Playing Catch-up

Ok, so my computer battery died and we have only had one or two outlets in our rooms and the heater takes up one and camera chargers rotating between the four of us take up the other…. So, point of story is I haven’t been writing and I have a lot to catch you up on!

Again, I would like to reiterate the fact that New Zealand is FREAKING AWESOME!!!!! Sorry… I didn’t mean to yell, I just love it here! Anyway, in Queenstown, Claire and Casey didn’t end up being able to go skydiving. After three attempts, it was just too windy for them to go. Cat and I were however, able to go ziplining. We went on four separate zip tracks through the mountains that gave us stunning views of the lake and mountains around it. The town itself was SO beautiful. It is a nice little costal town right on lake that was the same glacial blue as all the others sitting in between these huge snow capped mountains. The view from our hostel alone was spectacular. We had clear views of the lake and two different mountain ranges. One of which was the Remarkables, which are named for the fact that they are the only mountain range in the world that run due north and south. After our minor hikes and thoroughly exploring Queenstown and taking about a billion more pictures, we started our trek north to the Franz Josef glacier. On our way out of town there were two roads, the scenic route and the highway route…. Naturally we took the scenic route that got us to our mid way destination about 45 minutes behind the highway and the ominous road signs speaking of chained tires in winter and absolutely NO trucks allowed, didn’t stop us. Needless to say, we 100% made the right decision! With me at the helm, we wound and twisted our way up these mounatins and hills slowly heading north. Again, cameras were whipped out at every direction. One stop we came to looked back in over Queenstown and we even high enough that we were eye to eye with a landing airplane, to which I totally geeked out over. After that we kept on trucking along slowly twisting and turning up and down, luckily none of us got car sick. We finally wound our way through the mountains to our midway point of Wanaka. Again, this was a nice little town on the edge of a lake, with, of course, stunning views! We drove around the lake and stopped at this scenic overlook. We had the perfect weather, sunny and warm. I think I could have sat on the edge of this cliff overlooking the water for days. Unfortunately however, after some exploring we had to be on our way. On our way up the road, the scenery started to change dramatically. There were no longer snow capped mountains, but rather mountains covered in rainforest. Come to find out, it is an actual rain forest, but we couldn’t believe that the surrounding ecosystem had changed so much. We could see waterfalls flowing from high off the mountains and trees and bushes everywhere, it just had that “wet” feeling that you would imagine a rainforest to have. The only difference was that it was only about 60 degrees, so no jungle fever for us. Again, we found ourselves on curvy roads, but as we got farther towards the west coast we started to smell salt water. Then, out of nowhere, the mountains opened up and we emerged onto a road that ran just parallel to the ocean. It was amazing. It was about two o’clock when we had made it there so the sun was just visible over the water, making it even more of a sight to see. Again, we could have stopped for ages, but we needed to keep driving. The ocean didn’t last too long as we made our way back into the mountains for our glacial destination. There were two glaciers that we were going to see. One was Fox glacier and the other was Franz Josef, also the town we were staying in. We ate dinner at Fox Glacier and then went and hiked around the sheet of ice. It was pretty cool, you couldn’t get on it, but having never seen a glacier before it was pretty amazing. As the sun set, we decided it was time to go and check-in to our hostel just another 20 minutes up the road. Franz Josef was a small little town, literally only two roads and nothing open past 8 pm. We slept well and bounced out of bed early to check out the second glacier. Again, we couldn’t climb on it and we didn’t feel like taking an expensive helicopter tour just to get to the top, so we did the hour or so hike up to it and got as close as we could. Our next resting place was Westport, which was farther up the west coast, so after our hike we decided to hit the road again. We stopped at a couple of walking trails along the way, taking pictures of many waterfalls and scenic areas. Once we got a little over half way to Westport, we stumbled over an area called the pancake rocks. By this time we had gotten back to the coast and the rocks were so named because they have lines running along them that make them look like huge stacks of pancakes. What’s neat about them though is that their formation along the coast has made blowholes and as the waves come crashing into them, water is forced up and out of certain areas of the rocks. It literally looks and sounds like a whale is clearing its blowhole. Once on the road again, we made only one pit stop to get a smoothie from McDonalds. Unfortunately to say, as college kids on a budget, we have eaten at Mackers, as they call it, for breakfast everyday, and basically fish and chips (french fries) the rest of our meals because its the cheapest, but I digress…. Once in Westport, we stayed at this old renovated house, which was the only hostel in the whole town. It was a nice little place and the beds were comfy, but there was absolutely nothing do to there, except for a seal colony, so we went to see it. It actually turned out to be really cool. We were there around 6 pm so we looked at all of the seals sleeping, fighting, and flopping all over the rocks, then we made our way up the hiking trail to the top of this hill and sat in the grass and watched the sun set over the ocean. We stayed until