20 – feb 7: wanaka to haast

in the morning of leaving wanaka, we have picked up another travel companion. a german girl of 20 years old, named anja (yes, anja, like the russian name! so cool.) she will travel with us to the glaciers (through haast, where she has found a dorm bed in a nearby hostel). in terms of general travel it makes our car arrangement different – all my bags are in the backseat now (as they are the smallest, who’d thunk that), anja is sitting in the front, and i sit at the back with my laptop. this is perfect because i don’t have to keep up a conversation with anyone :D and i end up falling asleep A LOT. which is great cause i constantly feel like i’m lacking sleep.

so the drive to haast was punctuated with a few stops at pretty places (waterfalls and such), and that’s pretty much it. in haast we picked up food, and since i still felt tired and kinda sick (lightheaded), anja and oleg went to explore the local forests, and i stayed in the huge, open concept 2 floor YHA hostel. which actually SUCKED cause their oven didn’t really work from the first time, and they had a pronounced lack of dishes, in my opinion.

anyway, the day was not very exciting (overcast and grey too), but that’s exactly what i needed. the photographs anja and oleg brought back (they both have drebel 350d, hers is silver) are verrrry pretty, but i felt SO tired that i don’t regret that i stayed in one place, and had a day off.

evening dinner was pasta with ground beef and tomato sauce. the YHA hot plates sucked, and we never did end up eactly figuring out how they work, but everything got somehow cooked, and was made into a pretty tasty dinner.

i blogged some in the evening, and slept painfully with my burns, and very loud rain and wind throughout the entire night.