Straying Around New Zealand

Today is the last day of vacation for me. I head back to reality tomorrow morning. It will take approximately 30 hours to get there and will be an incredibly long Saturday. I leave Christchurch at 7:10am on May 14th and arrive in Seattle at 1:07pm on May 14th....at least I get the 19 hours I lost on the trip over back and I will no longer be Jenna of the future. The three plus weeks went by extremely quickly. I had a great trip and I am very happy I decided to visit NZ on my own. I went out of my comfort zone and pushed my boundaries a lot on this trip, and I am happy to have done so and have no regrets. Some highlights of my trip (in no particular order) were teapots, skydiving, hiking up Franz Joseph Glacier, seeing lots and lots of BEAUTIFUL NZ countryside, trekking through the woods, and meeting some great people who I hope to keep in contact with. NZ is a great country and I would recommend visiting to everyone. I have to say that I love the fact that NZ does not have any pennies. The smallest coin is 10cents and they round up or down depending on the amount. I also love that the tax is included in the price of everything you buy, so you know what the exact price will be.

My last day was spent in Christchurch, pretty much not doing anything. I arrived in Christchurch around 10am and was able to check into my hostel early. I decided not to go to the Antarctic Center since it cost $65 and I wasn't really feeling it. The hostel I am staying at picked me up for free, which was a nice savings. My room wasn't cleaned yet, but I was at least able to dump my bag and go get something to eat. By the time I returned at 11:30, the room had been cleaned and the sheets were changed. I wanted to leave Christchurch with a better picture in my mind than the damaged, crumbled buildings and piles of rubble, so I decided to go and walk around the Botanic Gardens. It isn't the prettiest time of the year to walk through the gardens, but it was alright. After the gardens I went and read my book before heading out for some free internet. I will say that I can see a difference in Christchurch from today and three weeks ago. Some cars are able to drive further into the city center and there wasn't as much military presence. The big pile of rubble that used to be a Burger King close to where I am staying was all cleaned up. There were more cranes at work around the city center as well. I get picked up at 4:20am in the morning to head to the airport....Now it is the waiting game. Below are some pictures of Christchurch that do not include rubble.....

This will be the last blog entry for this trip...Next trip will be Peru in October!

We had a late start this morning. We didn't leave Mt Cook until almost 11am. The weather was interesting in the sense that
if you looked to the right you would see blue sky and sun and if you looked to the left you would see stormy clouds over the
mountains. Luckily, we were headed towards the blue skies. We stopped for lunch at Lake Tekapu, which is a glacier fed lake.
the color of the lake was beautiful, almost an aquamarine color. After Lake Tekapu, we stopped in a town called Geraldine,
where we were able to buy groceries for dinner. We stayed in Rangitata tonight. Prior to the earthquake in Christchurch,
this would not have been an overnight stop. Since most of the large hostels in Christchurch are a pile of rubble, Rangitata
is the new stop. We leave here tomorrow at 7am and head to Christchurch. I get dropped off around 10am at the Antarctic Center,
which is about 20 minutes from the hostel I am staying at. Since I have already spent a day and a half in Christchurch and
pretty much everything is closed, I am going to see if I can leave my bag and hit up the Antarctic Center for the morning. Had
I thought about it and planned better, I would have caught a bus out of Geraldine straight to Christchurch and skipped the
overnight stop in Rangitata. The rooms sleep 10 people and are three bunk beds high.....talk about uncomfortable. I chose
to pay more for a double room, and Nina and I are sharing. There really isn't anything to do in Rangitata. Emer and I took a
walk in the hills, but other than that, I am pretty much just waiting to leave in the morning. The facilities are not terrible.
The kitchen and the lounge area are nice and the guy who checked us in was helpful. I feel like Stray should have
had us stay at Mt Cook for two nights and skip this stop. I also don't really like the bus driver or the bus this time. The
bus is packed full to the max and I am ready for a room to myself. All things considered, I am glad I joined the Stray tour
to see NZ. Would I do it again? No, I would do it differently based on what I know. I have had a great time though and met a
lot of really nice people.

