New Zealand - Days 7-11

Road trip baby! As of Dec. 26 (NZ time), we had driven 2,455 km (that's ~ 1,500 miles) around the south island. Its been quite amazing to see a bunch of different sights, but I think the last day or so, we were on tourist overload. We weren't too motivated to get out and do any longer hikes, so we stuck to the 30 minute snap the photo and move on type walks. Before heading to the west coast, we stopped in Wanaka (pronounced like Hanukkah). Wanaka is a smaller, more laid back version of Queenstown and Garrett and I enjoyed our couple days there. Like just about every other town here in NZ, Wanaka has a big beautiful blue lake. It also is the gateway to Mount Aspiring, and the road up to the national park offered our first experience of rock climbing in the country. We also lucked out with the weather - no rain! The type of rock there was schist and very interesting. Different than anything I've ever climbed on before. We did one climb called "Aretenaphobia" which I thought was a great name, as I do have some sort of fear every time I get on an arete since they seem to feel exposed no matter what! In Thailand, we were climbing along side a couple of Austrians and overheard them saying "expose yourself" (obviously in an austrian accent) and just thought it was hilarious and didn't sound quite right, so now, we always have to repeat it whenever a climb feels the slightest bit exposed...anyway, I digress...Overall, Wanaka was very enjoyable and we had a fabulous time there :) Our road trip continued from Wanaka over Haast Pass, stopping a couple times to see some roadside waterfalls. Pretty, but not comparable to the ones alongside of Milford Road. With the name of "west coast" you would think it would be a coastal highway, but its very misleading, as we only saw the ocean about 3-4 times during the drive. At about our itinerary's halfway point, we stopped to camp at Lake Paringa. It so happened that it was the worst campsite we have experienced on the entire trip. The sandflies were unruly and led us to make comparisons to the flies in Australia. We actually made a list the next morning, which I'll have to share with you another time in another post. Anyway, we ended up doing practically everything in our car, including swatting every sandfly that made it in there, eating dinner, drinking our morning coffee, eating breakfast. There were so many flies that when we got in our tent, it sounded like it was raining with all of them stuck between the rainfly and the actual tent. Ahhhh!! We were both over the camping...sooooo, we continued our drive on NZ's Christmas Day. We visited the Fox Glacier and the Franz Joseph Glacier in not so much depth and also did a walk around a lame lake that was supposed to reflect the cool peaks around it, but it was very overcast, so there was no reflections and we couldn't see the peaks. After our walk around the lake, we peeked into the closed gift shop and saw the post card of the lake with the reflection and then really wished we could've seen it. Oh well! We cruised on in our 1998 Mazda Familia station wagon north to Hokitika, where we saw the ocean for the fourth time! We tried to get a room with a bed in the Holiday Park, but they all smelled of mold, so we decided to camp for our 41st night in our tent. We did get nice hot showers and a communal kitchen to cook our Christmas dinner in. Garrett did a great job on the ribeyes - yum! The next day, we kept movin north, with what better soundtrack than the Led Zepplin 4-disc box set - through Greymouth and Reefton, listing our top 3 everything (meals, desserts, drinks, etc). We both had juicy hamburger with fries and a milkshake in our top 3 meals, as well as a brownie fudge sundae (like from Ghiridelli in SF) in the dessert category and coffee in common for the drinks list. All the food talk made us hungry, so we stopped in Murchison for burgers and 'chips' (fries). We asked the lady in the cafe what Boxing Day was since Dec. 26 is Boxing Day and she responded "well, that's today." Yeah, we already knew that lady - but what is it? The second response "its the day after Christmas." Ughh - whatever. From Murchison, we drove to Motueka via the Motueka Valley Hwy. My favorite sign was the "don't count sheep" sign with the cute cartoon sheep. Well, I don't think Garrett and I would be able to keep up with the sheep counting if we tried, but we also knew it was for people to pull over if they were tired sign :) We also saw a bunch of vineyards and lots of orchards, including kiwi trees! For some reason, I was really happy to see them, don't know why, but I was. And have you ever tried eating a kiwi with the skin still on it? We saw someone doing it in Australia when we first got there, so we tried it and its good - except Garrett made a comment about furiness being like hairy balls, so now its a little hard to eat them with the skin on now without thinking of that - thanks Garrett! So, we arrived at Takaka last night on the curviest road we've ever been on. The town is pretty small, but this is where the climbing is, so we're settling here for at least a few days. We'll let you know how it goes!