I spent Easter break (can't call it spring break, as it assuredly isn't spring on this side of the world, but it isn't winter break either, and fall break has to many associations with long weekends at Emory, so the religious marking will have to do) in New Zealand, tooling around the South Island with friends Lauren (not my roommate Lauren, but an awesome Lauren, nonetheless), Ari (short for Arianne and pronounced "Air-ee") and Theresa in Kiwi, a rickety old car that we rented for a suspiciously small amount of money. Kiwi did her job, though, and took us all over the island. I don't want to bore you with the recital of what we did each and every day, because while sitting in the car for hours and watching mountains pass while listening to Kanye West was fun to do, it loses a little something in the retelling. I will try to keep this vaguely chronological, though. So get ready for the episode of my life that I call Shoshi Does New Zealand.
Our first real adventure was hiking on Fox Glacier. Fox is one of only three glaciers in the world in which is surrounded by a temperate rain forest. It was a bizarre experience to hike it—one moment we were sweating in a swealtering jungle, trying to get down to our last decent layers of clothing, and then suddenly we would emerge onto mountain of ice and scramble for sweatshirts.
Here I am before we started the hike—please take extra notice of my bangin' footwear. The company that ran our hike (you can't go onto the glacier without a guide) provided us with these awesome boots that looked like they belonged in some inspiring film about 1900's wilderness explorers. I felt very John Muir.
Here is the approach to Fox:
And here is a shot of the mountains behind the glacier, with lots of little people standing on the ice. This should convey to you the sheer size of the glacier. If it doesn't, take my word for it: it is big. I was very impressed. Cold, a little mucuous-y from my running nose (due to the aforementioned cold) and with my toes bleeding from the damn boots, but impressed.
Our hiking guide, Sam, was a very charming, very knowledgable guy who dorkily admitted that he was trying to memorize all the flora and fauna in the rainforest. He also carried an ice pick like a sword against his back and used to hack out steps for us on the glacier. Foolishly, Sam believed our clever disguise, took us for mature young adults who could be trusted to handle dangerous tools, and let Ari, Lauren, and me hold the pick. He soon regreted that decision, as I took the opportunity to go all Trotsky on Ari:
After Fox Glacier (ooh, which New Zealanders pronounce "glaes-ier" to my endless amusement, as well as "crev-ASS" for "crevass") Kiwi huffed and puffed her way to Queenstown. Lauren and Ari went skydiving, while Theresa and I kept our feet firmly planted topside. Later that same day, though, we all went canyon jumping, which is essentially bungy jumping in a harness from a higher height. We jumped from 109 meters, and it was quite possibly the most awesome thing ever. Here is a birds-eye shot of the canyon that doesn't do its height justice:
They have different types of swings you can do which correspond to different levels of scariness. I chose the pindrop, which basically means I had to stand at the edge with my hands behind my back, bend my knees, and jump off the platform sidways. It took me a while to get myself ready:
And here I am, mid-crouch, right before I do the stupidest thing in my life and fall off a cliff:
I dropped for about twenty seconds (probably the scariest twenty seconds of my life) before the cables kicked in and started swinging me over the canyon. The cables let you go pretty low, so for a moment I thought I might touch the river at the bottom. I swung back and forth for a few minutes, breathing really heavily and trying to remember how to move my fingers, thinking extraodinarly inane things like "I have to check my bank balance" in between gasps of "oh my god, oh my god, OH MY GOD." Eventually the cables changed again and suddenly I was being pulled back up to the platform. When I first stepped back onto the edge, my whole body started shaking. I know the guys asked me some questions but for the life of me I can't remember our conversation. Lauren, who took these pictures, said I looked like someone had just hit me over the head with a two-by-four, but personally I think I look like someone who just jumped off a cliff and fell for 109 FREAKING METERS. You be the judge:
We needed a day to come down from the skydiving/canyon swinging adreneline high, so the next day we took a leisurely ferry ride around Milford Sound, about four hours outside of Queenstown. Milford was astonishingly beautiful, and luckily the rain let up right around the time we got on the ferry. Here is one of the many gorgeous views we saw:
While in Queenstown the we took the opportunity to go white water rafting. Unfortunately, we chose a slot at 8:30 AM on the coldest day of our entire time in NZ. I'm not going to lie: there were some moments out there on the river that I was sure I would come back to Australia with my frozen toes amputated. Apparently my lips were a shade of blue previously unknown to man, but there aren't any pictures because I wasn't about to trust my camera to the mercy of the rocks and rushing water. For the geeks reading this, though, chew on this: the river we rafted on, the Kawarau, is also the Anduin. So that scene in the Fellowship, where they go on the river past those two huge statues—I rafted that! Only there weren't any statues and I was too busy concentrating on NOT FREEZING to pay much attention at the time. Still, I geeked out once I realized where I was. Also, a bridge that crosses the canyon is the original bunjy site, and as we went under it a girl jumped. It was cool to watch her plummet and then get caught up by the cord, but I'm not sure how much she enjoyed it—her shirt flew up, her face dropped into the water, and she got a bloody nose.
