Apologies in advance for the long-haul post this is bound to be. I'm also having to resist putting in about a million pictures, but I'll be putting them all up on facebook soon if you want to see them. Our trip to the south island of New Zealand made for an amazing 10 days.
The adventure started with me getting a whopping half hour of sleep before we had to get up due to having to write my last paper, but it did get done. Got up at 4am and me and Katie invested in a taxi since it was still a downpour outside. We caught the 5:30 train, groggily transfered an hour and a half later, and reached the airport in good time. Check-in was kind of a pain since we got all the way to the front only to be told that we needed a printout of our return itinerary, which we had to trek across the airport to get, and then come back and wait in a now longer line. Besides that and Katie accidentally leaving something behind at security, the flight to Christchurch was fine. We called up the car rental place as soon as we got past the intense customs procedures (beagle and all) and caught their shuttle to their office.
We loaded our things into a white Nissan that had some years on it and I nervously got behind the wheel... On the right-hand side of the car. I was admittedly anxious about the whole driving on the left side of the road, so I slowly wheeled out of the parking lot and around the corner... proceeding to almost pull in front of a car as I turned onto the main road. Rocky start, but no actual problems, and I'm fairly proud to report that over the next 10 days I only had one other instance where I had another driver angry at me. By the time we checked into our hostel I had tackled right and left turns, roundabouts, and the real kicker, parallel parking.
We wandered around the town as it was getting darker and eventually ate some really good chipotle-like burritos for dinner and ventured out to see if there was any nightlife in Christchurch. Instead since it was so early we mostly just ended up awkwardly sitting around in mostly empty places before heading back due to exhaustion. That said, after a full night's sleep we checked out, grabbed some bagels, a cassette thing for our ipods, typed in Franz Joseph into our GPS, and were on our way. Apparently it had been raining solid for days, but it was gorgeous the day we got in, and in fact for most of our trip except a day or two. The drive was beautiful as well, through fields, to foothills, through Arthur's Pass, and finally to the little blip on the map that is Franz Joseph. We stopped a lot of places along the way for pictures and just to admire the views, as we did for most of the rest of the trip as well. Past Greymouth, we stopped at a little town for a bite to eat and ended up discovering a little black-sand beach, which was pretty cool.
We only had about an hour of light left (the short winter days tried to foil our adventures many times all along the way), so we just took a short hike up to a lookout where we could see the glacier. Even though we didn't end up taking one of the walks on the glacier itself, it was really cool to be able to see a huge glacier. It's sad that it's incredibly tiny compared to what it was just like 50 years ago also, in not too long it might be gone all together.
That night we made ourselves a pasta and garlic bread dinner, complete with classy bottle of wine, played scrabble for a while, and ventured out into the cold to look at the stars. We just walked around the corner, to the end of a cul-de-sac where there weren't many lights, and even there, with ever step we took away from the lighted area, you could see so many more stars. I think that's the first time in my life I've ever really seen the Milky Way. It was amazing. Seeing the stars in the middle of nowhere was actually one of my pseudo personal goals for this semester, and I'm so glad it was clear for us.
The next morning, we decided that instead of taking the long hike out to the face of Franz Joseph glacier, that we would go to Lake Matheson and Fox Glacier, which were on our way to Queenstown, our next destination. I have to admit that we didn't actually plan to go to Lake Matheson, we didn't even really know about it, we were just told that you could see Mt Cook from that part of the town, and realized there was a trail there. It was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been though. Me and Katie agreed that we could have both just sat there all day long.
From there we drove about 5 minutes to Fox Glacier, and hiked up to a little lookout. Obviously the same sort of thing as Franz Joseph, as I'm assuming all glaciers are basically similar, but Fox seemed bigger.
The road took us down to Queenstown from there. Some of our random stops along the way included a beach with a little cove and sand dunes with a path out to a marsh we decided not to follow, a lake or two and some rapids, all with absolutely the bluest water I've ever seen in my life - it looked like it had been dyed blue. Pretty much all of the water we saw in New Zealand was like that - ridiculously clear and blue - pictures don't even do it justice.
