#FlatOutBeautiful - Queenstown Half Marathon Weekend

I want to start this post with a quick anecdote - Yesterday I decided that I wanted to bake cookies for the first time. I looked up a recipe online and made a grocery list of 4 ingredients. 

1. Dark brown sugar 

2. Cornstarch 

3. Vanilla Extract 

4. Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips

So I drove to the store, and here's what I discovered:
1. They make "brown sugar" in this country. Not light brown sugar, not dark brown sugar. There are not 50 shades of brown. So I came home with 500 grams of soft brown sugar.

2. Cornstarch is actually corn flour here. But when I got to the store they didnt have that, they only had maize corn flour or wheaten corn flour. If I wanted wheaten corn flour wouldnt I just get regular flour? Maybe? Who knows. I got the maize one and hoped for the best.

3. They call extract "essense". ugh. I can't win.

4. Turns out they dont sell those classic toll house semi sweet chocolate chips here either. I had to choose between milk chocolate or dark chocolate and "drops" or "buttons". Came home with some "dark chocolate drops" which Cam confirmed would probably work because dark chocolate doesnt have full sweetness. 

So here I am, more than a year in to living abroad, with less than a month to go, and I still can hardly grocery shop on my own. But hey, the cookies taste delicious.

Queenstown - December 2014.
Just getting you ready for the rest of the post.

The main reason for this post is that last weekend, Cam, seven of our closest work mates/friends, and I went to Queenstown!

Queenstown was the #1 place reccommended to me before I came to New Zealand and it is hands down my favorite place in this country. Every time I go to Queenstown I leave thinking that it is the most gorgeous place on earth, I had the best time, and I hope I go back but if I don't I think I'm satisfied with the excursions I did. Then I go back and find all kinds of new things to do. Well, to be fair, the first time I knew I wasn't satisfied. 

Hellooooo Queenstown

To quickly recap:

Trip #1 - November 2014 - Travelled through Queenstown on my way to the Routeburn track. Got there after dark, and woke up to the most splendid scenery I'd ever seen. Drove around Lake Wakatipu to the get to the track, and after the hike drove the "road to glenorchy" back to Queenstown before heading back to Chch. 
Excursions: FergBurger (It counts), Road to Glenorchy

Trip #2 - December 2014 - Thought my time would be over on 12/20/2014, so my mom came for a visit and we flew on down to Queenstown for the weekend.
Excurions: Queenstown Hill hike, AJ Hackett Bungy, Arrowtown

Trip #3 - March 2015 - Three friends from Hopkins/NY came to visit and we stopped in Queenstown on the way to Milford Sound.
Excursions: Paragliding!!

Trip #4 - April 2015-  It was Jen and Keith's last weekend in NZ and Keith was going to run the Routeburn (See Trip #1), so we all got a bach to wish them farewell. 
Excursion: Gondola + Luge

And finally TRIP NUMBER 5:

Spoiler Alert. 
Excursions: Queenstown Half Marathon, Shotover Jet, Million Dollar Cruise (for the girls), Downhill Mountain Biking (for the boys)

This trip was a long time coming. I had known that I wanted to run a half while I was in New Zealand and knew a friend who ran Queenstown last year and said it was a great course. He didn't tell me about the giant hill in the middle.... but that's besides the point for now. I checked the other day and I actually signed up for the half on July 24th! That seems like so long ago now. 

Photo from Approximately July 24th. So long ago!

The Friday before the race, Cam and I drove down to Queenstown with James and Jess, the other two friends running with me.

Stopped in Tekapo on the way down!

Lupins! Photo Cred: Cam

James had booked our accomodation and warned us that it was "the only thing left" by the time we booked and it was garden view, not lake view. So when we got to Queenstown and checked out the hotel I was absolutely shocked at how nice they were. For the nine of us, we had two 2-bedroom apartments, each with a lake side balcony. 

First look from the parking lot. I like what I see.
(Our future room had one of those pretty balconies)

Just stop. Still in the parking lot. 

Didn't think it could get much better? This is our room. #remarkable

That view tho.

After checking out both rooms, and picking the better one (perks of arriving first), we walked the last 3k of the race course (!!) in to town to pick up our bibs. I was really anxious about the race, so Cam and I got chicken sandwiches and sat by the water for a while before I caught a cab back to the hotel.

