Goodbye New Zealand.. Helllooo Fiji

Upon leaving the Haymans' farm, we drove to the gorgeous village of Mount Cook for an overnight hike up to Meuller Hut. During the day slabs of ice launched off of the surrounding cliffs, giving us a nice avalanche show every couple of hours. In one instance, I was staring intently at an overhanging patch that had some direct sunlight and pointed it out to the others. "I'm just waiting for that patch to go... whooaaa there it goes!" And thus I found out about my psychic abilities. We watched the alpenglow slip slowly from the broad face of Mt. Cook, New Zealand's tallest peak, and sipped wine from the deck. A spectacular sunrise followed the next morning. On the hike out, I wondered out loud if we were going to see a Kea, a New Zealand mountain parrot, on this trip. One subsequently glided overhead and further proved my clairvoyant abilities.

In 3 days or so we sped up the South Island east coast, hopped on the Interislander ferry, and made it up to Auckland in the far north. During this period we went deep-sea fishing in Kaikoura, caught a rugby match in Wellington in which my Wellington Hurricanes 10 dollar beach towel finally made it to its homeland, and once again got rained out of the Taupo area, canceling our hike through the volcanos of Tongairiro National Park.

In Auckland we stayed with Alex and Jenny, our hosts from the start of our trip. They gave us the code to their beach house in Mangawhai heads and we picked up Tobey and Riley who happened to be on Easter break and hour away from there. In a week that was supposed to be nothing but rain, we got blue sunny skies for our day on the beach boogy boarding in the same place that we spent our first full day in New Zealand two and a half months earlier. A fitting end to the trip, and this time we did not come out so sunburned.

We celebrated my 20th birthday thursday in Auckland, eating dinner by the harbour and spending a night downtown. We sold our faithful but sometimes cranky vehicle, Big Jolly, and flew out the next monday for a 6 day "layover" in Fiji. Bittersweet would be a fitting word to use. I think we will all be back to the beautiful little country of New Zealand.