Wowee. After 26 hours of traveling from Christchurch NZ to
New York City, I am on a 7 and a half hour bus ride to Pittsburgh. Steeler
Country, here I come! And with all this traveling comes time to reflect on my
past few weekends and time to write about it. :D
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| City of Champions (and bridges)! |
Tongariro
We’ll start two weekends ago – my third consecutive weekend
on the north island (can you tell I’m tired of flying already?)
Two weekends ago I did the Tongariro Crossing – or rather I
went to the Tongariro Crossing Great Walk. As seems to keep happening, the
weather was forecasted to be insanely bad for the day we planned to do the
walk. But with plane tickets booked on a regular (non-3-day) weekend, we didn’t
have any wiggle room. The track is 19k long in one direction and you need to
take a shuttle back to the beginning when you finish the track. About 6 hours
before our flight out of Christchurch, Jen got a call that our shuttle was
cancelled and was told that we would be crazy to do the walk. Great. At that
point the plan seemed pretty crazy, and I was exhausted after spending the last
two weekends on the North Island, but it was my last trip with Jen and Keith
(well adventure trip.. more on the real last trip later) so I had to go for it.
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| Thanks for all the adventures Jen and Keith! (Avalanche Peak) |
We flew up to Wellington, drove five hours to National Park
(yes that is the name of a place) and stayed in the YHA there – we had a really
nice room for a hostel. It absolutely
POURED all night. As in I was woken up because it was raining so loudly
outside. But we woke up to clear skies, with blue sky peeking through in the
distance and a clear view of Mount Doom (apparently that’s not actually its
real name ;) thanks Cam).
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| View of Mt Doom for most of the hike (Should've taken a photo in the am) |
We went to the visitor center feeling pretty
confident that we were going to do the walk, but the guide at the visitors center
seemed to think we were crazy and unprepared. The funniest part was that the
forecast predicted 19mm in an hour, twice in the course of the day—but it
couldn’t predict which hours or where on the entire north island it was going
to happen. We decided to do an abridged track (a 17k loop instead of 19k’s in
one direction – no shuttle involved). The only thing I really wanted to see
were the blue lakes on the Tongariro Crossing and we were told that the Tama
Lakes on the abridged track were the same blue geothermal style so we could do
the shortened walk and still get the same effect.
We ended up finishing the 17k’s in 5 hours, saw the lakes,
and ate PB&J’s on the top of a mountain one last time. The lakes didn’t
disappoint and while we didn’t do what we set out to do we all felt satisfied
with the experience. AND finishing at 2 pm meant we had plenty of time to drive
back to Wellington in the daylight and get beers there with Jen’s grad school
friends.
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| Beautiful drive back to Wellington |
And after our 9 am flight back to Christchurch on Sunday I
had plenty of time to sleep after such a crazy weekend. Phew.
#TTinQT2015
The following weekend (Weekend 4 in a row of
traveling) we went to Queenstown! My favorite!
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| I <3 you Queenstown |
The “we” in this case is pretty
much everyone I know in New Zealand. It was Jen and Keith’s last weekend in the
country and we had a 3-day weekend for Anzac Day. For their last weekend, Keith
decided that he wanted to run the Routeburn (a 30-ish k Great Walk that
normally takes 2-3 days to walk and goes over the saddle of a mountain) I did
the walk with Jen and Keith and two other coworkers in November (see thispost), and now Keith was going to run it.
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| Just to give you a feel of the terrain on Keith's race |
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| Jen and Keith last time we did the Routeburn |
Jen had the idea to get a bach (kiwi
for holiday/beach/lake/vacation house) and invite all of our coworker-friends
for the three day weekend. Significant others were included so somehow I
convinced Cam that he really did want to drive 6 hours with me for a day and a
half in QT.
The weather on the way to Queenstown was gorgeous! I loved
the whole drive – and Cam drove so that helped.
Once we got there we hung out with everyone at the house
with an amazing view! The colors in Queenstown were amazing this weekend. I had
been twice before, in spring and summer, and I have to say that autumn was
hands down my favorite. Could not get
over those orange trees.
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| ORANGE |
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| View from the bach! |
Sunday was our main day in Queenstown and of course it was
pouring when we woke up. Cam and I took a gamble and decided to go up the
gondola anyway in hopes that some of the activities would open up if it ever
stopped raining. The gondola is one of the main tourist attractions in
Queenstown and takes you up to a hill
overlooking all of Queenstown, and somehow I had never done it before.
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| Queenstown from the top of the Gondola |
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| It was rainy so we took some photos :) |
Once
you’re at the top you can walk down, do a zip line course at the top, bungy
jump or do the luge. Cam and I really wanted to do the luge, but they close it
when it rains, so we were a bit disappointed. But once we were up there walking
around, it cleared up, and rainbows started appearing, and they opened the
luge!!
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| Ready to go! |
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| Luge Course!! |
We did a few rounds of real life Mario kart and then got a text that Jen
and friends were going to Arrowtown, wine tasting, and bungy jumping, so we got
in a gondola down the mountain to catch up with the fun.
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| Arrowtown, I love you too (p.s. ORANGE!) |
The whole day I just could not get over the colors.
Arrowtown was stunning – I must say it looks a bit like western PA in the fall.
The bungy jump location was also beautiful!
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| So beautiful |
The water wasn’t as nice a color as
when I did it in December, but the trees looked amazing. Two of Jen’s grad
school friends did the bungy (I think they loved it) and it was so fun to watch
.. and not be jumping. Then we went back the bach for a group barbeque.
Monday we got up did a little more wandering around Queenstown
and then drove six hours back to Christchurch in the ridiculous pouring rain.
Ugh.
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| Final morning - View from our room (!!) Nice house, Jen |
And then two days later I left for NY! So excited for my two
weeks at home with all my friends and then back to NZ for a bit more time down
under.
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| And this is the new puppy I came home to. Sophie!!! |
Til our next adventure,
E
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