New Zealand

The place where Lord of the Rings was filmed. That was our destination. Waking up at the crack of dawn to hop a bus to the airport with hopes of having a smoother trip than on our way to Sydney. Unfortunately our problems were a lot larger and more serious. After spending time checking in and heading down to security we were stopped by a rude security guard who said we had to throw out basically half of our carry on luggage. Luckily Colette and Leah were able to sweet talk there way into getting their bags checked on the plane for free. Now that may seem like a tiny problem but what happened once we landed in NZ was very serious. A student who was on our trip from us had problems with his bags as well but talked his way into getting them on the plane. When I saw him in the airport he was speaking with security so I felt bad that he had had such a tough time traveling. That was until I found out what a dumba** he was. According to our tour guide who spoke to the policemen escorting Pat out of customs, Pat had bought a bottle of Duty Free Vodka in the Gold Coast Airport, which was fine until he decided to open it on the plane and drink the entire 5th at 7:30 in the morning. He was so drunk that he was slurring his words and could hardly keep his eyes open. The whole group was so upset because no one knew the status of his return and kept us waiting for hours until we could leave. Our journey started in Christchurch and we were traveling across the south island to famous Queenstown over the next two days. 

Morning shots anyone?! (Aussies and Kiwis are nuts!)








Our first activity was to climb a glacier. We bundled up, and got equipment and hiked an hour up a mountain to get to where the Fox Glacier started. The change in temperature was dramatic and putting the spikes on our shoes and learning to walk in them the first time was a little of a challenge. We walked up the glacier and down into deep pits and through high iced walls, even slipped a few times.

Where we drank pure glacier water yumm...
(Tim, me, Colette, Leah, Matt, Will, Kayleigh, Katey, Vinny, Erica, Natalie)

   


Just casually hanging off the side of the mountain










We continued our drive to Queenstown with stopping alone the way to take in the beautiful sights.

A beautiful waterfall where our crazy driver decided to strip and jump in the water...along with a few other boys. They definitely regretted their decision when our driver dipped Justin's clothes in the water so he had nothing dry to change into.

The largest lake in New Zealand, they call it the sleeping giant. The water is so cold one can only survive for 20 minutes.
(Our driver almost died in that lake a year ago)

Our first night out in Queenstown where our tour guide Matt knew all the bartenders because not only was he our tour guide but he owns the lodge we were staying at.









It was pretty daring to go out that night because bright and early in the morning the group was going bungee jumping. I however had no plans to do so, so I was prepared to take pictures of everyone jumping off the edge. Unfortunately the weather wasn't great, it was rainy and very cold which made it hard to stand out there for hours watching people go but people said it helped with their nerves.

Tim was the first and took it like a man, running off the plat form and doing a superman dive off.

The German girl Mina did a handstand on the edge of the plat form and fell off it...one of the guys Dwight even did a back flip off!

This is about as close as i got to bungee jumping, but i will say i thought a lot about doing it the rest of the trip it actually looked fun....at least a lot more fun that the Nimbus one the boys did over the canyon.







The next activity was the luge. I was very disappointed to find out that it was on cement instead of ice but it still looked fun.

Unfortunately the chair lift stopped and we weren't able to do it that day but we did come back on our day off and it was a lot of fun, especially racing with all the boys.
That night was the bar crawl, 30 dollars to entry to bars and a shot at every door, sounds great in theory, but each bar was tiny, only consisted of the people on the crawl and was just overall not fun. We did run into the guys who were there on their own trip, not used to walking around NZ and running into people I know.

                      I'm a little tea pot!


Sunday was one of the best days of activities, and the worst to not bring a camera on, but I was not about to lose my camera to the NZ rapids. We started with Jetboating, which is a super fast speed boat that is driven on the rapids. You go so fast and the driver gets so close to the large rocks on the side you think your going to get hit or crash! We must have screamed a million times between having close calls and the driver pulling 360s with the boat. After that adrenaline rush we were suited up into wet suits, rain jackets and life jackets and boarded a helicopter which flew us up into the mountains and dropped us off at the top where the only was down was rafting. Ive been rafting 3 other times, but its never been the only way down the mountain, our guide told us it was a 2 day walk back to Queenstown. This was one of the best times i've had because my guide was not throwing me in the freezing water and we could relax in the boat occasionally.We did have 2 scares though, the first was through a class 5 rapid where Rachel fell out of the boat and got stuck underneath it for awhile, it was really scary because we couldn't find her. Luckily she was ok and quite the trooper. The second was going through a dark tunnel, I expected it to be short but it was extremely long and so dark i couldn't see my hand in front of my face. We made it out safely but once we were out our guide started blowing his whistle and jumped out of the boat. A bunch of the other guides ran to the tunnel to rescue someone that had fallen out of the boat in the tunnel and gotten wedged between the wall and the boat. He was ok and our friend Vinny some how managed to break his paddle into 3 pieces, he now has the top of the paddle as a souvenir.
Monday was our day to ourselves, some people did adrenaline activities but Colette Leah and I decided to spend our day exploring Queenstown which meant SHOPPING! Unfortunately none of it was for me, all xmas gifts for the family.

That night we left for a small town called Wanaka, basically a stopping point on our journey back to ChristChurch. We only spent the night but there were several other tours staying at the hostel as well so it turned out to be a pretty good night filled filled with pole dancing competitions, really bad karaoke and musical chairs...and a few boys decided to take a drunken swim in the freezing ass water.
The next day we arrived in Mount Cook where we explored the mountains and glaciers by boat.

Our last and final day in NZ was at a small family sheep farm! soooo adorable but the terrible thing was our homemade lunch which was amazing except they served us lamb and cow....can you say FRESH?

Officially one of the most amazing trips of my life and I cannot wait to back and explore all the other NZ islands!