Days 1-4 of Mid-Semester Break!

Me and the Fiords!

After 16 days, 15 nights, 9 cities, over 3000 kilometers, 4 showers, 2 laundry loads, 3 jars of peanut butter, 15 apples, 3 earplugs, 4 boxes of granola bars, 3 bus rides, 3 blisters, at least 12 hikes, 7 campsites, 19 baby wipes (yes, baby wipes), 828 pictures, and a million memories… I’m back in my cozy room in Hamilton!

Just for the record, I am overwhelmingly overwhelmed by the thought of reporting back all that has happened the past 2 weeks.  Of course I am going to attempt to explain as much as I can, but my words and even my pictures will not do justice to how amazing the last 16 days were.  Just a warning.  Here it goes…

I decided to split it up into a few posts for time’s sake, just fyi.

Day 1 (Hamilton-->Christchurch-->Dunedin):

Megan (from Oregon), Kelsey (from Pennsylvania), Nate (also from Pennsylvania), and I took the NakedBus to the Auckland airport.  Being American, we planned to get there at least 2 hours in advance, but little did we know there were only 2 domestic gates.  Luckily I brought a book and found some computer stand with free internet (I didn’t know the word free was in NZ’s vocab).  I absolutely love everything about flying, minus the seats and seatbelts on the planes that are full of germs, so I was super excited!  It was so interesting to see NZ from above, especially when we got to Christchurch.  Out one window were the alps covered in snow and out the other window was the east coast of the south island.  How crazy is that?!

yes, this is real.

A Jucy van picked us up from the airport and took us to their Jucy-land the pick up our van.  The guy who dealt with us, who was really sarcastic and made me feel really stupid, suggested we rent snow chains just in case we run into snow in the more southern areas.  After he showed us how to put them on, I asked a few questions for clarification and he got sassy.  Excuse me sir, sorry I’m from GEORGIA and don’t know how to work SNOW CHAINS (don't worry, we didn't need them).  Anyway, I started off driving and we were headed to Dunedin!  There is literally ONE highway from ChCh to Dunedin, so no worries about getting lost!  We pulled into Katharine’s (a friend from Furman) flat around 9:30, hung out a bit, and then crashed.

Day 2 (Dunedin):

We got up on Sunday and headed straight to the Dunedin Train Station with Katharine.  This building was really neat!  If only the train actually went somewhere other than on a scenic tour…  Katharine left for church and the 4 of us walked out to Baldwin Street aka the steepest street in the world.  We walked up it (phew!) and then back down.  I felt really out of shape as there were people running and biking up it, slowly though… but still!  Next, we took the Jucy van out to the Otago Peninsula.  This drive was gorgeous!  I was driving again and it was super scary as the edge of the road was literally a cliff into the water.  Not such a great feeling for someone who is used to driving on the other side of the road.  No sweat though, we made it to the point and back!  We took the mountain road back, but that was still cliffs through the rolling hills, sheesh. Scary business right there. 

Katharine and I outside the train station

After some cheap sushi and ice cream and a tour of campus, we called it a night again in Dunedin.  It was so fun and refreshing to spend time catching up with Katharine and I am SO thankful that we got to stay with her!  I loved seeing where she is and get a glimpse of what her experience is like.  We spent a lot of time talking and sort of broke down our individual situations.  It is so comforting that she seems to be loving where she is and that I am loving where I am, although we are at 2 totally different places.  Just goes to show that the Lord really knows what He’s doing when he puts us in certain places.  Dunedin and Hamilton are VERY different cities, but both seem to offer what each of us enjoys and desires to take away from this whole experience.  Ok back to the trip…

Day 3 (Dunedin-->Te Anau):

The 4 of us Waikato-ers (they don’t have college mascots here, what the heck!) drove out around 7am and made our way across the bottom of the south island to Te Anau.  Let me just go ahead and say that the driving on the trip was one of my favorite parts.  As tired as I usually was, no way was I going to let my eyes close more than to blink.  The scenery we drove through was absolutely incredible.  Rolling hills, sheep, cows, pastures, deer, snow covered mountains, snow capped mountains… just picture all of that ahead, behind, to the left and the right.  This country is ridiculously beautiful.  Passing through the NZ capital of country music (wait what?), we got to Te Anau/Fiordland National Park, did a few short hikes, and then went to find our first campsite!  We took advantage of the Department of Conservation (DOC) campgrounds whenever we could, even though the amenities were minimal.  This campsite was on the shore of Lake Gunn and it was— surprise surprise— stunning.  This was probably my favorite campsite out of them all. The fiords were surrounding the lake and were the tallest mountains I’ve ever seen.  The snow capped tips of them cam out above the clouds.  It seriously could have been a movie scene, just like this whole country.  I ate dinner (aka pb&j with an apple & pb), showered (aka wiped down with baby wipes), brushed my teeth (using my water bottle as a faucet), and washed my face (in Lake Gunn!), played some cards, journaled, and headed to bed!  The bathroom was grosser than using good old nature, so that’s what it came down to. 

This hike was covered in snow!

By the end of day 3 I was feeling VERY granola (aka outdoorsy).  My tennis shoes and boots had become slippers, my sleeping bag was now my changing room, my jacket was my pillow, my headlamp was permanently attached to my forehead by 6:30pm, my water bottle now served as a faucet, leaves were now toilet paper (sorry if that was too much info), cell phones were useless, and my bed was made of fold out planks in a campervan.  Hello nature!  Loving life and it’s only day 3!

Kelsey, me, and Megan in the campervan

Day 4 (Te Anau):

Well, I thought the campervan was going to be absolutely freezing at night, but I was pleasantly surprised that I actually woke up warmer than I did the night before in Katharine’s flat.  We left around 9am for out first hike, the Hidden Falls track.  It was a 5 hour return of walking through bush and rocks, over creeks and bridges.  We ate lunch at the turn around.  We took a pit stop at some rocks on the shore of a big creek and while we were sitting there a helicopter carrying a bridge landed about 100 yards away!  Some guys got out and the outgoing NZ version of me went to talk to them.  Apparently they were just bringing the bridge in to replace another one.  I almost asked if we could have a helicopter ride, but I thought that would be aggressive of me.  I’m still kind of mad at myself for not asking though… oh well.

When we got back to the campsite, we made friends (of course) with the 3 50-ish year old couples that had showed up.  They were celebrating one of the guys birthdays by campervan-ing around the south island… with a little more intense camper than ours.  They had 3 separate campers, dang!  Hello retirement money, or I guess that would be goodbye!  Anyway, they came over to check out our Jucy set up and felt so bad for us that they gave us some instant noodles.  Thanks generous middle-aged fellow campers!  I washed my face in the lake, brushed my teeth, babywiped, and headed to bed!  Had to go a little farther in the woods to go to the bathroom since the classy campers had joined us…

More to come soon!