We reached our hostel for the night in Queenstown after dark since we had stopped so many times on the way. We walked the short distance to the centre of town and got these ridiculously big burgers. We hadn't realized how valid the note someone had left on the wall was saying, "Next time I'm going to wear my eating pants" haha. From there we wandered around, poking our heads into the clubs around until we finally decided to go to bed.
Katie got up the next morning and went snowboarding for the day. Shortly afterward I got up, and as I got ready to go wander around town realized that it was gross and rainy out. So I donned by raincoat, grabbed my umbrella, and headed out into the freezing downpour. It was snow up in the mountains, so it didn't phase Katie, was I was soaking after a couple hours of wandering, eating, and checking my email quickly. I had planned on doing a couple of different activities there, but none of them would have been any fun in the rain. I headed back to the room, put my shoes to dry over the heater that was thankfully pumping hot air like a hairdryer, and took a nap until Katie got back. We wandered, still through the rain, and found a really good restaurant for dinner. For dessert and to warm up for our walk back, we went around the corner to Starbucks and got some hot chocolate, soaking up the warmth before braving the cold again. Since we didn't really want to be outside again that night, we settled in and watched a movie before going to bed, so it was a pretty quiet night.
Our fifth day found us checking out, grabbing breakfast, and heading out for Milford Sound. It was still rainy and cloudy out for most of the day, so we didn't stop nearly as much on this drive even though the drive into Milford Sound is well known for being beautiful. Because of that, we got in pretty early and realized that there is literally nothing there except for the lodge we were staying at, another small motel, a tiny café that wasn't even really open, two old fashioned gas pumps, and the cruise terminal. If we would have known that beforehand, we would have brought some food in with us, but as it was we bought some ready-meal type things at the shop at our lodge for dinner. Not the most exciting place we went especially those first few hours, but honestly, I'd say that Milford Sound was actually the highlight of my trip. We basically just putzed around that evening, doing little things. After it had been dark for a while, we ventured out to the glow worm walk that was right out the door of the lodge. The thing was that being a glow worm walk, it wasn't lit at all. And we didn't have a flashlight. So I'll just give you a second to imagine bumbling around in the woods (or bush for you Australians) truly in the middle of nowhere, over little plank bridges and washed out tree roots, with only a crappy faint light of one cell phone to guide you...
We saw a couple glow worms - it was kind of weird, like someone had stuck a couple mini glowsticks around in the trees or something. Before long we got spooked by some weird noise in the bush around us and basically ran back out to the road. Comforted by the sight of the lodge and lights again, and since the clouds had cleared again, we decided to try to go up the road a bit away from the lights to look at the stars again. Only a couple steps forward though and we were spooked again into backtracking once more. You're probably thinking we're wusses by now, but you try to be brave in the pitch dark without any light in the middle of nowhere, and let me know how it goes. We did eventually end up up the road in the other direction, at an opening in the trees. We could see even more stars than Franz Joseph, and saw a handful of shooting stars this time. We also realized that there were glow worms all around us in the trees - much more than had been on the walk. It was really cool to just sit there stargazing with the glowworms acting as funny little extensions of the specks of light above.
Another movie and a night's sleep later, we checked out and went to meet our boat for the morning. The cruise terminal is obviously built for a high traffic of tourists, but there were only maybe 15 people there that morning. Probably more like 10. All 10 of us boarded our boat which was small but pretty nice. The cruise around the fiord was one of the things I had really been looking forward to. It was again absolutely beautiful there. Not only did we see massive peaks shooting up from the water with waterfalls pouring off their sides, but we also got to see fur seals and dolphins! I have to admit that I was probably a little unnecessarily excited about the dolphins (since they are sort of rare to see there), but it sort of made my day. Our two hour cruise took us out to the Tasman Sea and back, and right up to the bottom of waterfalls to wet the whole front of the boat. It was definitely worth it, and amazingly it was a beautiful day, contradicting all the weather forecasts for rain that morning.
Disembarking from the boat, we headed back out the crazy windy roads we had come in, past Te Anau, and on towards Dunedin. We stopped back at some of the places we had on the way in, specifically the mirror lakes which are obviously supposed to be perfect still mirrors of the mountains behind them. As one might guess, rain isn't really conducive to still lakes, nor as it turned out was the wind of that second day, but it was definitely still a better view with the sun out.
