Alright, so I am finally writing – apologies it has taken so long. Storyboards and men’s vest and pants got in the way. But hey, now you get photos AND stories. Oh goody!
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So, get out your map of New Zealand and follow along:
We flew to Auckland, followed very quickly by a flight to Queenstown, a car ride to the Karawau Bridge and a 47m jump to the Karawau River.
Then back in the car to continue on to Wanaka. Are you still with me? We were moving very fast. When we got to Wanaka we went and checked out the sites and added a little Canadian humour to the scenery complete with an engraved piece of wood reading “New Zealad 2009” (I typed it just like I carved it). If found please return to #17 Lower Fort Street, Sydney.
The next day we just wanted to lay low and recover from the bungee jumping. HA! All jokes - we went sky diving. Not many other experiences can be equivalent to falling from 12,000 meters at 200 km/h. One piece of advice: don’t open your mouth, because once its open you are not closing it. Second piece of advice: Its impossible to not open your mouth because you are smiling like a crazy person the entire time. Oh, and you also have no control over your extremities.
Next came the journey from Wanaka to Franz Josef Glacier. We didn’t get in until way after dark cause we didn’t finish our dive until 5pm, but we went and checked out the glacier the next morning. Absolutely stunning – a glacier in the middle of a rainforest. Mindblowing really.
The next day brought a very long drive up the West Coast of the South Island until we turned onto Arthur’s Pass and drove through the mountain ranges to Christchurch. We stayed in Christchurch for a night and then drove up the East Coast of the South Island to Kaikoura where we stumbled upon their fur seal colony. Seriously, I nearly tripped over one of them!
We then drove further up to Picton where you can catch the ferry from the South Island to the North Island. We couldn’t get a hostel in Picton so we referred to our extremely accurate YHA map and discovered that there was a hostel called Anikiwa that was right beside the Picton YHA. The Anikiwa YHA circle was actually touching the Picton YHA!Wrong.
We drove out to Anikiwa, with very little direction. Actually that’s not true. There was lots of direction. First we went south, then east, west then north and finally we discovered this road that turned into another road that turned into the road we needed to be on which ended up being so windy it made Westside Rd. look like Saskatchewan highway. The hostel was half an hour out of town down this lovely road and was very very cool. It was in the middle of Queen Charlotte Sound, which is a mass of connected islands emerging from the water. It is home of the 5th best hike in the world and the oyster capital of the Southern Hemisphere. The hostel was in the bottom portion of a large home, so sitting in the tv room felt like we were sleeping over at a friends house.
Eek. Long catch up that one was. I’ll try to keep this shorter…
The North Island!
So we made our way across on the ferry to Wellington, then drove up to the coastal town of Paraparaumu where we stayed at what can be best described as great-great-great grandma’s house. Then we made our way to Hawkes Bay where we met up with a one Miss Katie Van Massenhoven and her lovely Kiwi roomie Monique. It was Monique’s birthday so we went out on the town and then stayed at her parent’s lovely farm. Thank you very much, it was absolutely wonderful and unbelievably hospitable.
So now the three Ks made our way up to Lake Taupo and Rotorua, where we checked out the Craters of the Moon, which were the coolest creepiest alien-movie location I’ve ever seen.
When we woke up in Rotorua it was Kristine’s last day in New Zealand, so we had to make it count. Nothing does that better than donning a wetsuit, lifejacket and helmet, grabbing a paddle and jumping in a raft with two guides and no one else. You would think that with two guides we would be safe, but the 7m waterfall had other ideas. It was a lot of fun, despite us getting extremely wet, tossed head over heels and flooded. But very very fun.
So Bean left for Sydney and Katie and I headed back south to do some repelling, caving, black water rafting and rock climbing. Ya… pretty cool. Used that word too much. Absolutely fantastic. I’m running out of adjectives.
The trip was amazing. You don’t go to New Zealand for the cities. You go to experience what they are known for and what they do best. You go for the Mauri culture, the outdoors experience and the adventure sports. And the fact that such a small island has everything from great Kauri trees to glow worms, huge mountains and windy roads to beautiful coast lines and dense rainforests.
So what is the verdict? You should go. Go and conquer some fears or just prove that you don’t have any!
