kiwitown-blog1

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June 15th ~ Dunedin

Just for reference, this picture is from my bedroom window. Dunedin sunsets are pretty, but she suuure is known for her sunrises.

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June 9th ~ the Catlins

The Catlins is a region at the south eastern tip of the south island of New Zealand that has a reputation of being pretty much stunning. I’d still have yet to have gone there with only a few weeks left in the semester since it was only about an hour and a half drive south of Dunedin and therefore thought I could pretty much go any time.

Getting into finals week (finals started Wed, the 6th of June), I’d gotten pretty angsty to go, along with some other people, so two cars full of us (Brette, Seppi, Emily, Avi, Toast, Megan, Anna, Maddie, and I) headed down there for a day trip that weekend. My car with Emily, Seppi and Brette went down earlier in the morning since at least I had wanted to get as much time as possible to explore given this was probably going to be my first and last opportunity to go this semester. The first obvious/iconic place we hit was Nugget Point (see selfie w nuggets), a piece of land that juts out with lots of smaller pieces of land scattered off the shore. Next was a short hike out to Jack’s Blowhole and then spent some time walking on the beach next to where we’d parked the car. We even spotted a seal coming in from and water and watched the big guy bumble up onto the beach, and we also stopped at Purakanui Falls, a pretty sick waterfall also a short hike away.

Our main attraction to go to the Catlins though was for some stargazing/hopeful aurora hunting, though we werent really in season for it unfortunately. The other car of people had driven down a couple hours later and had a picnic somewhere else before meeting us at Purakanui Bay after the sun had set. Most of us had brought sleeping bags (in addition to muuultiple layers of clothing) and we all squished onto a rock on the beach and spent a couple hours finding shooting stars and looking at the Milky Way. One of the infinite things that continues to make me fall in love with the country is its virtual lack of light pollution, especially in the south island. Its always crazy how much you can see in areas significantly less populated by humans.

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June 2nd ~ Queenstown

With classes over and finals starting the next week I was eager to get out somewhere with the free time that I had. A group of us (Megan, Maddie,Claude, Louis and I) headed to Queenstown for a fun 24 hours, leaving on Saturday morning and coming back Sunday afternoon (leaving us a couple days to start studying for exams, in which I *thought* my first one was on Wednesday - fun preview, I was not correct).

Queenstown is only about 3.5 hours from Dunedin, which at this point with the amount that we’ve been driving around this country is not that long. To get there we have to drive west, from Dunedin on the east coast, through a valley area, and west to the mountains on the western coast. About 2 hours into the drive we hit an area that all of a sudden was COVERED in thick ice frost. It was almost as if it had snowed because everything was so covered, but only a minute before nothing had been frosted over. The clouds also hung really low and everything was just very quiet. We described it as Narnia, but it was all very surreal. That whole scene lasted for maybe half an hour, and then once we started gaining elevation again towards the mountains it was gone.

Getting into Queenstown around midday we loaded up on snacks and then headed to the gondolas which can take you up a cliff face and gives an incredible view of Queenstown and the Remarkables, a mountain range next to it. The hike we were aiming to do, Ben Lommond, starts behind the lookout building at the top of the gondolas so we originally were planning to just pay the money to take them up so that it’d save us time and then we could get farther into the hike before daylight was an issue (the sun sets at like 5pm here now that it’s winter). However, getting there we decided to just do the hike up that covers the same distance up to the gondola lookout, and save the $40 round trip since the hike would only add around 45 minutes or so. So we hop n bopped up this freakin steeep hike (I had also done legs at the gym the last two days and my hamstrings were buuuurning, one of the harder hikes I’ve done and not entirely because of the trail itself but my legs just could not get me up). From there we continued on to Ben Lommond which was a rather modest hike along the part we did, but since it’s winter the path was completely snowed/iced over, which means coming down calls for some slips and tumbles (which very often occurred). Different strategies were used to try to combat this though everyone took the loss more than once, a couple of us chose the penguin walk, Louis chose quick steps (though I ended up giving him my gloves cause his hands got so cold from having to stabilize himself so many times). We also happened to catch the sunset on the way down which per usual was beaut-iful.

That weekend was also the Queens Birthday here in NZ (not Queen Elizabeth’s actual birthday but just apparently a standard day to celebrate the queen of England’s birthday as NZ is in the Commonwealth). To celebrate there was a light show in the Queenstown botanical garden which we checked out that night (though Megan, Maddie and I had just been to VIVID in Syndey the weekend before - muuuuch bigger scale and budget there). Definitely a different vibe at this festival, there were more nature based exhibits but a lot of them were still hard to compare to some of the stuff we’d seen the week before.

For our one night in Queenstown we scoped out the bars with drink deals during certain hours and planned our tour accordingly. A fun night considering the last time I’d been in Queenstown I’d left my phone and all my IDs in a bathroom on the way (and was lucky enough to pick it up on the way back) but that meant no bars for me. :( So I did get a chance to redeem myself.

The next morning was a pretty late wake up for the gang but I took a little walk around the water. You can definitely tell we’re starting to get into winter here cause only a few minutes outside can get ya shiverin. We had a bougie breakfast at the #1 breakfast place listed on tripadvisor (also happens to be a bar we went to the night before) called Yonder, would highly recommend.

We took a lightly different route back to Dunedin but passed through the valley region again, still covered in ice. We pulled off at an area with a lake and with the reflection and the stillness and the atmosphere is probably my favorite picture/area that I’ve seen while being here. Overall a perfect quick trip, good food, drink, friends, mountains, air, what else could there even be!!!

[kiwitown-blog1]

MAY 27th ~ Sydney, Australia

PART 2 OF SYDNEY ADVENTURES

Sunday was our last full day on Syndey before we flew back Monday morning to face the realities of class and assignments. One of the must dos we’d been told was to catch the ferry to Manly beach and spend some time walking around there. To start the day we got some bougie artsy breakfast (I got corn and salsa waffles with avocado for instance) and then paid the mere $2 or so for the boat.

