Day 7: Arrival in Christchurch
Well, it is definitely cold down here in New Zealand. Today we flew about five hours from Nadi to Christchurch with a stopover in Wellington, NZ. The plane was really nice and it even had individual TV screens for each seat! The view from the plane during the descent into Wellington was gorgeous with huge cliffs and mountains sprinkled with wind turbines.
The stopover was a new and weird experience for me because I’ve never had to get off a plane just to go through a small security checkpoint and get right back on the plane. The second leg of our flight was only about 45 minutes and the same big plane had only about 20 people in it. Right as we stepped off the plane in Christchurch, we began to see the country-wide phenomena associated with the Rugby World Cup 2011, which is being held in NZ this year. It smells like winter here! We took a shuttle to our hostel, The Jailhouse, which is actually an old jail that has been converted into a really nice accommodation. When opened, the building catered for the needs of both sentenced and remand prisoners. Over the years the building has been used as a jail, women’s prison and military camp. The place had a really nice, big kitchen, laundry facilities, a movie room, fast Internet, and the best part of all- real mattresses with sheets and comforters! There were a couple rooms left unchanged, even one with original drawings on the walls, so that the “inmates” (guests) could see what the jail used to look like.
Day 8 & 9: Exploring Christchurch
This morning we were finally able to sleep in! We ate cereal with cold milk (as opposed to the room temperature milk we were given in Fiji) and it was heavenly. For the rest of the day we walked around exploring Christchurch—or what was left of it at least. The whole city has a river running through it, surrounded by pretty trees and flowers.
There is a huge park in addition to the beautiful Botanical Gardens. The architecture was an interesting mixture of old English and modern with some hints of Maori tribal influences here and there. We circled part of the center city perimeter, but because of the earthquake it has been fenced off since February due to instability and we were not able to go in at all. It was pretty weird to see because the whole area looked as if it hadn’t been touched since the day the earthquake happened, except to determine which buildings had to be knocked down. I found it incredibly interesting to see and learn, first hand, about this earthquake that rocked an entire city and I felt stupid having known so little about it. It was around a 6.7 only 5m below the surface! It caused so much damage that many parts of the city were completely evacuated and blocked off. 169 people died during the earthquake and the city and its people are still greatly affected by the natural disaster. Even though the devastation that the city had experienced was awful, it was interesting to witness the damage that was still present so many months later. The entire city center was blocked off and there were memorials in place to remember what happened in February and offer hope.
There were encouraging and hopeful notes and signs all over the fence surrounding the city. Later on, we went to a pub, Speight’s Ale House, for dinner, which seemed to be highly recommended by multiple guidebooks. It was our “splurge” night of the trip, so I got an amazing steak dinner with mashed potatoes and salad. We were able to experience some of the rugby spirit because there were two games on that night.
The next day we took advantage of the theme of the jailhouse and took some inmate pictures. The jailhouse was fully themed in that the guests were called inmates, and the workers were called life sentence inmates. They all wore orange tee shirts with prisoner numbers on the back as well. After that, we made our way over to the botanical gardens. There were many sections to the garden, such as a rock garden, New Zealand garden, water garden, rose garden, etc. It is, however, winter so many of the flowers were not in bloom. The garden was gorgeous nonetheless and it was so nice to be able to walk around and relax in such an amazing place.
Day 10: The Scenic Alpine Highway & the Journey to Glacier Country
This morning Anna Lee and I went to get our Jucy rental van! I was the first to drive, and it was quite difficult to get used to. Not only have I not driven for at least 3 months, but everything is reversed here. I had to concentrate on staying on the left side of the road, but since I was on the right side of the car, it was difficult to stay toward the middle of the road without feeling like I was over the center line. The double lane traffic circles were probably the scariest part. We hit the road and it quickly turned into the Scenic Alpine Highway, which runs from the East coast through the mountains to the West coast. The entire 5-hour trip was full of gorgeous scenery, but it was unexpectedly steep, curvy, and narrow.
Meghan and Anna Lee were supposed to skydive this afternoon, but the weather was too cloudy, so they could not go up. The five of us walked around the tiny town of Fox Glacier and shopped a bit before cozying up and watching a movie at the Fox Glacier Inn.
