Keeled Over

We're off. Tomorrow. We can't take this hostel anymore, so we're checking into a hotel. If we're going to be cooped up indoors a day longer, we really needed a new environment.

At the rate we're "healing", we don't know if we'll be off to Stewart Island before Monday.

After a frustrating experience at a terrible pharmacy in town today, we consulted with the hospital to find a suitable pharmacist to provide us with our prescription medications for our ailments. Fizzy anti-sickness drugs (some sort of wafers) and stomach calming drugs. When Brent walked inside to pick them up, the pharmacist asked what we had to eat.

This hostel has run its course. We are next to a room they are renovating, so have been dealing with terrible paint thinning fumes, burnt wool carpet fumes, early morning drilling and hammering - none of the above helping with our sensitive tummies or noses, nor our headaches (which are probably motivated by dehydration amongst other things). We're packing up, and heading out. One night in 'luxury' - which really just means spending a day in a different bed, sleeping away the illness.

To cheer us up, we waltzed over to the Post Shoppe to see if the package my parents and I coordinated had arrived. We were pushing our luck seeing if it would be here - they only sent it last Monday. It was our last time to be able to coordinate a package exchange with them, knowing that we would be housed in this area for at least a few weeks with the island trip and some farm work. They were sending us some much needed supplies that we couldn't replenish here (there's an explanation for this) - and some items we had sent home out of desperation to downsize our packs at the beginning of our trip.

Low and behold, the package arrived in 8 days - 6 business.

It was like Christmas.

So a big thank you to my mom & dad for all the wonderful supplies; for Claude's one and only item that I could never find before I left home - a rain jacket so he could be protected; MY DOWN PILLOW - which Brent made me part ways with out of desperation for weight loss; Pop Tarts for Brent (after meeting our friends Dave & Christine, this is the one thing he asked for from home - and JUST in time for Stewart Island!!); all the extra fixings; just everything, I couldn't name them all - but everything is much needed, appreciated, and we laughed at some of the things we sent home and got back today. Our spare shoelaces - why would we have ever sent them home, why would that have ever saved us any weight, I don't know. Pure desperation - and I remember that day in South Auckland like it was yesterday. First day of an impossible journey, dying with the weight of our packs, bruised and bleeding from the pressure, and sitting in a bus shelter, crying on Brent's shoulder, feeling like a complete and utter failure. Four months later, a new type of adventure.

It was a box full of supplies, which would probably bore the average person, but it was like a hug from home. The moment the woman walked around the corner with the box and I could see my mom's handwritting on the brown paper, it was like I was back in North Bay watching her prepare all her Christmas shipping boxes.

Thank you for this. I love you guys so much. xo


Despite all the pain we're feeling today, we had our moments of sunshine.

After tomorrow night, we might just tent it somewhere in Bluff until we feel better. We're tired of being sitting ducks.