Today we flew an hour and a half flight to the South Island of New Zealand. We traveled the south for the past 10 days, and I was totally and completely cut off from the outside world with no internet, computer, and cell phone. I am loving this experience or de-tox from technology and getting to live completely in the moment. In fact I have lots of time to marvel that my parents and other older generations survived without cell phones and internet. I’m getting a small taste of what they went through and I am very glad to be living in the time that I do now, even though it’s been a growing experience for me.
But since I have been gone so long I am going to struggle to blog in detail about all the wonderful things I got to do on this trip. So I am going to put up lots of pictures and captions to go with them that will hopefully give a little insight into this amazing past ten days.
After the Shotover Jet we moved into our housing for the next five days. We stayed at a backpacker stop. Basically it is a small step up from a hostel. There are 8 beds- four bunks in each room. There is one tiny bathroom outside of each bunk room. While we were getting ready in the morning and night random people would come use our bathroom, boys live on the same hall as us, there was a bar right below us with blaring music pounding at our walls all night, and people from all around the world living right next door.
Lets just say we got very close over this time.
Lets just say we got very close over this time.
Right away I could tell that the south island is one of the most beautiful places on this earth. It has majestic mountains, clear oceans, huge lakes, and endless hiking trails through beautiful trees. Queentown is a very unique town. It is pretty small but it is full of adventures to embark on and most of the people here are up for a challenge. If you walk up the main street you can find places to sign up for mountain bikes, safaris, boat and bus tours, sky diving, bungee jumping, shot over jet, paragliding, and almost any other extreme sport or adventure you would want to do.
On the first day we were there Heidi and I were walking along the shore and we met some very interesting boys. They were two American boys who had just finished college and were taking some time off before grad school. They flew to New Zealand, bought a bus to live in and were eating meals off of free samples and bathing in the lake.
They were doing the south Island on a very tight budget, but they were happy living out of their van and exploring life that way. They were not necessarily kids we wanted to hang with the rest of our trip but I was way interested in their story, their ambitions for this trip, and their perspective.
Just a little ways past the shot over jet we visited an old mining town. Many of the first people in this area came over to pan for gold in some of the rivers.
We also visited the forest where parts of Lord of the Rings was filmed. Because of the contracts made the movie people had to live the nature where they filmed perfectly untouched after they made the movie so you can’t tell where everything happened but you can get the feeling from the movie by looking at some of the trees and landscapes there.
The south Island is said to have more sheep than people. I have seen sheep at fairs and different places but I was super intrigued by these thousands of sheep out along the fields. Some even got out from underneath the fields and were wandering around the road and open grass.
I had this strong desire to chase a sheep down and touch one. My professor bet me five bucks I couldn’t catch one and ofcourse I took his challenge. I hopped out of our vans an started chasing the sheep. I realized that the sheep were a lot faster than I had expected. After about 15 minutes of me running around and not getting close to catching one I was on the verge of giving up. But then I spotted a nice chubby sheep walking outside its fenced area. I slowly began to corner it with the help of Heidi. Then I charged it!!! It tried to jump back through its fence to get away from me but it was too chubby to make it through the fence part it was by. It dived into the fence in a panic and I lunged. I barely grazed the back side of this sheep while it was stuck before it took off in the opposite direction! I had done it… I touched the “wild” sheep thanks to the fence and its chubbiness J
A couple morning and evenings some of the girls and I took walks through the garden area of Queenstown.
We also went on some great hikes, posing for the occasional picture. I decided to head stand on a stump on the edge of the mountain thanks to Anna’s brilliant idea J
Day 2- Feb. 1st
Puzzle world was the next place that we toured as a group. I wasn’t too excited at first but there were some rooms and puzzles that were really fun to experience.
There was a room full of heads that looked like they were following you. There were optical illusions, artwork that popped off the paper, tilted rooms that made it look like water was flowing up stream, and a maze that I failed to completely make it through.
There was a room full of heads that looked like they were following you. There were optical illusions, artwork that popped off the paper, tilted rooms that made it look like water was flowing up stream, and a maze that I failed to completely make it through.
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