The Chance of a Lifetime...

S. Island- beginning part

Ok so its about time I posted about our trip on the south island...
I already said that we spent the night at Lynny's (my aunt)in Christchurch, then hopped on the bus to Kaikora. From Kaikora we headed to Picton- which is the port where you get the ferry to/from the north island. On the way there we stopped at a little Crayfish hut thing and Dirk (a German guy on our bus) bought a crayfish to try later. We saw tons of seals, and stopped to see if there would be any pups at a waterfall where Spanky had seen them before. There weren't any pups but it was still pretty cool. Back on the road we saw the solar salt works- which is the only 1 in NZ. We saw tons of Vineyards too, but no wine tasting. We arrived in Picton, dropped some people off (to go to the north island) and picked up some very obnoxious English people to go south with us. We got on the road with another driver- Nads, super crazy, tons of fun! Drove through Havelock which is world famous for green-lipped mussels haha. We arrived in Abel Tasman National Park early evening, it was absolutley beautiful!! After we checked in to Old MacDonalds Farm, Dave, Dirk and I went for a walk on beach, the tide was out and we could walk out really far, but it soon turned and came in surprisingly fast! The farm we were staying on had sheep, and shamels haha Sheep-Camels aka Lamaa's, they were pretty amusing. Dirk decided to eat his crayfish for dinner, and I tried some but it was disgusting!! Soo gross! Dirk didn't enjoy it either and ended up feeding it to the ducks haha they liked it, as did the peacocks and the Dicken (duck/chicken haha). I also fed them some pasta, and then a spider crawled accross my table, I flicked it on the floor and the duck ate it!!! Hhaha too funny. Dirk called me a spider killer!! But I argued that its just nature ha. Oh and then I tried to rescue a crab from a bucket of some kind of shell-fish but it fell down the drain, so then I was a crab killer according to Dirk, butttttt I said that all drains lead to the ocean (finding nemo of course) and that the crab would for sure survive!! A friend from our north island bus was there- Neif, a Welsh guy, so that evening, Dave, Dirk, Neif and I went to the local bar/cafe and had a couple of beers...pretty much got kicked out at 11 even though it said "open til ....late" soo we went back in the dark and found some beers on the "free food" shelves in the fridges!! I dunno who would leave beer when they're just getting on a bus! But anyways we weren't complaining!! Neif and Dave called it a night around 1 but Dirk and I stayed up talking for a while and then decided that it was close enough to sunrise and we should just stay up! Haha, so we did. And the sunrise was crappy!! It was soo cloudy we couldn't even tell the sun was up!! Haha, so I went to bed for about 2 hours and slept perfectl)! Dirk and I made up a story about how great the sunrise was and that there were dolphins and penguins and we swam with the whales etc. We told Neif and Dave the next morning but were laughing and they didn't believe us....oh well. Neif and Dirk hopped on the bus and went on to the next stop and Dave and I stayed. We went sailing on a sweet catamaran! They took us to Split Apple Rock to take pics but Dave and I dove in and climbed into it and had others take pics of us! The water was absolutely freezing!! I cut my arm climbing into this thing, battle wound! Ha it was funny, I'll post pics soon so you can see what this rock is- or look it up online! We sailed some more, saw blue penguins, a seal colony and stopped for lunch on a beach (still in the national park), we explored some caves w/ Kerri (the sailing dude) who told us about flying spiders that lived in the caves!! We got out ASAP!! We set off from there and started to sail back when they heard on the radio that someone had spotted a pod of orcas/ killer whales!! So we went looking for them and found them! It was amazing!! They're massively huge but soo graceful!! And we didn't even pay for a whale-watching trip haha. When we got back to the farm Dave and I went horse riding on the beach...my horse was called Mac and was pretty hyper- we had some fun galloping along the beach, and walking through the water- we even saw sting rays, it was super cool! We helped the dude turn the horses out, then went back and showered and ate dinner. Then we went up the road to meet the sailing guys, and Nads. We had a few beers with them, I went to bed around 11, exhausted from the "amazing" sunrise! Haha.
The next day we hopped on the bus with Nads and headed to Barrytown...we drove through/past the Bulla River and gorge which goes from east coast to west. We stopped at Taurunga Bay to see some seals. And then Punakaiki to see the pancake rocks and blow holes. Eventually we arrived in "don't blink or you'll miss it": Barrytown. The 1 pub, and a few houses town. Sweet. We checked in to our rooms at the pub, ate dinner and started drinking- it was 1 of the girls b'day and leaving party- 80's themed. There was a massive table full of fancy dress clothes so everyone took part. It was fun but pretty small-town local type thing. I went to bed around midnight. Oh, haha earlier in the week Spanky had told us that the pub in Barrytown were hiring, I considered it and decided I'd see what it was like when we got there... NO CHANCE. Ha.
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posted by Kirby @ 4:11 PM