11/29

We flew to New Zealand and made our way to Christchurch.  We walked around a bit before heading back to our room and getting some much-needed rest.

The following day we discovered meat pies at the Copenhagen bakery.  Over the next several days I tried to get pies at least twice a day.  After breakfast we visited the Antarctic Center.  They had blue fairy penguins in an enclosure and we watched them swim around for a while.  Then we rode in a Hagglund around a course they built to show off the tank’s capabilities.  After the Antarctic Center we walked around Christchurch some more taking in sights, such as the dandelion fountain by the river.

The next day we took the TranzAlpine railroad across the continent to Greymouth where we rented a car.  This is when the real NZ adventure began.  I was pretty anxious about driving on the left side of the road, and over the course of our trip there was a time or two where I pulled into the wrong side of the road by habit.  Thankfully, there was VERY little traffic on the road and both times I made that error there was no one around to witness it.  Except Jenn, of course.  After we got the car, we drove to Punakaiki to see the pancake rocks, then on to Hokitika for sunset and our hostel.

We did some shopping in Hokitika and bought some jade.  We had quite a time trying to buy a Styrofoam cooler to store our groceries in the car.  In Australia, the major cooler manufacturer was eskimo, and they called their coolers ‘eskies’.  On our tour of the red center we used them a lot so we picked up their terminology.  They did not call them eskies in NZ, and it took a while to explain just what it was we were looking for.  We asked at the grocery store, the gas station, even at a jewelry store.  Eventually the ladies at the jewelry shop told us we were trying to buy a ‘chilly-bin’ and sent us back to the grocery store to buy one.  As we were in line to check out, we asked for some ice.  They didn’t understand what we wanted.  Frozen water, I say.  ‘Ohhhhh, OICE!’ the checker says.  ‘Like Oice Oice baby!’, he says.  ‘Say Oice again!’ he requests.  It was pretty funny.  We got our groceries in our chilly bin with our oice and we were on our way.  From Hokitika, we went to Fox Glacier where we did the terminal face walk at the glacier.

We signed up for the heli-hike atop Fox Glacier but it took a few days for the weather to clear so we kinda just hung out at Lake Matheson playing cards.  NZ had very interesting birds.  The black one is a Pukeko and the green one is an alpine parrot or Kea.  When we visited Gillespie beach we met our first of many sheep.

The next day was clear enough for our helicopter to land on the glacier for our hike.  It was awesome!  Our guide was long-legged so Jenn had trouble trying to cross the chasms he could casually step across.  The air was crisp, the ice was blue, and they told us the dirt was from Australia- carried over by clouds.

We loaded up the car and headed out for Wanaka.  Unfortunately, we discovered a little too late that NZ isn’t like the states in regard to gas stations.  They are few and far between and we ran out of gas near Haast and decided to try to sleep on the beach.  We stepped put of the car and were swarmed by mosquitoes.  We lept back in the car and killed the blood suckers for an hour.  It also turns out that the beach in Haast was crazy cold.  We put on ALL of our clothes and tried to sleep in the car.  It didn’t work out so well.  Morning arrived very slowly.  We got some gas and continued on to Wanaka.  After arriving at the Purple Cow, we slept a bit before getting sunburned on a jet boat and visiting puzzling world.

Then we drove to Milford Sound.