no more sand flies!!!

1-27-10

We woke up the next morning to the same clear sky and beautiful views that we saw the night before. The weather has really been on our side this trip and we have really only had one rainy day, and even then it was just a small shower. We slept later than we planned, and drug our feet as we packed up and filled up with water. We knew the hike back was going to be a tough one. On one side, the hike was all down hill, which is good with how exhausted we were. On the other side, the steep downhill combined with our heavy packs and tiring joints made our knees and ankles scream out in pain. The hike was beautiful though, and we saw many views that we hadn't seen the day before when we had our heads down and were pushing for the end. We got back to the car in a little over 5 and a half hours, almost an hour and a half shorter than our ascent. We have never been more pleased to see Sunny!!

Since I had packed light on food, we were starving on the way back and kept talking about the great cheeseburger that would be waiting for us at the bottom. That burger came to us by way of the Fox Glacier Inn, and was a great moral booster after what we had just put our bodies through. After devouring our dinner we headed south along the coast looking for a place to camp. We pulled off the road just south of Haast in a small beach town called Haast beach. We picked a nice pull off and set the tent up on the beach, just in time to see a pretty spectacular sunset. We were both so exhausted that we fell asleep rather quickly, despite the few nagging sand flies.

1-28-10

We woke up the next morning to a thick blanket of sand flies covering the tent. Our hatred for these little pests has grown steadily over the trip...with this being the breaking point. These bugs draw blood and leave an itchy bump, just like mosquitos, but swarm like gnats. It really is unbelievable how quickly they can make you miserable. We have gotten into a pretty good routine when it comes to setting up and taking down camp, but seeing sand flies in the morning just makes things really frustrating. We both put on as much clothes as we could bear, and jumped out of the tent to take everything down as quickly as possible. In our misery we decided that no matter what we would get a hostel that night, since we would probably be in queenstown.

We packed up and hit the road...next stop queenstown. The drive was fairly boring compared to the curvy, coastal roads we had been on the past few days, but it was nice to make progress a little more quickly. We pulled into Queenstown early in the afternoon and found a nice backpackers hostel named "The Flaming Kiwi". I know what you all are thinking, but despite it's colorfol name we happened upon a nice place to relax and stay the night. The owner, Kent, informed us of places to see and things to do in Queenstown, which is known as the adventure capital of the world. In exchange, he asked us all sorts of random American questions, ranging from Miley Cyrus lyric meanings to football rules.

We were both so excited to have beds with clean sheets and hot showers. We spent a lazy afternoon napping, getting laundry done, reconnecting with people on the internet, and finding things to do for the next couple of days. We took a walk downtown that evening and got ice cream at a little coffee shop which had free internet. This coffee shop, along with a few bars and cafes, was right along the lake in town and was a center for nightlife in the area. I found Queenstown to be almost identical to Whistler. During the winter it is one of the larger ski towns in the area, while in the summer it is home to mt bike, bungee jumping, skydiving, and numerous other adrenaline seeking tours. Also, compared to most of the places we have been so far it's rather trendy.

We headed back to the hostel to get some sleep, but were met with the realization that with 8 people sleeping in one room, you are bound to get a few snorers. I went down to the common area to read, while Nicole stuck it out with her ipod and got some rest. I headed up around 2:30am to go to sleep, and accidentally almost nailed my bunkmate in the head with a nalgene bottle as I stumbled my way to the top bunk. Hello Kitty was not pleased.

1-29-10

Thankfully the snoring stopped during the night, and we were able to get some good rest. We lounged around the hostel until our 10am checkout time (TOOOOO EARLY!) and then headed back to our favorite new coffee shop with free wifi. After looking through the brochures and seeing various commercials fromt the company, I decided on doing an excurision with Mad Dog River Boarding. This was my favorite part of the trip so far.

