Nelson

Today, we awoke and somehow entered into an hour+ long debate about the pros and cons of war in the modern world. Over beakfast. Yes, we are a bit strange.
Anyways, once we had theoretically found satisfactory answers to the worlds major problems, we went into Nelson to visit the largest bead stockest in the world. Doesn't sound very exciting, but this place was a treasure trove. Over 10,000 different types of beads, ranging from a 1 cent plastic bauble to a 1000 dollar Roman pottery shard with a hole drilled through the top. Sacrilage to the archaeologist within of course, but pretty nifty as well! The idea follows th eline that you pick out your beads, play with them for a while to make a design you like, string it all together with the help of the in-store jeweller team and then walk away with your own personally designed piece of jewellery. This was very exciting. I am now the proud owner of a hemaetite, paua shell, teal and red venetian glass necklace with silver fixings. Its pretty, it reminds me of NZ and it was bargainous too! Alex was bamboozled by the choice of beads available, so decided not to make anything in the end. The guys beads did tend towards the bone material, which he was not too fond of.
After caving in and buying a giant pizza for lunch (you never know how much you will miss oven baked food until you lack an oven!) which we ate by the beach, we decided to go in search of adventure.
We found it. Booked into an afternoons quadbiking, we have spent the majority of today hurtling around a boulder strewn, muddy, wet, sheep infested mountain at high speed on top of hulking red quadbikes the size of a small rhino. It was excellent fun! SO exhilarating, we have decided to get quadbikes ourselves at the first opportunity. We had a picnic on top of the mountain with our guide Greg, who was brilliant and gave us informative and funny commantary about the German Princess who owns the island you could see offshore. I even managed to jump a ditch and fly over it, all four wheels off the ground! Alex and Greg were amazed.
Also, Greg found out about my love of lambs and took us to see a newborn that had popped out one hour previously. It was so small and wobbly on its legs! Then he took us to a small enclosure on the farm where they kept lambs that had been rejected and let us hold one lamb each. It had really soft ears, and tiny ringlets, and made small 'Maaaing' noises.
This whole day has been awesome. We are parked up at the Miyazu gardens again, ready to head into town tomorrow morning for the famous Saturday Market.

Hope everyone is good! Thank-you very much for the lovely comments about my writing! :)