25/03/09

Woke up at about half 10 and the sun was beating down on the camper, it was really nice wake up in the warmth for once, completely unexpected as I had been told that the weather was bitter on the South Island. We swung the camper around and tried to empty the waste water but with little success as we were on such a huge slope. Rich offered to do the driving for the day as he felt he had done b***** all yesterday. We drove the scenic route all the way to Nelson stopping off at a lookout on the way. The entire area was beautiful, vast backdrops and bright turquoise water. We all needed the loo when we arrived at the lookout and attempted to go in the public toilet, the thing was swarming with wasps so I didn't dare go inside, I took my chances in the bush and only encountered a few of the b******s. Helen and Coops had to use the camper. We arrived in Nelson and as I was DJ I had managed to complete a days drive without listening to a single Oasis track for the first time since we'd had the camper. I went in to the Info Site and asked a few questions about the national parks and what to do while the others sat in the van.

We went around Woolworths to get a 5 day shop, I ended up eating 3 apricot slices and a carrot because they were on special, then we drove to the car-park we had been instructed to park at. Everyone else seemed in a lazy mood and I was getting bored fast. I went for a shower in the public showers down the road but forgot my wallet. I only had a 20c in my pocket which was luckily enough to get through to use the toilet. I went in and cheeckily used the shower at the same time, although the water was freezing cold.

When I got back everyone else was still in a lazy mood and I decided to go for a walk. I walked along the river side for about half an hour and came across a huge hill at the back of Nelson where a guy from NZ guided me to the top telling me how he runs it every day, it was seriously steep. When we got to the top there was a spike pointing down to a plaque on the floor, turns out its the geographical centre of NZ. I stayed up the top of the hill chatting to other backpackers for an hour or two, waiting for the sun to set. Every now and then a group of people would show up on mountain bikes at the top looking completely shattered, then I heard some heavy footsteps and round the corner was this fat kid jogging along. He got to the top and sat down, he actually looked like he was going to die, sweat was pouring from his face, he couldn't breath properly and he was the colour of beetroot. I got bored waiting for the sun to set and walked back along the river. When I got back I had to drive the girls to the loo so they could empty the camper toilet, then I went to bed at about half 8 because I was shattered.

26/03/09

We woke up and our first action was to all go to the public showers. There was only one shower in the blokes, Pat went first while I stayed in bed reading, enjoying the final moments of a bed to myself. When Pat got back he told us that there was a queue so Rich and I went over to queue up. Rich managed to sweet talk the guy ahead of him in the queue in to letting him go first somehow and I ended up having to wait for both of them. In this time a parking attendant had been round a put chalk markings on the tyres, so I went and rubbed them off, forgetting that she'd probably remember marking a huge 6 berth camper. The guy that went in after Rich took forever, it was 45 minutes later that I finally got a chance to shower and we had to buy a parking ticket to cover it. Pat and Rich went for hair cuts and bumped in to Ben from Sydney on the way, random.

The girls and I went to wash the sheets at the laundry out of town. We expected the place to be fairly big, but it consisted of 2 washers and a dryer. We checked out the boats while and played 20 questions while waiting for the washing to finish, then went and picked the guys up from the car park, an hour and a half late.

We drove out to Rabbit Island where we spent the afternoon laying on the beach checking out the horses. Burns went nuts and couldn't lay still. He ended up bringing back loads of different sections of crabs and rebuilding them in front of us. His finale was to find a washed up Penguin, it stank.

We drove on towards Abel Tasman in the evening and made good progress. We decided to go further and then come back to do it at a later date. The roads soon changed as we approached the mountains and I couldn't be arsed with taking them slow to prevent the G Force in the back. Everything was going all over the place, books were falling off shelves, bottles of water that started at one end of the camper ended up at the other. We arrived at a really nice free camp site just before dark near some springs, there was an awesome river nearby with a fallen tree in the middle, so I waded out and sat there all evening.

Helen needed the toilet after another mild curry so I gave her directions to find it and handed her a torch. She came back laughing her head off and confessed to s***ting in a bush. She couldn't find it and was coming back to ask where it was but just really had to go. Later in the night I needed to go so I showed her where it was, she had no hope of finding it. She showed me where she had gone for hers, I was in a small hedgerow right in the open. The lights went dead later so we couldn't do anything, Coops and I decided to watch Spiderman 2.

27/03/09

It was freezing when we woke up, the sun had risen but it wasn't shining on the van, so we lay there under the covers for as long as possible. We finally got up and Burns drove us towards the Springs a few minutes down the road. We actually spent longer doing this walk that the sign post recommended. There were loads of snippets of information on signs dotted all throughout the walk, I have no idea why I felt the need to read every single one, they were all about the regeneration of the trees in the area, seriously boring stuff. One interesting one was the fact that the waters we were looking at were the second clearest waters in the world, second only to that found in Antarctica.

It was now about 11 and the Sun was out again, although my feet still hadn't thawed properly from the morning. We jumped back in the van and Burns drove us back over the mountain range. We arrived in a place called Marahua a few hours later after a very interesting drive where Helen took it upon herself to constantly stare at Coops and I, we tried to keep her amused but she seems to have the attention span of a 2 year old, so after 2 rounds of I-Spy shes straight back at it again, laughing away to herself.

The weather was so nice that we thought we'd spent the afternoon laying on the beach again. I was feeling particualarly fidgety so after 5 minutes I went to check out the water. As Coops and I approached it we noticed that there were hundreds of Cockles and Shells, an old couple were farming them. As we walked out a little further I saw something under the water, when I poked it it felt squishy, so I picked it up, turns out it was a starfish. A few more paces in to the sea and there were litteraly thousands of them, we couldn't put a foot down without carefully making sure there weren't any under our feet. We found a couple of them sharing a Cockle. We spent ages playing around with them, then Rich found an awesome one that was just chilling out in an empty shell as if it was a lazy boy. On the way back we saw some tiny litty flat fish, I managed to sneak up on one and pick it up by the tail. We got back to the beach and the sand-fly infestation had returned, I decided to go climb a huge tree. And the others went back to the van. When I returned the girls were sitting with their ears pretty much pressed to the window listening in to a couple having a domestic in the camper parked along side us.

We drove off to a town about 30 minutes away because we weren't allowed to park over night without paying. Burns and I got food from the bakery then went and attempted to do the shopping. When the others caught up with us we had actually done a decent job, we had washing powder, brillo-pads, milk and butter, everything we needed. They soon led us towards the 69 cent muffins and $1 twin pack of snickers. We drove towards a camp site we had been told about where you only have to pay $5 per vehicle, which we did as we arrived, I'm 100% sure no one else on the site paid for the privelege.

The lads and I enjoyed a game of frisbee and we relaxed in the evening playing Billionaire and then the name-game whilst Pat cooked us a Carbonara. The lights went dead so Coops and I watched A Beautiful Mind and then went to bed.