Mar 2009

Heya!
So we finally compressed a bunch of photos and uploaded them to Flickr (saving both time and money in the process) They're a little small but better than nothing! :o) Enjoy... http://www.flickr.com/photos/pacificcrest/

So we spent a few windy, rainy, and a sunny day at the tallest Mt. in asturalasia. So in oregon we have Hood and Jefferson being the tallest(Jeff at 12 somethin), well Mt. Cook is at 11.5 thousand feet. Basically it is in between Jeff and Hood, but much much steeper and just packed with glaciers.

so the first day we camped and got hit with the worst wind ever, our tent was flat, yeah flat. it didnt blow away because we were in it! the tent was fine a little bent but not much. The next night it rained so hard that a river developed under our tent, yeah a four inch deep flowing pool of water, and the tent was still dry.
The camp was set at the base of Mt. Sefton, and this thing was covered in 3 hanging glacers, and i had never seen so much ice hanging above you.

So bad weather and all it was still nice to get some hikes in. We headed up the Hooker glacier valley to the base of Mt cook. we left early and only saw 3 ppl out there and had the Mt to ourselves when we got there.

We had to cross several rivers over these swinging bridges, they made the way back really slow with all the tourist heading out around noon. Very scary, about 100 ft up and a line of people crowding to cross, with a limit of 20 ppl on the bridge, bit disconserning.

Well all and all we had the Mt to our selves for a while and got some great pictures of ice burgs and the Mt.

Well cheers to Mt Cook

Hi!
Apparently there is a distinct lack of high speed internet for hire in New Zealand, and we have been too frusterated with low page loading times to finish editing or posting new entries...however today, we have made some tea and settled down here in the kitchen of a Dunnedin Holiday park and are ready to battle through this :o)
We've been enoying the southern west coast of the South Island, we spent the last two weeks bumming around the Oamaru area. Oamaru is this funky little coastal town we've been sort of using as a base ... leaving to camp a few days out on the coast or in towards the rivers (so Ev could go fishing). It's been fairly nice out except for the freezing cold front that came through for a few days and actually dropped some very early snow up on the surrounding hills.
Our first trip out was to this surf festival just down the coast a few kilometers, we missed some of the competition but there was some great food (lamb sausages and cheese rolls :o) Healthy) and we managed to get our pictures in the paper (we'll send a fabulous NZ gift for anyone who can manage to hunt down last sundays, the 8th, edition of the Oamaru Daily Mailer, we didnt manage to get a copy)
The next trip out was to Trotters Gorge, a relatively unknown little DOC campspot near the Moeraki Boulders with a great trail up to some crazy rocks that lined the surrounding gorge...beautiful spot, we would have stayed longer but it began to rain and we almost got trapped in there by a flooding stream. A local guy came down at night and rounded us up as the stream was rising. Anyhow we came back to Oamaru to warm up and then headed out to this lake to camp a few days and fish, unfortunately the cold weather and some relentless wind kept up so it was back to Oamaru.
Our last trip before leaving was to stay with some WWOOF hosts south in Herbert. They were nice enough but not exactly what we were looking for so we only were there for four days before heading south to Dunnedin...
Thats it for now, we are in Dunnedin searching for some St. Patricks Day cheer :o)
love,
Nicole and Ev

• no pictures yet again...NEED FASTER INTERNET

so we found a way to get the photos on to the Flickr page! theres just a few and we'll be adding more in a bit.... it really depends on how much change we can scrounge up, but hooray anyhow FLICKR! url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/pacificcrest/

So it's taken about a week to get around to updating this...sorry bout that. We arrived safely in Christchurch and pretty much conked out for a good twenty hours before getting around to enjoying the city. It was fun, good food, good beer, pretty much all you could ask for plus a beautiful central park/garden and live music pretty much everywhere (we managed to get here right in the middle of their flower festival :o)
We meant to post pictures today but our SD card reader on the laptop has decided to poop out on us, so hopefully we will be finding another way to move pictures around soon.
A few days ago we left the city and headed north to take in the Kaikoura penninsula and Hanmer Springs respectively, nice relaxing times all around .
Currently we are exploring the Mt. Cook area, we found this awesome campsite right at the base of Mt. Sefton, its amazing (and here's where those photos would have come in handy) Its just a set of huge glaciated peaks, like a third of the Mt. Cook park is covered in glaciers and you can get practically on top of them. We've been doing small tracks here and there and around every corner you're just amazed by another crazy sight... I think we'll be here a few more days taking it all in.
After that the plan is to head south/east to the coast .... talk to you then!
peace and love,
Ev and Nicole