New Zealand and the Kiwi experience!

June 29, 2008 1:30 pm

Alright, I made it back from New Zealand. Barely. I was pretty tired and have only just recovered recently. It was amazing though, and incredible time. So here we go!

Day 1: I didn’t get into Christchurch (on the South Island) until about midnight so I just caught a cab to a hostel and went to bed. My tour started at 9am this same day, so I got up early and the met the group. There were about 30 people in my tour, from all over the world and all different age groups. To start off we took a walk about Christchurch and checked out the museum and the cathedral. It was freezing. I was quite unprepared for the cold and it was only going to get worse. After our walk, we loaded into the bus and headed south to a place called Flock Hill. Flock Hill is a huge sheep farm, which has accommodation and a restaurant. The man who owns it has over 20,000 sheep and produces much of the merino wool for Italian suits. We got a tour of the farm and watched how sheep dogs work. Pretty cool actually. That night we just had dinner and drinks on the farm.

 

Day 2: We all got up early (I won’t even say that anymore because we got up at 6 am everyday, it was awful) and headed down the West Coast of New Zealand. We stopped at a small town called Hokitika and checked out a jade factory. We then went on to a place called Fox that’s famous for its glacier. After suiting up in warm clothes and boots, we went for a long hike that ended on top of the glacier (and under it in some cases). I don’t know if any of you have ever been on a glacier but it is a strange thing. There’s a huge lush valley of temperate rainforest and then in the middle of it all, just a huge hunk of ice (miles and miles long). It wasn’t even that cold since the surrounding air was warm. That night we partied it up at the local Fox pub, the town only has 300 people. It was actually one of our best nights out, fun with the hick locals!

 

Day 3: Today was the day that we would drive down into Queenstown, the adrenaline capital of New Zealand (and also just a really cool place). On the way down we stopped at the Tasman Sea for some views and also the Thunder Creek Falls, NZ has tons of waterfalls everywhere. We stopped at a famous creek where people stack rocks (exciting, I know). We got into Queenstown and settled into our (surprisingly) nice motel. That night a group dinner was planned at an awesome gourmet pizza place, and then we went to an ice bar! The bar is made completely out of ice and kept at about negative eight degrees Celsius. You put on huge boots and jackets, and you have half an hour in the cold. The glasses were made out of ice too, it was really awesome! After the ice bar some friends from the tour and I went to a local bar called Buffalo, then home for bed.

 

Day 4: We had activities scheduled for this day. I went on a horseback riding tour of the Lord of the Rings territory and saw where a lot of the movies were filmed. It was absolutely gorgeous, and we had a perfect sunny day, even though it had snowed a lot the night before (I did say it was cold). Some of us went out for mexican for dinner that night and then had some drinks out. There was a lot of staying up late and getting up early on this tour, luckily we spent a lot of time on the bus where we could catch up on sleep.

 

Day 5: We had a boat tour of the Milford Sound on Tuesday and saw some dolphins and rainbows! The tour was only a couple hours, it was originally supposed to be over night, but instead we got an extra night in Queenstown, which was basically ok with everyone. After the boat, we stopped at some scenic places (we did that multiple times everyday, hence why I have 500 pictures from the week). Everyone was really exhausted on this day, so heading back to our motel was greatly appreciated. We did another group dinner out and had a couple drinks before bed.

 

Day 6: This morning we had some free time, did a little souvenir shopping and then we loaded into the bus to continue onto Lake Ohau. This lake was in the middle of nowhere, and the only thing around was the lodge we stayed in. It had its own bar (entertainment problem solved) with a pool table and some darts. A pretty decent dinner and drinks ensued for the night.

 

Day 7: The last day of the tour! We drove back to Christchurch, stopping for lunch on the way, and the tour was over by about 4. Our group decided to go out together for the night, since no one was leaving NZ until Friday or later. My flight was at 6 am on Friday (a big mistake on my part) and since we had to leave for the airport by 3:30 am I just decided to stay out (and thus up) with the group. Everyone met at a little cocktail bar called Lyme, where there was one (awesome) bartender who was not expecting 30 kids with a penchant for alcohol to wander in. He handled it very well and my friend Alyssa and I closed the bar (since there was no point in me going to bed). Around three I went back to the hostel, grabbed my stuff and booked it to the airport. Not my favorite flight ever, ahem, but I slept through most of it and made it home to my empty apartment. I managed to take a quick nap and stay up for the rest of the day and night, about 40 hours straight in all.

 

Overall NZ was beautiful and amazing and cold. I’m really glad I went, I did so many cool things and met a lot of awesome people. If I ever to go Michigan or Mexico or Ireland or Japan I always have somewhere to stay now :)

 

With all this being said, I do have a million pictures to post from the zoo and Melbourne and New Zealand and I will put up links, hopefully by tomorrow. My internet is iffy so I have to load them on campus, but I promise it will be worth the wait! Sorry this post is so long but I did a lot of stuff!

 

Everyone in Parklands leaves tomorrow minus 2 people, so it will be lonely and sad for awhile, until I leave for Asia on July 9^th. I suppose I’m excited to go but I mostly want to go home. I really miss the city and my apartment and everyone: Dad, Olivia, Mason, Megan, Emily, Elena, Seguin, Erin, Tom, Zach, Melissa and the list goes on! If I didn’t mention you, I promise I still miss you and I can’t wait to see you all!