Wow – I can’t believe it’s been so long since I’ve done a blog post. I meant to do one much sooner, but you know how the time just seems to slip away from you… I’ve spent the last 3 weeks traveling around New Zealand and I’ve really enjoyed it. However, I have to get this complaint out of the way early – the weather here is terrible! It rains and pours down rain and it’s windy all the time. This is supposed to be their nicest month of the year, yet the warmest day here is the same temperature of a cold day in Denver during the summer. I wore my one pair of jeans for nearly the whole 3 weeks I was here (I washed them, I promise!), which was very disappointing. However, if I look past the weather, I had an incredible time.
First and foremost, my brother Zach was here with me for the first 2 weeks. He came with me when I left the US in February. We flew through Sydney and spent a day there seeing the sights. We were even able to catch up with a few of my friends and have a night out on the town. Definitely glad Zach at least got to see a glance of Australia! We arrived in Christchurch and were picked up by my friend Angela, who I met in China. She took us for a spin around the Christchurch area, to see the devastation from the earthquakes. It is amazing how much there is still damaged. You had houses hanging off the side of mountains and entire neighborhoods that have been marked for demolition. It is nearly impossible to drive around the city, as many buildings are structurally unsound and they can’t have people near them in case there is another earthquake and they fall down. I just can’t believe how much work there is still do to do even get rid of all the damaged buildings. By the time the rebuild the city, I imagine it will take them years and who knows how much money it will take. It is sad to see how much damage can be done in just a matter of seconds.
After a lovely breakfast in Sumner, we went to pick up our sweet campervan. When I say sweet, you should know I mean really old and crappy! We rented with a company called Go Wild Campervan Rentals, and I cannot sway you away from them strongly enough. We were late in picking up the van and I was lectured for nearly 20 minutes. He was telling me how inconsiderate and rude and immature I am – who does he think he is, my father? I have rented literally hundreds of cars for work and never once was I lectured for being late. When you are working in an industry where flights are delayed all the time, you have to be flexible when travel plans change. Anyhow, back to the campervan. We knew coming into it that the van was about 20 years old, which was a concession I was willing to make to get a lower rate. However, there were some fun problems that we got to discover as we went along – the lights didn’t work, you couldn’t lock the doors if the windows were down at all and it was “recommended” that we not drink the water as it might not be safe….so awesome! It worked fine for us as it was just a place to sleep, but it did give us a new adventure every day. And don’t even get me started on trying to shift the tiny little engine while driving up and down the hills on the wrong side of the mountain – as I said, a new adventure every day!
I was really excited that Zach decided to do New Zealand with me. I had been told by many people that the best way to do it was to drive yourself, so you could see things at your own pace. If I was on my own I would not have been able to do that, so I was happy to have him along. He hasn’t traveled outside the US much before so this was a great opportunity for him to do it – NZ is just different enough to be fun, but not scary in any way. We chose NZ because it has lots of different outdoor activities, lots of ways to get out and do something new. He mentioned before he came that he really wanted to go cliff diving – so imagine my surprise when Angela suggested it on the first day! We went on these small back roads to a tiny rock pool that only the locals could know about. There were a couple of great ledges to dive off of, the tallest that we did probably being about 20 feet up. I wasn’t nervous, but still when you get up and stand on the edge preparing to jump, your heart starts to beat just a little bit faster.
After a couple days spent with Angela around Canterbury, Zach and I took off in the campervan. We stopped along the way to go to Puzzling World. It is a great place with lots of ways to confuse your senses, such as a room where water runs up hill or a puzzle with over 10,000 possible solutions, yet it took an average of 30 minutes to find just one of them. Best of all, they had a huge maze outside. You had to find your way to all four corners and then back again, which sounds so easy, but let me be the first to tell you that it’s not! I can only imagine what it feels like to be a mouse, trying to get through the maze to the piece of cheese at the end.
Next we made our way to Queenstown, the adventure capital of New Zealand. We spent our first day wandering around town, figuring out exactly what activities we wanted to do. Zach really wanted to do mountain biking, so he did that one morning and I just slept in and relaxed. We went on a pub crawl that evening, which was really cool. My favorite was a bar called Minus 5, which as the name implies, is a bar that is freezing inside. They give you a jacket and gloves and boots to go in, and all the drinks are served in ice “cups”. Below is one of Zach’s favorite photos of the trip – we were trying to get a nice photo for my mom, and up walks this really annoying, extremely drunk girl. She got all cozy up next to Zach and smiled at the camera – if only she realized exactly what he thought of her!
The next day we did an activity called river surfing. To sum it up, they give you a boogie board and a helmet and throw you in the river. I downloaded the photo below so you can get the idea, but obviously it was impossible for us to get a photo of ourselves. It was pouring down rain that day so they chose the “easier” river – we were only going through Class III rapids! They would never, ever let us do this kind of activity in the US no matter how many different legal liability waivers we signed, so thank goodness that NZ doesn’t seem to care. It was wild – the water was absolutely freezing (maybe 50F or 10C) so we were in head to toe wetsuits, and the water was a chocolate brown due to how fast it was going. However, once you jumped in you forgot all those things and just had a great time. You go really quickly down the river when you’re pulled by the rapids and it’s a nice chill ride when you’re in a flat section. I lost my boogie board on one of the rapids and that scared me for a second – going through with absolutely nothing at all to hold on to! It was absolutely incredible, but I don’t know how I will ever be able to go white water rafting again – it will just seem to safe J
Wow, after writing for a while now, I realize I have a lot more to say about New Zealand! In an effort not to bore you, I’ll just finish this for now and do another post on NZ later….
