New Zealand

I spent 9 days traveling around New Zealand. I went with a tour group through Extreme Adventures. There were 5 of us that went. Four of us were from the US. The last one was from Holland. Then we had our two guides that switched out about half way through...they just couldn't handle us. Haha.

Day 1

I spent almost 4 hours on a plane and barely made it through customs. The guy asked me 50 questions like I was smuggling drugs and then they had a dog come sniff me and my bag! I got onto a shuttle bus and unexpectedly met the rest of my group. We finally got to our hostel, Kiwi Base Camp, at about 1am.

When we all woke up the next morining we quickly went down the street to get on a bus where we would spend the next 8 hours. Yes, I just said 8 hours! We were all dreading this trip until we started seeing the scenery. It was absolutely incredible!

After a very yummy lunch outside looking out over the amazingly blue lake and the snow capped mountains, we got back on the bus and finished out journey to Queenstown. We met our guide, picked up our ski gear and then drove to Wanka where we would stay the night.

Day 2

We woke up the next morning and headed to Treble Cone to go skiing and snowboarding. I hadn't skiied in years and you could definetly tell. I was pulling a mom and was staying in the pizza postion the whole way down the hill. So after Oskar and Byron waited for me and helped my down the green slope, I practiced on the bunny slope for a while. I later decided to re-try the green slope again. I made it almost to the bottom without a single fall. I could literally see the end when I fell and sprained my knee. At least I got some good footage.

That afternoon we all went to Puzzling World where they had all of this really cool, mind bending stuff you could look at and do. They also had a maze but I couldn't do it because it hurt my knee to walk up and down the stairs in it. But it was fun listening to everyone try to figure the maze out.

Day 3

We started our day with a quick boat ride on the Earnslaw to Walter Peak, a high country farm. We go off the boat and had an amazing bbq lunch. It was delicious. We then took a small tour of the farm. We got to pet the sheep and feed them. Then we got to watch a demonstration of how they heard sheep. After that we got to see how they sheer sheep.

Day 4

Now this is when we really start getting extreme.

First we had Ferg Burger! That is one extremely huge burger and I finally found a place that uses American bacon and not Canadian bacon!

We went Jet Boating and unfortunately I was unable to get a video because they wanted us to actually buy their video. But I do have a picture. I am the one with my arms covering my face. Haha.

We then got suited up in wetsuits for white water rafting. To the area though, we had to take a helicopter ride. WOOHOO!

Then that night we played some extreme Jenga.

Day 5

Today we did some extreme frisbee golf! Then we went on a gondola ride up the mountain and then went luging down the mountain and bungee jumping off of the mountain. Luging is like go-cart racing!

Bungee jumping was awesome! This bungee was not the type that wraps around your feet. It is a harness that goes around your body. This type of harness allows you to do flips off of the ledge. I went to run and then jump off the ledge, but my knee gave out as I jumped and just fell. Haha. So my bungee jump wasn't very gracefull. The jump was 47 meters or approx. 154 feet!

Day 6

So far, on this entire trip, we have had perfect sunny, blue sky weather. Today is our one free day on the trip where we can do what ever we want. I was gonna go sky diving, but the one day of bad weather the whole trip was of course today. I wouldn't really consider it to be bad weather since it was snow that was sticking. But it still sucked I couldn't go sky diving.

Since it was snowing, we went up into the mountains and played in the snow a little. We also go to tour a town called Arrowtown. It was built during the time of the gold rush. It was the cutest little town. After dinner we decided to go to the hounted house, Fear Factory.

Day 7

Today we got up extremely early to drive about 6 hours to Milford Sound. You can only get to this place by helicopter, boat, or by driving through this one tunnel going through a mountain. It is amazing. On one side you are driving through lots of farm land, you go through the tunnel, and you come out with mountains surrounding so close you could almost touch them.

On our way to Milford Sound we stopped at a few places. At one of them we met a birdie who tried to eat the car.

One place we went was called Mirror Lakes. You can see the mountains reflected perfectly in the water. If you look straight down into the water, you can see all the way to the bottom.

The Chasm is a place where two tectonic plates sifted and created a chasm within the rocks and a flowing stream has just kept eroding it.

Milford Sound is a truly beautiful place, I just couldn't truly appreciate it because the evil sand flies were swarming me. I was so happy when we finally got on the boat for the boat tour through the sound. We even got to see seals and a penguin!

Mirror Lakes

The Chasm

Day 8

Today doesn't have much footage since we had a late start to our day and we went to see the glow worm caves. You can't take pictures of glow worms. We got up and cooked breakfast and then had to check out of the hostel by 10am. We didn't have our glow worm tour until 2pm. So to kill time we went shooting. We had a 22 beebee gun and a 22 sniper. After we shot all of the enpty beer bottles and cans we could find, we headed back into town and found this huge playground. This playground seriously was built for adults, not children. There were climbing structures way too tall for kids and there was a wheel set up like a steering wheel. The point of this wheel is to wrap yourself around it and spin around it like a hamster wheel. If we couldn't even hold on, how are children supposed to? We had fun being big kids on the playground. Haha.

Day 9

We gott up extremely early to get back on the bus we arrived and head back to Christchurch. We had a plan to catch at 6am the next morning. We spent 8 hours again watching the scenery.

Once in Christchurch we still had to find dinner. Our problem? Most of the city is still destroyed and uninhabitable from the earthquakes in February of 2011. The earthquake reached a magnitutde of 6.3 on the richter scale. So there is no where to eat because there are no open and safe restaurants.

We ended up finding a restaurant that was basically set up in tents and busses outside due to the fact that there building had crumbled. That is the picture to the side here. It was pretty tasty food. We then went and explored the city a little.