Goodbye New Zealand

I got home a couple of days ago. What an adventure! I would like to go back and live there someday. And then you all can visit me! Thank you for reading, all. I'm not sure what I'll do for the next few months, immediately have to visit and pick a school. Thinking about wwoofing again, or maybe taking some classes in finance/accounting (apparently important in business/law). 

Love the statuses.

And now some pictures from my "nice" camera (as in Canon Powershot). For the most part the phone camera had sufficed and also I had no way to transfer camera pics to a computer, didn't want to bother with public computers. So here's a selection of pictures!

First, Hobbiton. I vaguely described to some of you "oh it was so idyllic."

Chez Bilbo

And from that really miserable hike I did the first week, Tongariro Crossing.

Evening before the hike. Already ominous clouds

Started off this way, pretty little waterfall

Mist sets in, kind of cool looking

Crater

The German lady who took this picture highly encouraged me to try and look triumphant.  Looks like I am being held up after being marched up the volcano to be thrown into a crater, but I am a hostage and this is my captors taking a "look she's still alive give us ransom money" picture so forced me to smile. I was probably a bit delirious

So, so cold. I saw the Emerald Lakes for about ten seconds before clouds set in again

Things improved on the way down, after I hid out in a shelter for two hours

Ferry ride from Wellington to Picton (North to South Island). You enter the Marlborough Sounds, which I hiked later, and it gets very pretty.

Abel Tasman! One of my favorite things I did in NZ. I'd never seen water this blue-green. It was the color of the water they use in those tacky minigolf course waterfalls, that gross dyed water. It exists in real life, guys! So, so beautiful.

One of several water crossings we did. Bit of walking barefoot over broken oyster shells.

Look at that green!

Beach at low tide

Pancake rocks below

And actual pictures from Franz Josef glacier.

From the helicopter. I got to ride in front!

Cool structures

Apparently it would take skilled mountaineers two weeks to get to the top-ish area

And some last pictures from Kepler. The last morning, there were these cool misty swirly clouds in a valley I walked through, really beautiful.

Can you tell what those white circly things are?

Spiderwebs. Thousands of spiderwebs all over this field, just hanging from tall blades of grass. Slightly eery and so, so beautiful. Also didn't see this until now but I accidentally included my new boyfriend Amerie in this picture. Not really but he was a very handsome French guy who took a liking. My baggy hiking mom shorts really draw in the men. Funny story, I took a shuttle bus to the trailhead and my crazy driver almost ran over him and his friends in the parking lot--she didn't slow down a single kph even though they were directly in the path of the bus. They had to jump out of the way to not get hit. I apologized to them afterwards and we made friends. Another story, these guys brought wine for the hike--a bottle for every night, so three bottles. In the original glass bottles. So they had to carry in and out three pretty heavy glass bottles--they apparently didn't realize you couldn't leave empties. I hope it was worth it, though I got some wine too so can't complain.

I had to ford this river with my pack on my head. Just kidding there was a swing bridge that I couldn't find for a while. A German girl I was walking with and I wandered into a swamp where the trail ended and we struggled for a while. Very confusing trail, no signs at the end there.

And that's about it. In conclusion you should all go, it is an amazing mind-bogglingly concentrated area of diverse beauty. I had a wonderful time, met cool people, saw crazy things. Go!

Queen Charlotte Track

I meant to do another long hike in the Marlborough Sounds, a really beautiful area with lots of little bays and coves. 70k(?) that I meant to do over four days. The first day was glorious.

And then the weather got a bit stormy. To the point it just didn't make sense to walk, it would've been no fun and I was actually a bit worried I might get blown off a cliff as it was really very windy. I powered through the second day then gave way to nature. But the cool thing with this track is that there are private boat transfers available, so I just boated from resort to resort. It was still fun, I found For Whom the Bell Tolls in a free(?) bookshelf at a resort so read that. Suspenseful to the end, and somehow I didn't feel quite as let down as I did after reading A Farewell to Arms. Maybe just because I was expecting someone/everyone to die anyway. Also made friends with a bunch of middle-aged people and drank/ate with them. They were jolly good fun and bought me wine.

Also before the track I drove my rental car from Nelson to Picton, where Marlborough Sounds activity is based. Check out this bridge:

Seems a bit narrow eh? Well it is a one lane bridge, you're supposed to take turns with the other side. This one is a relatively super safe kind of one lane bridge, earlier with Kate I encountered one lane bridges with massive rock overhangs threatening to break at any time that curved around in such a way that you couldn't see the other end of the bridge. So you could simultaneously have a head-on collision with a massive rock tumbling on you. Bit scary.

Reminded me of Quechee Gorge