So its been an exciting week for me! As I told you before I was taking a trip to the south island of New Zealand for the break and it was an amazing time. New Zealand is so beautiful, the whole of it looks like a post card, its pretty unreal. We spent a full 8 days traveling around and seeing a ton of the sites so im going to break this into a few separate posts, so not to overwhelm you.
A few things you should know about New Zealand before we get strated, they really arent that important but I learned about them, so I think you should too.
-New Zealand is the cousin of Australia, but there is this strange love hate relationship between the two. More towards the hate on the NZ side.
-Apparently the OZ accent and the NZ accent are different, thats what they say anyway, but good luck trying to find the differences.
-The nickname for a New Zealander is, a Kiwi.
-Sheep > People
-There are no snakes in NZ. No joke.
-There are no large predators such as wolves, bears, coyotes, mountain lions, or foxes. Pretty much just sheep.
-Anything that is considered a pest, such as the possum, is not a native to the islands. They pretty much blame Australia for all the pests they have.
-Only one poisonous spider, and its kinda of a weeny poisonous spider that doesnt do a whole lot of killing.
-Sand Flies are the devil
-Yes, part of Lord of the Rings was filmed there, and yes I did partake in an epic journey where parts did feel like I was in the movie. Awesome.
-For some reason "sweet as" is the most popular phrase there. Makes no sense when people use it in context. Hell, it doesnt even make sense on its own.
We laid out our trip before hand so at least we had some sort of schedule to follow. We would be flying to into Christchurch on Saturday the 22nd. From there we would drive straight to Queenstown to stay the night, then the next afternoon drive to Milford Sound. Spend 2 nights in Milford then drive back to Queenstown, where we spent 1 night. From Queenstown we drove to Fox Glacier to spend 1 night, then drove to Arthurs Pass the next day and stayed the night. From there, we drove to Hanmen Springs to spend 1 night, then in the morning we drove back to Christchurch.
DAY 1
Saturday 22nd - We arrived in Christchurch at 5:30 in the morning. We had to leave our place by 11 to give ourselves enough time to check into the airport, then we had a 3 hour flight to NZ. We actually arrived in NZ at 3:30 am our time, but there is a 2 hour time difference, so all of this made for a sleepless night. We had to hang around the airport till about 8 o'clock when our rental agency opened. From the airport we took a shuttle over to Britz, the company that we hired our campervan from. It actually did not cost a lot to rent the campervan for the week and it really was nice. Inside the van was a fridge, a stove top, a microwave, a toaster, cutlery, outlets, blankets, sheets, pillows, 3 seats in front, 2 seats in back, sleeping space for 4, and a rented gps; so really it had everything you could need. As an added bonus the company has a "pantry" where other travelers left food and supplies they didnt use on the trip and others are welcome to take whatever they need. Saved a little bit of money that way. After getting settled and adjusted, it was time to actually drive...on the right hand side of the car and on the left side of the road. It was just a bit intimidating to say the least. Doug volunteered to drive first, which was eh ok with us. Celine sat up front to make sure Doug stayed on the left side of the road. It was really unnerving, the whole time in the back Julia and I stayed alert, and slightly freaked out, its a new experience to re-learn how to drive. It was pretty smooth sailing for the most part, one slight incident where one person may have forgotten the left hand side rule, but we survived. We planned to drive all the way to Queenstown, which was about a 4 hour drive. Since we got our campervan so early we took our time driving. We stopped a couple of times to take pictures and check out the mountains. We stopped at Lake Tekapo then Lake Pukaki, beautiful and clear. It made you wish that it was summer time just so you could go swimming. We arrived in Queenstown around 6:30 and it was already dark so finding a campsite was a bit difficult, so we parked it in a parking lot for the night. Super convenient because it was next to a rugby field and had bathrooms. I felt like a real life bum washing up in a public in a park, but thats alright, I didnt mind. We actaully went out that night for Dougs 22nd Birthday! Have to say though, Queenstown is not nearly as poppin' as a Melbourne Saturday, but it was still a good time. We bought him a Candy Paddle at the bar, which was 5 skittles shots all of a different color so that it looked like the rainbow. It was cute. Then after we ate at the famous Fergburger where the burgers are as big as your head! Pretty much my type of burger. We ended our night and retired to our hobo parking lot campervan.
DAY 2
Sunday 23rd- We woke up early the next day in order to pay for our parking spot so as not to get any tickets. We pretty much walked around the downtown, checked out some stores, then stocked up on groceries for our trip. If you have ever been to Denver or Colorado Springs then you would have a pretty good idea of the town atmosphere. Its really laid back with small roads and tons of shops, lots of snowboarding bums, and a view of the mountains in the background. We went down to a camper site by the Lake Wakatipu shore. Beyond beautiful. The water is a crystal clear turquoise and you can see straight to the bottom. On top of that it was a really sunny clear day. That was by far my favorite campsite that we had.
By the afternoon we were cooking a delicious breakfast of eggs and ham in the sun! It even
warmed up enough (maybe 65 degrees) that we decided to take a dip. That was the quickest dip into the water I have ever take. Literally, it was painful. We couldnt stay in for longer than 20 seconds. But hey, we got some sweet pictures and thats all that matters. After the brisk swim we cleaned up then packed up and headed off for Milford Sound. This is the first time that I gave driving on the left hand side a crack. It was still a little unnerving but I felt a lot more confident after watching other people drive. You just have to keep reminding yourself at every turn, " To the left, to the left. Everything in the van on the lane to the left". Sing it to the Beyonce beat and it makes a lot more sense. Driving really isnt too bad because NZ is really unpopulated. There are only 5 million people in total on both of the islands and roughly 900 billion sheep. Roughly. I had no idea that NZ is mainly farmlands, everywhere. My god, I thought Indiana was bad, but thats the minor leagues compared to this operation. You can drive for 5 hours and only see fields of sheep. Granted, the landscape is much prettier and does vary and has a beautiful mountain backdrop, but its still going to be dotted with sheep. Also these "towns" we drove though are tiny, basically 20-30 houses...and thats it. Im not sure where these people get their gas or groceries. Anywho though, right before we arrived to Milford, we had to drive over these snow covered mountains and at the end we drove through a stone tunnel and when we came out on the other side we drove right into a cloud. It was crazy, we were so high up and had to work our way down a winding road out of the cloud.
We finally pulled into Milford and was completely shocked by the size of it. Tiny. I assumed that for such a famous place that there would be tourist places, a town, restaurants, the works, but no. The town consists of a bar/restaurant/information center, a lodge, and an airstrip for Milford air tours....thats it people. The population of this so called town, maybe 30 people, who are only there because they are the tour guides or they work the lodge or the restaurant. There really isnt a town at all; no houses, no grocery store, no gas station, no hospital, no fire department, no NOTHING. So from our many options we chose the lodge and we were able to take our first showers. yay for cleanliness.
Ill be back later to update, so keep an eye out!
<3
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