Well, here's another big blog but it has to cover a whole country-and an extreme one at that. Our last day in Sydney we finally met up with the son and daughter of the Nepali family we lived with in Pokara. They are studying there and the family really wanted us to see them. Our flight left late in the evening and without a hitch, and like most things we have done we took the cheapest flight and we didn't get into Christchurch, on the South Island of New Zealand until after midnight. In the States the customs officials look for dangerous goods, in Australia they frisk you for fruit, and now we know in New Zealand they check you for dirt. They washed both of our shoes and went in a back room and washed down our tent...What service! It was almost one a.m. and we contemplated getting a taxi to the city and a hostel but we ended up taking the cheap route and sleeping on the hard floor of the terminal until 8:30 when we could get a free shuttle to the van we rented. The day before heading to NZ we did some extreme searching for camper van deals and found a bare bones deal 
for a 1993 Toyota bubble van. When we got there they had some better vans available and we got a free upgrade to the Toyota Hiace, with fridge, table, sink and
burners all for the same price. The guy even through in a GPS. Free upgrade! We were off to a good start and after the first few days we decided that we wouldn't have time to see everything we wanted so we extended the rental to 11 days. We were tired from our airport sleep but made it almost to Queenstown on our first day. After being in one of the driest countries in the world for three months it was great to see the green rolling hills. As you would expect, we also started seeing heaps of sheeps (the aussies and kiwis use heaps...heaps). There are around 4 million New Zealanders and over 43 million sheep...I started checking their numbers by counting the south island sheep but soon became very sleepy.
Q-town is the adventure capital of NZ and probably the world. If you can think of it they probably have it. They have jet boating, extreme swings, skydiving, hang-gliding, paragliding, canyoning, sledging(like kick boarding down rapids), and this is the home of the first commercial bungy jump site. The weather was pretty crummy for the first few days of our trip, raining and blowing. We passed on most of the activities, but I ended up doing the Kawarau Bridge Bungy 43meters. I asked to get my head dunked and they said they would try, "it's not an exact science" he said, "I may of over shot it...". It all happened pretty fast but before I knew it I was standing with my toes hanging over the edge of the platform and listening for the countdown. I hesitated for a second then swan dove off. I screamed like I was scared ---just for effect or something like that. My thoughts were somewhere between "Did I empty 
my pockets?"
and "Maybe I should get a puppy?" Then my head dunked under the water and up to my waist. Icy cold, blue water...I bobbed around for a bit and then was lowered into a raft. I was the only one that made it in the water for the day, so I gave the spectators a good show. So glad I did it.
We spent 3 or 4 days around the south part of the south island, dodging rain showers we hiked around the Glenorchy area, Te Anau area, played disc golf, and camped and swam in some pretty cool settings. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy was filmed all over New Zealand and some scenes in the area we were in. We didn't take any of the guided tours of the areas but took in some of the sites during our hikes. Pretty amazing, the kindof places where you would almost expect some elves jumping out of the ferns or a battle troll stumbling down the hill. We mostly
camped at Department of Conservation sites or national park sites or free on the side of the road, only staying in caravan parks for 3 of the days. It was pretty great sliding opening the van door to some sweet mountain lake or river and stepping out on to the set of The Lord of The Rings every morning. (No hobbit jokes please). We drove the scenic road to Milford sound, full of oneway bridges and a oneway tunnel, nice forests, swaying motorhomes, and loaded buses. We finally made it down to the Fiordlands National park and were really lucky that it stopped raining. The 
place gets 21 feet of rain a year! We took an early morning cruise and the girl on the cruise said that it was the first time they had seen the sun in 3 days. It also worked out well because with the heavy rain from the night before kept the water falls running and the first snow of the season dusted the tops of the mountains making it very picturesque. The cruise was good and informative, we saw some New Zealand fur seals, got sprayed by waterfalls, and just took in the scenery...after about an hour and a half the cruise was over and a good thing because my photo finger was getting a little tired. In the afternoon we did a nice day hike for a panorama of the peaks. The weather got worse as we
