Well, last time i left you when maayan left me...

That was on Jan. the 23rd.We agreed on meeting on Feb. 10th, in the wine festival Katie invited us to, or maybe earlier...

By the way, that was the last day of my first 2 months in NZ! Such amazing 2-months!

before i start though, there are photos to along (an old album you might have seen)...
http://www.tomeraroundtheworld.shutterfly.com/action/pictures?a=67b0de21b3257d94c4a5

I wanted to hike with Caroline, but her only free day my whole time there was the coming Sunday.
And now was Monday.
So i decided to try and get to Mt. Cook and be back by Saturday.

So the next day, Tuesday, i hit the road at around noon. The hitching went very slow, and after about 6 hours i only made 2 hours progress.
But than a nice thing happened.
I was picked up by Brandon. Asking me if I'm in a rush, he invited me into his home.
I was in no rush, and so i accepted...
I had very nice time with him, his wife and their 9 months old baby... You know how much i like playing with little kids :)
they have a little farm, with a cow, some sheep, etc. And we dug some potatoes for an excellent dinner...
nice substitute for rice with peanuts in my tent ;)

Next morning they gave me a ride to the next town, where i was picked up by a Christian that 13 years ago came from Indonesia to NZ, and her family originated in china... It was quite interesting talking to her.
After 4 more rides, i got to Mt. Cook village, and started climbing up to Muller's hut.
After a few hours during which i had nice views on Mt. Cook (though the very top was clouded), i got there.
It was really nice climb, and very close to the hut there was a lot of snow - someone even built an igloo there...
Well, i didn't see one in Alaska...

The following day i woke up early to watch the sunrise.At 6 i was already freezing out there... It was cloudy :(
But than it cleared and i saw an amazing sunrise :)
For 30 seconds...And it got cloudy again :(
But after 20 minutes, it cleared again!
So beautiful!!
again - 30 within 30 seconds it got clouded again...And it kept going on and off until 7 am, when the sunrise was over, and i walked back to the hut, and tried to defrost myself with some tea...
Quite stupidly, even though it's an alpine hut (and you pay 3.5 times more than for the regular huts), it was one of the only huts I've been to that has no heating :$ And the kitchen, the warmest room there, was 10 degrees Celsius!!
i waited a couple of hours for the weather to clear and than started down again, with a German guy named john.
Crossing a patch of snow, i fell down and "skied" down on my but...
Than john found a piece of wood someone left there, and did some snow-boarding...
I kept snow-butting...
not by choice though...
Anyway, we got down, enjoying great views of the top of Mt. Cook.
Back in the village, we parted, and soon after i got a ride to the main road, some 60 km from the village. where within a few minutes i got a nice ride directly to Amberely! I thought it will take about a day and a half...
The way was nice, and took us about 6 hours, and i surprised Caroline coming back a day earlier...
We watched the "Lord of the Rings" and went to sleep.

Next day was a quiet day of mainly resting, with some 40 minutes easy bike ride (Caroline's), and in the evening we had dinner with some friends of hers. It was really nice and very funny...

Next day we hike on Mt. Herbert.
It was a really nice hike, and we could see Christchurch and the rugged bay right next to it.
It was really nice hiking with her again...
Both on this evening and on the 23rd, after maayan left, we went to see the Basques festival.
All kind of street performance. Some of them were really nice and some were really stupid.
On the whole, we had a very good time there :)

So what did we have this time?
Brilliant views of Mt cook, parting with maayan, nice hitch that took me in for the night and fed me, snow-butting, watching Christchurch and its bay, amazing yet cloudy sunrise and a Basques festival.