"Um, Dustin, Where's Laura?"

Our last big adventure in New Zealand was a really fun day of rafting the Rangitata river gorge deep in the Canterbury plain of the south island. The section of river we paddled included two sets of “class 5” rapids (which in laymen’s terms translates as “you’ll probably wet yourself when you paddle this rapid but technically it’s still safe.”) The only rapid more dangerous than class 5 is (you guessed it!) class 6, which you paddle only when you have a death wish and/or gills.

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Love in the Time of a Head Cold, the Frayzhe Edition

We’re wrapping up our month-plus in New Zealand by spending our last full day here online (two computers at once!) at a computer lab in Christchurch. This is all well and good, except for the fact that outside these dreary lab walls, Christchurch is experiencing its sunniest, warmest day of the summer. If we weren’t subject to the NO COMPLAINING EVER rule, I might whine a little about this, but instead I will go about blogging and emailing with a smile on my face. :) (—-> See, that’s me smiling!)

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By George, It's a Glass-y-er!

As if New Zealand didn’t already have enough going for it — incredible jagged mountains, crystal blue seas surrounded by lush green islands, steaming volcanic rivers from the center of the earth, giant fern forests, deep caverns lined with glowing worms, Flight of the Conchords — it has to go ahead and throw a glacier surrounded by a temperate rain forest into the mix. We spent a full day climbing up the Franz Josef glacier, and though both of us had seen it before, there was something about being on the ice for a full 6 hours surrounded by blue ice lit up by the miraculous appearance of the sun (they don’t call it a rain forest for nothin’!) that made this a pretty special day.

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Queen Charlotte & Lady Noeline

Our three days walking the Queen Charlotte Track were both a wonderful gift and an exercise in masochism. As far as the latter goes, I don’t think we really considered the distances we’d be walking each day or how our legs would respond to those distances after two months of virtually no exercise. (The shocking answer? Not well!)

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A Quick Thank You...

… to everyone who has commented on our blog posts and pictures. We haven’t been able to respond to every comment due to really limited (and ridiculously expensive) internet time, but we absolutely love hearing from friends and family — it makes home feel a little less far away. Keep the emails and comments coming our way!

Love, Lustin

Hippies & Hahei & Hot Water, Oh My!

Well, we said farewell to gumboots and free wi-fi a few hours after our last post – Mr. Scoobs made a miraculous recovery thanks to some good luck and a very talented local mechanic, and we made it to Wellington only four hours later than expected. We’re in a lovely idyllic hostel in Picton now, waiting to catch a boat up to the northern end of the Queen Charlotte Track. We’ll spend the next two and a half days hiking back down the track along the Marlborough Sound, and then we’ll reconnect with the Stray bus on Sunday. Especially after not being able to do the Tongariro Crossing earlier this week, we’re both really looking forward to getting out on a trail for a few days (assuming Dusty’s ankle holds up!).

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Mr. Scoobs on Life Support!

Lustin is currently stranded in a town called Taihape thanks to an ailing Mr. Scoobs. You may recognize Taihape as the home of Gumboot Day, which includes the world’s largest Gumboot (i.e Wellingtons) Throwing Competition. (Be sure to ask Dustin how he did today when he tried to throw a gumboot. Let’s just say that he would probably qualify for the Gumboot Special Olympics if there were one…)

Today was scheduled to be our last day with Mr. Scoobs, and we thought we were in the clear — but the old bastard had one last trick up his sleeve. The starter engine won’t start or something like that, and we’ve currently got a local mechanic working on it. Not sure when we’ll get to Wellington tonight — it’s still 3 hours away.

We’re currently using the first free WiFi we’ve found in this country (in the local library — imagine that!)… we’re so happy about it that we may just abandon the rest of the trip and move here.

Coromandel Pics

Finally getting some more pictures up. These were taken up on the lovely Coromandel Peninsula last week, where we spent one night in a little beach town called Hahei with a new group from Stray. We had a blast up there and will write more about it soon. :)

They Call Me Mr. Scoobs!

We woke up Thursday morning to a sunny day in Auckland and got ready to begin the next leg of our trip. I was already feeling much better (thank you, Zicam!), and Dustin was miraculously still healthy despite wading through piles of my used Kleenex over the previous 72 hours. Unlike our short trip to the Bay of Islands, we knew that the bus driver and majority of backpackers we started with on this leg of the journey with Stray would probably be with us for a while, so we hoped for the best.

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Backpack, Come Back!

Our return trip to Auckland (or “Dorkland” as the Kiwis refer to it) from the Bay of Islands was mostly uneventful except for one minor adventure. We’d been driving along in our 24-seater bus for about 15 minutes when I heard a car horn blowing somewhere behind us. Dustin also noticed, and he wisely decided to look behind us to see what was up.

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