Rolling into the town after we’d gotten off we just followed the crowd since we had no sense of direction and started noticing posters and street directions for ‘A Taste of Manly’ which was apparently going on that weekend on both Saturday and Sunday. They were still setting up when we walked through, but seemed to have a bunch of food and drink stalls and a few stages from what we could see. We ended up just headed straight through towards the beach at first, where we spent a couple hours laying out and Anna and Maddie rented some boards and went surfing (though they had to compete for wave space with the dozens of other aussies out there). I started getting antsy after a while as I do, because I’m not very good at just sitting somewhere for very long, and Megan and I headed into the festival to check it out.

Let me just say we picked a reaaaal good weekend to come to the greater Sydney area. Not only were there crazy good food stands, but half of the stands turned out to be vineyards, and the deal was, your first drink at any wine stand was $15 which got you a cup (as artsily shown in picture) and the wine inside, and then you could continue to go wherever you wanted after buying your first cup and get it refilled for $5. Let’s just say I haven't had a lot of high quality wine during my time here (aka I only buy bottles under $11 with the highest alcohol percentage - not the best on the taste buds) so I could really taste the increase in quality and I do now truly appreciate good wine.

The festival also had several big stages and some street performers so a lot of time was also spent appreciating those. We found these two younger kids performing on one of the side streets of the festival and during the time period I stopped to watch them, they did covers of the songs Rum Rage and How to Fly, both by Sticky Fingers (an Aussie band that we’ve discovered while being here and one of my current all time favorites, Rum Rage ESPECIALLY). I took some videos of the kid singing them, will cherish forever. On one of the biggest stages that we watched, it also got late enough in the day that most people had had a good amount of wine at that point. There were these two girls that had gotten really close to the stage in the crows and looked like they wanted to go up but were clearly a lil alcohol affected. Whatever band was playing then proceeded to play Red Wine and by the end of the song there were at least six girls and maybe a guy or two up on stage. One girl found a microphone and started singing very poorly into that, but the band didnt seem too mad and it took at least two songs for security to come up and kick them off so I guess mission accomplished for them?

To end the day after taking the ferry back we did another round of the Rocks night market for dinner and watched some more live music as well as VIVID, looking at some of the light exhibits we’d missed. That night I found my FAVORITE one, which projected microbiology facts and animations of viruses and proteins up on this one building. It went through highlighting a lot of specific diseases like influenza and ebola, and then would present a little fact about them. I had to be dragged away from this one. We also walked the Sydney Harbor bridge and got some pretty sweet pictures of the city lit up, but overall called it an early-ish night since our flight was at 8am the next morning.

Also a fun little anecdote to include, when we’d checked into the hostel on Friday we found out we’d been upgraded from the original 12 bed room we booked online to a four bed room (not including Anna because she stayed with a friend at the university the first night), so Megan, Maddie and I all had a room with only one other person and our own bathroom. GREAT. When we first threw our stuff in there our fourth wasn't there so we couldn't meet her but a lot of the stuff in and around her bed didn't necessarily look like things a stereotypical 20-something would have. Fast forward, and we meet our roommate Patty, a woman from Sydney, somewhere in her 60s probably, that stayed in the hostel almost annually to take pictures of VIVID. Maddie’s first impression? ‘She looks like a snorer.’ And loooone behold she was correct. I had brought ear plugs, but those did not help my friends. I also had the bunk above Patty, and when Megan or Maddie getting up out of their beds to try to wake her up didn't work, I would try to shake the bed from where I was laying on top in my own attempt. Since she was taking pictures of VIVID she also warned us that she’d be back pretty late most nights and that she’d be showering. Fine if she hadn’t been as loud as she was, took as long as she did to take a shower, and left her bed light on the whole time she was in the shower. But we’re not bitter.

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MAY 25th ~ Sydney, Australia

I came all the freakin way down here so I feel like I had to go to Australia at some point right? A month or two ago a couple of us (Megan, Maddie, Anna and I) booked flights out to Syndey for the weekend before the last week of classes (casual traveling I know) and that weekend finally came round that corner.

We booked flights out of Christchurch instead of Dunedin since you can get direct flights to Syndey that way, thought it means having to drive the 5 hours there and back. Our flight to to Syndey on Friday was also at 6:30am but just as casually as our traveling, Megan happened to know someone living in Christchurch that was AMAZING and hosted all four of us for the night before our flight. As I probably said before Meg plays soccer for Davidson and lone behold, one of the guys on the mens soccer team happens to be from Christchurch. He and his family were SO KIND and let us sleep in real beds at his house, served us wine and cheese in preparation for dinner, and cooked us a delicious full meal. Really was the sweetest thing. Oh and then Louis (the soccer player) woke up at 4am to drive us to the airport so we could leave our car on their street. Amazing.

The flight to Syndey was with the airline Jetstar, or more affectionately named locally, Shitstar, because it really is just basic budget airline that includes nothing in the ticket and makes you pay to add anything, like guaranteeing that they wont overbook your seat, or bringing a bag over 7kg, or feeding you. But hey, the tickets are pretty cheap if you dont care about any of that stuff. Because we were flying with Jetstar Louis’s family recommended that we get there at least two hours early to make sure we were given our seats, hence leaving at 4am. We didn’t end up having any problems though so bless.

Getting into the Sydney airport at 8:30am Aussie time we didn’t really have any plans and couldn’t check into our hostel until 2pm, though we were able to leave our bags. The announcements on the plane had mentioned a shuttle from the airport into downtown so we tried to look for that info after grabbing our bags. This older guy at one of the info desks was a saint though and got us to get public transit cards and how to get to our hostel using the lines for only like $3. The $20 each of us put on our cards at the airport that day was the only money we paid for transport for the whole weekend.

