pics from the Heaphy Track and Franz Joseph Glacierr!!

gosh i'm just so cool.......?
dork

Marky mark and I in the Oparara Basin
Oparara basin...lots of Iron in the Water=red

drivin down the West coast!

Hamish, Mark, and Funny Margaret!
GLACIERR!!!

Sunset at Heaphy Hut on the Heaphy Track........where the sea and the rivermouth meet, pretty awesommmeee

GLACIER, again!

Lake Matheson, with Mt. Cook (the tallest Mtn. in NZ, and Mt. Tasman)

"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

can't stop, wont stop...

Cannot get enough of Slumdog Millionaaiiireee! love this song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrVlBrooxcM

This and that....

Ahhh OK! I realized i forgot to write about st. pattys day. as I said, i was on the hunt for irish people. I was about to give up on my night, BUT then, something AWESOME happened....I walked in my room and there were 2 irish girls that showed up YA!!! they were super nice and fun. we decided to go out to this "irish" bar...I think it was just a bar with decorations. but we were walking there, and realized none of us knew where it was....given that Westport has like 1 main road, but we talked to this guy and he was like "just listen for the music." no shit, we heard the music like 5 blocks down and there we went! It was pretty fun. Nice little irish band, everyone was shitfaced. Oddly enough, they played Wagon Wheel at the end, which is one of my favorite songs....so that was a lovely touch.

Ok, enough of that...

This week has gone by soooooo fast! Jeeez-la-weez. Hamish and Margaret are going to get back tomorrow night....I think at least. So here are a few highlights of the week.......

---Yesterday, during high tide, mark and i decided we should take a little kayak trip out. Not to the sea, but just around the estuary. so the kayak we took was SOOO old. we ended up fitting myself, mark, and FINN the dog in the kayak. hilarious. right when we started moving, mark pointed at something and finn just dove in the water. so of course, he got back in, and then just shook out all over the place and got us drenched. and stinky. we ended up getting stuck somewhere and walked back in our underware. pretttttttttty sweeeet! wish we had a pic of the three of us because we looked insane. pure rednecks.

---the chickens here are my friends now. they are HILARIOUS. I primarily feed them and they crackkk me up. they walk all over my feet and if they see me walk to the feed bucket,they freak ou8t and start running at me. The main chickens she has are a little walk away. so when I walk there in the morning i have my gumboots on and usually some lettuce leaves of something....so i start walking and say "heyy choooky choooky chooookkyyy!!" and they all start RUNNING at me. like little dinosaurs. its so odd and funny. then they follow me into their little house and i get there food and scatter it around. the rooster is SO damn loud. i want to kick it. but, i wonnnnntt! At night i have to collect the eggs. there are usually between 8-10. YUMMY! THe best is when i pick them up and they are HOT because they were just laid. pretty neat. Margaret told us that if any of the chickens are being "clucky" which means not laying eggs when they are istting there, to punish them by locking them up in the "sin bin" which is a cage and not feed them for 3 days. HA!
hummmm what else..........mark and i have these "art sessions" they are pointless, but fun nontheless. we just draw whatever....usually eachother in realy messed up ways, with blue hair and buggers. durrr!

FOund this new guy I like to listen to, Tiki Taane, he has this one song "always on my mind" that is sooo good. he was in a big group here called Solomonella Dub......... FYI.

What else, soo....OH YA! Farm WIFE! Shit, sooo basically after being here I realized i am not cut out for farm life. I think I would feel confident with a big garden and chickens, but thats it. Mark has had some troubles so he has done all the mowing and cutting wood, i have painted, weeded, and picked Calendula for soap. Oh and i stacked a shit ton of wood. but ya, basically, what it boils down to is that i understand how sexism came about back in the day. stuff can be hardd! especially for someone as small as me. small hands. so i appreciate farmers even more. and local produce. I enjoyed it and always wanted to support it, but now I think its necessary. its how people make their living, and its good for ya!

so the neighbors here are GREAT! and all new zealanders. I have had like 4 people, just neighbors, call here to see how I am doing and if I need anything. And hamish's sister, lindsey, who I have stayed with in CHristchurch and LOVE called the first night to make sure I was OK. SOO NICE! I love these people. such nice folks.

sandflies are a problem right now. my feet are swollen from the bites and they are just ALL OVER. ugh. oh well, once i leave the W. coast they will cool down a bit. its just bad over here.

Welll, anyways, i need to collect my thoughts betterr.......................................... scattered right now. OH YEA! I used a hair dryer today for the FIRST TIME SINCE JAN. 24th! I can't believe its half way over....only a month and a half left......crazy.

Oh ya, mark and I are going to do part of the Heaphy Track, its one of the "great walks of new zealand" it starts/leaves from Karamea. we are going to leave weds. and hike till Sunday...very excited! loooovvee hikin! ok, xoxomwah!

something to appetize the eyes...

Ok, sooo.......the big giant tree in the sunset is the coolest tree i have EVER seen. its on their neighbors property----hes gone for the week but they said we could go up there because he has this super sweet view clear all the way past the estuary and to the sea.

the pine looking tree is called a Norfolk Pine and its my favorite tree in NZ. BUT, its not native--comes from an island, norfolk island, btw NZ and aussie. its on their property. so there ya go!

