So it just seems to be the way things go that none of the girls here ever know when they'll be
leaving until at least three weeks before hand. I may have set the record with 6 days. After an amazing trip hitchhiking around the South Island, Justin and I returned to Mel and Connie in Blenheim. To be able to put our backpacks in a car and then drive wherever we wanted was great fun after the past two and a half weeks.

I am so happy that Justin and I got a chance to hitch around the island. Hitchhiking is really common here so there isn't really the same stigma as at home. We never had too much trouble getting picked up- our record was when the person two cars behind the one that dropped us off picked us up. On a few occasions we had to wait an hour and a half maybe, but never more than that. I enjoyed the experience of talking with all the different drivers. There definitely isn't a specific type of person who usually picked us up. A few times we even had drivers who swore they never usually stopped for hitchhikers. It must be our roadside charm. Or the juggling.

After a short trip to Stewart Island and a wonderful reunion for me with Dunedin, (I love that city) Justin and I headed out to Purakanui for one last day of climbing. We were picked up by a lovely woman, Justine, and her daughter, Izzy. I sat in the back and talked with Iz, who has bright red ringlets and a maturity far beyond her 6 years, while Justin and Justine talked in the front seats. I'm not sure what the two of them discussed because I was absorbed in a serious story, complete with hand diagrams, about the neighborhood Izzy lived in. Justin managed to catch my attention and asked if we wanted to accept the offer to stay with Justine and Izzy in their spare bedroom. Hmmm... sleep in a bed in a warm house with amazing people, or haphazardly find a place to put up our tent... I'm in. The house was wonderful and we had a great time cooking dinner, playing on the trampoline with Izzy, meeting Blondie the pig, and talking with Justine after dinner. In fact, we loved it so much that we readily accepted the offer to stay another night.

In the middle of all this I was exchanging emails with potential employers for possible job offers for leading work crews in the backcountry. One starts in early April and the other in mid May. I decided that if I were going to come home then start a job where I would be even more isolated from contact with people than I am right now (and all of you thought I was hard enough to get ahold of already), I would want to spend some time at home first.

Our last day of hitchiking was a great accomplishment: Dunedin through Christchurch all the way to Blenheim. We even were picked up by a truck driver, something I thought was never going to happen. We then met up with Mel and caught the ferry to the North Island. We stayed with Danielle for a night (which was every bit as wonderful as she said. It was great to see where she's been living this whole time. We all really liked the family and are so happy for her) then drove off in the wee hours of the morning to pick up Mel's dad and brother from the Auckland airport.

So here I am. Justin flew to Australia this morning after a great month here. I now have a day and a half to enjoy myself in Auckland before I hop on a plane tomorrow night to fly home. TOMORROW NIGHT. What? Am I leaving this wonderful country tomorrow???

I guess that it feels right, though. I'm excited to be (hopefully) getting a job that I'm really passionate about. I could happily continue traveling for a lot longer... living out of a backpack, sleeping on my trusty Thermarest, brushing my teeth in public bathrooms every night- in fact I'm basically signing up for another 5-9 months of it if I get this job that I'm applying for. The main thing that I think I'm ready for is to have a purpose again. I think that I'm ready for some serious work after living such a carefree lifestyle. This trip has had a lot of different sections- traveling around with different combinations of the five original girls and all of our different visitors (Mt. Cook with the Egges, Hokitika to West Coast to Wanaka with my sister and the Martins, climbing tour with Justin), staying with all the WONDERFUL families who invited us into their homes, meeting up with other travelers from all over, and meeting Kiwis who showed us around.

It seems fitting to me that if I can't spend my last two days driving around with Lauren, Danielle, Megan, and Mel, then there's no way to do it other than by soaking up that last part of New Zealand by myself.

