Since You Have Nothing Better to Do

Exactly 2 months ago, I planted my first garden.

I had (and still have) NO idea of what I'm doing but I do know that in New Zealand, veggies are on "auto-pilot".
I haven't done much in the past couple of months except for throw some compost around and hoe around...That's it.

Now I am in harvest mode.
Which is also stress mode.
How much lettuce did I plant and what am I going to do with all of it?
Why is the broccoli getting so big?
and my usual..."What the hell is that?"

What is even more embarrassing is me giving a tour of my garden to real gardeners. It is hilarious when they point out stuff that either a) I thought was a weed and was about to kill or pull up or b) show me something that I totally saw but didn't recognize.
I had a friend come over last week. She is a veggie gardener and knows her stuff. In fact, she was able to plant and maintain a garden in a small backyard in San Francisco! She comes to my house and says:

"That is an amazing artichoke plant you have there"
Me: "Where?!" I should have sounded cool, like I KNEW there was an artichoke plant in my garden but I didn't
Then she wanders off and shows me the strawberry plant that I thought was a weed that I had been hacking at just days earlier. Thank God the strawberry plant forgave me and thought I was ignorant cause it kept growing...and big.
I'm just not cut out for this "identification of plants" thing.

I totally didn't see it...

OMG! It is an artichoke!!!!

So I decided to give you a little update on my garden.
We harvested our first "crop" of mescalin lettuce from my garden and had salads....for days....it was a lot of lettuce and that's not all of it. I blame Bruce. I sent him out with the shears and asked him to "get some salad greens". He came back in with enough to feed eastern Europe.

My lettuce!!!!! I made that!!!

Can't let it go to waste so we had salads for lunch and dinner 2 nights in a row. I still have lettuce growing. I don't know what to do. We don't have any pests that are eating it and since the sun shines for about 100 hours a day, it is growing at an alarming rate.

This is lettuce...after harvest...I swear I cut it!

Oh and it rains, a lot. That doesn't help with the overgrowing thing.
I used to have a problem with killing innocent green things. Now they are laughing at me. I pull things up and they drop seeds and grow a foot overnight. The next day, I'm trying to figure out how that happened.
I have given up reading about gardening.
I don't know the best way to harvest lettuce or broccoli. I just pull stuff up or cut it with scissors. Whatever I'm doing, it seems to like it. It grows back, stronger and bigger.

I'm not sure I'm comfortable with broccoli this big...

Looks like we are going to be eating good....for a while...

Oh, and since you have nothing better to do, I have a bunch of  "Before" and "After" shots of my garden
(Can you tell I'm a proud mama?)

Before...(actually about 4 weeks ago)

AFTER! Just add Water!!!

It was big before...but now...

More adventures gardening coming soon!!!

Vampires Have it Good

Please don't think that I am complaining about something...I'm not. I'm just making an observation of something that is nice but has made my life a little harder.
I'm talking about the summer.
Spring is almost over here and now we are about to enter summer. Summer in New Zealand is peak travel season. Time to get out, barbeque, visit friends and family, hike, bike, row and swim. Everything outdoors. I knew that these people loved their outdoors but now I see why.
Summer has some nice long days. When I say long, I mean LONG!
I can't complain about pretty, sunny days, birds singing and balmy temperatures.
I can just make a couple of  minor "comments":

WAAKE UP!!!!
It is pretty hard when the sun comes up and burns a hole right thru your eyelid at 5am. I can't close the shades because it is so warm now that we have to sleep with all the windows open (Air conditioning is unheard of in most houses in New Zealand). When you rely on breezes to keep you cool you don't want any curtains or shades to be in the way! This isn't too different from when we were living in Phoenix. We had incredibly early sunrises, usually at 5-515. It makes you feel energized and ready for the day. Unless....

Is It Dark Yet?
There is a psychiatric disorder called Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). Basically, there are people so affected by chronic darkness and lack of sun in the winter that they develop a chemical disorder in the brain which causes them to be depressed. That must be the rarest disease in New Zealand in the summer.
I have lived in the desert in the southwest US. We enjoyed long summer days. Days where the sun would set around 8pm during the height of the summer. I thought that was a long day. Phoenix has NOTHING on New Zealand! I don't think I noticed that the days were getting that much longer. I just knew that all of a sudden, we seemed to have a lot of time off after work to go out and do things. I just thought it was because we were getting a "second wind". I found myself having enough time to come home, go to the store, cook dinner and watch a movie and it would still be light outside after all of those activities. Sometimes we would go for a walk! Here I thought we were just using our time more efficiently. It wasn't until an entire week of feeling exhausted all day that I made the mistake of looking at a clock during one of our long afterwork days.
We were sitting on the couch, after dinner, deciding what DVD to watch and I glanced at my watch. It can't be right.

