Te Waipounamu - South Island (part 2)

Tēnā koutou!

I think I forgot to mention in the last blog - Te Waipounamu means "The Greenstone Waters" because greenstone is found in the South Island and it is very precious to the Māori culture.

So I last left you in Queenstown...

Our route for the second half

Friday, April 18 cont.
The first thing we did when we arrived was walk around and find a nice place to play. We stopped in front of a cafe called Patagonia (on our favorite waterfront street). Then we ran into our Australian friend that we met in Wanaka! He was with his daughter and her friend so we all had coffee together and talked about life. After we caught up with them, we set up again to play ukes. It hadn't been very long at all before we attracted two random Italians who sat down to jam and then ALL of our American friends (the boys plus 3 other girls from school) and then our other friend from Zimbabwe who we met in Wanaka walked by and joined us. It was one big, funny reunion. We all jammed for a while and enjoyed the crisp night under the street lights with great people.

 

Reasons why we love Queenstown

Saturday, April 19

We always have leisurely mornings and make beautiful oatmeal breakfasts with tea and/or coffee+hot chocolate. We had camped next to the boys again and they took off as soon as they could. We eventually made our way to the Saturday Market in town where lots of artists were selling jewelry, pictures, pottery, scarves, etc. I bought a greenstone necklace that was carved by some Māori kids and blessed by a Māori elder. Since pounamu is so precious to the Māori, it's important for it to be blessed after it is taken from the river. We ate lunch in the grass by a rugby field and then decided to hike up to this place called the Skyline - a real tourist trap where you can take the Gondola up the mountain and buy ice cream at the top and ride the Luge (like go-carts). The hike was really beautiful and the view at the top was stunning.

After the hike, we met up with our friend, Lisa, who would be joining us for the rest of the trip. We decided to treat ourselves at Fergburger since everybody who talks about Queenstown RAVES about it. And for good reason! It's DELICIOUS. It was the only meal we treated ourselves to (excluding coffee) the whole trip. Fergburger specializes in gourmet hamburgers and they are HUGE. I ate the whole thing and it was hard work. I got the "Southern Swine" which had Prime NZ beef, American streaky bacon, lettuce, tomato, red onion, avocado, aioli, and tomato relish. So yum.
After that, the four of us busked for a little while and ran into our French friend, Gilles, who we saw busking in Wanaka! We invited him to have coffee with us at Patagonia to warm up. It was a good time :)

Upgrading to BOWLS of coffee

Sunday, April 20 ~ Easter

We had another leisurely morning with oatmeal for breakfast. We also tried to wash up and wash some of our clothes in the river by the campsite. This was my first time bathing in EIGHT DAYS (and the only bath I would have for the whole trip). It was the dirtiest I'd ever been and the river was freezing but it felt so nice to have somewhat clean hair. We hung our laundry out of the car windows and got such funny looks as we drove through the bustling town center. We drove up to the Remarkables Ski Field and have lunch and a 6 km high view of Queenstown - so gorgeous! But let's be honest - you could be anywhere in NZ and snap a random picture and it would be gorgeous. 

The plan was to get to Milford Sound by sunset, but first one more quick 'cuppa' at Patagonia. And the rest is history... "Milford at sunset" turned into a street concert by a group of Brazilian buskers. And of course, we ran into Gilles again, and his friend Antoine. We danced and sang all night and then finally had dinner around 10 pm with our French friends in the parking lot. We cooked soup and pesto and had bread and tea and chocolate; it was divine! We listened to French techno radio and played with poi. It was definitely an Easter unlike any other. Before we left, we passed on our letter from the Rawhiti Cave to Gilles.

Brazilian Street Band

Gilles reading the letter

Group photo :) (minus Maria)

Monday, April 21

We had camped about 45 minutes outside of Queenstown and woke up next to a beautiful lake with more mountains and someone boating around. It was always fun when we set up camp in the dark and were able to wake up in the morning to an amazing surprise.

