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Published: April 15th 2018
Gorgeous lake near Mount Cook
I had to hold my hair because it was so windy that you couldn't see my face if I wouldn't..- As I'm running a bit behind with my blogs, there will be another one very soon! -
You may or may not remember this from one of my first blogs, but the bus drivers from Stray all have nicknames. Passengers never know their real name, so we all resort to calling them Happy, Pacman and Romeoo, for instance. After Queenstown, Kookie took us to Mount Cook, where we did some amazing walks and saw icebergs! Not only did he take us there, but afterwards he took us to the factory shop of Cookie Time. Granted, he got his name for being a chef rather than a major cookie lover, but I still thought it was all a funny combination.
After the Cookie Time factory, I was back in Christchurch. To get to the North Island, I had to re-travel the first part of my trip. I just chilled a lot in Christchurch, sleeping in, walking around to spot street art, enjoying food at a local food court and walking through the botanical gardens. On my last day, everyone I knew was tired but I wanted to go to a bar since I'd already had quite some early nights
in a row. I had already given up on this plan when two roommates that I hadn't spoken to yet (other than “hi” and “sorry”) asked if anyone wanted to join them at the bar. I ended up having a great time with them, they were so friendly and open and I'll probably see them again in Melbourne!
The next day, yet another bus driver (Rhino) drove me to Kaikoura. I did a 5 hour walk there, hopping over rocks to get closer to the hundreds of seals that were chilling along part of the route. It was adorable, they had pups too! I'll be honest, the walk itself was supposed to be no longer than 4 hours but the seals distracted us a bit.
The drive to Picton and the ferry ride went smoothly (I wasn't even seasick during those 3,5 hours!) and I finally arrived on the North Island for the second part of my NZ trip. I didn't see much of Wellington yet, since we arrived pretty late and I had to get up at 5:40(!!) to get on the bus to Auckland. This was an 11 hour drive, which wasn't great, but lucky for
me there was a cyclone nearby causing terrible weather (so I didn't miss much by sitting inside). Our bus driver tried to get us to Auckland as soon as possible, since there had apparently been an accident with a tornado along the road to Auckland.. scary! Apart from a broken power cable due to which we had to turn around and change our route, the ride went smoothly and we got to Auckland after 12 hours (only one hour delayed).
When I came back to my room after breakfast in Auckland, I was in for a surprise: all my luggage was gone. Everything that was on my bed, my bags, all gone. There were also two random men in my room, “Didn't they notify me of the inspection?”. Turned out that they moved everyone's stuff to reception for some kind of inspection but they forgot to tell me (and a bunch of others too, as it turned out later). Either way, all my stuff was indeed safely stored at reception and 5 hours later I could finally put it back in my room to pack for the trip around the North Island!
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Paul Stapper
non-member comment
Adrenaline
Wow, Anne! Even een paar blogs van je bij gelezen. Wat een adrenaline avonturen zeg! Zou het niet in mijn hoofd hebben gehaald. ;) Misschien een vreemde vraag, maar waarom werk je niet langzaam je weg op richting het noorden van het Noord Eiland? Vergeet niet om de Tongariro Crossing te doen! Dat is echt super gaaf! :D