My brother fell into quicksand and I almost wet my pants

Oh boy...today was like Princess Bride, New Zealand edition. It started off peaceful enough. It's sunny and kinda warm. I drank my coffee looking at the ocean and then we started our drive to Farewell Spit - the "hook" at the northwest corner of NZ's south island.

It was low tide when we got there so we decided to walk out to the end of the spit (a long narrow piece of land covered mostly by beach and sand dunes with some vegetation). As we walked along, I was searching for shells and told Evan about the time in law school when I got 3 hermit crabs: Princess Buttercup (the little one), Inyigo Montoya (the medium one), and Fezic (no idea how to spell that, the huge one). Unfortunately Fezic killed and dismembered Princess Buttercup and I couldn't have murderers in my apartment so I disposed of Inyigo and Fezic down the trash chute (I still feel guilty to this day).

Evan turned around and said "I think someone is following us!" I looked back and realized they were AND they were gaining on us so I replied "Inconceivable!"

We walked a bit more and decided to head up and explore the sand dune. It was crazy and beautiful up there as we crossed it to get to the other side. When we got to that beach we encountered the crazy NZ sand. I don't know how to explain it. It looks like that hard wet-ish sand that you walk on as the tide goes out but for some reason, in some spots, you just sink in for a few inches. It makes it really hard to walk.

So, we're walking along and I'm thinking "man, I should have stopped in the ladies room before this walk." Suddenly Evan yells "Help! It's quicksand!" I look over and he's knee deep in muck. Every time he moved he got deeper. He's yelling: "Throw a rope! Wait, take a picture. Oh god...I'll never get out!" And I'm trying to get my camera and look for a convenient vine to dive in and rescue him (like they did in the fire swamp quicksand) all while crossing my legs because I was dying laughing and trying not to wet my pants.

Unfortunately there was only a small twig available on the sand dune. I did get some great pics of him almost waist-deep in the sand and he was able to free himself. Luckily, I did not wet my pants. I'm still cracking up just writing about it.

After that we grabbed some lunch and some ice cream and drove through some crazy hills and vegetation to get to another beach with orange sand. It was all pretty incredible and were it not for the sandflies we'd probably still be sitting there.

I can't believe it's October! Just 11 more days until Australia sunshine. :)