The Final Stops

After a rainy night, we got up early and took the windy, turn after turn after turn drive from Te Anau to Milford Sound. This seems like a great time for the second edition of Ally's poorly made New Zealand travel maps! Check it out (if you're confused, Te Anau is the lower of the two furthest left pins):

At Milford Sound we did the only thing there is to do ... take a boat cruise! We chose Mitre Peak since they had smaller boats that didn't take buttloads (I mean, busloads) of tourists on board. Since it had been pouring the night before, we were surrounded by unreal waterfalls - it was hard to see where they came from due to the mist/fog/clouds, which made it that much more incredible. On top of all that beauty, our boat kept being chased by dolphins! At one point, the driver stopped the boat and a dolphin was just chilling right next to the bow, and Drea and I stood there staring at it for over a minute ... we were so close we could have touched it! It was a pretty magnificent experience overall.

When the cruise was over, we hopped back in the car and drove to Dunedin, our final stop of the trip. We stayed with Charlie, a friend from UBC, in an all-boys house (a little intimidating, not to mention the odd smell ... just kidding!). It was great to catch up with another old friend. While we were eating dinner, the news about the Japan earthquake / tsunami was on TV. It was terrifying to see a natural disaster of much greater severity so close after Christchurch had been impacted by one ... definitely didn't calm our nerves at all. 

If only they were real ...

That night, the girls went out to experience a good time Dunedin-style, but Derek and I stayed in since he'd accidentally ingested gluten with his Chinese dinner ... not very much fun for him! :( On Saturday morning we drove back to Christchurch, with a quick stop to a berry farm (mmm my favourite). We sorrowfully returned the Dragon to the car rental, and
started to prepare ourselves for the re-start of classes on Monday the 14th.

Unconventional S'mores

When we woke up in Te Anau, the skies were slightly overcast but we decided to go ahead with our morning activity. We hiked a 3 hour section of the famous Kepler Track, from Rainbow Reach to Lake Manapouri. It was a fairly nice walk, not very difficult and it had some nice views. Some of the Lord of the Rings river scenes had been filmed nearby, and any LOTR tidbit is always nice in New Zealand!

At the hut on Lake Manapouri we talked to a few people who'd actually been doing the whole Kepler Track, and it sounded incredible. I would love to do one of NZ's Great Walks. We ate our lunch while being attacked by sandflies (no fun!) and scooted back to Te Anau.

Loving Lake Gunn

We then drove into Fiordland National Park, which is actually huge - Te Anau is right on the edge of it, and it extends much further North and South so that it takes up a good portion of the South West of New Zealand. We set up camp at Lake Gunn, a picturesque campsite about 80km north of Te Anau. There was only one other tent at the site when we arrived, a cute little yellow one. About an hour after our arrival, the tent's owners pulled in to the site ... and it was no other than Kat Brown and her boyfriend Ryan, friends from RKY! I'd known they were in New Zealand, but we weren't expecting to meet up under those circumstances at all, so it was very exciting.

Catching up :)

The campsite kept filling up, and that night we made a campfire and hung out with everyone. We met a bunch of Germans and introduced them to s'mores - but our lack of graham crackers, chocolate or conventional marshmallows meant we had to make due with aeroroot cookies, M&M's, and the not-so-tasty strawberry marshmallows that seem to be the only ones available in NZ. Needless to say, the s'mores were unconventional but still proved to be delicious!

If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you? Hell yeah!

After our delightful morning in Wanaka, we drove to Queenstown. The locals will tell you it's "just over the hill" ... the hill is actually the highest paved road in New Zealand, and it's followed by an outrageous amount of switchbacks that had all of us feeling a little queasy by the end. Once we were in downtown Queenstown, we went to the AJ Hackett bungy centre where we checked in and then awaited the bus that would come pick us up.

On the drive to Queenstown

YES, I was going bungy jumping (in NZ it's spelled bungy, not bungee) and after what happened while cliff jumping this summer, I was terrified. Kelsey was also nervous for the jump, so we decided we'd jump tandem to provide each other some support. On the bus ride to the Kawarau Bridge, my stomach was churning, and I was getting more and more nervous by the minute. Annoyingly, it turned out that we went right back on the road toward Wanaka so we could have just avoided taking the bus altogether - oh well.