After dropping our bags off we went to the Fine Food Store for breakfast finally though it was like 1pm back in NZ. One of the main reasons I’d been so excited to get to Sydney was for the good fooooood, bougie, health, beautiful foooood. And this place did not disappoint, had a nice bagel with avocado, peppers, pesto, the whole nine yards. The rest of the day was spent doing all the touristy things, walking around the Rocks (where our hostel was located - an area with a lot of archeological history, our hostel even stood on stilts above an archeological site you could dig at), around the harbor, the Opera house and botanical garden. Unbeknownst to us when we planned the trip weeeeks ago, we happened to arrive on the very first day of VIVID, a light festival that lights up the city for 3 weeks, including projecting onto the Opera house, lighting up the bridge, and gardens among hundreds of other art works around the city. V good timing. Our hostel also had a rooftop terrace with craaaazy views of the iconic buildings ~* as seen in pic 2 *~ and was also a good place to watch the changing projections on the Opera house at night. Anna also had a friend studying in Sydney for the semester that wanted to take us to dinner at his favorite place that night, so with Uber’s limited time free!!! rides we hoped over to Alexandria to go the Grounds, the cutest little complex place I’ve ever been. It’s made up of several areas/rooms/not sure what to call them, a bar area, event area, and restaurant part called the Potting Shed (please seriously look up pictures of the place). It was like eating in a beautiful hippy botanical garden and all the food was fresh, local, bougie food, ugh so good exactly what I’d dreamed of.

Post dinner we walked around VIVID and the night markets on the Rocks right next to our hostel and then called it a pretty early night as we’d been up since about 2am Aussie time.

Day 2 we did the Bondi to Coogee walk, a coastline path that runs fron Bondi beach to none other than Coogee beach. Haaaad to get acai bowls at Bondi and saw the Icebergs Club  (the iconic site of the seaside pools). The walk along the coast was super beautiful. The water off Aussie is definitely bluer than in southern NZ. And then headed back to the night markets on the Rocks for some dinner and music (location of the hostel COULD NOT have been better).

[kiwitown-blog1]

MAY 15-20th ~ Dunedin

With time getting scarily short until I’m forced to leave good ole Dunners I’ve been especially keen to check off things I’ve wanted to do locally so that I can’t go back without having done the obvious.

One of the stereotypical Dunedin things to do is to go to Signal Hill for sunrise/sunset. Now I have been good and actually have done it a couple times before, but some pretty sunsets never get old. Signal Hill I think is a monument/remembrance kinda thing (I’m not very educated) but theres a big statue and overlook area that looks right over all of Dunedin and the Otago Peninsula. Apparently Dunedin is much better for sunrise because of the direction of the sunrise vs where Dunedin sits next to the hills but the sunsets are still extra beautiful and have yet to see a bad one.

This week I also had a lot of free time so Maddie and I went to visit the Otago animal shelter! I’d looked up the details one day when I wasn’t feeling too hot and needed a little pick me up but never followed through and getting pictures of my cats at home just wasn’t doing the trick. The shelter was partially under construction (they seemed to be expanding) but everything was suuuper chill. We just walked in, signed in, and could go wherever we wanted to play with animals by ourselves. We spent a good while in the kitten room where they had a least a dozen kittens, the cat rooms, and they even had a little complex of bunnies, a duck, and a pasture of sheep. In terms of dogs they seemed to only have a couple that seemed in pretty bad shape in the outside kennels and two in the indoor one. Not sure if they moved some because of the construction, if I should be happy because they don’t have many dogs or what but it was still a little sad to see those guys mostly alone.

That weekend was another Dunners weekend and Megan’s friend was visiting for a couple days as she was passing through (she’s studying in Brisbane this semester - also fun fact, she played soccer with Megan for Davidson for a year or two before transferring to, none other than, UVA so hopefully I’ll get to see her again around grounds).  Saturday morning we all went to the farmers’ market and then walked around downtown a little bit (including by the most photographed building in NZ apparently aka the Dunedin train station). In the beginning of the semester somewhere I got a map for a mural walk around the city since there’s a pretty good handful in some areas so we spent a little while doing that. It’s also a thing here to paint the power boxes which is a trend I can get behind.

I also had a little me adventure on afternoon and finally took a walk over to Baldwin St aka the steepest street in the world for those of you that are uncultured. I’d been running around that area once before and had walked up a street that I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was the steepest street and considering that I was very curious to actually walk Baldwin. The street starts out pretty level, and then it gets really steep (where you really start feeling it in the calves) and then the sidewalk turns into stairs so that really gives ya an idea. There was also a bench and water fountain at the top, which I’m sure are both heavily used after the trek up. It did really occur to me that it must be a royal pain living on that street though since you have tourists nearly all light hours of the day. I can easily imagine buses pulling up with our favorite mad groups of asian tourists (not to hold a grudge). But in honesty, even walking back down the street, its so steep that you can see over fences because of the angle and awkwardly made eye contact with some man walking around is porch in basically pajamas. Not what I’d want to risk experiencing every day. The street did give a sweeet view of the town around it/below though, gotta give it that.

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MAY 13th ~ Fox Glacier, Arthur’s Pass

So Saturday night, based on everything we’d seen that day it was a pretty easy call to say frick school (for lack of a better word) and continue up that grand ole coast. Also funny little thing worth mentioning that’s very obvious now, but sky diving had also been considered on this trip. A week or so before I’d mentioned to Meg the option of splurging and getting a heli tour of the glaciers since ya girl is very into glaciers and you get to see soooo much more of them from the sky. Apparently when I’d put this thought in Meg’s head she’d concluded that no, we’d sky dive because hey, two for the price of one, a flight view of the glaciers aaaaand an adrenaline rush. Now sky diving was on my list when I came to NZ so I didn't fight this idea though I still got nervous (I’ve noticed that I’m very easily persuaded in these situations - I won’t initiate anything but also will go along with it if someone else suggests it. I gotta start initiating!!). We called a few places while we were in Wanaka on Friday to set up a flight time and ended up scheduling a spot on Sunday morning at Fox Glacier, though not at all guaranteed because of how dependent on weather it all is.

