Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Dear Dad, I'm wearing socks with my Keen sandals (and yesterday I wore a waist-pack). Love, Heather

We woke up this morning to fabulous blue skies and sunshine and drove for a good 3 hours that way up the West Coast of NZ and started heading back east. It still wasn't "warm" out but, as I've said before, I'll take sunshine. And then the snow came, again. Only for 15 mins or so (and now it's drizzly misty hazy sunny-ish) but still. Enough with the snow! (BLOGGER'S NOTE: We stopped for a bit and now we're in winter storm conditions again!).

We're headed to Hanmer Springs for the night to enjoy the natural hot springs and pools (BLOGGER'S NOTE: We actually stopped at Mariuia Springs and chilled/heated in those pools so now we're heading all the way east to Kaikoura tonight. The pools were nice but for a ton of moss and algae, I had to get out early because I was grossed out.) and still hoping that as we head east and north we continue to get less precipitation and a little warmer temps. Evan is more optimistic than me but we'll see.

So, I've been trying to keep a mental list of the reasons it's not that bad backpacking in the cold weather. Here's what I have so far:

- your clothes don't get dirty/smelly as quickly so it reduces the need to do laundry (and is very helpful when you only have 2 pairs of long pants and 4 longsleeve shorts with you)

- I barely ever have to shave my legs

- I don't need to worry about dirty feet like I did in Europe and I definitely don't need a pedicure (I haven't even seen my feet for more than a minute a day when I dry them after a shower)

- no one is witnessing my hair's continuous awkward growing-out stage because I wear a winter hat or headband almost constantly

- it's totally ok to wear socks with sandals and carry your crampons (not tampons, see yesterday's entry) in a bright red huge waistpack (aka fanny pack)

- it's easier to heat our campervan at night than it would be to cool it (and we get to keep our windows closed so no sandflies or mosquitos)

- it's easier to warm up after a shower than it is to stop sweating

- nothing/no where is crowded

- our campervan isn't overheating on this crazy uphill climbs

- it's really cute to watch the lambs cuddle with each other and the mom-sheep to keep warm

And that's about it! Sounds fabulous, eh?

No comments:

Post a Comment