Friday the 29th of February: Back in NZ
The trip to NZ took around 23 hours in the air, and cost two calendar days. I slept in Singapore airport for eight hours. I arrived in Christchurch airport at 10:20am, but had been awake for around 12 hours.
I spent the first day alerting friends of my presence in NZ and planning the first phases of my adventure. It was a long day, and I made it until 7pm before finally crashing into a catatonic slumber.

Saturday the 1st of March: Double-Glazing, Paullo's & Jet Lag
I woke up at 5am, fresh, revived and ready to face the day. What does one do at 5am? Call friends in Switzerland, naturally. Max heard me shuffling around downstairs and suggested we make an early start installing some windows at a client's place. We arrived on her doorstep at 8am sharp and had the job finished by around 3:30pm. Next stop was Paul's place. I brought some swiss chocolate and some of the mead I'd brewed before I left NZ. The mead was fantastic, by the way. It had aged wonderfully, and was both sweet and slightly dry at the same time. It went down superbly. We played a bit of muzac too, though I must admit the guitar/amp I borrowed was definitely the 'guest' set. Well it was fun to hammer out some old songs and talk some of the old BS with the old flatties. The jet lag took me towards the evening and I fell asleep in the car on the way home.

Sunday the 2nd of March: Pancakes at Marissas
Every first Sunday of the month Marissa hosts a pancake brunch at her place. We share several mutual acquaintences, so I caught up with many of my old friends there. It's good to see that the old social circles are still intact. I helped her and Shagor, her fiancee, plant some vegetables and crashed at her place overnight.

Monday the 3rd of March: Nina - Robertson Tramp Day 1
Panic and Chaos reigned as I tried to find a way across the Lewis Pass where I had organised to meet my mum for a tramping trip. Marissa dropped me into town and helped me find a way across to the coast. I'd missed the bus I needed by minutes, so we kicked back at a coffee shop in the square, had some bagels for breakfast, and waited for the information centre to open. Sometimes surrendering to fate is the best plan.
In the end I was only able to bus as far as the Hamner junction turn-off, and I hitched the rest of the way across the Lewis pass. I actually ended up being early.
Brenda arrived an hour or so later. She'd brought her friend Jan along, and the dog. We left the car at the start of the track and continued on foot, arriving at the Nina hut just before the rain started. Perfect timing.

Tuesday the 4th of March: Nina - Robertson Tramp Day 2
Day two of the track was really tough - quite a bit longer and harder than we'd planned. We rose, ate, packed and were walking by around 10am. We crossed through the Nina river and started up the valley.

The tracked stopped at the Nina bivouac, from where we bush-bashed and followed the river. I stepped on a wasp nest and was stung once on each leg, which nettled me for the rest of the day and itched like mad for days to come. (Ironically, I was the only person wearing long-johns and also the only person stung by wasps. My particular long-johns have horizontal black and blue stripes, with red and white lines. The colour scheme is indeed horrific, and I now accept that the wasps were not stinging me for trampling their nest but punishing me for my crimes against fashion.)

We navigated steep inclines, stepped around spaniards and splashed through waterways to eventually reach the ridge at the top of the valley. At one point Brenda put the dog in her pack and carried her.

The next obstacle was a massive scree slope we precariously traversed. If you're unfamiliar with the art of scree traversal, you haven't missed a thing. Every step you take slips half a step downhill. Every rock you stand on rolls. You frequently lose balance and it's slow going. We were quite tired upon reaching the other side.

And then the sun set. We were still on the tops, searching for our way down. Fortunately we'd found enough of the marker posts and had studied the map well enough to more-or-less follow the post. We found the bushline as darkness fell. The track was not very well travelled, but well marked with orange markers. I would scout ahead in the darkness where I thought the track went until I found a marker, at which point Jan and Brenda would move to my current position. By the time we found the hut we'd walked an estimated twelve hour day, and I was thoroughly fatigued. We all were. Even the dog.

