Kaiteriteri, home sweet home

After our two and a half weeks of travel we have finally settled into a routine. And while it is nice, I mean we are steps away from the best beach in the country, working in a hotel stinks.

On another level. When I was a server we would all complain about how much people sucked. But people really can’t do that much damage in a restaurant when they are just eating for an hour. Put early 20 somethings in a room together for an entire night and you can imagine what they can come up with. The worst is cleaning the kitchen. Even though we have nice signs everywhere reminding people (more or less politely) to wash and put their dishes away but no one does. The first night we had thirty five backpackers and through out the night it seemed as if they were playing an epic game of Jenga as they stacked them up on the drying rack. The pile was nearly three foot high with each dish perfectly positioned to continue building on. This was frustrating enough but even more were the people who decided there were too many dishes so they would just leave their dirty ones around the sink. It took me an extra hour just to rewash all the dishes while Alex worked on vacuuming everything around me. This is just our night time job, in the mornings we also have to make up the rooms as they leave. So basically… its a lot of work and people are gross and slobby but everything else is fantastic. The meals they feed us at night are dinners you’d receive at a five star restaurant. And they gave us our own room with our own king sized bed and our own beautiful freezing bathroom (which I don’t mind the cold because this is an alcohol free hostel (SAY WHATT) so we need a place to stand in for a refrigerator to keep our smuggled goods cold). And there’s this awesome painting over our bed! We also get to use the bikes and kayaks for free and we get every few days off. Its really not so bad, its just harder to make friends with the people passing through when you clean up their messes all day. We have had an exception though. The Kiwi Experience backpacker bus drops off every other day but the backpackers are allowed to stay a few nights and get on another bus when they are ready. After the first bus three people stayed so we got to know them a little better (and teach the dutch boy how to do dishes!). So anyways since we are the cool kids now with our awesome station wagon, we invited them to go to the Abel Tasman National Park with us, just 13 kilometers up the road.
This park is gorgeous, just miles of sandy beaches and crystal clear water.

We decided to go for an hour and a half hike passing more gorgeous beaches and trails that wound through the jungle and up the mountain. Unfortunately we moved a little slower than we thought we would so as the sun started to go down just a little, we decided just to hit one more beach and head back. There was a mud slide of a trail to our right that was basically a vertical drop for 300 feet (maybe… I really am no good at judging these things) with ropes made out of hoses to help you not die. It led to yet again another stunning beach but by that time we needed to spice things up. We decided we would walk back by climbing over the rocky parts of the shore. It was a terrible idea. As the tide started rolling in each step became a little more dangerous. We climbed for nearly 25 minutes before we got to a cliff we just couldn’t get around. Our new friend Ollie decided to test the water for depth but it was well up to his thighs and everyone had given up hope. Ollie and our other new friend Casper had only worn chucks and were slipping and sliding over the moss covered rocks.

I love seals. So yes that was our adventure. Tomorrow is our first day off and we are going to drive up to the largest sand spit in the world!

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