Adventure Activities and the Scenic Route

I was in Queentown, at last. The first thing I did after checking into my hostel was to sign up to a bar crawl that was happening that evening. I thought it would be a good way to meet people in the hostel and familiarise myself with the area. It turns out that, while I did get to meet people, I had no idea where I was because they blindfolded us between bars, and we had to do the conga along the streets being led by the hostel staff to make sure we didn't get lost - a surreal but admittedly fun experience, especially when you've had a few beers!

The next day, I decided to face my massive fear of heights and do New Zealand's highest bungy jump - and wow it was amazing! I was terrified though. Especially in the little box that shuttled us over to the ledge (which had a see through floor...) and when they had me sat down doing up my harnesses. Strangely though, my fear completely disappeared when I got to the edge - I just thought "wow, that's a long way down!" but I wasn't scared, and just like that, the man in charge counted down 3... 2... 1... and I (rather inelegantly) threw myself off the platform! I could see the floor coming towards me, and was probably free falling for about ten seconds before I felt the bungy rope lengthen and save me from hitting the rocks below me - what a rush!

Once I was back, and had calmed down from the jump, I decided to go and taste one of the world famous Fergburgers. They are enormous, delicious - and best of all - cheap! Everyone who has been to Queenstown told me to get a Fergburger, and they did not disappoint at all, with layer upon layer of burger, salad, sauce, bread and a whole bunch of optional extras. I had one of these burgers every day of my stay in Queenstown, which meant I actually spent more on Fergburgers than transport on the South Island.

I spent the rest of the day wondering around the town, finding my way around and looking at clothes I knew I couldn't afford, and when I got back to the hostel, predictably, the Kiwi Explorer bus had arrived. I've not yet mentioned the Kiwi bus, and I will now explain why I knew I would bump into them at some point in Queenstown. I first met the passengers of the Kiwi bus in Westport (at the top of the west coast of the south island). The next day, I saw them at the pancake rocks. The next day, we were on the tour of the Franz Joseph glacier. By this point I was thinking that it was silly to keep seeing them everywhere and to not know any of them, so we all got chatting, and they said that they'd noticed me everywhere they went as well! Just like that, friendships blossomed and as we parted ways we said "see you in Queenstown!" - I didn't know they'd be in the same bloody hostel as me! So for the next few days, I kind of latched onto their group - drank with them, ate with them and sat around doing not much else with them...

I did, while in Qtown, also go on one of the 'world famous' jetboat rides on the Shotover river. It was pretty fun, but for the first five minutes of the 45 minute ride it was raining, and when you're going at 80 km/h, you do NOT want it to be raining. After the initial pain of rain splattering into my face though, it was great. The driver obviously knew what he was doing, and took us very close to rocky outcrops and pebble beaches to make us think we were going to crash, but obviously we weren't. In summary, quite a fun experience, but probably would have been more fun if I was with people I knew, instead of a load of Asian tourists that said "iiyyyaaaaa" every time the driver spun us around...

At this point, I was completely broke. I searched everywhere I could, in every bank account I'd ever opened, and I realised that I had almost nothing left. I made a call to my parents, and begged, and they kindly agreed to give me my Christmas money early (THANK YOU!). To stay on the safe side though, I didn't do any more adventure activities while in New Zealand. They might have been worth every penny, but they still costed a lot of pennies!!

I reluctantly moved on from Queenstown after four nights and went to Mt Cook - New Zealand's highest mountain. Apparently it's beautiful. I wouldn't know, there were too many clouds, so I spent the rest of the day watching the Lord of the Rings (which seemed to be playing in every hostel I'd stayed in - how clichéd) and playing scrabble with the other people staying there. The next day was still cloudy, but not as cloudy, so I went for a walk to kea point, hoping to see some kea. Unfortunately they were nowhere to be seen, but I did find some really, really, really blue lakes! I stayed there for a while, taking in the atmosphere, and eventually the clouds did start to clear up and I managed to see the summit of the mighty mountain.

