Time for the South Island trip details…. lots and lots of
details! Be warned this post is much longer than the North Island. We did more
activities in the South Island and I must say it was the better of the two
islands from what we saw. But there is plenty of New Zealand we didn’t see so I
might not be the best judge.
Sunday was a long travel day. Drove to Wellington, caught
a ferry to the South Island and then drove to Nelson. I’ll note that we did a
TON of driving. Way more than I would ever consider acceptable for any
situation. However, it didn’t seem bad at all. It’s very different than the
headache of driving on highways staring at nothing but traffic for hours. The
whole country looks like a postcard. I brought a stack of magazines and a book
and read less than one magazine in all of the driving. There was even very
little napping (Bill did all the driving). I simply enjoyed the beautiful
scenery and prayed we wouldn’t get in an accident on the tight, windy roads up
and down mountains. 95% of the driving was one lane each way with the option to
pass… which we did a lot of. No stop lights, just open roads and lots of
elevation gain. And lots and lots of sheep and cows.
The next morning, we had an all-day kayaking trip in Abel
Tasman. A boat took us to the most remote part of the Abel Tasman coast line.
Since we were the furthest out, there weren’t other kayaking groups around
which was nice. We paddled for a while and then stopped on a small section of
coast to eat a picnic lunch. Some seals came up pretty close to us. Technically
you must stay 50m away but can’t really be at fault when they come to you. The
guide timed lunch so that the tide would raise, allowing us into a section that
is dry during low tide. He said he rarely gets to go into it so I’m glad we got
to see it. Then it was back to paddling. We went by a small island that had a
lot of furry seals and some swam really close to the kayaks. You can hear them
from far away. It was kind of a scary sound. Reminded me of Jurassic Park. We paddled to another small section of shore
where a boat picked us back up. Great day of kayaking all around. Then we drove
to Punakaiki to stay the night at a bed and breakfast.
We had another great B&B experience at Punakaiki.
Once again the locals were amazing and they made a huge and delicious breakfast
spread. At some point in the morning I bent over at my suitcase and felt and
sudden sharp pain in my groin that left me limping around. It was raining a
little on and off but we decided to do the horseback riding anyway. Great
decision when you have groin pain. It was a few hours of horseback riding which
included stopping at a cabin for some coffee and cookies. It’s probably sad
that one of my favorite parts of this was watching the dog that accompanied us.
It was the owners 16 year old dog that had hip surgery recently and was joining
us for one of his last tours. The owner actually put the dog on top of the
house as we left and then he hopped off and ran along with us the whole time.
It was sad watching him cross rivers and get swept a little downstream. When we
got to the beach he had a blast barking and pushing a rock around the sand.
Anyway enough about the dog. At the end of the ride we went past the Pancake
Rocks. Unfortunately, because of the rain we didn’t get any good pictures but
they were cool looking and right on the beach. After sort of drying off we drove several
hours to Franz Joseph.
Rest of the day was fairly relaxing. We did a short hike
up a hill to see the Franz Joseph glacier from far away. My family started a
tradition after my mom passed away of wearing the “fox sweater” on various
vacations. Sort of like “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” but with a fox
sweater. When we were cleaning out her closet after she passed away we found
this awful sweater with tags still on. It’s a weird sort of joke but the fox
sweater has been traveling all over the world. After seeing the glacier, we had
a nice dinner.
We were warned ahead of time that any cameras or phones
we brought were our own responsibility and the glacier has consumed many
iPhones people have dropped. At one point the guide offered to take a picture
for whoever wanted of a hole in the ice with us standing on the other side. So
I handed him my phone and he put it in his pocket while taking someone else’s
picture. Later I turned around and saw him laying down on the ice with his arm
in a crevasse and had a bad feeling. My phone had slipped out of his pocket
down a crevasse only as wide as his arm and who knows how deep. The phone was
balancing on an edge, threatening to tip and slide further down. I seriously
thought the guide was going to cry. He was saying it’s never happened to him
before and he was calling to see if the “the claw” was on the glacier and could
it be helicoptered up. After being face down in the ice with his arm stuck in
the crack he was able to use his hand to melt the ice enough to finally reach
the phone. It was a scary several minutes and after that I decided I didn’t
care enough to get the photo.
Aside from the phone drama which was funny as soon as he
retrieved it, it was a great experience. Was certainly overheating in the 3
layers they told us to wear but oh well. We really lucked out with the weather
since the excursion is something that is cancelled about 1/3 of the time.
Afterwards it was several hours drive up and over mountains
to Queenstown! This was the city I was most excited for, known as the adventure
capital. I only wish we could have fit more in. Of course, finished off this
evening with amazing food.