Flash forward to Saturday night and the weather was lookin real iffy for Sunday morning so part of me was convinced that I wouldn’t have to jump our a plane the next morning and calmed down. Yet come Sunday morning, no water falling from the sky. Our appointment time, if you will, was at 9am so the earliest time we could call in and get a weather update/see if we were still flying was 8am that morning. We had to drive from Franz Josef where we’d stayed the night back to Fox Glacier that morning anyway so to waste some time we did a short walk to Lake Matheson (see first picture for sunrise ish - since it was still pretty cloudy). There we called the skydive place and were told to just come in since they still weren't sure, we could fill out the paper work and then they’d judge the skies game time - great - so we hop n bopped to the place. There were clouds in the sky at that point, but all were high above the mountains, aka pretty high, but since they weren’t sure how high we’d be able to jump from they left it open and would charge us accordingly once we got up there. So Meg and I, a British girl traveling by herself, and three other young people all got suited up and the three of us girls got pushed into a plane. Honestly at this point I don’t think it quite registered in my head that I was gonna jump. I’ve flown on so many planes at this point that taking off and getting up into the sir was all so normal, until I felt my body start shaking and had to take a deep breath. My mentality through the whole ordeal was really just what’s gonna happens gonna happen at this point so there’s no use in worrying/getting nervous. We just along for the ride. So yea, we got nice views of the glacier on the way up, sweeeet ice gotta say, and then yea. I was the second one out of the plane and you can assume the rest. I think it was about 45 seconds of free fall (we ended up jumping from 13,000ft), (honestly got a little bored of falling at the end there lol), and then the parachute got pulled, my ears popped finally (little suckers probably didn't know what hit em, couldn't adjust fast enough), and a graceful gliding tour down over some sheep pastures, the coastline, and the mountains. Twas a grand sight. And like the Nevis Swing, for some reason once I hit the ground I was ready to jump again - am I becoming an adrenaline junky or something??)

After that fun little adrenaline rush I was feeling pretty blissful as we started the drive north along the coast towards Hokitika. Lotsa fern action through this area of the drive. The weather turned sour so we spent a little time walking around the town, grabbed a coffee and then continued across the country through Arthur’s Pass towards the east coast.

The lousy weather honestly just made all the glacial rivers look even bluer and all the colors stand out even brighter. We ended up stopping along the highway probably three times before we even got to the edge of Arthur’s Pass National Park just to take pictures. Even driving through Arthur’s Pass the change in terrain types over the 2ish hours it took us to get through was craaazy. Steep vegetation-covered cliffs and mountains, to mountains and glacial valleys, to tussock mountains with a range of blues and browns, to large hills. Sad we didn’t really have time to hike around that much, especially given the poor weather but it was still completely worth it. Please look up more pictures from Arthur’s Pass on the internet, you won’t be disappointed.

We got the other side of the park at around 4pm and continued toward Christchurch where we’d yet to book a place to stay but we sure we’d be able to just show up at a hostel and find beds (yay off season!!!), but an hour outside of Christchurch we decided to just save the money from a hostel and send it the last 5 hours back to Dunedin that night. And so we did. Honestly don’t know how we were able to drive that much in one day without feeling terrible. A total of 10 hours of driving plus a morning skydive, two little hikes in Arthur’s Pass, and a couple stops for gas. Oh and home by 9pm. Really a miracle. And that my friends was that crazy, wild, beautiful, favorite weekends of my semester so far. We love the west coast, we love Meg, couldn't have written a better three days.

[kiwitown-blog1]

MAY 11th ~ Wanaka, West Coast, Fox Glacier, Franz Josef Glacier

Ok this post is gonna have to be broken up into two separate posts because there’s just waaaay too much to show and explain.

After having spent a couple weekends in Dunedin and having increasing anxiety about making sure I’d have time to visit all the places I wanted to before I left, I convinced Megan to embark on an adventure with me for the weekend. I was itching to get to the west coast/central part of the south island, especially the glaciers considering I’d been outvoted to see Rob Roy Glacier when a group of us were in Wanaka earlier in the semester. Heading out the tentative plan was to drive out to Wanaka on Friday, spend the night there, and then continue to the west coast and drive up to Fox and Franz Glaciers and then spend the night in Franz Josef, reserving Sunday for the 7 hour drive back to Dunedin. The alternative was to just keep driving north on Sunday and get to drive through Arthur’s Pass, a national park in the center of the island, stay in Christchurch for the night to break up the drive, and then make the way back to Dunners on Monday morning. This was our trip outline, but other than booking hostels in Wanaka and Franz Josef the rest was pretty much open for us to wing it. The weather for the weekend was slightly unpredictable per usual an leaving for Wanaka on Friday the weather for the day didnt look great.

We got in around mid day and cloudy mixed with some rain, so not ideal for any big hikes. Instead we visited the Lavender Farm we saw on the way into Wanaka. Suuuuper cute and artsy and got to feed alpacas, sheep and pigs (we always love some alpacas). They also had a whole store of lavender products and honeys (including lavender honey of course) which were incredible but slightly above the budget unfortunately. Afterwards we ended up doing the Mt. Iron track, a shorter iconic track right outside of town (kind of like a mini Roy’s Peak that we’d done last time we came to Wanaka). Not the best views because of #NZweather but at this point bad weather doesnt even bother me, I’ll freakin hike in anything. Next move was to the hostel (Megan had booked for the both of us together) where we’d apparently been UPGRADED from the 10 bed mixed dorm room to a two bed private room WITH ITS OWN BATHROOM. A luxury really. We love the off season.