We left Queenstown and headed to Lake Tekapo, where we relaxed, came off our adrenaline highs, and generally frolicked. In fact, here we are, doing exactly that:
From Tekapo, we drove to Christchurch. We took the scenic route because a sweet old man stopped us in the middle of the road in a tiny town called Geraldine to suggest it to us. He saw us making a three-point turn in the middle of the street, hailed us down, and proceeded to give us directions, entirely unsought after. It was the strangest encounter, made all the more bizarre by the circumstances that had brought us to stop in Geraldine at all. We were originally going to breeze right past the one-horse town (a step-up from most New Zealand villages, which have to share one horse between three or four of them) when suddenly Kiwi blew a tire a couple kilometers out of town. She made it to the closest garage rolling on good luck and our fervent prayers. There was a sickening twenty minutes when it looked like our insurance wouldn't cover the repairs and we imagined the rest of our trip spent wandering the streets of Geraldine (all two of them). Once we got that straightened out, though, we spent a nice lunch at the local Subway before another group of travelling American co-eds came in and practically challenged us to a rumble. Apparently the town wasn't big enough for two American girl gangs, so we grabbed Kiwi and hightailed it out of there. That may seem like cowardice to you, but collegiate sweatshirts and Burberry headbands are a suprisingly intimidating combination. The one with the iron-straightened hair looked like she meant business, and I didn't want to see what the blond one could do with her Uggs.
ANYWAY, we took Nice Old Man's advice and took Highway 72. If you ever find yourself on the south island of New Zealand, you should also listen to Nice Old Man, because that was a some of the most beautiful highway I have ever seen. My favorite part was Rakaia Gorge—you don't really notice it at first, so you're just thinking, "oh, pretty landscape, pretty landscape, look at the sheep! Just like the other sheep! Pretty landscape, pretty landscape," and them bam, the gorge. Which, now that I think about it, is less "creeping" and more "bam, knocking into you," but whatever. Either way, it was stunning.
Christchurch was our last stop, and I'm not actually sure what to say about it. We were so hopped up from everything we'd done before—the hiking, the rafting, the jumping from high places—that we found it hard to get back into the groove of exploring a pretty city. I didn't take any good pictures of Christchurch (which is beautiful and definitely deserves more attention than it gets) because I was too busy trying to catch up on lost sleep or wandering around town, bitching about the crappy food (we made bad restaurant decisions) and damn birds (there are a lot of them). We did have AMAZING desserts and margaritas every night, though, so at least our days ended on a high note.
The highlight of Christchurch (beyond the desserts and the margaritas) and the part I enjoyed the best was the Antarctic Center. Christchurch is called the "gateway to Antarctica" and it is the city most used as a port of call for those stationed in Antarctica. The center is an interactive science exhibit, with informative videos, displays, and a room that recreates arctic conditions. They give you a parka and rubber shoes and let you go crazy on the ice. There is even an ice slide and a fake ice buggy, which I took full advantage off. Lauren was happy to ride piggyback:
The Antarctic Center also functions as a wildlife reserve for penguins who have been injured and are unable to live in the wild. They care for Little Blue penguins which are the smallest in the world. My favorite was Elvis, the bizarrely named blind female penguin. The caretakers feed all the penguins in the pool, but Elvis gets a special feeding on land because they can't trust her to catch her food in water. That didn't stop her from taking a dip after the feeding though, and watching her try to get back on the rocks was adorable. The observation room was filled with little girls going all Veruca Salt on their parents, squealing "Daddy, I want a penguin! Buy me THAT one! I WANT it!" I might have begged Lauren for one, to be honest.
Here is Elvis, cautiously approaching the pool. If someone of the Lipton-Resnikoff persuasion could find a way to get this to Grandma , I'd appreciate it: y'all know how that woman is about penguins.
And that, visually speaking at least, was that. I chose not to document the humiliatingly amusing night we spent sleeping in the airport before our plane started boarding, or the disgusting vending machine food I ate for dinner, midnight snack, or breakfast that day. I returned to Melbourne, exhausted but triumphant, ready to fall into bed and sleep for eight million years. And I did, which explains why I'm so late posting this.
Stay tuned for further Melbourne adventures, random pictures, and Sydney! (I just bought my ticket.)
P.S. If anyone is interested in meeting me in Thailand around the middle of June, email me.
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