headed back through Queenstown and Wanaka and we decided to pass on anymore adventure activities for now. The next day we got pumped up by hiking to the (Hans &)Franz and Fox glaciers. We couldn't get too close to either because of recent rains and unstable ice faces but they were pretty impressive. On the news on our last day in NZ we heard that two Australian tourists died after crossing the boundary...Note to self, don't cross the line. We were working our way up the windy, windy and rough seas of the west coast. We caught the sunset at the pancake rocks, which are limestone rocks that have been layered and look like you guessed it...pancakes. After a bit of driving and some more nice scenery 
we made it to the northwest coast and the Abel Tasman National Park. We finally got 
some good weather and rented sea kayaks. After some colorful instruction by a cool kiwi guy we were off and cruising the clear blue waters and coastline. We paddled out to an island and just floated and watched the fur seals for about a half and hour and one even jumped a few feet from our boat. We had lunch on a nice beach, took a swim, and paddled through some caves in the afternoon. For our paddle back the wind had picked up and we fought some huge waves and even rode some...we made it back, sore but without incident. We kept moving back towards Christchurch. We relaxed 
and relieved our sore muscles at the hot springs in the nice little town of Hanmer Springs. We returned our temporary home and stayed at a nice hostel in downtown Christchurch. We met up with one of Melica's sister's friends who lives in Christchurch and who recently did an exchange to the U of I. We got a quick tour of the downtown and had some coffees. ChCh is a nice town and we really enjoyed the south island and definitely could have spent more time at many of the places. We first planned to split the time pretty evenly on both islands but we were having a good time and only left ourselves 4 days for whole north island. The next day we started our epic journey north and took the old adage "relocation, relocation, relocation" to a new level, tagging together a campervan and car rental to get us to Auckland. Our first mission was to take a super long backpacker campervan from ChCh across the ferry to Wellington. We headed up the pretty east coast of the south island. We saw some more seals and stopped for some fish and chips at Kaikora. Melica was attacked by a brave seagull who attacked her for a chip en route to her mouth.
The evening ferry crossing was nice and calm and we were lucky because we heard some horror stories from about a week ago where the seas were rough, people were getting tossed everywhere and throwing up...Calm seas, good views and a clear sky as we wove through islands and across the Cook Straight. We turned the van in the next morning and explored Wellington. Wellington is a really cool city with a good vibe, probably our favorite big NZ city. We walked around the streets and the waterfront ending up at the Te Papa museum. It too was a pleasant surprise, with heaps of NZ information, a preserved giant squid, and lots of great displays. The best part was that it was free-99. We could have spent all day there, but we had our next mission...to relocate a Kia Picanto 
(I think picanto means small and spicy-it was)to the Auckland Airport.(and only 50 cents per day!) We headed north and after about an hour we got out to stretch our legs at the little town of Levin. We realized that even the community parks are extreme in NZ. This one was fit with some extreme teeter-totters, large hampster wheels, and a crazy flying fox zipline thing-all unsupervised and open to the public. After some near misses with injuries and our abs hurting from laughing at each other we hit the road. About a half an hour later we came upon some hitch-hikers...I was like... "I"m going to go with my gut on this one- let's pick 'em up". We all crammed in the little car and kept moving. They were a kiwi couple heading home from Wellington for the weekend. The girl was part Mauri (indigenous NZ) and the guy was swiss but a resident for 7 years. After having a good chat, we decided to change our route and take them all the way to their house and
crash on their floor. It was a bit out the way but worked well for both of us. We drove for about 3 hours, stopped for Kebabs, and arrived well after dark. They lived on a Mauri settlement (similar to a reservation) and worked there. The next morning we woke up to the great view of the Mt. Taranaki-an extinct volcano a few Kms from the village. It was also the 18th of the month, and every 18th and 19th of the month the village has a meeting and festival to remember their past. This group was supposedly the first indigenous group to practice passive resistance to the colonization and have been holding these meetings for over 150 years. We were invited to breakfast with them (they had to ask permission). We were greeted with a hongi or traditional forehead/nose to forehead/nose 
greeting- we joined them for a breakfast of porridge, mashed potatoes and meat. We chatted with the different people and learned a bit about them. In the afternoon they have storytelling and a big dinner but we had to hit the road- we fed some river eel, said goodbyes and hit the road. And that is what I love about traveling...you can be driving down the road and just by chance happen into some great cultural experience and meet some great people on the way.