We started Saturday off with a little sunrise at the #ThatWanakaTree (it literally has its own hashtag) where we were greeted by a bus load of asian tourists (a reoccurring theme here) all set up in position to catch the best angle. Meg copped a coffee and then we hit to road towards the coast. Saturday’s weather started clearing up in the morning and led to a beaaautiful sunny day. Though haha, funny story, driving from Wanaka we left with a little over a quarter tank of gas, dont know why this fact didn't startle me more at the time considering my friend Maddie had done the same drive to the glaciers the weekend before and had apparently run out of gas and warned me because there were minimal gas stations along the way. Driving through Mt Aspiring National Park was beaut (west coast really is my favorite part of NZ). The mountains are comparable to Fiordland but still tropical and just some crazy contrasts. We stopped at Thunder Creek Falls (wanted to recreate a picture I’d seen on a tourist guide - as seen me eating the waterfall) along Haast Highway and at this point Paddy’s gaslight turned on. There has only ever been one other time that I’ve been in the car with the gas light on so it’s kinda scary when you don’t know how far you can push it without actually being in trouble. We also didn’t exactly know how far we needed to drive to get to a gas station, hoping that the next town we’d drive through would be big enough to actually even have a gas station. I took over driving at this point to try to coast as much as possible since I started getting anxious, and lemme tell ya we got reeaal close to empty. We drove for at least an hour with the gas light on before finally getting to Haast on the coastline. Really tested the heart. After filling her up with petrol and finding a little place with freshly made muffins still warm from the oven we took a slight detour to Haast beach to see that beautiful ocean with our eyeballs. The beach was covered in crazy small smoothed pebbles  of orange, white and blue with some green and purple ones thrown in there. While Megan swam I just sat playing with rocks like a child, pretty much in awe.

The rest of the drive up the coast reminded me a lot of what I imagine the coast of California to look like, very Pacific Coast Highway -esk. Again, my favorite part of NZ to date.

First we hit Fox Glacier and did the lil one hour round trip hike to the viewing point and back. (Again unpleasant experience with asian tourists as one yelled something as us as we were walking right by her and took our picture?? Maybe because we were two blonde girls? idk. really wasn't my favorite encounter). Then we scurried to Franz Josef Glacier (allegedly the bigger better glacier) and did that 1.5 hour round trip hike. Both hikes were walking along the valley created by the receding glacier and had some pretty extreme beautiful cliffs, reminded me a little of Milford Sound. They also both had signs marking where the the glaciers use to extend to at certain years, some of them being reeeeally far out compared to where it ends now. Just another fun reminder of the extent of global warming!!!

Getting into the town ship of Franz Josef where we’d booked a hostel for the night (basically just a circuit of hostels/motels/food/tour places and a gas station) we located a sweet place to watch a sunset and took a lil walk there. Afterwards we headed to the hot pools that we’d heard about and had a nice lil soak before cooking up some dinna back at the hostel and planning the next day. Megan had an assignment due Tuesday so I was leaving the big decision as to continue the trip Sunday or just go back home that day up to her since I really had no obligations. And this is where I’ll leave you in suspense for the rest of the trip recap!!!

[kiwitown-blog1]

MAY 7th ~ Dunedin/Dunners/D Town

Decided to spend another good ole weekend in Dunners since we’re really starting to get to the point where I feel like I need to make sure I do everything I want to around here before I’m shipped off!!

Saturday was our main adventure day and started with the Dunedin farmer’s market which happens every Saturday morning at the Dunedin train station (apparently the most photographed train station in the world? idk look it up). I’ve got a thing for farmer’s markets, and since I’ve usually been gone on the weekends I was really looking forward to this one. It was all outdoor in the parking lot next to the train platform (though there were no trains around) and had everything you could ask for, from produce, to kumbucha, meats, live bands, crepes, coffee, lebanese/greek food, shall I go on... The plan for the day was to hike silver peaks, a hike up to a hut just a 20 minute drive outside of the city center. We stopped at Warrington Beach, north of Dunedin (gotta get the full beach tour before I leave) then tried to get onto the road for Silver Peaks. However google maps was really not having it and sent us down two closed/non-existent roads when the correct road should have been really obvious. Long story short we got there a little later than planned around 1, and with rain in the forecast around 3pm we definitely weren't gonna last the whole way. We at leats got up the ridge line before heading back but the view really reminded me of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and I gotta say, as much as I love those guys, my standards have been heightened pretty significantly while I’ve been in NZ and those things almost aren’t cutting it anymore. Still pretty, but look like glorified hills more than real rocky mountains.

That night was also had our first night in town (in the Octagon) at the bars which basically turn into clubs. A greeeaaaat time as well.

The next Monday I also didn’t have any class and was feeling antsy and recruited two of my flatmates, Claire and Shane to go out to the Otago Peninsula with me for a quicky little hike. We did the Sandymount Track and honestly a lot more beautiful than I was expecting. I always think I’ve seen everything around here for what it is at this point and it keep surprising me. The sky was also kind of weird that day as we got out there around 11am, but the sky had kind of a pinky/yellow tone to it. We walked out to the Chasm (big crack/opening in the cliff at the water) and to Lover’s Leap (natural bridge type thing in another deep crevice). V scenic. The pathway went through sheep fields, and I really like the picture after the one of me and Claire where you can see all the white dots. All those little guys are lil sheeps just hanging out on the cliff field!! The track then looped back around to give us views of Sandfly Bay (where I took Sam and Harry and saw seals) and a bunch of the terrain of the peninsula, and of course saw more sheep on the drive back. I’ve also realized lately that I need to take more pictures of sheep. They seem like just a trivial sight day to day here, but ya know some day I’m probably gonna want to see pictures of those sheep. Probably.

[kiwitown-blog1]

APRIL 30th ~ Dunedin

Just a brief lil post about some random Dunedin fun.

Meg and I spent an afternoon at the Otago Museum and coughed up the money to pay for the actually exciting exhibits: the interactive science center, butterfly garden, and planetarium show. They also had a room of Te Kore (or the void - said to be the state of the world before it was created in Maori stories). Basically it was just a small room covered completely in mirrors and hanging lights and short light show. Pretty trippy stuff.

