Fox Glacier

So as you can imagine, we all felt like walking piles of shit after getting up so early then being told we didn't really have anything to do, then being rained on, then sitting on a long busride, then told we were going on a hike, in the rain.

So pretty much if the glaciers hadn't been awesome, there probably would have been some homicide.

Luckily for Aiden and the rest of the tour leaders, when we got to the glaciers, it was just amazing. I remember taking the pictures and thinking, this isn't going to cut it. Photo's are really a sorry excuse, there's something about just being there that makes those ridiculously monstrous, slow moving bulldozers of rock and striking blue ice seem so much more impressive. It was really a shame they had just had a mudslide so we couldn't walk right up to the glaciers, but even from the distance that we were at, they were a sight to behold.

We continued the long busride feeling a little better about ourselves (especially since, just as we were leaving another group got there, and at the same time the rain started coming down with a vengence)

After a while the rain seemed to forget about us again, so we stopped to take some extreemly windblown pictures on an overlook.

The unnecessarily tall Finnish boy on the left is named Sakari, the girl on the right is Samia. If you can't tell, that's me in the middle, getting devoured by my own hair.

Our last stop that day before arriving at our next accomidation was the nepherite jade, or greenstone factory, where they showed us how the ever popular newzealand greenstone necklaces are made, which, given the hardness of jade, was actually a suprisingly interesting tour. Of course we were given the opprotunity to spend exhuberant amounts of money in their attatched jewlry store before we were allowed to leave.









PS. I'm going to bed now, these posts are taking longer than I expected (copy and pasting from microsoft word somehow brings over a shit ton of HTML code that needs to be manually edited out, plus the pictures don't exactly upload fast. On top of that the next day is milford sound, for which there are more pictures than you can shake a stick at, so yeah, I'm not staying up for that mess. You'll have to content yourself with half the story for now, you'll get the rest tommorrow.

PSS. I can't fix these layout issues. I know it looks like shit, but I really can't do anything about it, the preview in the posting window is nothing like how it actually turns out. Sorry if it gives you a headache, but I'm sure you'll manage.
Ta.

Franz Joseph

So this particular day consisted almost entirely of a very, very long bus ride. Not the longest we had on that trip, but dammit it was up there.
Not that I really took any pictures of the scenery either, it was raining.
They do have deer farms down there though, kind of weird, but okay... I'm not one to judge.

So you're left with these few pictures of a small selection of the menagerie of words, wise and otherwise, gratified on the underside of my bunk at our accommodation, what seemed to have become some sort of backpacker tradition.

The first says "It's not the years in your life that matter, it's the life in your years."
The second one says "Long live goats, trumpets, free meals, trees, feet, boots, ducks, and teapots."
To the mix I added "If at first you do not succeed, skydiving is probably not your thing"

This was also the first day that any of our accommodations had a piano. A very old, very, very out of tune piano, but a piano nonetheless. So, as I am clearly always prepared, I whipped out my stack of piano music and started playing, and remained a good source of entertainment throughout our dinner of spaghetti (of which they made too much, so we all ended up stuffed).
Of course people asked for requests, but lets get this straight right now alright. I'm good at piano, but I don't do it for a living. If you see someone using sheet music to play, chances are they don't know all your favorite songs by heart, so keep your trap shut.

Following dinner we went down to some hot pools, apparently fed by glacier water, which is good for you I guess. The hot pools were relaxing and nice, but the barefooted walk down the road wasn't, and since I am clearly never prepared I completely forgot to pack a towel on this trip, and had to make do with a dish cloth.
I bought a towel the next day... fat lot of good that was.

For the record, jeans actually absorb quite a bit of water before they can be considered "wet", useful stuff.

We were warned of a very early morning (especially for the people doing the glacier helicopter rides), and sent to bed. Only after they were woken up at an ungodly hour did they find out that the helicopter rides got canceled due to weather. I'd feel bad for them, but half of them were in my room, so I ended up waking up at the same time they did.

