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.

Road Side Attractions

Let me begin this blog with an apology. As I was speeding my way through the descriptions of where I've travelled, I didn't think about the fact that no one back home had any idea WHERE Mapua was, or Hokitika, or maybe even Christchurch. So, as per the request of my loving family, I have included a rough map that I put together outlining where we're up to at this point in my South Island journey. Some of the names might be hard to read - if so, just check out New Zealand using Google Maps. The bottom right corner is Christchurch, our starting point.

So ... continuing with the journey. In the morning, Mal, Kelsey, and Drea took a helicopter ride to see some of the glaciers. We ended up skipping out on our glacier hike for the afternoon since we'd been told by friends that the half day wasn't worth it - you didn't get up high enough to really enjoy the ice fields. I'm a little bit disappointed that I didn't see any glaciers, but I ended up saving a LOT of money by not going ... the tourism industry in New Zealand is catering more and more to wealthier / older bus tours of people and not to backpackers like us!

After the heli ride was finished we drove south to Fox Glacier (only about 30 minutes) where we had lunch. The rest of the afternoon was spent stopping at pretty much every single road side attraction that NZ had to offer us for the day. It's amazing how many cool things you can see in this country by stopping your car and walking 10 minutes away from the road! Check out what we saw between the glaciers and Wanaka:

#1

Battling bugs to check out the dolphins

We stopped at a beach near Haast, where there was a boardwalk peruse to a Dune Lake. I have no idea who would be crazy enough to do the walk, because the sand flies at this beach were ferocious. The only thing that kept us at the beach were the beautiful jumping sea creatures we saw - Hector's dolphins! This endangered species of dolphin is only found in New Zealand, and can be identified by their rounded dorsal fin. They were so cool - I'd never seen dolphins jump like that other than at the Vancouver Aquarium.

Not my photo ... but easily could have been if I'd had a telephoto lens!

#2
We crossed a bridge that was infested with tourists, so we decided to hop out and check out what all the fuss was about ... turns out it was just a really gorgeous river with stunningly blue water flowing down it.


#3
A sign read "Blue Pools - 10 min walk" so once again we hopped out of the car, did the walk and ended up somewhere beautiful. We waded into freezing cold water that lovingly soothed all of our itchy sandfly bites from earlier that afternoon.



Our last couple stops of the day were to take photos of the incredible mountains we began driving past as we neared Wanaka (our destination for the night). It was such a gorgeous day and everything we passed seemed to become more and more unbelievable!