Adventures - an appropriate word for current experiences

Hello friends. If we can call you friends since you are clearly uninterested in sharing your comments with us lonely travellers...

Anyways. A recap of happenings since Wellington:
- We said goodbye to Joel and took the most expensive ferry trip of my life (and the most expensive thing we did in NZ) down to south island. $215. In the process we met a car full of ex-rentals staff: David, Tim, and Digby. They had Alex with them (who is Amy's ex-roommate). Dave and Tim were on their way to buying a van, and about to do the same thing Jon and I were already doing. They were going to meet up with us in Nelson, but our phone lost Dave's number. So we just parted ways...

-Jon and I were sick of paying lots of money for housing, so when we got to Nelson, we just parked in a secret-looking place, and stayed the night in our car. Despite a security officer clearly driving past our car, we had no trouble with the law. I guess they don't really follow up on those threatening-looking signs that read: "No camping or overnight parking." We had bought a thin layer of foam from "The Warehouse" to sleep on as a mattress (already being decked out with a Duvet and several pillows, thanks to our lack of loyalty to The Park), but the comfort level in the car was not overwhelming. I managed to bruise my hip bones. I think I'm too heavy for my own skin...

- After Nelson, we went North to Motueka. The main attraction here, as we found out, is a 4-5 day backpacking hike called the Abel Tasman. Though it looks like a really popular attraction, we got all excited about having found the place on a whim. We hiked for a couple of hours in one direction and then turned around and walked back. What a beautiful hike, by the way. This place is a National Park right on the ocean and the ocean views were spectacular.

- Having gone about as north as it gets on the South Island, we headed south. We stayed the night at a little "holiday park"(which is what they call a place where you can pay to park your vehicle and sleep in it, but also to have access to toilets and a kitchen) in Tapawera. This place was awesome. You could tell that the economy of the entire town (of 400 people) was being fueled by the fact that this holiday park was attracting people. We slept next door to a very cool horse, a pony and a wild razorback pig being kept as a pet. And we got to touch all of them because Jon is awesome and makes friends with people. Yes, we fed and petted a wild boar. Oh, and if you scratched his tummy, he fell over. Also, his name was spider pig. The horse was cool cuz she would get impatient with us trying to feed her grass, so she would tear fronds off of the palm tree and chew them. Heh.

- South again we drove, to Westport, where the main attraction was seals, which are apparently aggressive, and we only got to see from the cliffs far above. We passed a place that has rocks shaped like stacks of pancakes, and watched the waves spray out of a blowhole in the cliffs. That night we slept in a campground at Lake Mahinapua. We heard of this place from the guy that let us pet his pig. Six dollars for a place to stay is quite a deal here. That's how we got privvy to the free and very cheap campgrounds owned by the Department of Conservation. SWEET.

- Now we are in Franz Josef, where the Glaciers are just a 30 minute drive away. These people are ripping us off. We are staying in a Hostel for $21 a night each. LAME. Oh and also, today is the first day it has rained on us in the South island. We had been very lucky, but we are in for a week or so of some bad weather. Boo.

So far the $60 a day thing has been working well. We have been spending about that much a day, saving very little, but still able to buy food and gas. Yay! It is possible!

Jalissa