A new family

Standing just outside of Franz Jozef with a sign saying "Haast", we got picked up by a station wagon that seemed to already be packed to the brim. But, upon closer inspection there was plenty of space left for us and our gear, despite the fact that there were already four people inside. Apparently the two girls in the back had screamed at their dad that he had to pick us up and he complied. Sometimes I guess being two guys has it's advantages as well. Unfortunately they could only take us to Fox Glacier, which was about 50km south of Franz Josef.
After a while of standing there a van pulls over just in front of us, then 2 seconds later a second van pulls in and then a third van. We were unsure if they were stopping for us or for some other reason, but decided to ask anyway. Turns out they did stop for us and they were all travelling together, there was only 4 of them so they had exactly two seats left (they all had beds in the back), so Jasper jumped in one van and I jumped in another. The guy I jumped in with was called Jan and was from germany. The others were called Sebastian, Claudia and Colleen, two Germans and a french girl. Apparently Jan and Claudia had already met before in South America, but never exchanged adresses and then ran into each other again in NZ. Claudia was travelling with Sebastian after they met up in New Zealand a few days earlier and they picked up Colleen along the road, she was hitch-hiking like us. We travelled in formation and stopped at Fox Glacier along the way to take some pictures. We stopped several more times to take some pictures, the scenery was too stunning to be ignored. At first they were going to stay in Haast as well but eventually decided to go all the way to Wanaka. Seeing as we only picked Haast because we figured that was as far as we were going to get in one day we tagged along all the way to Wanaka. We went for dinner in a restaurant while Claudia was having some problems with her bank card and Sebastian was away half of the time to smoke. When the waitress asked if we were ready to order Claudia said "Mommy and Daddy aren't here yet but we'll order anyway" (Because Claudia and Sebastian were older than the rest she called em Mommy and Daddy). When she came back to bring us our drinks she asked if our parents had come back yet; by then Sebastian was there as well and the look on his face when Claudia said "Well this is daddy but mommy is still away" was priceless. After dinner we went to visit one of Wanaka's greatest attractions, Cinema Paradiso. A small cinema where instead of chairs they had couches, sofas and even an old VW Beetle for you to sit in. They were also renowned for their great ice-cream and cookies. The movie we watched wasn't particularly interesting but it was a nice experience.
The next day they were going to Queentown and we wanted to stay a bit longer in Wanaka so we booked another night at the campsite. Turned out that they were also staying the day in Wanaka so we tagged along with them as we paid a visit to the Puzzling World. First we had a play around in the great maze, which had 1.5km of paths to get lost in. First we had to find each of the towers in the right order and then back to the centre, this was a lot harder than we first thought and it took us quite a while to finish, eventually me and jasper were trying to find the exit and just kept ending up at the same place. Then we went into the halls of illusion where they had all sorts of 3D pictures and optical illusions.
At the end of the day we said goodbye to our new friends and promised we'd meet up again in Queenstown. The next day we started hitch-hiking pretty close to our campsite, this was what looked like the shortest road to Queenstown, even though it wasn't part of the highway. There was a couple already hitch-hiking and this was the first time we were actually hoping another couple would be picked up soon. When after an hour we still hadn't found a ride we decided to walk to the other side of town to where the highway was and try again there. We had been standing there for almost an hour and a couple of people had shouted to us that Queenstown was the other way; we starting to despair a bit and were unsure if we should remain there or walk back to our original spot. Luckily at just that moment a car stopped for us on the other side of the road and took us to Queenstown.

http://s713.photobucket.com/albums/ww138/lingonlas/NZ%20Maart%208/

videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXjKqpTQfts a kitten that was hanging around our tent in Franz Jozef

Puzzling world:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPmcMFHBzUI&feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjApAJCyTGY&feature=channel