Paua's Blood. New Zealand.

                                                                                                     Don't get married. Be free. Travel off the beaten path.

The road came to an end in Milford Sound. My friend Alex was guilty in our SCUBA Diving here, because it was him who told us that it's incredible. He only didn't clear it up, what's incredible, the incredibly low water temperature or incredibly low visibility. I must only say, that our diving was incredibly strange, unusual but beautiful despite of all what you've read above. The air temperature in the morning was +7, the same as water one and feeling the goose bumps under my hoody I didn't feel that the dry diving suits are gonna warm us up during our dives. The water on the surface in Milford Sound was green and unclear at all. 

I love to SCUBA Dive and it doesn't matter where, that's why I felt happy about our coming up adventure. The worst the conditions the better the divers!

My girls felt enthusiastic and not permafrost nor cold water temperature couldn't scare them. It's all because of love and experience. The people are afraid of what they know about themselves. If you are experienced and in love of what you are doing, the conditions are like a colours of one of your favourite dresses. Just have a look at this faces which are trying to hide from the horizontal prickly rain. Whatever the conditions are, anyway it's 1000 times better than to work.

The dry suits looked impressively even on their slim vegetarian bodies. What appeared later, we just had to go down through seven meters of green and unclear ice cold smoothy to get to the eighteen degrees temperature clear ocean water. If I knew about it I would put the open cell neoprene wet suit and felt like a seal, but nobody told...

The dry suit advantage is we all looked like Rambo's with all those hoses and additional valves. We scared the fish with our outlook, they run away and only one fish who would withstand our look was the shark, but it never came...

Two thousand meters mountains were going down with their nearly vertical slopes straight into the ocean. They were continuing underwater for four hundred more meters until they were meeting the ocean bottom in the full darkness. It was a place where the continent platform was ending. It was nice to know it and we were hovering only on 25 meters depth with rare fishes around us. The rest of the fish spices weren't fool and they drifted to the warm waters up north million years ago. Only patriotic fish decided to stay in this half deserted cold bay. This religion is so so, but it helps the place not to be fully abandoned of at least.

Here we see it all. The edge of New Zealand continent.

What a nice old forests live back south behind the mountain pass. We were zooming around and "drinking" the purest air which was mixed with flora's smells. The sun was rising, the temperature was going up and the summer was starting developing through the mist of a cold fiord rains.

We did have only a month for our adventure but we didn't even cover the whole South Island. We needed of at least half a year to do it in a relaxed manner with no rush and to go with the wind. But! I managed to catch Paua or Abalone before we turned deep inland. Paua is a beautiful huge shell and the snail which is inside is really tasty. It's really in demand in the whole world restaurants, expensive and even in Christchurch they are asking for $85 per piece. Ones again, it's rediculously tasty.

But you should know how to cook it. If you cook it in a wrong way, it's gonna be as tough and chewy as the boot sole and if you are gonna try to bite off a bit your teeth are gonna get stuck in this rubber forever.

Definitely you need to take care of your teeth and google first. There is your salvation in internet. It'll tell you how to cook it deliciously. I can only add that I brought a portable steamer and steamed 1cm slices with salt water for 11 minutes , as Paolo Coelho recommended.  I don't tell where I bought them to save them for a future generations to enjoy. Every person need to find his own Paua spot-it guarantees the adventure of at least.

I'm not gonna post the blue blood of Paua, I must only say, if you drink it, drink it raw from the crystal glasses during the sunset time. I can't use any words to describe what is happening when you are doing it. There is only one way to figure it out-to do it by yourself.

I didn't make it even to Kaikoura because Justina took out the wheel and said that they had enough of a cold winds and salt water and want to go inland to their true love- fricking mountains. They love mountains more than me loving ocean and it's a lot, trust me! Moreover I'm so happy to see them to be happy, that's why it was easy for me to say good bye to the Ocean and in half a day we were already staying in a middle of a mountain ridge gazing at the beautiful stars. They were the most clearest and brightest stars I've seen in my life.

Since then we were climbing the mountains, drinking tea and living in a presence. We were washed away with rain at Mount Cook, we were warming up our white bones in the wild hot springs of Amethyst creek, we were wandering up the stream in underground river, wearing the wet suits and torches, climbing the small rapids and waterfalls. We lived the full lives on the road.

We were drinking the tastier clearest water from the mountain springs, we trampled soles in very long transitions, we were sleeping in different tents, because, as it appeared, I was snoring a lot. However, my snoring was keeping dangerous animals and hungry backpackers away. When we were driving the long distances, we were coming to the camping spots at dark, but that sunset roads are still in my mind. When we were so wet, the tastier coffee and the hottest shower were the best gifts for the wettest day lived from the Guiness record book where there is no other prison besides water and darkness and there is no pronoun except WE

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A big THANK YOU to our friend Alex. There wouldn't be Milford Sound adventure without him.

We get back strength and love while travel and wisdom comes with age. Sometimes the age comes by itself without wisdom. 

Never mind! This is nothing, as long as there is gunpowder in the powder flasks and berries in the buttocks. 

Travel where the berries are and don't spare gunpowder.

See you on the crossroads of this beautiful planet!