Playing catch up

So I didn’t do a great job of blogging in New Zealand. Here’s our story.

We flew into Christchurch in mid December, rented a car and checked into this little beach bach in Waikuku New Zealand. We walked the beach, rode some bikes and adjusted to the jet lag.

This cat welcomed us, but we put our bags down and then never saw it again!

We were just a five minute walk from this beach. On one side was marsh and the other was beach. On the marsh side, there were thousands and thousands of little snails each time the tide went out.

It was a small town so we asked a local lady where we could grab a bite to eat. She said there was only one place in town, and it was the fish & chip shop at the end of the street. We walked down and got fish & chips. Pretty standard, except for that is came wrapped in a thousand sheets of newspaper. Since our options were limited, we went to the same place the next day. We were about to get a real lesson in South Island New Zealand Food. I ordered a hot dog and dan ordered a sausage.

The woman taking our order then asked, “how much salt?”

Ummm, “what?”

“A little, medium, or a lot of salt?”

When in doubt, go with medium. Right? “ahhhh medium please?”

And this is what we unrolled from our newspaper.

We quickly learned that everything is fried… and to not have any expectations.

So we dug in. (We “tucked” in as they say here)

So here’s the thing. It didn’t come in a bun, they didn’t have ketchup or mustard, it was covered in salt… and it tasted like NOTHING!

In review,

Lesson 1 – everything is fried & salted

Lesson 2 – everything is bland…somehow. Even after the grease and salt. And newspaper ink.

We came across this happy cat at another cafe we found in the next town. I decided then that I should probably starting photographing every cat I see – for my “cat’s of the world” book I will never write someday.

Dan thinks it’s a crazy idea.

This is Dan. In case you forgot. He’s walking along a trail we found near the bach. The landscape was a bit odd and it was then that I decided NZ wasn’t how I expected it. I don’t know what I expected, but this wasn’t it. (Right behind him are some Canada geese by the way).

After a few nights we headed North to our next destination. We were pleasently surprised when we rounded a corner on the highway (narrow windy two lane road) and saw a most beautiful beach. Tropical blue water, an empty beach, and tall green mountains. Turns out this wasn’t “the” beach. There are tons of beaches like this, which is awesome.

A couple hours later we pulled over to stretch our legs. We looked over the side of the road and you might not be able to see in this picture, but there were tons of seals. Sleeping, playing, swimming, you name it.

Here’s a close up.

More to come on our adventures in NZ, but for now, I’m going to bed. It’s exhausting being on temporary permanent vacation. There’s a lot of eating involved. So ya know, that’s pretty rough.

zzzzz