Baby, what time is it?
I dunno, what does your watch say?
Its broken, it says 9:45pm but its still light outside.
Its not 9:45, the sun is still up, see? as he goes to pull up the shades that we had to pull down to keep the sun off of the TV. We'll get you a new battery for your watch tomorrow.
Ok.

What 9:45pm in New Zealand looks like....

We selected a movie to watch.
Two hours later, we are getting ready for bed and I realized the awful truth. It really is midnight!!! It really was 9:45pm!!! OMG! We had to be up for work by 6am...We were cutting into our sleep time! Now I'm really concerned because I know Mr. Sunshine likes to come up and hit me directly in the forehead at around 5:15am. Anyone who knows me knows that I am a "reverse vampire". I have to get up when the sun comes up. As long as the sun is in the sky, I must be up. I cannot sleep during the day, no matter how tired and exhausted I am. I can only sleep when it is dark. That is becoming a bit of a problem.
Now, I watch every day as the sun seems to climb higher and higher in the sky and sit there all day and most of the night. Currently, the sun sets around 9:40 pm. Doesn't get dark enough for a respectable sleep until around 10:15...that is so past my bedtime. So by default, I am tired.

Slightly darker at 1030pm...

I'm starting to wish for the winter again.....

I'm Sorry I Killed You

I think that I have committed a form of plant-icide. I have murdered a group of little innocent seedlings. They never saw it coming. They expected me to care for them to take care of their needs....But noooo...I tore them from the fertile earth just when they started to grow. What can I say? I'm an idiot.

I thought I was a smart person. I was so wrong. Anyone that has to go online or to the library and get a book called "Gardening for Idiots" is an idiot. Who knew that this was going to be so damned hard?!
I don't know what possessed me to think that I could grow anything. I have a black thumb. I kill anything green or plant like. Something is wrong with me. Maybe I secrete plant poison from my pores? (Hope FBI/CIA/X-files doesn't come looking for me) All I know is that I had no business trying to do a vegetable garden after the "Incident"...


Killer Instinct
The "Incident" has to be the single most indicting piece of proof regarding my poisonous hands.
When I lived in Alabama, I had a friend (Elizabeth) that I met working. We worked everyday together and became inseparable. She and I were close. When I was leaving, Elizabeth got me a orchid bulb, wrapped in burlap fabric and I promised that I would plant it and keep in on my window sill and think about our good times in Alabama. Well, in the craziness of the move, my delicate orchid got packed away and moved to our new home in Houston. I didn't find it until 2 months later when I was unpacking the last of our boxes. I felt terrible that I had forgotten such an important gift. What was amazing about my orchid is that it had actually sprouted! No water, no sun,  no soil. Packed away in a box with little to no air..in darkness, my orchid started to sprout! I immediately took it out, carefully unwrapped the fabric around the roots/bulb and followed the instructions on planting it. It died. Seriously. After 2 months in a box with no sun, water or soil, I touch it and it dies. That's me. The Green Killer.

So here we are in New Zealand and I am confronted everyday with the black gold that these people have for soil. I have heard that you can throw a nail down and get a nail garden. Anything will grow!
So now, about 6 weeks after my backbreaking work to till my garden and sow my seeds, I have started to see the fruit of my labor. Not actually fruit but gigantic things. Unfortunately, I have no idea what is a weed and what is a plant. I did everything by the book. I removed all weeds to prep the soil, mixed in compost and something even nastier called "blood and bone" (it is EXACTLY what it says it is!!!!). I watered the soil and then carefully planted every seed EXACTLY how the package said. I'm sure I looked like an idiot out in the garden with a ruler, measuring the exact depth that the seeds were supposed to go in. I even had to call my friend, Amanda to ask her "How many seeds go in a hole?" Who has to ask that? I'm terrible at this!!
Anyway, I got my garden all planted. The only thing I was able to salvage from the prior garden was a carrot and some celery.

