Leah's Adventures in Australia: New Zealand 100% Pure

Hi Guys!

So, New Zealand is definitely one of the “Greenest” places I have ever been. And by that, I do mean both environmentally friendly as well as the color of everything is a brilliant GREEN. Maybe something like the Emerald City from the Wizard of Oz. The country/the Kiwi’s are very environmentally friendly and eco-conscious, so there are recycling bins EVERYWHERE and signs about water usage and littering. There’s also just a huge respect for nature and coexisting with it as we use it so that it is not damaged or destroyed by our actions. I heard that 10% of New Zealand’s landmass is protected land that can only be accessed either by foot or with special permission. 10% may not sound like much, but when you consider the size of the islands, it’s huge! It also means they spend a lot of time outside. New Zealand is very much an “outdoorsy” country—it’s not for “indoorsy” types. At least I haven’t really seen any “indoorsy” activities except for the tours I’ve done. Maybe a museum or two. But still…it’s impossible to not be outside for most of the attractions with these mountains everywhere. Besides, who would want to be inside when you could be hiking around, exploring this country?! New Zealand doesn’t even seem real sometimes, it’s so pretty. It’s very fantastical—almost fairy tale-esque. It’s no wonder why Peter Jackson chose to film Lord of the Rings in New Zealand, but that’s beside the point. It’s my theory that because of this attitude and attention to the environment, a lot of roads that Americans would have leveled hills or somehow made straighter are left to blend with the cliffs and therefore create the narrow, winding, twisty/turny roads that I have been experiencing while driving here. It possibly explains the one-way bridges, too. They seem to only alter the landscape if absolutely necessary, which I think is really cool. Sometimes seems a bit dangerous, but cool. And it makes the attractions so much more beautiful and nature based.

I also love the Kiwi people! New Zealanders are just fun. They’re easy going, friendly, nice, and “normal.” There is not the crazy drama that seems to be everywhere else, which is really nice. They’re also, as I said, kind of insane, but in the most wonderful way possible. I know this sounds like a contradiction, “normal” and “kind of crazy,” but it’s honestly the only way I can describe them! I’ve not met a Kiwi I haven’t liked or found to be fantastically friendly and helpful. I think that the outdoorsy spirit and lifestyle are to thank for this!

I got to Queenstown after dark, which made finding my way really difficult. I was really unsure of where I was going and there is a festival going on, so streets were blocked and it was a mess (Lessons 1 and 2 apply here again). I couldn’t find the hostel I was planning on staying in, so I decided that I would just stop at the first “Backpackers” place I saw unless it was super sketchy. Fortunately, I found a respectable-looking hostel with an empty room for the night and checked in, made dinner, etc., and then settle in for the night.

The hostel I was in only had a bed for that first night, so I had to check out and move on at 10AM. I wasn’t totally sure what my plans were (I had intended on skiing that day—Wednesday—but there was absolutely no snow) and so I found a new hostel and checked in. I wouldn’t be able to move in until 2:30, but I was able to use their computers and figure out how my schedule had changed. After a while, I came downstairs to call and make a reservation for the next day when I heard a girl asking about trips to Milford Sound. I should explain that Milford Sound has been on the top of my NZ list for pretty much ever. I saw a photo when I was about 14 and have ever since wanted to go see this place, so when she started asking, my ears perked up. I already had plans to leave for Milford the next day, so I didn’t really need to know about the tours, but I was curious what the receptionist would tell her. The trip she was looking at was about $170, but I had gotten my cruise ticket for $39 on a website called “BookMe” (kind of like LivingSocial or Groupon, but only for Queenstown and surrounding areas). I asked if she had a car (she didn’t) and explained about the cheap ticket and then offered for her to drive with me and split petrol. Fortunately for me, she agreed! My new friend is named Ruth and is from the UK and is just lovely to be around. I ended up getting switched into her room for the night and we spent a lot of time chatting and getting to know each other before our long journey.

I’m not really used to being this far south, so I find it really interesting that the sun doesn’t really rise until 8:30AM and sets about 5:00PM. I know I said it before, but it’s just really dark! So Thursday morning, bright (well, dark) and early, I was checked out of my hostel and waiting outside to be picked up by the DART STABLES van to take me to Paradise, New Zealand (an incredibly fitting name) for my self-spoiling trip on horseback.

