Part Three

So picking up where I left off.... And as per request, I'm making all the pictures in this post bigger, enjoy!

I was meant to start classes again on Monday the 23 of April, but there was an unfortunate miscommunication about the dates of my break when the travel plans were being booked and so my parents let me skip a whole week of school to travel with them. It was nice, I ended up having four full weeks of break.

So, Saturday, April 21... Long drive from Nelson to Greymouth, where we were staying at a beautiful B&B right on the beach. As a Colorado native, I will always be partial to mountains, but whenever I am at the beach I am always amazed. 

 

 

Sunset from our B&B

 

On Sunday we drove up the coast a little ways to visit the Pancake Rocks. Along the way, we stopped and did some little walks and had a picnic by the beach. The Pancake Rocks were super neat, I've never seen anything that looked like that before.

Pancake Rocks

Pancake Rocks

Picnic on the beach

Sunset on the beach

On Monday we drove from Greymouth down to the Glaciers for one of the coolest experiences I've ever had. When I was with the group of people on my first week of travel, we went to Franz Josef glacier and it was awesome. The glacier was super cool and we had a really fun walk, but with my parents, we did a HeliHike of Franz Josef. As in, we took a helicopter, landed on the glacier, put crampons on and hiked on the glacier. WE RODE IN A HELICOPTER!!!!! IT WAS SO COOL!!!!! Then, WE WALKED ON A GLACIER!!!!! IT WAS AWESOME!!! SO. MUCH. FUN. As you can tell, I particularly enjoyed this part of the trip. Definitely on the "Top 10 Coolest Things I've Ever Done" list.

Franz Josef Glacier

GLACIER! VIEW FROM OUR HELICOPTER!

OUR HELICOPTER!

LOOK! WE ARE HIKING ON A GLACIER! SO AWESOME!

WE HIKED ON THE GLACIER! WE RODE IN A HELICOPTER! YAY!

Okay. Moving on... the next day, we drove to Lake Matheson because it's meant to be just gorgeous. We were going to try to see the sunrise there, but our family has a hard time mobilizing, particularly early in the morning. Some members of our family (cough, me, cough) are especially grumpy in the mornings, while others (cough, Dad, cough) are much too chipper in the morning. I was not pleased that we were taking so long to get out the door and that we watched sunrise happen on our way to the lake (but we did make it out the door by sunrise! That is pretty amazing for our family...) and I was so frustrated that we were up so early and we weren't even going to get the sunrise. I expressed my frustration to my dear father, who then became a man on a mission to get his daughter to the lake by the time the sun actually rose over the mountains. Those of you who know Harry Newman may know that he doesn't move quickly. He doesn't drive quickly or aggressively unless someone really pisses him off. I have never seen him drive so aggressively. He may have even been going a little over the speed limit. Shocking, I know. Once we finally made it to the lake, we parked the car and got out expecting the lake to be a 5 minute walk where we could promptly get out our cameras and take pictures of the sun rising. We assumed incorrectly. The lake was not a 5 minute walk. The lake was a 45 minute walk. I have never seen my father walk so quickly. He was on a mission and I basically had to jog to keep up with him. Silly me, wore my Birkenstocks-- not good for walking as quickly as possible. We made it to the lake just in time. There were a few people there with really fancy cameras and we knew that if they were still there we hadn't missed out on our opportunity to get some good pictures. Turns out we were pretty lucky as well because we ran into a guy who said that he had been there the previous 4 days and that the day we went was the first clear day that he'd been there. We got some pretty great pictures and then had a lovely breakfast at the Cafe. It was quite the adventure. Who knew that he could move so quickly?!

Racing the sun to the lake....

Perfect reflection from the lake

Lake Matheson

After the excursion at the lake, we drove to Queenstown where we had Ferg Burger for dinner. Ferg Burger is well known for having some of the best burgers and we were definitely not disappointed. We had a pretty boring night in and went to bed quite early because we were planning to get up early the next morning. We got up just in time to see a beautiful sunrise over the lake! We did a fun hike up to the top of the Gondola where we had an incredible view of Queenstown, the lake, and the Mountains. We rode the gondola down the mountain, had ice cream for lunch, and then drove to Te Anau where we went to see the Glowworms! It was so cool in the cave, it looked just like the starry sky! Glowworms are really neat, they only glow when they are hungry so that they can attract their food and then they lure it in and eat it. Pretty cool little creatures. It was a lot of fun.

Daddy & I

Family Christmas Card?

Queenstown

On Thursday the 26, we drove from Te Anau to Milford Sound where we did a really cool nature cruise. It wasn't sunny this time around, but Milford Sound was still incredibly gorgeous and it was really awesome to go on the boat ride around the Sound. We saw dolphins and seals!! I still think that Milford Sound is one of the most beautiful places I've been but since I talked about it so much in the last post, I'll keep this short.

Milford Sound

Waterfall!

