Back in ten

Yeah so anyway these posts are getting shorter and shorter and less interesting and for that I can only apologise. New Zealand struck upon this wonderful idea of a slow balanced pace of life and of necessity that makes things like internet cafes harder to find and more expensive. Also the pace of life is insiduous and its all that one can do to sit in a campsite all week waiting for the wind to die down and clean up the beach break or cruise surf highway 45 for something else.

Today I am in Wellington, the Southern most tip of the North Island, awaiting a ferry at ridiculous o'clock to the South Island. The plan is to walk the Abel Tasman track which takes about 4 nights and follows the coast of a peninsula in the Tasman sea. It is pretty popular so I had to pre-book, missing out on the preferred Milford Sound in the South. Kitty is going to get the cold shoulder for a few days since I then plan to head South either by bus or hitching and there aren't many waves down there. With any luck there will be a reunion in time to surf Kaikoura.

Sadly (depending on who you are and your expectations for my survival) I didn't get to jump out of a plane for reasons of expense and weather. On Sunday my compadre Stefan and I took on the Tongariro Crossing through many prominent filming sights (Mount Doom, Emyn Muil, Mordor). Sadly visibility was good only for making the experience cold, wet, low in visibilty and pretty eerie. Occasionally the fast moving fog would illuminate the scenary or our shoes but we spent most of the time staring blankly from one guidance post to another so that we entirely missed the volcanoe.

Hopefully I will have better luck down south which is said to be an entirely different experience to the North. I leave you with the wise words of a dairy farmer I met in the pub. Don't Panic, you shoot the ones that Panic.