Time for a geeky confession. Many, I dare say most, of you know that I love Lord of the Rings. It’s one of my favorite books and movies and I’m pretty knowledgeable on the subject, ask Jammin or Kyle Gates. If it were a final Jeopardy topic, I risk it all and would probably get it right. If it was just a normal topic, I’d own at it. Just saying. So, my most expensive and self-indulgent adventure on this trip happened to be a horse-riding trip called “The Ride of the Rings.” Yes, you may giggle at the fact that I went on this, or you may be incredibly jealous, or you may roll your eyes and accept my level of geek as an endearing quality of mine, the choice is yours, but the fact is that I did this! It was wonderful. We rode through a lot of the forest scenes and learned where the shots were. If anyone’s curious, most of what I saw was from Fellowship and it included Isengard, Boromir’s death, Aragorn’s battle with the Orc (at the end), the Misty Mountains (!!!), what stood for Fangorn, and Lothlorien. Fun fact: a lot of “Wolverine” was filmed here, too. New Zealand represented Canada, apparently. Haha. Don’t worry, I took plenty of photos and am more than willing to share. It was—need I say it?—legen-wait for it-dary.

Me and Randell in Middle Earth

After that, I returned to my hostel and picked up Ruth and headed off for Milford Sound. This is very possibly the most beautiful road I’ve ever driven on in my life. It was glorious and fun and amazing. There’s actually a tunnel that was drilled THROUGH a mountain (the Homer Tunnel) that is just ridiculous. Thank goodness for Kiwi ingenuity and engineering. But once I got through the tunnel, the valley just opened up and it felt like I was actually driving INTO Middle Earth! Because the light disappearing, we didn’t get to stop for many photos, but we did take a few and made plans to leave earlier in the day so that we could stop many times on the way out the next day after our cruise.

The Homer Tunnel

Literally through a Mountain

Friday morning, Ruth and I woke up early and found out way down to the boat terminal. We boarded our cruise and headed out onto the fjord. Holy amazingness, Batman! Milford Sound is amazing. The water is beautiful and smooth and the mountains look like they were plucked right out of a fairy tale. It’s hard to imagine that they are actually real! We even got to see dolphins swimming along out boat! And the fur seals were out sunning themselves, so we got to see them, too! How awesome, yeah?! It was freezing cold (go figure, winter, yeah?), but it was too amazing to go inside. (Although at the end, we did go in for free tea and muffins—which was pretty fantastic.)The cruise was totally worth every penny—we both said we’d pay more for the experience we got.

Dolphin!

Me and Ruth

Fur Seals!

If you look on a map, Milford Sound is really close to Queenstown. However, in true Kiwi fashion, the way to get there takes over 4 hours and is really somewhat out of the way. What that means is that it makes it a place that you REALLY have to want to go—you don’t arrive by accident. But the road is amazing. It’s fun to drive and there are lots of little stop offs and walks that you can do on your drive. Ruth and I headed back towards Queenstown after our cruise and, as said before, took many, many photos.

So there is this bird here in New Zealand called a Kea. It's the only alpine parrot in the world. A few people had told me to beware of these birds because they eat the rubber off your car. I listened to them, but wasn’t totally sure that I believed them. We hadn’t come back to birds on the car after the cruise, so maybe they didn’t like cold? That’s what I thought. Ruth thought that they were a joke that people played on tourists. So you can imagine our surprise when, after one of our little walks, we came back to three large, olive-colored birds standing on my car. I think we got back and chased them away just as they had decided that Suzie looked appealing, so no damage was done, but they’re crazy birds. Very, very curious little guys.

Kea ready to Attack Suzie

I had rescheduled skiing to Saturday since there was no snow on Wednesday and I had been told they were expecting a storm, but New Zealand is having a bummer start to their winter season and most of the resorts (including the one my car rental gave me a free pass to) are not open yet/still. So instead, Ruth and I did a morning hike to the top of the “Mountain” (large hill, really) that Queenstown is situated on for the view. It’s also the base for a lot of the more extreme things that I was not so into (aka bungee jumping and the mountain swing) as well as parasailing (or whatever it is), which was really cool to watch. We rode the gondola down, which was also really cool, before heading back to the hostel. We had lunch before I had to say goodbye and begin my drive north to Fox Glacier.

After our Hike

What a View!

Gondola (aka Cheaters Way Down)

My drive was not that interesting. The west coast is stunning, like most of my drives have been, but the journey itself is not terribly interesting to describe. Except for the cow in the middle of the road. That was kind of strange/funny. It definitely broke up the monotony of night driving. I didn’t hit it, though. Promise.