Garden...BW (Before Weeding)

Garden, after the "Great Weeding"

See my 3 celery plants I was able to salvage? And my ?turnip, collard, mustard green at the back right

In the Beginning, there was Nothing

Oh, what a difference a month makes.
One week after I planted my seeds, I had sprouts. Not little sprouts but pretty big sprouts. That can't be from my planting, right? The package says 2-4 weeks.

One month after planting...wow!

Three weeks after, I had a mini jungle. I had no idea what was growing. Yes, I carefully labeled each row and used garden twine to mark off individual veggie rows. But what the hell was growing in them?
Before you laugh, how many of ya'll city slickers know what the heck a young zucchini plant looks like? Or a cucumber plant? or any vegetable plant for that matter? I don't!

They're growing!!!

The Survivors of the Weeding...(Near to Far)

Broccoli, Mescalin Lettuce, Red Onion

So about 4 weeks after I "sowed my seeds" I had to weed the garden.
It started innocently enough...I started pulling up....uh, stuff. Then I realized that some of the stuff I was pulling up was stuff I have meticulously planted last month! Dammit! I killed half a row of carrots and lettuce before I realized that they were not weeds! I also pulled up two potatoes (by mistake) thinking they were weeds. In my defense, I didn't think there was any way that something that I JUST PLANTED could be that big!! What the heck is in this soil? Nuclear waste? Steroids? My potatoes grew from little potato-lings to plants just like that!!!

Oh, and the celery...

I'm going to call and see if I qualify for the biggest celery in New Zealand...

The celery was here when I got here. It was obviously celery. It had been overgrown by weeds and I carefully pulled away all the weeds and cleaned up around the roots. I guess the celery just needed that little boost to shoot to the sky. I am pretty convinced that what I have is not celery but a tree that looks like celery. Unfortunately, the celery will be sacrificed to the Celery Gods on tomorrow. Why? Two reasons...
1) It has grown so big that it has "flowered" and according to gardeners that know something (not me),  once the plant flowers, the fruit/vegetable is past its harvest. How was I supposed to know that?! I'm letting the dang thing grow to the sky. I thought that is what you wanted? Big, giant food!
2) The celery is now a whopping 6+ foot tall. Who in the heck would eat over 18 feet of celery? And the celery is blocking the sunlight for the poor little broccoli seedlings next to it. Its not fair for the broccoli. The celery has got to go.

Should celery be bigger than you?

Now all I need is a chainsaw...

My mom, trying to select from the 1 foot or two foot celery. When do you ever need that much celery?!

My Midlife Crisis...Also Known as the Kepler Track

Bruce seems to think that I have gone through a midlife crisis. I disagree. First of all, I'm not that old. Second of all, I will NEVER get old. And most importantly, I am NOT midlife. I choose to believe i'm more "post-twenties" (Fine...and thirties)...Any hoo...

I thought that part of the fun of living in the "Outdoor Country of the World" would be to experience the things that New Zealand has to offer. When I heard about the "Great Walks" I knew I had to do one.
For those of you who don't know, the "Great Walks" is the country's premier hiking and backpacking trails in the country. There are a total of 9 Great Walks in the country and it just so happens that I am about 2 hours from 5 of them. There was no way I couldn't do at least one.
Now, you know me. I had to do my research. I asked multiple people their favorite hike, bought a book and visited hiking/outdoor stores several times to get all of the things we needed. I was ready. I just had to get Bruce on board...

"Honey, we are going to do a Great Walk--the Kepler Track"
"Ok, I'll get my coat"
"No, its a Great Walk. I've booked it for my birthday weekend. It will be fun"
"You want to hike for your birthday?"
"Yes, its a 3-4 day hike through some of the most beautiful scenery in New Zealand with mountains and rainforests and...."
Bruce wasn't listening...I had him at "hike" and "birthday"...I'm sure he was calculating how much money he was going to save not feeding me at a fancy restauraunt.
"uh, hello...are you still with me?"
"Yes! Sounds great! But one thing...What makes you think you are in shape to hike?"
Silence...I KNOW he did NOT just say that!
"Uh, what I meant was, what makes you think that WE are in shape to hike?"
Better, but still in trouble.
"Cause," I snapped. "They said it was easy"
Famous last words...

This is where I found out that Kiwi's lie. Either that or they have NO concept of what is hard.
Every time I have asked them about something being difficult or hard, they always give me the same answer...
"No, its not that bad, its easy"
Never trust when a Kiwi says something is easy. Their preception of easy is when you don't end up in the ICU after an activity. An ER visit, a few broken bones and being laid up for a couple days is still "easy".
I should have known... This is from the same people that told me that a 90+ mile bike ride was easy...
They lie.

