Exploring the North

While I still have a number of places I want to go on the South Island, Cam and I spent the last two weekends exploring the North Island. Cam's from the North Island so not too much was new for him, but aside from a short trip to Auckland last year, these trips were all uncharted territory for me.

Wellington

For New Zealand's four-day Easter Weekend, Cam and I headed up to Wellington. Wellington is known for its craft-beer-and-cafe culture (two things I love), so I was excited to see it for myself.

We spent our first morning walking by the water front and exploring the national Te Papa museum. The museum has everything from a giant squid to the Treaty of Waitangi, so we kept ourselves entertained for a pretty long time.

Signing the guestbook at the Te Papa museum

The next part of the trip was a little treat from Cam. After watching some cricket while New Zealand was hosting the Cricket World Cup,  I decided I wanted to learn a bit about rugby. I had told Cam this, and two days before the trip, I got a text from an unknown number saying "Click here to download your tickets for the Hurricanes match on April 3rd." Followed quickly by, "Surprise! :)" from Cam. Cam had purchased tickets to go with two of his friends to a Wellington Hurricanes rugby game! So after a bit more exploring of Wellington and grabbing a beer with our friends, we went to the game.

Win for the Hurricanes!

Saturday morning, we went to Zealandia. Zealandia is a nature reserve on the hills around Wellington, surrounded by a fence that prevents all predators from coming in to the area. This way the animals who are native to New Zealand can live the way they did before the British settlers and other groups brought over predators. As a result, you can see many animals that are extinct on the mainland just by walking along the pathways here.

Casual pukeko spotting - endangered except at Zealandia!

We had a really fun time walking around and seeing all the animals. To list a few highlights:
- I saw a lizard dating back to the age of the dinosaurs
- I got really scared of a "monster chicken" - more commonly known as a Pukeko
- I learned what the song of the Tui sounds like

Sunday was Easter - the day devoted to eating chocolate and other sweet things. Cam had the idea to go to Sweet Mama's kitchen, where they make chicken waffles and DELICIOUS milkshakes - so that's exactly what we got.

We also went to the grocery store to buy eachother Kiwi easter treats. I made sure we got Reeses pieces :D

We were feeling good and full with just enough time to go to church. After church and a call to the US to wish my parents a happy Easter we took the cable car to the top of the hills over Wellington.

We got so lucky with warm and low wind weather so we walked around the botanical gardens and basked in the sunlight.

After heading down the hill, we had time to relax by the water for a bit - and then it was time to fly home.

Not a bad place to end the weekend.

Hamilton and Auckland

This last weekend wasn't a three day weekend, but to celebrate Cam's birthday we decided to make it one. We decided to go to Hamilton for Saturday and Sunday to see Cam's dad and then spend Monday in Auckland to celebrate his birthday.

Cam and his step mom's pup

Hamilton is the 4th biggest city in the country after Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch. It also happens to be very close to Matamata, the home of Hobbiton and the wee little town where my favorite kiwi grew up.

We flew to Hamilton on Sautrday and we were so lucky because the weather was BEAUTIFUL. We spent the afternoon eating lunch in the backyard, walking the path along the Waikato river, and exploring the Hamilton Botanical Gardens, voted the 2014 Garden of the Year (an international award!). The gardens were centered around a circular area with openings in to each garden. It's impossible to see through the opening to the garden ahead until you're directly in front of the ideal view, which makes each garden surprising and wonderful. They had a Japanese garden, Indian garden, Italian Renaissance garden, and even an Alice in Wonderland garden.

Italian Renaissance Garden

Alice in Wonderland?

We finished the day with a delicious dinner with Cam's parents and a few cocktails on our own. As Cam told me, contrary to popular opinion, Hamilton is a real city and it had a good selection is really interesting bars - almost on par with Wellington ;)

On Monday we hopped on an early bus to Auckland and started our next adventure.

Pretty Pretty Auckland

I think I must be getting used to New Zealand because my reaction to Auckland last time was extremely different to the one I had this weekend. This weekend, Auckland was a bustling city and Cam and I were both commenting on how many things there were to look at in the big city --- lord help me when I land in New York City in two weeks. We really enjoyed the food in Auckland and between sudden downpours, we really enjoyed the waterfront.

Obviously I loved the bridges

Since Cam's birthday was Tuesday and we wouldn't be together past 7 am, we celebrated Monday night. Unfortunately the restaurant he wanted to go to recently had a fire and was closed.. so we wandered to the  Sky Tower and discovered that admission to the bar on the 53rd floor was free.

View from the bottom

We took an elevator up to the highest floor of any building in New Zealand and took in the views over a couple glasses of wine.

Cam needs to work on his selfie abilities. 

That's better. Sleepy Cam

And unfortunately Tuesday morning, it was time for me to go home.

Snow on the Southern Alps on my way home. Winter is here.

It was an amazing two weekends on the North Island and I'm so grateful my favorite Kiwi showed me the lay of the land up there. I'm heading back this weekend for a hike with my coworkers and hopefully Cam and I will be going back a few more times before I leave this beautiful country. Thank you so much and happy birthday, Cammy!

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