Our last stop before Auckland was Te Kuiti-"The Shearing Capital of the World" all set with a 21 foot statue of a dude shearing a sheep. Melica's Dad is a shearer so it made it all that more interesting. They had the world records posted and most of the world record holders come from this area...the record for lambs was 831 sheep in a 9 hour work day! It said that attempting a world record was comparable to running back to back marathons. We took some snaps, had some lunch, and sent home some shearing pants for Martin and were off again.
We timed it just right and spent our first hour in Auckland not getting out of first gear on the
freeway. It was rush hour and there were two accidents. We finally made it to our friend Clayton's house. He is a guy we met while hiking in Nepal and he said if we ever made it through-to give him a call. He is a great guy and gave us an intense 3 hour tiki tour of Auckland, accompanied by a mixed CD of classic New Zealand music. It was a good night, a nice dinner and some gelato to cap it all off. We crashed on his floor and were off the next afternoon. We did some time travel as we left New Zealand at around 8 on Thursday and arrived at 5, three hours earlier...if I could only use that technology for my NCAA bracket. (Go Zags)
New Zealand is another great country- our only regret is that we needed more time. They have heaps of outdoor activities and some amazing hikes. It is a great rural based country, comfortable, green, organized and beautiful. We were thinking that if you bundled up Norway, Montana and Canada and gave them a goofy accent and as goofy of a sense of humor you would have New Zealand-or New Normanadada as we call it. It's the kind of place you can be sporting a wooly jumper, be eating a lamb sub from subway, listening to "The flight of the Concords", while jumping off a cliff shearing a sheep.
This is our first day in Bueunos Aires, Argentina and have met up with Melica's sister Tirtza who just started her year abroad studying here. It should be fun and a definite change after being in some sort of English speaking country for the last 3 1/2 months. Our plan is still open but are hoping to travel Argentina for a few weeks and start slowly making our way north to the homeland. Adios por ahora...
for a 1993 Toyota bubble van. When we got there they had some better vans available and we got a free upgrade to the Toyota Hiace, with fridge, table, sink and
burners all for the same price. The guy even through in a GPS. Free upgrade! We were off to a good start and after the first few days we decided that we wouldn't have time to see everything we wanted so we extended the rental to 11 days. We were tired from our airport sleep but made it almost to Queenstown on our first day. After being in one of the driest countries in the world for three months it was great to see the green rolling hills. As you would expect, we also started seeing heaps of sheeps (the aussies and kiwis use heaps...heaps). There are around 4 million New Zealanders and over 43 million sheep...I started checking their numbers by counting the south island sheep but soon became very sleepy.
Q-town is the adventure capital of NZ and probably the world. If you can think of it they probably have it. They have jet boating, extreme swings, skydiving, hang-gliding, paragliding, canyoning, sledging(like kick boarding down rapids), and this is the home of the first commercial bungy jump site. The weather was pretty crummy for the first few days of our trip, raining and blowing. We passed on most of the activities, but I ended up doing the Kawarau Bridge Bungy 43meters. I asked to get my head dunked and they said they would try, "it's not an exact science" he said, "I may of over shot it...". It all happened pretty fast but before I knew it I was standing with my toes hanging over the edge of the platform and listening for the countdown. I hesitated for a second then swan dove off. I screamed like I was scared ---just for effect or something like that. My thoughts were somewhere between "Did I empty 
my pockets?"