One mile to go on the course (the night before)

I got race ready and was in bed before Cam got home. (Also, while getting ready I realized I didn't have ANY food for breakfast. Oops. Traveling for races is hard. Thanks to Cam who grabbed me a scone in town before coming home)

And the next morning it was go time!! Cam (if you can't tell yet, he was the best support crew - major major thanks to Cam.) got up early, took our picture on the balcony (pre-race photos are always the sleepiest), and drove us to the start.

Pre race photos - energy level is not quite READY TO RUN 13.1 MILES.

I was so nervous getting out of the car. As soon as we got about 5 meters from the car, I turned to Jess and said "I can't wait to see Cam again at the finish." #motivation

Lets do this!

And then we got in line, crossed the start line, and ran ran ran until I got back to town. A lot of people have asked how it went/how it was so I think I got my synopsis down: It was hard. It was beautiful. Literally every turn was an incredible view.

Not even joking (maybe one filter) but this was the course!!
Would've taken so many more photos if I weren't also trying to run a race.

The last 11.5 miles were on a trail along the lake, but unfortunately it was really narrow and crowded. I felt like it was hard to boost up or down a hill with the path being so narrow and full of people.

See what I mean about crowded.
Mile 1.5 of the race and heading in to the trail portion

But in the end, I finished, and I saw Cam right in front of the finish, and the announcer man announced my finish! "Erin is across the line! Good job Erin!" And then I found Cam. And then I cried. Ah that post half finish line cry - gets me every time. 

FINISHERS!

The rest of the day is a slight blur - we did a lot of walking and as much sitting as possible. The rest of our friends (the 6 non-runners) were headed on an uphill hike, but I knew I wasn't cut out of that. Cam, James, Jess and I went in to town for a giant pizza and beer feast. We were trying to figure out what we could do that would be exciting (especially for Cam who didn't run) but not too tiring. All of us agreed that the one excursion we hadn't done but would want to was the shotover jet. So we got on the next tour, and headed over to sit down and wait for that to start.

:)

As expected, the shotover jet was incredible!! The bottom of the boat must have been so shallow because it was able to go so close to rocks and the shore without (seemingly) worrying about the depth of the water. It zoomed through the canyon, making several 360 turns in the middle, and had us all cracking up the whole time.

My best friend Kate also went on the shotover jet.
Cam made fun of me for taking this picture.

And after that I was dead. Time for a nap, some beers, dinner, and finally home. When I got home, I checked my phone and I had allegedly walked 22 miles that day. Gooooood night.

Are you getting sick of this view yet? Yeah me neither.

Sunday morning, I woke up feeling surprisingly alright. Cam and I walked in to town to get some meat pies for breakfast (what has happened to me!?), and ended up meeting up with our friends. They were meant to do paragliding (See Trip #2... it was incredible), but it got cancelled due to wind, and they were itching to find another activity.

Not to rub it in, but #tbt. Remember this?

The guys decided to go downhill mountain biking (take a bike up the gondola and then ride down tracks that are marked like ski slopes - green, blue, black, double black) so Cam went with them to do that. Kiki, her friend Terri, and I decided to take the Million Dollar Cruise for $35. Honestly most excursions in Queenstown cost $200 for an 8 second experience (yes bungy jumping I'm talking about you), so $35 for a 90 minute cruise where I could SIT DOWN the whole time? Sign me up. 

Million Dollar Views

Hotel I stayed at with my mom last December!

One more of this view.. Can't stop, won't stop.

Oh forgot to mention I was the captain of the cruise.
Look at that sign above my head  -  that's my favorite part.

Both of our excursions ended at the same time (ish), so we all met up, got some dumplings for lunch, and started the long long drive back to Christchurch. I was honestly so sad to leave Queenstown, knowing that I really am leaving New Zealand this time. But I'll be back. As my mom said, I'm still young ;)

Ah Queenstown. I LOVE YOU. 12/2014

Sweet Silver Lining

On a scale of one to successful, I definitely wouldn't rate the last few weeks very high. We attempted to do quite a few things... and failed to do quite a few of those. But hey, there's always a silver lining. So here's the rundown..

Idea #1: 

Temple Basin Ski Field. I was so excited to try this field! It's supposed to be a really unique experience - some would even say the best skiing experience of their life (in NZ), but as their website says, "It is not for the feint of heart". Since I don't consider myself to be that, I bought a GrabOne deal with two day passes- one for me and one for Cam. We waited for the perfect day and on a sunny day with 30 cm of fresh powder, we drove out to Arthurs Pass.

Where it all went wrong: 

The reason this field is not for the feint of heart is because you have to HIKE there. Remember the access roads I described in the last post? This field doesn't have one. Instead it has a "goods lift" that you access from the main road, and then you hike up the mountain and get your gear at the top. The problem is that every description we read of the goods lift said it was right near the parking lot. So we parked near the parking lot (it was full so we really parked on the side of the highway) and started up the track. About 10 minutes in we were thinking that this was really ridiculous and we couldn't see the lift anywhere. Cam decided to drop his stuff and run up without gear to see if he could find it, and in the meantime I called the number on the website to ask. No answer. As soon as I googled the goods lift and found out it was actually 800 meters PAST the carpark, I got a call back from the number I had just called. He said the goods lift had closed about 10 minutes ago and that we could maybe pay the goods lift guy, who would be coming up behind us, to carry our gear for us. No thanks, we said. We've had enough of you Temple Basin.

The view from the track wasn't too bad. If only we weren't carrying all our gear.

The silver lining?: 

We ended up calling to complain - the lift was poorly marked and the man on the phone told us the goods lift closed at 11 when the website told us it closed at 12. He also told us that if we tried to go down and see if it was still working, we wouldnt get up to the top for another hour so it probably wouldnt be worth it. The resort apologized profusely and said WHY WOULD HE SAY THAT ON THE BEST DAY OF THE YEAR???Rub it in, Temple Basin. (They refunded us our lift passes, so that was nice)

Since that wasn't much of a silver lining, I'll come up with the one we felt in the moment. The drive was beautiful, Cam had never been so far in to Arthurs Pass and there were at least 4 ski fields on the way back to Chch that we could stop at and just pay for a cheap half day pass. On to the next brilliant idea.

Sick of snow photos yet? This one is the view from Idea #2 (Porters Ski Field)

Idea #2: 

Porters Ski Field. One of our kiwi engineering interns told me to go to Porters at some point this winter. It's a club field, so it'll be cheaper than Mt. Hutt, and it's really close to Chch. It's on the way back from Temple Basin so we called to see how the conditions were and if we needed chains and they said all good - come on over!

Where it all went wrong: 

Twenty-ish minutes later we drove in, feeling great about the road and the day, and just as we thought we're gonna make it to the top, we run in to about 5 cars stopped at a switchback. A Porters employee comes over and tells us "it'll just be a minute, we had someone drive off the road" (MY WORST NIGHTMARE). About 10 minutes later a grater goes up. About 5 minutes after that, the same porters employee asks us if he can have one of our sour patch kid candies (only if you fix the problem, sir - nah he was the man, we shared happily). And to make a long story story, about 40 minutes later, we were told that the road was closing and we weren't going to be able to go skiing today. womp. womp.

The silver lining: 

They said if we called and intended to go back they'd "try to work something out... maybe some free food at the top". Cause everyone wants free ski resort pizza. We probably won't be going back, but at least they felt a little bit bad. And on the way home we stopped and made a snowman! That was pretty awesome. Oh also since Porter's messed up, we were able to get a refund on all the ski gear I had rented! Win!

Captured the snowman AND snowball fight in one photo!

We made it back to Chch in time to relax a bit before the work week started. And the next weekend we were off to Tekapo with one of my new work colleagues and his girlfriend.

The road back - sorry for the overload of snow photos.

Idea #3: 

I feel a little bad doing it, but I think I'm going to anyway - this one was Cam's idea. Cam was really keen on going to Tekapo. It's about three hours away, there's a holiday homes website, so you can get a bach there, and most of all there's an observatory there where you can do incredible stargazing. Cam has never seen the milky way so we thought it would be fun to make a weekend out of it. There's also a ski resort, a hiking track I was interested in, hot pools, and a tube park. I agreed - it was a pretty good idea.

