I hope you're comfortable where you are sitting because this could be a long post :) Surely I won't be able to write about everything we did over break, but I will do my best to hit the high points! My jaw dropped more than once on this trip. Even as I'm sitting here thinking about my trip, it's hard for me to even believe that I've been experiencing all these awesome things and visiting different places in the world.
I guess I'll just start at the beginning... Mariel and I flew into Sydney where here friend Jillian met us at the airport. We spent the afternoon walking to the Opera House where we had a great view of the harbor bridge and we also walked to the botanical gardens. We stayed the night at Jillian's friend Emma's apartment. She made us a roast lamb dinner that was delicious. The next day we took the ferry to the zoo and caught an early afternoon train up to New Castle where Jillian goes to school.
We stayed there for the remainder of the week. We went to trivia night at a local Chinese food restaurant/bar, spent an afternoon at the beach, went to a wildlife preserve, and walked around Jillian's campus. The afternoon we went to the beach, we actually ended up having quite an adventure! Mariel's cell phone ran out of credit and we couldn't find a pay phone that worked so we had no way of contacting Jillian (who was supposed to meet up with us after she was finished with her day at school) We ended up catching a bus ( longest ride ever) back near campus and walked the rest of the way to her house. When we go there we found out that Jillian had gone out looking for us.. Her roommate called her and in the end we all made it home safely. We were pretty proud of ourselves for making it back in one piece.. a little cold, but we made it!
Not only did we see kangaroos, we bought some kangaroo meat from the grocery store and ate it on pizza :) It tasted kind of like beef. In fear of getting sick, I of course cooked mine til it was basically black, but it was still delicious! We made homemade dough and had a fun night making the pizzas all together.
We spent our last day back in Sydney. We paid 7 bucks to store our luggage and decided to do a 'hop on hop off' bus tour. For 35 Australian dollars we were able to tour the whole city and get on an off wherever we wanted. A bus comes to each stop every 10-15 minutes, so it was a great way for us to see what we wanted in the short amount of time we had. We went to the Wildlife world where we were able to actually pet koala bears and get our picture with them :) They're not as soft as they look. It was still an experience tho! We also went to a place called Pancakes on the Rocks. This was recommended to us by our friend from Geneva who studied there last semester. We had a delicious lunch of the best pancakes!! I of course, got the chocolate lovers one..complete with ice cream! We had an absolutely gorgeous day to tour around the city, and fabulous weather all week! We had an evening flight out of Sydney to Christchurch where we met up with the rest of our friends.
We got to our hostel pretty late that night and were up early the next morning to catch our shuttle bus to where we'd be picked up by the STRAY bus that we traveled on for the remainder of the week. The ride everywhere was simply gorgeous! There was always things to look at and see and the land is just breathtaking down there! All of my photos just don't do it justice. The first day consisted of traveling and we stayed in a backpackers near the Franz Josef glacier for 2 nights. The second full day of our trip, we spent 8.5 hours hiking the glacier. Only guided tours are allowed on the glacier, and I can honestly say this was one of the coolest experiences of my life so far. I feel like I keep saying that, but this is something you can't experience everyday!
We arrived at the glacier guide place at 8am. We were suited up in boots, dry coats and bum bags with our crampons (fanny packs- but you're not allowed to call them that here) We dressed in plenty of layers that we actually didn't end up needing- it was an absolutely perfect day for hiking! When i pictured a glacier, I didn't exactly have the right image in my mind. I was picturing a giant flat floating piece of ice.. this is not the case! This was one of the most challenging hikes I've ever been on, but the most rewarding, and I would definitely do it again. It's hard to describe in words, so you'll have to just flip through all my pictures and see for yourselves! By the end of the hike, I had only fallen and slid down one "wave" and I had 2 blisters from the hiking boots they gave us, but that was the worst of the injuries. We were all COMPLETELY exhausted and we spent the next 2 days being sore and achy- but again, well worth it!!
The next morning, we got on the bus again and traveled to Makarora. This is a SMALL town. And by small I mean small. Population = less than 70 people. We went to the bar that night because there was supposed to be karaoke, however, being the nerds that we are, we had one drink and went back to our little triangle shaped hostel house and went to bed... the karaoke ended up starting way later than we thought and we we had to be up early the next morning for out jet boat ride down some rivers! This was quite the experience! We were frozen from the start, and got sprayed lots of times from doing 360s and it actually started to rain on our trip back to the "dock" -- it was actually anchored to the edge of the river by a big old tractor! We had lots of fun gliding along at top speeds and the boat was less than 6 inches in the water while moving!
Right when we got back from this the bus was again leaving to travel to Queenstown! We spent the whole day riding in the bus but we made plenty of stops for breakfast, lunch and photo opportunities! I should tell you a little bit about our bus driver, Tyke. He was awesome! He made the trip such a blast. He was actually in the army not too long ago and learned to drive a bus there. He took a job with STRAY and he tours the country full time: arranging hostiles and guiding trips on the north and the south island! He took very good care of us and kept us laughing! We made one stop that we were particularly excited about.. a waterfall used in the 2nd LOTR movie.
We made it to Queenstown and went right to book our adventures for the next 2 days! We were going to take a LOTR tour, however it didn't fit into the time we had put aside to go. In the morning we got on a bus, drove for 40 minutes and reached our destination. THE SECOND HIGHEST BUNGY JUMP IN THE WORLD. THE NEVIS BUNGY JUMP!! We all booked our NON REFUNDABLE tickets the day before, so there was no backing out! We were all pretty excited, but obviously terrified! I was the lucky one who had to jump first!! I'm kind of glad though! Here's the link to the video of me jumping. I'll just add that I was nervous deep down, but didn't want to show it so apparently it came out in the form of dancing..hahaha. It was an experience of a lifetime and I would do it again in a heartbeat!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2024404&id=151101508&saved#/profile.php?id=151101508&v=app_2392950137&ref=profile
After this we went back to town and went to Fergberger: one of THE best burgers I've ever had- but not better than yours, Daddy-o! It probably tasted so good because we were so hungry. None of us ate anything that morning for fear of getting sick before bungy jumping! After that we went back to the hostel and got ready to ride the gondola up the mountain to ride a luge. This brought us back to our youths but it was still great fun! We had 6 rides with our tickets so we spent a good couple of hours riding down in the luges and riding back up the ski lift! It was a fun day!
The next day we spent 5 hours on an Eco Bus tour that took us to the Milford Sound. The weather was pretty nasty, but it was still a beautiful place to visit; absolutely breathtaking! We had some rough waters and a few of us felt a little sick-- then we got back on the bus for a 4 hour ride back to Queenstown and I did get sick. The roads were windy and narrow and I was miserable. I still felt sick the next morning and got sick again as we headed out of Queenstown back to Christchurch. At our first stop i got a bottle of sprite and drank it with some tylenol pm- i then slept in the fetal position on the bus for the next 6 hours. I did feel better once we reached our hostel.
The bar attached to the hostel we stayed at just happened to be having a free pig roast that night so we got a free meal! It was delicious and reminded me of home :) We went to bed early and caught our shuttle to the airport in the morning and were back in Auckland in the afternoon! We had SUCH a great trip- no major problems, and were blessed with great weather and safe travels! This description of my trip doesn't do it justice, but I hope the pictures help! Here's the links to all my pictures that I've put up on facebook. I hope they work so let me know if they don't!
65 Days left. So much yet to do!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2024404&id=151101508&l=5f45a7fada
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2024405&id=151101508&l=66157a0012
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2024424&id=151101508&l=fc6c60a4c4
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment