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After 6,5 weeks of travelling the second part of my trip was about to start! I nearly cried when I left the airport in Sydney but it was time to fly to New Zealand, or as the Maori call it: Aotearoa, the land of the long white cloud. I must admit, we did have a bit of a shock when we arrived in Christchurch, on a public holiday, nobody on the streets and debris all over from the earthquake and its aftershocks in the past months. At least Jenny was there to welcome us to this new adventure, but it did take some time to get used to. Aniek and I threw ourselves onto making a plan for the coming weeks, as we did not really do any research before hand.... After about 5hrs we figured out what the best way was to cover the majority of the South and North Island in the 4,5 weeks we have.
We've been here now for two weeks, and so far we've done a loop of the South Island. Our means of travel here is Magic Bus, a bus network which also takes care of organising your accommodation (if you want), tells you where to go and what to see, where not to go and what not to see, when to take a photo, when to eat and drink, and when to get out of bed. I am exaggerating a bit here, but I can tell you, it's pretty organised. After driving our car for 4000kms in Australia this was a bit of a shock to me. But I can tell you, we've gotten used to it now. As Australia had taken its toll regarding our energy levels, we practically sleep every bus journey, get dropped of at our hostel (which we book ourselves) and get picked up again (when we want it to). All in all, we figured out a pretty good way to get best of both worlds and I've seen the positive side of a guy telling me something about the history of this country whilst looking at stunning views of yet another lake. At times we do feel like Japanese tourists being dropped out of the bus for a photo, but then I think, would I have stopped here if I was driving a car by myself? The only downside is that there actually are a lot of Asians travelling Magic bus, who do not feel the need to socialize. Anybody who knows me just a little knows I like to socialize so this can feel very isolated at times, which results in me talking to Aniek who in turn just lets me talk and mumbles back at the right times. (Just to be clear, we are still having the best time of our life but I can't blame her - if someone would be talking to me 16hrs of the day I would probably do the same.) We have met a few cool people from Brazil and the UK who do still tend to listen to me when I'm pointing out every single thing I see - especially when we got stranded twice as we had the oldest bus ever which inevitably broke down. The first time we only had to wait for 45 minutes sitting amongst sheep eating our lunch, but the second time we were sunbathing on the side of the road for 2 hours. It was so hot that one guy from Los Angeles even tried to fry an egg on the tarmac, which ofcourse didn't work (stupid Americans).
As said, so far we've done a loop of the southern part of the South Island. We started in Christchurch where we acclimatised for 2 days before taking the Trans Alpine train to Greymouth, which is on the west coast. The only thing there is in Greymouth is Monteith's beer brewery. It was a cold rainy day so we decided to do the brewery tour, which actually wasn't really our cup of tea (could've thought of that before paying 18dollars). We did get to taste 8 different types of their beer, which they served us at such a fast pace it got a bit tricky for us to walk back to the hostel at 4 in the afternoon... After spending one night in Greymouth (more than enough) the bus came and picked us up at 7.30 in the morning (this is NORMAL for any bus company in NZ) to take us to Frans Jozef. Frans Jozef is famous for its glacier. We did a hike on the glacier, which was so impressive. I've never seen somehting like it before. Aniek even managed to squeeze herself through an ice tunnel, falling into the arms of our quite handsome guide Jack, as he said: "You can trust me!!". I passed on the ice tunnel, not that I didn't want to fall into the arms of handsome Jack, but the tunnel was pretty tight and I thought it would be wise to save myself from any embarrasing situations... The nature adventure carried on as we travelled down to Wanaka. This town is situated on the south side of Lake Wanaka. Our hostel was literally a 2 minute walk from the lake with stunning views of mountain reflections and snowy tops, whereas the temperature was 30 degrees on ground level. We did some mountainbiking there which was desastrous after not going to the gym for 2 months... According to my dad we shouldn't be worried "You don't cycle up mountains at home, do you?", but being out of breath after 5 mins on a bike did worry us a bit...
After Wanaka we were ready for a bit more of a city environment, and travelled down to Queenstown. Queenstown is supposed to be NZ's "party capital" so this was the only place we could let our hair down. We had another reunion with Jenny (and Astrid, another friend from Australia). Queenstown is the only town on the south island with a 'city feel' to it. Nice shops, pubs and restaurants - best burger ever that Annie and I shared for dinner due to our tight budget. The night after we attempted to make pancakes in our hostel. Yes, you are reading this right: "attempted". You would think making pancakes is simple, then try to do it in a hostel with 100 italians around you making pasta and yelling at each other, whilst scraping the non stick layer out of all the pans which resulted in all our pancakes sticking to the bottom. What we had for dinner that night: cooked carrots and nearly raw pancakes. The dough filled us up anyway. From Queenstown we also did a day trip to Milford Sound, the "8th" wonder of the world. The views I saw there were amazing. It looked exactly like lord of the rings, even though I've never seen the movies.
In sum, New Zealand is all about the scenery, taking photos of views, mountains, lakes and sunsets and catching up with our sleep. This cycle pretty much repeats itself every day and I'm starting to appreciate it more as times go buy. It was hard to wind down at first but I've started to realise that nothing can beat overlooking the ocean and stunning views, sitting on the doorstep of your hostel with a cup of tea in your hand. Writing this I'm overlooking the Pacific Ocean from our hostel in Kaikoura, a tiny coastal town I've fallen in love with instantly. I'm happy I still need to pinch myself at times instead of taking all this for granted already! Tomorrow we're taking a boat out into the ocean to swim with dolphins, can't wait! Hope everybody is doing well and I promise to update again soon!
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Agnes "It looked exactly like lord of the rings, even though I've never seen the movies." hahahha Aangename afwisseling, een beetje rust? ;) XXXXX