The following day we had to say goodbye to Simon and Beata since we had planned for an extra week in New Zealand than they had. We drove them to the airport and then had to find ACE, our car rental company since we were trading our station wagon in for a smaller cheaper car. Though they claimed to be at Christchurch airport they are actually a bit away and after asking around I got directions to them. They are a pain in the ass company, but if you don’t breakdown they are the cheapest in NZ. We opted for no GPS this time since it was not only useless, but caused a lot of expensive agony and stress.

Giant Sand Fly

Then we were off through Arthur’s Pass again. The weather was clear this time from the beginning so we were able to see the gorgeous views that we had missed the first time. We spent the night in Greymouth, where we had planed on going adventure caving the following day.

We drove to Te Anau since Simon and Beata wanted to go to the cave there to see glowworms. I wanted to do adventure caving but my plan to go to Greymouth or Waitomo were vetoed. The cave in Te Anau does not have adventure caving at all.  Since Hendrik and I were staying a few days longer than the others we decided to go to Greymouth later instead. While they were off at the caves Hendrik and I found a campsite and relaxed there since Te Anau is a tiny town with nothing to do. After the others joined us again we decided to go play mini golf. We walked to it but no one was attending the stall. There was a number which I called and was told that they were closed. Basically the people working the mini-golf were too lazy to actually work it. I was very disappointed because I love mini golf and it took a while for me to convince the others to actually go with me. So we walked up and down the city about 8 times, which is basically only one block and went into some souvenir stores. I bought an umbrella since mine had been blown apart. Then we went to the only nice pub in the whole town and played pool and got served by a guy with a mullet.  It was so unremarkable that I don’t even have any pictures from this day.

A picture from Queenstown which I love.