South Island

Well i'm here on the south island and the weather was great today. I made a bit of a blunder today though, i ended up in Nelson, paying a whole heck of a lot for a room, and realized today that I have to leave early, and i am basically now backtracking.

So basically i wasted today and it was expensive and because i arrived in the late afternoon on a saturday everything was closed. So that has been a bit discouraging. But i think i needed to catch up on sleep and having a double bed will make it easier.

I haven't been up to a whole lot today but i went and did my first grocery shop, i bought stuff to make sandwhiches fort my bus trip tomorrow. The grocery stores here are a bit different, especially the cheese section, they have so many different cheeses and not much cheddar. A lot of specialty cheeses, like feta with all sorts of variations like pesto feta, or berry feta or whatever, same with camembert. They also have a lot of like organic stuff and all sorts of health type foods. They also have fanta here (which I love) like they do in Europe.

The bus trip should be my last before i join the magic bus tour, which will be nice because my transport is already paid for. I have a few more arrangements to make before that though.

Anyways i can't post pics here, so i won't be able to settle any debates, but maybe at my next stop.

And if it's derek asking about Papua New Guinea.. all I have to say is.. no comment.. why don't you worry about your own travel plans first...

Windy Wellington

I'm in Wellington after an 11 hour bus ride. The one thing that was weird was the buses had seatbelts, but only kids under 14 had to wear them. The countryside here is really beautiful and though parts of it reminded me of Canada it's much more hilly and there's so much more vegetation everywhere. We also passed by an area with 3 volcanoes, and apparently one of them went off only a few years ago in 1996.The bus driver gave some commentary on most of the places we passed through which was nice and then dropped the backpackers off at the different hostels.

I'm going to see Te Papa which is the big new modern museum here. It's supposed to be really great and it's free. The weather isn't great here right now i think it may be raining outside, and its definately windy. The city is in a valley right by the ocean so it is known in New Zealand as the windy city.

I'll try and post more pics at a later.

Thats all for now

Wedding!!!

So i went to the wedding of my cousin Diego to his wife Katie. What a good experience, I met some family, and got to participate in such a wonderful event.

It was really a good ceremony, not too long, it was outside and the weather was just perfect. I have attached here a photo of the couple. I didn't get a lot of pictures of the reception, but this is a very nice shortly after they exchanged their vows.



Well i'm not up to a whole lot today other than planning the next part of my adventure. I leave tomorrow for Wellington, then quickly down to the south island.

I'll probably have less access to a computer than here and it'll be more expensive (ie it won't be free) but i'll be updating as often as I can.

Wish me luck!