Yesterday, as i was dutifully folding sweatshirts at Rip Curl (I go corporate a couple times a week) I got fully attacked. Mel had run screaming through the store, throwing me into an incredible hug and spinning me around only to face the dear Christy Dunbar, followed closely by good ol Justin. Hug after hug ensued, all while i was trying to not cry.. ha.. And although Mel pulled back to do her usual check over... "I think your hair may be blonder... it does look like you've seen sun... are your knees more scraped than usual? what's these bruises?".. within five minutes i've forgotten that i've been separated from them for so long.

it really was pretty exciting. i got to see connie, which is like seeing home. she looks great. the girls have done well. and you know the feeling when you are just so happy that standing still is really NOT an option, but you must kind of keep fidgeting like you have this HUGE secret that you can't tell anyone... but really it's just that you're so freakin STOKED that even your heart is beating kind of funny? yeah. that's about how i felt. to have these three kids come into my world... my Mount Maunganui world, where i've spent the past three months working and surfing and kind of alone... was pretty epic.

christy and mel are both beautiful and doing wonderfully... Christy heads home tomorrow (she may post about that later... say her good byes...) and Mel is now about to go on an adventure with her dad and brother, after which she will return to me.

they dropped off a lil vintage blue road bike for me. i found a couple bright plastic flowers and they are now hangin out on the handle bars. i took the ocean road to the surf shop today, which means that almost my entire bike ride to work i can watch the waves. it's a hard life these kiwis live.. :)

Oh no.

Looks like we're a little behind on blogging. I guess there's probably a lot to catch up on. Because I'm working on a time and money budget from one of the expensive internet cafes that can't be avoided in New Zealand, I'll just give a short update on my most recent events:

After a VERY sad goodbye to Megan at the Sydney airport, Mel and I returned Steve, the slightly beloved rental car and hopped on a plane to return to NZ. It's funny how I view flying after this type of traveling. Plane flights are always exciting, but usually a little bit of a pain. You're kinda cramped and would rather be cooking your own food than eating the stuff they serve. Not anymore. The idea of sitting on a plane and watching free movies and getting (what seem like) free meals is luxury to us. Mel and I were pretty excited.

I'm not sure what we did for the frist three days we were in Christchurch... I think it involved a lot of internet time searching for jobs and other chores like that. Either way, before we knew it, the morning of the 18th came and it was time to go pick Justin up from the airport. Justin did a pretty good job of immediately fitting into our lifestyles here. I think he genuinely considered Mel's offer to let him drive away from the airport on our way to Takaka.

We arrived in Takaka, home of one of our favorite climbing spots on the South Island, Paynes Ford, and one of our favorite camping spots, Hang Dog. Hang Dog is an amazing place, all the climbing you could ever want to do is a short walk from the campsite, there are two AMAZING swimming holes on the way back to camp from the climbing. The first swimming spot has multiple rope swings, rocks to jump from, and a couple of climbing routes that you can do over the water without a rope. Heaven. The second has more jumping spots, wonderful rocks to lounge out on, and a slackline set up over the water. Heaven, once again. The campsite has loads of friendly people, more slacklines, a bonfire at night, and a few potlucks thrown in here and there. From camp you can borrow one of the bikes and ride into town. Bike riding is one of the main things all of us miss from home, it feels really good to get on a bike and cruise into town with the paddocks behind you and the gorgeous mountains in the distance. In town there are GREAT cafes and restaurants to visit. Pastries to eat, coffee to drink. We were at Paynes for six days, I think. We managed to climb ourselves silly while still making time for all of the other goodies the place has to offer. Being there feels similar to being on a cruise ship or a Club Med vacation. You wake up in the morning with no responsibilities or obligations but somehow feel like you have a lot of things to do. It's hard to fit in all the climbing, biking, swimming, eating, and laughing in just six days.

So the wonder team (Mel, Justin, and myself) left Hang Dog and headed to Nelson, our point of separation. When we reached the highway, Mel and Connie headed east to go find a job working at a winery. Justin and I found ourselves on the side of the road hitching rides west to Greymouth for the night. Hitchhiking in New Zealand is wonderful. The people who pick us up have been, without exception, great. We've had some great conversations with Kiwis, travelers, and quite a few people who have moved here from other countries. We usually don't have to wait very long for a ride, although there have been a few times that have taken close to an hour. Justin and I manage to entertain ourselves fairly well, we do a lot of laughing, singing, dancing, and recently we've been working on our juggling skills. We try to keep all of that to a minimum when there are cars in sight, somehow I feel like people will be less inclined to pick us up if we look like we're trying out for the circus. Maybe I'm wrong though.

From Greymouth we headed out to Castle Hill, a famous bouldering spot in the mountains between Christchurch and the west coast. It was beautiful, absolutely magnificent. Bouldering (climbing shorter distances without ropes) isn't really my thing so I mainly spent my time there walking around or reading. You could probably lose yourself in the scenery for weeks on end if given the chance.

