South Island of New Zealand

Well week two has come and gone and I’m still loving New Zealand. I have just about finished with the South Island and it was even more beautiful than the North (although a bit tamer with the activities!) There has been a lot of time spent on the bus but the scenery has certainly been worth it. One third of New Zealand is National Park and the vast majority of those are in the South Island so the vistas have been beautiful.

We crossed over to the South Island via a four-hour ferry ride through the Marlborough Sound, which was beautiful. That night we stayed in Abel Tasman National Park at a lovely little campground called Old McDonald’s Farm. Let’s just say I’m thinking the real Old McDonald Farm’s was just a wee bit nicer…but the views were amazing and we visited a Maori woodcarving shop and the saw some really amazing cravings. The next day we went for a catamaran sail around the bay and saw a few seals and penguins.

The next day we were off to this strange little place called Barrytown which was just actually a pub at the side of the road on the West Coast…very weird plus we were treated to a guided tour of the highway and beach by this maniac who I dubbed crazy jay (if I’m anything I’m original…) he took us greenstone (jade) hunting for 3 hours on the beach…let’s just say that with my lack of attention span this was not my favorite activity. But we did get to watch another All Blacks match this time against Australia and they won again so that was good and I did manage to understand the game just a little more.

After the adventure that was Barrytown, we headed for Franz Joseph Glacier where I did a glacier walk in the pouring rain. It was so cool. It rains 265 days a year in this town and I was just lucky enough to get to go on a particularly nasty day but it was really awesome anyway. The glacier was amazing and the hike is about 200 meters up all these stairs that have been carved into the ice. The glacier is always changing and moving so the route has to be re-cut every week and it is never the same. The views from the top were not very good because of the rain and sleet. It was about an two kilometer walk into the glacier and coming back out was really exciting because the valley floor had been flooded with all the rain so we had to cross the rivers and they were a bit wild so that was a good time.

We were off to Queenstown next where I proceed to completely chicken out of doing a bungee jump. Seriously I was on the platform and all locked in and just could not bring myself to jump…rather embarrassing but what do you do. The next day we hiked this insanely steep mountain to get to the gondola stop at the top (why we did not take the gondola I have no idea!!) seriously it was probably a 45-degree grade and the walk was an hour long! But it was worth it when we got to the top and had a beautiful view of Queenstown and it’s lake. We then proceed to do this crazy go-kart luge thing down this also insanely steep hills going way to fast! Queenstown was a pretty neat little ski village. It reminded me a lot of Breckenridge.

Off the next day to Milford Sound. Wow. How amazingly beautiful. It so lived up to all the hype. We took a boat around the sound out to the Tasman Sea and back. It was truly amazing.

Stewart Island was next on the list. It is this small little island at the end of the South Island that is 95% National Park and only has 700 residences. We rented mopeds and toured around the 22 kilometers of road for a couple of hours then we were in for a treat and got to go deep sea fishing…let’s just say the price should have been my frist indication that this was not your nice white boat, sipping daiquiris, and working on your tan deep sea fishing…for a mere $35 Captain John and First Mate John (with a lovely missing tooth) will take you out into the middle of the bay and hand you a stick with string and two hooks. You then proceed to drop it over the side where you let it sit on the bottom of the ocean until something bites then you pull the 45 odd meters of string up as fast as you can and hope that your fish is still there. Let’s just say GOOD TIMES!! I’m not really sure why anyone bothers with that whole rod and reel thing. This was much more efficient and fun. I did manage to catch one little fish which Captain John proceed to chop up into little pieces to use for bait because he was just a little to small to eat…all the bigger fish that were caught were unceremoniously skinned and de-boned and chopped into small bits and placed into a plastic bag for us to fry up for dinner…let’s just say I headed for the local p for a steak sandwich instead. Not sure when I am going to be able to eat fish again…oh and did I mention that the boat looked like something out of the Deliverance (if they were in boats rather than canoes).

Another day another adventure. We are in Christchurch now and I am flying back to Auckland tomorrow to go to the very top of the North Island to the Bay of Islands. Then I leave next week for Samoa for 2 weeks of relaxing on a beautiful sun drenched beach before heading to Australia for 2 months of more good times.

Hope everyone is well. And thanks for keeping up with me. I would love to hear from everyone.

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