babablahblog: If Hamish ever asks you if you want to go eel hunting...just say no.

Hello hello. Well its been quite some time...well rather months since I've attempted to write about our journeys so here it goes, much of it in abbreviated form. Autumn in NZ is now apon us and we have been on the road for almost three weeks since leaving o'le Picton. Life couldn't be better.

A typical day goes as follows:

We get up around sunrise. Eat. Discuss. Drive, stop and explore. Find camp. Eat. Sleep.

While tramping life is even simpler because the track ahead is already laid out.

We have no worries living a rather simplistic life, and in all honesty, if something is bothersome we tend just not to do it. Beyond the obvious experiences of traveling; exploring, seeing, meeting ect. there is an added bonus in the cadence in our livestyle. Our live's are basically dictated by the day. We wake up around sunrise, and go to sleep an hour or so after dark. There is never in a rush, there's always time for reading, exploring and stopping. We are also all in pretty darn good shape. Hiking, climbing and surfing, and unfortunatly along with a severly reduced calorie diet has made us pretty darn trim (not to say im proud or anything...but i fit into a size small pant!). Its actually quite the healthy lifestyle.The only drawback is that we are easily sidetracked. When we left Picton, I would have assumed we would have been at Stewart Island already, but we havent even made it to the southern alps yet. I also definatly haven't been as cleanly as even I would like. Hot showers are hard to come by, but theres always a stream to rinse up in. But thats ok, we have done so much and so little since we left, it couldnt be better.

A little run down of things we have done so far in short (pictures will better describe this). We left Picton and to say goodbye to the sounds we explored their far reached by travelling and hanging aroudn the French Pass and the Tennyson Inlet. Booked the Abel Tasman great walk...also strangely known as the AT, and hiked for 7 days taking the inland track back to our car instead of the ferry. Hung out and ran some errands in Nelson (a.k.a. stuffing our faces with BK), and headed of to Golden Bay and the Fairwell spit. Spent a very relaxing few days camping in the middle of nowhere on the beach, then checked out a hippy climbing commune, and headed for the west coast town of Westport.

Currently, we are camping somewhere in between Lewis Pass and the east coast bound for Christchurch. Just finished dinner, rice and carrots, and just came to the alarming conclusion that my sleeping pad has a hole in it. We actually wern't even planning to go to Christchuch untill two days ago, the same day I might add where we drove four hours to finally get to the West coast. We woke up planning to go to Barrytown to forge knives(killer), found out there was a folk festivile in C-church, packed our belongings, and started driving right back across the country to get their. We have made it work out so we can stop at castle hill (best climbing in the world) on the way back to the west coast and still make knives on next friday. This is pretty much how we have been travelling so far we just do the do.We have seen so many amazing little pockets of NZ that we never would have come across if we weren't doing things on a whim.

At the time we left, Picton was slowing on down. Friends were leaving and the ussually busy town in the summer was burning out. I enjoyed my last weeks building an ice cream shop from the ground up, but my ambitions trancend the profession scooper world. (side note: there was also a roving gang of teenagers in town that were trying to beat me up) So with the love affair with Picton slowly coming to a halt we just needed to leave and get on with what we are really here to do, travel.

Thats pretty much the extent of my existance right now. We still have some major priorities for the trip. Stewart Island and Milford Sound are at the top of the list, but right now we just are really enjoying the crisp autumn air on the road. Starting to really get sometime to think about what I want to do when I get back...which is nice.

I heard things are going better back home. Mainly less snow and more sun, which is always good. I NJ actually quite abit and am pretty jealous I missed out on the Montclair Wilco concert.

I hope everybody had a splendid easter, I miss you all! I hope this gives a sorta broad perspective of whats been happening for the past month or so, I'll try to actually update more frequently so I won't have to generalize things so much. Thanks for reading!

Edit: We made it to the festival. Really liking Christchurch. Saw a bunch of amazing folk blues bands. Jazz on tap for tommorrow!