and "Maybe I should get a puppy?" Then my head dunked under the water and up to my waist. Icy cold, blue water...I bobbed around for a bit and then was lowered into a raft. I was the only one that made it in the water for the day, so I gave the spectators a good show. So glad I did it.We spent 3 or 4 days around the south part of the south island, dodging rain showers we hiked around the Glenorchy area, Te Anau area, played disc golf, and camped and swam in some pretty cool settings. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy was filmed all over New Zealand and some scenes in the area we were in. We didn't take any of the guided tours of the areas but took in some of the sites during our hikes. Pretty amazing, the kindof places where you would almost expect some elves jumping out of the ferns or a battle troll stumbling down the hill. We mostly
camped at Department of Conservation sites or national park sites or free on the side of the road, only staying in caravan parks for 3 of the days. It was pretty great sliding opening the van door to some sweet mountain lake or river and stepping out on to the set of The Lord of The Rings every morning. (No hobbit jokes please). We drove the scenic road to Milford sound, full of oneway bridges and a oneway tunnel, nice forests, swaying motorhomes, and loaded buses. We finally made it down to the Fiordlands National park and were really lucky that it stopped raining. The 
place gets 21 feet of rain a year! We took an early morning cruise and the girl on the cruise said that it was the first time they had seen the sun in 3 days. It also worked out well because with the heavy rain from the night before kept the water falls running and the first snow of the season dusted the tops of the mountains making it very picturesque. The cruise was good and informative, we saw some New Zealand fur seals, got sprayed by waterfalls, and just took in the scenery...after about an hour and a half the cruise was over and a good thing because my photo finger was getting a little tired. In the afternoon we did a nice day hike for a panorama of the peaks. The weather got worse as we
headed back through Queenstown and Wanaka and we decided to pass on anymore adventure activities for now. The next day we got pumped up by hiking to the (Hans &)Franz and Fox glaciers. We couldn't get too close to either because of recent rains and unstable ice faces but they were pretty impressive. On the news on our last day in NZ we heard that two Australian tourists died after crossing the boundary...Note to self, don't cross the line. We were working our way up the windy, windy and rough seas of the west coast. We caught the sunset at the pancake rocks, which are limestone rocks that have been layered and look like you guessed it...pancakes. After a bit of driving and some more nice scenery 
we made it to the northwest coast and the Abel Tasman National Park. We finally got 
some good weather and rented sea kayaks. After some colorful instruction by a cool kiwi guy we were off and cruising the clear blue waters and coastline. We paddled out to an island and just floated and watched the fur seals for about a half and hour and one even jumped a few feet from our boat. We had lunch on a nice beach, took a swim, and paddled through some caves in the afternoon. For our paddle back the wind had picked up and we fought some huge waves and even rode some...we made it back, sore but without incident. We kept moving back towards Christchurch. We relaxed 
and relieved our sore muscles at the hot springs in the nice little town of Hanmer Springs. We returned our temporary home and stayed at a nice hostel in downtown Christchurch. We met up with one of Melica's sister's friends who lives in Christchurch and who recently did an exchange to the U of I. We got a quick tour of the downtown and had some coffees. ChCh is a nice town and we really enjoyed the south island and definitely could have spent more time at many of the places. We first planned to split the time pretty evenly on both islands but we were having a good time and only left ourselves 4 days for whole north island. The next day we started our epic journey north and took the old adage "relocation, relocation, relocation" to a new level, tagging together a campervan and car rental to get us to Auckland. Our first mission was to take a super long backpacker campervan from ChCh across the ferry to Wellington. We headed up the pretty east coast of the south island. We saw some more seals and stopped for some fish and chips at Kaikora. Melica was attacked by a brave seagull who attacked her for a chip en route to her mouth.
