New Zealand in the eyes of an American Tourist

Over the mid semester break, I traveled to New Zealand for a 10 day adventure/adrenalin tour throughout the south island. We started in Christchurch, drove to Queenstown then up the west coast and across the top to end back in Christchurch. See map:

New Zealand is a beautiful island country but it is definitely not your typical island. Often people think of a tropical island but actually New Zealand is not tropical at all. It is extremely mountainous with a lot of lakes and tall sequoia trees. It reminds me a lot of the Rocky mountains in Colorado and, similarly, in the winter, New Zealand has a renowned ski season. The nature is breathtaking and the cities are all extremely clean, making this a truly incredible place to visit.

Day 1: Arriving in New Zealand

The plane ride from Brisbane was just under four hours to get to Auckland (in the north island, we had a layover). You can see the difference in landscape from the plane:

During our layover I decided I wanted to get some gum at the airport because I didn't have any for the plane ride. I went to the only shop in the small airport and I couldn't find gum anywhere. I looked by the candy, the magazines, the souvenirs, everywhere and found nothing... so I decided to ask the lady at the counter:

Me: "Hi, where is the gum?"
Lady: "Oh it's banned here"
Me: "Oh, excuse me sorry I said GUM" (enunciating gum because I thought she had heard GUN)
Lady: "Yes, it's banned in the airports. It's too messy to clean up if it goes on the floor"
Me: .................. in shock

So, gum is banned. And my ears popped the entire way on the plane. Welcome to New Zealand I guess...

Our final destination was Christchurch where we were staying for the night and then beginning our tour the next morning. We checked in to our hostel late Thursday night and decided to grab some food before bed. There was absolutely nothing open and we ended up eating bar food at this really sketchy bar filled with a bunch of old, drunk people.

Aside: February of last year, Christchurch was affected by its second major earthquake in 6 months. Although a relatively low rating on the Richter scale, the earthquake was so devastating because it was extremely close to the city center and they still hadn't recovered from the previous earthquake. The damage was immense and the city hasn't really been the same since. It was once New Zealand's second most populated city and now it is essentially a ghost town. Basically everyone abandoned the city due to the dramatic infrastructure damage.

Thanks Google... I didn't actually see this

Essentially all that's left in Christchurch are run down buildings and some extremely unique people who decided to stick it out. Needless to say we didn't stay long at the bar...

Day 2: Beginning the tour

This was the start of our trip. We piled 48 college students (all American, except for 3 Canadians) into a green tour bus and headed out of Christchurch as fast as we could.

The name of our trip was called "So that's what a sheep is for" and there is a little background with that which is mildly humorous. New  Zealand is very popular for its sheep. Yes, sheep, as in the farm animals... and let me just say that there are a lot of sheep. The total population of New Zealand is only about 4.4 million but there are about 60 million sheep roaming the beautiful countryside. Given that, the Australians (basically New Zealand's big brother) decided to start some nasty rumors about the farmers of New Zealand. Basically, they say that the farmers get really lonely out on the farm and there are just so many sheep that they get a little too... romantic with the sheep if you know what I mean. After our tour guide proceeded to tell us some Australian/New Zealand sheep jokes, he said so that's why your tour is named "so that's what a sheep is for". We all giggled about it and then he gave our bus an inflatable sheep which we named Barbara. We lost it within the first 3 days.

With all this excitement around sheep, we were fortunate to experience the farming/sheep culture of New Zealand on the very first day. We stopped at a sheep farm for lunch and watched a sheep sheering. I couldn't tell you how many girls were distraught because the animal "looked sad" or it was "being hurt". Ugghh... I don't even live on a farm and I knew that it was perfectly normal. So dramatic those girls...

Okay... it looks a little sad

I even made friends with the sheep. And a cat. Typical farm girl right here...

We continued our drive south and made a couple really cool stops along the way. The first stop was at Lake Pukakai where we climbed rocks and took a ton of pictures.

We also stopped at this cute road side fruit market and got delicious ice cream. They blend it with really fruit! Yumm

We got to the hostel that night in Queenstown, devoured 30 some pizzas between 48 people and then decided to explore the town for some nightlife. It happened to be Good Friday and interestingly, none of the bars were allowed to sell alcohol because of that. We did however discover a loophole: if you buy food, you are allowed to order drinks to supplement your "meal". So we went to a bar called Chico's, ordered some fries and a bunch of bear and decided to make the most of the night. It was a group of about 15 rowdy Americans and we basically cleared that bar out. We jammed to the live band, pretended it was one of our friend's birthdays, and some old man gave us $100 to spend on drinks (we have no idea why).... pretty successful night if you ask me.

