Friday 5th June 2009

3 months down the line and I am now living in 9 Brunswick Street, Queenstown. About 1 week after arriving in Queenstown I met a girl called Amy Everin she was staying in a room with a group of lads I met on the Kiwi bus. She was also hoping to stay in the little town. Over the next few days we went and looked at flats together a found what we thought at the time was a good place on 12A Isle Street, we stayed there for a month as it was central so when we went job hunting it wasn't a drag to get to town. We both went for a couple of interviews but I ended up in Ferg Burger and Amy settled for a very expensive clothes shop - untouched world. When we got the job under our wings we decided to move out of the expensive cold room and found a half decent little place even more central with no hills or steps to walk up. It is a 1 bedroom apartment with a lounge and open kitchen with the bathroom on the end. We had 'Gordy' our very difficult 'land lord' living upstairs with for ever changing flat mates.

SO I'm the fluffer at Ferg burger I work 11 hour shifts 4 days on 3 days off, which is great but long! I've eating the whole menu minus 2 burgers, and official never want to eat another burger again! Although I'm very sure I will! A week into Queenstown when the weather was still hot Amy's kiwi bus people were still around and we all rented out mountain bikes and cycled around the lake and up to Frankton, chilling out on the lake side. then treated our selves to ice cream after =) Another Queenstown activity was the gondola, with lugging up the top, my first week of arriving a few people from my Kiwi bus got the gondola up to the top and went lugging, great fun! Our old flat mate one afternoon wanted the challenge of hiking up to the top of the gondola, so Kat, Amy and I joined her it was challenging but rewarding.

Amy's friend Blake drove us to Arrowtown which is a small, old' village the kind of place your grandparents live, it didn't have a lot there apart from expensive shops and few café's, but it's claim to fame was the old Chinese gold digger town, as it was net to a river filled of gold, so we took a walk through there, it still had original hut's, they were tiny considering 6 people used to live and sleep in them! That was my history lesson for the month.

I've met lots of people and found out how small Queenstown really is, as everyone knows everyone through someone. Which I'm sure ill love, with in reason everything you need is a walk away, work, home, doctors, dentist, but of course the supermarket is a bit of a trek away. Amy and I went up to deer park heights with 2 of our friends Matt and Ben, the views from the top were out of this world, and to see all kinds of wild animals and the sun set was fantastic! It's now getting very VERY cold, icy roads and pure white snow on top of the mountains! Picturesque views, but extremely chilly. I'm now in a tizzy of what to do, weather to stay in NZ or move on to OZ as both are very hard to get visas. I think ill go ahead with the original plans of 1 year in NZ and 1 year in OZ then see what I can do in the future with coming back!

Thursday 10 September 2009

So it's now official I am homeless and jobless, a travelling bum! My last shift at Ferg Burger was yesterday morning, felt so good to be doing everything for the last time, but don't get me wrong ill miss the place and the people but not the hours or repetition of the job. I made some great relationship with people there who ill meet up again in the future in different countries. In the last 3/ 4 months I've been Skiing up Coronet mountain with Amy and a friend who came to stay whom I met in Fiji, was very pleased with the fact that all my skiing skills came back to me after 7 years, I also went for snowboarding lessons up Remarks, this wasn't so easy but I did get through it all to link only 2 turns, then after I just kept falling and hurting myself, so in old fashion Nicola style I had a paddy and left the mountain. All I have left to do now is a bungee jump, its not so appealing to me but for me not to regret anything in Queenstown I HAVE to buck up the courage and do it. Tomorrow I'm going on a road trip around the south of the south island, I've planned it for quite a while and am going with two best friends from work Simon who's a kiwi - hell be driving of course and Jannicke from England.

Friday 11th September 2009

So excited when I woke up knowing I was going on a road trip and travelling again, with 2 good friends Simon and Jannicka, I met them whilst working at Ferg burger and of which I've become very close too. Planning this road trip about 1 month ago the hype had built up so it was even more exciting. First stop was Oamaru famously known for the seal colony they have, it was only about a 2 hour drive away so Simon and Jannicke picked me up at 11.30 then first stop was the supermarket for munchies - of course! So on the way we stopped at a gorgeous dam and had some pictures as the sun was shinning and the water looked a bright turquoise. When arriving in the tiny town we found cute little backpackers just on the out side in the old part of town, where all the penguins stayed. When arriving at the hostel we were greeted by some what of a crazy lady - lovely but nutters! She showed us around and told us where the penguins would be. So we hurried back grabbed our cameras and ran to the watching box just before dusk and managed to see one yellow bellied penguin swim out the sea and waddle up the beach and disappear in to the bushes, we would have seen more, if it weren't for the fact it was nesting season so they were all hiding. after taking a few blurry pictures of the far away penguin, we headed back to the hostel to wait for 11pm to go and see al the blue tiny penguin's, the Crazy lady explained to us that there would hundreds of the animal wondering around town, but we had to search for the 5 we saw on the pier hiding in rocks and running to the holes under the shops/bars, but I was so pleased I got to see them as they are so cute! I now want one as a pet now!

