Wow, its been quite a while since I've made time to update this. Alot is happened, but I'll just overview the important parts.

The car that we had bought in march abruptly died about a week later, while returning from the west coast over Arthur's Pass. I wasn't there, but the cam belt snapped and all of the cams became misaligned. It would have costed more to fix than the car was worth, so it got left at a garage to be scrapped for parts. I havn't had too much trouble getting around without a car since, relying on a combination of friends' cars, hitchhiking, and using the bus lines around New Zealand.

We had basically all of April off from class at the university, so I took this opportunity to get around and see some more of New Zealand. All of the exchange students were in the same situation - wanting to pack as much in as possible - so it was funny to see everyone flocking from the international student residence halls as soon as classes ended. For the first part of break, I headed to the northern part of the South Island with Aaron from UMD, and my friends Jess and Tim. (from Iowa and California respectively). Tim's got a old Toyota Hiace van, dubbed "big blue", which has a couch as a back seat. We decorated it with fabric from the secondhand store and headed out to see some beautiful countryside. Our first stop was Kaikoura, which is about 3 hours north of Christchurch. There we spent the night at a free campground, and woke up to see a range of snowy peaks pressed up against the coast. We went to a swimming hole, which was freezing, and got back on the road again. We spent the next afternoon in Renwick, which is famous for being one of the biggest wine producing regions in New Zealand. There we rented bikes and went wine tasting at a few wineries. We moved on to Nelson on the northern coast of the South Island. There we went to a cool easter market, and camped out by the sea. We met some really interesting Israeli guys, who had been living on kibbutzes there but moved to NZ to work. We sat around drinking tea and talking to them for quite a while.

From the Nelson area, I broke off from Tim, Aaron and Jess to head up to the North Island to stay at a Buddhist retreat center and do a hike that I had intended on doing for a while. I did one day of the coastal Abel Tasman track, which is basically a flat hike along the beach. After this I took a bus back to Nelson and hitchhiked to Picton, where the ferry departs for the North Island. I got a ride from two Austrian guys on a gap year before university, and then from a woman who lived in Wellington (the capital, on the North Island) and had been visiting a friend. On the ferry, I met up with my friend Sam, who was traveling with a few of his friends from home who had come to visit. I had planned on getting a ride with him about halfway up the North Island. The ferry drops off in Wellington, where I stayed with my friend Julia (from orientation at the beginning of the semester). Sam, his friends and I departed north in the morning. We had all planned on doing the Tongariro Crossing the next day, which is a long one-day hike through the many craters of the volcanoe Mt. Tongariro. Togariro is one of three large volcanoes in the central part of the island, which are sacred to the Maori (indigenous people of NZ). While about halfway through the drive, we stopped at an information center where we learned that the Tongariro Crossing would be impossible the next day due to bad weather. Sam and his friends decided that they would stay the night where we were since there was no longer any hurry to keep going. A bit frustrated that my plans had become so shifted, I decided that I wanted to keep going north, and perhaps make it to the retreat center earlier than I had planned. I said by to Sam and the others, and started hitchhiking. My first ride took city of Palmerston North, about one hour from where I had started. The driver was a convinced but thoughtful creationist, and after he learned I was studying philosophy we talked the whole ride about evolution, creationism, and whether there is such thing as truth. It was actually a pretty fascinating conversation, and when he dropped me off I had plenty to think about. From Palmerston North I caught a ride from a pretty uninteresting guy to Bulls, which is a bit of a crap-hole town just before what is called the "desert-road", which crosses through a dry, scrubby, and completely uncivilized section of the country. I waited in Bulls for a while, and finally got a ride from a truck driver in a big freight truck through the desert road to Taupo, where I spent the night. This guy was pretty interesting too. He was driving all the way up the North Island from Wellington to Auckland, and his friend in another truck was doing the same route. On and off throughout the ride they would shout jokingly at each other over the CB radio, talking about music, other truck drivers, or whatever was on their mind. It was an interesting glimpse into the life of a truck driver - where you have to stay awake throughout the night navigating boring roads, get a little bit of sleep, and then do it again. I waited for him to have dinner and smoke a few cigarettes, and didn't get to Taupo until about 1am, where I spent the night in a hostel.

Well, that's about all the typing I can tolerate for now so I'm giving up. I'm only about 1/3 of the way through break so far, so expect some more stories soon about the Buddhist retreat center, and backpacking about on the South Island.