Queenstown: Our Final Venture

After tens of hours in rental cars, thousands of kilometers on beautiful roads, and countless nights of not being able to feel my toes, we finally reached Queenstown. In this city you can do any extreme sport you can think of: skydive, paraglide, snowboard, or the all famous Bungy Jump. We did none of these upon landing in this amazing city...instead we got in the car and drove for almost 5 hours all the way out to Milford Sound and Mitre Point, the Number 1 thing all Kiwis must do. Mitre Point is a mountain out in the middle of Milford Sound and it is nearly always covered by clouds or rain. If you get to see it on a sunny day then you are quite lucky because it rains 6,700 mm a year here.

Mitre Point...covered in clouds as always. 

I know I look special... but in my defense, it is about 40 degrees, windy as could be, raining, and I think I may be wearing 4 shirts...

 The road to Mitre Point may well be one of the coolest we ever took. It is 110 Kilometers from the nearest town one way which means you better fill up your tank before you even think of making the drive. In order to get there you must drive through the Rainforests of Fiordland National Park and then into the dark depths of Homer Tunnel. The tunnel is straight through a mountain. It was opened in 1954 and for quite a while it was the largest tunnel in the world. It is just over 1.25 km long and it doesn't have smooth walls like the tunnels we are used to in the States...you are driving straight through the rugged rock of the mountain.

I didn't take this picture...you aren't allowed to stop your car near the tunnel during any season except summer because there is a significant risk of avalanche...but this is the eastern portal of the Homer Tunnel.

We stayed in a pretty camp site that night and then visited Humboldt Falls the next day.

camp

Sometimes I wish that we could get closer to the amazing sites





The clouds cleared enough to see the top for less than five minutes!



Just about as soon as we left the Falls it started to rain...and it didn't stop until about 8 pm...We spent a long day in the tent while we played cards. We also got attacked by thousands of Blackflies which are kind enough to bite.

Blackflies that were on our porch...they didn't get into the tent but they did make it really hard to leave.

We spent our last full day in Queenstown where both of my travel buddies Bungy jumped. I didn't do it for a number of reasons, but I think the most valid is the fact that I like to blackout when I am upside down for more than a second or two...which would not be good if I were to hang that way for a couple of minutes. We visited another gold mining settlement too: Arrowtown. We spent our last night of camping in New Zealand at Lake Moke...my official favorite campground.

I decided I would live in this mountain later in life.

Words cannot express how cool it was to see the mountains perfectly reflected in the lake. It was a perfect end to my travels in New Zealand.

And finally a picture or two from the plane ride home:

The color of the water here is unreal.

A taste of the Southern Alps

A bit of the North Island (Including some Lord of The Rings!)

An evening flight to Wellington began our North Island adventure where we did lots of driving, slept in a different bed almost every night, saw lots of Lord of the Rings filming sites, and climbed some very epic trees. We landed in Wellington with no idea where we were really going and no clue which bus stop to use but we eventually made it to our first hostel. We spent two nights in this place and I wasn't so fond of it. It kind of felt like I was being locked in. We spent our first full day touring the Te Papa museum for the most part. It is a huge national museum with everything from Moas to art. We also visited the Weta Cave, a small film museum that did not meet our expectations at all...but did yield a nice picture or two.

The actor who played this Orc really was that big! The statue is on a stand that is about a foot high so if you drop him to a foot shorter you get a life-size version. He was nearly 7 feet tall and had a chest that really was that wide!

Just hanging out with Smeagle (the man at the museum gave me permission to touch :))

After a couple of rainy days in Wellington we walked the outskirts of the Shire and then moved on to Rivendell where we had a lovely lunch. After touring some of the scenery from the Elven City, we moved on to Mordor...which happened to be covered in snow...it was creepy all the same.



If you are a true LOTR fan you will be able to recognize this as the road that the Black Rider chases the hobbits down as they leave the Shire.



My favorite tree in Rivendell

Tawhai Falls

Mordor...well sort of. It would look much more realistic if there wasn't any snow.

