So I would just like everyone to know that I worked VERY hard to keep this short-ish. This is the last of the VERY long posts anyways...and soon we will be up to current events (yay!) so then of course I won't have as much to write anyways! So off to the South Island!
Originally, the plan had been to go wine tasting around the North Island for the few days; but when the boys realized that it was our last free full week before mid-trimester break, they convinced all of us that a week long tour of the South Island would be a better idea. Mind you, this discussion happened on Saturday night and Sunday morning, so there was VERY little time to plan. All we had really planned was buying the ferry tickets on Sunday, and that didn’t even work out in the end because the boys had to leave on an earlier ferry than we did. We were all using one computer to buy the tickets on (since we were all together) and the boys went first and found a ferry ride at 1pm, which was perfect since two of the girls still needed to register for classes in the early morning (they had decided not to wait in the really long and pointless line that I waited in on Friday). But once the two boys bought their tickets THE FERRY SOLD OUT!!! None of us could believe it. So us girls ended up taking a different ferry that left an hour later. So after that we just decided that we would make decisions as we went and would find places to stay when we needed them…who needs hotel reservations?!?!? They are too expensive anyways!!
The ride over for us was not to eventful…the boat didn’t sink or anything exciting like that. It was a lovely day, bright and sunny, and like all weather in New Zealand…temperate. The ferry ride was only about three hours and, since it was such a nice day, we decided to sit up on the top deck of the ship and get some wind in our hair. It was really quite an enjoyable ride, and the three of us managed to take a nap (in shifts of course….someone was always watching the bags because I am now PARANOIED! thanks to some wonderful pieces of advice before I left lol).
Everything seemed to be going according to plan (well …really just going smoothly since there was not plan). We had decided, since the boys were leaving on a ferry an hour before us, they would be the ones to secure our rental car for the week. The girls were quite happy about this and were excited to come into port with a car ready and waiting, so of course no complaining from us lol. Well, some ferries are faster than others and the earlier ferry seemed to take about four hours instead of three. So the boys were a little worried that they were not going to get into port in time and so started calling rental companies from the ferry. However, since it was the week before Universities around New Zealand were starting, and the last full week in February (the last of the summer months down here), all of the major rental companies were all booked and did not have a car to give us. So once the boys landed (also at a different port that was down the street from the major terminal, so first they had to find there way over there), they ran around to multiple car rental companies trying to find the best deal. Being turned away a few times they became very worried, but just as we walked out of the terminal they found a place that would rent us a “people mover” van for NZ$375 for the whole week! It was awesome, and fit all five of us comfortably. If we had wanted to we could have folded down another row of seats in the back so everyone had more room, but we never ended up doing that, leaving plenty of room in the back for our stuff.
We got into Christchurch around quarter-to eleven and still needed to find a place to stay for the night. One of the boys had brought traveling cheaply in NZ and so we tried to find a place in there to stay. All of the lodging were hostels, and by 10:45, they were all pretty full if not entirely, or not taking any more people for the night. After being turned away from the 3rd hostel we thought we might have to sleep in the car for the night, but I mentioned going back out of town a little bit and seeing how expensive a motel for the night would be. It was also 11:15 by that point and I was getting tired. We ended up staying at the first motel we stopped at. For NZ$160, we ended up getting a full suiete, with a kitchen and everything, and we all got a bed to sleep in! We also got a deal for the next night, $140 for night two, so it ended up being a pretty good deal.
Christchurch was nice, we stopped a diner for breakfast and made our way into Cathedral square. What we didn’t realize ( and I soon remembered) was that we were traveling around Christchurch on February 24th which happened to be a Tuesday. It was Shrove Tuesday!! It was fun to be there then because there was pancake races and other fun Marti Gras events. So we wandered around the cathedral for an hour or two and then walked over to the Kiwi exhibit across the street to see a kiwi up close and in person. Once we had seen that, we drove across town to the gondola, which takes you up to the highest point in the city and had wonderful views of Christchurch. Soon after, majority decided to drive back to our motel for a little while, since we were all pretty tired from the drive down the day before, and were going out that night to meet a friend who was studying in Christchurch.
Overall I wasn’t too thrilled with Christchurch. The center of town is quite nice, all walking district in and around Cathedral Square and that is really where all the “quaint” things (the English style gardens and bridges and such) are. Once you leave the city center, it is really just like any other city with not too much character. I would have liked to go punting on the Avon or walked around the botanical gardens, but it wasn’t a great day, overcast with the threat of rain, so I didn’t make a big deal of not doing those things (really I just wanted to go punting and not fall in haha). I’m hoping I’ll be able to go back at some point during my time here, and that will be a nicer day when I do.