Like I’d mentioned before its definitely autumn down here in the southern hemisphere and campus is looking very orange, especially pretty in the picturesque parts of campus. Just a sad reminder that the semester is chugging right along:/

[kiwitown-blog1]

APRIL 27th ~ Kepler Track

One of the bigger things I’ve been determined to do while in New Zealand is to complete one of the great walks, tracks known for being especially beautiful and popular, and usually take several days to complete - ie a backpacking trip. I’d hiked part of the Routeburn track just outside of Queenstown earlier on in the semester when my program took us on a weekend trip, but we only did about 16kms of it that day compared to the full thing which is about 30kms and usually takes 2-4 days depending on how you break it up.

With the season now starting to get late, trying to complete a track has been much less reliable from what I’ve heard. Parts of tracks keep getting closed due to weather - rain or snow, or even just camping for the night is getting bloody cold, so opportunities get smaller with every passing free weekend. The days a group of us decided to bite to bullet and just try the Kepler Track in Fiordland were not predicted to be good weather. The first day, Friday, and that night were suppose to rain into Saturday, which was predicted to clear by the end of the day and then Sunday would be okay. Kepler is about a three day loop, and the direction we started it the first day we wouldn't climb much elevation and was very sheltered by forest, before climbing up to the ridge in the second day. Timing-wise it should have worked out nearly perfectly as we’d get up to the #views when the weather was suppose to clear up and then continue on the rest with better weather - but naturally my luck with New Zealand weather has officially run out.

Friday morning we started the three hour drive out to Te Anau and started hiking in some light rain around early afternoon. We only hiked about four hours worth with our packs before hitting the campsite along Lake Te Anau. The campsite had a little shelter area where we pretty much hid for the night until we were forced out into our potentially very wet tents for the night. We also hadn’t paid for the campsite for the seven of us that night and hoped not to run into a ranger checking bookings.

Saturday we woke up and packed up to start climbing in elevation. The plan was that this was to be a long day, covering eight hours of distance, including the climb up. The next hut on the track was Luxmore soon after hitting the ridge line but our goal was to bypass it and continue on to Iris Burn, a hut we had last minute booked. Pretty early on in starting the hike up though we started getting told by people hiking the other direction that the track from Luxmore to Iris Burn had been closed due to weather, not completely surprising since it’d continued to rain into the day and was getting noticeable colder and windier as we kept climbing. (Also of note - we kept getting passed by trail runners up this trail all day, apparently there’d been a race of some sort on the Routeburn scheduled for that day, but had gotten cancelled due to weather so a bunch of participants had come to run up mountains on Kepler instead. Definitely made me feel inferior.) Because of the rain and low hanging clouds we also couldn’t really see any views on the way up as they were all covered by fog, this includes when we got up to the ridgeline and just saw cloud where normally there’d be nearly 360 degree views (see second to last picture):/.

We were able to get to Luxmore hut (as seen in the last picture) where we decided to have lunch and try to figure out our next move. At this point we were definitely all happy to be inside though since the weather, especially on the ridge, was cold, wet, windy, and sort of miserable. The idea briefly came up to try to see if they had space in Luxmore for the night and then just continue on for an extra long day Sunday to finish her off, but not a likely option for a big group of seven people (Megan, Emily, me, Brette, Sarah, Taylor, and UC Berkley man). The weather prediction had also changed and was not showing very significant improvement over the next few days. Eventually we decided to just send it back down to the cars and probably just drive back to get in late that night, that way at least we wouldn't have to pay for accommodation for that night and we’d all be warm and comfy. So that’s pretty much what we did. Sort of a failed weekend unfortunately, but at least I can say I’ve done some of it!!

(Quick note: We did stop at a Turkish take away place on the drive home and I have to say I’ve really grown an obsession with falafel wraps since you can find them everywhere and will miss them dearly when I get back to the states unless I can locate some staple places.) Ok that is all for that weekend.

[kiwitown-blog1]

APRIL 24th ~ Dunedin

Apparently autumn tends to set in around mid April down here in the southern hemisphere. Still weird to see and hear things from people back home about how warm its getting and be reminded that its spring there while were getting ready to prep for the cold. The Department of Conservation (DOC) in NZ, who look after the tracks and huts around the country, slows after April 30th, which is considered the start of the off season. On some trails you can no longer book huts to stay in, or those maintained by the department are much less looked after so things can be a little more uncertain planning hikes, though now you can start to tell that there are less people on the trails and roads of the parks which does make it a little nicer. The weather is getting more unpredictable and colder, so again, making hiking plans is getting harder. A lot of the paths of higher elevation are even getting a bunch of snow, so parts of tracks tend to get closed without warning.

We’ve also had a very frequent visitor in the castle complex recently aka Gretchen aka Edgar aka cat that everyone knows but no one seems to know where he/she came from. She hangs around Castle St and makes rounds nearly every day. Suuuoper sweet, suuuper social. She’ll literally just walk into your flat if the door is left open. Apparently she walked into my neighbor’s flat one time and waited for her flatmate in her room. I feed her cheese pretty often and in turn she acts as a fix for my pet nostalgia. Was really starting to miss animals so now whenever I see her outside I have to run to greet her from wherever I am in the flat. Gonna miss that gal when I have to leave!!

[kiwitown-blog1]

APRIL 21st ~ Hyde St, Dunedin

Well, here’s a brief introduction to the party culture in Dunedin that I’m going to miss.

Saturday, April 21st I went to the Hyde St party, basically a massive day long costume street party and I’m sure you can fill in the rest. Back in it’s hay day it use to be a keg party with all the houses on this one street each having a theme and thousands of students - like 10,000, were not playing around here - filling it in every area throughout. It got so big that a couple bad things happened and the UNIVERSITY STUDENT organization, (OUSA) took the whole thing over to allow it to continue happening. (I love casually this school supports drinking.) Now tickets are restricted to a mere 3500 students, they’re raffled off for $35 or you can pay a hundred or two dollars for one guaranteed ticket, food and water is provided along with security stand by, medical staff, the whole administrative nine yards to the keep the event under control.

