Need a little time to try some livin'

Another weekend, another coastal trip for us hard working tourists.

Adam took off from his literally, nearly backbreaking work at the vineyards of the Otago region to join us. Brody and I tried to warn him of the hazards of vineyard/orchard work, but he claimed to love psychical labor and was itching to be outside. Poor, silly Adam. The weather has been crap (we just recovered from a week long preview of the winter weather to come) and Adam's body hurt pretty bad after his first day. He actually resigned from his 5-day stint at the vineyards just yesterday. Tomorrow he starts making beds and cleaning rooms at a local hostel. I hear this job also carries some hazardous work - a fellow CU grad we met here claims to have gotten tendonitis from scrubbing.

Anyhow, we all took a break to head up the west coast this time, towards the popular Wild Foods Festival in Hokitikia. We left Guano behind and took our turn at camping in Adam's tent, "George Clinton" (because "he's got the funk" - the tent smells terrible, especially with the boys in it). The tent itself is a little ghetto - it looks like something boy scouts on a budget wouldn’t camp in. It leaks and has no real frame. One top of that, Brody and I have no sleeping bags, so we had to resort to using a duvet Colin's parents gave us (Thanks Bettina and Brian!). We were ashamed to take our blankets out of the car at the camp ground while everyone else had their snazzy sleeping bags, so we had to wait until after dark to set up camp.

On our way to the festival we stopped by Fox and Franz Joseph glaciers. They’re both extremely interesting sights, since they're some of the world's only glaciers to exist so close to the ocean. They're only 20 kilometers inland. Furthermore, they exist in the middle of a rainforest (the west coast of the south island gets about 6 meters of rain a year!). Both glaciers are also among some of the fastest moving in the world - they move about 2 meters a day, which makes them a bit unstable to walk on since crevasses pop up in new places all the time. The day we were there, a large block of ice about the size of a car was in the middle of the outflow river. Our guide told us it wasn’t there the day before. And the two CU grads we met here were hiking around Fox glacier about a month ago when an even larger block fell off the glacier as they were standing there, sending chunks and splinters of ice flying. Just in 2003, a jökulhlaup (a glacial lake outburst flood) took place at Franz Joseph that changed the appearance of the lower half of the glacier and the course of the river. Despite the dangers, we all felt relatively safe joining a tour group that took us through the glacier valley and up on the ice. It was only a bit unnerving to hear ice creaking and cracking as we strapped on our crampons at the base of the great icy mountain. Our guide was a nutty Aussie with a mullet who made the trip interesting with his confusing explanations of the geological make up of the glacier (he tried to compare it to a Mars Bar) and his strange word usage, "Feel free to ask any queries."

We made it to the festival the next day. I love festivals. Ohio made me addicted to them, and I usually go to get a good eat, so I'm not sure where my interest in this festival was, since I'm not an adventurous eater. I suppose I wanted to check out all the nasty things everyone else was going to eat. I broke out of my eating shell a bit and tried worm sushi, kangaroo, crocodile, and even some sheep testicle sandwich. Brody was a bit more daring and added in a huhu grub. For those of you who don’t know, here is the 411: A huhu grub is a giant maggot (about the size of your finger) that can be found in rotten wood. They chop the wood and pull out the treats right in front of you and then - get this - you pay to eat them. The trick is, however, that you have to chomp them quickly or they bite your tongue with their pinchers. Several people at the festival said they tasted like peanut butter, but from the looks of Brody and Adam's faces, they just tasted like crap. Adam also tried grasshopper on toast.

Even if you weren’t sampling the strange foods at the festival (other delicacies included lamb's tail, stag heart sandwich, and horse intestines) the attendees were entertaining enough. Many people dressed up - to no apparent theme - and proceeded to get ridiculously drunk. As Adam so graciously put it, "This place turned into a royal shit show." Kiwis don’t mess around when they drink. Before long, they were wrestling each other in the rain and mud. That was about the time our bellies had enough nasty in them and we headed back to the campsite. We stopped at the beach along the way and Adam threw some rocks. Imagine. We did some random sightseeing along the rainy (any this is no understatement) coast and headed back home.

Brody's parents come this weekend, and I'm sad that it’s not my parents, but I'm excited to see some more familiar faces. We have about 4 more weeks in NZ - 2 more in Wanaka - before we all 3 head to Thailand (more about that later!)