I have really run the gambit as far as hostels go on this trip. Some have been great and some have just kind of been funny/odd. Ivory Towers definitely falls under the second category. It’s a fairly small hostel, but kind of odd. There were lots of those inspirational posters hanging everywhere (like http://www.motivational-posters.com.au/home or even http://www.ebaumsworld.com/pictures/view/81313010/) and even a few from www.despair.com, which made me laugh, but also made the hostel sort of sweet and homey. Not homey in the way that your actual house is, but kind of how the crazy cat lady’s house is homey. Make sense? Haha. It was not one of the nicer hostels I’ve stayed at, but it was a good place to crash for the night. And the girls I was sharing a room with had “Flight of the Conchords” (so Kiwi) on DVD, so we hooked up my laptop and watched that for a while. We were going to watch it in the Movie Room (which was a cool feature), but when we went to see where the current movie was at, it was “Lord of the Rings: Return of the King—Extended Edition.” Part of me really wished that I had brought my DVDs with me to watch while in New Zealand/Middle Earth (lol), but I didn’t, so instead, I’m listening to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack on my iPod/car connection (pretty geeky). I kind of laughed because we went in, though, because I knew exactly where it was in the film (yes, I am THAT geeky) and told the other girls that I was sure that the film would last for at least another hour (anyone who cares—it was when Eowyn kills the Witch King, so there’s still a lot to happen after that). Then our spot in line was taken. Hence, the computer solution.

The next morning, I woke up and went to Fox Glacier Guiding for my adventure. I went on the Fox Trot half-day trip, but after doing that, would have loved to have spent more time on the glacier! It was amazing. Apparently, I was pretty lucky as far as weather went since there was no rain or anything and the sun was out/sky was clear. I guess this doesn’t happen very often. I’ll take it! We hiked about half an hour up to the glacier and then spent about 75 minutes on the ice. And, thanks to the crampons and trekking pole, I didn’t fall even once! Yes, the klutzy Leah Jarvis did not fall! Incredible! Haha. It’s pretty cool to see one of the glaciers that helped carve New Zealand (this entire country is pretty much the work of glaciers) and the sheer size of it is absolutely incredible. Plus, my guide, Tyler, who was from San Francisco, is a former CU Buff! So we talked Boulder and Colorado a lot on our adventure (he used to work at Half Fast—how random and small this world is!). He kind of reminded me of Brad Wiidakas, for those of you who know him (RTLC people—the guy from “Let it Shine” who talks about rafting with junior high girls in their ponchos and the intense raft guides/rapid names). Really, it was a great day. And we even got to go into an ice cave and see the “blue light.” Ahh-mazing. Fun fact: the Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers are some of the only glaciers in the world that end in temperate rainforests. The others are in Chile and Patagonia. That’s what a mountainous coastline will do for you!

The Mighty Fox

Ice Cave

Blue Light

My Guide, Tyler

After I finished my hike and lunch, I went to Lake Matheson, also called Mirror Lake. This lake looks really polluted, but it’s not. The water is just really brown and still. What this means is that it creates a perfect surface for reflections. By happy coincidence, Mt. Tasman and Mt. Cook are directly in line with this lake to create postcard-perfect reflection photos. Unfortunately, the great weather I had on the glacier hadn’t held and so most of my photos show the mountain base and clouds. But I’m pulling a photo from the Internet to show you what it CAN look like. I went on another hike as I decided to go the whole way around (about 3k) before heading back to my car to drive north to Westport.

My Photo

Google Photo

New Zealand, similar to Australia, has more attractions than you could ever have time for. On my way, I passed turnoffs for ocean blowholes, “pancake” rock formations, and seal colonies, just to name a few, but didn’t have time to stop at them! Plus, it was dark. I could have taken all day to drive that stretch of road and stop all I wanted. I think the next time I come back, I will schedule more unscheduled time (make sense?) for driving so I can do these stops if I want to! And I’ll come in summer, so the sun is out until 10:30PM.

Westport was nothing really except an overnight stop for me. My hostel was super cute, though. It was an old Victorian-era house that had been converted to a hostel. And there was a pretty black kitty that reminded me of Sadie. I was also the only person there (aside from the owners) who wasn’t Asian. I guess there was a tour that was staying there, but it was interesting that there was not more diversity, like there is at most hostels. But it was fun and my roommates were all really nice and very understanding about me going to bed early and waking up REALLY early.

The next morning, Monday, I woke up at 3:30AM to start driving to get to Picton in time to catch my ferry. I had planned on taking the ferry at 12:45, but, because I slacked, I couldn’t get a spot for my car on that ferry, so I had to be on the 10:30 one (which meant checking in by 9:30). I also apparently misread a sign and took a scenic route to Picton, which is not a good thing to do when you’re on a time constraint. So there was a bit of stressful driving for a bit at the end—fearing that I would miss the check-in time, but I made it…(LEGALLY, even!)…but just barely. I pulled into the vehicle check-in bay at 9:29. Talk about cutting it close! But, I safely made it on board, and watched the South Island disappear behind me as the ferry crossed the Cook Straight, heading for the North Island. But I’m not saying goodbye to the South Island—I know I’ll be back. And soon, hopefully!