First Visitor to New Zealand!

It's official: New Zealand Visiting Season has opened, and there's no sign of it slowing down - maybe at all until we leave. First up was the one and only Dan Villella. Dan and I are travel buddies to the max, having traveled in India, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Utah, and now New Zealand together. We were randomly assigned to share a tent for a month when we were doing a medical rotation in the Himalayas (this story sounds pretty far-fetched as I'm writing it down, but it's the truth...) and have been friends ever since  - because after a month in a tent with someone, you'll either be best friends or worst enemies...

Anyway, Dan and I immediately set out on multiple adventures for a week until another group of visitors arrived, then we all adventured together.

Here's one of the first days Dan was here. We toured the South Coast of NZ, including Gemstone Beach, Tuatapere, Orepuki, Colac Bay, and Riverton. Dan brought the only summery weather of the entire year with him, and it has since gone away abruptly. Good thing he visited or we really wouldn't have had a summer.

Taking a walk on Gemstone Beach. I may have been a bad host and interrupted his nap to inform him that this was, in fact, the nicest day in New Zealand since I'd arrived last September, so we should go outside and do something.

South Coast Sunshine

It looks warm, but that water is still ice cold.

I took some pics of the sand-art the tide left behind

Enough of that. back to beautiful beach pics:

You can see hills in the far distance. We climbed them a few days later - stay tuned for pics and stories from that ordeal...

We stopped by our mussel spot to scope out the goods since we had big plans on coming back with the next wave of visitors to gather up some mussels for dinner. The supply was ample.

This place would be good enough even if it didn't provide delicious free supper

Dan was reliving an old marine biology class, playing with all the shelled creatures.