I left Dunedin this morning on a new bus. Half the bus was made up of people we were traveling with before, and half the bus
was new people. We downsized to a bus that only seats 24 people and it was pretty full. I definitely preferred the big bus
that allowed us all to have our own seats and spread out. I think I am stuck on the short bus for the next two days though.
The final stop for the day was Mt Cook. We headed up north and stopped to see the Mouraki bolders. They weren't anything
spectacular, but it was nice to stop for breakfast. We headed through Omarau and stopped at a glacier lake for a picture.
We arrived in Mt Cook village around 2pm. This is the nicest place we have stayed so far and we have a spectaular view. The
place we are staying is a hotel that has converted some rooms into dorm rooms, so two bunk beds sleeping four people. We
have our own bathroom and a balcony. I ended up walking out to Kea Point towards Mt Cook. It is an hour walk there and an
hour walk back. I didn't really have anymore time for a longer walk since it starts getting dark around here by 5:30. The
place we are staying offered a deal for a lodging, a meal, an hour of free internet and a 3D movie of Mt Cook. I ended up paying
for the deal and watched the 3D movie after the walk. After the movie, we ate dinner and the bar had a trivia night. Our team
came in second and we won a $30 bar tab. We would have come in first had the bus driver, who was on our team, known some facts
about NZ. We lost by two points, but it was fun. If I had more time, I would definitely spend a few extra days here doing
some walks. It is so beautiful!

Today was my last day in Dunedin. I had a lazy start, and caught up with Jesse in the morning. Around 11:30am, Emer, Emma and I decided to walk to the world's steepest street. It was about a 40 minute walk to Baldwin street. It only took about 5 minutes to climb up the street though. Emma cheered us on from the bottom since she hurt her knee. The pictures won't do it justice, but it was a pretty steep street. There are steps up the side so it wasn't really an intense walk up. People live at the top and probably have to have the brakes on their cars replaced fairly often. On the way back into town, we walked through the botanical gardens and past the University. The gardens were nice, but nothing spectacular. After the gardens we stopped at the store to pick up some groceries/snacks and went back to the hostel. I went and walked around some of the shops and picked up a few things. It didn't rain today, but it was pretty grey and overcast for most of the day. Dunedin is a cute town, but I am ready to move on. We head to Mt Cook tomorrow. Yikes, only four more nights in NZ. My time is coming to an end soon and I will be back to work before I know it. I will definitely have to come back to NZ and explore the North Island...maybe incorporate an Australia/NZ trip. I guess Fiji is really popular with backpackers and other people visiting the South Pacific. I have absolutely no interest in going there....I have heard way to many stories about bed bugs. I think it is too cold in NZ for the little buggers.

I'll add pictures later....I'm not on my computer, so I can't upload any at the moment.

Today was my second full day in Dunedin. There is actually quite a bit to do around here. I still haven't decided if I am going to pay a fortune to see more penguins, but I'll make a game day decision tomorrow. My trip is starting to wind down to the last few days.....I'm a little sad about it, but I am ready to sleep in my own bed....at least for three weeks before I head off to Minneapolis for three weeks in June. This morning, Nina and I decided to head up to the Ovelsten house. The house was built in 1906 by a wealthy family. In 1967, the last heir died and the house was left to the city of Dunedin with instructions to perserve it and open it up to the public. The last heir preserved everything in the house from when it was built. There are 35 rooms and we saw all of them except the basement and the top floor where the servants quarters were. It was actually a really interesting tour and I am glad I did it. After the tour we went to a cafe for lunch where I had the best vegetarian sandwhich ever. It had pumpkin, pesto, grilled veggies, lettuce and tomato on rye bread. I think I will go back there for lunch tomorrow....the only thing that could have made it better was avacado. In the afternoon, six of us met up to go on the Cadbury's chocolate factory tour. They give you quite a bit of free chocolate and you get to taste some liquid chocolate right from the spout. I didn't realize cadbury's made so many different types of candies. Most of the stuff I saw today isn't available in the States....or at least I have never seen it. I bought some chocolate to take home, but who knows if it will make it home. After the Cadbury's tour I got the official confirmation that Jorie had booked our plane tickets to Peru! I am very excited about this since I actually wanted to go to Peru instead of NZ, but didn't have anyone to go with, which is why I picked NZ to travel to. Peru will be a shorter trip....we leave October 6th and come back October 22nd, possibly planning on hiking the Inca Trail up to Machu Picchu. The weather was looking great this morning, but after lunch it became completely overcast. Emma, Emer, and I decided to book the 2 hour ghost tour around the city for 6pm. It didn't really compare to the Edinburgh ghost tour I went on two years ago. There isn't as much history in Dunedin, and it isn't as old. It was an interesting way to spend the evening, but I wouldn't do it again. After the ghost tour we went our for drinks and snacks, then headed back to the hostel.