Sweet As

Greetings from a freakishly soggy Alice Springs! We arrived to gray skies this morning and learned that it’s been pouring here for the last 5 days. Everything is flooded and the normally 100+ degree temps have been in the 60’s. We’re about to head off on a 5-day 4WD tour of the “Red Center,” but before we go totally offline we wanted to close out with a few final thoughts on our month in New Zealand.

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"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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New Zealand's Down Under

The deep south tour took us from Queenstown to Milford Sound (and Gunn’s Camp, a lovely little spot which you’ve no doubt already read about), down to Invercargill and on a ferry for an overnight on Stewart Island, then back up the Catlins Coast to Dunedin, finally looping back into Queenstown. It was a bit of a whirlwind tour, but one that we’re glad we took!

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Milf(j)ord Sound

For a portion of our New Zealand tour that we almost skipped (the “deep south”), the southern loop turned out to be one of our favorite parts of the trip! There weren’t a heck of a lot of funny backpacker stories to share, just some incredible scenery, a few more million sandflies, and some looooong days of riding on the Stray bus.

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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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Chaos With Curry

We woke up on Sunday morning in Picton after three tough days on the Queen Charlotte Track, and we were glad to know we didn’t have to rush for an early Stray bus pickup (the new bunch we were joining up with had taken the 8AM ferry from Wellington, so they wouldn’t be coming through Picton until close to noon). We enjoyed a really great breakfast at a place called Gusto – it was maybe the best breakfast we’ve had so far on the trip. It also arrived at our table in less than 45 minutes, which is more than we can say for the dinner we had at the place down the street the night before. After a bit of email and blogging back at our hostel, it was time to meet the new crew.

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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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Gumboots Special Olympics

Our final three days traveling with Mr. Scoobs and Mambo were pretty unexciting, unless you count getting rained out of doing the Tongariro Crossing, a minor gumboot mishap, a semi-major medical emergency (not one of us, don’t worry Moms), and a full-on breakdown of Mr. Scoobs on our way to Wellington.

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Hail to the Chief

Laura and I are taking a “down” day in cloudy Abel Tasman today to catch up on email, photos, blog, and the random bits of real life (mostly bills and the like) that still have to be dealt with while we’re traveling. We’re also taking this opportunity to exercise the “off” option of the hop-on/hop-off Stray bus tour… having spent a really fun week or so on Mr. Scoobs with Mambo as our driver, we’re already missing his laid back style and wickedly dry sense of humor (though not the mechanical unreliability of Mr. Scoobs, may he RIP), so we’re hoping the next bus and driver will suit us a little better than the one we joined yesterday in Picton for our south island loop.

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