Motueka

After a delightfully late rise and a relaxing breakfast with those unfortunate boys who had not yet been able to remove the last of their makeup, our group loaded onto the bus right on time, to head to our destination.
Of course half way out the exit one room of girls realized they had left their room door wide open, so the bus had to back up, and they had to run off to the door, then realize they forgot the key, then run back, then lock it, then get back on the bus, making us due to be late for our activity and causing them to be the subject of our morning ridicule.
Not like I hold a grudge for the fashion show or anything, but....
Karma's a bitch... bitch.

Moving on.

We arrived at the kayaking place a little later than we should have, so there was sort of a rush to get everyone off the bus, taken a photo of (this was arbitrarily the point where we had our group photo that I posted originally), instructed on kayak use, split into two groups, since they only had enough kayaks for half of us, and send us on our way.
The first group was to hike to a beach a ways up the coast, eat lunch, and meet up with the kayakers, who were being driven to a different starting point and paddling up to the same aforementioned beach, where the two groups would switch off.
It was a random selection, but I was glad I got put in the hiking crew, because I would not like to do that trail with wet, sandy socks.
Probably a little bit of a problem for my group though. My legs are still set to hyperspeed from Philmont (a ten day, 50 mile hike I went on last summer) so the majority of the group ended up about a kilometer behind.
Samia and Hiedi managed to keep up though, so at least I had someone to talk to. It was also nice to enjoy a silence away from the group (it became increasingly apparent that silence was not something everyone else was enjoying whenever the main body came within a hundred meters of us).
Anyway, the hike started off straight from the Kayaking place, and we first walked to a sort of backyard art exhibit that was just down the road. Filled with lots of really cool pieces of woodwork and large muddy puddles to fall into.
Afterwards we headed off to our main destination "apple tree beach" or something to that effect. There were no apple tree's, although the lunch that we brought along did contain these little green apples without cores (they had seeds, just the middle wasn't really that tough like it normally is)
Well the kayakers were taking forever to get there, so we contented ourselves by sitting on the beach, and occasionally gathering a horde of people together to drag one unsuspecting victim into the water.
Eventually they did arrive, and they split us up by "strong kayakers" and "weak kayakers", so that each kayak had one of each to even it out.
You damn well know mine was the fastest kayak, we left everyone in our wake, and my partner made sure everyone knew it. Yelling and hollering and splashing and not doing an ounce of work. Just added to the challenge I guess.
At one point they had us put all our kayaks together, hold onto eachothers shoulders and stand up. So that was fun.

We returned and had the pleasure of helping to carry the kayaks back to the shed, over a yard of gravel. Seriously, you're a kayak compony, people are going to be walking around in bare feet regularly, at least have the common decency to lay down some damn pavement!
Following that we got a lunch of mini sausage rolls, grape juice (which I have not had in forever. When was the last time you had grape juice? That's what I thought, now go out and get some.), and candy. That was nice and enjoyable until the most ominous rainclouds ever to exist decided to roll in and start glaring at us.
Oh no, they didn't actually rain that much, but you knew they had you tagged.
That was our cue to get up and leave, so as soon as we got on the bus it started to pelt down with rain, like they were saying "Yeah, you know what, we could have smoked your ass. You better be gratefull you didn't get rained on you snivelling wimp, now go run home to mommy."

"At home with mommy", or more accurately the holiday park that we had been staying, we were greeted by yet another NZET tour group, this time a day behind us, and I was greeted by Al, the (I can only assume) semi autistic, overly excitable, loud, obnoxious, tai kid who I have met at past AFS camps. He however was my line of introduction to the four American kids on that tour. Get that, four whole Americans! I haven’t been face to face with someone from my home country since Kaitlen (who I could have sworn I've written about before, but upon further inspection discovered I haven't), an loud stereotypically blonde exchange student from California, left.
We stood around talking about the various peculiarities and absurdities of kiwi life until dinner, after which we were promised another activity. The boys from our group were visibly terrified at this prospect to the puzzlement of our alternate-tour counterparts. Luckily this time we just got to learn the Kapa Haka, so we could at least retire to bed with some degree of dignity.