There and Back Again

Well we finished up our final days in NZ driving up the west coast and stopping where and when we felt like it. For the most part it was trying to keep our eyes on the road while driving and still enjoying the breathtaking scenery. Did the short hike out to Fox Glacier, unfathomably massive. More fur seals greeted us near Cape Foulwind. Hot springs were found and massages received while crossing the Lewis Pass on our way to Christchurch.
Christchurch, the first and only place where we received any sort of actual honeymoon perks (free upgraded room and complimentary drinks at the restaurant!). There wasn't a lot of apparent damage left from the 7.1 earthquake at least in the city center. We felt two aftershocks while we were there. Yes they are still having aftershocks almost two months later, at least a half dozen a week! We missed the resident wizard but did get to enjoy fabulous weather yet again while wandering the Avon River and exploring the botanical gardens. Small country that NZ is, we ran into two of our hiking companions while on the tram!
We decided to live it up for our last night in NZ and had reservations at a nice restaurant and got all dressed up (or at least as dressed up as we could get after 3 weeks of travel).
With framepacks laden with goodies we caught our 6.30am flight out of Christchurch to Auckland, spent 7 hours in the Auckland airport and after 4 security checks and 27 hours of travel have arrived back in Berkeley at 1pm the same day we left NZ. As someone on the plane said "time travel is possible!".

Some brief anecdotal lessons learned in NZ:
1. The 100km speed limit is really more of an imaginary goal as you'll never be able to go that fast on 90% of the roads.
1a. The above applies unless you're a large heavily laden truck and then 100km is de riguer around the curves just to scare the bejesus out of all the tourists.
2. Sandflies are squishier than mosquitoes.
3. 4 days of sunshine constitutes a severe drought in some parts of the country.
4. One can't possibly capture the amazing beauty of NZ on some puny camera.
5. Not every brown flightless bird is a kiwi. In fact 99.9% of the time it won't be a kiwi, but it will probably be a weka.

Don't be fooled!