Once we got ourselves collected, we began our drive towards Milford Sound (Piopiotahi). Driving in was the coolest thing because it was a little foggy and we were listening to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack and the mountains were so majestic. The Sounds themselves were also very majestic and misty and mysterious. While we were there, we met two brothers from Michigan!!! They're from Bay City and one currently lives in Washington DC and the other in Japan. They were just travelling together in NZ for two weeks. Small world eh! 

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Tuesday, April 22

Waking up in Fiordland was really cool. We were in a tall, grassy field with misty mountains all around us. The only thing was that the sandflies were really bad and we couldn't stand in one spot for very long otherwise we'd get attacked. Our plan for the day was to get up into the mountains, so we started on the Routeburn Track, which is a 3-4 day long Great Walk but we vered off to do the Key Summit hike, because we only had one day. We also did another secret, obscure side hike, courtesy of Scott Cook. Fiordland is absolutely beautiful. It was so green and there were little ponds because we were walking through a bog and there were squiggly trees with brown moss that looked like they came straight of the LOTR movies and of course, mountains, mountains, mountains. And it was no surprise that we ran into the Michigan brothers again because it's New Zealand and so we walked all the way back to the parking lot with them and talked about America and Michigan and Vernors and Enya and traveling. It was a really great day!

That night we had a hard decision to make. We only had a couple of days left and we could have continued driving south and have long days of driving ahead of us, or start going north and see some things along the way. We chose the latter and drove towards Mount Cook (Aoraki) that night.

Wednesday, April 23

Good morning!

We had lots of driving to do on this day but we still were able to see the Mount Cook/Aoraki, the Tasman Glacier (Haupapa), and Lake Punakaki. We didn't stay long, just made our way up to the glacier viewing point and got to see the lake while driving. I'm running out of adjectives to describe NZ without saying everything is beautiful and stunning... The drive towards Mount Cook was magnificent and the lake was a dazzling teal blue. The glacier was superb and my eyes were delighted to see such wonders.

"Gollum"

We drove until we reached our destination for the next day: Arthur's Pass. We found a picnic shelter, set up camp, and cooked delicious soup. I love soup.

Thursday, April 24 ~ Maria's 21st Birthday!!!!!!

We woke up and had a lovely birthday oatmeal breakfast and I gave Maria a card that I'd made for her and a CD of all the songs that we've been singing in New Zealand so she can listen to it whenever she wants to reminisce. 

Our morning campsite surprise

Our first stop along Arthur's Pass was Castle Hill, the land of the large limestone. These limestone were formed 30 - 40 million years ago when New Zealand was covered by water. It's cool having a Geology major (Bridget) with you because she knows so much about the landscapes. 

Boulder Yoga

We climbed around the rocks for a while and played ukulele and enjoyed the sunshine. Next, we stopped at some caves along the pass and explored those too. 

Caves always have cool acoustics. After all this exploring we were starving so we stopped to have food in a pretty spot :)

So obscure, eating pineapple chunks out of avocado shells - always laughing

Shortly after, it began to rain... So we stopped at a cafe for coffee and it didn't really let up. But that was alright, because we had a busy day while the sun was out! We drove until we found our next campsite and set up. In honor of Maria's birthday we made more delicious soup with allll the veggies and hot chocolate and wine and a really nice banana+nutella+carmello chocolate+peanut butter dessert. Mmmmm that was a fun night, so much laughter, so much love ♥

Watch out for Kiwi!

Friday, April 25

Our last day..... 

We had a guest for breakfast that morning - a curious, little weka was drinking out of our dishes that we left out for the rain to wash. Then he felt comfortable enough to sneak inside our tent to see what was up. We let him eat some dry oats and then he tried to take off with our entire loaf of bread!!! We scared him away but he was back shortly after and ran away with our sponge. Silly weka... That sponge was gross anyways.