Day 3- Milford Sound Boat Cruise

We woke up really early to start our drive to Milford Sound which is the most popular tourist destination in New Zealand. Milford Sound is a fjord which, geologically speaking, is a narrow inlet surrounded by steep cliffs usually caused by glaciers. (Yes, I got that directly from Wikipedia. You can search it if your curious for more fjord-ish information). Basically, it's a beautiful lake with giant mountains around and waterfalls and seals and all sorts of beautiful nature. See pics and you will understand.

 


To get to Milford Sound, we drove through the Fiordland National Park where we stopped for some great photo ops and of course more pictures:

Mirror Lake

We spent that night at our hostel in Te Anau where we played drinking games and relaxed after a long, hard day of being a tourist.

Day 4- Pretty Glowy Things

We woke up early to take another beautiful boat ride to the the Te Anau glow worm caves. On this boat ride we happen to see an absolutely perfect rainbow that seriously made me cry. The pictures say it all:

After the boat ride, we hiked inland a little to get to the caves. We then walked through the caves for about 15 minutes to get to the glow worm spot. We took a little boat through this underground river to their special spot where is was completely dark (I couldn't see my hand directly in front of my face). All you could see were tons of little bright blue spots, like stars in the sky. We had to be completely silent as to not disturb them. The silence and the darkness made it quite tranquil and magical. Planet Earth did a special on the glow worms during their Caves episode if your curious for more.

After the caves we drove back to Queenstown just in time for dinner. This is when I experienced what might have been one of the best parts of the trip: Fergburger. Fergburger is a world famous burger place specific to Queenstown. All I can say is that it was the best burger I have ever had (sorry Dad) and I ate it three times during the four days we spent in Queenstown.

Day 5- Adrenalin Day 1

Just your average Monday here in Queenstown, New Zealand where they let 20 some college students jump out of planes. Yes, today was the day I went sky diving. I wasn't really nervous until I was on camera for the pre-jump interviews (weird, I know).

Me and my friend Evan who goes to Madison who I met in Fiji who just happened to be on the same tour in NZ

Here is how it happens: you get suited up in a really flight suit type thing (see above), your camera man interviews you (you will of course act like a total dork, or at least I did), you will meet your tandem partner aka the man in control of your life (I hugged mine and uncontrollably told him I loved him upon our first meeting), you then climb into a small plan where they pack you like sardines, and you ride in the plane for about 13 minutes to reach an altitude of 12,000 ft. Now here is when it gets interesting, they open the door and people literally start disappearing out the side of the door, when it's your turn you have no choice but to go toward the door because your tandem man is pushing you. Your camera man jumps out and hangs on the side of the plane to get one last picture and then all of a sudden you're falling. Falling at a terminal velocity of approximately 50 m/s to be exact. You fall 8,000 ft in 45 seconds... I mean as a nerdy engineer you have to appreciate the insanity of this. You fall 2/3 of the distance you are up in less than a minute... and it took you 13 minutes to fly up there in a plane! Anyway, I basically forgot what it felt like it was so crazy. Good thing I got the video which can be watched later upon request.. or when I get the motivation to upload it.

Here I goooooo!

Loving Life

After sky diving we spent the afternoon crusing around town, shopping, eating some spicy Thai food that made my mouth hurt, and ended the night with an exciting bar crawl of over 100 people (two tours combined). Thankfully we didn't have to get up that early the next day.

Day 6- Adrenalin Day 2

After a nice sleep in, a few of us girls decided to get Starbucks. I hadn't realized how long it had been since I got coffee there because they legitimately don't exist in Australia. I think there are a total of three in the entire country. After that delicious treat we all started to get excited for another big day: today was bungy day. I will admit I was the most scared for bungy jumping. It just seems so... unnatural. But I knew I had to do it or I would never live it down. I don't really have much to say about it: you basically fall off a ledge and bounce up and down. Although simple in description, it was definitely an adrenalin rush. The video says it all:

After bungy, we took a few rides down the luge track. It was basically like go karting down a mountain with no acceleration control, only brakes. It was really fun actually. We finished the day with more Fergburger and a nice night in full of girl gossip.

Day 7- More Adrenalin!!

