First and foremost, for this section, I would like to thank my mother who has put in countless hours on my behalf trying to get my airline tickets sorted out. For those of you who don’t know the story here it is: I ordered my airline tickets for Australia and South East Asia from a company known as cheaptickets.com. It was simple enough, point click and pay, and your tickets will be emailed to you. I quickly discovered this was not going to be the case. The company has decided that it would be better to actually mail me the physical tickets as opposed to simply giving me an e-ticket; Albeit from me to inform them of the ever popular, “go-green” motto sweeping the country. The ticket was then to be mailed to my home address in Louisiana and then expected to be fed-exd to me in New Zealand, simple enough. The powers that be have decided that the Andrew Lewis, the wonderful southern boy, from Louisiana was not deserving of these tickets and instead has awarded them to the Andrew Lewis, (allow Mom to insert her insults), in New York. I don’t know whom I have wronged at this company but apparently I did it big. The tickets were located, through much work and stress, by my Mother, NOT AN EMPLOY OF THE COMPANY. When confronted about this matter cheaptickets.com informed my Mother and myself that there was nothing to be done on their parts and tried to instill the notion that it was somehow our fault that the tickets were mailed to New York. Several times we have been contacted assuring us that there were no problems and that the matter had been resolved. This is not, was not, and will never be the case. My dear mum has been nothing short of a saint in dealing with these matters and even while her son is halfway around the world she is dealing on his behalf. Its not to say that I couldn’t have taken care of the matter, but come on guys I’m on vacation. It is only to say that my mom has nothing but love in her heart for her favorite child. (screw you Neil).

Now to the traveling.

I am currently in Greymouth, New Zealand in route down the western coast of the Southern Island. The first thing you discover/remember, is that the sun sets on the west…… it is absolutely gorgeous right now with the sun going down over the mountains. Rewind a little bit to me being in Nelson and Picton. Picton is just a short 30 minute drive to Blenheim, the wine capital of New Zealand. I rented a car, let me repeat I rented a car to make the drive to Blenheim to get my wonderful family a few souvenirs that I knew no Lewis could deny, WINE! After discovering early on that driving on the left side of the road meant everything else was in reverse, I can only guess how many times I turned the wipers on while turning, we made it to Blenheim safely. We walked around town, Donnie in search of work me in search of a 3^rd camera, for a few hours building up a good thirst. We realized that it was nearly five and that most of the vineyards tasting times would have been well passed. I made a b-line to Nautilus to get mom some of her loved wine and then headed over to cloudy bay to check out their Pinot Noir. After a tasting or two or three we ran into a couple from Ponchatoula! It was wonderful getting to talk to someone about the saints and the LSU tigers short comings against Penn State. After this we headed back to Picton to check out what remained. The following day we took a hike and snapped some amazing pictures overlooking the harbor. After two days of rain, and now of course no dive, I was off to Nelson. Nelson is not known for too many things other than having the geographical center of New Zealand. I took a tour via Micro-flight (imagine a hang glider with a propeller) over the Abel Tasman national park. The park was gorgeous and the weather was perfect and so I managed to record a long video as well as snap a few pictures from the air. I made it back to town and took the walk to the center of New Zealand. It was a little bit of a let down but the views made up for the lackluster walk. I then headed into town and met my friend Chris from the UK. We had a few pints and met a guy who had met Sir Edmund Hillary. For those of you who are unaware Sir Edmund Hillary was the first person to EVER climb Mt. Everest! We talked a bit and then met a guy from Tibet, I am sad to say that he was not a Sherpa, spoke nearly perfect English, and had never climbed Everest himself. The next day we had hoped to kayak the Abel Tasman national park but were denied, of course, by weather. After a few hours the weather cleared and Chris and I went to the park to attempt to catch a water taxi around the park. We learned that we had just missed it and instead opted for a short walk. I am glad we took it because the beach was absolutely amazing. There were heaps of freestanding rock formations along with caves and some minor water falls. We drove back in to town after a few hours and said our good-byes, Chris was headed in the opposite direction as myself. I made it to the bus on time, not common, and was a little annoyed at the amount of stops and time we spent waiting. It is very uncommon for this bus to wait on anyone even for a matter of minutes. To top it all the weather was perfect and the air conditioner, broken. This meant that the first day we had hot sunny weather I had to spend it inside a bus for the next 10 hours with about 40 other people, I was a little bummed. The bus broke down several times but we still made it to the pancake rocks and blowholes by high tide. This may not sound that cool to everyone else but to see it in real life was awesome. The pancake rocks are just rocks that look like pancakes, however; the blowholes are essentially coves where the tide comes rushing in and shoots water in the air, it was pretty intense. We have finally made it to Greymouth where again I had to give up my bed to someone who couldn’t speak English, because it was easier and therefore got taken to another hostel where no one is. Tomorrow I head off for Franz Josef and to the glacier. I have booked an all day hike up the glacier and hope, pray, that the weather holds out and I won’t miss another potentially exciting spot of my trip. If these tickets come through like they should have 2 weeks ago I will be wishing you guys a happy Varentines day from Cambodia…. Sorry I couldn’t wait to use that joke. All is well and spirits are high! I will be updating again sooner than usual as per the amount of awesomeness the western coast of the South Island holds! Thanks guys for reading and if you see Janine give her a high five for the hard work she has put in on my behalf.

Andrew