Ian and Nathan's Travels, Part 1!!!!1!

Day 1: Christchurch

In case you're wondering what happened to the other two people writing the blog, here we are (Nathan (Hall-Snyder) and Ian)!

This is Ian

This is Nathan (HS, not Golshan)

We've been traveling separately from the others and have our own set of adventures to report and our own pictures of rain. Since we've had limited internet access thus far, we'll be putting up pictures of our trip in 3-4 installments - this is the first.

This is a prison cell at the Jailhouse Hostel. You're screwed if there's a fire.

Though we all arrived on the same day, Ian and I stayed at a different hostel the first night. Because of the recent earthquake, accomodation in Christchurch is insanely difficult to find. The majority of the Central Business District (read: most of the city) is closed off for seismic inspection, demolition, and reconstruction. As the others mentioned, the city still has a post-apocalyptic feel to it - even the roads have asphalt scars where the earth moved during the quake.

Day 2 - Rain
The next morning, we picked up our rental car (a manual toaster-on-wheels), bought some tea, and tent, and some Steinlager Pure, and headed into the mountains and rain for some camping!

Our trusty Diahatsu, stuck in mud not six hours after we rented it. Fortunately Ian managed to push the car out while I turned the  clutch into a consistency not unlike the mud in which we were stuck.

The first night we camped by a lake near Arthur Pass - there had been so much rain that there wasn't much of a boundary between the lake and the grass - we set up camp right on the edge of the newly formed swamp, amid continuous wind and rain. We were about to cook our dinner (linguine with clams mussels) inside the car, but Ian disappeared into a thicket and returned with a flat section of...tree, which worked wonderfully as a table.

Ian, in his own words: "Lifting heavy things makes me happy, ok?"

Look mom, it's a shelter!

Day 3 - Rain

The second day we spent encouraging flooring our little rental car over Arthur Pass. Since even the local Keas seemed cold and unhappy, we decided against trying to hike any of the local peaks in the driving rain/snow, and continued West to Greymouth.

Wet and cold Kea is very wet and cold.

Don't look up. So much for the New Zealand Beach Vacation...

Ian looks forward to hiking in snow and rain in Arthur's Pass!

At this point, we were pretty sick of rain - aside from being cold and wet, it was a cruel reminder of the rain that stopped the solar car race weeks earlier. So we hunted around for a bit of internet, found a cafe, bought some drinks, and checked out the weather. At this point, Ian started musing about a "New Zealand beach vacation," and suggested that we do the Abel Tasman track, a 50 km hiking trek through the (sunny!) Abel Tasman National Park. Since that area looked the dryest of all our options, we booked several campsites and headed North for the track.

That night, we stopped at the trip's strangest camping spot - a pizzeria/campsite/hotel/bar/swamp in the middle of nowwhere, owned by a German woman. We paid her a small amount to camp on the lawn, and cooked backpacker's boulliabaise (sp?). In the morning, we were woken up by thunder, so we finished our soggy bread, threw everything into the car and got moving just as the heavy rain hit.