Later that day, I got the bus to lake Tekapo. Wow. It had the bluest water I've ever seen. Properly blue, like when you're a kid and you use a blue crayon to colour in the water. It was so blue that you couldn't even see the bottom when you went and stood next to it - it was opaque because it was saturated with minerals that had been collected as glacial ice ran down the rocky mountain. It was stunning, and almost enchanting. I was told that there was no other civilisation around the lake within a 30 mile radius, meaning that there was no light pollution or any other kind of pollution, so on a clear night, it was the perfect place to do some star gazing. Because of it's ideal location, the'd built a large telescope there, and it was available for public use. At midnight, me and some other tourists went up to the telescopes and had a "tour" of the night sky, where they pointed out constalations, galaxies, nebulas and stars. We even got to get a close look at Jupiter, and saw its rings and three of its moons! A truly humbling experience.

Me in front of lake Tekapo

The next day I made my way to Christchurch. I didn't really know what to expect. Most of the travellers I'd met had told me not to even go there because the Earthquake damage had been so extensive. There's not even anything left - they'd tell me - but since I was flying out of Christchurch airport, I thought I'd at least have a look around. What I found was that it wasn't actually that bad. I was expecting some kind of apocalyptic wasteland, where you couldn't walk down the streets for fear of building collapsing on top of you. In reality, most of the destruction had been cleared and I felt very safe as I roamed the streets. In saying this, only one street was open for business, and the shops here had been made out of shipping containers, so that when the city has been properly rebuilt, the containers can be removed easily.

By the way, I don't mean to belittle the devastation that has obviously been felt in that city, but by the time I'd got there, almost all of the collapsing buildings have been demolished. I think they've made a lot of progress since the initial quakes, and it won't be long (a few years) before the city is back to normal again - although personally I feel like it would be a better idea to move the city away from the major fault line...

After a long night in the airport, talking with a French girl, a German man, and an Italian man, laughing a lot, and keeping everyone else awake, I finally boarded the plane and was on my way back to Australia! But getting back into the country was not as easy as I thought it would be, after getting my passport ever so slightly soggy back on the Tongariro crossing, but that's a story for next time! Thanks again for reading :)

Santa Costume Wearing, Knife Making and Glacier Climbing

After my soggy accent to the top of Mt Doom, I stuck around the hostel for a while, playing board games, watching (aka, falling asleep in front of) films, and massaging my aching calf muscles before my bus departed from Turangi at 1.45AM. I got to the bus stop early so that I could look at the stars in the cloudless sky. They were just so beautiful because the level of light pollution was so low, and the air is so clear over here. A five hour bus journey then ensued which took me to Wellington, the capital of New Zealand.

When I got there at 6.30AM, there was very little to do, so I resorted to having a McDonald's breakfast and falling asleep in the corner for an hour, after which, I went over to the Houses of Parliament. Oddly enough, there was a troop of people wearing Santa costumes. Confused as to what they were doing at this time, dressed in this way, I went over to ask what was going on. It turns out they were promoting a fun run (where you had to dress as Santa to take part. Much less exciting that I thought - I thought there would be some sort of protest) that was going to occur later in the day, and that the news team from Channel One was going to be there shortly. I was bored, and it was still two hours before anything in Wellington opened up, so I decided to ask if I could join in, and sure enough, there was a spare Santa outfit lying around. I put it on and tried my hardest to make myself look presentable for television after two weeks of living out of a backpack (although the only parts of me that were visible were my eyes and nose anyway). It's a good job smellavision hasn't been invented yet. Just saying.

When the news team arrived, we did a very cheesy Rocky-style running up and down the set of stairs outside parliament building, occasionally throwing a few punches into mid air while trying to hide our laughter with our fake beards. At the end of the clip, we all ran into the distance and for some reason we were told to stop and wiggle our bottoms every so often. And this is the start of my career as an international superstar, but I'm sure that will be a story for another day.

