Our trip down to the South Island was an eventful one as we tried to squeeze in every last bit of North Island sightseeing into our travels before we left the island for good (or at least for now?)
We made a quick stop in the Napier/Haistings area for some delicious vino and sunshine (and later, thunder). And then headed back inland with the ultimate goal of completing the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, claimed to be the best day hike in New Zealand.
Before we go on with the adventure telling however, I feel it is necessary to take a moment here to once again interject a little information about our Couch Surfing experiences, which we try to do as often as possible given the free-ninety-free cost of staying in these places for a night, and of course the colorful people we encounter. Which leads me to my next point. We always end up staying with the WEIRDEST but the nicest (in the weirdest way) people. We will just leave it at that for now to keep from putting too much bad karma out in the world (Lord knows we need all the good stuff coming our way - and bad karma seems to come in the form of car troubles these days, troubles we could definitely do without). But if they are "colorful" and fantastic, yet strange, perhaps fantastically strange and are a part of the Couch Surfing network in New Zealand, then we have probably stayed with them. That being said, beggars can't be choosers, Couch Surfing is still an amazing idea, and we would be lost (and sleeping a lot more in Stewie) were it not for our fantastically strange hosts.
The Tongariro Crossing was....cloudy and misty. Not quite the clear day we were hoping for, but we still managed to enjoy ourselves quite a bit. We managed to take a kilometer picture, for all 19.4 of them, made quite a few Lord of the Rings jokes with Gnarls making special guest appearances (one of the volcanoes of the crossing was the inspiration for Mt. Doom), and saw some amazing volcanic/alpine terrain (as promised by all the tourist info duh). It was a very iconic New Zealand experience and one we greatly enjoyed crossing off our list.
We spent a couple days in Wellington before crossing over (staying with fantastic friends of the Clements who inspired us with their travel photos and stories), sightseeing, watching the Olympics Opening Ceremonies (surprisingly hard to find), taking in Kiwi culture and history (and the world's biggest Colossal Squid ever found!) at Te Papa, and enjoying Windy Wellington.
We finally arrived to the South Island, and the sunny Nelson/Tasman region and settled in with our gracious hosts, the Francis family. After about a day of worry that we weren't going to find any jobs (and about 10x a much worry about Stewie never running again), we landed a job picking Kiwi-Berries (not Kiwi Fruit) and Pears. Fruit picking is not easy. Don't let anyone fool you. It is surprisingly exhausting to more or less slowly walk down an aisle of kiwi-berries with your arms above your head plucking berries from the vine. But its pretty amazing money so again, beggers can't be choosers and the people we work with are all nice, although some a bit over the top when it comes to kiwi-berry picking competition.
The South Island is an amazing place. Right as we pulled our trusty old Stewie off of the ferry and on to the mountain and sheep lined highways, we got the feeling that things are just a but grander here. So needless to say the prospect of exploring is very exciting. So far we have done a two day hike to Mt. Arthur in the nearby mountain range, sleeping under a rock overhang out under the stars and getting amazing view of the Tasman Bay, exploring the most northwest point of the South Island, Farewell Spit, enjoying the local farmers markets, hiking and swimming in the Abel Tasman National Park, picking up some very interesting (and very hippy) hitch hikers, nursing our blistered fingers, and spending some quality time with the Francis family.
The next two weeks has a lot of fruit picking in store for us. But hopefully also some fun here and there. Once our jobs here wrap up the plan is to do last bits of exploring around the north of the South Island and then begin the great journey farther south! In the meantime, wish us luck (and our fingers, and Stewie - we're going to limp him through the rest of New Zealand).
Sending you all lots of Kiwi sunshine
Sending you all lots of Kiwi sunshine
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