It's been a while since I've posted about life in New Zealand, mostly because every day life has become just that. Work has been busy, running has become much more of a time commitment, and something didn't feel quite right about chronically all the time I spent with Cam.
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| Cam and I doing cool things like winning sunglasses at the arcade |
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| Cam and I doing actual cool things like climbing a mountain :D |
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| The hanging glacial valley Cam's looking at in the last picture |
But traveling has started to pick up again and a few of American friends visited me last week/weekend. I was able to take a few days off work and we ended up doing a MASSIVE road trip around the southern part of the South Island. It was a lot of driving but the landscape is always changing in NZ so the drives never felt too bad.
Wednesday afternoon, after the girls explored Christchurch a bit, we drove to Queenstown. The drive is 6 hours long, down and across the country - past Lake Tekapo, my favorite- Lake Pukaki, a few small towns, and then finally to Queenstown.
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| Lake Tekapo - the most vibrant I've ever seen it |
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| Church of the Good Shepard at Lake Tekapo |
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| Welcome to New Zealand my love! |
We made a stop in Cromwell (one of the small towns on the way) at a farm stand on the side of the road. The stand turned out to make my favorite ice cream AND have a beautiful rose garden in the back of it. The ice cream style is called "real fruit ice cream" - very creative- and basically they take fruit and a plain frozen yogurt and put it in a cone that pumps out a blend of the two with a soft serve texture.
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| Roses and Ice Cream - Happiest Girl in Cromwell ;) |
It's amazing and my friends loved it. They kept asking to stop if we saw another place for it the whole trip. I told Cam that we stopped at this amazing place with a rose garden and he said his granddad is the rose gardener of Cromwell! He did a really good job with this one :)
After checking in to the hotel, we went down to the town for dinner around sunset and ate at the same restaurant that I went to with mom in December. (HIGHLY recommend Finz if anyone is traveling to Queenstown) It was amazing - again. I even had the same waiter - another american expat from Montana.
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| Ariel and I on Coronet Peak |
Paragliding wasn't nearly as scary as I thought it would be and after running off the hill and taking flight, I enjoyed my flight with a veteran from the South African army. He told me he once took a paraglider to high five someone standing on the famous cliff in Capetown, so I felt pretty comfortable with his abilities.
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| Made it! Thanks for the ride Roland! |
My friends had really great flights as well, so everyone was feeling good as we drove back to town and got on our way to Milford Sound.
Milford Sound is meant to be about four hours from Queenstown and we wanted to get there before it got dark so we left Queenstown around mid day. I had done about 3 hours of the trip before, to get to the Routeburn Track, but had heard that once you pass the start of the Routeburn track it gets even more amazing. This was definitely true. The mountains seemed to get more rocky and honestly just larger. My mom had told me from her two trips to Milford Sound that we should stop at Mirror Lakes along the way if it is sunny, and as luck would have it - it was!
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| Mirror Lakes! |
After a few photos, we hopped back in the car and headed on. Next up was the Homer Tunnel, a one lane tunnel which serves as the only road to Milford Sound and can be closed in bad weather. Luckily we caught the timing well in both directions and the weather held up to keep the tunnel open. I expected it to be like any tunnel I had seen in the States, but the inside of it was actually completely exposed rock, with steel bracing every 10 m or so -- less man-made support than I had anticipated, making me a bit nervous.
I had forgotten my NZ Frenzy book, which has road side hikes that you might otherwise not know about, so I was pretty keen to stop at any brown sign indicating a short hike with interesting scenery. The next stop was probabaly my favorite: The Chasm. It was a short walk to a rapid waterfall where the texture and the color of the water was amazing. Equally as amazing was the formation of the rocks surrounding it. The rocks were smooth and the strength of the water had worn holes through them. In the photos I took, its hard to determine the orientation of the photo because the scene is so unfamiliar. I like to call these photos abstract art ;) . This was definitely one of the highlights of the trip for me.
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| The walk to the Chasm |
Eventually we made it to the lodge and checked in to our room. We weren't sure if there would be food at the lodge so brought all of the essentials -- sandwich goods, cheese and crackers, and some wine :) My friends weren't the most comfortable at the lodge, but after some wine and a good game of New Zealand Monopoly, we all got a surprisingly good sleep.
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| Yes, I will buy the Christchurch Cathedral |
Thursday AM we went out on the boat in Milford Sound. I was so surprised by the magnitude of the mountains and how rocky they are, since most of the mountains here are covered in grass. I think I'll let the pictures do the talking though...
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| Seals on the Rocks |
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| Giant rocky mountains and waterfalls everywhere you look - beautiful day in Milford Sound |
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| The rain created hundreds of absolutely amazing waterfalls. This is just part of one of them :) |
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| Ariel and I in Milford Sound :D |
After Milford Sound it was on to Dunedin. Dunedin is one of the places in NZ that I had convinced myself I needed to see. Everyone told me that I didn't absolutely have to make the trip, but for some reason I couldn't let it go. Dunedin ended up 100% meeting my expectations and was one of the highlights of this trip. My friends and I were describing it as a little like San Francisco for its hills, a bit like Boston for the brick covered streets, and a bit like Philly for its vibe - and also a little European with the Cathedrals in town. After an amazing breakfast at the Octagon, the center of town that is literally shaped like an octagon and full of cafes, bars, and restaurants, we drove out on to the Otago Peninsula and I decided Dunedin was just like Australia. Long story short, we absolutely loved Dunedin and by the end of our morning there decided not to compare it to all the cities it reminded us of and just call it what it is, Dunedin.
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| Larnach's Castle on the Peninsula! Beautiful property and gardens! |
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| The view from the Gardens of Larnach's Castle. We loooved this place. |
Thanks for visiting Ariel, Jenny, and Brooke! I had so much fun with you <3
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| xoxo |
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