We had to wake up really early today because we had so many activities planned. We started the morning with a jet boat ride which was great! The jet boat can suck in 800 L of water per second and only needs about 4 inches of water to work. They drove the boats through the river which was surrounded by really steep rocks. There were times when we were centimeters from the rocks.

After jet boating, we were whisked away by van to the side of the mountain. We then boarded a helicopter which flew us to the start of the white water rafting site. Helicopters are really cool and they have a lot more control than you would think. Plus it was nice to see the aerial views of New Zealand without the thought of jumping constantly weighing you down.

Once everyone was flew into the white water rafting site, we began the two hour journey down the river. It was really cold, but still fun. The rapids were pretty intense and we even rafted through an underground tunnel type thing. By the end of the journey everyone was so cold  so we all piled into the sauna at the rafting hut and then headed back to the hostel for our last night in Queenstown.

We went on another bar crawl that night which included a very famous stop at the ice bar called Minus 5. It is a bar literally made of ice and you have to wear parkas to get in. Even the glasses are made of ice. It was really "cool" if you know what I mean ;)

Day 8- I can't take anymore adrenalin!!!! (but I want it so bad)

A few of us had to wake up early today because we were going to squeeze in one more adrenalin activity before we left Queenstown: the canyon swing. It is essentially a giant swing through a canyon, seems nice right? Well, it's actually pretty scary... but definitely fun. It's funny what weird things come out of your mouth because you're so freaking nervous. I did the jump twice and there are plenty of hilarious things. Here is the video:

*Disclaimer: Yes, you will hear me scream that "I have already had three children". That is not true, I have actually had zero children. All I have is my baby gecko and he was a given to me. I yelled that because prior to getting strapped up in that contraption, the guy asked if I had any health problems and well, after doing so many extreme things I had gotten that question so many times that I was kinda bored of answering it normally so I lied and said "Yeah, I've had like seven heart attacks... and three children.. but I'm good now". OKAY it was a joke... anyway I was freaking out on that ledge so it just kinda slipped out. Sorry if it concerns anyone.

After we were done canyon swinging, the entire group drove to Wanaka where we would stay for the night. We had lunch in Wanaka and then a few of us decided to hike up Mt. Iron. It was a pretty steep hike but the views were definitely worth it, and we got to have some fun with jumping pics at the top.

Day 9- Look at that Glay-see-errrrr

We woke up really early to begin our drive north of the west coast to get to the Fox Glacier. We arrived around lunch time and then hiked the glacier for the entire afternoon.

The icy part of the glacier used to be at the top of the rock where you can see the tree line. The glacier is continually shrinking and expanding. sooooooo cool!

As a side note, glaciers are amazing and I am really curious about Geology now because they can do some pretty crazy stuff to the rocks. Anyway we hiked around, I picked some ice, and we all drank glacier water. Totally normal Thursday.

We spent the night in the small glacier town with a couple bottles of wine and a good old fashioned game of charades. It was quite entertaining. Oh, and we drunkenly made a human pyramid. Check it out:

Day 10- Farewells

Today was spent driving back across the country to get to Christchurch. After arriving in Christchurch our group had to split up to stay at different hostels for the last night so we had to start saying our goodbyes.

Day 11- I eat adrenalin for breakfast now

Most everyone flew home today, but Adam and Alex and I didn't have our flight back to Brisbane until the next day so we went to the Adrenalin Forest for the day (yes, we just didn't get enough adrenalin on the trip). It was essentially a high ropes course with zip lines and really fun obstacles.

The video is pretty funny because I didn't know how to brake.. which always makes for an exciting time. Don't worry, it wasn't that painful...

Adrenalin Forest Video



Day 12- Departures

This was our last day in New Zealand. We decided instead of paying for a ridiculously expensive cab to the airport, to take the city bus. It was quite the experience, especially in a creepy city like Christchurch, but we made it to the airport with plenty of time. And don't worry, I bought gum at the store before we got to the airport.


Summary:

Things I would do again (in a heartbeat): skydiving, bungy jumping, canyon swinging, white water rafting, helicopter, jet boat, and traveling to New Zealand

Things that cost a lot of money:  skydiving, bungy jumping, canyon swinging, white water rafting, helicopter, jet boat, and traveling to New Zealand

Motivation to graduate and get a good job: see lists above

Okay, but in all seriousness, New Zealand is a beautiful country with a lot of things to experience that are unique to the country. I love that I was able to travel to NZ while I was "nearby" and hopefully I will make it back some day. Oh, and it was worth every penny. Cheers!