I fell in love with New Zealand. Seriously, the prettiest place on earth. I cannot count the number of times Beth and I had to stop and seriously ask ourselves if we were still on Planet Earth. It was unbelievable. Don’t worry, I’ll liberally sprinkle pictures throughout this blog entry. Also: we only did the South Island. We heard that for the amount of time we had, the North Island wasn’t really worth it. I could be convinced to go back and be proven wrong, though.
On our first day, we flew into Christchurch, rented a car, and did a short drive to Arthur’s Pass National Park. The hostel proprietor there was hysterical. I refuse to refer to him as anything except Michael Moore. He kind of looked like him, but that’s not the point. He was Canadian, and he kept trying to bring up Bush and how much he hated Bush, and he clearly wanted us to sympathize. Beth and I were like… yeah, we get it, we hated Bush too, but that was THREE YEARS AGO. WE HAVE A NEW PRESIDENT NOW. NO ONE STILL IS TALKING ABOUT BUSH. The guy kept using the word “groovy,” with no apparent sense of irony, and kept trying to get us to rant with him about evangelical Christians and the Bible Belt. Beth and I were just like… wow, news must travel slowly to rural New Zealand. Yes, we saw Jesus Camp, yes, we saw the results of the 2004 election, yes, we were horrified at the time, but we’re pretty much over it now. Let’s… let’s move on.
So anyway, the next morning we woke up and went hiking in the national park. It. Was. Stunning. Pictures here:
However, I had to wuss out a little early. I think I thought I was in much better shape than I was. It got better the more I hiked, but that first day… I couldn’t quite make it to the top of the mountain. Sad day.
After we went hiking, we drove down to glacier country. There are these two glaciers along the West Coast of New Zealand, so the next morning we hiked out to see those. Pictures here:
That was also cool but I mean, I’ve seen snow and ice before. There were Australians ahead of us who were just blown away because it was the first time any of them had seen snow. Beth and I were just kinda like, yeah, we get it. It’s cold. Wahoo.
Our next stop was Queenstown, which is like the adrenaline sports capital of the world. I did no adrenaline sports. First of all, SO not my thing. Secondly, surprisingly expensive! I mean, I know throwing yourself out a plane would be in the region of 600 bucks, but bungee jumping was like 400, which actually did surprise me. Had it been like 30 or 50, I maybe would have considered it, but for that amount of money when it’s something I don’t really want to do? Forget about it. We stayed there two nights and it was one of the only non-rural locations on our trip. We met these two Canadian guys in our hostel who were in their late 20s and doing a trip around the world because they got a year off work – a PAID year off work! GOD I love Canada.
After Queenstown, it was on to Te Anau National Park, where we stayed one night before taking an overnight cruise around Doubtful Sound. Here is a random scenery picture from that drive:
Anyway. There are these two big sounds in southern New Zealand: Milford and Doubtful. Milford you can do in a day cruise, but it was like 150 bucks to do that, and Doubtful was overnight and 200, so it was pretty much a no-brainer as we’d have to pay for a hostel that night if we’d done Milford. Doubtful Sound is called that because when Captain Cook was a-explorin’, his men wanted to go into the sound but he was DOUBTFUL there’d be enough wind to get them back out! Haha! Geddit? DOUBTFUL!
Anyway. The main point of the cruise was just to look at how pretty the sound was, so I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves:
I mean HONESTLY.
After Doubtful Sound we drove up to Christchurch in the morning. We spent two nights in Christchurch. Our first we had to spend in this horribly sketchy Asian hostel because the hostel we wanted to stay in closed its reception at like 8 and we got there at like 8:30. It was clean and safe and all that, but it smelled SO strongly of curry and fish. It was disgusting. That morning, we woke up and drove out to Kaikoura wine country, where we saw a seal colony and did wine tastings.
Here is a picture of the beach and of me at a seal colony:
We had a lovely dinner at a brewery that night and drove back into Christchurch. It’s kind of unbelievable how badly Christchurch is still suffering from that earthquake and, correspondingly, how quickly the earthquake disappeared from the public eye. I went to New Orleans in 2007 for the Sugar Bowl, and honestly, the downtown of Christchurch reminded me of some of the worse-hit neighborhoods I saw of NOLA. The entire city center is closed off to traffic and pedestrians, but the surrounding areas were still really bad, so I can’t imagine what the city center is like. It shocked both of us – we remembered hearing about the earthquake but I guess we sort of didn’t realize how much it would still be affecting daily life in the city.
Our last night we stayed in an absolutely lovely hostel (the one whose reception had been closed the previous night). We drank a bottle of fine wine that we’d bought at one of the wineries and watched How I Met Your Mother and it was basically a perfect ending to an absolutely lovely trip.
Then I flew for 30 hours and took a 2 ½ hour bus ride and I never, ever want to travel again. Cheers!
p.s. If you’re on facebook, there’s a ton better pictures up – it’s sort of hard to load pictures onto this thing and the majority of them are on there.
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