So, from April 5th-25th, we had our mid semester break. I really think that schools stateside should learn from this and make their mid semester breaks a more appropriate length… Anyways, I don’t feel like writing too much, so I’ll just put up some pics and a brief synopsis. Day one included picking up Pops at the airport, getting a rental car, dawdling about my flat as I doing some last minute packing, and driving from Chch to Murchison the long way, via this route. It was a good day. And I did all the driving… Anyways, pics:

This is some river coming down in Arthur’s Pass.

This is the Otira River (I think) on the western side of the divide.

And now some pictures of the west coast, north of Greymouth.

We even saw signs for penguins… Alas, we didn’t see any penguins.

Pops wasn’t terribly exhausted yet at this point.

We moved on to Punakaiki, also known as Pancake rocks. It’s thusly called due to the fact that the limestone is layered in such a way that it looks like it’s just so many pancakes stacked all on top of each other. Pretty cool deal. We were getting there right near sunset, so that was a neat place to watch the sun set.

And that’s that for pictures from the first day. We ate that evening in Westport, and then made the 1h30 – 2h drive off to Murchison. That’s when Pops started getting real tired and hallucinating. It was both amusing and frightening at the same time. At least now I know what happens when one is subject to prolonged lack of sleep.