Needless to say, I didn't think anything of the fact that I had NEVER hiked before. Oh sure, I've done "nature walks" where I carried some water and bug spray but I have never had to carry my entire LIFE on my back. The Great Walks are nice in that you don't need a compass or a GPS. The trail is pretty much dummy proof. You just walk. BUT, you must walk with a 20-30lb bag on your back for 3-4 days, 6-8 hours a day. And you may not see another person for hours...When is the last time you went for a half day without seeing another person? The closest i've come to that is being the first one at the mall on a Sunday. You have to bring all of your food with you PLUS an extra day rations "just in case". You have to bring clothes for all weather and all seasons because you can and will experience all 4 seasons in one day.
You have to bring a sleeping bag, able to keep you warm in sub zero temperatures (just in case) and you have to fit all of that into a "medium" size pack that you wear like a mule on your back. Not to metion all of the other stuff you need like cookery, matches, first aid kit, etc. My first mild panic after packing was realizing how heavy our food was! I thought I did good, I found food that was high in protein and carbs to bring with us but 4 days worth of food takes up space! And adds weight! After packing our sleeping bags, extra clothes and food, we had no more room in our backs. And no more strength to carry.
I have to admit, we were so excited at the beginning. We had our brand new packs, brand new sleeping bags and cool camping gear we couldn't wait to break in. They day we started was a perfect sunny day. Them temperature was a balmy 75 degrees, we had a big breakfast in our tummies, we were ready!
Or so we thought....

Let the fun begin!

All smiles before the pain...

Bruce and his brand new, never before used pack...all 30lbs of it...

Kiwi Lie #1...
Kepler is a Easy/Moderate Track but harder on the first day

American interpretation: Kepler is a calf killer and a spirit breaker but if you can make it up hill you get some awesome views so don't kill yourself or have the ranger call you a helicopter out...

We were trotting along, having a ball. Chatting about life and travel and all the fun things we could do. It was getting hot. We were peeling off layers, the sweat started to pour. Seems hotter when you have 30lbs on your back. No problem, we figured we'd rest for lunch about 3 hours into the hike.
Then the hills started. First they were little hills then they became horrible acute switchbacks that climbed higher and higher. I felt like laying down after 3 hours! We stopped for lunch and I was ready to scream "I give up!" but my pride wouldn't let me. This was my idea, so I couldn't give up first. I was hoping that Bruce would give up and then we could both pretend that we'd rather just do something else in town. But no, we are both stubborn to the end and wouldn't say those three little words..."Kill me now"

First lunch break and I was broken...

Limestone bluffs near the alpine section..Almost there...

Looks like something out of a dream...

We continued to climb higher and higher. Knees creaking, back breaking, calves burning. The weather got cooler but I don't think we noticed. I just wanted to get to the hut.
All of a sudden, about 5 hours into our death march, we came out of the forest and into cold mountain air. We had made it to the top...sort of...we walked through alpine tussock planes and all of as sudden saw the most beautiful sight in the world...Salvation, also known as the the Luxmore Hut.

Barely...

The Department of Conservation has built huts strategically located along each of the Great Walks. Each hut is basic and has running water (cold only and is usually from the nearby river or lake), toilets (better than the trees and grass!)  and has bunk beds. Each hut varies in size but Luxmore Hut is one of the largest. It can sleep about 55 people. The bunks are basic...think summer camp circa 1982. Oh, and about 30 people sleep together in one room. Now, I have to admit, I was SO GLAD it was cold. We had gone from the balmy 70-80 degree beech forest near the lake to the frigid alpine air near the summit of Mt. Luxmore. An almost 2,000 foot climb! We were sweaty and tired. Imagine 30 sweaty, tired people, in one room with NO shower!!! Like I said, I'm glad it was cold. Cold covers funk...
We huddled up into the main kitchen area which consisted of gas stovetops and heated our ramen noodles and canned chicken for dinner. Now, usually I would have sat thinking about all of the great expensive food that I COULD have had had I stayed in town but I was too tired, to dirty and to sore to care. We ate our noodles, took a bunch of ibuprofen for the pain, chased it with a hot toddy and fell asleep in our bunks. It was 5 oclock...
We woke up, refreshed and less sore and ready to conquer the world. The 14 hours of sleep had worked its magic. (That plus the 600mg of ibuprofen and the shot of tequila that we took as a bedtime drink).
We were excited to see what the top of the mountain had in store! Too bad we believed Kiwi Lie #2...

