Week 3, Road Trip Week 1

 We're few days into the road trip and here's some basic stats:

Amazing Sunrises (that we've woken up for):3

Amazing Sunsets: 2

Kilometers traveled: Roughly 500

Times our car has gotten stuck: 2

Hail storms the size of Marbles: 1

Amount we've gone over budget: roughly 750 New Zealand Dollars

Lamb Placentas: 1

Times Mindy and Kristen have said the phrase "Oh my god! baby lambs!": 5,012,371

Ok, now that the stats are out there, here's the context. The road trip started out relatively to plan for a group of 21-22 year old kids. We only left 3-4 hours late and only got shafted with a surprise 750 dollar mandatory insurance policy that more than doubled our entire budget for the trip. Despite the ridiculousness of entire intercourse (I'll once again spare unneeded details), we soon overcame indignation and shock and loving dubbed our slightly-more-expensive-than-anticipated van “Fey”. A night of long driving later, we ended up at a lake close to Te Anu in Fiordland, made rice and beans, and decided to call it a night. Per usual, Maggie and Timbo Braved the elements- in this case rain and wind- outside, while the girls and I settled down to a scintillating night of pillow talk. The next morning- before getting Fey stuck for the first time- we were greeted with the first of what has turned out to be many spectacular waterside sunrises.

Fey plowing through a delicious baby lambs.

We spent the ensuing day working our way south through back country roads, exploring a cool condemned bridge and stopping at  a couple of lakes, all while forcing our way through giant herds of sheep that clogged the roads much like Cholesterol in Bill Swerski's arteries (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXhEPxXyhW0&feature=related). 

How low can you go!

We eventually ended up landing at a place called Monkey Island that had the most ridiculously high winds. We took turns leaning off of rocks and seeing how far we could lean over with the wind holding us up [Addendum: I would include pictures, but their are better ones at a later time]. After that we all grabbed our cameras and orchestrated a sunset photo session with Monkey Island. 

The next morning we decided to ignore the fact that we were about as far south as you could go without being in Antartica and sprint through the waves to Monkey Island. Once there Mother Nature decided to express her disaproval by pelting us with a flash hail storm. Hail the size of marbles forced us to take cover and we sat laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation while shivering our asses off.

Our tracks out of Bluff, the 2nd most Southern City in the world. I loved that dog.

We drove along the coastline for a while, eating lunch in Bluff, before setting up camp in Curio Bay. The highlights of Curio Bay occurred the next morning as we spent sunrise scoping out the penguins and petrified forests. 

Over the next couple days we made our way up the coast to Dunedin, keeping the driving pretty minimal and making tons of pit stops.  The most memorable of which was Mindy's first attempt to befriend a newborn lamb. Since it's becoming spring, pregnant sheep are popping babies out left and right and Kristen and Mindy were going gaga for what they lovingly called "baby lambs". After being couped up in the car for a couple hours and watching all of these adorable creatures testing out their new legs, we decided to ford a water ditch and find a lamb for Mindy to pet. After hopping the barbed wire fence, Mindy took off running into a herd of lambs and their mothers. She disappeared in the bushes for a couple seconds before coming back screaming because she realized the lamb she was chasing had literally just been born. It was bloody, still had an umbilical cord attached and, as we shortly realized, we were standing right next to its placenta. After we calmed our stomachs, we coaxed Mindy into leaving the lambs alone- for a while- and went back to Fey.

Mindy, finally finding a baby lamb who likes her.

The rest of our time has been filled with visits to hippie art galleries and scenic Lighthouses, buying home made relish from an 85 year old kiwi couple named Wilma and Clive, and taking a cool hike during which Mindy finally got to touch her first "baby lamb".

Right now I'm enjoying the relative comfort of a Dunedin Starbucks while catching up on internet and preparing this post. We're about to cross back through the country up through Wanaka and to the west coast. Once there, we'll hit up some glaciers, soak up some warmer weather and do a 2 day hike up to Hospital Flats were we can lounge in some toasty hot springs.