Hello again from NZ!!

We are now in a small town called Wanaka... about 1.5 hours N. of Queenstown! Things here are still going fabulously and we are loving New Zealand.

We've done a ton since we last wrote.. surprised? :) We spent the last few nights making our way down the West Coast (of the S. Island). We spent one night in this TINY little town called Blackball.. it's about 20 kms from Greymouth. This town has a population less than 50, 3 pubs, one place to stay called Formerly the Blackball Hilton (guess they got busted by Hilton so they had to add a "formerly"), a corner store and that's about it! We were told by a bunch of locals here that we HAD to go there because it's like no other place you'll ever go....so we gave it a shot and absolutely loved the town and the Formerly Blackball Hilton. The woman who runs the hotel, Sue, was so friendly and helpful. She cooked us a homemade meal while we sat and read a paper from 1964...yes I said 1964. Crazy huh? After dinner we ventured out in town to hang with the locals... it was pretty interesting. Most of them grew up there and had never left. They were completely baffled by us, some didn't even know where the US was, but they were the nicest people! They live very simple lives.. work during the day (most cutting pine trees) and then play pool (snooker, as they call it here) and gamble/raffle at night. They had us draw numbers for their raffle and asked if we wanted to play... they gamble for chickens and/or chocolate.. too funny!

The next day we did a gorgeous hike on the Croesus Track. You hike along a raging river and through a rain forest most of the way. The whole track takes 8-9 hrs, but we didn't have time to do the whole thing, as we needed to move on that night, so we hiked for about 5 hours. It was stunning - and we agreed that it was our prettiest hike yet. Check out the pics of the Indiana Jones-like bridges we had to cross one at a time. They were a little bit scary because they were over huge rivers and they swung from side to side as you walked across, but quite cool :)

Our next stop was a town called Franz Joseph... great small town with a fun hip vibe! We stopped at the Wanganui river and to look for some hotpools that apparently only locals know about, but we couldn't find them. We had a blast anyway though and quite the adventure looking for the pools...we climbed fences, slid down steep embankments, and waded thru many parts of the river in search of them. The river sat in between a few different mountains and the sun was going down while we were out there, so it was really beautiful. When we arrived in Franz Joseph we signed up to do an all day Glacier Hike the next day. When we woke up for it that next morning it was raining and we realized that it was January 15th...the day before our return home...YIKES - we still have tickets taking us home on the 16th, which is so not happening! So, we decided to cancel the glacier hike that day, get our stuff organized, and stay a few more days in NZ. We did the glacier hike the next day and got SOOOO lucky with the weather! We had beautiful blue sky the whole day and not a drop of rain.. that's unusual for the West Coast of NZ given that it consists of mostly rain forests!

The Glacier Hike was absolutely amazing. Franz Joseph is a really unusual glacier because it goes all the way down to 200 meters above sea level and it runs into a rain forest. It's crazy.... you are standing at the bottom in the middle of a rain forest with the greenest of green trees and gorgeous waterfalls and just above is this massive glacier. Both are stunning, but it just doesn't seem possible that both can coexist with in the same valley. We ended up with a really cool group of about 10 people (all Germans and one girl from Korea) and our super star guide Ryan. Ryan's a local from the area and only 20 years old, but a stud on the ice! The climbing experience was really fun too.... you get to wear "clamp ons" and climb up carved out ice steps and go through tight crevices & ice caves. Ryan carried a huge ice pick/axe and cut our path the whole way. What a work out he gets every day! The glacier is tucked between the Southern Alps with several waterfalls and ends in a valley of rain forest so your view no matter which way you turned was incredible. Again, we don't really know how to explain this experience other than to show you the pictures... check them out, they're up! We'd def. recommend doing a glacier hike if you ever have the chance... it sounded scary at first, but you'd be amazed at how well you can scale ice with the cramp ons :)

