Wurstladen

As I already said we left for Nelson on monday afternoon. We got a ride from a really nice guy called Keith (he's about 5osomething^^) and when he dropped us he asked us if we would like to go out for dinner with him to a Thai restaurant (the best one in Nelson!) Miri and Dani felt really bad about taking that offer but he said that he would like to have some company for the evening and he would be glad to show us some real Thai food so in the end they said yes and he picked us up at 7. Dani and Miri shared a dish because they didn't want him to pay so much for the dinner. It was quite interesting.. at least they liked it. Miri let me have a little taste of her food but I really prefer my own.. It turned out that Keith had a Thai wife and had also lived there for quite some time so he knew a lot about the country and it's political situation.. which he told us a lot about. After the dinner we said good bye and Miri and Dani had to look some things up online before we went to bed.

Keith and the girls at the Thai restaurant

The next day we wanted to check out the iSite (the Information Center) to plan our trip through the Abel Tasman. Miri and Dani had argued about that a lot during the last days because both of them wanted to do something different but in the end they agreed on taking two days of walking and one day kayaking back. The walking part was free but they had to book the camp grounds they wanted to stay at and of course the kayaking tour in advance. On their way there they suddenly stood in front of a little cabin which said "Wurstwagen". It turned out to be a butchers shop which selled not only German saussages (hmmm Landjaeger!!!) but also other German products like Sauerkraut, cheese and Haribo! The two guys who owned the shop were German as well (from the very north). It's just crazy how many German people there are around, hm?

YEAH!

So we walked on, booked the Abel Tasman tour and last but not least went to the post office so that Dani could send out the bottle of wine that she had bought on our wine tasting tour in Blenheim for her parents. Uff it took for ever until Dani could finally send it becaue they weren't sure if it's possible to send wine and so we had to call different agencies orr whatever to ask them.. but it worked out in the end and we could hop on the road to get to Motueka, the last stop before our tour through the Abel Tasman. The Backpackers we stayed at was just so cute and (of course) the hosts were German.. what else ;-) But they helped us a lot with organizing all the gere we had to borough for the tour and so we finally had our tent, some sleeping matts, Miri had a good sleeping bag and we had some tickets for the bus which would pick us up at 7.35 the next morning. The last problem was our luggage.. Of course I couldn't carry anything so Miri and Dani had to split all of it between them. It was so much stuff that the hosts gave us some big plastic bags where they could put all their clothes and other stuff into that they didn't need on the tour and leave it at the Backpacker. Then they had to pack their big backpacks with the tent, sleeping bags, food, clothes and everything else they needed. Oh what an act!

What a mess..
Do you see the big black plastic bags?