Kia Ora, South Island!

So here we are, on the South Island at last!

If you read the previous post, you can guess that we eventually got safely off that windy and sheepshit-speckled hill. But as if being beaten by wind for 4 hours wasn't enough, at the end of the hike we got wet in the rain and then the gale continued whipping our tent viciously enough not to let us relax in it for another few hours. But our wonderful Mountain Hardware Light Wedge 3 held up bravely to the test, which made us pretty happy. (If you want to backpack comfortably and superlight, we recommend this tent wholeheartedly!)

The next day the wind died down and we went for a much nicer walk on another surrounding hill, taking pictures of the nervous sheep and the splendid views. On Friday we returned to Haumoana near Hastings, hoping to celebrate my birthday with Nathan and Hanka, but Nathan was in Auckland, so we had a quiet evening with Hanka, catching up on our favorite NZ soap, Shortland Street, then the Wife Swap, America's Next Topmodel and other TV trash that becomes such a special treat when you're on the road. On Saturday we celebrated the b-day by going to Napier's ocean hot spa, Mongolian Grill restaurant and renting movies for the night.

On Sunday we finally left Hawke's Bay area and drove south towards Wellington. We camped somewhere on the way and visited "Owlcatraz" - a family-run bird zoo where we learned about the NZ owl morepork, flightless wekas and kiwis and played with the parrot Joey - and got to Wellington where we stayed at the aforementioned YHA backpackers hostel.

We didn't hang around the capital city for very long. On our only full day there we visited the famous Te Papa, NZ's national museum, and took a cable car to the botanical gardens to have a view of the lovely bay city. We already knew that Auckland has more population than all the other NZ's major cities combined, so that wouldn't leave much for Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin, but Wellington is even smaller than you'd expect. Its center crouches between the Wellington bay and a string of surrounding mountains, and some of its neighborhoods creep up the hills, but you can pretty much see it all from the Botanical Gardens viewpoint.

To save $70 that we paid for our hostel room, we scouted the city outskirts for an "informal" campsite and we finally found one near a rocky surf beach in the neighboring Lyall Bay. It also happened to be right next to Wellington airport, so you can imagine the quality of sleep we got there... Actually, the planes stopped landing over our heads after about 10pm, but they were still taxing on the runways, not to mention the wind that was rocking our tent and keeping us awake all night. Actually, Ryan slept through all of it, I got about 3 hours of sleep. The highlight of that night was the lingering purple sunset, though. We didn't realize until the morning that what we took pictures of the night before was our first glimpse of the South Island shore...

The following day, Wednesday, we finally crossed the Cook Strait on a Bluebridge ferry to the South Island. It seemed that the ferry was full of backpackers like us, all of us braving the chilly wind on the deck and taking hundreds of photos of the impressive Tory Channel and Queen Charlotte Sound -a mountainous pass that leads to the tiny ferry harbour town of Picton. Since it was already late in the day, we drove straight to the nearest campsite and, as soon as we got out of the car, a wild weka, the flightless bird we learnt about at "Owlcatraz," walked fearlessly right up to us and hung out for a while, probably contemplating what it could snatch from us (they're known for stealing). Wekas are apparently almost extinct on the North Island and so to see this bird in our first hour on the South Island - it was like a special greeting. Or a good omen?

In the few days we've been here, we passed Nelson, a backpackers haven on the north shore, camped on another beach with purple sunsets, visited the nearby Abel Tasman National Park and walked the "world famous" Abel Tasman Coastal Track, which is beautiful, but after 3 1/2 months in Fiji it was just a string of sandy beaches to us, not a natural wonder. (No offense, Tasman!)

Now we're in Motueka, a small hippy town north of Nelson. It's a sunny fruit bowl and wine country just like Hawkes' bay is in the north, and we're here for apple jobs. Looks like we just got one - packing apples in a pack house just near here. Yay! It will be a nice area to hang around - there are sandy beaches here, the Abel Tasman National Park is just a few kms away, lots of cafes and even great shopping, should we need some new Converse sneakers or Doc Marten boots. It should be good.

We'll keep you posted. We're putting up the photos as fast as we can, so please bear with us and keep checking back.