South Island Trip: Pt.1

I have been super busy so blogging has kind of gone by the wayside. I went on my 15 day trip around the South Island during our Spring (Autumn) Break, so I thought I should blog that. I went with 3 other people from my AIFS group: Nick, Gina and Aimee. We rented a car and did a big loop of the island. Believe it or not this is only the first week. A lot of it’s right out of journal so it’s a lot of stuff …feel free to skim. I will get to the rest a little later.

Saturday April 7^th- Arrival in Christchurch

Today our flight was leaving at around 5:30pm to Christchurch so I left around 2:10 to catch the bus to the airport. The flight to Christchurch was really pretty, we went at sunset and the sun looked really yellow. We flew into Christchurch at around 6:30 and took a shuttle to where were staying that night, “The Old Countryhouse” We had some trouble with booking so they ended up putting us in a 3 person private room with our own bathroom, a double bed and a twin bed. We got fish and chips and some groceries. The fish and chips were really yummy because we were so hungry, they were also really cheap here! I eat a lot of fish and chips here, instead of McDonalds or fast food I will have fish and chips because it’s fast and cheap. Though the hostel was really pretty and nice, the town we were in was pretty sketchy, the most run-down place I had been in New Zealand yet. This is probably because of the earthquake though.

Sunday, April 8^th- Easter in Christchurch

Today we woke up and picked up pur car from the rental company. We got a Nissan sedan. The trunk was pretty small and we already had a lot of stuff, and another person was coming, so we really had to squeeze. We then went to the Botanic Gardens and had lunch in front o the lake, then we walked around and climbed some huge trees. They also had a rose garden similar to the one in the Wellington Botanic Garden. They had a “peacock fountain” that was really pretty. Because of the earthquake that happened last year in February, and then another one this December, a lot of the city is blocked off in a “Red Zone” where there is construction being done to repair all of the condemned buildings. There is a stream that runs through Christchurch and lots of trees, so it looks like it used to be really beautiful but everything is really destructed. Sidewalks and railings are cracked and don’t line up in a lot of places, buildings everywhere were missing windows. Some stores were not in the red zone but were still condemned; it was like they were frozen in time. The stores had signed advertising events and sales that were dated around the time of the first earthquake. On our way back to the car we stopped for ice cream. I got Boysenberry, it was so yummy! It reminded me of black raspberry. Then we headed to the Rapaki Track, about a 3 hour walk. It was a beautiful day and I ended up hiking in a tank top and shorts. The track was beside a valley that had SO many sheep. When we got to the top the view was amazing! There were so many hills in the distance across a body of water. Then we climbed some more rocks up to the summit of the hill we were on. I was really scared to climb them because they were pretty much vertical but the view from the top was amazing! By the time we were done the sun was setting so I rushed to see it set past the other side of the mountain. We saw Christchurch at night with the lights and the sunset and it was beautiful. We then headed to Ashburton to camp, which was on the way to Dunedin where we were headed the next day. It was out first time in the tent and it was tiny. I bundled up to stay warm!

Monday, April 9^th- Penguins and Seals

This morning we started our continued drive to Dunedin. We had about 4 hours left. Our first stop was the Moeraki Boulders. These boulders were on a beach and they looked perfectly round. I read that they were formed from erosion. It was amazing how round they were. They looked like huge marbles stuck in the sand. It was kind of chilly out so we didn’t swim. There was seaweed on the beach that looked like huge black octopi and felt like rubber, it was weird.  Next stop, Shag Point, to see seals and penguins. This beach also had the weird seaweed. There were tons of seals there! We saw some fighting and swimming and some were about 4 feet away from us. Then we went to see the yellow-eyed penguins, which are the rarest penguins in the world! There was a little island out in the ocean that they were all on. We probably saw about 20 penguins. It was so windy on the peninsula that I almost thought I would blow away. We got back in the car and drove to our hostel, Central Backpackers, in Dunedin. The place was really clean, modern and nice, with a great kitchen. It also had free wifi which was nice. Dunedin council also provided free internet to “The Octagon” which is an area surrounded by an octagonal street in the centre of the city. I wish that York had free wifi! The one catch about the hostel, this time we stayed in a room with 10 people, was that it smelled really bad, like sweaty guys. I got to schedule my classes tonight, too.

Tuesday, April 10^th- Butterflies and Beer

The first thing on our agenda for today was going to the Otago Museum. It was a good day to do this because it was kind of rainy out. Luckily this was our only rainy day! The museum had a lot of stuffed animals and information on Maori Culture. The coolest part (the part you had to pay for) was a discovery zone like the Whitaker Centre, for children and a tropical butterfly exhibit. After playing around for a little in the discovery zone we headed to see the butterflies. It was really hot in the exhibit and there were birds and butterflies flying around trees and waterfalls with so many colourful flowers. Some of my favorite butterflies were pink and black, neon green and black, and bright blue. When the bright blue butterflies closed their wings they looked like they had eyeballs. After walking around Dunedin for a bit we checked into the hotel we had booked the night before. Nick was arriving that night and it was cheaper for us to stay there than a hostel. It was called the Law Court Hotel and had a very old-timey feel. It had a bar, stained glass windows, a slot machine area and old staircases. That evening we went to the Speight’s Brewery tour. They are one the only breweries in the world that practice gravity fed brewing. I learned that back in time they had beer testers and one of the ways they tested the beer was by wearing leather pants and sitting on a bench that had beer on it for a few hours. If the tester could stand up after this time, the beer was good, if they stuck to the seat it was too sugary. They brew over 20 flavours of beer. At the end of the tour we got to try 5 different types of beer and a cider for 30 minutes. The cider was my favourite and I liked the lighter beers a lot better than the dark beer. The porter that we tried tasted just like coffee. We tried to go to a few bars afterward because we heard Dunedin was a really cool place to go out but because it was a uni time and everyone was on holiday it was pretty dead. The one bar that was open had an open air deck with a fireplace and tvs that played music videos so it definitely looked like a fun place if there were more people.

