Four years ago today, Morgan and I were hunkered down in the mining town of Reefton, NZ for Christmas Eve and Christmas day. Reefton is a town surrounded by gold mines, and the people who live in this city are all miners by trade. Needless to say, they were a bit on the rough side. This was our first Christmas as a married couple, and it was definitely one for the books. I would not say that it was the best Christmas we have had thus far, but one of the most memorable. Leave it to the fly fishing addicted husband to end up in a town like Reefton during the holidays. We were on the west coast of the south island in search of the illusive brown trout, or at least I was. The rivers surrounding Reefton are some of the best on the island, and I was bound and determined to wet a line. The west coast of New Zealand sees more rain than any other portion of New Zealand throughout the year. So why would Christmas be any different? We showed up to fish the Inangahua River, and it was a complete washout. I fished for maybe a half a day before hanging up the rod and boots. We set up our camp along the river, and ventured over to the main town of Reefton to do some holiday shopping and grab some warm food. That day, we got introduced to Boxing Day. A much unknown holiday to Americans, it lands on December 26th. Basically, every restaurant, shop, and major attraction was shut down from the 24^th– 26^th. We happened to find a café that was open, and I bought Morgan a chai latte.  I had a coffee of some sort along with a sandwich.  We chatted with the locals, and asked if there was anything that we could do during our stint in Reefton besides fish. The answer was a resounding NO.  My hope was to let the rains subside a bit, and try to fish the surrounding rivers, but the forecast showed rain for the next 5 days. In New Zealand, you never rely on the 5 day forecast. The only way to get a real gauge on the weather for the day is to walk outside in the morning and see what the day has to offer. There were a couple of days during our travels where we saw all four seasons in one day.

As we sat drinking our coffees, we contemplated our next move. We decided to camp Christmas Eve down by the river, and get a hotel Christmas day in town. Yes, we basically were living in a Subaru down by the river. We either camped in a tent during our time or we laid our sleeping bags in the back of the car to avoid bad weather and sand flies. All the hotels were booked, but we did manage to get a cabin at a local campground on Christmas Day, which was not how I planned spending our first Christmas together. We both had dreams of sitting by a warm fire sipping hot cocoa, and reading books. This was just not going to be our reality. Morgan cried in the coffee shop, and I consoled her. I promised we would move to more warm and sunny places in the next few days, and that our love would carry us through the next two nights. It was my first real test as a husband, and I knew what not do in the future. I was better off driving 8 hours to a town that actually had an available hotel.

We got back to our campsite, and set the car down close to the river for some better scenery, and tried to make the best of our night. We were wet, smelly, and still slightly hungry. We played cards, and put our first Christmas ornament on a pine tree limb we found outside. Morgan was hell bent on having a Christmas tree! I would say it was about 10 PM in the evening when I looked outside the car window to notice that the river was beginning to rise quite quickly, and our car was just feet away from getting flooded. I woke Morgan and, and we drove the car to higher ground, and were praying for the rains to stop. The next morning, we quickly drove back in the town fishless and tired to check into our cabin. It really was not half that bad except for the fact that our neighbors had about 8 kids, and the husband, who was a miner himself, had been pounding Speight’s beer all day. They were a bit too loud for our tastes, and the children ran around half naked the entire time. No restaurants were open, and we managed to have some crappy steaks and pasta for dinner in the campground kitchen. This was the first time we had ever been away for the holidays and our families were dying to hear from us. The only place in town that had internet was the town library, which of course was closed the 25-26^th. We happened to find this out the day we arrived, and managed to get the Wi-Fi code from the librarian who felt sorry for us. Christmas day, we parked our car outside the library to get internet, and spent an hour or so Skyping with our families and friends. There was literally nothing else to do except get out of town. On the 26^th, we continued driving along the west coast in search of drier weather. Ultimately, it rained for 2 weeks straight, and we had to drive 2 days to the southern part of the island to get away from the rain.

Most would read this post and think to themselves, “that sounds like a really terrible way to spend Christmas.” The picture we both had in our minds of how these 3 days would play out did not get played out at all. To my defense, I had never been to this town before, and did not know what to expect. We pictured 3 glorious days fishing in the sun, while spending our evenings in a nice hotel. I have been through 30 Christmas’s to date with my life, and this is the one that stands out the most. If I could do it all over again, I would not change a thing. It taught me to look at the good in every situation, and make sure that every Christmas moving forward, we were somewhere dry and warm.