Here’s a nice little background video if you’re interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-GXB1z3xxE

Really all I have to say about this is that ya girl got a ticket and went, and here’s a picture that Megan took of us (look how happy I am) since documenting the thing at the time was not my first priority. (Also for reference, Megan was a hippy, I conjured up a costume last minute and was a sort of prisoner I guess?, and Sophie and Kieran were both tie-dye kids idk.) Best day, lost all concept of time, but needs to be remembered. Here’s the more fun video - I remember seeing the drone that shot part of this, so have fun trying to find me!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmVkXjG3yaY

[kiwitown-blog1]

APRIL 13th ~ Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park

Before I start, I have to announce that this is now my favorite place in New Zealand and disclaim that pictures cannot do it justice, nor is it possible to pick enough to try to portray it all. That is all.

I flew into Dunedin the Monday my parents also took the flight in, and left again on Friday, the day after they’d flown out (good timing on their part a suppose). Emily and I had booked spots in Mueller Hut next to Mt Cook to hike up to on Friday and spend the night, and then hike down on Saturday. It was my first time heading to the central west coast of the south island and she DID NOT disappoint, gave Fiordland a run for its money I gotta say.

The drive to the park was insanely beautiful, driving along massive newly snow capped mountains, vividly blue lakes and salmon fisheries and along the side of Lake Pukaki, which again is almost unnaturally light blue. Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park also has most of the South Island’s highest peaks (with 19 peaks over 3000m), and with Mt Cook being the highest peak in the country so yea, shes a beaut. The hike itself up to the hut isn’t super long and some people choose to do it up and down in a day at 5km each way. The real catch is, half of it is straight stairs (as pictured - literally no breaks) and then the rest is a path up a mountain face. In addition, a couple days before our hike it’d snowed, so the second half of the steeeeep path was entirely covered in at least 6 inches of snow, packed down by numerous hikers, making it really slick in most areas (a couple people coming down as we were going up were having a hard time not slipping down sort of non-existent the path). The third picture I included by the frozen lake is just at the elevation attained from the stair section, so the views were pretty insane. Especially with the snow covering all the surrounding mountains with the NUMEROUS glaciers around them it all looked pretty dreamy.

After getting up the mountain face we got to the ridge line, where we then walked along for another 30 minutes, but let me just say, the view at that ridge line was the first view thats pretty much made me want to burst into tears but also laugh and jump and scream to the extent it did. Not only could you see the Tasman Valley glacier (and the melted lakes below it) but also the fully glacial mountains on the other side of the ridge previously hidden, complete with the occasional distant avalanche.

From there we walked the ways to the hut and had ended up booking it the same night as several other groups of our friends/other kids we knew from UOtago (there ended up being over a dozen of us  out of 20 and we kind of took over the place). The sunset over and around the mountains was crazy, and the complete lack of light pollution made the star gazing incredible, I saw at least five shooting stars and the sweeeet Milky Way. My only real issue with the hut (though my opinion doesnt mean squat) was that there was absolutely no heating in the hut - no fireplace or fires (the huts burned down a couple times), no electricity, no nothin. The bathrooms were also a little elevated hut separate from the hut, which meant if you had to do your business you had to tramp through the snow and into the even more freezing cold. The night we stayed there was so cold it made all the difference to keep your feet off the cold floor, all the pipes of the indoor tap/sinks were frozen (so couldnt get water and couldnt drain) and the tap of the outside water barrel was frozen, so you had to open the top and dunk your hand/bottle straight into the ice water - that or boil snow from the porch. Even all of us just hanging out in the common room for a few hours was enough to fog up all the windows to the point you couldnt see out.

We all went to bed pretty early since we were uh freezing our body parts off, and we all had plans to catch the sun rise in the morning. Again, the layering of the mountains, first with the colors in the sky and then the shadows of the sunlight was craaaaazy beautiful - another peaceful moment that made me want to cry of happiness.

We were warned not the try and hike back down too early, though we were all up and at em from the sunrise to hopefully let some of the snow/ice on the path down soft up a little to make getting down easier. I had honestly been really nervous all night and that morning just thinking about trying to go down, since the slightest instability in train turns me into an ungraceful baby giraffe (though I have to say I’ve been working on it and I’m getting better). After walking the length back along the ridge to the mountain face with Emily, Brette, Avi, Toast (Tom) and Alyssa, Avi and Toast quickly solved that little problem leading the way slidding/sledding down the path on our butts, packs and all. The real proper technique is to squat down on your feet so your butts not touching the ground and doesnt get roughed up with your pack and slide down that way steering with your hands, and that really cut the time down once everyone finally gave in and got on board with the methodology.

We got really lucky with the weather both days since its impossible to predict and with the people that happened to plan for the same day. Emily and I had originally planned to possibly camp somewhere in the area Saturday night and head back to Dunedin Sunday to give us more time to explore, but Friday night had been so cold that the thought of spending another night outside was not at all ideal. Instead we hit up Lake Tekapo, east of Lake Pukaki and also one of the most beautiful areas in NZ and then headed back to Dunners for a lazy Sunday, which after the hours of downward stairs from the hike was much needed.

but still, FAVORITE PLACE IN NZ NO DOUBT. 12/10 WOULD RECOMMEND TO ANYONE.

[kiwitown-blog1]

APRIL 9th ~ Dunedin

Well it’s been a hot minute since I’ve gotten around to recording some recent events, though not so recent at this point (its currently May 8th). With the end of the semester getting closer I’ve gotten caught getting absorbed in the day to day activities and weekend adventures and haven’t given time to reflect as the pressure to make sure I’m able to do everything before I have to leave kicks in - but this is me trying...

The same day Emily and I flew from Auckland back to Dunedin in time to catch our classes, my parents also took the same flight five hours later to come to Dunners to visit me (after they’d spent two weeks luxuriously traveling around the country themselves). After attending my class for the day I got to pick them up from the Dunedin airport in my car, Paddy, and show them a round a little bit.