After this I headed over to New Zealand's biggest museum - Te papa (Mauri for 'our place'). It was actually a really good museum, with lots of interactive installments so that children (and child-like people like me) don't get bored, and they did a good job of explaining Mauri culture and the science behind the earthquake in Christchurch. Shortly after this I went to catch a ferry over to the South Island. Strangely enough, I ran into a man called Kevin. I met Kevin the day before on the shuttle bus to the start of the Alpine crossing, so we spent most of the ferry journey contemplating travel plans for the south, and exchanging stories of travels so far. We decided that we'd part ways when we the boat landed in Picton, but exchanged details because it looked like we'd have pretty similar plans after a few days. A nearby girl called Julia overheard our conversation and decided to come and talk to us, she said she was going to try and hitch hike around for a while but she was nervous because she'd never done it before. Since we were heading the same way, I said I'd go with her - and so, I had a new travel companion, Julia from Wellington.

Julia and I with a hippy lady that gave us a lift

Even though we didn't start until 5pm, it was still surprisingly easy to get a lift! We got picked up three times and were in Nelson that night. There wasn't a lot there. I think it's just a place to stop off on the way to the west coast or to the Abel-Tasman reserve (which I was gutted that I didn't have time to visit). Julia had a friend in Nelson, who was supposed to hook us both up with free accommodation for the night, but the parents are super strict Christians and were opposed to a boy sleeping in the house, so Julia and I parted ways, after a shot but sweet four hours of companionship.

I reluctantly stayed in a hostel that night after the offer of a free place to stay was cruelly snatched from right in front of my face, but its a good job I did, because one of the guys I got chatting to said that he'd hired a car and was heading over to the west coast, so kindly offered to take me to Westport - the top of the west coast of New Zealand's South Island. On all of the maps, Westport looks like a major city with heaps of things to see in do. In reality there is one road with shops on it, and a beach which takes 45 minutes to get to where the water is too cold to swim.

It didn't take long to get bored of Westport, and so the next day, I hitched a lift out of there, and began my journey down the coast. I'd heard that the drive between Westport and Greymouth was meant to be amazing, with beautiful scenery and winding roads. This was enhanced by the guy who picked me up. A retired English man who has fallen in love with New Zealand and just can't stop coming back, called John. I had a great time in John's car - mainly because he seemed fascinated by everything I said. We talked about science, and he was keen to ask me lots of questions about the chemistry and geology of the world. I did my best to answer his questions accurately, but remembering those geology lessons from five years ago was a bit of a struggle, so I must admit that some of my answers were slightly on the fictional side. I think I got away with it though. Since he was a tourist as well, we stopped off at the pancake rocks (rocks that look like stacks of thick pancakes) and he even bought me a pot of tea and some chips. When we got to my next destination of Barrytown, I discovered that the hostel there had been closed down, so John even offered to take me to the nearest hostel, which involved going back on ourselves. It was a shame to part company with John, since he was such a kind, generous and interesting man, but I suppose that is the way of a hitch hiker!

That night I stayed in the Punakaiki Beach hostel. Obviously I'm not going to bore you all with the details of every hostel I stay in, but this one was just great. It sits right on a a quiet beach where you can just walk up and down collecting jade stone and with a backdrop of the southern Alpine mountain range. That evening, I sat and watched the sun set over the sea, and it was the most vibrantly red sunset I'd ever seen. Everything about this place was beautiful, and I kind of didn't want to leave, but the next day I set off, back to Barrytown, where I spent the day making a knife. From scratch. And by coincidence, Kevin was there too!

