10 days in Mt. Cook national park:

Alright, I guess I should add some words for the first time in a long while. Yes, I’m still alive. Tomorrow I get on a plane for a week in Tahiti. At that time, I’m going to book my flight home, sometime around May 15 give or take. But I wont be home for long, only a few weeks. Then it is north, to follow the summer again, up into the arctic and the midnight sun; which I haven’t seen in 5 long years…

I’ve been up before sunrise every day for the last 2 weeks; bitterly cold in the morning, especially when it had been raining for 3 days straight and all your clothes are wet, with no hope of drying. At which point you give up and goto sleep at 6:30 in the evening, too lazy or tired or cold even to bother cooking dinner; since it will be either rice and or beans in tomato sauce, which you have eaten for the last 4 days straight since all the fresh food you had ran out and your bread went moldy. But even here, the sun returns, and you find yourself 100 meters up the side of a cliff with a bit more to go, watching the next storm approach from the west, hoping the rain will at least wait until you have finished climbing. Its cold and windy, but you cant decide if its worth the effort to pull you jacket out of your pack, since its not that cold. Back to the shelter and within 5 mins the rain starts falling.

How did a picture of me get on here? Careful your monitor doesn’t break!