A cold front from Antarctica had just hit Dunedin just when we all arrived and continued on through the week, so the whole week was colder and wetter than even I had become use to at this point.

Tuesday night I brought them out to the Royal Albatross Center on the Otago Peninsula to watch little blue penguins. They spent all day out at sea feeding, but you can catch them at dusk/night when they come back in in rafts to their burrows. We caught a reaaal good night and got to see at least 30 of them coming back (see high quality pictures taken by the padres - finally not my low quality phone). Mom was at least super excited to see them as it was her only request of the visit.

The next day we headed out to St Claire to see the beach and then to Starfish, one of my all time favorite food places in Dunedin - will never get tired of going there. To follow we drove to Tunnel Beach, a Dunners classic (and site of earlier semester camping fail), always a good time I have to say, though the weather was still cold and v windy.

Overall super happy that the parents suffered through that excruciating endless flight (in business class) across the Pacific to see me. It really did make my week having familiar, comforting faces after traveling around consistently for a week. Grateful to have such wonderful, adventurous, nature-loving parents that are always keen to come visit wherever I am!!

[kiwitown-blog1]

APRIL 7 ~ Cape Reinga, Far North

Welcome to our final fun day of our trip!! Today we headed all the way up to the northern most part of the north island of NZ (this area is especially significant to Maori as they believe after the death the spirit travels up to the northen most point of NZ before flying to Hawaiki, the origin of all Polynesian peoples/ a region in the central Pacific). Forst we went all the way up to the Cape Reinga lighthouse before going back down a ways to the west coast to the Te Paki sand dunes.

As you can probably see by the pictures, these are no ordinary sand dunes. These things make you feel like you're in the middle of a desert, which is also next to the ocean and a forest? It’s all a very weird feeling. The thing to do here is to go surfing down the massive dunes on a boogie board, so obviously this is exactly what Emily and I did. We rented a boogie board for $15 from a lady next to the parking lot and hiked up these freakin massive tunes which is no small feat. Going down some of these things was pretty intimidating, since you have to start at a relatively high/steep dune to gain any speed whatsoever, but shoving your feet into the sand as you go down serve as pretty efficient brakes. Honestly still cant quite get over this place considering how fun/other worldly it was, 11/10 would go back in a heartbeat.

To get a little more sand time in we last minute decided to go to Rarawa beach (last picture) even father down on the east coast. I had originally wanted to go see the big silica dunes, but they were located at the mouth of a bay and you had to pay to go out on a boat to see them. Instead, the whole coastline for several kilometers down from the dunes is white sand beaches that are apparently some of the best in NZ, so I figured that would suffice. The thing that was the weirdest though was that when you walked on this white sand it made squeaking noises with each step, especially if you walked really aggressively. The first time I heard it I thought the sound was coming from a small child near me squealing or something, but nope it was my feet. So that was funky.

I also wanted to include a fun lil picture of our trusty steed for the week, our lil Mazda Demio god bless her. She looks pretty mighty in front of the dunes eh

[kiwitown-blog1]

APRIL 6 ~ Paihia, Bay of Islands

Emily and I drove to Paihia Friday morning without any real plans, a first for us. We got into town around noon after driving from Auckland where we’d spent the night and headed to the i-site, aka tourists galore aka the information center. Overall Paihia seemed pretty like a pretty small town upon first impressions (we’ve been noticing that the tourist towns we keep hearing about always seem to be a small fraction of the size that were imagining before we get there). Most of the action was around the waterfront, a pier in the center and a beach on either side of it, but other than that there were a couple streets of restaurants/shops/backpackers (hostels) and that was almost it, at least in ‘downtown’.

Of the suggestions that the info center had given us I decided to go on a solo boat tour to the hole in the rock at the end of the bay of islands (at a discounted backpackers price!!) while Emily went to one of the beaches for the afternoon. Dolphin/other animal sightings were also guaranteed on the tour so I was sold.

The boat also stopped in Russel to pick up for people after we left from Paihia, a town across the harbor also known as the ‘hell hole of the Pacific’ because apparently that where all the sailors got a little rowdy if ya know what I mean after being at sea for a while. However now its the nicer, more expensive version of Paihia so go figure. We cruised around islands for a while until one of the crew members spotted dolphins. The boat went over slowly and lemme tell ya these dolphins put on A SHOW. For one, I was standing at the very bow of the boat, some of the dolphins would get right up under the front of the boat and just ride the wave made by the boat for a while (ex: pic including my feet). There were at least a dozen in the pod and a bunch of them swam right up and around the boat checking it out. Then these puppies started JUMPING out of like 3 meters out of the water twirling around each other, splashing, flipping. On time they even did it maybe 4 meters from the boat itself as if you could reach out and touch them, but obliviously I got none of the big jumps on camera. I do have a pretty sweet video of them jumping out of the water though.

We then continued out to the hoe in the rock (as seen in the right part of the photo of large rock and below), and since out weather we perfect our boat actually powered through the hole to the other side. (We had to wait a little bit at first for some spear-fishersmen in kayaks to move out of the way first.) On the same rock structure with the hole was also the Polynesian Princess, a rock formation with a vivid facial profile of a woman, and Cathedral Cave. Next we moved to we some seals on seal rock and then made the longer trek back to the dock at Paihia. Having been slightly uncertain if I should spend the money for the tour initially, I was super glad I went.

To waste some time before dinner we both went to check out a waterfall and then headed back to one of the beaches by the pier where I played in tide pools probably longer than I should have. That night we also stayed in our first hostel since we’ve been staying in airbnbs all other nights. Didn’t really develop much of an opinion since we were only there for a night, but I did overhear a conversation where some American guy was talking about how he didn't understand how some people know what they want to do for the rest of their lives and how he doesn't like deadlines and making plans far in advance and I just thought that was the most stereotypical hostel conversation I could have possibly heard.