It was a beautiful day for driving, the sun shining again as we passed by countless vineyards and rolling green hills. We got to Picton pretty early, so we met up with the boys who were camping nearby with the other Americans. It was fun to have one final night all together on the South Island. Our ferry left from Picton at 10:30 pm and we arrived in Wellington at 1:30 am, with still a two-hour drive back to Palmy. We were sad that our journey was over, but we felt content because it was a really fulfilling trip.

I love New Zealand.

and these goofballs

Thanks for reading :)

Ngā mihi rā

LOVE,

Katie

Te Waipounamu - South Island (part 1)

It's taken me a while to finally sit down and write this post because when you go to the South Island of New Zealand for two weeks with three amazing, adventurous, hilarious people, SO MUCH HAPPENS. And what an incredible two weeks it was. We drove in Maria's car and really roughed it for [almost] two weeks. (We were forced to stay in a hostel for one night after our tent wouldn't stay up during a monsoon – but I'll get to that later.) Our plan for the trip was to not plan at all, and so we took each day one at a time. I've never done a “vacation” like this before and I absolutely loved it. We were free as birds. We did have one very helpful resource: Scott Cook's guide book, NZ Frenzy. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS to anyone going to New Zealand – especially those wanting to “get off the beaten track”. He tells you all the best places in NZ, from the popular tourist traps to the coolest obscure destinations. Of course, our goal was to be as obscure as possible.

I think the best way for me to present this journey is to just do a short day-by-day summary. I won't go into huge detail because that would take ages. But I'm afraid that if I do it any other way, I'll miss something important! So if you've got a spare minute, go make yourself a hot drink, and enjoy :)

Our route for the first half of the trip

Sunday, April 13

Our ferry was out of Wellington at 9:00 am. (And since I'm learning place names in my Māori class, I'll add the Māori name after I tell you about a city. Wellington is Pōneke.) The water between the North and South Islands is called the Cook Straight and it connects the Tasman Sea to the Pacific Ocean. Maria, Bridget, and I started the trip together and Lisa would join us a week later. We rode the ferry with our American friends, Logan, Brock, Cole, and Jordan (who will from now on be referred to as "the boys"). We spent almost the entire three hours playing ukes in a room with big windows. Sometimes other ferry passengers would sing along or listen and smile and a few people even took a video! That was a pretty cool feeling. I love music for that reason, it brings people together in the simplest of ways. Music a pretty important theme for our journey.

After arriving in Picton (Waitohi), we ate lunch on the docks and caught our first glimpses of the South Island. We followed the boys to our campsite near Nelson (Whakatū) and we all camped in my 6-person tent (that was so generously lent to me by my wonderful host family). We played card games and ukulele and laughed all night.

Monday, April 14

We woke up and the boys' plan was to go to Abel Tasman (Tāhimana), but it was a dreary day so we decided to be obscure and go caving. We went to the Rawhiti Caves near a cute hippy town called Takaka. It was about an hour hike into the caves in the slippery mud, but it was so worth it for what we got to experience. There were huge stalagmites covering the entire ceiling! We explored around and played more ukulele. The acoustics in the cave we were SO AWESOME! We also met some travelers from Israel, Austria, and Germany. We chatted for a while and they gave us a really nice letter wishing us a happy future and to pass it along to another traveler who we thought deserved it.  

Me and Maria

Me and Bridget

Afterwards, we hit up a grocery store and began to drive south. We drove for a couple hours and when we started to get tired, we pulled off at the nearest Picnic Shelter that looked suitable for camping and set up our tent.

"Home" for the homeless

Tuesday, April 15

This was a big driving day. It was pouring rain most of the day and we were so afraid the weather would stay like that for the whole trip. We took this opportunity to get as far south as we could. We did stop at Punakaiki Pancake Rocks to have a look. We got drenched but the rocks were very cool! They were formed 30 million years ago by dead marine creatures and plants.

