Wildfoods and More

The weekend before last Brit, Brian, Sasha, Tait, Lani, and I piled into Lani and Tait's Subaru and drove to the West Coast town of Hokitika for the Wildfoods festival. We met about 20 other kids that we knew there at our campsite. The festival is a collection of interesting foods and drinks from all over the world along with a number of concerts and performances. People come from all over the country and the elsewhere and many of them wear costumes. This was a group of people in aerobics outfits that wanted to take a picture with us.



There was also a fun band of drummers.



There were some strange foods at the festival: grasshoppers, maggots, ostrich, crocodile, lion, stag heart, "mountain oysters", etc. The strangest thing I ate was honeycomb. It was pretty good, but a bit waxy.

It rained for most of the actual festival, but the sun came out at the end and made a huge rainbow.



I slept in a hammock for both of the nights I was there and luckily someone had an extra rain fly, so I was drier than some of the people in tents.

This past week I went and walked around the city center with Brit and Brian. Brian and I took this picture in Cathedral Square sporting the new gear we bought from the street vendors. I have some sweet shades and Brian has a reversible wool headband with kiwis on it.



On Tuesday, Brit, Brian, and I went to the car auction and bought a car. It's a 1989 Mitsubishi Galant. We bid $750 on it and so after the auction fee it only cost $950. Hopefully it will last until July.



On Wednesday morning Brit, Brian, Jeremy, and I went to the beach and went surfing. We rented boards and wetsuits from a stand on the beach and surfed for about three hours. The waves weren't really that big but they were fun to learn on. I think I had the hang of it by the end, but it was exhausting.





After coming back to uni for classes on Wednesday afternoon we went up to the Port Hills to climb. Its only about a 20 min drive from my flat , and the climbing is pretty good. You can see how close the city is in the second picture.





On Thursday I don't have class so I went up to Castle Hill with Lindsey and her boyfriend who was visiting.

Then on Saturday morning I went with the UC Climbing Club back up to Castle Hill. We climbed all day Saturday and Sunday and stayed at a research station owned by the University on Saturday night. Heres a couple pictures, but I'll put more up later when I get them from my friends who were taking them. The second picture is of a problem called Ode to Joy that is about 10m high.





More later.
Nick