Pascal in New Zealand

And now, for something completely different ....

Those of you who know Pascal -- and yes, I know you folks do read my blog, even if you won't leave me any comments! -- anyway, you probably know that he's spending half of his junior year at the University of Melbourne. A bunch of his fellow dormies are from New Zealand, and he's just finished touring that country with them during his term break.

Whenever he found a cyber cafe, he sent Dean and Francine vivid emails describing his experiences. He copied me in on some of them ... just because he knew that I'd gnash my teeth with envy as I read each one! And I did!

I thought I'd give you a few excerpts -- dashed off quickly, but highly descriptive, and quite expressive of his excitement -- and also three of his photos.


It was amazing! We had about an hour hike to get up there... and get this, it was in a RAINFOREST! yes... that's right... you hike through a rainforest to get to a glacier! Crazy! So you go from being really warm to freeeezing! Once we got on the glacier we threw on some crampons and got hiking. It was quite the experience. Quite slow because our guide had to constantly carve steps out for us with her pick axe. It was really incredible to be on there though. Took way too many pictures! Anyways... that was amazing fun. And afterwards we hopped into our car (now named Misty due to her light complexion) and took off for what turned out to be quite the drive.

While we were en route we decided... why not just drive for most of the night and get as close to Milford Sound as possible? So we did. After a brief dinner in a one-cafe-restaurant-town in the middle of no where we drove... and drove... and drove. It was really nice actually. Two people would sleep in the back seat and two would drive and navigate. We almost hit about 5-6 animals along the way... but I don't think we actually DID hit any. Lots of possums and rabbits. So we ended up driving till about 1:45 AM and pulled off into a little roadside campground where we tied up our tent (because when we borrowed it the person forgot to give us the poles) and got to sleep. Two slept in the tent and two in the car. Hahaha... the tent actually worked just fine and we were up and goin in the morning. It only took us another 45 minutes to get to Milford Sound which was an absolutely breath-taking drive! The fjordlands were INCREDIBLE! Maaaaassive mountains all around and crazy waterfalls all over! Aw man... could not stop Ooooing and Ahhhhing. Milford sound is a TINY little town that doesn't even have a grocery store! We walked around town when we got there and then ended up just hanging out at our hostel after a failed attempt at a hike... because it was pouring rain...

Ok... so my time is out on the internet... more soon!

And five days later.....

My plan was to stay in Dunedin until Monday and then bus back, because the other guys had a flight back to Melbourne on Sunday morning... but once again, no availabilities... so I booked a place in Christchurch and just drove back with the boys. It was a nice drive back... stopped to play frisbee along the highway while watching the sun set which was absolutely amazing! The boys dropped me off at my hostel in Christchurch before spending the night at the airport and leaving very early the next morning back to Melbourne. My hostel is nice. It's really nice to just be able to relax and not be on the go all the time. Yesterday I slept in and then walked over to a Sunday market outside. I had a great crepe there (nutella of course) and then decided to check out the botanical gardens. Wow! It was sooo nice! It has a big creek running through it and people rent out kayaks and canoes and there are even those gondola things like in Venice! So I just grabbed a bench by the creek, whipped out my new Nick Hornby book called A Long Way Down (which is very good so far), listened to some tunes and had a GREAT time. It was just perfect! I can't describe to you how happy I was at that moment with the smiling kayakers and the beautiful scenery. Hahaha... it was hilarious, a whole gondola full of Japanese tourists floated by and one of the old ladies waved at me... so naturally I waved back, and one of the other old ladies thought that I was waving at her so she waved and I waved back and then another waved... eventually I got a wave from the entire gondola! Hahahhaha... ah such good times.

He's crazy of course, but we should all be so lucky to be so crazy!! Pascal, you idiot, if you read this blog, send me more mail!!