Never seen drinking cappuccino in Italian restaurants with oriental women

February 10

It took us a while to get ready this morning, and we made a lot of trips back and forth to the car. Ian and Wes went to find an outdoor store to replace our broken tent pole (did I mention I broke a tent pole? It happened on the 7th, and we improvised a two-pole tent at the Holiday Park on the 8th, using rope tied on a water jug on either side of the tent to keep it taut). They found one that would do a repair, but not before 10, when our parking expired and we wanted to be on the road.

So, car finally packed but tent pole still out of action, we sat down for breakfast at the Orange Cafe, on the same block as our hostel. Zach and I ordered the eggs on toast breakfast and discovered that all of the breakfasts come with more toast. This amounts to six slices of toast for each of us, plus a lot of spreads. The eggs were poached in some sort of bowl a little smaller than a slot in a cupcake pan. It made the egg look somewhat like jello in that it resembled no particular organic shape. It was, at least, a very interesting way to serve eggs. It was probably easy to make, too. The most interesting part of breakfast, though, was marmite. "New Zealand's vegetarian spread" was a yeast spread and tasted like it -- to Zach, at least. To me, it tasted like soy sauce and was not something I wanted on my bread or really anything for breakfast. Though Zach didn't like it either, he "could see people liking it on toast". I can't.

The somewhere we're going to is Mt. Cook. We're just cutting a day off our stay in the South Island and moving our ferry back to the 14th (we managed this with nothing more than a phone call. Apparently we can even use the same ticket). Our first stop on the way is the Moeraki Boulders, a collection of very spherical boulders on a beach, and the location of the cover photo of Ian's guide book. Some of the boulders are cracked open like eggs or giant pokeballs. Others are shattered into dozens of pieces, none of which have been noticeably rounded into smaller spheres. I find these shards almost as interesting as the whole boulders.

Our next stop was supposed to be a blue penguin sanctuary, but the only ones we saw were in the gift shop. We did see a seal sunning itself on the rocks in front of us, making it the third one we've been close enough to walk to (assuming none of them were sea lions), the fourth one we've been within 10 meters of, and the umpteenth one we've seen at all. I didn't realize there would be quite so many of them.

I was reading ferociously to get to the end of my book while we were driving, so I didn't go in with the guys when they stopped to get salmon. It was a fishery that we stopped at, and visitors were apparently allowed to feed the fish for free. From what I heard, the fish were just as frenzied as the paid variety. We bought a 2.2kg salmon and got back on the road.

We had to stop for a few sheep on the way

 

We paid our fee at the registration center at Mt. Cook before we went to the tent site. It was $6/person and we payed entirely in coins. Most of them were $1 and $2 coins, though 13 of mine were not :). We had no ill-will for the cashier; we just are not used to having this quantity, or this value, of change.

After the briefest of looks at our camp site, and a briefer debate about whether to upgrade to a cabin to avoid the rain (we chose not to), we headed off to walk a few trails and cook dinner. Barely having started the first trail, Ian wanted to veer off and climb a small hill. I told him I would if he did, and we charged. The charging didn't last long. The vegetation on the hill, combined with its quickly increasing slope, tired us out pretty quickly. We eventually had to crawl up the hill, using our hands on the ground for balance as well as rest. Toward the top, we started running into bushes that had long, but shockingly strong and sharp, leaves. Ian pricked his leg on one, but I only brushed mine enough to infer its piercing power. When we reached the top, we discovered our conquest to be a disappointingly narrow ridge, with barely enough flat ground to rest on and no chance of descending the other side (which was covered in not surprisingly sharp bushes), at the base of which Zach and Wes were contentedly following the trail.

"It makes you appreciate how tall those mountains are," I noted. We took a few minutes to catch our breath and then scurried back down the side we had worked so hard to climb. I enjoyed the exercise. Ian complained of being out of shape and we both want to exercise more while in Auckland. The simple act of buying/hiring ("rent" = "hire") a bike may go a long way toward that goal, given how hilly the city is.

By the time we caught up with Zach and Wes, the trail was almost as high as our ridge had been, but it was much easier to climb. We eventually reached the end of the trail and found it to be much higher, but still easier to climb than our hill. Perhaps there is something to be said for the many long, winding paths that have led us, by car and on foot, around the rippling landscape of New Zealand.

The track led to a glacial lake. We recognized the Grey color of the water right away, but the glacier was much less noticeable. Though it's just on the other side of some mountains from the Fox & Franz Josef glaciers we saw a week ago, this one, covered in rock and barely distinguishable, has a very different look. We notice what look like kayakers down in the lake. We sit looking at the lake and its floating ice for a while (long enough to realize the "kayaks" have motors), and go back down to the carpark to start the next trail... which again leads to the lake. We could have gone all the way down to water's edge this time, but the motorized kayaks were being pulled on shore there and we didn't want force our way through. When we were sick of the bugs and ready to start cooking, we went once again back to the carpark.

The fish, as with much of our food, was Zach's territory; he was the only one of us who had ever filleted one (though he couldn't believe that I, living on a lake, had never done it). He washed it in a stream and started slicing it on a picnic table. Those ubiquitous bugs started into us again, and when Zach was finished he decided we should drive somewhere else before cooking it. This turned out to be a good decision, as there were far fewer bugs on the lookout where we stopped. The fish was great, though we all agreed we could have gotten more of it. This seems to be recurring theme with our meals: they look like a lot of food while we're buying and preparing it, but it never really fills us all up -- the closest we've gotten was the mutton and cous cous dinner.

After wiping down the dishes with a paper towel (we didn't want to use our water jugs for cleaning, given that we were within driving distance of sinks), it was time to set up camp. The campground was already rather populated when we first drove through it, but we managed to find a nice little spot that was surrounded by trees and not close to any other tent. We wanted as much isolation as possible because we were planning on another game of caveman poker and didn't want to keep anyone up. Worried about rain, we had decided earlier to try to use our broken pole. Ian and Wes wrapped it in duct tape and slid it into place. It worked! I'm sure the tent has less structural integrity than it did before, but the pole is at least strong enough to keep the tent and the rain fly taut, which is what we want if there's a downpour. It's not yet 10:00, so we decide to do the poker game. The chips this time are small rocks, straw, and big rocks. We decided after the last game that it would be much more fun to have something heavy for our most valuable chip, so we each picked out five of the largest rocks by the tent. This wasn't enough for Zach, who wandered away toward what looked like a rocky (dry) river bed in search of the biggest rocks he could carry.

At stake this time was doughnuts. We decided to get them for breakfast some morning, and the winner will get some larger number than everyone else -- we were a little vague about the details. The game was fun. Zach especially made use of his 20-chip stones, dramatically lifting them into the center every time he bet them. I won some number of doughnuts, Wes made a midnight Ramen soup (which I spilled my entire share of), and we went to sleep for the night, cramped in the tent that sleeps four very tightly, hoping it didn't rain.