First and foremost, my brother Zach was here with me for the first 2 weeks. He came with me when I left the US in February. We flew through Sydney and spent a day there seeing the sights. We were even able to catch up with a few of my friends and have a night out on the town. Definitely glad Zach at least got to see a glance of Australia! We arrived in Christchurch and were picked up by my friend Angela, who I met in China. She took us for a spin around the Christchurch area, to see the devastation from the earthquakes. It is amazing how much there is still damaged. You had houses hanging off the side of mountains and entire neighborhoods that have been marked for demolition. It is nearly impossible to drive around the city, as many buildings are structurally unsound and they can’t have people near them in case there is another earthquake and they fall down. I just can’t believe how much work there is still do to do even get rid of all the damaged buildings. By the time the rebuild the city, I imagine it will take them years and who knows how much money it will take. It is sad to see how much damage can be done in just a matter of seconds.
After a lovely breakfast in Sumner, we went to pick up our sweet campervan. When I say sweet, you should know I mean really old and crappy! We rented with a company called Go Wild Campervan Rentals, and I cannot sway you away from them strongly enough. We were late in picking up the van and I was lectured for nearly 20 minutes. He was telling me how inconsiderate and rude and immature I am – who does he think he is, my father? I have rented literally hundreds of cars for work and never once was I lectured for being late. When you are working in an industry where flights are delayed all the time, you have to be flexible when travel plans change. Anyhow, back to the campervan. We knew coming into it that the van was about 20 years old, which was a concession I was willing to make to get a lower rate. However, there were some fun problems that we got to discover as we went along – the lights didn’t work, you couldn’t lock the doors if the windows were down at all and it was “recommended” that we not drink the water as it might not be safe….so awesome! It worked fine for us as it was just a place to sleep, but it did give us a new adventure every day. And don’t even get me started on trying to shift the tiny little engine while driving up and down the hills on the wrong side of the mountain – as I said, a new adventure every day!
I was really excited that Zach decided to do New Zealand with me. I had been told by many people that the best way to do it was to drive yourself, so you could see things at your own pace. If I was on my own I would not have been able to do that, so I was happy to have him along. He hasn’t traveled outside the US much before so this was a great opportunity for him to do it – NZ is just different enough to be fun, but not scary in any way. We chose NZ because it has lots of different outdoor activities, lots of ways to get out and do something new. He mentioned before he came that he really wanted to go cliff diving – so imagine my surprise when Angela suggested it on the first day! We went on these small back roads to a tiny rock pool that only the locals could know about. There were a couple of great ledges to dive off of, the tallest that we did probably being about 20 feet up. I wasn’t nervous, but still when you get up and stand on the edge preparing to jump, your heart starts to beat just a little bit faster.
After a couple days spent with Angela around Canterbury, Zach and I took off in the campervan. We stopped along the way to go to Puzzling World. It is a great place with lots of ways to confuse your senses, such as a room where water runs up hill or a puzzle with over 10,000 possible solutions, yet it took an average of 30 minutes to find just one of them. Best of all, they had a huge maze outside. You had to find your way to all four corners and then back again, which sounds so easy, but let me be the first to tell you that it’s not! I can only imagine what it feels like to be a mouse, trying to get through the maze to the piece of cheese at the end.
Next we made our way to Queenstown, the adventure capital of New Zealand. We spent our first day wandering around town, figuring out exactly what activities we wanted to do. Zach really wanted to do mountain biking, so he did that one morning and I just slept in and relaxed. We went on a pub crawl that evening, which was really cool. My favorite was a bar called Minus 5, which as the name implies, is a bar that is freezing inside. They give you a jacket and gloves and boots to go in, and all the drinks are served in ice “cups”. Below is one of Zach’s favorite photos of the trip – we were trying to get a nice photo for my mom, and up walks this really annoying, extremely drunk girl. She got all cozy up next to Zach and smiled at the camera – if only she realized exactly what he thought of her!
The next day we did an activity called river surfing. To sum it up, they give you a boogie board and a helmet and throw you in the river. I downloaded the photo below so you can get the idea, but obviously it was impossible for us to get a photo of ourselves. It was pouring down rain that day so they chose the “easier” river – we were only going through Class III rapids! They would never, ever let us do this kind of activity in the US no matter how many different legal liability waivers we signed, so thank goodness that NZ doesn’t seem to care. It was wild – the water was absolutely freezing (maybe 50F or 10C) so we were in head to toe wetsuits, and the water was a chocolate brown due to how fast it was going. However, once you jumped in you forgot all those things and just had a great time. You go really quickly down the river when you’re pulled by the rapids and it’s a nice chill ride when you’re in a flat section. I lost my boogie board on one of the rapids and that scared me for a second – going through with absolutely nothing at all to hold on to! It was absolutely incredible, but I don’t know how I will ever be able to go white water rafting again – it will just seem to safe J
Wow, after writing for a while now, I realize I have a lot more to say about New Zealand! In an effort not to bore you, I’ll just finish this for now and do another post on NZ later….