After the hike we started making our way further south towards Wanaka - about a 7 hour drive from Franz Joseph. We planned to sky dive in Wanaka b/c the views are spectacular and it's not as touristy as Queenstown, where most people skydive from. The weather forecast was calling for rain again a few days out so we really hauled in efforts to get there in time to dive before the storm came through. We pulled into town about 1pm the next day and were booked to dive that afternoon. The morning divers were able to go, but the wind picked up too much in the afternoon, so they pushed our reservation to the next day... BIG BUMMER! So the next day we were all ready and psyched up, but again TOO much wind. We are going to hang here for one more day and try again tomorrow morning.. all the weather maps looks like it'll be clear so we are keeping our fingers crossed. The anticipation is killing us though.... Rach threw up last night but she isn't sick. We aren't sure if it's nerves or maybe we ate too many gummies :) Both of us have always wanted to skydive, but now that we are only hours away from doing it we are getting pretty nervous... excited nerves though! We've decided to do a 12,000 ft., 45 second free fall dive. They take you out over Lake Wanaka which is SOOOO beautiful. We can't wait! After skydiving we are planning to head to Queenstown to hopefully Jetboat and take a scenic flight into the Milford Sounds! We have an exciting couple of days ahead of us! Once we are done with that we have to drive the camper van another 7 hours and return it in Christchurch. Normally you'd be really bummed about all this driving, but NZ is so beautiful and there are so many things to stop and see along the way (blowholes, hotpools, waterfalls, etc) that we actually really enjoy it!

So people keep asking us.. if the weather isn't that great there than why do you love New Zealand? Doesn't it look a lot like areas of the States.. especially Washington State where you grew up? The answer that question is yes.. much of it looks like Washington, but a lot of it looks very different too! The beauty of NZ is one thing we love, but what has really made it for us has been the people...they go WAY out of their way to make sure you have a good trip! Here's a few stories that will help you understand what we mean:

1. When we did the Tongariro Crossing the conditions turned for the worse and we didn't have enough warm clothing with us. A guy up on the mountain saw that Rach was really really cold and gave her his jacket and just asked that we drop it by his hotel to return it when we were done. We didn't end up needing to do that because we saw him on the way down ... we returned his jacket and chatted with him for a bit. As we were leaving he gave us his number and offered to have us join him and his wife at their cabin up in the North. He not only offered to take us fishing and on a boat tour of the Bay of Islands, but also to teach us how to dive. He's been diving for 20 years and also has done a bunch of traveling and just wanted to make sure we had a good experience here in NZ. His direct quote... "I have the cabin and all the gear so why go and pay for it some where else? I'll teach you how and you can dive for free so you can save your money to travel longer!" How nice is that? And I know it sounds like it could be a bit creepy, but I promise it's not.. he was just a really nice guy. He was offering his food and everything he had to everyone on the mountain.

2. We walked into a spa in Wellington our first night there to look into massages. This particular spa couldn't take us so the girl at the front (Jill) called several other spas to find one that could. Not only this, but she hooked us up with gym passes so we could work out and shower at the gym and got us a dinner reservation at the best restaurant in town... all just to be nice and helpful. She told us to not bother going to the nearest campsite because it was about 40 minutes out of town and that we should just park along the waterfront called Oriental Parade and shower at the gym! We took her advice and had the BEST time in Wellington. Oriental Parade was beautiful and it was so nice not to have to spend 40 minutes commuting in and out of the city! Funny story, we had the massages that Jill booked for us the next afternoon and then had just planned to shower at the spa before going to dinner with Rach's friend Rob's parents that night. Well... we were able to shower at the spa, but they had no place for us to blowdry our hair.. YIKES! We were going to a nice restaurant and wanted to look somewhat presentable. We only had 30 mins before dinner so we couldn't drive over to the gym we had passes for so we tried every gym and public bathroom nearby we could find.. NOTHING! Gym's bathroom was under renovation and the public bathrooms had no plugins. We continued looking and eventually found a hair salon that was nice enough to let us dry our hair.. OH.. the experiences of traveling :) We barely made it to dinner on time, but we did make it.. pheeeew!

There are more stories like these and a really good one about Rach managing to get something brought to her in Franz Joseph that she accidentally left in Blackball over 200 kms back... It's a crazy story! We'll put that up soon because we have to go now... we are going to go and see if we can skydive now!!

Miss and love you tons!
Rach and Steph