Better late than never...

So it's been almost a month now since I've blogged since I am a terrible person, but life gets in the way (lack of internet while traveling, immediately having 4 papers due when I got back to school).  So now that I am done with all that I can catch the world up on all the rest of my glorious travels.  Now if only I could remember what came after the glacier....

For starters, we spent the next morning at Lake Matheson for the b-e-a-u-tiful sunrise. That's all you really need to know: it was gorgeous.  We headed to Wanaka and Queenstown next, both were on the shores of lakes and really pretty, but Queenstown was basically spend all your money or don't do much of anything.  On the way there though we stopped at the blue pools.  The glacier runoff comes through here and the deeper and more still the water the bluer it looks from all the mica in the glaciers, so we walked down and mother and I, being very hardcore went wading in the glacier runoff stream. It was...impressively cold.  At first it felt fine, just like any other cold water, but then it started to burn, and that was somewhat less fun.  I couldn't make it to the point where my feet just went numb, but putting my socks back on has never felt so good.  Except for a couple nights ago when I had been walking back and forth to the laundry room barefoot in the freezing rain and finally got to put on toasty dryer socks, which was of course pure glory.

After freezing our feet off and scary prawns with their heads still on (one fear I had to conquer, but only for one meal) we headed to Lake Tekepo.  It's one of the best places for star gazing in the world and originally set up by UPenn as a Southern Hemisphere base.  Mom and I did a night sky tour that was super cool, the highlight being seeing Saturn through the telescope in the picture that made it look like less of a star and more exactly how you picture Saturn.  Rings and all, it perfectly matched the glow in the dark Saturn sticker still on my bedroom ceiling back home.  We also saw some nebulae (apparently the plural of nebula, so google chrome tells me) and star babies and really old stars and asked lots of questions and it was all quite dandy.

 Next we headed to Kaikoura and there was lots of adorable seal action, not to mention amazing Indonesian food (currently googling [side-side note, why doesn't google think googling is a word?] good Indonesian places in Wellington because I'm in love with it now) and of course my rockin' 21st birthday.

Seriously though, baby seals? enough said, if you need more go check out the video on facebook. They are more adorable than you'd think. like puppies that are really good swimmers, or fur covered 4 year olds. Same dif.

The fabulous Flett family adventures continued (and yes mother, you are included in the Flett family even if you are a Rasch, best accept it at this point) in Blenheim and we found ourselves back in wine country.  Though to be fair it seems much of New Zealand is wine country.  We spent a day recuperating from awful Chinese food and doing a couple wine tastings, but sadly then the rents had to head back to Welly to catch their flights back to the motherland.
Oddly, even being a third of the globe away, Tennessee wasn't the only one with gale force wind and crazy weather attacking our lives that day, the parentals flights were delayed after a baggage cart was thrown into the engine...while they were on it. Not cool Wellington, not cool.  I however was still in Blenheim doing a wine tasting tour with some Canadians I had met, and I swear after 36 hours with those girls I was starting to talk like them. Not ok.

I went off on my own to treck across Abel Tasman national park since we had to miss it for rain on the way there.  It actually worked out wonderfully, I spent the last few days of my vacation with weather that got better and better every single day I was out there and ended up walking about 2/3 of the track.

It got warm enough I even managed to go swimming on my last day, though don't get me wrong I got the wind knocked out of me a little when I first dove under water, and very much eaten alive by sand flies whenever I was by the water, but the track was beautiful and I ended up running into some friends going to school on the South Island and one of the Canadian girls.  Eventually however it was time to head back home, where I have been since back in the routine of classes and papers and what not, but vair happy to be back home.  Though I must say, coming back felt a little like a dream with in a dream I still needed to wake up from.  Home but not all the way home.

Split Apple Rock