Feb 2008

This post is short and lacks photos. I just wanted to let everyone know that we are still alive. I'll post more photos later when we aren’t in such a hurry!

We quit our jobs for the second time in two months! After 2 1/2 weeks of apple thinning, we decided we had enough. Our initial plans were to head further North from Nelson to the Abel Tasman park (where we had our kayaking adventure) and do some hiking and sight-seeing up there, but a beer festival and a long-haired boy named Adam caused us to change our plans. At the end of March, the city of Nelson is hosting their first annual "Marchfest" which they claim will be similar to Germany's (and the bars of America) Oktoberfest. They'll brew specialty beers just for the event, and there will be lots of food and entertainment. We couldn’t pass up a chance to get some good beer, so we decided that we will come back for the festival. Also, our friend Adam gets into Auckland in about a week and has plans to drive south and meet us. We figured, the more we do before he gets here, the longer we will have to wait for him to catch up. So, for this additional reason, we decided to move on and see the rest of the area when we return.

Since we left, we've been to the Nelson Lakes National Park and done some hiking. We drove to the east coast, stopping in Hamner Springs before arriving in Kaikoura where we did some more hiking and swimming with the dolphins (A-MAZING! More on this in later posts). Then we went south to Christchurch and the Banks Peninsula where we visited the little town of Akaroa. We are now on our way back towards the west coast towards Queenstown where we hope to get another job. We are thinking this will be more of an indoor adventure, but if need be, we'll try our cherry and apricot picking abilities.

I used to get so mad at Herbie and Kristina for waiting so long in between their posts and now I'm averaging about a week in between updates! I promise I'll post again soon with some fantastic photos!