The next day was another traveling day. We got up and were on the road by 8am (I know I was very surprised myself!). It was quite a long drive to Queenstown, all together about 7 hours, but we stopped along the way a bunch so it was not bad. It was on this leg of the journey that I got to try my hand at driving on the wrong side of the road in a big minivan. The car was very old (a 1987…old for a car, not a person) and had a few of its own characteristics—like the fact that it pulled to the left quite a lot (later on we discovered it was probably because one of our back tires were flat, but by that point it was too late to fix the problem). But after a while I got used to it and in the end it wasn’t too bad at all.
On my leg of the trip, we passed a lot of pretty landscape (of course when I was driving so I missed some of it L). Up until then, we were driving through a lot of cow and sheep country, which was very mountainous but there wasn’t much to look at. But once out of the Remarkables (the Mountain range that spans the South Island), we passed a few glacial lakes and such. We stopped at both glacial lakes that were on our way to Queenstown (Lake Tekapo and Pukaki for anyone who cares).
Well after our few pit stops and four and a half hours of driving, I was relieved from duty and it was onward to Queenstown. The drive was fine, though the one thing about the “highways” in NZ. THEY ARE NOT HIGHWAYS!!!! I don’t want to know what would happen if anyone from NZ went driving on real highways in the US! No all of these roads are mountain trails! The only thing that makes it different from driving around Appalachia is that these are pretty well paved….but they are AWFUL! I have never been on windy-er roads, and they take then SOOOOO fast. But oh well we got there, it just took a lot longer than it looks like it should on a map. I do have to say, the estimated times on the map between cities was right on. So at least they warn you that it is going to take longer than it looks lol.
We got to Christchurch around 3:30, and after getting our bearings of the city a little bit, we decided that we would find a place to stay then, and not 11 o’clock that night (at least we learned a little….but still no reservations in advance…it’s a road trip!) Well, one of the boys had brought a 2 person tent, so the boys wanted to see if it would be cheaper to stay at a camp site with a tent and a car rather than at a hostel. So we looked into it…it was going to be more expensive per person than the numbers we had for the local hostels…so it was off to find a hostel. Well, it being the most popular travel time of the season, all of the reputable hostels didn’t have any vacancies. Well, after that we felt a little rejected and pulled ourselves over to the most expensive looking motel to just see how expensive it was going to be. WELL were we ever WRONG! It was the best deal out of anything. Per person the REALLY NICE motel was cheaper than staying at the cheapest hostel. And here we were sleeping on real beds…not bunks! There were 2 balconies (a front and a back of course), also had a kitchen, 2 bathrooms, 2 HD satellite TV (we got our fix of the discovery channel and other cable tv stations that we don’t get back at our flats), and beds for all (well not all, the boy who brought the tent decided that he wanted to “rough it” and sleep on his camping pad on the ground because there were only 2 king size beds lol). So it was so great we stayed there all 3 nights.
That night they all actually planed ahead and reserved their spot for the Nevis Bungee Jump (The tallest in NZ). I ended up not going, I was going to go and watch, but it was going to be VERY expensive to go with them, so I ended up sailing on the New Zealand NZL14 Team New Zealand America’s Cup sailboat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so needless to say I was not too bummed that I didn’t jump off a cliff lol. I was absolutely stoked!! It was an AMAZING morning the next day, it was beautiful and sunny and we had really nice winds, when I was sailing (yes I got to take the helm for at least 20 minutes of 2 hr sail, anyone else who took the helm only got like 5 or 10 J ) I also had the boat sailing the fastest…10 knots, ok well now I’m just bragging lol. The rest of the group didn’t get back until about 5pm so I had most of the day to myself, which was actually very nice. I went shopping a little bit and picked up a few gifts and tourist-y things.
On our last full day in Queenstown we decided to take a bus tour around Milford Sound in the Fiordlands. It was a gorgeous day once again (we really lucked out with the weather every day of our week trip, it was all beautiful!). We saw a lot of natural bush and went around a few walking trails before finally taking a cruse around Mitre’s Peak (the largest sea cliff in the world. A sea cliff is a cliff that rises directly out of the water.) It was an all day excursion, so we didn’t get back until about 7pm. On our last night we found a GREAT place to have dinner—ferg burger. The largest burgers you have ever eaten in your life!! If anyone ever makes it down the Queenstown, you have to go, just to experience it!! Lol
The next morning we were on the road by 8am (again I was very impressed lol) for an all day road trip back up to Picton. We didn’t stop much on our 12-hour car ride—only for food once (we went shopping in Queenstown and got some munchies for the car so we wouldn’t have to stop a lot). It was the only day that it rained constantly all the way up the coast for our wonderful ride back. But we got back to Picton by 9pm, got the car in on time and were one of the first groups on the ferry back to Wellington. By 1am I was very tired and was happy there were many cabs that I could take back to my own bed in Wellington. It was a great trip, I am so happy that we ended up doing it, even without planning much for it!
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