Wednesday the 5th of March: Nina - Robertson Tramp Day 3
We had the option of taking two days to walk out, or firing all our guns at once and walking the 18km in a single day. Still knackered from the previous day, the novelty of being in the bush had been replaced by a weariness and remoteness, and there was only forwards. I opted to walk out.
The track went along the valley floor, and wasn't particularly difficult, however my body was still complaining from the previous day's jaunt so it was no easy frollic. The track was boggy, river crossings meant wet feet, and hook-grass was everywhere. I've never seen such dense hook grass. Even my famous stripey blue long-johns didn't save my leg-hairs from being pulled. We were even treated to another scree traversal. My achilles tendon became inflamed towards the end of the day and my knees ached. Jan's car at the end of the track was the most welcome thing I've seen in a long time.

Thursday the 6th of March: Reefton
I slept in, did some laundry, checked my email, visited an old school-mate in Reefton, and spent the day hanging out with Brenda. The dog hardly left her box the whole day, and when she did she hobbled around as though both her hind legs were in casts. Poor thing.

Friday the 7th of March: Wild Foods Road Trip Day 1
I bid my farewells and caught the east-west shuttle bus to Christchurch, arriving sometime after twelve. I dumped my backpack at Marissa's work and caught a bus to Lyttelton to have lunch with Max and...er, pick up the Wild Foods Festival tickets I'd left there. I took the bus back into town, regrouped with Marissa, Sean and Tanya, and embarked on our road trip to the Wild Foods Festival in Hokitika. We arrived after dark and caught up with Bev and his two workmates Danielle and Erica. We ate, returned to our dorm and played drinking games into the evening. Our dormatory was apparently an old alcoholic rehabilitation clinic. We drank to that.

Saturday the 8th of March: Wild Foods Road Trip Day 2
Burboun & Coke for breakfast, with marmite on toast to wash it down. Marissa and I engaged on a mullet hunt, and shot quite a few prize beasts throughout the course of the weekend. One of our prey, Peter, went on to become our official mascot, and turned out to be a surprisingly good dancer.

The Wild Foods Festival was quite interesting. We sampled many vaious delicacies, including crocodile, muttonbird, pickled nikau palm, wasp larvae ice-cream, worm surprise red-bull shots, huhu grubs, whitebait kebab, kava, testicle stew, and many more. We missed out on mountain oysters, live grasshoppers, and bull sperm shots (oh no, not me. That's where I draw the line.)

She likes wasp larvae.	He likes wasp larvae.
But not everybody likes wasp larvae.

There was some pretty good live music and it was raining, so we danced in it for a while, went shopping, and returned to the dorm for tea.

We'd all bought tickets to the dance, but were pretty tired and were undecided on whether we should go or not. In the end two english lads persuaded us to go and ordered a taxi van. Reluctantly, we obliged.
The sounds of Elvis echoed across the grounds as we arrived, and people were streaming from the main marquee towards the drink stands. West Coast Breweries had wrestled the sponsorship from Monteiths this year, and had placed a strict 'Ours or Nothin' policy. Their beer was revolting so we stuck with wine, and waited for Elvis to die. The next band to come on was a great little cover band which played a lot of well-known songs. We danced, jigged and barndanced until 1am rolled around before carrying ourselves home to bed.

During the night, Marissa patiently defeated the series of improvised locking mechanisms I'd placed to prevent unwanted manipulation of the old hospital bed I was sleeping on. I awoke as she was raising the end of the bed, much to my chagrin. Well at least the wheel brake was still on, or I could have awoken rolling down the hill.

Sunday the 9th of March: Wild Foods Road Trip Day 3
We went for a tiki-tour up the coast. We were drenched in a sudden downpour at the pancake rocks at Punakaiki. We went down the Truman Track and meandered along the little beach. We stopped in Charleston to visit the beach I always used to play at when I was a kid. We farewelled Bev, Erica and Danielle, stopped in Reefton for fish & chips at Brenda's, and finally got back to Christchurch around midnight.

Monday the 10th of March: Return to Bergli, laundry & packing
I bought some decent tramping trousers, some plain black merino long-johns, a 1GB memory stick for my camera, and met up with Max. We bought some tramping food for our trip on Wednesday. I did laundry. Wrote some blog.

Tuesday the 11th of March: Packing & blog
Just that. Tomorrow we fly down to Invercargill and will cross the Foveaux Strait to Stewart Island. We have ten days to stroll around the island and admire the wildlife, the coastline, the bush, the rain and the mud. I anticipate plenty of all aforementioned. My achilles tendon is still a bit 'creaky'. I hope it holds out.
There will be no internet or cellphone access down there, so I'll be under the radar for the next ten days.