Saturday, March 15
Murchison to St. Arnaud. The past couple of days are teaching me what Kiwi hospitality is all about. It started yesterday with all the help
the Andrew family offered us. Then this morning as I was having trouble
finding a phone line to send out the files, I ran into a very generous
lady. Her name is Jean Paterson, and she lives there in Murchison. Anyway
she invited me into her home and pointed out where the phone jack was. As
I was hooking up she brought out coffee and homemade cookies. After spending about an hour and a half there, sending files and listening to all the wonderful stories of growing up in New Zealand, it was time to push on. So I said my goodbyes and headed off to St. Arnaud.
This was a nice detour from S.H. 6. In fact, only a hand full of cars passed the whole way there. It was a short trip that went out of the way, but it does shorten the trip to Nelson for the next day, with much better scenery. St. Arnaud is 630m high on the north side of Lake Rotoiti, so the climate did change quite a bit on me. This probably also had to do with the thick rain clouds hovering above. John left me with the tent so I stopped off at the campsite right there on the lake. Once I finished dinner and started to settle in, it started raining. I was tucked in the tent with only a short amount of time left on the computer battery. Fun!