Past the mountains, the driving got a little less exciting, and there wasn't much for me to do as we passed flat farmland for hours on end except for count the obscene amount of rainbows that day. I'm not kidding - I saw no less than 7 rainbows over the course of a few hours, scattered across from East to West. We got into Dunedin as it was just getting dark, and we checked into an eight-bed dorm which ended up being our private room. We wandered a bit as we were prone to do, finding somewhere to eat and killing some time drinking hot chocolate.
The seventh day of our trip started with exploring the Otago Peninsula, which is part of Dunedin. At the tip, there is the world's only mainland Albatross colony, along with seals, sea lions, and a penguin colony of blue penguins and super-rare yellow-eyed penguins. Thing is that they charge big bucks to go see all of them and me and Katie are cheap. So we took a few pictures of the lighthouse at the tip of the peninsula and turned down a different road to take us back, passing by the only castle in New Zealand (but we figured that also cost money, so we didn't even really attempt to go in). Once off the peninsula, we made way for Lake Tekepo. We stopped at the Moeraki Boulders - which are basically just a bunch of bizarrely spherical rocks on the beach there - and at Oamaru to see their blue penguin colony. You really only get to see the penguins at dusk apparently, and it was the afternoon when we were there, but they have a breeding area there that you can tour. So of course we had to, and we got to spy on all the adorable little penguins in their homes.
The closer we got to our destination for the night, the icier and snowier it began to get. Again we got there after dark, and thankfully the roads up to there had been nice and clear, but there was a fair amount of snow on the ground. We grabbed some frozen pizzas from the "wee market around the corner", sat by the fire for a bit in the cozy lounge petting the resident cat, and watched a movie on tv until bedtime. The next morning we checked out, petted the kitty goodbye, and promptly discovered that a) the ice needed to be scraped off the windows, and b) we were stuck on the ice/snow of the unshoveled road in front of the hostel. After some finagling we were out onto the clear roads, just driving to find something interesting. We came across the observatory out there that is run by the University of Canterbury and started driving up what turned out to be a long winding road up Mt John, with only a small single lane's worth shoveled out of the snow, and even then we got stuck in the snow at one point. I made a snow angel and we were treated by some pretty sweet views at the top. Never have I ever quite appreciated my waterproof hiking boots as actual hiking boots as I did that day as impromptu snow boots.
Our journey back down thankfully didn't involve us getting stuck, and we headed out towards Christchurch once again, making our circuit complete. We returned to the original hostel, managed to snag one of their 5 parking spaces that time, and had more or less quiet night involving wandering yet again, eventually eating at this "Irish Pub/Restaurant" that was utterly non-Irish. The next day we went in the cathedral briefly, but mostly spent a few hours hopping from tourist shop to tourist shop and intermittently listening to the live music in the square. With a definite feel of running out of things to do, we eventually visited the art museum which was free and saw one of the creepiest/weirdest exhibitions I've seen before they threw us out as they closed.
Walking back a different way, we happened across a microbrewery and decided to share a tasting board, which turned out to be an excellent way to kill some time. 7 small half-glasses of their beers - one of which was a guest beer apparently. 2 of them were really good, one was horrible, another not so great, and the rest fairly good. Later that night we decided to go on the pubcrawl since it was a Friday, which was fairly fun. Some of the places were really quiet and almost boring, but a couple of the places were pumpin', one with karaoke which was fun.
We were sad when our last day came around, the trip had been incredible. Basically that whole day was crappy as well - filled with obnoxious people. From being woken up at 7am by three roommates doing seemingly everything to try to avoid letting the remaining four sleep, to the man who clearly didn't believe I needed my kneecaps as he enthusiastically repeatedly jammed his seat further and further back, to the bunch of 12-yr-olds on the train who wouldn't get up so that not only did we have to stand for the hour and 45 min train ride, but were massively in the way of everyone with all our luggage. We were surrounded by a minimum of 15 children, all seemingly going crazy, and my ipod was completely dead. That said, I never knew I had so much patience.
In any case, it was good to get back home to the Gong, where I only have a limited amount of time left as well, but I'm so glad we had a chance to go to New Zealand - it was an unforgettable trip.
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