Pre-hike to Mt. Aspiring

We are headed up to Mt. Aspiring National Park for a "friendly" hike according to a local we met in the sauna last night. I don't trust him. He had huge tattoos on his shoulder and to him, friendly probably means a 6 hour hike that ends up on a glacial overlook. This IS the country that invented bungee jumping, you know! But we are packing up and going there just to have a look around.

Not a cloud in the sky today. Don't know if that means it will be really cold or starting to warm up. i'm bringing my fleece, long underwear and mittens with me no matter what.

Last night as we grocery shopped for our breakfast and picnic lunch, it was fun to look at the different candy they have. When you are somewhere else, their candy seems so much more interesting.

Here are some of the bars they have:

More Nuts
Pinky Bars
Macho Nutty
they have dark chocolate kit kats, (do we have that??)
A lot of their wrappers have penguins on them
Our favorite candy bar so far has been the Boost. It was like a snickers wrapped in a layer of extra nuts, then more chocolate. Talk about a lot of Energy!!
Our least favorite has been the Crispy. It was like a really, old, dried out butterfinger.

When you have a picnic lunch every day, you get excited about the little things. After an entire week of either shaved chicken or shaved ham, today we are having tuna. The tuna here comes in four flavors: plain, thai chili, lemon pepper and olive oil. we chose the lemon pepper.

Ok, we are off. I'll let you know what these Kiwis mean when they say, "Oh, it's a fair and friendly walk". If we don't return, we went to Mt Aspiring National Park. To some trail called the Rob Roy Trail. Isn't he the guy who got his head cut off in Scotland? Greatttttt.

I leave Lauren and Sarah the house and all my belongings.
Lori gets the fish