Back from the 2 week roadtrip!!! It was a lot of fun and so pretty! It was interesting to see all of NZ finally...it was like driving through Lord of the Rings meets Jurassic Park.
Started off with Eilidh, Laing, Eddie and myself heading to Methven to snowboard on Mt. Hutt! Our last day of the season boarding was so much fun! It was a beautiful sunny day so the ice slushed up nice and quick. It was so warm out, we even got tanned. :D Anyway, Methven was a nice city...full of cats. Seriously, I think everyone in Methven owns a cat. Dad would hate it.
Headed up the west coast passing through Arthur's Pass to get to Punakaiki. The lakes and rivers out that way are this amazing blue color because of the glaciers. When the ice melts in the summer, it picks up rock dust down the glacier to give it the color. It's amazing. I don't know if I ever mentioned it, but Kiwis have one way bridges. Tons of them. We finally ran into the first two-lane bridges we've seen in ages at this point. It was pretty entertaining hearing me and Eils be like, "TWO LANE BRIDGES!!! HURRAH!!!!" Anyway, we got to Punakaiki and stayed at this really cool retreat called Te Nikau in the middle of the woods. We were put in the Rata hut with a few other people - it's a really nice house with great kitchen stuff, cool fireplaces and great views. We also went to the Pancake Rocks which was like 10 minutes down the road from the retreat. They're these really interestingly formed rocks that are in flat layers - like pancakes obviously.... Anyway, no one really understands why they formed this way so it was fun to see. There was also a really nice beach to walk to with BIG waves and lots of cool rocks and shells. Pretty much everytime we went to the beach, I came back with pocketfuls of rocks and stones. It was a little bit ridiculous and I got made fun of a lot for it. The hippy guy who owned the retreat had this amazing fresh baked bread every morning to buy, so we got one and as I walked from the reception center to our house, a weka started following me. The creepy little bird STALKED me!!! It was a beautiful morning so I was all la-dee-da and not paying attention so I turned the wrong way down the road. I realized this as the weka started following me so I turned around and it gets closer to me and turns , slowly creeping up on me more. So I sped up and tried to get away and it did the same. Pretty entertaining seeing me with a fresh loaf of bread running away from a wee bird.
After Punakaiki, we headed up to Kaiteriteri for more cool beaches, BBQs and Eddie trying to kill everyone. First, we hiked to this cool island off the beach and collected mussels to try. Eddie forced me to eat one!!! It was pretty tasty but looks disgusting....anyway, later on, we'd met up with some of our other friends from F&B - Charley, Adam, Richie, Lois and Ryan. So we're on the beach hanging out, playing football and this fun racquetball game Eddie brought and Eddie does one of his funky side-back-flips. Now, Eddie's been doing this for years. But Laing and Richie decide that they just have to learn too. I just sat down to watch them hurt themselves. So did the people eating at the restaurant across the street. :) So, Eddie shows them how to backflip and was all good about it but Richie decides to be REALLY dumb and try a front flip on his own without any direction! Stupid boy. He flipped, landed REALLY hard on his back and DID IT AGAIN! This time he almost clipped his neck and hit his back so hard he tore a muscle and hardcore winded himself. Needless to say, he learned a lesson not to do dumb things as it can almost paralyze you. Eilidh also left us at that point as the weather wasn't great and she felt bad.
Eddie, Laing, Richie, Charley, Adam and I headed from Kaiteriteri to an amazing beach in the middle of nowhere called Whararaki Beach. You have to drive to this random carpark surrounded by sheep paddocks, carry all your gear through fields of sheep up this hilltop walk then hike to a spot on the beach. At this point, we grab our gear and just happen to run into a mate from work, Timmy. Of all the random places to run into people, this one was the strangest, I think. Anyway, we had tons of gear because we were planning on camping for a few days. So we carry all of the heavy junk to the beach and hike out a bit farther than usual because people like to come on the beach and we didn't want all that disruption. So we set up camp, collect firewood, play some minigolf on the beach and find a baby penguin! It was adorable. Anywho, it starts to rain and we all sleep in leaky tents, lol. We all wake up cold and wet to a dreary morning and decide that it's probably for the best to not to stay since the weather looks horrible. Ryan and Lois were supposed to me us at the beach after they went kayaking in Abel Tasmain, but got to the carpark when it was really dark and raining hard. So they hiked the wrong way for about 30 minutes, thought they were hopelessly lost so they pitched their tent but everything was wet from the hike, so they slept for a few hours until first light then found they were just up a few hills from the car camped behind a barn. Hahahaha. A barn. So they hiked to the car, slept in there and then found us in the morning. So, the high tide was coming in when we decided to leave and we had to walk past this rock face. When we all finally get everything packed away, we had to wade through water about knee high to get to the path back to the car. It was definitely entertaining.