Holy Moly, a lot has happened...and now I'm a farmer! AHHH!

Lets start from right now to the past week and a half or so...

Right now i'm in Karamea which is on the W. coast of the S. island. its pretty much just like jurassic park. population 500, which is spread out over like 6 miles. so yeah, there is nothing here. one very smalll grocery store, the post office (which is inside the hardware store), an isite info place and some hippy store that sells old clothes. YEEHAW! So I got picked up by Hamish, how is LIndseys sister--the woman I have stayed with in Christchurch. He picked me up from this CRAZY, INSANE backpackers (which I will get to later) on thursday morning. He had to take all of this Flax to the estuary because they are building a trail there, etc etc. So i just rode around with him and his truck, with Finn, his dog for a bit. It was rainy and gross out. At one point--during on eof the runs back to ge tmore flax, i stayed with finn and threw fetch with him for a bit. when we got in the car, he started hacking and a piece of his lung, is wear it was his lung, flew up and landed on hamish's jacket. I almost puked. id idn't say anything though. gross. i thought i killed the dog. but alas, he is fine and barking like crazy right now.

SO, Hamish and Margaret----AWWEEEEESOOOMMEEE! I love them! They live on a farm, wtih a small orchard that has pears, apples, an OK plum tree, land lemons. then they have 500 feijoas which is NZ fruit. their main thing is Tea Tree Oil. They are the only organic tree tea farm in NZ which is pretty sweet. so they have all these tea trees and they are AWESOME. i have a cold right now so I have been doing these tea tree inhilations....VERY intense. but they clear you up. Margaret said she would always just give her kids a dot of tea tree oil when they had a cut headahce, flu, etc. ha. So she is HILARIOUS. makes me laugh so hard. just a laid back hippy woman who is very smart and funny. we have a lot of fun together. Hamish is also equally as awesome. he is SO nice! He had to teach me how to use these gigantic lawnmowers that i swear were made in the 1800's and had more patience with me then anyone i have ever met. i kept getting them stuck, or I couldn't push it. ohmigod they are HUGE. so annoying. and he taught me how to use the 4 wheeler, which is pretty gnarly. its a stick shift so thats funny.

SO yeah, i stayed with them solo for about 3 days. they just showed me the ways of the farm....how and when to feed the chooks (chickens), watch the sheep, feed the cat, dog, etc. look after th garden. watch the baby chooks. lots of stuff, actually. they also live right on this MASSIVE estuary. its the biggest i have ever seen. yesterday mark and i walked all the way to the sea----the Tasman. its a GORGEOUS beach.

So my friend Mark, who is traveling here for the year and working, said he would meet me up here. he has no phone and i had no reception and he was gonna hitch up here. AAHHH! so anytime ANYONE passed by on the "highway" (they live on the highway, its realy just a country road) we would run out and see if it was mark. ones a group of biker guys stopped in front. hamish thought it was mark, i thought that would be INSANE if it was...it wasn't. so then finally, 2 evenings ago, a HORSE TRAILOR showed up in the drive. and guess what! it was Mark! I died laughing. hilarious. I was SO happy he showed up! I knew he would, just didn't know when. but just realy happy he is here. i was scared i was going to have to talk to animals all week....

we have lots of chores to do--LOTS of mowing, have to feed the chickens twice a day, weed, pick the apples and pears, and paint one side of the house. so we are busy. mark is mowing right now.......we cant get the other mower to work. i'm taking it as a sign that i'm not supposed to mow??? ya.

So....stilll going back in time....right before I got here I stayed in Karamea at this wicky wack backpackers called Rongo Backpackers. The building, which was small, was painted in rainbow colors so it really stuck out. everyone was hugging eachother and loving eachother......ughhh! hippys! i have nothing against hippys, but this was nuts. 2 poeple started hugging in front of me and didn't let for like 7 minutes ( i counted) and i waslike oh shit i hope she is ok, i hope no one died, and then their arms broke and she was like wow that was great, thanks.......ahh...ok?

The good thing about ROngos was that every weds. they have a potluck dinner. so everyone was supposed to make something from their country, or atleast something good. my fav. was israeli. it was called Shakshusksa??? not sure exactly. it was like a spicy omlette, but not, onions, tomoatoes, and egg...hard to describe but so damn good. so we had fresh bread, couscous with tomatoes and onions, pumkin, lasagna, these asian thing, fruit salad---lots more. i just pitched ina couple of bucks bc i didnt want to cook. and some of those people had been there for like 2 weeks cause the 'got stuck there'--every 4th night is free. so they were all best friends...how lovely. OH but, one cool/funny thing they had there---outside in the back there is this small room thing where they have painting classes a couple times a week AND Karameas ONLY radio station. you can go a play anything you want at anytime. how funny.