Ready to go on day #2!

Still smiling despite the cold!

Kiwi Lie #2
The Second Day is Mostly Downhill...
I should have known not to trust what the Kiwis say about outdoor activities. "Mostly" should have been the blaring warning in that sentence. But nooooo...I heard "Downhill" loud and clear. I didn't realize that we weren't even at the TOP! After 6 backbreaking hours of trudging uphill yesterday, we still had 4 more hours up!!! I didn't know that, had I known, I would have had Bruce get me the most expensive birthday present he'd ever gotten me...a one way, 5 minute emergency helicopter ride down to the town!
We were rested and excited and we started out, up hill from Luxmore Hut. About 30 minutes outside the hut we noticed the weather had changed. Big time...The wind was icy and we started to notice that the snow on the peaks of the mountains around us were actually really close. We were up in the mountains. Thank God for Bruce and his love of dressing me warm. He made me put on long johns, waterproof pants and my windbreaker. When it was all said and done, I had 4 layers of clothes on up top and 3 down below. Nice!
We continued to trudge uphill but we were rewarded with some of the most awesome views. All of a sudden, the hills seemed smaller (they weren't) and the track seemed shorter (it wasn't). It was nice to see what we had accomplished. We actually were higher than some of the surronding mountains and were able to see the gorgeous fiords of Lake Manapouri, a lake so big that it has over 200 islands! We even saw evidence of a recent avalanche that had wiped out some of our track!

Huh? We are NOT experienced...

A recent avalanche that had wiped out some of the track...

Bruce near the top...or so we thought...

It was a good day. There were a couple of avalanche shelters on the alpine section of the track that we sought refuge in when the winds got too tough and during a brief rain shower. We munched our lunch of tuna and chatted with other hikers that we came across. The coolest part of the hike was the exposed "Saddle" section. It was a scary, treacherous portion that was over a ridge between two mountains. We were told to be careful of gale force winds that could blow us off the mountain!! It was exhilarating to look to either side and see a sheer drop of hundreds of feet! And I'm scared of heights! It was great!

So small in such a big world

Where exactly does it get easy?

Feeling taller than the mountains...

That is a looong way down

We made it!!! Kind of...

What goes up...and up...must go down....eventually

Then came the downhill...
Now downhill should make me excited but a "gentle" downhill would be nice. Not the sheer drop that punished the knees and back. The downhill made me wish for a little uphill. I should have known that downhill could be as bad. After stopping  for another break (and more ibuprofen) we started to drop down the other side of the mountain towards the rainforest. You could tell it was rainforest by the dense mist hanging over it and the amazing jump in temperature as we got closer.

Going down into the rainforest...

It got hot, quick! Peeling off of layers of clothes...

When we entered the edge of the forest from the alpine section, the temperature was so high that we had to start peeling off the many layers of clothes we had put on. It was beautiful to see such a green lush forest. Moss was growing on everything and the ground had gotten so moist in certain areas that trees actually fell over. I have been in forests here in New Zealand but this was the biggest, thickest rainforest I had seen. I half expected monkeys to be swinging from the trees or giant dinosaurs to jump out and grab us.

Serious trees

Seriously dense forest...Shouldn't there be some Ewoks/Elves/Hobbits or something about?

What made it funny is that we talked so much about how dense and thick the forest was that we started to spook ourselves thinking that we heard noises off the track...

What was that?

Did you hear something?

Nice little refill station

After another long (but rewarding) 7 hour hike we broke into the clearing to see our hut for the evening...Iris Burn Hut. Iris Burn wasn't unlike the Luxmore Hut. Lots of bunks, lots of people (about 45) and cold water (no showers). What we weren't expecting was the addtional funk that the heat had added to the sweaty 45 bodies and the damn sandflies. Sandflies are the most annoying little pests ever. I haven't ever encountered them before but I know I hate them now. Thankfully, sandflies don't seem to like the taste of Bruce and I. Maybe they don't like dark meat but I don't care. We had a couple of "test" bites and that was it. We could walk through a swarm and not get touched...but that didn't stop them from flying into your hair, nose,ears, mouth...everywhere! Ugh! Thank God the hut had screens! We decided to take a side hike to Iris Burns waterfall and to take a quick bathe in the stream. As tired as I was, I was really getting a kick out of my "outdoor" living. I had never washed in a stream (its better than a cold shower) nor have I ever been so nochalant covering. Hell, it was hot and everyone was taking off most of what they had on just to get a little cold water on the body. Everyone just wanted to wash the sweat, bugs and sticky off of them. Makes for a much sweeter night in the hut!