We started with a piece of steel, a plank of wood, some brass and a length of metal. Steven, the man who took the course, showed us some of the finished products, and we all thought the same thing: how on earth are we going to turn these things into one of those?! It was a long day of hammering, grinding, sanding and and sawing, but sure enough, at the end of the day, we all ended up with beautiful knives! We finished the day with a glass of Barrypagne (boxed wine from Barry passed through a soda stream), and Kevin and I continued down the west coast towards the Franz-Joseph glacier. The west coast is very sparsely populated, so there was very little traffic. We managed to get 20km away from the glacier that night, but ended up having to sleep in Kevin's tent on the side of the road because the sun had set and we were both exhausted from walking 10km from our last drop off point. Luckily, when we woke up the next morning at about 6.30, I managed to hitch us a lift in the first car that passed us! We went to drop off our bags in a hostel, and spent the rest of the day hiking up the Franz-Joseph glacier, apparently the world's steepest and fastest flowing commercially guided glacier.

It was a sunny day for the most part, which really made the blue ice on the glacier stand out. I'm aware that I overuse these words a lot in these blogs, but it looked amazing and beautiful. The pictures don't really capture it, but they never do... Sadly, the ice is melting at such a fast rate that they think that pretty soon the glacier won't be there, so if you want to have a look for yourself, then I'd do it in the next few years! After the eight hour glacier walk, Kevin and I went to the local hot pools (included in the price of the glacier walk - result!) and stayed long enough to sooth our aching muscles and wrinkle our skin.

The next morning, we got up early to try and hitch a ride to the infamous adventure capital of New Zealand - Queenstown. We stood on the side of the road for about half an hour, but only two or three cars even drove past... It was a hopeless cause, so we just got on the Intercity bus and paid our way there. Finally I was here. This is the place I'd been most looking forward to for my entire trip. Adventure ensued.

On the Road Again

After four months of being in Australia, and the stability of having a roof over my head in Kooloobong, it is now time for me to travel... After a long day of goodbyes and see you laters, I left Wollongong at 9pm on a Saturday night, arriving in Sydney Airport around two hours later. I found a spot to settle for the night, but was soon told to move on because they were closing this section of the airport.. This happened two more times.


One of these times, I'd sat next to a lovely looking French girl. Unfortunately her English wasn't great, so communication was sparse. I tried my hardest to recall my GCSE French skills, but to no avail... I spent five minutes trying to convince her that 'ecouter' meant to study, when of course it means to listen... "I listen in Wollonong!" She must have thought I was mental. Shortly after this we were moved on, and I saved myself the embarrassment of getting lost in translation again by pretending to lose her in the moving crowd of people (shameful, I know, but I was tired and couldn't handle the humiliation!).

Six hours of drifting in and out of sleep passed slowly, and every time I woke up, I was surrounded by a different group of people - disorientating to say the least. By 6am I'd had enough of spooning my rucksack on a cold, hard floor and decided to wait in line to check in... three hours later, and I was on the plane! (I do sometime think how absurd it is for humans to put themselves into long metal tubes thousands of metres in the air...)

I would now like to take a moment to talk about the in-flight entertainment - mainly the film I watched, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows II. I had not watched this film before I boarded the plane, and I now WISH I'd gone and seen it on a big screen. After the last fifteen years of my life being dominated by a fictional boy, the series had finally come to an end, and what an end it was! Tears were genuinely streaming down my face at some points (eg, when Prof McGonagall stood up against Snape, and when Neville stood up against Voldemort) - I'm pretty sure the air hostesses were debating asking whether or not I was okay, but I didn't care... Until they decided to switch off the in-flight entertainment system twenty minutes before the end of the film!! I suppose I know what happened anyway, but it would have been nice to see it haha.

Landing in Auckland, I wanted to look outside and see how beautiful it is, but I couldn't, because the man next to me was asleep against the window... Despite this, I still got a great first impression of New Zealand. Everyone I met at the airport gave me a smile. The woman at customs even taught me how to say the words in the address I was heading to (eg, Waingaro = wayne-aerrro, and Ngaruawahia = now-rrrou-ah-wahia... 'ng' is pronounced 'ny' and they roll their r's). This really put me in a good mood, and I felt ready to start my hitch hiking adventure to the Earthship!