On Friday we went back to Queenstown for the night. We drove to Arrowtown in search of a winery. Arrowtown is an adorable town that reminded me a lot of Breckenridge. It was beautiful with all the leaves changing colors. We stopped by a winery on our way back to Queenstown before having pasta for dinner. (It was Friday after all... Had to have our pasta night!). My dad said he'd do a pub crawl with me. We started our night at a fun Irish pub with live music, drank one pint each, and decided we were too tired to keep going. We had a great time, but we didn't do a very successful pub crawl. We'll have to work on that next time...

Autumn in Arrowtown

Pretty colours!

Chard Farm Winery

Grapes!

On Saturday we had a long drive from Queenstown to Christchurch where my parents left me and went to Wellington and it was back to reality for me. Lots of catching up to do. My term break adventures were just awesome. It was so cool to see so much of the South Island. I hope to make it to the North Island at some point, but there is just so much to do here that I'm not sure if it will happen or not. I will post soon about my trips to Dunedin and Lake Tekapo, and this coming week during our study break I will hopefully be doing some more traveling. I have officially finished classes and I am leaving this wonderful place 3 weeks from today.... I am excited to go home but I am really sad to be leaving here. I promise I will be better about updating my blog for the remaining 3 weeks here!

The Term Break Adventures, continued...

If you thought that last post was long, I can assure you that this one will be longer. It has pretty pictures though! This part of the break starts on Saturday, April 14.

So after a long night of unpacking, essay writing, washing clothes, wine drinking, repacking, and little sleep, I met up with my parents!!!!!!!! They drove down to Christchurch from Kaikoura and picked me up. We drove part of the way to Kaikoura and stopped a winery for lunch. It was beautiful and the food was great. We caught up a bit (because unfortunately I don't talk to my parents as often as usual while I'm on the other side of the world), and then drove to Kaikoura. We went and saw some seals that night, which was pretty neat.

Seal colony

The next day, we had a tasty breakfast and did a wonderful 4 hour hike/walk around the Kaikoura Peninsula. We saw more seals and vistas with the most beautifully blue waters I've ever seen (although I've seen a lot of really blue water here... I don't understand how the water here is so blue everywhere. NZ is gorgeous) and had a fun picnic of sausage, cheese, bread, apples, and wine before driving to Blenheim for the night. 

Kaikoura

View from the top of the peninsula walk

More seals!

In Blenheim, we stayed at a B&B on a vineyard. We were greeted with the tastiest tea cookies and had dinner at an incredibly tasty restaurant in town. I had salmon risotto that was so good. Blenheim and Nelson are part of the Marlborough region which is famous for its Sauvignon Blanc (which you may know is my favorite type of wine). We stopped at a winery on our way out of town the next day after a wonderful breakfast fixed for us by Evelyn, our wonderful host. If/when my dear friends and I own a winery/vineyard/B&B/restaurant, that was pretty close to how I imagine it to be. Might not ever happen, but we can dream, right?

Parents and Evelyn

Korohi Vineyard

Mmmm... breakfast

We drove to Nelson on 16 April and drove into Nelson just in time to see a wonderful sunset. We stayed at the most adorable hotel that had rooms in English cottage buildings. It was so cozy and unique. We had dinner that night at a wonderful Indian restaurant (another thing I LOVE about NZ... the Indian food here is amazing; even the mediocre stuff is delicious). Nelson is such a fun town, I would love to go back while I'm here but I don't know if I will get the chance. The next day we were still in Nelson so we did a short little hike up to the geographic center of New Zealand, had a picnic in the botanic gardens, and walked around town a little. We had dinner at an amazing restaurant with outstanding food that overlooked the ocean. Our stay in Nelson was lots of fun, and we came back a few days later (Friday night) after our trip to Abel Tasman. Because it was Friday, we had pasta (family tradition) that was also so good. Moral of the story: Nelson has really good food.

My wonderful parents :)

Geographic Centre of NZ

One of the coolest things we did on our trip was our 3 day sea kayaking and hiking trip in Abel Tasman National Park. On Wednesday we began our journey in sea kayaks (did about 20 km on day one) and we stayed the night at Torrent Bay in an incredibly classy lodge. It was fun to meet other people who were doing the same trip we were but instead of kayaking, they were walking the whole thing. Day two, we kayaked 10 km, and walked 10 km to another lodge. It was really neat, we only carried what we needed for that day and all our overnight stuff was transported by boat and was waiting for us at the lodge. Friday was a shorter day of walking and then a boat ride back to the start. It was really cool to take the boat ride and see how far we had walked and kayaked; it really was quite a long way. We also saw jelly fish, seals, and blue penguins!! Abel Tasman is gorgeous and it was such a fun adventure.

Our kayaking group

As previously stated, we returned to Nelson on Friday night for pasta and had a wonderful dinner. Stay tuned for part three... it will resume in Nelson on Saturday, April 21. Get excited!