Happy Birthday Steamroller!

Hokitika was great, small, not too cold, and just what I was looking for. We went in search of a 'carve your own jade' workshop. We found one, and decided to stay or two days, so we headed off to Greymouth for a brewery tour of our favorite beer (Montieth's). We got a cool tour, learned all about the beer, and then got to sample every flavor at the end too! WOW! Afterwards we checked out the Hokitika Gorge, with it's perfectly blue water (my pictures don't do it justice at all) and not so perfect sand flys.

After leaving Hokitika, we drove south towards Queenstown, at the southern end of the South Island. We stopped off at the Fox Glacier and Franz Joseph Glaciers, doing a nice little walk in the area and got to touch the glacier! We then hiked out to Lake Matheson, bringing lots of food with us to make Vietnamese Rice rolls and cooked lunch sitting next to the lake and looking at Mt Cook and Mt. Tasman. So beautiful, peaceful, and a great picnic spot. We spent the night near the glacier in a deserted picnic spot, waking up to a van load of asian tourists and an ice cream truck being used for it's generator. The ice cream trucks owner came eover to talk to us, seeing that we slept in the car and wanted to know how we configure ourselves, as he sells the miniwagons privately and thought it was funny that we could fit our lives inside. We think it's pretty funny too!

Queenstown is a town mainly comprised of tourists, adrenaline activities, high prices and lots of souvenier shops. Sweet! (Can you sense the sarcasm?!)
Anyways, we got into town and decided to find a hostel so we could spend my birthday night in the tent rather than the car makeshift bed we have concocted. My birthday was great, including us going to something called the canyon swing, out to dinner at a real restaurant, donating beads to tzedakah organization and drinking our favorite NZ beer.
The canyon swing is similar to a bungy jump, except instead of being on a latex rubber band that bounces, it's like a gigantic schoolyard swing suspended 109 meters above a cayon river, next to rock cliffs, and in the open wind. First you jump, are thrown, scoot a chair off or flip from the platform, freefall for 50 meters and then are swung another 200 meters in an arc from a full body harness. Because it was my birthday, they blindfolded me, hooked me to the swing, suspended me upside down (so, head first into the canyon, with my feet wrapped around the rope attaching my harness to the swing, hands above my head towards the ground) and then, at the same times, the following happened:
I realized I might cry out of shear fear
The blindfold was taken off
The release cord was pulled
I began my fall
I scream, louder than I beleive any child who drops their ice cream, smacks their head against the ground, or falls face first into something. I scream so loud, for so long, it makes me 'screamer of the day' according to the guys who put the blindfold on
oh, and I remember that it's my birthday, I have a moustache drawn on my face, and the marker is permanent. Sweet!

To say the very least, the canyon swing was one of the most exhilaratingly horrifying things I beleive I have ever engaged in. The swing was so beautiful, with the river below me a crystal robin's egg blue color, and the rock cliff faces were also so interestingly carved by the water from years ago. Then again, because it was my birthday, I got a free jump, so I attempted a back flip (to no avail, but oh well) and it was still as scary and as fun as the first time. What an adrenaline rush!

Dinner was great, although being at a proper restaurant was a little weird. We ate, we drank, and we tried to score some cake for free (no dice) and walked back to our cold, Monteith's Radler (ou new favorite brew) chilling in the fridge. Since we haven't had a fridge in the car (obviously..?) we realize how much we've taken our previous usual access to a fridge and how wonderful an apparatus it really is. Oh traveling, how you make me understand the small tihngs in life that I forget when I am in the "real world".

We've left Queenstown (yes!) after eating lunch the next day and headed towards Timaru, on the east coast. It was really the next big town we could find before Christchurch, which is where we are staying until we fly to Australia on the 20th.
Timaru is a... gross town. It smells like rotting beer and a sponge that's far overdue all the time, nothing is open (although i did by a cool scarf), so after spending the night there (which was another nice spot, near the beach, with a barbeque pit outside!) we headed out the next day, driving up to christchurch.

I've updated the photos, so check out all the stuff we've been up to for the last month or so!

Hope all is well with everyone at home. Is there snow yet?