Christian Perez's Travel Journal

Cross-country blitz starts now!, Wed Jul 26, 2006

A lot has happened. I flew to Wellington in a hurricane in a 15 seat prop plane to meet Ben at the airport. I thought we would go to the All Blacks match, but he wasn't interested, so we did a little sight seeing and flew back to the South Island. We raced up to Nelson and camped out on the beach in Golden Bay, north of Takaka. I'm glad Ben agrees that the night sky here is astoundingly clear. There wasn't a cloud in the sky all night and the moon didn't come up.

We've been moving a lot the last few days. After camping out and freezing our butts off, we retreated back to Blenheim for a night to warm ourselves and watch a few episodes of The Office. We got off to a slow start the next day and had resigned ourselves to driving to the west coast at night. But we stopped halfway there at Nelson Lakes and I couldn't resist the nice clear weather. So we hiked three hours in the dark with just a torch between us to a hut at the southern end of Lake Rotoiti. We were expecting to find the place empty since it is the middle of winter...

There were about 30 crazy, giggling 16 year old girls on a week-long trip with 2 school teachers. We don't get to the hut until almost 10 pm and so they're freaking out cuz they hear all this noise outside as we stomp up the stairs. I open the door and see a million boots and think "Oh crap". We get inside the hut and its like a sauna; they've been stoking the fire all night. The girls instantly scream and giggle and shine lights on us just in case we decide to attack or something. I thought they were 12 years old just from how they were acting (I couldn't see them in the dark.) Ben loves the attention, of course :) And the teacher laments, "Why couldn't you be two old fogeys stumbling in here? It would be so much easier..."

We hike out the next morning with a thick frost covering everything. We also get some free food from the girls because they packed too much. We make it to the car before noon and are driving again. We get stopped outside of westport at a police roadblock. They are checking registration and licenses.

I lost mine two months ago.

I'm crapping myself, because its a big fine if he asks to see it and I can't produce it, but he just asks me what license I have and I say US and I've been here since April and he waves me through. We get gas in town and I hand Ben the keys, who still has his license but has only driven a total of 3 hours or so on the left side of the road. He drives the rest of the way down the West Coast, even at night, on windy roads, going 120 kph on the straightaways. The man is CRAZY! Takes after his old man, no doubt about it.

Also stopped at Punakaiki, or pancake rocks, and some awesome beaches, where the huge waves crash on ridiculous looking Martian shaped rock formations. I ignore all the signs emphasizing the danger and climb out on the rocks to explore a bit. I take after my mom.

Ben is on the glacier as we speak. I hope he's having fun, cuz I'm sitting on my hands until he's done. Gotta go! Pics later!