#4 this time around West Coast

Our trip was quickly coming to and end which meant departing from Bobby and Natalie and starting to make our way north towards Blenheim where we hoped to find vineyard work.  The campsite above was outside of Queenstown and the picture below is of Glenorchy which was a beautiful drive but not a very exciting town.  We spent a few days messing around Queenstown and then Johnny and I started up the west coast.  It was sad to leave Natalie and Bobby, we've had an awesome 6 months with them.  They are going to travel around the south island and eventually make their way up to do vineyard work, so we'll see them then.

This is fantail waterfall, all along the west coast we saw beautiful waterfalls.  It is one of the most green places I have ever seen, the rain-forest is so thick you can't see through it.
We stopped by two glaciers- Fox and Franz Josef which were incredible.  It was amazing to see a glacier right next to the sea and rain-forest.  I have a couple of friends coming to visit in a few weeks and we plan to take them back and actually go on a hike on one of the glaciers, so we are really excited about that.



These are correctly named the pancake rocks because they are layered right on top of each other.  Below you can see the staircase you walk up to see the ocean.

After a few days spent on the rugged west coast we made our way over to Blenheim.  We camped on this beach the day we arrived in Blenheim.  On the way to this beach we stopped at another and actually got to swim!  It is the first time since we've been in New Zealand that we laid out on a beach and the water was warm enough to get in.  I loved it, it's funny that all four of us thought when we jumped off the plane that we'd be in our swimsuits on the beach.  Little did we know.  

So know we are living and working in Blenheim.  We lucked out and are flatting (renting a room in a house) with a teacher and her husband and an engineer from the Philippines.  The houses we looked at previously were awful.  5 to 7 people living in filthy houses, and Johnny and I didn't know what we were going to do, I guess camp forever (yeah right).  So luckily we found this awesome clean house with 3 really nice people living in it.  The husband actually works out of town so it's only the 4 of us during the week.  The backyard is sweet, it has a BBQ, veggie garden, and a pool!  We'll put pictures up soon.  Johnny started working on a vineyard yesterday and said it was extremely boring but is was okay because he didn't have to deal with customers.  I will start in a few days, and luckily we can listen to our ipods while we work.  So we'll let you know how that goes.

Hope all is well with everyone, Maegen