Well, time is almost up here on the mountain. The snow is dying a slow death and people are starting to head to the beach instead of going skiing. We hiked to the crater 2 weeks ago and got fresh tracks down the mountain and I got to work as a lifty on a T-Bar for the day...unfortunately it rained, snowed, was windy and sunny and cloudy all in that same day and it wasn't too busy. Many of our co-workers who were contracted through Oct 11th have been let go early and will be leaving on the 4th instead. The beginners area, Happy Valley, is the lowest area on the mtn and will be closing after this weekend. All of a sudden we'll go from around 50 lifties to about 25! I'll be the last ticket checker standing. Just like Connor MacLeod, "There can be only one!". Anyhow, we're starting to figure out what we'll do on our travels across the country and beyond...never much for planning ahead I guess! We've had a great time up here but just can't wait to get to the beach and relax and then go out and explore and see the beauty everyone says exists around here.
Our plan is to leave here and head down to Wellington, which is the southern coast of the North Island. From there we'll catch a ferry across to the South Island and head down the eastern coast back up a little on the west to see the glaciers then back up to where we started. The plan is to do this in about 2 and a half weeks. With our other week and a half we'll travel back up the North Island's east coast up to the far north before flying our of Auckland on Nov 6th. We hear there are some great beaches up there!
Not sure if we'll but a car before the ferry or not (it costs about $200 to take it across each time) but we'll do a lot of car camping and living on the cheap so we can spend our money on the fun stuff like bungee jumping, zorbing, diving the Great Barrier Reef and all the fun stuff we'll do in Australia! We'll try and get wireless internet where we can so that we can stay in touch. and we'll try and be a little better with updating this so that you all know what's going on in our world. We hope you'll keep in touch too and send us updates!!!
