Te Anau now remains our current home. Yesterday we took a flight from beautiful Wellington down to Queenstown near the bottom of the South Island. We were in Wellington for about 7 days with Mclean and his roommates, we got a really good feel for that city and once McLean finished his speech for a class it was time to jet down to Queenstown. Once arriving in Queenstown we hopped on a van with other hikers headed down to Te Anau(SW of Queenstown). This joyride really started reminding me of Lord of the Rings. Amazing mountains surrounded by bays and lush green forest. Our van driver also happened to be a city messenger and delivery driver, so along the way we stopped at farms,shops as he tossed packages out the window and honked the horn letting the owners know he made the drop, that was old school. It was about a 2.5 hour drive through some really astonishing mountainous views. We arrived in Te Anau yesterday about 4 in the afternoon, this is a nice little town with a laid back atmosphere, basically designed for backpackers to stay and settle before big hikes all around the town. We somehow got settled in a hostel which is more like a lake cabin for $30 each. Like most hostels we were thinking we would share an 8 bedroom, which is always nice for meeting folks but not if you need some solid sleep. We settled in the 2 bedroom cabin with a couple from Wales who are really nice, they just checked out and left us a nice little note, letting us know they left us their extra goods in the fridge. We've got this amazing cabin and loaded up on hiking foods and are setting out to trek the Keplar Track as a day hike today, alittle warm-up for a 3-4 day trek through the Milford Track, ending up in the Milford Sound (google it). We are minutes away from taking off down to the Keplar Track for the day, only thing is that the rain is coming down fairly hard right now. We better get going, I will finish this update soon, til tomorrow.

Kia Ora---from NZ,
Kc