"back in the day when men were men, and sheep were nervous" -the bushman

HOLY SHIT!! its been a while. sorrry friends and family!! I know you have all be just DYING for me to write. dreaming about it in your sleep, desperately wanting to learn about my life...bwahaha. NOT.

so much has happened. SO MUCH. so here we go. and again, i apologize for bad spelling, disgusting language, and for hoping all over the place and not making any sense, what-so-ever. the internet is wickedly expensive down south.

Starting back in Karamea, where I was for 3 weeks......highlights were---

One night Margaret, Hamish and Mark and I went to their friend rogers down the road. he is the one with the AMAZING view that looks out onto the estuary and sea. we had drinks, cheese, wine, etc. hamish said that rogers birthday was a "chemical feast" as in he loves drugs. so anyways, we were all a little tipsy when we got back. had a late dinner and then we got on the topic of drinks. We started talking about whiskey, which is my enemy. So hamish just whips out this LARGE bottle and 4 shot glasses. so I was thinking in my head, is this really happening, are we about to take down whiskey shots in the middle of no where. thankfully, i brought up Hot Toddy's. margaret was curious, so we ended up having multiple hot toddy's...whiskey, tea, honey, lemon?? yea. sorta felt like shit the next day. oh well! Good times. Margaret LOVED them. ohh i miss her. she freakin made me laugh so hard. I told her i wanted her to come with me on the rest of the trip.

there were wild peacocks on the farm. they wanted them dead. 2 babies and a mama. if anyone has ever heard peacocks you know how annoying they are. SO LOUD. they make this awful honking noises. we thought they got shot one night but i dont think they died...hum...maybe for easter dinner.

so hamish and margaret wer enice enough to let us barrow their car when they got back from the Kepler Treck for us to go to Oparara Basin, which is outside Karamea about an hour. Nice hikes and HUGE, massive arches. Hamish told us that the road going their was gravel and dangerous so be careful. i took this to heart, being scared of transportation and all. Mark, not so much. another woman told us to be careful too. so we are driving there and I kept telling mark to slow the F down. there were cliffs on either side, iw as getting car sick, and didnt want to die. i am an extremely paranoid driver and usuallyy drive slow, most of the time. so i was being annoying and telling him to slow down and all of the sudden, BAM! he goes off the side of the road into a ditch. mind you, we have driven about 14K and havent seen a human. so, he starts backing up and I'm like NOOO WAIITTT YOU dONT KNOW WHATS BEHIND YOU!!! so he stops, and then we realize that the car is completely stuck in the ditch. FUCK. is all i thought. if he hadnt backed up we would have been good, but nooo he just had to back up. so we get out of the car, look around, and realize that one of us has to run back down, like 7 miles, to find someone to help. i stay back and immediately start thinking of shows like "i shouldnt be alive" and "survivorman" not that anything would have happened to me cause there are like ZERO mammals here. but maybe a little kiwi bird would attack me? who knows. i started looking in the first aid kid they had for flares....ohmigod i'm insane. i thought mark was going to either not come back and i was about to set up camp in the car. THANKFULLY, a Department of Conservation, DOC, officer was driving, picked mark and up like 15 minutes after he left, and pulled us out with no worries. i felt awful though about the car, even though it as OK. made for a good story though.....

NEXT.

finally made it to the arches in the Basin. MASSIVE. huge. biggest i have ever seen. couldnt help but think how bad it would be if an earthquake happened while i was under it. get back to the house and turns out there WAS an earthquake!!!!!! like 20 minutes after we were under the arches. CRAZY.

americans wash dishes different than kiwis. we run water the whole time, they fill the sink up with water and wash everything in that. i think i like our way.

LOVED hamish and margarets lifestyle. Simple, fun, to the point, just loved it. they really knew how to live and be happy. going to miss them a lot and its very strange i probably wont see them EVER again.

So mark and I decided to do the Heaphy Treck, which is one of the 9-10 great walks of NZ. it was GORGEOUS. we had perfect weather. hiked for 4 days. did a total of about 45 ish miles, maybe more? I felt good, my feet hurt though at the end of every day. the sandflies were AWFUL at one of the huts we stayed at--where the sea and the river mouth meets. they love H2O. my legs were eaten up. couldnt sleep from itching so i found some dramamine i had taken with me. thank god. the huts were GREAT! just a kitchen, fireplace, gas stoves for cooking which was NICEEE, and then there were 2 rooms with boards. you just had to get a "mattress" a plastic thing. so you are sleeping RIGHT next to people. the first night we had 2 other poeple in the hut with us, the next 2 they were full, so like 25-30 ppl. it was a greaaaaaaat time! really enjoyed it. felt safe and good except for mudslides....ugh. mark would walk ahead at times and then hide and scare me when i got closer. i usually screamed rather loud. part of the hike was full of Nikau Palms (Ne-Ko). they are BEAUTIFUL! check 'em out. another sweet part of the treck were the swing bridges. they are for 1 person at a time and are just made out of about 4 cables and like little pieces of metal....fun to walk across. bwahaha.sdasd hand is cramping up right now......

when we were done with the hike we called this shuttle # and this woman named Carol picked us up. we later saw her driving a schoolbus and another bus. THEN, the day before we left, i called to get the shuttle going to westport to pick us up at Hamish and Marg's. A woman answered...it was CAROL! and her son was picking us up. i mean this town was SMALL.