At the World's First bungee site we were greeted by a peppy guide who took us to a desk where we got weighed, then all of a sudden we were walking out onto the bridge. My stomach was doing cartwheels and Kelsey was wringing her hands, but Derek and Drea were cool as cucumbers. When we told the bungee operators we wanted to go tandem, the oldest one there said "Twice as much can go wrong with a tandem jump" in a gruff voice. Miss peppy guide urged us to jump solo, and we finally agreed (mostly terrified by the bungee cowboy's words). Kelsey went first, and luckily we couldn't see her after she jumped off. Next, it was my turn ... I was practically peeing my pants at this point, but the man who was tying up my legs gave me no chance to hesitate, just talked to me the whole time until suddenly I was at the edge, my photo was being taken, and it was time to JUMP!

There is nothing rational about hurling yourself off a 45m bridge toward water. For a second, I thought I couldn't do it - I felt just like I'd felt on that cliff. But then my knees buckled and I had no choice, I was doing it so I might as well enjoy it! I spread my arms and fell, and it was an incredible rush - followed by a dive into the icy water below. I was unbelievably happy - I DID IT!! Luckily Mal was on the viewing deck (anyone can stop their car and watch some bungee if they feel like it) so she got it on video ...

Bungee Jump from Ally Stocks on Vimeo.
 

Drea's and Derek's jumps were very graceful and very wet (they got fully dunked in the water; I went halfway), and when we were all finished we were a jumble of excitement and adrenaline. We relaxed in the sun and watched a few more bungee jumps (some people looked very awkward and wiggly when they jumped) before taking the bus back to Queenstown, hopping in the car and driving to Te Anau where we stayed the night at a creepy campsite that lacked grass space for tents. 

Wanaka

In the late afternoon of Tuesday March 8th, we drove through mountainous regions and past gorgeous bodies of water until we hit a road sign - if we turned left, we'd head to Queenstown; right, to Wanaka. We were tired from all of our stops that day, and thought it might be smarter to stay in Queenstown that night (we'd be heading there the next day anyway) but something persisted in us, and we drove to Wanaka. I am thrilled that we did - Wanaka is easily one of the highlights of our trip.

 

Everyone who's been there says that Wanaka is the smaller but better version of Queenstown. I don't really think the two cities are similar at all, but either way, Wanaka takes the cake. As we drove into the town, the sun was beginning to set and the mountains, the lake, the sky were all being accentuated by the light. We giddily ran from the car down to the lake and jumped in; it was freezing but we all had huge smiles on our faces. Considering we'd been camping for the whole trip, we'd become pretty grungy so it was nice to get some water through our hair (which was looking similar to the way it did back in Rotorua on the North Island).

As we basked in the last of the day's sun, we made the decision to spend the night in beds. We had a number of options to choose from (considering our budget) which included a couple of hostels and motels, but Derek and I found one that blew them all away - the Durry Hill Motel. We chatted with an elderly man about staying at his motel, and he kindly showed us where we'd spend the night - we were shocked (in a good way!). We had a full kitchen, dining room, living room, two bathrooms, two bedrooms, a garage and a backyard. It cost $40 each for the night, so we went for it! I thought back to the days on family camping trips when Mum and Dad would tell us that we were staying in a hotel that night - John, Jane and I would go CRAZY with excitement! I seem to recall a cartoon of someone running blindly into a tree with happiness ... 

Sparing no expense at this point, we ate dinner out at Thai Siam - you guessed it - a Thai restaurant! Yum yum yum. We bought ice cream, popcorn and candy and watched a terrible Nicolas Cage movie in our fabulously comfy living room, showered, and collapsed into the most comfortable beds we'd slept in in forever.

The next morning we made massive breakfasts of pancakes, strawberries and scrambled eggs. The ever-wonderful William Durry chatted with us about how he'd built all of the houses in the motel complex, and directed us to fill up our water bottles down the hill with natural spring water he'd made available to the public. We spent the morning exploring Wanaka and taking it easy before we hopped back in the car to head to our next destination: Queenstown.