Wednesday, April 11^th- World’s Steepest Street and Cadbury Factory

            This morning we woke up and went to the World’s Steepest Street, Baldwin Street, which has a gradient of 1 to 2.86 meters. The fastest someone made it up was a minute and 14 seconds. The houses looked slanted. I took my time and it took about 10-15 minutes to walk up. After this, we went to the Cadbury Factory for a tour. Unfortunately, the factory was closed so we could only go on a half tour. The coolest part was a huge chocolate factory that poured one ton of chocolate out. We got lots of free samples. At the end I got 3 blocks of chocolate blocks. Crunchie which has hokey pokey in it, Chocolate Mousse and Cookies. We tried to go to New Zealand’s only castle, the Larnach Castle, but it cost 27 dollars so we decided not to and started our drive to Queenstown. The drive was amazing, the scenery is just unreal. There are rolling green hills everywhere ad huge mountain ranges everywhere. Practically anywhere could make a postcard. I remember watching Lord of the Rings and thinking that they must have picked only the good parts of New Zealand and that I wouldn’t actually see anything like that but instead I see it more often than not in the South Island. We stopped in Alexandra and I took a turn driving! It actually wasn’t that weird but I did tend to drift to the left white line a bit and put the windshield wipers on instead of the turn signal a few times. The weirdest part was that the speed limits were in kilometres instead of miles so I drove at 100 a lot of the time. We stayed at a campground in Queenstown that night that had a really nice common area, showers and a trampoline! We went to check out the city for a little and it reminded me of a ski-lodge town. You can see that it is a town that relies on tourism because there were a million souvenir shops everywhere. Queenstown is the adventure capitol of New Zealand, the location of the first bungee jump, so adventure companies advertising skydiving, bungee jumping, quad tours, jet boating, parasailing, etc. were all over!

Thursday April 12^th- Queenstown Hill

            We went to town early this morning so Gina and Aimee could bungee jump. I chose not to because I had already gone skydiving. While they were bungee jumping Nick and I went to do the Queenstown Hill hike that I had seen advertised as having great views of Queenstown and surrounding mountains. The whole thing took about 3 hours It was so gorgeous at the top. The advertisment was right. All of Queenstown and Lake Wakatipu on the left and a mountain range with snow capped mountains on the right. I said it was the prettiest place I had ever had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. When we were about to walk down we saw a rainbow. The day we needed to be in Milford Sound which was about 5 hours away and our cruise was at 9 am so we neded to drive at least some of the way that night. We decided to stay at conservation site in Te Anau. Conservation sites are run by the DOC and range from free to about 10 dollars-typically they cost about 5 or 6 dollars, which is much cheaper than a holiday park that charges upwards of 15 dollars per person. We went out to the field to stargaze that evening and while we were looking we saw a helicopter searching the nearby mountain. We thought it was searching for a person but later we found out from another camper that they do helicopter deer hunting at night for sport. Tonight I slept in the car instead of the tent because no one else wanted to and it was pretty comfy.

Friday April 13^th- Milford Sound

            We eoke up at around 6:00 so that we could get on the road by 7:15 and make it to Milford Sound by 9:15. We were glad we left early because the road was super windy. Milford Sound is supposed to be #1 on some lists of things to do in New Zealand. There are tons of waterfalls on mountains that are lined up beside each other with the Tasman Sea pooling between them. Milford Sound is in Fiordland which gets huge amounts of rain each year. I think the record of rain in Milford Sound for one day was something like 4 meters in a 24 hour period. Milford Sound is one place that is actually better during rain because it produces waterfalls. The captain told us that if it is raining there can be thousands of waterfalls. The day we went it was only drizzling but there were still a lot of waterfalls produced from the little drizzle. Milford Sound was really amazing. I felt like I was going into another world. Because we were on a small boat we got to go underneath the Sterling Falls which were huge. Milford Sound also had seals. Back at the dock there were great views of the clouds and mountains. We didn’t plan our trip very well and Milford Sound is about 30 minutes away from the Divide where we were ending our Routeburn Hike in a few days. Since we only had one car we figured we should drop it off at the end to avoid driving back to Queenstown for one night and then having to hithchike back at the end of the hike. We hitchhiked back in groups of two. Hitchhiking is an accepted mode of transportation in New Zealand. I have only heard about good experiences hitchhiking and it is usually other backpackers who pick people up. We rode back with two young guys who were travelling the south island after apple picking. They were from Germany and France. They were very nice and stopped for pictures. When we got back to Queenstown we checked into Base X, our hostel and then I met up with Katie, and our friend Grant from Scotland that we met at another hostel a few weeks back, who were all in Queenstown at the time. I was very happy to see them again! We ate at a place called Fergburger, which is like a right of passage for Queenstown, they have HUGE delicious burgers. We ate it by the waterfront. That night we went to some of the bars and it was really fun. Queenstown has a very upbeat vibe.