So it has been about two weeks since we left Nelson, and life is good. We started our travels in the picturesque town of Kaikoura. located about three hours south of Nelson on the east coast of New Zealand. The drive down was full of beautiful and breathtaking scenery, which we would soon realize was going to be a standard part of our driving escapades. About twenty minutes outside of Kaikoura, we stopped to see a colony of seals just hanging out by the side of the road. It was incredible. We stayed in a quaint hostel with a porch overlooking the crystal blue water of the Pacific Ocean, courtesy of Katie’s Let’s Go NZ book (the most wonderful book in the world). The first evening, we made pizza, played cards, went to a local bar for trivia (didn’t Win), and then went to bed early to be well energized the next morning for the first true day of our traveling adventure. The next day, we went for a wonderful walk around the Peninsula that makes up the coastal border of Kaikoura. We also went on a short hike to a waterfall where literally about one hundred baby seals were swimming and playing! The whole day was unbelievable and the weather was perfect. To top it off, on our morning walk, we ate seafood chowder and fresh scallops and fish from a BBQ seafood stand on the side of the road!

The next day, we sadly said goodbye to Kaikoura and headed on a four and a half hour drive to the west coast. We arrived early that evening in the town of Punikaiki, home of the famous Pancake Rocks. On the drive over, we called and arranged to stay at the Rain Forest Retreat, which now looking back is our favorite hostel so far. It was adorable with clean china, available spices for cooking, and fresh baked goods. We made grilled cheese with tomatoes (a new favorite of Lindsay’s), store bought seafood chowder, and salad for dinner. The next day, we naturally visited the pancake rocks and also went on a short walk through what could best be described as the rain forest. We ended up staying another night at the hostel because we liked it so much. The night was filled with cards, laundry, and discussion of our future plans.

Hokitika was the next stop. We stayed at the birdsong hostel, where every room was named after a different bird of New Zealand. It was cute and educational at the same time! We were the Kea room. As we had come to realize by that point, if we could get a room to ourselves for a little more money than a standard dorm price, that was the way to go. The reasoning behind this is simply because we just have TOO MUCH STUFF! Even now, as I am writing this blog entry, I am looking at the floor below my bed and wondering what we were thinking. Our arrivals at the different hostels across New Zealand have been greeted with the same puzzling stares of fellow backpackers as we make our third trip to get stuff out of the car. Moving back to Hokitika, during the day, we walked around the town and then had a picnic on the beach for dinner while watching the sunset. We concluded the evening by attending the movie “BOY” (the number one New Zealand comedy ever) in a historic local theater in which the standard movie seating was replaced my couches and lazy boys! The next day, we traveled from Hokitika to Franz Josef glacier for a day adventure. We decided to do the half-day guided tour and were not disappointed. The glacier was unbelievable, both in spectacle and overall physical experience. We took a lot of amazing pictures!

The next stop on our journey is Arthur’s Pass and then four days in Christchurch. Until next time….

Travels!

We had to move out of our apartment on Monday, but did not leave Nelson until Tuesday thanks to the lovely couple from Georgia whom we’d met at the beginning of our travels. The couple, Lane and Mark, was kind enough to invite us over to their house for our last night in Nelson. That night they made us a delicious home cooked meal, and in the morning we woke up to the most beautiful view overlooking the Tahunanui Beach. Lane and Mark gave us some goodies for the road, and then we were off!!! So, where are we going again…? We have all saved a little bit of money and plan to travel the remainder of our stay (which is currently the end of June). As you know we have rented a reliable car because our stubborn Subaru now resides in a car park. Using this new automobile, which ironically turned out to be a Subaru, our travel itinerary involves camping and staying in hostels all over the south island. In Nelson, we were lucky enough to be given a three-person tent from a work friend and when using this miraculous gift, we most likely will freeze our fannies off. Nevertheless, camping is cheap, so BRING ON THE COLD. However, we do not plan on camping too many nights. For our parent readers, I assure you that we will be well dressed in appropriate layers and always have a cautious eye full of awareness with our surroundings. Eventually we will end up in Queenstown (adventure capital of the world) where the McDuff family is meeting us. They have rented an awesome house, and we will be staying with them for a week. Then it is off to Australia for two or three weeks in which we will fly into Melbourne then Cairns (Great Barrier Reef) and then Sydney. That is all we know at the moment. Our goals for the next seven weeks are to be open-minded, flexible, resourceful, and adventurous and to obviously live it up because we are in freakin’ NEW ZEALAND!!!!

1-56 Bridge Street

It’s been an amazing two and a half months so far in New Zealand but we are looking forward to our travels! Nelson has been a wonderful home away from home. Literally, we could not have asked for a better city to live and work during our first few months. We will forever cherish our work, apartment, and friends. There are a few things we have not mentioned, like our amazing wine tasting experience, yoga classes, and MarchFest!

