Weekend wonders and Microwaved Muffins

What a weekend... you wouldn't even believe it all so I think I will just put the slightly less traumatic version on here. I said in a previous post that a couple friends and I had rented beds at a hut where we would be camping for the weekend...and that was in some way how it went. We found out that in order to access  the hut we had to drive an extra 180 km round trip to pick up a key for the building. With the added drive time we weren't able to make it to our site until around 9:30 pm which is 3 hours after sundown here. A half mile hike was included in the adventure of finding our accommodation and when we reached our parking lot we spotted a mysterious man hanging out in his van. As we were the only ones that had booked the area, we had no cell service, we had to hike to get to the hut, we had only a pen light and cell phone lights, we would likely get lost, and we really didn't know if the man was just a hiker staying in his van for the night or a crazy ax murderer, we decided we would rather find a motel to stay in and fork out some good money instead of getting into unknown trouble. We locked the doors of our little red rental car just for good measure and drove out of there as fast as the narrow gravel road would take us. We knew that the town we would be visiting the next day was only a short bit down the road so away we went. We eventually found a motel that also rented out small cottages and we rented one for the night. The next morning we woke up to this as the view from our front door...

Not too bad of a deal if you ask me... we spent the early morning packing up our things because we fully intended to find our hut later that afternoon. After packing we headed out to the beach that we had just slept 100 feet from. We walked along and collected shells and sea-glass of course.

We checked out of the cut little cottage above and went to see what we were there to view...the coolest boulders in the world (Moeraki Boulders)

To make a long story short...from here we went to find our hut and got lost...in a very pretty place...But then we found our hut and it was quite unfortunate. Despite the lack of luxury or even basic accommodations within the hut, we stayed the night...night time here is roughly 14 hours...and what a long and cold 14 hours it was. I only slept a grand total of 2 of them and spent many of the other 12 in a half dazed state convinced that my toes were going to fall off if I bothered to move them.

The first of the above 3 pictures is where we got lost. The second is the color of the streams and rivers here. It is totally natural and is because of he mineral content in the water. The third is our lovely hut...not worth the $34 we spent to stay there if you ask me...but oh well.

The next morning we went hiking and climbed a mountain near by where we could see all the way out to the ocean and watch the waves break. It was astounding.

That was the view from the mountain....beautiful right? and under that is what I like to call the "Tony The Tiger" rock...The picture either doesn't do it justice or we were just really really tired but we really did think it looked like Tony the Tiger. Here is a 360 view from the top of the mountain with a peek at my companions.

After the hike we set out to return our key. The city (Dunedin) we had to take it to has the steepest road in the world and happens to only be accessible if you drive over a few mountains..well it snowed when we got there and we ended up sitting on the side of the only highway out for an hour or two before we were assisted by a woman stuck behind us who helped us to get traction and get off the road. The highway was closed for the night so we had to again drop some good money on a hotel room and extra food. We tried to leave the next day but the road was still closed so we scoped out the cheapest place in town to stay and then went to a museum. The saddest part about us being snowed into Dunedin was that there was only about 2 in of snow over the ground...2 in shut down the entire city and shut down Christchurch for 2 days!

So above we have the whole 2 inches of snow...Myself getting eaten by a croc in the museum while Carina saves me....Shell encrusted toilet seats (what kind of museum has shells in their toilet seats?!?!) and the mountains on our way out.

We finally got out of the city without having to stay a second night there. We got home kind of late and then returned our rental the next day and walked 2.5 hours (part of which was because we got lost) on the icy sidewalks home because we couldn't afford the bus after how much our weekend cost in surprise expenses.

So with all of that in mind you may be wondering where the microwaved muffins comes into the title...well we don't have ovens in our flats but we have microwaves that pretend they are ovens so I made muffins tonight and they aren't too bad :)

Until next time you may feast on these...or I will :)