Oh my! That pretty much sums up my experiences in New Zealand. I will try to recap everything from the past week and if I forget something, well you probably won't even notice. So lets start from Wednesday night when we got there. To start they are 2 hours ahead of where I am in Australia so we got there at 12:00 AM. By the time we checked into our little hostel and hit the pillow it was probably 1:30-2:00. We woke up early the next morning to make the short walk to the Bealey Hotel where we were to meet up with our tour group. It was quite a brisk walk because it was a little chillier than we had expected. Probably between 40-50 degrees Fahrenheit. When we got to the hotel we checked in with our tour guide, Barnaby, yes that is his real name I looked at his drivers license, and ate breakfast with the rest of the group. The first day we traveled from Christchurch to Lake Ohau. On our way we stopped in Geraldine, which is a little town that is home to the Guiness Book of World Record's largest jersey aka a really big sweater. After that we headed to another little town on Lake Tekapo. The pictures were gorgeous! There was also a little church up on a hill that would have fit about 20 people max. for a service. We then headed to Lake Ohau lodge where we spent the night hanging out and getting to know each other a little better.
The next morning we had a "refreshing start" of 6:40. While we were on the bus we were able to see the sunrise over the mountains, which ended up being totally worth the early start. We were headed to Milford Sound on the West Coast, for a night/day on a boat. On the way we picked up a few new people and stopped at what we thought was the field where the "Hills are Alive" song was sung in Sound of Music. Well we were told to stay on the bus while Barnaby and James, our bus driver went out of the bus. The bus proceeded to play the Sound of Music song and they donned on their blonde wigs and frolicked through the field for about 2 minutes. Later they told us that this was not indeed the field where this scene was filmed, but that it was an entertaining place to stop. We then stopped at Mrs. Jones' fruit stand where there were so many different types of dried, fresh, and chocolate covered fruits! And they were so cheap, everyone got at least a few fruits to take a long with us as snacks for the rest of our trip. By this time it had started to rain which made everything cold and damp, obviously. But we were told that this was the best part of the trip because while we went through the mountains we would see waterfalls. Well leave it to Barnaby to be right, as we were travelling down a windy road through the mountains there were hundreds of little and big waterfalls. We found ourselves at the launch site of our boat. It was like an old fashion boat but obviously with a motor attached. We sailed to a little inlet that night where we had the option of going kayaking or going in a motorboat around the area. A bunch of us chose to go kayaking in the rain. Everyone got soaked and was freezing but there were nice hot showers waiting when we got back to the boat. That night we spent the night on the boat with 4 to a cabin in bunk beds. The next morning we sailed out to open water where it got really rocky and wavey. On our way back in, the skipper thought it would be a good idea to take a group picture in front of the open water. Little did we know that he was going to drive us straight into the waterfall. Luckily there weren't too many cameras to take the pictures so we were able to run inside before getting completely drenched from the waterfall.
Later that day we went to back up through the mountains to a cute little olden town named Arrowtown. It used to be a big gold mining, until all the gold was found and taken away. But I got a pretty Paua shell necklace from a jeweler there. Next we traveled to the Kawara Bridge bungy site where a few people decided to go bungy jumping. The Kawara bungy was the world's first commercial bungy jump. And no I did not go bungy jumping. After that excursion we ended up in Queenstown. We stayed at the Aspen Hotel for the next 3 days. The first full day we were there, I went skydiving in the morning and riverboarding in the afternoon. Skydiving was one of the best experiences of the trip! I jumped from 12,000 feet with an extremely attractive man strapped to my back, or was it I was strapped to his front. Oh well anyways, I was the last one on the plane, which meant that I was the first to jump out of the plane. The feeling is surreal. We were freefalling at 210 km/hr for 45 seconds. Then he pulled his shoot and we glided down the rest of the way. The view was amazing! There are some great pictures on facebook of us freefalling and at least 1 picture where my tongue is out. haha Later that afternoon I walked around Queenstown a bit while I waited to go riverboarding. Riverboarding is just what it sounds like, you basically are boogie boarding on rapids. The water was 10 degrees Celsius which ruffly translates to 50 degrees Fahrenheit. We had to wear so many layers in order to keep warm: a wetsuit, a wetsuit jacket, a life jacket, booties, and a helmet. We started up at the Roaring Meg rapids and traveled about 5 km down stream. After that we played around a bit on an old gold mining slide, swing and a jetski. Pictures are on facebook. It was so nice to get back to the hotel afterwards and take a long hot shower! I finally could feel all 10 toes after being in the shower for about 30 minutes.
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