new zealand is for lovers: part 2, abel tasman and wedding.

okay okay okay, so it was a little ambitious of me to imagine i would write every single day... BUT writing this post already puts me way further along than i ever got in my spain posting, so there is that.

after we got our fill of nelson, we journeyed north a bit to try on abel tasman for size. we found two gems along the way:



i really hope this car worked and gets driven around. we followed the signs into some guy's backyard with a note saying "open by appointment only" but you know how sometimes you don't feel like calling someone when you're right in front of their house to tell them you'll be there in 30 seconds? plus, all the sculptures were just sitting in his unfenced backyard. what were we to do? why, get out and look at them of course! so, we pranced around some guy's backyard for a few minutes (with no sign of the guy anywhere), then left because the sculptures were a little bit scary.


the second stop we made was at a gas station/convenience store. lucky for us, they had chocolate covered pineapple chunks (not what you think...in new zealand talk, pineapple chunks apparently means pineapple-flavored (this is a stretch) marshmallow filling). and even luckier for us, this particular gas station doubled as an art gallery. and why not? we found this little statue


we're not quite sure if maybe it's a person hugging E.T., or maybe it's a person in a yoga move where she's hugging her own legs... but, there was a little 3x5 card taped to it with the artist's phone number on it, so we called him and told him we were on our way to get married and he said, "oh this is piece is perfect for you then! it's called 'embrace'!" (then he probably said something under his breath that sounded like "suckers.") and we thought, hmmm i guess it is perfect for us then! and bought it right there at that gas station.

we were so excited to see abel tasman because we had heard so much about how beautiful it was and what incredible scenery, etc. so, we decided to start it off with a hike. what we didn't plan on was a day of downpouring rain.


but, while we couldn't really see much of the scenery and we had the fact that we were scheduled to get married the next morning...outside...looming in the back of our minds, we had a great hike and saw giant bugs.


we stayed that night at the everton b&b, which we had arranged beforehand. i knew this was the place to stay because when i was looking around for places to surround our wedding day, the hostess here, diane, was by far the most excited person i talked to. she was thrilled to have a bride and groom in her home and was eager to help out wherever she could to make the day great for us.... which included calling her son and his girlfriend, inviting all the neighbors to "come out to watch the bride leave her house," etc. it all of a sudden seemed silly to me that i was ever worried about finding two witnesses to be there!

i had been in touch with another lady in the area - rose, who i contacted through servas. she wanted us to stay with her really badly, but since we already made arrangements to stay with diane and martin, we agreed to meet up with rose for dinner. so, rose came over to the b&b, picked us up, and took her back to her house for dinner. where a handful of her friends were anxiously waiting for us. who knew we were meant to be the dinner subject of the night for these random strangers?


it was even better when pretty much all of them showed up on the beach the next morning to take pictures and watch us get married, along with a slew of other random kiwis. it was great!

anyway, enough about the wedding. you can check out pictures and stories of all that at theflaggfamily.com

after our wedding celebration (and a little nappy nap for the boy), we decided to head back down to the beach where we got married to swim. and that was our first encounter with - duh duh duh - sand flies!! in our newly wedding bliss, we completely forgot about the warning that EVERYBODY gave us that "sandflies are the one thing that keeps new zealand from being translated to heaven with the title of 'paradise on earth'." before i even knew it, i had at least 8 billion bites all over me. and you know how you aren't supposed to scratch bites even though they itch the bejeebers out of you? yeah, multiple that itch by 8 billion and tell me you wouldn't scratch.


so, we ran away from the beach and it all of a sudden occured to me, "sand fly bites make me crave pizza..." and that's why we treated diane and martin to pizza. where the owner of the place serenaded us just like in lady and tramp, except we weren't eating spaghetti and he wasn't Italian and we weren't dogs. and since we aren't dogs, we could get up and dance, which probabaly made the whole restaurant think, "oh great, there they go again - those americans are ALWAYS trying to steal the spotlight."


the next day, we shoved (very delicately, mom) my dress back into the campervan and headed back to the sand flies to try our hand at kayaking. turns out our hands were pretty good at kayaking...for the first 3 hours. and then i (and these are the boy's words) started looking like gumby flopping my paddle all around the place. and remember how we didn't even tip over once...while at sea? i somehow managed to tip the whole thing over while it was ON SHORE. so, i'm still sorry about that bill that we had to paddle back with wet bums. although i think the gumby arms were a direct result of the wet bum, just for the record...

also, i just remembered that we got stuck in a cave that took us awhile to get out of...