had a little more get up and go." About 20 k's after having said that, Ben asked me, "Hey, is the parking break on?" And, to my utter astonishment, it was. So now I know what a parking break warning light looks like. Lesson learned.

We drove up along the North coast, through Nelson, looking for an open supermarket. Because, and apparently it's a real law over here in New Zealand, everything in the country pertaining to the service industry has to be shut down. So we stopped by a Countdown. Closed. The Warehouse. Closed. Every damn place that sold food was closed. So we decided that we'd go hungry, and we pushed on to Abel Tasmin. Ben decided to take a random turn that wasn't really on our map, lucked out due to his inherent Bentuition, and we ended up at Marahau. While there we again defied the odds, and ran into four more americans from Massey Univeristy: Rhett, Janet, Niel, and Phil. Honestly, I began to wonder if there were Kiwis in the counrty, or if they were fables, tales told before firelight. Ben had an awesome idea, so we booked a campground spot in the National Park, bought some really, really expensive food in the camp store, packed our bags (for Me, a school backpack, for ben, a tramping backpack. God I'm dumb.) and hiked to our camp ground with only one other tent extant. It was owned by a guy from Kentucky. Remember what I said about no Kiwis? We ate our expensice PB&J's, watched the sun set over a hill, and went to be in our tent.

April 9th:
Luckily for us, I'd decided to bring along a 1.5 liter drinking bottle that I brought from my room in Massey, because none of the available water was potable, and we didn't have anthing to boil it in. I say luckily, because we ate these for breakfast:

It's like eating cork flakes, but without milk or sugar, and they're compressed into bar form. Honestly, without my 1.5 liters of water, the WeetBix would have done for us. You know how they used bamboo as torture in VietNam, well, the bamboo was fine as long as there was water too. . . It was something like that.

After our life-endangering breakfast, Ben and I did the first leg of the great "Abel-Tasmin Coastal Trek," it took about 4 hours and was breathtakingly gorgeus. Again, here's some pictures for the skeptics among you. Since we still had things to see and people to do, wait, strike that, reverse it, we took a water taxi back from Torrent's Bay.

Ben put on the daddy pants here.

Does this scenery look familiar or what?

After a big day like that, anybody would want to just find a close hotel and crash, wouldn't they? Of course, Ben and I aren't like anybody, we're too smart for that. We'd rather drive for hours, through Buller's Gorge, along the western coase of New Zealand to Greymouth. Yeah, that's way better than resting or anything. We found an open hostel called "Noah's Ark," and we crashed. I ended up talking with a German girl for about an hour about movies and which hikes to do in NZ. After that, it was lights out.

April 10:
We got up early again (8:00, who get's up that early. Eyuck.), ate some toastella (toast and nutella) and some Peanut Butter toast, and I made Ben drive the first lap. And by made, I mean, "hey, Ben, wanna drive?" "Sure." I can't help it, I'm just a demanding bastard. So Ben drove through Arthur's Pass, which was bloody amazing, through a rainstorm. I turned on the Return of the King soundtrack, giggled at the awesome irony, and sat in the navigator's seat for a whiles. The weather cleared up by the time we reached the town labeled Arthur's Pass, so we stopped for a restroom and afterwards, a bit of a tramp. We decided to go up the Devil's Punchbowl trail because at the end of it, there was a waterfall. Hmmm, perhaps the word "trail" is too nondescriptive. I think I'll use the word "stairway." So, we decided to go up the Devil's Punchbowl stairway. It was a pretty little hike, and the top afforded an amazing view of the tree-filled mountainous region that is Arthur's Pass, so it was totally worth the climb up and down the stairs. Hmmm, the word "Stairs" makes one think of cement or metal, does it not? These weren't stairs so much as earthworks, a little box filled with dirt, piled on top of one another. Really though, the view was again amazing. Pictures:

After we got out of Arthur's Pass, we ended up in the area that was used for Rohan in Lord Of The Rings, or LOTR. They looked a lot like Reno initially, only not quite as mountainous. It was only when we got to Twizel, (or, if you prefer, Pellenor Fields from LOTR) that it looked Exactly like Reno. Honestly, one of the mountains looked like Peavine. I kid thee not. It may change in about a month when the snow hits, but then, I was back home.

ROHAN!!!

PELLENOR!!!

On the was to Twizel, we stopped by at lake buk-ahem-pukaki, which was a glacial fed lake. You remeber back when I tried to describe the color of the water in Huka falls? I've finally found the right descriptive word: glacial. The waters that comes off from a glacier picks up this really unique blue tinge, and I found it rather beautiful. With any luck, one of these pictures will give you an idea of the color:

At Twizel, we met a girl from Colorado who helped us with medical gauze when my engineering traveling partner cut himself on a mexican bean can while using a Kiwi can opener. In his defense, it was a weird can opener, kinda like stabbing a knife into the can repeatedly until it opens. In my defense, it was hilarious. The inquisitive engineer, cut down in the prime of his life by a can of beans. After that, we made mexican food for dinner, I hassled him repeatedly about his injury, we watched Mean Creek and the new Bad News Bears, and went to bed.