Mount Cook

We arrived at Mount Cook that evening and just chilled out in front of the TV. Unusually, Andrew was extremely cold. He sat under the heater and in front of the fireplace with a hat on and he was still freezing. Usually that’s me, but this time I was so hot and I just couldn’t understand why he was so cold. That night I couldn’t get to sleep because I kept thinking about the bungy jump that wasn’t. I was toying with the idea to go back there the next day and attempt it again but decided to sleep on it before making any decisions. The next morning when I woke up I was fine with the fact that I didn’t jump. It’s just not something I need to do. At least not right now. I was never keen with the idea but got so wrapped up in the hype and the excitement of it that I really wanted to do it. And I still want to do it but I also know that I can’t do it and I don’t want to waste the money to try.

I thought Andrew might be getting sick but the next morning, although he wasn’t sick, his stomach was hurting him. It is so unusual for Andrew to get sick that I was a little concerned but we couldn’t pin point what it was. We had both eaten the same thing and I was fine, and he obviously wasn’t sick (as in having a cold sick), which lead us down the path of “was it the bungy jump?”, but then we remembered he had drank some water from the water bottle we had filled up at the gross hostel in Queensland. I didn’t drink any of that water and I was feeling fine so we concluded it must be that. He didn’t eat anything all day and only ate instant noodles (very healthy choice) at 6pm.

The plan was for us to do a hike that day but since Andrew was still not feeling well, we decided to stay in. We watched some shows we have on our laptop, read and napped throughout the day. I was also finally able to catch up on the blog! Mount Cook (the village) does not have a grocery store so we were very limited in what we could eat. We finished off all the instant noodles we had, and I had eggs with toast for dinner, which pretty much finished off all the food we had. We were staying at the YHA, and it was very weird for me to see 3 families (kids and all) staying there. A hostel is not a very child friendly environment as the shows on TV are not children appropriate (remember, it’s a bunch of 18-35 year olds staying there) and there isn’t really anything for them to do. The parents at least kept them occupied so they didn’t intrude too much but I don’t think the hostel staff were thrilled to have them. When they were checking in I heard them saying, “you want to stay here with kids?” The rest of the night we spent in front of the TV.

We have learned, although there is a lot to do in NZ, it’s a lot of water and summer activities which limits what we can do now, in the winter. In addition, the things we can do are very expensive so we have to pick and chose what we do, which leaves us in front of the TV quite often. Being in an expensive country and having a limited budget makes it very difficult to stay positive and motivated to continue traveling. Ultimately we’re always asking ourselves, what’s the point of traveling if we can’t afford to participate in anything? That’s why we’re really looking forward to Indonesia (we leave in 4 days! July 25!) where our budget will go a lot further. We love NZ but I think we both know we haven’t experienced it to its fullest potential. If we come back to NZ again, it will definitely be during the NZ summer.