South Island Madness Part II

Hey All (Still no photos)
So it has been a crazy week. Have done a whole lot of travelling and exotic things. Went to the Wildfoods Festival in Hokitika. it is this huge food festival with exotic and local food. The festival consists of over 90 vendors of food, serving almost everything. the food that i sampled was the Westcargots(Snails), Punga(NZ Plant), Lambs tail, Crocodile and Kangaroo, Stag Heart, HuHu Grubs (Little bigs), Smoked Eel, Grasshoppers with a Satay sauce, Oystrich Pie and Mountain Oysters (Sheep testicles). After all that yummy food we had dessert which was fresh starwberries and vanilla ice cream. So that day was full of exotic and different experiences.(Have have plenty of video to upload when i get back to Auckland) The worst tasting food that i sampled from the festival was the HuHu grubs and the Eel. The Best tasting thing was the Oystrich Pie. So i call that day a success.

I am being rushed off now, we are going Panning for gold. Ross produces a million dollars of Gold a week. So i am going to try my hand in the trade. will finish the blog up later.

Ok I am back from Gold Panning, nothing big just a few specs of Gold. Still something is better than nothing.

After the Wildfoods festival we went to the Hokitika Day at the Horse Track. which is a local day which the whole area comes out for and bets on some horses. the cool thing about the Hokitika Horse Track is that it is the only horse track in the world that runs the races the opposite way. the world runs counter clockwise, Hokitika runs clockwise. Hokitika is also a grass track which hold alot of water, so it takes a special kind of horse to race fast on the track. I did not have any luck, i bet on one race lost and quite. Leo won 7 dollars and Leo's sister Eveline won 35 dollars. it was good fun, there were 10 races on the day, they started at 1200 and went off every 30 minutes. we stayed till race number 7. i got video of the whole process of the horse from weigh in to being jockeyed and to getting in the gates.

On Monday Leo and I left in the morning for the Abel Tasmin National Park. we were going camping at the base of the trails. Abel Tasmin has trails that can last for 3o minutes or 5 days. Leo and I hiked all day on tuesday. On the way up to Abil Tasmin we took the West Coast Highway stopping in all the main towns for some sight seeing. We stopped in Punakaiki to have a look at the Pancake rocks which is a huge tourist destination. we had a stop in Murchinson and then in Moetueka, we arrived in our destination town of Marahau which is the end of the Highway that brings you to Abel Tasmin. We stayed at a campground called the Barn for two nights. the trip up took us just shy of 6 hours but it went by quickly with all the tourst stops. Tuesday we hiked for 6 hours in the Abel Tasmin National Park. it has beautiful trails, views and beaches. I have heaps of video and photos that i will post when i arrive back in Auckland which is in a weeks time. We also did all of our running through the trails, it was very scenic and cant wait to share the photos with everyone. Wednesday we had to leave the campground by 1000, on the way home we took the inland highway making less stops but still a few. Quick stop in Richmond and then a stop at Buller Gorse which has NZ's longest swing bridge. it also offers tons of other activities, none of which quit fit my budget. the drive back we did just shy of 5 hours so it was all good.

Today we went back into Hokitika town to check out these two factories, one was a glass blowing factory and another was a copper sculpture factory. they were very cool as they did the art work infront of you in the store as you shopped. it was a bummer tho because they would not allow you to video or take pictures. you could however buy the 40 dollar dvd on how they did the stuff. but once again not in the budget. O Well had a good time watching them. Just got back from panning for gold which i told you all about.

Got nothing really exciting planned for the rest week. Tomorrow we are going to GreyMouth (40 minutes) to watch some horse racing again. it is a different type, i forgot what they called it but it is the one where the jockey is pulled in a cart. saturday Leo's neices have a pony show and Eveline is incharge of the show so we are off to watch/help out at that one. then sunday catch a train sunday to hristchurch to start the trek home. nothing planned yet in Christchurch but will update all on that as it gets closer. Well i hope you all enjoyed the Blog miss you all and Leo and I send our regards.-Mike