Camping near Castle Hill is pretty similar to Hang Dog. I think the same people visit the two, it's just a matter of who you catch in which spot. There is a slackline set up, communal areas to cook in, and a great community of people who gather around in communal areas after the long hard day of climbing is over. Instead of swimming holes there is the famous cave stream, a quarter mile or so of cave that's been dug out by a stream (go figure). We went through there with a group of 10 or so people from the Craigieburn campground. Our group looked like you would probably imagine a bunch of climbers to, barefeet, Chacos, old running shoes, old shorts, and a few shirtless guys. There were other groups there who came with guiding companies outfitted to the max: gaiters, waterproof clothing, hiking boots, helmets. Definitely a funny comparison.

Ok it's my turn to shower, so I'll let Justin finish the rest of this description:

Now that I've completely wrecked this poor hostel's bathroom shaving, cleaning underwear and washing grass from our toiletries, I hear it's my turn to guest post on the blog.

Let's see. Craigieburn was phenomenal, but completely in the boonies. About 50km from the nearest town in either direction, Christy and I had to be smart about the groceries and fuel we brought there. We weren't. By day two we were downing handfuls of dry muesli and currents, making lentils with carrots (very orange) for dinner and when we ran out of fuel, cheese sandwiches.

The climbing at Castle Hill is bizarre. Famous for mantels, stems and the other bodily contortions its boulder problems require, I came to question - as I gruntingly shimmied my way on top a rock I might have jumped onto with a running start - whether what I was doing could really be called a sport. How could I justify this ridiculous stone lovemaking to an outsider? With me existentially troubled and scraped all over my torso, Christy out of the action because she prefers sport climbing to bouldering and both of us tired of eating like livestock, we decided to hit the road.

Retracing our steps through Arthur's pass out to (oh my god I'm horrible with indiginous names) Hokitika we continued to enjoy the wonderful weather. A cream cheese and apricot sauce pizza at Hokitika's Fat Pipi's had us both acting like we'd just returned from a desert island. It was, by any standard, a delicious pizza and the place has received a ton of rave reviews. Christy and I recommended it for days, "Oh your headed to Christchurch? Well let me tell you about this little pizza place just 350km out of your way."

After a great night camping with a British couple who fed us ginger beer and spoke of their travels as scuba dive guides, currently married and with two cute girls, we made our way along the sand-fly infested west coast inchingly. Stuck in Franz Joseph for maybe the longest time yet Christy caught up on the cell phone and I juggled roadside rocks for potential rides finally charming a couple of German girls into picking us up and driving all the way to Wanaka.

Our first night in Wanaka we were luckily directed to a "free" campsite by a local (if Christy has told you it was free she has since eaten her words - more on this in a bit) where we left our tent and packs the next day a trip out the hospital flats crag. Alas, here our weather luck runs out. The first Wanaka rain in nearly two months sent Christy back into town and me on a suicidal hike up Mount Roy. Christy had warned me that the hike was miserable, but with cold almost sleeting rain, Chacos on my feet, no rain jacket and nothing to eat, I've since had to make room for Mount Roy in my top ten most miserable outdoor experiences - congratulations Mount Roy. After spending too much time sandaled and among the sandflies and completing this hike we thought my feet picture worthy:

I was reminded of my father's medical magazines which always saved the juiciest skin disease for the cover and found their way to the kitchen counter where they could be conveniently contemplated before a meal.

The next day and every day since we have made it to the hospital flats area and done some fantastic climbing each of us notching some personal records (Christy's first 20, holla! almost my first 26). The weather has been great and we've had time to enjoy the town - a movie at Cinema Paradiso, burger at Red Star, food and coffee at the cafes. Two angry visits from the park ranger later we're on the lam and continuing south.

Alright, back to Christy now. So it appears we've been surviving the sand flies, park rangers, various weather patterns, and, maybe most impressively, each other. Justin has had to dodge more than one fireball from me trying to light his temperamental stove, we're all hoping he survives the rest of the trip. We've been having a great time traveling though. Nightly dancing while brushing our teeth, taking turns using the broken spoon, attempting to fend off the crazy possums that eat all of our food, and the hilarious trips we take around the grocery store with a shopping cart filled with our backpacks (climbing gear, sleeping bags and pads, cooking stuff, tent, hiking shoes, running shoes, and climbing shoes, etc. take up A LOT of room) and other stuff have all become habit. I'll try to get in another update soon.