Hokitiki

I heard this on the radio this morning:
A mom and her kids are driving to school and from the car in front of them flies a huge dildo - it hits the windshield with a 'thonk' and then bounces off. Mom, not wanting to have to explain says, 'don't worry, that was just an insect'. And the little boy from the back responds 'Wow, can't believe that it could fly with a dick that big!"


I drove today from Motueke to Hikitiki which is on the west coast. It took pretty much all day, but the drive was amazing. It was definitely Lord of the Rings scenery. Huge, beautiful mountain ranges that plummeted down to valleys with wide, dark rivers running through them. Absoulutely amazing. It makes you feel pretty insignificant driving among such giants. I can't remember if I told you but the New Zealand PM during the depression, commissioned the planting of a zillion trees to generate work. There were about 170 varieties including the California Redwood, Austrailian Eucalyptus and some sort of Pine (these are just the ones I remember and can identify) anyway the result are these incredible hills with rows of trees! Logging is big here - I didnt know, but most of the wood goes to China. So you'll have these lush forests along side of a bare patch where they've cut down all the trees. They do, however, wait until the trees are 25 - 30 years old...so at least they're thinking. Almost 90% of NZ used to be covered in this amazing Rainforest type environment and it's really diminished over the last 100 years - to like 30% or something. I saw a topo map in the Te Papa museum in Wellington, it was pretty significant :(

I haven't really talked to you about the food here b/c its' kinda unremarkable. But what is remarkable is the variety. Even in a small, one street town, there will definitely be Thai & Indian, sometimes 2 of one kind! In the bigger towns/cities there is even more variety w/ Moroccan/Algerian, Ethiopian, Chinese, Japanese, you name it! So whatever I'm craving, I can usually find something. It's more expensive than I thought - they call appetizers, entrees and then 'dinners' are bigger plates. Everyone here eats w/ a fork and knife, no matter what is ont he plate - sandwiches, dinner roll, you name it. So here I go to pick up a sandwich, when everyone around me is clanking their silverware...it's all very civilized :)

So, I'm off to the glacier -Franz Josef. I'm thinking about splurging and taking a fixed wing flight over the glaciers and Mt. Cook. Everyone says thats the best way to see the glaciers - other than climbing over them which I'm not sure if I'm up to, but I'll let you know.

I'm still trying to figure out how to put pictures up on this blog, well I haven't tried that hard, but someone's working on a 1pg summary on how to do it -