Tough Elements in the South Island

We are at the ends of the Earth here....even though Joe talks more about Middle Earth and there is a whole sector of the tourism industry that is devoted to visiting Lord of the Rings filming locations. The days are long, there is still light in the sky at 10:30 p.m., and sometimes there is a fierce wind that seems to blow up directly from the South Pole- which isn't all that far away.

The elements are severe down here. The weather can change four times in a day. And the weather and scenery change drastically over short distances. When the sun comes out in force, it feels like our skin is sizzling cancerously and when it rains, I still feel cold when I am inside the tent, in my sleeping bag, with a wool hat and sweater on. But we are loving it! The other night we camped at perhaps the most idyllic, remote and beautiful location yet, in the Fiordlands National Park. We went hiking and skinny dipping and the entire time we had to fight against prolific amounts of sand flies that leave giant welts, enormous mosquitoes that flew inside our tent if we opened it for a second, and strange blue inch-worms, that were falling from the trees into our hair and onto our clothes (one time, I picked 4 inch-worms off of Joe at once).

New Zealand has an incredible National Park System. Much of the land, beaches and waterways are protected. And there are walking trails, camp sites, and public bathrooms in every last bit of this country. What land is not public, seems to be sheep grazing land. The stereotype (that Aussies love to joke about) is true. New Zealand is a country of sheep. There are 40 million sheep here and only 4 million New Zealanders. And sheep are cute! Sometimes we get stuck in sheep traffic jams, when they are being herded across country roads.

Joe is hiking one of the country's "Great Walks" right now: the Kepler Track. I walked the route with him for the first few hours but had previously decided to let him do the hard mountain-climbing and inclement weather bits by himself. I will see him in three days when he returns to the Fiordland town of Te Anau, where I am staying. He was ecstatic about it and I think he probably started running up the mountain as soon as I left him. He is strange and very cute like that; running up mountains with a heavy pack on his back is one of his happiest activities.