After we ate take-away lunch while listening to a band playing a concert in the park for funding for Haiti, I left Nicole in town to shop and continue to catch up on the internet for a few hours, while I headed out towards the river on a shuttle with 5 other adrenaline seeking tourists, and our crazy tour guides Arnold and Dave. River boarding is basically white water rafting but instead of using a raft to navigate the rapids, you have a bodyboard, thick wetsuit, lifejacket, helmet, and fins. We suited up and were dropped in a calm area of the river to get training and make sure we were adaquate swimmers. We then reached our next stop where we scrambled down the river bank, finished gearing up, and jumped straight into some pretty heavy whitewater. I was thinking all of the waivers, warnings, and questioning of the staff was all a bunch of legal shenanigans, but when we hit the first rapids I could completely understand why they wanted to make sure we were prepared. We spent 40 mins or so going from rapids to rapids, with most of them class III's. The following guide was pretty cool with me, and showed me several places where currents met together forming a vaccuum and you could duckdive underwater, returning to the surface fairly far from where you started.

Once the rapids were over, a guy met us on a jetski where he towed us in pairs riding on a sled which was drug right behind the ski. We were completely at his mercy, and pretty much at will he could send us skipping across the water and off of the sled. Once we all arrived at the end of the fun section of river, they had a slide, rope swing, and various levels of cliffs for us to play on. I was stoked to get to jump off of a 60ish foot cliff and the guides taught us how to do backflips on the rope swing....what a fun day!

I met up with Nicole back at the hostel where we had kept the car for the day. She had a nice relaxing day and spent some time on the lakefront beach as well. We got the rest of our clothes off of the clothesline, checked internet for the last time for who knows how long, and hit the road. Right outside of Queenstown we found a nice little campsite along the lake. This was one of the best places so far, with a great sunset and best of all...no sandflies!

1-30-10

So after a night in the noisy hostel (men snoring, people coming in and out, toilet tank running...) we went back to the good ole tent! We found this little spot right on a beautiful lake, surrounded by mountains. It was a clear night so Brian chose not to put on the rainfly...well come 800am we woke up to rain drops on our heads...I think to myself, "ugh, well guess it's time to get up". Nope, Brian was not going to have any of that 800am crap...he sprung out of his sleeping bag, put the rainfly on and went back to bed...we both slept till 1230pm!!! Who does that? Especially in a darn tent! We laughed about that for a while. It really was a good sleep. Well, off to enjoy the remaining hours of the day--we were off to Milford Sound.

We were driving down the road eatting out Recees Peanut Butter sandwiches (Nutella and crunchy peanut butter...you should try it...devine!) and then we had an apple after that...we finished our lunch about the same time and then simultaneously, we both burped the most epic burp ever!!! WE DIED LAUGHING! It's the small things that keep us laughing out here.

Milford Sound was by far one of the most beautiful places I had ever been. There were blue skys (thanks Lord). One thing Milford Sound is known for is it's beauty and RAIN! lots of rain. We, however, got to experience it with beautiful blue skys! It is said that Milford makes poets run out of words and photographers run out of film! Pretty good way of putting it. We saw snow covered mountains, rainforest, and ice-clifs.

While we were there, there was a film crew set up just outside of a tunnel that runs under this mountain. We found out that it was a Kia commercial. The funny thing was there were no Kias in sight. Little strange.

After exploring Milford, we found Gemstone Beach. Such a great beach! The whole beach was little pebbles pieces and then very cool stones on top of the "sand". And BOOM! Everyone has a souvenir! haha :) We strolled the beach collecting stones and then set up camp. For dinner we chose to just pop a can of New Zealand "Spaghetti Oh's"...they can't be THAT different can they? HOLY COW! Never take Spaghetti Oh's for granted! They are so amazing in the States. The NZ canned spaghetti was so nasty. So we then popped a can of frank and beans to wash down the crappy noodles. UGH! They were even worse. The beans were ok but the frank...good grief! I ended up seeing how far I could flick my franks from my fork! They were far better to launch!

OFF TO BED!