Salvation Hut #2..Iris Burn Hut

Yes, I'm tired...no, those are not my clothes

Waterfall/shower/bathing facility

After our second nights dinner of ramen noodles and canned chicken we went to lay down but the wind wasn't cooperating. Iris Burn is in a valley and unfortunately, the wind doesn't necessarily sweep through. It was hot and stagnant at night and no one dared open the doors to let the resident pain-in-the-assess (sandflies) in. We just laid there and tossed and turned. All of a sudden, about midnight the temperature dropped and the wind picked up. It was nice and comforatable. Too bad I had to go to the bathroom...Now, going to the bathroom in a hut, in the middle of the night is a challenge. First, you have to navagate getting out of a bunk bed without breaking your ankle/ass/hip/knee...Then you have to have your flashlight. Why? Cause the huts don't have electricity and in the middle of nowhere it is blacker than a thousand midnights in a Cypress swamp...That black...Then since you are sleeping in a giant room with 30-40 other people you have to remember where your bunk is. Nothing says "Good Morning" than waking up snuggling with a strange backpacker that is not your husband. Really difficult to explain...Anyway...

On the Third Day...No One Lied...
The third day was the best start ever. It was cool and clear and we really were done with the steep downhill and uphill climbs...only flat trail to go! 7 hours of it..
We had the opportunity to walk through valleys and follow a river until in poured into the huge Lake Manapouri. We even found our own little "beach" to rest and relax at. After a refreshing "bath" we headed on to our third and final hut, Moturau Hut. This hut was smaller and less congested than the two larger huts. After arriving to the hut and resting for a brief while we decided that we couldn't spend another night eating ramen and sleeping in bunks...the call of a proper bed and a steak dinner was too much to bear.

Easy Tramping...through the Valley

Fern forest

On the shores of Lake Manapouri...perfect for a bath!

After a little dip/cleaning and reenergizing break

We had arrived at the hut so early that we figured that we could easily hike the last 6 hours out of the forest and to the beginning. We felt good so we decided to press on...
Big mistake.
One hour after leaving the hut my toe started to rub and blister. We stopped and let me do a little first aid bandaging. Even with the anti-chafe cream and blister stop pads the toe was screaming with every step. Bruce was so sweet, he made it a point to scour the nearby forest for sticks that I could use as walking poles. He found me two and fashioned me two "crutches" so that I could take some of the pressure off of my growing blister. We hobbled on at a much slower pace, thanks to my crutches and Bruce's sciatic pain, looking like we had just done battle in Middle Earth with hobbits and dwarves. After what seemed like forever, we made it to our exit point. On time and only semi-crippled.

Little Timmy can walk!!! Its a Christmas Miracle!

Bridge to Freedom...and a shower...and a steak...

Thirty minutes later, we were on a shuttle, whisking us back to the town of Te Anau where we promptly found the first restauraunt open and gorged ourselves on cheese bread, batter fried cod and french fries (cholesterol? what cholesterol?). Still sweaty, smelly from lack of appropriate showering for 3 days but full and happy we pulled up to the nicest hotel in Te Anau. We took stock of each other. Bruce had dirt in his overgrown beard and looked homeless, I on the other hand looked like a sea witch but we decided I looked more presentable. I hobbled out of the car, did my best to shake the grass, moss and dirt out of my hair and clothes and presented myself to the front desk.  "Do you have any rooms available for the night?" I expected the lady to call security or to kick me out to the nearest backpackers lodging but she took one look at me and smiled and said: "You just finished a track, huh? You look like you need a long hot shower, a massage and a good sleep. We have a room, overlooking the lake."
I almost started crying. What she said next sounded like music to my ears..
"Which tramp did you do?"
"The Kepler"
"Oh! God, that's one of the hardest! I bet you're exhausted!"
"Yes, I am...and I no one told me how hard that track was going to be, but I did it and I'm proud of myself! By the way, where are you from?"
"Philadelphia. Oh, and never trust the Kiwis when they tell you something is easy"

Happy Birthday to Me

If you'd like to see all the pictures of us going through hell and back, click here