girl gone kiwi.: I wanted the whole world or nothing- Charles Bukowski

I’ve been putting this post off for almost two weeks now because I didn’t want to have to write down all the goings-ons of the previous three weeks. Look where that’s left me, with five weeks of happenings to update you on. Well, well, well, where to begin? Alright, well in my last post I had just gotten back from Aussie and Castlepoint (seems so long ago!). Since then I’ve had three weeks of constant adventure with my NZ family and two weeks of horrible, miserable, tantalizing, rigorous, life-consuming (you get the idea) schoolwork.

It all started the Friday of Easter break (known as Fall break here, weird.) Nicole, Taylor and I headed northbound to the Bay of Islands, for some sun and relaxation. The travel day was full of CD mixes, country sights, and copious amounts of baking powder-less cookies. The next few days were spent wandering around the sleepy town of Paihia, a really beautiful place that sort of shuts down in the fall/winter (we didn’t know..) Anyway, it was still a fun few days filled with crime-ridden waterfalls, nomadic tendencies, treacherous, steep, one-lane roads, and the stressful card game, ‘slaps’.

On Monday we boarded an overnight cruise called ‘The Rock’. This was the best part of my time at Bay of Islands. We had so much fun fishing, night kayaking, night swimming, snorkelling, hiking, and trying the local seafood delicacies. Not to mention The Rock’s crew was completely accommodating, friendly and awesome. We also befriended a lovely family from Germany, a couple from Georgia, and some friends from England. By the end of our 22-hr cruise around the Bay of Islands we were so sad to leave our new friends but more adventures were waiting to be had.

The three amigos headed to Auckland for the night before our flight to Queenstown. Not much happened here, we meandered a cute part of Auckland (who knew?!.. kidding, kind of), got 100lbs of various types of fries and stayed at the best hostel ever with the best bathrooms (Pentlands, it you’re wondering). The next day we set out for the airport, for some reason I was on a different flight from Nic and Tay, so that was weird.. Rou picked us up in Queenstown and we began the two weeklong battle fitting everything into Bernd (his little blue car).

Queenstown is magnificent, one of my favorite places in New Zealand. We met up with some AustraLearn buddies, enjoyed the infamous Fergburgers, explored the Milford Sound, oh yeah and I went skydiving! It was the best, most exhilarating, peaceful thing I’ve ever experience. I’m hooked; I may have found a new calling in skydiving photography (sorry mum!).

Nicole and Taylor (the packing experts) packed up Bernd on Saturday morning and we headed to the beautiful, Wanaka. We spent most of the day wandering around town and the girls and I spent the afternoon at Puzzling World. Rou forgot about us so we had to walk back to town where we ran into some girls from Massey—what a small world! That night we spent the night playing the international travellers card game ‘shithead’ with a bunch of fun people from the hostel. Nicole and Taylor spent the night living thug life in the car. At one point Taylor remarked, “This is the best hostel I didn’t have to pay for!”

On Easter Sunday we set out on a little tramp in search of waterfalls around Lake Wanaka. We were told it was only going to take about 40 minutes. Well, anyway we must’ve taken a wrong turn or something because we ended up walking for an hour and a half then giving up and turning back. Oh well, beautiful sights were seen and a good time was had so no lost there. After our fail, we set out for the Franz Josef Glacier. There wasn’t much to do or eat there so we had an Easter meal of instant noodles and frozen vegetables (thug lifeeee).

The next morning Tay, Nic and I set out to conquer the Franz Josef. After gathering our hiking outfits and walking three km of riverbed, we were ready to begin the ascent. What struck me most about this colossal behemoth was how deceptive it really was. What looked like an easy 20-minute hike took hours. It was an awesome day and I’m definitely glad I got to do it. The next part of our journey was a little less fun and a lot more stressful. We left Franz Josef around 5:30 with high expectations of getting to Dill’s house in Motueka that night (a 6+ hour drive). We met up with one of Taylor’s friends from home for dinner in Hokitika. This would have been cool if I hadn’t locked the keys in the car (whoops). But honestly, who leaves the keys in the car and the car unlocked with all of our valuables in there?!?!! Rouven, that’s who. Anyway, I’ll be the bigger person and take the blame. He ended up breaking into this own car and the rest of the trip Nicole and Taylor’s foreheads were cold from not being able to close the window all the way… Lesson learned!

We finally pulled into Dill’s driveway after midnight. We quickly caught up, and went to bed exhausted. The next day we packed up and went camping. We hiked for about 2 hours to this tree house-like boulder. Spent the day and night roasting marshmallows, sausages, swapping stories, and debating political and ethical issues (that was kind of unexpected haha).

The next few days were spent being pampered by Dill’s lovely mum, Kath. She cooked and baked for us, we watched movies, played with cats, dogs, and ponies (finally!) and just enjoyed the feeling of being in a home. I also took a memorable trek on the beach with an ‘off the grid’, horseback-riding, ditty-singing character; Harmony Aquarius. It was nice to be back in the saddle, I couldn’t believe how sore I was for the next few days. After we said reluctant farewell to the Anderson household, which was one of my favorite parts of the trip.

Next we were off to Farewell Spit, the northernmost point of the South Island. Again, there wasn’t much to do here so we looked around and occupied ourselves with cards. We spent the next day exploring various beaches and caves. It’s the weirdest thing here, one minute you’ll be walking through a sheep field of rolling hills and the next you’ll be on the beach amongst vast sand dunes and boulders.

We were told that we missed the most beautiful drive in New Zealand by driving from Franz Josef to Motueka in the dark so we headed back down to further explore the West coast. We stayed the next few nights in Westport, yet another ghost town. We spent the next few days seeing the beautiful Pancake Rocks, Greymouth, and Arthur’s Pass.

Our trip was rapidly coming to an end and on Sunday we headed out early to Picton. It was yet another gorgeous drive through Marlborough and Blenheim, where we saw miles and miles of beautiful wineries. I chose the scenic route instead of the highway to Picton to catch the ferry (mistake, I didn’t know). Poor ol’ blue was struggling up, around and down steep mountain dirt roads. We spent the last day killing time in Picton then finally heading back to Welly on the 10 pm ferry.

Alright so fun’s over, back to reality. I’ve spent the last two weeks as an invalid trying to get all my assignments together and turned in. I guess it’s universal, professors ban together to make their students’ lives miserable by making everything due at the same time. I do like being back in Welly, I somewhat missed the constant sirens, traffic, and noise. Last weekend we went to watch the Hurricanes play rugby against the Blues. I didn’t have a clue what was going on but it was still fun. On Saturday we went to JOHN BUTLER TRIO!!!!! It was so good!!!! AHHHHH, can’t get over it! This past week has been used for catching up on more assignments, nothing noteworthy has happened yet. Cody and I walked around town wearing elephant masks to help promote some play, that's not unusual right? The weather has been crazy bipolar. Anywho, that’s all for now I’ll try not to be so neglectful next time.