The last night we were there mark found a shit ton of mussels so we cooked them and ate them...YUMMY! made a butter/garlic sauce. some of the mussels had baby crabs in them or were halfway through digesting them. mark and hamish's son ate the baby crabs, i passed. gross.

cant stop drinking lemon and honey tea. so damn good.

So SOMETHING SO STRANGE HAPPENED! this is an example of the small NZ is....... back in August, my friend Julie Welch, told me about her friend Shannon who was coming to NZ to live and travel as well. so shannon and i exchanged a few fbook messages, just asking/saying things about our potential plans...etc etc. i never really thought we would meet up bc she has been working, balbahablah. so about 4 weeks ago shannon wrote me again but i still felt we werent going to meet up....so I am in Westport waiting for the stray bus to pick me up. i get on the bus and go to theback. introduce myself to some people, "mariel...hihihi" and this girl goes, "umm are you Mary-Elle (thats how people say my name who dont know me) and I say "yea, mariel" IT WAS SHANNON! soo fucking strange. she is the one who told me about stray too. so we have now been together for like 4days and will be in wanaka, (where I am right now) for the week. SMALL ISLAND.

the driver i had, natalie, was GREAT! on time, safe. much better than the male drivers. except she wanted to play games, like counting bridges and shit. i dont do games like that.

the first night we stayed in barrytown, wher eI had to wear drag again. man oh man did it PISS DOWN RAIN! i thought the town was going to get flooded out. they said they had enver had a storm like that before. BUCKETS of hail. all night. pretty cool. i didnt dress up, or drink. was tired. it was all good.

we then went to franz joseph glacier which is the steepest glacier in the world. it moves 1 meter a day. it was WICKED AWESOME! they had just had rain for the past 5 days and the day we hiked it was crystal clear blue skies. I got some amazing pics--i'll post later. so i did the full day hike. had to wear cramp ons, it was a great experience. pretty insanely gorgeous. and bc it had just rained the Ice was even more blue than usual. had a great guide, Rob, from the UK and a great group.

so that was GREATT!! started to move more s. the next day. the mountains are snow capped right now. went to lake matheson and saw Mt. cook and mt. tasman. GORGEOUS! i just love the mountains here. spectacular to look at--esp. with the snow. makes me want to move to the mtns. badly.

I forgot to tel yo9u guys that the god awful horse i rode in Queenstown way back, Elvis, was in LORD OF THE RINGS! I RODE A CELEBRITY!!! ohmigosh, how cool am i.

getting sick of my clothes. and i smell. someone kept farting ALL DAY ON THE BUS and it smelled so bad. i wanted to die. i almost made an annoucment for the farter to get off the bus, walk to the toilet, and take a shit. i mean it was awful. everyone kept talking about it all night. i could hardly breathe.

got to wanaka today---love at first site. right on Lake Wanaka, snow capped mtns. all around it. GORGEOUS! i will be here till next sunday. going jet boating with my friend Sofie from Sweden---we are also going mountain biking, rafting, and kayaking---its a primo outdoors town. so i love it.

if i stayed here longer, i would stay in wanaka and work here for the ski season........humm....

ok, well i'm gonna go. i will put pictures up on monday or something. i know i stil have more to say, blabaaha, but this is all my poor hands can take.

Oh, the title of this one, "sheep were nervous"....we stopped at this "bushmans center" on the side of the road. this man named pete came on and goes " so, this is the bushmans center. and believe it or not, NZ didnt used to be like Auckland, with all those Hooity, Mushy, Metro-sexual lovin people. It used to be a palce where men were men and sheep were nervous" this guy was NUTS! i loved him. the place was strange...it was about how NZ farms deer. they used to shoot them (they are not native, obv. its an island, and can hurt the environemnt) but they started farming them. there are deer farms everywhere. so NZ bushman get in helicopters and either shoot out nets over them or actually jump out of the helicopters onto the backs of the deer. we watched this insane video about it. NUTS! THE BUSHMEN ARE NUTS!

CHEERS, ya BLOAKS! xo