I'd heard that the best place to hitch a ride south from Auckland airport was the Shell petrol station just outside. I went to the petrol station just outside and tried there for a while. Everyone I asked seemed to be going north. I was very confused, but then one of the staff came outside and made me realise the error of my ways by pointing me in the direction of another petrol station just down the road (the Shell one...). Shortly after arriving, I got a lift to the start of the highway (about 15 mins from where I was) from an indigenous couple called Naa and Susan. They were telling me about how they met on Cook Island when they were little and have been together ever since (awww). They also kindly offered me a place to stay if I ever find myself back in Auckland again! I'm sure I'll be taking them up on this offer soon.

Naa and Susan

Within fifteen minutes I'd got my next lift from a father and son combo called Jamie (father) and Chaz (son). The window next to where I was sat was jammed open, so the win was rushing into my face (it's like I was skydiving again, but far less exciting). On top of this, they were playing some kind of gangster rap/reggae fusion at full volume. Conversation was limited to lip reading, but I was finding it difficult to keep my eyes open with all the wind blowing in my face! They proceeded to drop me off on the side of a motorway. Crap. First rule of hitching - never hitch on a motorway. I panicked, got out of the car, thanked them, and watched them speed into the distance. I guess all I could do was stand there, and hope someone would be kind enough to pick me up!

An hour and a half had passed, and the only people who payed any attention to me were groups of people in camper vans who waved at me, or groups of Asians on bus tours who took pictures. I thought it was game over. I wondered over to a nearby cow farm to see if I could beg someone for a lift, or even give them some money. They couldn't help, but he did tell me about a better hitching spot on the nearby expressway (different from a motorway, and more importantly, less illegal to hitch from!). I wondered down, and still no one stopped for me. I decided to walk along the road in the hopes of finding a service station to stay the night if the worst came to worst. I walked along the expressway with my thumb out into the traffic in the hope that someone one would stop.

Then, around a corner, I saw a car in the hard shoulder.. 'Surely they didn't stop for me?' I questioned. I got closer, and closer, and like a miracle, one of them signaled for me to get into the car! I ran, got in, and expressed my gratitude in what can only be described as slurred noises.

Once I'd calmed down a little, I found out that the pair were a mother (Kushette, pronounced Kushi) and son (Dylan) who lived in Auckland, but were traveling down to Rotorua to see Kushette's sister and dad. They also revealed that they only picked me up because they thought I was Mediterranean and exotic, and were not expecting a pom (not the first time this has happened... Brings back memories of Bummit 2011). They told me about the relatives they have all over the world (NZ, Australia, Spain, USA, UK) and also mentioned that Kushette's dad works in Rotorua, and would be able to get me and some friends a discount if we went to see the Maori performances there! Excellent! I will definitely have to take her up on that one when the Norwegians arrive!

Kushette and Dylan

When I told them that I was staying in Ngarauwahia, they looked at each other then both said "good luck" to me! Apparently it has a bit of a reputation of being a rough place where lots of "maldis" hang out (probably the NZ equivalent of a chav, or bogan). I believe the phrase "thank God you're only there for a week!" did actually come our of Kushette's mouth!

I could not have been more grateful to Kushette and Dylan, who brought me right to the driveway of the place I was staying. We exchanged numbers and bid each other farewell. My first impressions of the place were not great (tainted by Kushette's words) with broken down cars and rubbish strewn on the sided of the roads, but when I'd walked up the hill to the Earthship, my opinion completely changed! I was greeted by the family, a noisy cockatoo, several chickens, pigs bigger than me, and a barking dog. We all introduced ourselves to each other, and I ate the cold left overs from tea (since I'd arrived a lot later than anticipated). All in all, a great, but long and tiring first day. I will write more about the Earthship in my next post. It's amazing.