Lake Tekapo in Fall (March 2015)

Church of the Good Shepard (also in good weather)

Where it all fell apart: 

God decided to dump a midwinter, blustery, cloudy, cold, miserable, rainstorm on Christchurch and Tekapo last weekend. The house was non-refundable, the observatory tour is only refundable if you're there in person at 5:50 pm for them to tell you the weather is bad, and chances are the forecast is going to be wrong in this country... so we went anyway. Despite our best wishes, the weather didn't really clear up, and it turns out there isn't much to do in Tekapo if its raining. Also it was a popular weekend for this rest stop/town because of the new moon (good for stargazing) so the "bach" we rented was pretty lame. Didn't even have a full size couch!

The drive around Lake Tekapo to the Roundhill Ski Field

Silver lining: 

Cam and I managed to get in an afternoon of skiing. (Finally!) Visibility wasn't great, but we had fun on the slopes while we could. I was glad just to make it to a field successfully after all the trouble we've been having. 

Once we met up with Kyle and Iona and realized that the obsevatory tour would probably get cancelled, we called the house-rental company and asked if they had any board games. They did! So we played a fun battle-of-the-sexes round of Cranium :) We also ate really good pizza, saw a bit of the All Blacks rugby game, and got a good night sleep. It was really fun hanging out with Kyle and Iona, but I still wish we had seen the stars!

Skiing was fun.

So that's it for this episode of Ideas and Mishaps, but just so you don't think we have the worst luck in the world, here are a few things that went well:

We went to Paint n Sip!! We actually had to cancel and reschedule this twice, but we finally made it and it was really fun. The theme was Paint Your Mate - Picasso Style, and I think I hit this one out of the park.

Beautiful!

Looks nothing like me.

My sister got engaged!!! I'm so so happy for her and cannot wait to help plan the celebration!

This photo is THREE YEARS OLD. Still love you guys just as much as when we danced the night away in Hoboken.

My mom's puppy went to Canada while my parents are out of town. This is particularly exciting for me because the family who is dogsitting take the best pictures of her.

This is her boyfriend - They like to cuddle.

And finally, the New Zealand Film Festival came to Christchurch! We got tickets to five movies and have gone to four so far. Here are my ratings:

Enchanted Kingdom - ✶✶✶✶✶ (best nature documentary I've ever seen)

Pheonix - ✶✶✶✶ 

Dope - ✶

While We're Young- ✶✶✶

Lobster - TBD

Just two more wintery weekends until my trip to Australia/the USA! Spring will be here before I know it - just in time to kick my winter blues away :)

As much as I love this GIF, it's time to stop wearing sweaters.

SEE YA SOON, SPRINGTIME

Let the Games Begin ... Again

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.

Cam and I doing cool things like winning sunglasses at the arcade

Cam and I doing actual cool things like climbing a mountain :D

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. 

The girls arrived in Christchurch on Tuesday and I sent them in my rental car out to Akaroa - where I went on my first weekend here. 

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.

Lake Tekapo - the most vibrant I've ever seen it

Church of the Good Shepard at Lake Tekapo

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.

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. 

First views of Queenstown (This trip)

Early Morning Run #grassrootsgear

Nothing beats Queenstown in the morning

The following morning we went on a paragliding adventure over Queenstown and had an  15 MINUTE trip from the top of Coronet Peak down to the plains below. (The paraglide over the town is 5-10 minutes, so we picked this one for the length). 

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.

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!

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. 

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.

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...

Seals on the Rocks

Giant rocky mountains and waterfalls everywhere you look - beautiful day in Milford Sound

The rain created hundreds of absolutely amazing waterfalls. This is just part of one of them :)

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. 

Larnach's Castle on the Peninsula! Beautiful property and gardens!

The view from the Gardens of Larnach's Castle. We loooved this place.

After the Peninsula, we drove 4+ hours back to Chch, and based the length of this post, I'm sure you can imagine how exhausted I was.

We stopped at the Moeraki Boulders on the way home!

Naturally formed spherical boulders near Moeraki! Strangest thing Jenny Lenz has ever seen ;)

With a fantastic tip from Cam, we stopped at Fleur's Place in Moeraki for some AMAZING seafood

I used the little bit of energy left in me to grab a drink with the girls and my favorite Kiwi and fall right asleep... until the girls left at 3 am for their 30 hour trek back to the USA.

Thanks for visiting Ariel, Jenny, and Brooke! I had so much fun with you <3

xoxo