We got all the way down to Franz Josef (Te Tai o Wawe) and it was nighttime so we decided to set up camp - except it was a MONSOON. There we were... the three of us in the pitch dark, POURING rain, with our little headlamps, trying to set up our mansion of a tent. We tried to set it up in "record time" and when we finally got it all connected, we couldn't get in it because the wind blowing it over, making it flat as a pancake [rock]. We just laughed and laughed at ourselves and decided to go visit the boys in their hostel nearby. The plan was to warm up, make soup, then go back and be obscure and camp in the rain. But of course, we got lazy and just decided to stay inside. 

Wednesday, April 16

We woke up super early and beat all the tourists to the Franz Josef Glacier. The early Māori knew the glacier as Ka Roimata o Hine Kuatere (Tears of the Avalanche Girl). Most places in Māori are named after a story or event that took place there. This legend is that a girl lost her lover when he fell from one of the peaks and her flood of tears froze into the glacier. Franz Josef Glacier is 12 km long (approx. 7.5 miles)!

Our next stop was Lake Matheson, which is famous for its reflective views of Mount Cook (Aoraki) and Mount Tasman (Horo-kōau). The lake is home to long finned eels and water birds.

Maria and Bridget, with ukulele and celery... how obscure is that?!

We ended the day in Wanaka, one of my favorite places in NZ. It's a really cute mountain town next to a lake and everyone walks around town in scarves and hiking boots. As we headed further south, you could feel the temperature dropping. But none of it compared to the weather at home! 

We did some busking on the sidewalk and made some friends. Busking is really fun because of the cool people that stop and talk to you. You meet people who are traveling from all over the world! They're just roaming around, doing their own thing in NZ. It would be so cool to live like that for a while, but I don't think I could do it for a really long time. We warmed up with some coffees at a nice cafe called Kai Whaka Pai and then headed out to set up camp. 

Thursday, April 17

We woke up and made delicious oatmeal at our mountain-surrounded campsite. Our activity for the day was a hike called Roy's Peak, which took you on an 11 km walk up a mountain whose peak is 1,578 meters above the ground. In total, it took us about 6 hours. The views were stunning! We got to see Lake Wanaka, Mount Aspiring, and lots of cutie sheep. And there was snow at the peak! (Something I thought I had escaped for good...!) But it was awesome because we were on top of a mountain. 

Bridget and me, snacking on bananas and peanut butter ♥

Bridget and me, on top of the mountain

Maria and me, on top of the world

Me being stoic in New Zealand

Sheepies and Lake Wanaka

My friends :) :D ♥

Mountain snow!

After the hike, we went to the grocery store, listened to a busker, and had our evening coffee. We met up with two guys who we picked up hitchhiking earlier, one from Canada and one from Germany. Hitchhiking in NZ is nothing like hitchhiking in the US. So many people do it, and it's the main mode of transportation for all the random travelers that we met! Such wonderful people! An amazing day :)

Friday, April 18

We planned on making a speedy get-away but of course we were distracted by coffee. I think that's what I spent the most money on during the whole trip. Besides gas. And Cadbury Caramello Chocolate :) 

We bought postcards and wrote them to our families while drinking coffee at our cafe and listened to a cool group of buskers from Vanuatu! Most of their instruments were homemade. We went to talk to them after and they let us try some of them out! I really loved their music too, they were so fun!

Me playing a Vanuatuan ukulele!

Bridget on the bass!

Here's a little clip, just you can hear what they sounded like

When we finally made our way out of town, our next stop was Queenstown (Te Kirikiri). We thought we weren't going to like Queenstown because it is honestly one big tourist trap. But, low and behold, one cobblestone street by the waterfront where all the musicians come out to play is where all the magic happens. When suddenly.....!

To Be Continued . . . .

Pō mārie,

Good night,

Katie   

p.s. I LOVE LIFE