the sun finally sunk below the horizon, and in hopes of seeing the green flashing light at the end of Pirates of the Caribbean 3, but it never happened. After that, it got super cold so we went back to the hostel and watched a movie. The next morning was a big drive to Picton where were catching the Ferry to Wellington, but not before horse back riding. Casey had been wanting to go horse back riding since day one, so we found a place that did a two hour ride for $80 (New Zealand) and we went. We all grumbled about it, but it ended up being pretty fun. We basically went all over the woods and along some fields and water. One river was the Buller river, which come to find out has the largest amount of water flowing through it second only to the Nile, so that was pretty cool. After that little adventure, we headed to the Sea port of Picton. We went back through the same rain forest type mountains, which we are all convinced is where the Jurassic Park movies were filmed. Once to Picton, we hopped on the ferry and parked our car and just chilled out for the 3 hour journey in the lounges upstairs. After our journey to Wellington, New Zealand’s capital city, we got lost for about an hour. Wellington is one of the world’s WORST laid out cities ever created. I was driving and Claire was navagating, and no matter what the map said, we kept hitting one way’s and do not enter signs and seriously could not get to where we needed to be! We finally made it and just crashed in our hostel and got up bright and early the next morning to get the heck out of there. We ventured into a town called Upper Hut and visited a couple of Lord of the Rings filming sites. One was a river, but the most exciting one was where they filmed Rivendell. I took tons of pictures and again, the landscape was just gorgeous. We then started to head up north to the town of Rotorua. On the way, we saw where they filmed the Black Gates and as we passed through this deserty area we saw a full rainbow in the field right next to us. Claire was driving and immediately swerved off of the road for us to take pictures. The North Island is completely different from the south. Here instead of long mountain ranges, there are rolling hills of green as far as the eye can see, with little plops of white sheep all over them. The north island is where they filmed the Shire in LOTR so if you are familiar with the movies, then that is where we are. As we headed up the road, we stopped at a place called Lake Taupo and ate dinner and did a little walking around. It was a decent sized town and the lake was beautiful. It was really clear and blue, although not glacial fed, it was still nice none the less. The green hills surrounded the whole lake and the sun again was setting over it, making our views unbelievable. After we tore ourselves away, we headed into Rotorua. Let me just start off by saying, THIS TOWN STINKS!!!!! Not stinks as in its boring, but as in the air stinks! This area is filled with geothermal hot spots so the smell of sulfur is rank in the air! I absolutely do not know how people live here. The smell is awful. Luckily our hostel is in a place where it is hard to smell it, but man some places in town smell like you have been swimming in rotten eggs for years. Anyway, we got into town last night (Wednesday 29, September) and did a little exploring. We stumbled across this amazing hole in the wall and got ice cream and ended up going back today for lunch. For $10 you got two pieces of fish, one sasuage (like a bratwurst), chips, and a seafood stick! It was amazing. I’m getting ahead of myself a little bit, but the food was just SO good. Anyway, we went to bed rather early and got up around nine and went to the one thing I have been waiting this whole trip to do… Zorbing! Zorbing was invented in New Zealand and its where you put your self in the big giant plastic ball and roll down a hill. Casey and Cat did the dry Zorb where you get strapped in and tumble down the hill head over heels all the way to the bottom. Claire and I however, did the water Zorb, where they fill a portion of the ball up with a bit of water and then you climb into it. They then proceed to roll you down this winding hill whilst you slosh everywhere! It was absolutely one of the most amazing things I have ever done in my life! If it wasn’t so expensive, I would have ridden a million times! Afterwards, claire and I froze our bums off and went back to the hostel to change. Once back we were trying to decide on an afternoon activity and settled on a hike through this redwood forest. It was about a two and a half hour hike and it had a pretty good rain going for the latter half of the trek, but overall it was pretty neat to see. The redwoods are just like those in California, except I don’t think they get as big around. We were also able to look down into a spot were there were a bunch of geothermal pools and we also saw one of the geyser’s erupting. Our long wet trek finally came to an end and we are now sitting back in our hostel taking a breather....

Phew.. Ok, I know that is a lot for you to read, and man that was a lot for me to type. A lot has happened since I was last able to write and I’m sure I’m missing out on some things, but this is turning into quite the post! But, at least you are all caught up now! I would also like to mention that it is my mom’s birthday today, so HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM! Tonight should be a pretty chilled out night in Rotorua as we are getting up early to hit up a couple more spots before heading into Auckland. This trip is just going by insanely fast and I can’t believe that it is already coming to a close. We really only have one more day left here, as our flight is out of Auckland at 7 am, but that should give us a chance to settle back into Australia time and come down off of our New Zealand high before starting school on Monday.

Hopefully all is well on the other side of the globe! Until next time… no worries!