Day 11: Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers
We woke up to more clouds and the girls couldn’t skydive until it cleared up a bit. We went on a hike around Lake Matheson, which is supposed to have incredible views of Fox Glacier and the mountains, since it was cloudy, though, they were good, but less than spectacular.
While Anna Lee and Meghan skydived, Kristen, Liz and I drove to Franz Josef and hiked to the base of the glacier there. It led into a turquoise river and was pretty cool looking despite the fact that clouds covered the top. In the afternoon, we drove four hours to Queenstown. The drive was, again, gorgeous as we wound through lakes and mountains. There is hoppin’ nightlife in this city and we went out to the World Bar, where they served drinks in teapots!Day 12: The Milford Sound
This morning, we had to wake up quite early to drive to Milford Sound, which is a beautiful sound that was naturally carved out the glaciers around it. The process of the glaciers melting and shifting dug out a valley and placed water in it. We had left a bit late, and as we pulled into the port, we heard our boat leaving. Luckily, we were able to do a tour that was an hour later so we had some time to explore a bit. During the tour, we saw a variety of beautiful waterfalls, some permanent and some that were created because of recent rainfall and the melting of the snow on the tops of the mountains. In the stone of the mountains there are many different colors caused by mineral deposits. My favourite were the shimmery copper and gold metallic streaks. We learned that laws protects the area, so no one is allowed to alter the land, therefore the sound looks the same as it did hundreds of years ago and will look the same in the future. We also got to see seals that lived in the sound on some of the only rocks that were low enough for them to climb on. From far away, they looked like slugs! Milford Sound was beautiful and provided a great day trip!
Day 13: Queenstown
Today we finally spent the day in Queenstown. We shopped, walked around the cute little town, and explored the park and sea front area. The town is cute—a mixture of a quaint, small town feeling with a bustling downtown area. It feels like a mountain college town of sorts, with cobblestone roads and many pubs, bars, and shops.
I had hoped to hang glide while there, but when I called to confirm, there had been too many delays that day and they had to cancel. We went to FergBerger for dinner, which is a well-known place with a wide variety of huge burgers. After that we went back to the hostel, which, mind you, we had already checked out of, and watched two movies in the common room in order to rest and stay out of the van until about 1 AM when we departed for Christchurch. We rotated driving about every two hours with someone else always staying awake with the driver. Because of scarcity of gas stations along these mountainous New Zealand roads, we knew to keep an eye out for them and to stop for gas whenever we passed them. About 3 and a half hours into the trip we only had a quarter of a tank left of gas. We stopped at a 24-hour gas station but when we attempted to pump gas, we realized that we had to have a certain type of prepaid gas card in order to purchase it. None of the gas stations we had encountered in New Zealand had pumps in which you could pay outside, however we did not seem to think this would be a problem at the 24-hour gas stations. Apparently it was. We began to drive around the small town looking for some sort of accommodation that we could possibly stay in until the gas stations opened in the morning, but everything was closed. All the hotels, stores, medical centers. closed. Even the police station was closed. We were at a loss and realized that apparently places do not stay open 24 hours like they commonly do in America. At this point, all we could do was laugh at the situation and our lack of preparation for this particular part of the journey. We had done so well with planning and executing our trips with no problems, and then this happens. By this point it was 4:30am and luckily the gas station opened at 6 AM, so we parked our van in a lit hotel parking lot and watched a movie on a laptop until 6. I have to admit, although it was not the most desirable situation, it was quite amusing.
Day 14: Homeless for 48 hours
Around 10:30 AM, we finally arrived in Christchurch. We felt like homeless people because we had used our hostel in Queenstown all day yesterday to cook and watch movies, then we slept in our van in a motel parking lot/while driving, then in the morning we went back to our first NZ accommodation (the Jailhouse) and toasted our bagels there, and finally we washed up and changed in a Burger King restroom. To top it all off, we are staying/sleeping in the airport tonight from 5 PM to 6 AM. Anyway, today we saw the Canterbury Museum and got some fresh air before we had to return the rental car by 5 PM. So, here we are, in for a long night at the airport, quarantined off into this tiny “designated rest area”, waiting for hour 3 hour flight and 2+ more hours of public transport until we will finally be back home in the Sunshine Coast again. It has been a long trip, but all-in-all, it went very smoothly and I am really proud of the five of us girls for planning and executing this whole adventure!
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