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Published: October 29th 2014
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The Wednesday started with an early start and a drive to River Valley. We were meant to go on a walk on the way but Mac, our driver, said the weather was too bad. Instead we stopped at a waterfall famous for where Golm found his ring,apparently! Our next stop was at Mr Wong's which has the cheapest ice cream in New Zealand, 2 scoops was only $2.50. I got cookies and cream and mint choc chip. When we got to River Valley Alex, Emily and I went for a waklk, it was really pretty round where we were staying. We saw some cute lambs and lots of blossom trees. Then when we got back we had a group roast dinner made by the hostel. We sat on a table with Mac, Struan, Hugh and Jacob from our bus. Our table ate all the food pretty fast so we sent Jacob to the other table to steal more roast potatoes for us... We were so full at the end! After we all stayed up chatting for a bit before having to sleep in a slightly odd 16 bed dorm!
Today we were woken by our rafting instructor saying we had
to leave earlier because of the weather forecast. We met in the lobby for a safety chat. We got our wetsuits and two jumpers to wear under our jacket. Then we had a 20 minute drive to the start of the rapids where Daniel,our instructor, gave us some warnings about grade 5 rafting. When we got out we sorted our groups. Emily, Alex, Georgina and I grabbed some man power and got Struan, Jacob and Freddie in our boat. We all got seated and I was in the front with Alex. Then we took our raft to the top of a grass verge and they pushed us down a massive hill which was fun! Then we learnt all the basic strokes we would need and off we went! The first few rapids were grade 2, so they were quite calm. The scenery around us was amazing. Daniel took the rafting very seriously but we all found it hilarious! The rapids got stronger as they went along but we were quite good/ the boys were haha we did a few grade 3's and then Daniel gave us a Mars bar each for energy before the harder rapids. We then tackled our
first grade 4 rapid which definitely involved a bigger splash and drop than the others. As we hit the bottom of the drop Struan fell out the boat which was really funny... We were able to rescue him easily which Daniel was pleased about! After that we did our first grade 5 rapid, it was really fun but when we got to the bottom Daniel told us 3 people had died doing that rapid before :s fortunately we were fine! We got to the second grade 5 but had to miss the first half because it was too dangerous so we got out and climbed over some rocks and just did the bottom half. Then we rafted a bit further before getting out to jump off a rock into the water! Then we did a few more rapids before getting backs to our lodge. Daniel said we were his favourite group and he gave us some free mars bars! Once we were all ready we had to get back on the bus and head towards Wellington. We stopped off in a town called 'bulls' where they name everything with the word bull after like 'bank-a-bull' and 'fix-a-bull.' Then we arrived
in Wellington in the evening and got ready to go out, we went to a few bars, including karaoke but were home by 1, so not a late night!
On Friday we woke up about midday and got up to go to the Te Papa museum. It was huge and had five floors! The first floor was all about earthquakes and volcanoes in New Zealand which was really interesting. There was a cool machine that registered all the earthquakes happening in NZ, there was one 26 minutes before but it was untraceable, was weird thinking there are lots of earthquakes all the time here! The second floor was mainly about animals, there was a giant squid and loads of interesting facts about animals (I know I'm a geek) the third floor was more about Maori culture but we had learnt lots about that already and had information overload by this point so we didn't see the 4th and 5th floor. We had been there over 3 hours so we got some food shopping, made spaghetti bolognese.
On Saturday we got up about 10 and went for a walk up Mount Victoria. It wasn't a very long walk but
it was quite steep! We got to the first viewpoint which overlooked all the city, it is really pretty compared to most capital cities! Then we climbed the last part to the summit... The views were beautiful! We took some photos before walking back to the town. It was still quite early in the day so we went shopping to kill some time. That evening we got ready and went out with a few people from our kiwi bus - it was a good night, we didn't really drink much though as we are trying to not spend too much! The next day we got the cable car up to the botanical gardens, we decided to go one way and walk back down. It was really big so we didn't see it all. There were some pretty flowers but not all of them were in bloom! (I think kew gardens is better!) after walked to the city and explored a bit, looking at some sculptures and looked by the marina. It was really sunny by then so we had a nice cream and sat in the sun for a bit. We had sausages, mash and gravy for dinner which was
nice! After we all went to our room with our friend Hugh and hung out for a bit but had to have an early night because we had to get up at 6 the next day.
We got up and had a short bus ride to our boat which would take us to the South Island. Apparently the journey is quite pretty across but we all fell asleep so missed it! We spent most of the day travelling to Kaiteriteri and when we got there we had a little look around but it's a small town and everything shut by 5 so we had no choice but to hang out in the hostel!
The next day we decided to explore the Abel Tasman national park. We got the bus to Marahau and started the walk. After a short while Emily and I were quite far in front so we decided that we were going to walk to Anchorage Bay which was over 11k out. It says it takes 4 hours each way and we only had 6 before the bus home but we decided to give it a go. The walk had so many amazing views and we stopped
off at loads of different beaches along the way. It was mainly flat walks but each time we went down to a beach it was very steep! When we got to Tinline bay the tide was out so we were able to cross to Coquille Bay. We crossed lots of rocks and walked along the beach before carrying on to Apple tree bay. The walk carried on past lots of creeks and beaches, I was surprised how nicer be beaches were, for some reason I didn't think they would be as clear and clean as they were. We carried on to Anchorage which was a long way, when we got there it was like a desert, with cracked ground and it was boiling hot. The last 15 minutes were super steep down which we weren't looking forward to re- climbing! When we got to the bottom we had lunch and saw the biggest seagull ever! Then we started our walk back. The journey there had only taken 3 hours with stops so we knew we would be fine for time! We ended up on a slightly different path back but it was nice to see different places. We thought we
were lost for a while but didn't panic because the sea was on the left! Then Emily saw a 'pretty bird' which we watched for a while before realising we had turned into 60 year old bird watching women! Finally we got back to the start of our track, with time to spare! We did 25k in 5hours 30, with stops which we thought was pretty good! After we met the other girls in a cafe and shared a sundae while we waited for the bus. In the evening we just watched TV in the hostel and Emily and I planned another walk for tomorrow!
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