We were all sandy and wet and miserable, so we decided to drive to Pohara and find a backpackers. Lois, Ryan and Richie ditched us since they had to go home early for work, so it was down to Eddie, Laing, Charley, Adam and I. Pohara is a small, small town. After showers and food and such, everyone was taking naps but Laing and I decided to go walk through town since neither of us wanted naps and we walked down the road and passed a cafe. That was town. Seriously. So we went to the beach instead.
Onwards to Nelson where we walked around town a bunch, looked in the first shops we'd really seen in NZ and stayed at this great backpackers. It's like an old Victorian house with a pool and spa in the backyard, plus free breakfast and soup! All for $22. It was great. We also treated ourselves to dinner at this nice Italian place that made great pizza as we got our holiday pay that night so celebrations were in order. We also ran into Billy and Kelly, also from F&B in the hostel.
We left Nelson to hit up Kaikora because they have great beaches but the weather wasn't great and it was a tiny town so we just went on through to Christchurch where we ran into Mel (also F&B) in the hostel there! We went out to dinner at a great Asian place with her and has a good time. The sweet thing about traveling with Eddie is he's being in NZ for 4 years so he knows all the good places to travel to since he's done a lot of it before. So he knew all the great restaurants, etc. Lovely miso soup at the asian place he took us to.
After Christchurch, we headed to a beach to camp just outside of Timaru which was gorgeous then headed down to Dunedin where we stayed on the Penguin Reserve at this nice little house thing. Hardly anyone was there and we drove up to the lighthouse to see the albatrosses! THEY'RE HUGE!!! We also went to the aquarium because I got bored and made the boys go with me. We tried fried seaweed. It was gross. Laing and Eddie liked it a lot because they're weird. :D The next day, we went to another beach where this sea lion was chilling. It kept rolling around in the sand and barking at people, etc. We were joking that it was the sea lion version of Laing because rolling in the sand, sleeping in the sun would be his dream. Lol. After Dunedin, we head back here to Queenstown! It's nice to be back and see everyone, for sure! And I'm moving into my new flat today as the girl finally vacated the room! Hurray!
So, I uploaded Eddie's pictures from the trip - more to come when I get Eilidh's. I'll tell you what each one is here as snapfish won't let me add little comments. First one is Mt. Cook with the cool glacial lakes in front, then Laing in Geraldine with a sign post he "picked" for me (it wasn't cemented in so he found. I made him put it back.), next is us waiting for the bus in Methven to go up Mt. Hutt, then 3 pictures of a really cool stream from this random bridge outside Methven, next is the beach in Punakaiki that had this really cool sandstone wall that's HUGE, more Punakaiki beach, then Eddie and Laing found a cave with a hole in it so Eddie stuck his head through, lol. Then a cool sunset outside Kaiteriteri, and some sweet beaches. Then Eddie and Laing poses all silly, next me and Laing in front of our "Life as it ought to be" --the mountain's motto was that and we decided that our jobs were, in fact, NOT life as it ought to be and the gorgeous sunny day was. Then Laing and Eddie on the beach, then me and Eddie. Next up, lots of sunrises and sunsets and beaches. Plus our fire from beach camping, towards the end, there's Laing poses with his sea lion too. There's a link to my snapfish album in the previous post so use that!
Anyway, enjoy the pictures and this super long post because I'm exhausted now! :D
this is way too long to read.
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