Saturday 12th September 2009

Leaving Oamaru today and heading for Dunedin with a lot of stops on the way. The sun was beaming and we were ready to go at 11, first stop was Makare to see the huge perfectly round boulders in the see, I'm not to sure how they got there or why but I got some cool pictures of them and collected some very pretty shells off the beach. Next stop I was looking forward to a fisherman's dock with a famously delicious fish restaurant where we all treated ourselves to a fish lunch, which may well not have been deserved but defiantly worth it! I had fillet salmon with veggies in a creamy sauce; we sat out side and watched all the fishermen come into the bay. After lunch it was a straight forward drive to Dunedin with one stop at shag point just because it was called shag point hehe!! But we did end up seeing some seals and baby seals which was great! Dunedin is famous for its hundreds of students and Cadburys chocolate factory, unfortunate it was closed for tours on the weekend so I didn't get to see the wily wonka like place. This weekend in particular was known for 'undy 500' were once a year people from Christchurch buy a car for under $500 and drive it all the way down to Dunedin there quiet a rowdy group setting things on fire ECT, so we decided to stay in that night even though we were looking forward to going out in the party city, better safe than sorry though hay!

Sunday 13th September 2009

Unfortunately today was an unproductive day as the weather wasn't to fab and a lot of getting lost was involved, instead of going down the coast through the Catlin's a wrong turn was taken so ended up going through Gore, which is an absolute dive with nothing there, but never mind we ended up in Invercargill, the place we were aiming for and decided to do the Catlin's tomorrow instead of Stewart island as it wasn't guaranteed good enough weather to get across there. Another night of card games and went wild and played charades.

Monday 14th September 2009

Set off extra early today to cover all of the Catlin's as there was so much to see, the first stop into it was some huge water falls through a 30 min walk of forest, it was so good to walk as the drive had been about 3 hrs, then we went to watch hector dolphins but it wasn't the season BUT we did get very close to a seal which was just hanging out on the side of the road. Then another long drive and we ended up at Jacks Blowhole hehe! Which is were the sea pops up in the middle of a bushy field and it was another 30 min walk to that, the most exercise I've done in a while! So a lot of driving today to see……..well not a lot to b honest but it was all gorgeous scenery and sooooo many sheep! ended up at Te Anua quiet late and didn't have any food and of course the shops were all shut but we scrapped something together and figured out it would be a very early start tomorrow starting with a food shop to get lunch for our cruse in doubtful sound which I cannot wait for!

Tuesday 15th September

Woke up to not so bad weather the sun was trying to come out which was fab, got picked up at 8.45 and driven 20 min's down the road to the lake side, were we hopped into a small boat and drove 1 hour up a lake, it started to drizzle but it was actually quite nice as there was there was a few rainbows which put the cherry on the top of the scenery, at the top of the lake was a huge water power station the biggest in the southern hemisphere, of the boat was a mini bus which drove us into the mountain were the main part of power station was, inside made all the aluminium. It's the only working place inside of a mountain and inside was a museum about how they made the tunnel, was actually interesting! After the tour of inside the mountain we drove to the begging of doubtful sound lake and got into the bigger boat were the cruise would start, unfortunately the sun completely disappeared so the setting wasn't as good as it could have been but we still saw a penguin and sea lions on the rock and then Dolphins came and swam by a couple of times, then all of a sudden they appeared about 1 meter away from the boat all 6 of them cuddled together it was breath taking to see wild bottle nosed dolphins so close. after returning from Doubtful sound as we were having dinner the receptionist came in to tell us that there was a red sunset over the lake and mountains which was B E A utifull! So got some last snaps of the trip. So an overall of the trip was OK, seeing the wild life and the scenery was fab and could only be seen in the south of NZ but as for the amount of driving and the disappointing towns bought the trip down.