So now we back up all the way to westport....westport sucks. its this small town that links karamea to civilization. i got picked up by the 'bus' to go to karamea there. it was more like a small airplane of a car. it was myself, the driver, andt his guy who lives in this town called Granity which is in between karamea and westport. he said the only time he talks to people is when he comes to westport to go the grocery store. so of course he was talking my head off. the ride was interesting and AWFUL. I got car sick. it was the curviest road EVER. and the 'bus' was also the delivery truck for karamea. so people would just tel this guy what they wanted from town ....and we dropped it off. so we stopped like 15 times to peoples houses and stores. hum.

so i felt like shit the rest of the day and was starting to get a cold then...whaa wahh. i know.

now i'm here and we are having a blast! we are both just thinking this whole thing is hilarious. mark is mowing right now, i did garden stuff today. Finn, their dog, is crazy. ive never met a dog with so much energy. he will play fetch with you for HOURS. we played with him yesterday for like 5 hours. nuts. and so strange, we were on the estuary and we were looking at him and he took a poop like a human, sitting on a log. soo funny! whatta crazy dog. he can also jump like 5-6 feet to get balls and such. nuts.

ok, so this blog was to satisfy my mother. i have more stories to say but I will save those for tomorrow or the next day. talk soon! ooxoxox oh and here are some pics of the past couple days and such!

From wearing Drag to a Dead end town....

HIYOOO!!!

Lets see, where shall I start....so stray actually picked me up this time around. I was sitting outside the hostel I was staying at in Able Tasman where supposedly they pick you up. Then one of the guys working there asked who was picking me and I said Stray and he said I better just stand in the middle of the road so they don't forget me.....ya....so then he ended up giving me a ride to where stray was staying that night---this place called Old macdonalds Farm like 30 feet from my hostel/barn. So I got on the bus and all was well!

So whenever I was on Stray before I never really knew where we were going until someone told me. I thought we were going to Westport, but apparently we were driving to this small ass town--population 40--called Barrytown. We were literally staying at a BAR. Basically this bar is only open for the 3 locals that come there and for Stray. So the bartender was our "receptionist" and gave us lost of booze. But the kicker was they made all of us dress us in nasty ass outfits--wearing drag, the guys were all in lingerie, etc etc. i'll post pics later. We we all just got pretty drunk--it was a good time. By the end of thenight, our bus driver, Baggins (yes, as in lord of the rings) was in a skirt and a bra. We ended up playing this awful, AWFUL drinking game. I lost so I had to take a shot of beer and wine---GROSS> but this other chick had to drink a shot of baileys and tequila----EW. so anyways, that was that---pretty fun. THe only problem is I have to go and do that exact same thing in a week when I'm done with house sitting, which starts tomorrow.

That next morning, we jumped across the highway and did this bone carving thing---I made a pretty sweet as necklace. I will also put up some pics of this. The bone carving itself smelled SOOO awful. i wanted to puke. GROSSS!

So then stray left at 1 and my bus picked me up at 2. I was sitting on the side of the highway with my pack feeling like a complete homeless person. i have had this feeling multiple times.

OH Also, we stopped on the Punakeiki Rocks aka Pancake rocks. super cool--check 'em out. AND, we stopped at this lookout spot that was rated in the top ten for best views in the world. I can def. see why---it was gorgeous.

so yea, now i'm up in Wesport--this shithole town. it kind of reminds me of martinsville----its where 'real men' come to live. Lots of coal and gold mining up in this part. I was attemping to walk to the beach this afternoon after I talked to my mom. So I started walking and then realized the beach must suck cause i was the only one walking towards it. Mind you, there was no one walking anyways. so I get to one part of the walk and there is no one around and i'm about to head down a dirt/sand road with bush on both sides. I could just imagine getting robed and killed. but I still wanted to go. i had my knife with me and almost put it in my pocket and then realized i was a freaking idiot. so I turned around. i must have been 40 yards from the beach. oh well, better off alive in westport than dead on the beach. just felt creepy...

the hostel i'm at is pretty cool---its like an old victorian house. there were people up till 5 am this mroning in the room next to me. i wanted to kill them.

I think i pulled a muscle above my ass. it hurts so bad and its giving me a limp. HOT.

So i leave tomorrow for Karamea--its a little over an hour from here. I'm staying at this backpackers called Rongos Backpackers and Art Gallery---i think its real hippy. and colorful. I prob. wont be able to sleep. my friend mark should be meeting me in karamea within the next day or so. I HOPE. I will die if he doesnt.

So yeah........there are some other things I could say but I need to gather my thoughts before I write them out. So its St. Patricks day here---i've been on the hunt for irish people. god they are so crazy, i love it. I was hoping the two crazy identical irish girls I met on the Tongariro crossing would be here---i'msure they are always blacked out.

Ohmigod---THE BACON HERE IS SO AWFUL! I just had french toast with bacon, banana, and berries---the bacon is seriously dead human. i can't look at it. and i need to remember that i dont like it here. EW. VOMIT.

ok, i will write more later. i have to tell you about this awful woman from purdue. gross. for many reasons.

going to take a shower and go to the grocery store. just bought some fresh corn--i'm sure I will mess it up though.

xoxoxomiss things! (i think?)