Hello Wanaka

Carrie: "Mike take my pants off!"

Mike: "As your brother I would be honored."

Now that I have your attention, I first have to apologize for the lack of posts as of late and specifically the lack of photo posts. I am currently back in the US and on a poetry tour and therefore have had very little time to catch up on all of my NZ posts. Additionally, Mike - who is currently in Melbourne - has all of my photos and has had difficulty getting them to me. BACK TO THE ADVENTURE (and the explanation of the above quote):

We rolled into the lakeside town of Wanaka after an incredibly beautiful drive through the bottom of the West Coast. We stopped so many times to just gasp and take photos and stand in sunny lake water that it actually got annoying. Nothing should be so beautiful but it is. The lakes that you see below are huge and brilliantly blue with these powerful green mountains lining them and the entire drive winds around them.

Wanaka is kind of what I imagine Aspen, Colorado to be: a small, gorgeous, resort town with lakes and mountains and sunsets and incredibly expensive everything. We picked up our most expensive groceries yet, got gas for a parched Adi, and scoped out information at the iSite which happens to be right on the grassy beach of Lake Wanaka. We ate some snacks, checked some emails, and Tim, Mike, and I went swimming in the blissfully cold lake water as the sun began to set behind the mountains. We made dinner at a picnic table (chicken sausages and beans) and drank tea as it began to get dark.

Mike and Tim were off chatting up some pretty foreigners as Dan and I got the tea ready and somehow I managed to dump my entire mug of tea across my lap while fighting with the honey bottle. I started shouting and trying to rip my pants off as fast as I could on a public beach front. Dan had no idea what had just happened and started to video tape what I was doing as Mike and Tim came over to see what I was shouting about. Let's just say it's a pretty good video and someday will surface. I was writhing on the grass with my pants around my ankles screaming "My crotch! Is! On! Fire!" and thus said the quote that began this post much to the boys' delight.

We rewarded undressing in public with ice cream and spent some time standing in front of the Real Estate windows exclaiming over the number of 0's on some of those plots of land. We heard from some other backpackers that we shouldn't freedom camp in the area as the Rangers were particularly active and that instead, we should camp in a nearby campground and just leave at the crack of dawn. That sounded like a good idea to us for some reason so we went to the campsite and tried to sleep through the loud techno music being played ("They have to be German" - Tim) and the full moon. Dan and I gave up and just watched an episode of Friday Night Lights on my ipod before passing out somewhere around 3:30 in the morning for two and a half hours of sleep.