Hola mi amigos!

I'm on 5 days off, all of which have been deliciously lazy and relaxing. I spent two nights in Manipouri, 15 minutes outside of Te Anau in the house of the co-owner Dave. He had a clean kitchen and shower, a DVD player where we watched 4.5 movies, and a beautiful view of Lake Manipouri. I read a book, I read the paper, I cooked and I listened to music. It was a lovely relief after a tough 9 days on while nursing an enormous couple of tonsils covered in a whitish/green mysterious gooey substance. (feeling much better now)



We then drove towards to relax further in the green grasses of the Peregrine vineyard for their annual Harvest Festival. I sampled three different central otago wines and ate olives and cheeses and quince paste on crackers.

Later, we lazed some more in our plush hotel room (one gets sick of hostels and shared showers after a while), getting takeaway Thai food and watching movies on the plasma TV.

Today, I've been reading and sleeping and reading and eating and accidentally watched 39-22 of E's "Most Awesome TV Moments".

Back to work tomorrow, but only 20 days left at my job. Gulp. Then world travel with some world class beautiful people. Hooray!

It is blowey and raining and cold.
Milford has on average 3 meters of rain a year.
Wet feet are common.
Smelly feet are more common.

Though the upsides to caravan livin' are many, the downsides are no less uncomfortable. Imagine: You wake up at 3am warmly nestled in the tucked cocoon you have created for yourself to the wrenching in your gut that is a full bladder. (For some (whose initials may be KKE) this is an annoyingly frequent occurance). Most nights, you are fine to sneak outside and do your business quickly in the bushes. You are out and in, under a minute flat. Most nights. Tonight though it is not just raining, it is howling. The mountains are crying for a lost lover and the skies are lashing out against their cousin earth. If you try to pee in this your legs will be drenched and you will not want to think about in which liquid. The problem; the toilet is located over a gauntlet of caravan wires, parked campervans, large boulders and muddy grass. You assess the situation. As much (in life) as you wish for your bladder pain to dissappear, you know that it will not.The longer you wait, the more you delay the inevitable painful slap in the face that is the weather outside your covers. You take the plunge and tonight it is literally that, as you plunk into 5 inches of cold rainwater that your sandals (jandals, flippers,thongs, flip flops) do not protect you from. You stumble in the dark, because there are no lights in Milford after 11pm, and besides, you do not have your contacts in so cannot see regardless. Wet trees grab your hair as your body jolts awake. You are angry. You are wet. You wonder why you are living here.


So what do you do when you wake up the next day, grumpy and still a bit damp? You book a ticket to someplace warm. You book a trip to say, Costa Rica, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador and dress yourself in the thought of warm sandy beaches and lazy afternoons.