Arthur's Pass

Credit: Alexandra Bertin

Arthur's Pass National Park is west of Christchurch. On the way to Arthur's Pass you drive right past Castle Hill, an awesome must see. The mountains on both side of you as you drive through are just massive and give you the feeling of being totally insignificant.
We visited Arthur's Pass as part of our University of Waikato's semester break. While we were in Arthur's Pass we did the Avalanche Peak tramp (read about that with the link) that was really intense. While we were in Arthur's Pass we parked the car and slept in a gravel parking lot of the ski fields just tucked behind the road, that night while we were making up some dinner (couscous) where we met a really cool guy from the chech republic and his mobile command unit. That's right, mobile command unit... well it wasn't quite like this, but did have everything needed to live out of. 

We spent the night in the same parking lot as mobile command unit Czech guy, but we were kept awake by a kea bird attacking the car just like these kea birds. It's cool, I really wasn't sleeping anyway because it was a car we were sleeping in. Ever try to sleep in a car? terrible.

Dear Jucy,
I fought valiantly against these clever and persistent mountain parrots to defend the molding and wiper blades. Sorry about any damage that they caused.