While we were leaving Mordor we saw the best rainbow I have ever seen. It was a perfect arch with a connection in the middle and a secondary rainbow hovering to the side.
Our next hostel was a fun place called A+ Samarai Lodge in the tiny town of Turangi. There isn't much to about Turangi except that it is a town of few happenings bit many fun people. An hour up the road was Taupo, home of Huka Falls. While in Taupo we got to see a lot of amazing wildlife once again. We saw the elusive Blue Duck which has been the focus of several conservation projects and a lot of restoration. This was also where we saw hundreds of water plumes from surfacing hot springs.

Huka Falls, the most visited natural attraction in New Zealand (according to the sign in the carpark)

Next up: Rotorua where I did not take a single picture...the end...Rotorua may well be the most tourist oriented town in the North Island and that is probably why we didn't linger there very long. We soon moved on to Matamata. This is where Hobbiton is but we couldn't actually tour it because they have started the filming of the new movie. (By the way...to all of you that kept encouraging me to try for a part as a hobbit in The Hobbit you will be disappointed to know that I am 6 inches too tall to qualify...the casting call is for women that are 4'8" or less).

I didn't see any hobbits.

Our final destination was Auckland because what North Island trip would be complete without it? To be honest, I kind of hated most of Auckland...the city just doesn't hold a lot for me but we did get to watch the final showdown of a sheep shearing contest. We were probably the only three Americans in the crowd and we were by far the loudest people cheering. it was pretty cool.

On our last day in the North Island we did a little something for me. We went on six high-wire/tight-rope courses that were in the trees of a nearby forest. The highest  bits were 14 meters off the ground. I walked across a 3/4" thick metal cable 46 feet above the ground in the rain! Granted I did have two life cables attaching me to the trees, but it was really scary. There were some pretty intense obstacles too. It was kind of like doing a huge obstacle course that was between 8 and 14 meters off the ground complete with climbing nets, giant skateboards, swaying logs, and lots of zip-lines. It was one of the most challenging things I have ever done without a doubt. I am still sore after that one! My abs will never forgive me and there is a bruise and a scab from where I kindly punched a tree. Once we touched the ground again for the last time, we headed for the airport and flew home for a whole 10 hours before we flew off on our last adventure!

Glacial Glory

So I have kind of dropped the ball on this whole blog thing...In the last 17 days I have really only been home for about 4 of them. Crazy right? I have been doing crazy amounts of travelling so I will make 3 different posts about the 3 trips that I took recently. Firstly you all get to learn about the West Coast and the Glaciers!

On October 7 we set off for the Punakaiki Pancake rocks and Blowholes. This is a cool area where there are stacks of stone that is in sheets. Scientists cannot fully explain why the rocks do this.

From Punakaiki we scooted our way down to Hokitika, the Jade pub of New Zealand. We camped next to the beautiful Lake Matheson where we listened to a Morepork, New Zealands only Native owl...their call really is "Mooore-pork Mooore-Pork". While in Hokitika I bought a Jade ring :) After a rainy day of shopping we moved on to Gillespies Beach which was an old gold mining settlement.



Part of an abandoned bucket dredge




Coolest sheep ever




















We stayed there for two night because it was in a great location to get to Fox Glacier and to see Mount Cook; NewZealand's highest mountain.

The Twin Peaks: Mount Tasman and Mount Cook

We did a nice hike to Fox Glacier where we got to see it from above and then we walked to 200 meters from the ice face. You cannot get any closer than this unless you pay big bucks for a guide and the proper gear. It was here that we saw our first Kea, the only Alpine parrot in the world!

Coolest person in the world



Fox Glacier



Kea

We finished the trip with a hike through a pitch black glow-worm cave that had a river running through it. Let me tell you, that water was cold! And the cave was about 3/4 of a km long. Once you got to the end you were forced to turn back right away because there was no where to go except back so in total I walked a km and a half through that creek. Our final adventure for the trip was a drive up a super steep hill that our rental car couldn't get going more than 25 kmph. And thus concludes out tour of the West Coast.