So about three weeks ago we went wine tasting. We only went to three of the many vineyards in the Nelson area, which are all within a twenty-minute radius. Each vineyard had its own unique style and tasting technique. Some of our favorite things from wine tasting were: learning how to properly taste wine (twirl, view the color, smell, then taste), developing a new vocabulary full of many creative and elaborate adjectives to describe the flavors, tasting the actual grapes that were fermented into the wine (in which we learned that all the grapes are red, even for white wine), and last but not least, quickly realizing that eating between vineyards is essential to surviving :). Our friend Chelsea was kind enough to be our sober driver. So, after tasting about thirty different wines, we headed on over to BarD for some food. Lucky for us, Debs (the owner) was there. She had Chef Richard make us a HUGE platter of food and of course, we ate every last bit.

As for yoga, Emily found a cute little hot yoga studio and attended a class when we first got to Nelson. It was right down the road from work/apartment, so it was the perfect location. After taking a class and meeting Robert and Andrea, the new owners from Seattle, Emily decided that she definitely wanted to take some more classes (as long as she had enough money!). Once again we lucked out. Robert and Andrea offered her free classes in exchange for a little bit of studio cleaning. AWsum! Even more AWsum was that they agreed to let Katie do it too if she was interested! Katie had never done yoga before, but was finally willing to try it out. After taking a class, Katie was all in too. We cleaned four times a week (Lindsay helped on her nights off), and it usually only took us about twenty minutes. Not too shabby! Looking back, we do wish we had taken a little more advantage of the situation. A lot of days we were too tired and lazy to go to a class after we got off of work, and all we wanted to talk about was what we were going to do for dinner. However, Robert and Andrea quickly became a special niche in what made Nelson so special!

MarchFest, yes, was in April. This year they introduced eleven different beers. Lindsay stuck to the beer while Emily and Katie drank the new Organic Old Mout Cider. Twas quite tasty! Several local bands played throughout the day, and it brought back good memories of our days in Athens. They had a variety of local food venues and the atmosphere continued to blossom as the night went on. We had a grand time and were pleased to come away with some fun souvenir mugs!


We all finally finished up work this past weekend. Katie finished Friday while Lindsay and Emily had to work Saturday and Sunday. We all agreed that the last few days of work dragged on because we were so excited to start our travels. On Katie’s day off she got a head start in packing and cleaning the house. She was busy making pizza dough, banana bread, applesauce, etc., for our road trip. Sunday and Monday were quite busy days. As you know, we decided to sell our car because it sadly would not make it around the south island due to the hill problem. And as much as we did not want to put money into another car- we decided to rent one. On Monday, we headed out to Ace car rental to get our car. As we were literally pulling in, the car decides to go curplunk. What in the world?! We freaked out for a second and then realized that we just ran out of gas! Thank goodness. So we got our rental car, which turned out to be another Subaru, and then headed back to sell our Subbie for a whopping 300 buckaroos. All our friends told us that we should hold out and wait for a better offer (who knows if it ever would have come), but we were just excited to get $100 back each.



After selling the car we grabbed lunch at some of our favorite restaurants, and then headed back to the apartment to take on the task of packing up. Katie and Lindsay piled bag after bag into the car while Emily worked on cleaning the place up some. Finally around 7pm we finished everything up and said goodbye to our little home on Bridge Street.

Bye Bye Bye Love, Bye Bye Nelson NZ! Hello backpackers, I think I’m gonna cry.

Just a few ELK observations!

In case any of you followers head to the South Pacific in the future, we are going to try and give you some kiwi language 101. We have touched on how odd it has been for us to drive on the left side of the road but also with our common everyday sayings, we find ourselves getting a few blank faces. You would think that when traveling to an English speaking country the language barrier would not be a problem. On the contrary my friends, it’s rather hard to understand kiwis for they always speak so fast. In addition, while they speak in a more proper British manner, they tend to slang the ba-jesus out of words (especially in text messaging) but we won’t get into all that.

Here are some simple common kiwi sayings: Sweet as! How you going? Good on ya!! Good day mate. Cheers. I’ll ring you. Toss it in the rubbish bin. That will be a five dollar note. Give way. Kumera, capsicum and aubergine are my “favourite” veggies. You can get a beer out of the chilly bin! Let’s go to the vinYARDs! AWsum!!!!! (These are just a few!)

As a foreigner they may sound a little out of sorts but for the day in the life of a kiwi… these are common words and phrases. Let’s begin with the phrase “Sweet As”. Well for starters, sweet as what? Instead of just a simple “cool” or “awesome,” kiwis say “sweet as” but then they have us hanging in suspense. We constantly are waiting for them to finish the simile but it never comes. Another problem we find with these saying is where to put the emphasis. Lindsay has often gotten a few looks because she puts her emphasis on the “As,” and sometimes sounds like she is saying a certain body part. As you can imagine, this does not go over well to other girls and adults.

