To the North Island

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Next after the Franz Josef stop was Wanaka, some really small, random town further south. We signed up for a skydive but it got cancelled two consecutive days due to the winds. But I did a jetboat ride with five of my tourmates and Gump (our driver/tour guide). The jetboat was easily the most maneuverable boat I've ever seen. I was quite sure on several occasions we were going to crash into a boulder or a huge tree stump or something, but the driver managed to steer around all the obstacles. We also did a few 180 degree hairpin turns. The experience was capped off by having a race with a helicopter that some of our fellow tourmates were in. The helicopter was literally about 10 feet from us, close enough to make us feel like stuntmen in one of those really bad 90s action movies. Carina, our Austrian tourmate was with us. So we did our best Arnold impressions until she was completely annoyed with us. GET TO THE CHOPPA!!!

The next day, we set off to Queenstown, the self proclaimed adventure capital of the world. As we approached the city, we stopped to see a couple tourmates do a bungy jump at AJ Hackett, which is allegedly the first bungy site in the world. I was skeptical of this but we saw a video of their history, with the founders bungy jumping in the 80s in front of amazed people who didn't even know what it was. They also had a segment with some tribe bungy jumping off of bamboo towers with vines. I don't know how they didn't kill themselves. Actually, some of them probably did.

Queenstown was a lot smaller then expected. In fact, I think it's a bit of a stretch labelling it a city. The weather wasn't very good, and a lot of our tourmates stayed back in Wanaka. So our new, smaller group consisted of me, Austrian Carina, and English Ben. Ben was funding his travels by busking with his guitar everywhere he went. Really good idea if you ask me. Anyway we went and saw a couple movies and then just wandered around. The weather never improved enough for us to do our skydive. I think, next to England, New Zealand gets the most rain in the world.

From Queenstown, I took a day trip out to Milford Sound, which I learned isn't really a sound, but a fiord. Anyway, it was incredible. Straight up Loard of the Rings scenery. Definitely the best scenery in New Zealand thus far and I would rank it up with the Kili summit and all of Switzerland to be the best scenery I have ever seen. I can't even begin to upload the pics right now but I'll do it when I'm home. It rained the whole time but this was actually a good thing because it made the waterfalls bigger than normal. And we're talking about hundreds of waterfalls. Literally. We also saw seals on the rocks and dolphins were following our boat for a while.

I parted ways with Carina and Ben as they went south and I headed north back up to Christchurch. The only person from my original Stray bus Rich, another English guy. We only spent one day in Christchurch and then planned to go north up to Kaikoura with Stray. But the bus left us due to some miscommunication. At first, they told us we would have to pay for our own way there. But then after going to the office, they paid our bus fare, gave us free t-shirts, and then the driver bought us drinks that night. So I'd say they made up for it.

Kaikoura was a small town right on the ocean famous for swimming with dolphins and whale watching. I tried to sign up for it but it was fully booked and I didn't have enough time to spend another night there. But I was partly glad I couldn't do it because the water temperature was barely above freezing and I would have had to wake up at 5 am. Rich later told me that they saw hundreds of dolphins, including baby ones that were a foot long. No whales though.

After only one night in Kaikoura, we went north to Wellington, the capital, and the entrance to the north island. Wellington was bigger than Christchurch, not quite as nice, and equally as boring. New Zealand is awesome but its cities aren't. Rich stayed in Kaikoura but I met Josephine from Sweden on the new stray bus. Then I met Josephine's friend Blake (from Florida) and we ended up hanging out with a huge group of Canadians, Germans, and Austrians. The nightlife is definitely not my kind of scene in Wellington so I was glad when everyone was keen to hang out at the hostel all night.

The next day, we hiked to the top of Mt. Victoria, saw a bunch of filming locations for Lord of the Rings, and went and saw a couple more movies. Lord of the Rings is obviously huge around here. We saw the theater which hosted its world premier and apparently they have plaques on the chairs where the famous people sat. Now it cost like double the ticket price to sit in those chairs.

After Wellington, we headed up to Taupo. Again, our skydiving was cancelled. I haven't even seen a blue sky in over a week. We've had a good time in Taupo but I'm heading up to Auckland today while Jo and Blake are staying here. Auckland is my last stop before I fly back to the states. Although I have a day layover in Fiji so that will be my last stop abroad. I'll probably get out of the airport and squeeze in some snorkeling. I would do a dive or two but your circulatory system explodes if you dive and then fly. Or something like that.

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Photos

Bridge
Possibly the least structurally sound bridge in history

Jetboat
Our Jetboat group

Scenery
...from the jetboat

Comments

[danielle]

rarr!
awwww! look at the dog! haha