New Zealand

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To the center of New Zealand

Well the weather was sunnier today but it was cool again with a high in the 60's so we decided to skip the beach. Instead, we drove back to Nelson and hung out in town all day. Before we left, we got one last view of the crazy tides in New Zealand. Check out the pictures before.

 

This is low tide which occurs in the evening this time of year. If you look closely you can see the little orange buoy in the middle-right.

This is the same area that was all sand in the previous picture.That little thing floating in the water was the same buoy in the other picture. And it wasn't that shallow, it was a few feet deep right up to the rocks.

After snapping the picture of the tide, we headed out of town and back to Nelson. We got lucky and checked into the hostel at 11 am. Since nothing else was going on, we headed next door to a fish and chips place for lunch. They let us pick out the type of fish to use for the meal. It was conveniently next to a store that sold fresh fish so you know it had to be fresh. Oh, and it was right on the water.

That's the place. Pretty non-descript.

This was right behind the fish and chips place. It's pretty safe to say that the fish was fresh. 

At this point it was noon and we had absolutely nothing to do for the rest of the day. We'd heard from a couple different people that the center of New Zealand was located somewhere in the city. We had no idea that it was at the top of a mountain that we had to climb. We didn't come prepared. We tried it in just our normal clothes but we got some good pictures.

Erin was putting in some good effort, even in those stylish glasses.

Kristin was dressed a little more appropriately but her face looks like she's in labor. It was a boy.

Cindy's arms were a little too short to reach the next area so Chase had to push her up. Turns out he really is a scholar and a gentleman.

And then Chase was watching out for everyone else. 

I wasn't very happy to have my picture being taken so I had to make a weird face.

Ok, all of that was a lie. We really just walked up the path to get to the top but we thought it'd make a better story if we climbed some huge mountain. And we got some good fake climbing pictures.

When we really did reach the top there was a plaque that marked the exact middle of New Zealand

This is the view from the center

I stood directly on the center

Then the girls stood in the center

A good view of the town and ocean from up here.

This is a picture they had at the top so that we could tell what we were looking at. You can see the part labeled "Marahau"-- that's where we were yesterday. I had no idea we could see that far across but it's pretty cool.

Then we walked around downtown Nelson some more. This is a cool area with some outdoor cafes.

This is the Christ Church Cathedral in the center of town with some nice flowers surrounding it.

Some more flowers outside of the church.

The inside looked like a typical church. I got in trouble for keeping my KU cap on. Oops.

They advertise with Uncle Sam here too!

The girls made dinner and Cindy made a great cake. 

So that was the big day. Tomorrow we fly to Auckland at 8 am and then meet with the rest of the group. We only have 2 days left here so we'll have to make the most out of them.

I'm on a boat! (again)

Yesterday involved a long hike, a cold catamaran ride and a grease fire. It was tiring to say the least. We'll start out our arrival to Marahau. It's a little town that consists of a couple of beach camps on the outskirts of Abel Tasman National Park. We're staying at the Abel Tasman Centre which is one of the beach camps. Our place is a little cabin which sleeps 5 and has a little kitchenette. It's really not too bad and is all we need.

This is our little cabin and home for 2 days. It's not exciting but it gets the job done. And it's cheap.

This is the inside, complete with a table, chairs, 3 twin beds, a double bed, and a kitchenette

You could see our kitchen but Erin is blocking my view

This is the "beach" in front of our place. The tides in New Zealand are insane. At high tide this entire sand area is covered with a couple feet of water and it comes up halfway those rocks.

This is the start of the hike. We were going to Anchorage which is 11.8 km which is a little over 7 miles. It's along ways.

Here's a map of some of the trails. We ended at the Anchorage

So here's how the trail started, walking through a nice flat area just off the ocean. Chase is also taking some pictures there.

After a short climb on the first part of the trail, we saw this view of the beach. This was the first of many good views

Chase just trying to annoy Erin with the peace sign. It works everytime.

Getting a little higher up, we found another good view so I figured this would be my token proof that I was here.

This was a cool little waterfall.

This was another little waterfall. I liked all of the moss covering the rocks.

And those are some of the cool palm tree-like things they have all over New Zealand.

Higher up, we found this tree that had been knocked over and was blocking the path. Cindy used her midget strength to throw each of us over the tree, one by one. At least that was the plan. It changed at the last minute and we had to just climb over.

Another good view. I liked how the jungle butted right up against the beach, which you can see at the bottom.

I couldn't get this to come out the way I wanted but I was trying to show the river/waterfall to the left and beach/ocean to the right.

Getting higher and looking back toward the beach that we saw before.

Once we reached what was basically the top of the mountain, we turned a corner to go to the other side of the mountain and the terrain immediately changed from dense jungle to almost desert.

More of the really dry area

Even though it was dry way up here, we could still see the area we'd end up in. Ignore the ugly glasses, they only cost $20.

Pretty flowers right? Well these were down by the beach and we quickly learned that where there are flowers there are bees. There were big bees, medium bees, small bees, mama bees, daddy bees, and baby bees. None of them would leave us alone on the beach. We'd try to sit down and within a few minutes we'd have a bee bothering us. Annoying.

This is the Anchorage beach. It had some beautiful water. This is where we would hang out for an hour before getting on a catamaran.

Our catamaran took us up close to this rocky island to look at seals. You can't see much there.

My camera didn't get a great picture, but if you look closely at the rocks you can see some little seals.

Someone somehow had a small piece of private land in the national park for their house. Sounds sketchy but it was a nice little piece of land.

This was about the time the guy put up the sail for the catamaran. These people were just trying to not get hit by the big pole. It was pretty funny.

Oh, did I mention that the ride was FREEZING? It got cloudy on us which dropped the temp and then the wind didn't help anything. It still didn't stop Chase's peace sign.

We stopped by this, which is called Split Apple Rock. I don't know anything about it but it looks like a split apple and people swim around it.

And then, just as our trip was about to end look who showed up...

Our old friend Beyonce! But where was Jay-Z you ask?

Oh he was keeping a lookout from his own boat. No big deal.
Now back to reality. We finished up our boat ride and came back to grill some steaks and chicken. Since we're the official grillers around here, Chase and I decided to fire up the grill. It was a little gas-powered grill that seemed simple enough. At least we thought so. After it started to heat up, we noticed flames shooting out the back and up the side of the building it was next to. This was before we could even put meat on it. We pulled it away and turned off the gas but the fire kept going. The entire grease catching area was on fire because nobody had bothered to clean it for who knows how long. As Chase and I tried to figure out what we should do about it, and the people downwind started getting out of their tents and campers because they were being smoked out, we started to hear plastic popping. At that point we decided a fire extinguisher might be the best option before we destroyed their grill. With a few puffs of powder, Chase put the fire out. Needless to say, we didn't use the grill for our grilling. We used a griddle and it was just fine.

The last excitement of the day came when Erin trapped a bee with a bottle cap against the window but then didn't know what to do with it. This is her freaking out. After terrorizing her for a few minutes, Chase came to the rescue and killed it.

It's now Monday morning here and we're deciding whether or not it's warm enough to go to the beach today. If not, we can always go back to Nelson since we're staying there tonight anyways. We fly back to Auckland tomorrow morning and meet up with Seth, Cori, and the girls. Then back home Thursday morning!