This past weekend I traveled with a group of about 30 kids (along with 3 RA’s) on a weekend trip to Arthur’s Pass and Hokitika for the Wild Food Festival.

Taking off Friday morning we stopped a place or two along the way including Castle Hill, a series of speculated rock formations that are beyond fun to climb all over. There was a group shot taking under them before we were able to explore for a little over an hour, taking pictures and the guys daring each other to climb the highest most impossible rocks and jump from one to another (which was really unsafe) but thankfully no one got hurt.

 

  

We then continued to drive through the Southern Alps, still covered in green, and took pictures off all the great rock formations and rivers that cut through the Alps’ valleys.

Once we got into Arthur’s Pass we found our cabins not too far from the center of town, claimed beds and then went off for a hike up to Devil’s Punch Bowl. It wasn’t too hard of a tramp but it leads you up to one of the most fantastic waterfall with a big pool at the bottom that the group did not hesitate to go down the slippery wet path and into the freezing pool. I must say it was completely worth it, even though I had a cold at the time. I discovered it’s really windy and loud near a waterfall so it’s hard to hear people near you but the gest of most conversations is how cold it was. Of course all the guys just dove right in and swam around and I took it a little slower easing into the pool so my legs would numb up but of course with how slippery everything was I ended up falling right in anyway and getting soaking wet. 

Saturday was spent in Hokitika or Hoki as the locals call it. There we went to the Wildfoods Festival and spent a few hours looking at all the booths and eating crazy foods. You could get anything from rocky mountain oysters to fresh honey comb there. The weirdest thing I partook in had to be the sheep brains. It was so disgusting that I could only eat a small portion of it, no one could finish more than a small bite, and ended up gagging at least 3 times. It was watery, had the weirdest consistency of anything I’d even eaten and was of course covered in barbeque sauce. 

The best food there by far was the shark on a slice of bread with lemon and tartar sauce. It was so good I was ready to go back and get another helping if I hadn’t been saving my hunger for other oddities. 

After we left the festival we headed down to the beach and lazed about in the sun till it was time to head back to Arthur’s Pass so we could take off first thing Sunday morning.

Of course one tourist stop was made in the mountains where we took a van group shot before hoping back in and making it back to campus around 1pm in order to recuperate for classes the next day.

Location: Hokitika, NZ