Brief Break Highlights

Oh, wow. I'm pretty overwhelmed at the task of updating about my 16-day road trip around the South Island. It was an absolutely epic, once-in-a-lifetime adventure that I can barely begin to sum up. I also have two papers due this week that I've barely thought about, so I should get down to work. But, you're more important.

Two BU girls Ashley and Michelle and I flew into Christchurch on Friday morning, September 5. We picked up our rental car (some kind of Mazda; we never quite figured out its make) and hit the city. We didn't do much; had dinner at our new favorite restaurant Winnie Bagoes, and talked about how excited we were!

We had plans to stay with Kirsten, a Canadian-Kiwi who Ashley met in the airport (?!) on her trip to NZ. The girl and Ashley hit it off and Kirsten said if she ever needed a place to stay in Chch to call her up. So, we did.

Kirsten and her roommates live in a farmhouse in Darfield, which is a very rural suburb about a half hour outside Christchurch. Trying to find the house in the dark without knowing we're actually looking for a 1920s farmhouse-- complete with a dilapidated silo and three sheep (!) in the yard-- was quite a task, but we succeeded, and our trip started off with a bang in rural New Zealand.

Since we arrived in the dark, we didn't realize Kirsten's Canterbury Plains residence had an epic view of the Southern Alps-- our first glimpse of those beauts was in the morning.

First round of photos

From Darfield the next morning, we hit Route 1 and traveled south all the way to Dunedin, home of The Speight's Brewery, Cadbury Chocolates NZ, and the University of Otago. Read: college-girls' PARADISE. Though I didn't find Dunedin to be an especially aesthetically pleasing city, it was tons of fun and had a great atmosphere. Loved it! If I didn't have such a fantastic internship here in Auckland, I think I would have liked to study at Otago. Oh, well. Next time.

Pictures from Dunedin

From Dunedin, we went to the Otago Peninsula for some prime beach-wildlife viewing in the rain. We saw sea lions just lounging on the beach! So cool. They're massive, docile creatures and it was lovely sharing the beach with them. Though we trudged up a dune to the penguin hide, we didn't see any penguins, but that's not surprising, because they're apparently very shy. We did see one albatross (spotted by me!) at the Tairaoa Head Albatross Reserve, which was cool. Huge birds! It was raining while in Otago, though, so that put a little dampness-- I mean, damper on our day. We survived, though.

From Otago, we drove through the Catlins, but it was still raining heavily, so we pretty much viewed the beach scenery from the car. Visited Porpoise Bay but saw neither porpoises nor dolphins. Sigh.

See some photos here.

Then we caught the ferry to Stewart Island, the small island just south of New Zealand's South Island. It's the furthest point south you can go before Antarctica! (When Michelle told her dad that, he then went ahead and told all his friends that his daughter was traveling to Antarctica... No, Mr. R, but close. So close.)

The Foveaux Strait is one of the top three choppiest straits in the world, a crew member told my friends, as I was vomiting into a small paper bag she handed me. I have never been seasick in my entire life. I am a sailor, for chrissakes! It was ridiculous. Having not had a very difficult life thus far, I think seasickness is absolutely the worst feeling in the world. So gross. So, that was fun.

When the hour-long eternity of a ferry ride finally let us off, Stewart Island was a grey little bubble of cold rain. And it stayed that way as long as we were there. To exacerbate the situation, we had to walk outside our bedroom to get not only to the kitchen and lounge, but also to the toilet and showers. Ugh. I was damp and cold for our entire two-day sojourn to Stewart, and nauseous for a good part of it.

We hiked for a day on the island, though, which was great, despite the unrelenting rain. A nice man gave us a ride to the trail (four kilometres away from our hostel) in his utility van that morning (good idea, taking rides from strangers, I know), but unfortunately, after our 6k hike, we had to trek back to the hostel. In the rain. Seriously damp and cold. But worth it, for sure. Helped the nausea pass.

Soggy photos.

After Stewart Island, we began driving up the West Coast toward Queenstown via the Fiordland. Seriously, of all the magnificent natural beauty I saw over these two weeks, the Fiordland took the cake. Mountains and lakes are just so freakin' pretty. As much as I love salt air and crashing waves, I'm a mountain girl at heart.

Pictures that can't possibly do it justice can be seen here.

Queenstown is the adventure capital of the world, so that was fun. It's a mountain town and a tourist haven, offering absolutely any adrenalin rush one can imagine. My friends bungy jumped from a height of 50 metres; I took photos. It's just not my thing. We did have a great hike, though, and we rode horses in Glenorchy, a town just outside of Queenstown, where lots of scenes from Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia were filmed! So cool.

I also finally bought Canterbury sheepskin boots; they're the new loves of my life. I really wanted to buy yarn, but of the two yarn stores in Queenstown, the one that was open didn't have what I'm looking for (anything chunky). For a country with such a preposterous number of sheep (45 million), there is a really disappointing yarn selection.

Photos from Queenstown and a few surrounding tiny towns

After a long stint in Queenstown, we headed back to the land without radio reception and skied Treble Cone, a resort in Wanaka. Skiing in New Zealand is so different from any North American skiing I've done! There are no native tress that grow mountainside here, so trails aren't defined that way. I suppose I've never really given thought to how necessary it is to have my trails defined, but Michelle and I definitely had to sidestep up a few slopes we realized were unskiable just a little too late. Also, it's spring here, so the snow was so slushy and heavy-- I definitely felt it in my legs for the next few days! Such an incredible experience; definitely a highlight of the entire trip.

See some nerdy pictures of me in my ski helmet here.

From Wanaka we headed along the coast to a small town called Okarito, which has a permanent population of 30. All of my classes in Auckland are bigger than that. Keri Hulme, author of The Bone People, is a resident! Ash and Michelle wouldn't let me knock on her door, though. Fair enough. Okarito was very relaxing and we had a nice kayak paddle in a lagoon of the wild Tasman Sea; that was another trip highlight.

From Okarito, we went to Punakaiki, a beach town famous for the Pancake Rocks and blowholes. The Pancake Rocks are huge limestone boulders getting eroded by the waves of the Tasman Sea... and are eroding into layers. Science doesn't know exactly why-- there are many theories, all of which sound probable enough to me-- but it sure does look cool. The blowholes happen when high tide waves crash into crevices formed by erosion, causing huge mists of water to blow out. Since we visited on a sunny day, we saw tons of rainbows!

Though it's not confirmed, I think Punakaiki is Te Reo (the Maori language) for pancakes. "Kai" means "food," so it could be... I hope it is. That would please me very much.

We changed our itinerary last minute to incorporate a visit to the Hanmer Springs thermal pools, some natural sulfurous hot pools. Though we stank of boiled eggs for a few hours, it was a fantastic decision.

Final round of photos.

We ended full-circle with dinner at Winnie Bagoes. We were very exhausted and fairly poor. I've been up since 4:30 this morning, to catch my 7 am flight out of Chch. Though I'm overwhelmed with work, I'm kind of glad to be back in Auckland. Kind of.