Sandwiches, etc.

Our New Zealand trip has been amazing so far. We just arrived at Marahau, Abel Tasman's national park village. Our days have been get up and go go go...either jam packed with activities or long days of driving. It has been 5 days since we landed, and we have driven almost 2100km!!! Spending so much time in a car has forced us to eat a lot of bread, cheese, granola bars and carrots. Ok, it hasn't been all healthy, we do have bags of chips and candy sitting in our car as well.

We have been eating sliced cheese sandwiches like it is going out of style. No joke...on the days that we are driving, we are probably each eating about 5 sandwiches a day. Not only is it to save time, but the bread that we found is amazing: Mackenzie High Country Bread baby, you can't go wrong.

I found this bread by chance on our first day in New Zealand. We were loading up on gas to drive to Queenstown, and I wanted a snack. I wanted something that would fill me up, but I didn't feel like chips or chocolate. I saw this one lonely loaf of bread just sitting there on the shelf, so I grabbed it along with some sliced cheese. Ever since then, we were hooked...they were actually damn good!

We have pretty much tried every flavour of Mackenzie bread available; our favourite is the southern grain. We started getting sick of the cheese that we were buying, so we are now buying sliced black pepper cheese: a little variety, a little kick from the black pepper, we were happy.

Oh yes, I must also mention that dDub is my new favourite kiwi band. It is hard to get radio here when driving, so we picked up a CD to prevent us from going crazy. Yes, we actually purchased a CD. I don't remember buying a CD since the 90's. It wasn't cheap either, it was $30 NZD. However, it was truly one of the best purchases we have made on this trip. We have been listening to this CD for days now, and we are not even sick of it!

After Queenstown, we saw Milford Sound, Fox Glacier, and Punakaiki (pancake rocks). All were absolutely wonderful experiences, and no words can properly describe it.

In terms of climate, New Zealand reminds me of Canada, but densely compacted. You can basically experience all types of weather in a very short period of time. During our drive to Milford Sound, it started out nice and sunny, 2 hours later it was wet and foggy, and then an hour later, we were in the middle of a snow fall. It was really bizarre.


We are kayaking tomorrow, and it should be a blast. We are paddling to the Tonga Seal Island where I hope we will see both penguins and seals. We keep seeing penguin crossing signs on the roads, but no sign of the actual animal yet.