We started out Thursday with some canyoning. We really
lucked out that we were the only people signed up so it was just us and the
guide. This made things more quickly and smoothly since I like to think Bill
and I are pretty competent people and generally in shape, injuries aside. Plus,
we already had some rope work experience the previous week in the caves. We
essentially started at the top of a canyon and worked our way down. We either
abseiled, slide down rocks, climbed rocks or jumped into water. The water was
freeeeezing! My feet were numb within minutes of landing in the first pool of water.
I knew early on that canyoning probably wasn’t the best
idea as things were hurting. At one point, I stepped forward to reach for one
of the rope bags and my foot slipped kind of putting me into a forward split.
The pain in my groin become horrible. After that I was limping badly, simply
trying to make it to the end, which luckily was very close. Only bad part was
after we got to the bottom of the canyon, we had to hike our way back up to get
to the vehicle. Every time I think about that moment I cringe thinking
stressssss fracture. Categorize that as things I did to make the crash
situation much worse. But canyoning in general was a lot of fun. I just wish I
hadn’t been miserable in pain at the end.
After we were dropped back in Queenstown downtown, we had
a relaxing lunch outside and then I managed to find an ice cream place.
Naturally I got two big scoops and enjoyed the outdoors while listening to
people play music.
Then it was time to cross off an item on my bucket list. For
many, many years I have wanted to do bungy jumping. My mom and I always talked
about doing it off the bridge in NZ where it all started. There are higher
jumps in NZ but I really wanted to do it off the bridge as we always talked
about. I told Bill it was up to him if he wanted to do it as well and he
couldn’t be out done by his wife so he joined. We were weighed 3 times, weight
written on our hand and a piece of paper to hand to the guys. It made me feel
safe. There was an option to actually dip into the water which I was going to
pick but they had already started setting up the other rope so no water for me.
People asked a lot… how was bungy jumping?! Not sure how
to explain it other than an adrenaline rush starting from standing on that edge
until I made it back on my two feet. It was actually more of a rush than sky
diving which seems opposite of what I expected. There was obviously the initial
fall but then several bounces up and down. And lots of spinning until I got a
hold of the stick the boat held out for me. I was feeling dizzy by the time I
got in the raft. Apparently, my racing, adrenaline drugged brain was convinced
I was going to slip out unless I tensed my feet and that somehow hurt my one
calf. Sigh.. so much limping. I didn’t scream at all. I was just wide eyed
taking it all in as I plummeted towards the water. I watched Bill jump from down
below and then we headed back to the hotel to clean up for dinner.
For dinner, we took the Skyline Gondala up on top of a
mountain. We took in the view of Queenstown as the sunset before enjoying a
buffet dinner. Sooooo yum. Once again, I severely over ate but I had to try it
all and second helpings of several things. The food in New Zealand was really
good. It was all very fresh tasting. It was interesting how chicken would cost
as much as a nice cut of meat. That meant I ate a lot of good meat on the trip.
Friday, we were mostly away from Queenstown. And I’m
getting sick of typing so this will be more condensed (thank goodness, I know) with a ton of pictures.
After the sun came up we took a soda can sized prop jet to Milford Sounds. The
flight was gorgeous seeing all the mountains, little lakes nuzzled in between
them and rivers. Then we took a “cruise” through the Milford Sounds. Once
again, very gorgeous views. Even got to see more seals! Then it was back in the
soda can to fly to Glenorchy.
This was probably my favorite part of the day. You see in
the above picture the wispy river running in the rocks? We went on a river jet
boat in that water which only needs to be in a few inches of water. That meant
often we were scraping the boat bottom on the river rocks which was apparently
fine. It was very fast driving and we got to do 360 degree quick turns. At times,
I was convinced he was going to go straight into a tree or on the river bed but
he was great at steering. Lots of fun and awesome views. On the drive back to
Queenstown we made a quick stop at a place that lots of movie scenes were
filmed like Lord of the Rings and Logan.
That pretty much wraps up the trip! Unfortunately, the
last real day of vacation we had pouring rain. Overall, I can’t complain
because we were incredible lucky the whole trip but it sucked to end the trip
that way. It essentially turned into a long travel day from Queenstown to
Christchurch. The original plan was to stop at Mount Cook to do a few hours of
hiking and it was the whole reason we were flying out of Christchurch instead
of Queenstown (and because it was cheaper). But we didn’t really feel like
hiking in the pouring rain, especially since I was in pain and it was foggy
enough we couldn’t even see the mountain when were close. So that about covers
the whole trip! Rest of it was traveling and enjoying the last few over
indulgent meals and drinking too many lattes.