The evening ferry crossing was nice and calm and we were lucky because we heard some horror stories from about a week ago where the seas were rough, people were getting tossed everywhere and throwing up...Calm seas, good views and a clear sky as we wove through islands and across the Cook Straight. We turned the van in the next morning and explored Wellington. Wellington is a really cool city with a good vibe, probably our favorite big NZ city. We walked around the streets and the waterfront ending up at the Te Papa museum. It too was a pleasant surprise, with heaps of NZ information, a preserved giant squid, and lots of great displays. The best part was that it was free-99. We could have spent all day there, but we had our next mission...to relocate a Kia Picanto 
(I think picanto means small and spicy-it was)to the Auckland Airport.(and only 50 cents per day!) We headed north and after about an hour we got out to stretch our legs at the little town of Levin. We realized that even the community parks are extreme in NZ. This one was fit with some extreme teeter-totters, large hampster wheels, and a crazy flying fox zipline thing-all unsupervised and open to the public. After some near misses with injuries and our abs hurting from laughing at each other we hit the road. About a half an hour later we came upon some hitch-hikers...I was like... "I"m going to go with my gut on this one- let's pick 'em up". We all crammed in the little car and kept moving. They were a kiwi couple heading home from Wellington for the weekend. The girl was part Mauri (indigenous NZ) and the guy was swiss but a resident for 7 years. After having a good chat, we decided to change our route and take them all the way to their house and
crash on their floor. It was a bit out the way but worked well for both of us. We drove for about 3 hours, stopped for Kebabs, and arrived well after dark. They lived on a Mauri settlement (similar to a reservation) and worked there. The next morning we woke up to the great view of the Mt. Taranaki-an extinct volcano a few Kms from the village. It was also the 18th of the month, and every 18th and 19th of the month the village has a meeting and festival to remember their past. This group was supposedly the first indigenous group to practice passive resistance to the colonization and have been holding these meetings for over 150 years. We were invited to breakfast with them (they had to ask permission). We were greeted with a hongi or traditional forehead/nose to forehead/nose 
greeting- we joined them for a breakfast of porridge, mashed potatoes and meat. We chatted with the different people and learned a bit about them. In the afternoon they have storytelling and a big dinner but we had to hit the road- we fed some river eel, said goodbyes and hit the road. And that is what I love about traveling...you can be driving down the road and just by chance happen into some great cultural experience and meet some great people on the way.
Our last stop before Auckland was Te Kuiti-"The Shearing Capital of the World" all set with a 21 foot statue of a dude shearing a sheep. Melica's Dad is a shearer so it made it all that more interesting. They had the world records posted and most of the world record holders come from this area...the record for lambs was 831 sheep in a 9 hour work day! It said that attempting a world record was comparable to running back to back marathons. We took some snaps, had some lunch, and sent home some shearing pants for Martin and were off again.
We timed it just right and spent our first hour in Auckland not getting out of first gear on the
freeway. It was rush hour and there were two accidents. We finally made it to our friend Clayton's house. He is a guy we met while hiking in Nepal and he said if we ever made it through-to give him a call. He is a great guy and gave us an intense 3 hour tiki tour of Auckland, accompanied by a mixed CD of classic New Zealand music. It was a good night, a nice dinner and some gelato to cap it all off. We crashed on his floor and were off the next afternoon. We did some time travel as we left New Zealand at around 8 on Thursday and arrived at 5, three hours earlier...if I could only use that technology for my NCAA bracket. (Go Zags)New Zealand is another great country- our only regret is that we needed more time. They have heaps of outdoor activities and some amazing hikes. It is a great rural based country, comfortable, green, organized and beautiful. We were thinking that if you bundled up Norway, Montana and Canada and gave them a goofy accent and as goofy of a sense of humor you would have New Zealand-or New Normanadada as we call it. It's the kind of place you can be sporting a wooly jumper, be eating a lamb sub from subway, listening to "The flight of the Concords", while jumping off a cliff shearing a sheep.
This is our first day in Bueunos Aires, Argentina and have met up with Melica's sister Tirtza who just started her year abroad studying here. It should be fun and a definite change after being in some sort of English speaking country for the last 3 1/2 months. Our plan is still open but are hoping to travel Argentina for a few weeks and start slowly making our way north to the homeland. Adios por ahora...