As you know we are all working in restaurants. Typically we would say “'how are you doing this evening,' or 'how’s it going?!'” but a common way of greeting a fellow Kiwi is “how you going”(with a slightly higher pitch)? In some ways it makes sense, … how YOU going, instead of how’s it going. What is “it”? It is still extremely awkward to say.
“Good on ya” is one of our “favourite” sayings meaning well done or go get ‘em… we think! :) Kiwis, like Australians, refer to their friends as mates. And if you are married you refer to your spouse as a partner, not to be confused with the American meaning of partner. “Cheers” has a universal meaning of whatever you want, like if you want to say bye or thanks or your welcome. All else fails just say cheers and smile!! :) If someone is going to call you, they will say they will ring you, again not to be confused with the American saying: “ring your neck”. Kiwis throw their trash in the rubbish bins, which sounds so much more pleasant than trash can. They refer to dollar bills as dollar notes. So if you have a lot of dollar dollar notes, dat be a good thang! “Give way” is a street sign that means yield, another significantly more pleasant term.
few common veggies that we eat such as sweet potatoes, peppers and eggplants which are called kumera, capsicum and aubergine. This is important to know before serving dishes with these foods in them. Coolers=chilly bins! The emphasis on the word vineyard is more like vinYARD. And if you have not noticed from reading our blog we LOVE the way kiwis say AWWsum. It is probably one of the most commomly used words on the island and all demographics use it!! It makes for a relaxed atmosphere and AWsum time. That is it for now!!!

Easter Weekend!

Happy Belated Easter! Our Easter weekend was filled with adventure and breath taking views of the Abel Tasman; it was absolutely wonderful :)

We woke up early Easter morning and attended the 8am service at St. Pauls’s Cathedral, which is located right in the center of downtown Nelson. While the service was in the Anglican tradition, it was much different from what we are use to in the U.S. in terms of an Easter service. In other words, it lacked the momentous awe expected from the Easter celebration found in lengthy hymns, a joyous choir, and a large congregation. However, we still enjoyed the service and in all honesty, felt better about ourselves for attending. After church, we regrouped at our apartment and packed up our gear for the weekend. Due to our car (the adjective that goes in front of car is inappropriate for our adult viewers), Lindsay’s friend Anna graciously offered to take us one-way to the start of the hike. We arrived in Marahua around 1:00 p.m. on Sunday afternoon and began the four-hour hike to Anchorage along the beautiful coastline of the Tasman Sea. We walked at a pretty good pace, considering we stopped every five minutes to take pictures (Emily Brooksher and Katie Arnheim for you, haha). Our original camping site was Torrent Bay, which was about an hour away from Anchorage. However, we stopped in Anchorage to get water and ended up just camping there due to the growing darkness from day light savings and increased expectation of rain. And it was a good thing we stayed there! This was not due to the weather (which we had no problems with), but because Lindsay’s friends Dave and Sarah ended up being docked in Anchorage cove and found us setting up our tent a little ways up from the beach. The original plan had been to sail back with them on Monday to Marahua. However, since there was poor phone service in the Tasman, we had feared that this was not going to happen because we would not be able to get in touch with them. Our fears were lifted after seeing them, and we ended up having dinner on their boat that evening. The next morning we awoke to a beautiful day (literally we could not have asked for better weather). The night before, Dave had offered to put our packs on the boat while we hiked the next three hours to Bark Bay. We naturally agreed, and after doing so, we were off on the middle stage of our adventure: a three hour hike to Bark Bay filled with the best scenery on the Abel Tasman. With cameras out and smiling faces, we had a most enjoyable time during the hike. I have said this to a few of you before, but everywhere in New Zealand looks like the scenery from a movie and most likely has been. We were trying to decide what movie the Abel Tasman could have been used in (maybe Jurassic Park or Mighty Joe Young). I know this information can probably be found online, but if you have seen those movies then you will have a small understanding of what we were seeing. We finally arrived at Bark Bay to find Sarah and Dave waiting for us with their boat. Here was the tricky and almost disastrous part to the so far perfect trip. To get to the sailboat, we had to ride in a little dingy boat, which is probably intended for only two adults at a time. However, with ambitious spirits, we attempted to all four ride in the petrol-fueled boat over the crashing waves hitting the shore. As you can imagine, this did not go so well, and we ended up soaked holding our day- packs over our heads. We then decided to carry the boat to a near by sand bar so it would have a better chance of getting over the waves. Emily and Sarah went ahead and Katie and I waited on the beach. After five minutes and seeing that the dingy had run out of fuel, Katie and I ran to a water taxi who had just dropped some kayakers off in the cove. Katie convinced the driver to take us to Dave’s boat and also to pick up Emily and Sarah on the way. We finally arrived on the boat wet but relieved that our stuff (a.k.a cameras) had not been damaged.
The sailboat trip back was awesome, although getting out of the cove caused us to all to feel a little seasick. We got back to Marahua two hours later, and caught the bus back to Nelson. This was probably one of the best weekends we have had since we have been here. We are starting to get really excited about our up coming travels, which will begin at the beginning of May. Until next time….

leaving easter service!