Catlins

My apologies for not having written in a while. These past two weeks have been full of assignments as the semester is rapidly coming to an end. As of now I have less than a week of classes left before the start of exams.

Two weekends ago I headed to the Catlins with a bunch of people from The Lofts. After going to my morning class and then to the gym for a short while, Tucker, Fredric, Grace, Sara, and I piled into Lady, the purple Ford Telstar for our scenic drive to the Catlins. The Catlins is located about two hours south of Dunedin and is pretty much a rainforest. For more about the Catlins, click HERE. Jono calls it "virgin forest" which is pretty accurate in a way. Everything there was perfectly serene and trees and wildlife grew wild. We first stopped at the little house we had booked for the weekend. It was a cute little house with two rooms, a living room, and a kitchen. There were also two bathrooms. One room had two bunk beds while the other room had a queen sized bed. After dropping off our things and eating some Nutella and bread, we headed out to look for the beach. At the beach we walked around, taking pictures and enjoying the relatively warm day. We also had fun driving around on the beach, which is still rather peculiar to me since you can't drive on beaches in New York, or at least I didn't think you could. Lady made some donuts in the sand and then we swerved around. I really do like car rides. :)

We passed this on our way to the Catlins. Seems appropriate for the World Cup. :) 

Our little room. I was on the top bunk of the bed  to the left that is cut off 

Little living room

VIEW FROM OUR PORCH!!! 

The first beach

The second "beach" though we were just at the look out point

After the beach we went to McLean Falls. It was a short hike (the sign said it was a 40 minute walk but it really was about 10 minutes to the Falls) We reached the bottom part of the falls and while it was pretty, the water was a not-so-appealing color. We hiked up higher to find a much bigger waterfall. At the larger waterfall we walked over slippery and mossy rocks and took pictures.

That night we went home and made dinner. Then we headed over to the upper house where everyone else was staying. On the walk over I looked into the sky and saw more stars than I had ever seen in my life. At the upper house we played some air hockey and pool and this slightly dangerous game that Tucker made up that involved a lot of running and rolling pool balls. We then played a pretty epic game of Kings where I learned a lot of interesting things about people and quite a bit about Scandinavian politics. Upon returning home, Tucker, Fredric, and I continued to have a conversation until early morning before going to bed.

One of the caves at a beach during day two adventures

We also found a lighthouse!

Day two in the Catlins involved much driving around and going to see different places along the coast. We drove in the direction towards Invercargill but I'm not quite sure what each of the places were called. I will post pictures though. That night, we made taco's for a flat dinner. It was delicious. We also went back up to the upper house and hung out for a little while before returning home to go to be a little earlier than 4am because we wanted to wake up to see the sun rise. Also because bed time before 4am is usually a smart idea.

Here is a small side story to our trip. Nutella. All of us brought food because there is only one supermarket and everything is really expensive there. I brought some weet-bix (kind of like cornflakes), fruits, soy milk, bread and Nutella. Everyone else also brought Nutella. When packing lunch for our second day, we all brought out Nutella and bread. So much Nutella as you can tell from the picture. Actually, it would have been even more epic if Tucker hadn't left his jar at the house.

The next morning I woke up needing to go to the bathroom and after attempting to very quietly climb down from the top bunk I saw the big and beautiful purple orange and yellow sun midway in the sky and decided to be not so quiet and wake everyone up in the house to go see the sun rise. All five of us stood on the porch with our eye's half open taking pictures. After the sun was fully up, each of us climbed back into our beds for another two hours of glorious sleep.

We had to check out that next morning and after paying the woman we drove to Kaka Point and Nugget Point. We also met up with Victoria and her crew at Nugget Point.

Another lighthouse!

I presume those are nuggets

From left to right: Tucker, me, Grace, Sara, Fredric at Nugget Point

The week following the Catlins was consumed by schoolwork and the last season of Prison Break. I finished a Chinese essay, a Food Science essay, and started on my computer science assignment. Season 4 of Prison Break was pretty good in the beginning but just became more and more ridiculous as the season went on. On Friday I went on a run with Fredric and Grace to the reservoir. Some realizations from that run include, 1.) I am terribly out of shape 2.)I miss running outside, ellipticals are boring and 3.) Spiky gravel really hurts to run on in my toe shoes. Anyways, I enjoyed the run and hopefully now that is getting warmer i'll run some more outside. Friday was also Tucker's 21st birthday party and was one of the most fun parties i've been to in NZ. 

Saturday I slept in rather late but the headed to Sandfly Bay and Tomahawk Beach in the afternoon. Sandfly was amazing as usual and there were caves at Tomahawk, which are cool to climb through.

Sandfly

Sea lion say "Hi"

From inside the cave at Tomahawk

Sunday night I ended up pulling an all nighter in order to finish my last CS assignment. Tucker had a paper due on Monday and since it was already 4am by the time we finished watching Dexter and when he finally chose his paper topic, I just decided that i'd might as well stay up to do my assignment too instead of waiting until Monday night when I probably would have needed the entire night to do it anyways. We both worked on our respective assignments until about 6:30am when we drove up to Signal Hill to watch the sun rise. We didn't actually see the sun, but it was still pretty and VERY windy and VERY cold. 

Post sun-rise, pre-paper-finish....

I was actually quite awake the whole day. I have to say, that all nighter was probably the most pleasant one i've ever had. This is not to say that I am now fond of them and will be having them as a hobby but I am usually incredibly stressed out during previous ones because my assignment is always due the next morning. This time, I was doing an assignment earlier AND I had company AND there was a decent sunrise. Anyways, that following night we watched some more Dexter and the movie Thor, though i'm not sure how well I followed either as I dozed off a couple of times...

It seems a little surreal that I only have two classes left before the end of semester. It is partly because its mid-October and partly because I am shocked by how fast this semester has gone. By the end of this month I will be half-way through junior year. As for upcoming events, I am hoping to go to the Moeraki Boulders tomorrow and then i'm off to Wellington for the weekend!