Last weekend, 5 of us drove down to Wanaka to do a bit of hiking and see the town. We took the car our friend Austin's car (he was with us) which his brother left for him to sell. We had to jumpstart it to get out of the parking lot at school, and then about 20 minutes out of Christchurch one of the back tires, which incidentally had just been replaced, literally blew up. Like I'm talking the entire sideway of the tire shredded and the hubcab ejected like 30 ft. off the road blown up. Luckily we had a full size spare and were good for the rest of the trip. We got to Wanaka and camped that night up the lake a ways. Our plan the next day was to hike the Rob Roy Glacier track, when we went to the visitors center in town the next morning we were informed that the track was "very closed" due to "active landslides" and "track repair". Clearly based on this information, and the fact that all the other day hikes in the area sounded pretty beat, we decided to see just how "very closed" the track actually was. Turns out there was only one section that was washed out, so after ducking some caution tape and taking pictures next to signs saying don't be here we were good to go. It was drizzling throughout the day Saturday so the valley we were in was covered in low lying clouds and mist which was super cool. There was also the small fact that I had forgotten to bring any good pants to hike in, so I ended up just wearing my bright day glow orange longjohns...When we got the the end of the track we could see the front faces of the glacier just below the clouds and happened to see a massive avalanche come down off of it! On our way back out from the track along the 30 km of dirt road and ford crossings we some how ended up with a massive yellow reflective exclamation point sign in our car...I'm denying all responsibility or knowledge of how it came into our possession. We went back to Wanaka to cook dinner by the lake but since it was cold and kind of windy, well to make a long story short we ended up dragging a picnic table and bench into the entrance way of a bar that was closed for refurbishing right along the main road through town on a Saturday night and cooking dinner there. Yes we got some VERY funny looks from people. After dinner we walked around town still with no real plan of where we were going to sleep that night. During our wandering we passed a bakery with cardboard boxes and sleeping bags in the window, turns out they were hosting a 40 hr famine for world hunger or something along those lines. We had the bright idea that maybe WE could also sleep in the boxes in a warm, dry place! Well when we came back later we found out that the people staying in the boxes were 14 yr old girls and the mother/bakery owner wasn't to keen on 5 strangers staying there too even in support of world hunger...We then did the only logical thing and immediately after talking to her went around the back of the bakery and raided the motherload of all dumpsters. Now when I say we hit the jackpot, this might as well have been the lottery for 5 hungry kids wandering around a town. We found probably about 50-100 assorted pastries and treats nicely wrapped up in paper and placed in the trash bins along with 3 MASSIVE (roughly 6 in. square) cookie/brownie things with a cream center that were individually sealed in plastic! We were pretty much in heaven. We ended finding a place to sleep outside of town, and woke up the next morning and cooked breakfast down by the lake. We then wandered around town some more and ended up spending over an hour on the playground there with all the parents and they're little kids. It was a pretty mean playground, literally everything spun around. It took us one more jumpstart at the gas station on the way out of town to make it back, but overall it was another awesome weekend.

On another note, yesterday I dreaded my hair and am planning on keeping it that way for quite a while hahahaha.

Cheers!