Lake Wanaka was brilliant! So beautiful. We decided it was way too cold for kayaking, so we went for a hike up Mt. Iron for some spectacular views of the lake and mountains and then back down to flat ground to visit Puzzling World! LOL, Puzzling World is this bizarre sort of museum/fun house that has an outdoor labyrinth. First, we went through the museum, which had all these optical illusion tricks and holograms and the like. Then we did the maze, which was a real laugh. Well, it was half a laugh and half a frustrating mess, as I would assume most mazes would be. I ccompleted it in 45 minutes but it took Nathalie an hour and a half!

The next day we drove along the West Coast to Fox Glacier, where we had booked a guided tour of the glacier. It was so cool walking on the ice. We had to hike up about 2 hours before reaching the glacier. Then we walked on the ice with things called crampons on our boots for another hour or so. The crampons made sure you didn't slip on the ice cause, man, would that hurt! Such a cool experience.

The following day, we zipped through the rest of the West Coast, stopping at Hokitika for some Pounamu or greenstone (also known as jade). It's really valued by the Maoris. We also stopped at Punakaiki (the Pancake Rocks), also very cool. There are these holes in the rocks that create blowholes that look like geysers. And because it was raining and the sea was rough, the blowholes were really spewing the water far. We continued North all the way until Motueka, which is a gateway to the Abel Tasman National Park. The next day, we were driven to Kaiteriteri Beach where we took a water taxi up to some of the furthest beaches up into the park. Then the taxi dropped us off and we took a dazzling walk through the park where it picked us up again 4 hours later. Truly gorgeous. The weather held off for us again! We totally thought it would rain but it was nothing but blue skies. Then we departed for our drive to Picton to spend the night before our ferry to the North Island.

We spent today and last night in Wellington, where the weather was absolute crap! It seems we left all the nice weather behind on the South Island. It's been rainy and windy and cold, not to mention the little hailstorm I got caught in this morning. I'm sure Wellington is a really nice city, but the weather really ruined it for us. We spent most of the time in the national museum, Te Papa. It's this immense sort of natural history/cultural history museum. There's a Lord of the Rings exhibit on now so we went last night after we'd checked into the hostel. It was really interesting. It had all the costumes and props from the films and lots of interviews with the actors and plenty of behind the scenes interviews with Peter Jackson. We spent almost 3 hours in there! We also went back today because the museum closed before we got to see everything else. Great way to spend a rainy day.

So right now we are in Paraparaumu, a suburb of Wellington, where the couple that Nathalie stayed with and worked for the two weeks before I arrived lives. Mary is cooking us an amazing dinner...it smells so good right now! We have real beds to sleep in (instead of bunks) and clean showers. I'm very excited. We're only staying the night, though, cause it's off to Lake Taupo tomorrow morning. Hopefully the weather improves by the time we get there because there's been a lot of snow up there. Maybe we'll do some skiing. I can't believe we're nearing the end of our adventure. Just one more week to go and then it's back to Oz...