Wow, I actually got around to writing about my South Island trip. Even I'm impressed. Because I kinda rushed to pump this post out, I expect most of the dates (probably all of them) are horribly wrong so if you do the math and realize that things don't add up, it's not because I'm deliberately lying to you, it's because I'm too lazy to remember important dates.
Aiiight so I arrived in Wellington on the 9th and I actually wrote a post for that day. This is what I wrote.
Today on the 9th of November I started my trip to the south island of NZ. I begin catching a flight to another part of the north island, Wellington. I've never been to Welly before but I'd heard a lot of mixed reviews. For starters I'd heard that Wellington was famous for unpredictable weather (except for wind which is consistently 100km/hr). For mains I'd heard that it was super hilly and for desert I'd heard that the people are all super friendly and super liberal (like, literally everyone). The weather thing is right, it was bright and sunny when I first arrived but soon enough it got quite overcast and rainy. Wellington is not that hilly at all - the CBD is remarkably flat. There ar e a few mountains surrounding the city but they're pretty out of the way. I'm hoping to climb one tomorrow but I don't know the names; I hope one is currently called Mt. Inn. I haven't met many people from Wellington formally, but I did notice the reactions from the people watching Trump win the election on live TV around pubs and public libraries and everyone seems to be really liberal. I would say NZ in general is about as homogeneous as a sunburned ginger.
And that's when I stopped writing about my trip. Oops. The most important things to add to this was 1) I ended up climbing Mt Victoria 2) I want to an epic burger place called Ekim Burgers (very hipster) 3) I went to the museum and saw the WW1 Gallipoli exhibit - it was breathtakingly good and 4) I met up with a good New Zealand friend of mine, Luke, which I met years ago in New Plymouth when I did my internship with Schlumberger. Oh and 5) I met up with my the crew I'd begin road tripping with: Max (my Swedish friend I met in Cambodia), Sunny (a German), Lucas (a Brazilian) and Peter (a Slavanian? Slovenian? Sloevienian?)
Wellington is amazing, but it technically wasn't part of the South Island so that mean't we had to keep moving! Due to our horrible organization, we arrived at the dock to catch our ferry to Picton almost an hour late. Fortunately, my time in Auckland had taught me to rely on New Zealand's unreliability, and surely enough the Ferry hadn't even started to board yet. I'd heard rumors that the ferry was mean't to be extremely bumpy, windy and vommity which excited me because I loved the idea of balancing on the front bow the ship while everyone else was throwing up in the bathroom. I'm disappointed to say that the ride was smooth and vomit free. When we arrived in Picton we immediately drove to the nearest Domino's for a quick stop off and refueling before making our journey to the Abel Tasman.
The next day we finished our journey to the Tasman and went on a 8 hour loop around the place. It was really great! Even though the weather was forecast to be shit, the sky was blue and sunny all day. It was even good enough for Lucas to test out his large and loud drone to take some great landscape shots and intimidating selfies. Because everyone was stuck with me for 8 solid hours, I took this opportunity to engage in some real deep conversation about philosophy. Amazingly everyone got into it and we had a lot of really interesting ideas flowing back on forth - it's such a big relief to talk philosophy with non New Zealanders (since Kiwi's tend to have an awful habit of regurgitating well memorized ultra liberal dogma). It was a great day! And if it wasn't for those bloody sandflies it would have been a perfect day.
That night we decided to camp at the Abel Tasman and I managed to make a roaring fire with nothing more than a crappy lighter and drenched sticks. I got mad props from everyone around me for building it. I found it quite funny on reflection that one of the only things I'm good at building is something that's famous for destroying things which other people are good at building. After a great dinner and good company we decided to set up the tents and go to sleep. And that's when the earthquake hit. The 7.5 quake WAS AWESOME - it's like I was surfing on land! It wasn't a very rough and high frequency shake, it felt like a giant was slowly moving a carpet underneath us back by 1 meter and then forward by 1 meter about twice per second. So much fun.
With no need for coffee the next morning we immediately took advantage of the crappy weather and made this day our driving day. We first intended to stay in Greymouth for a night to split the journey in half, but after only being there for an hour we realized how deadly boring the place was. After careful deliberation, we decided to make our way to Franz Josef and square our shoulders for the long drive ahead.
Franz Josef was amazing! We stayed in a hostel called chateau Franz backpackers which was only $28 / night and featured free breakfast, free soup for dinner and a hot tub! Great value! Great place! There were also dozens of walks around the place including the Alex Knob Track and the Glacier view point. We loved it so much here that we ended up staying 3 (or maybe 4?) nights.
In the morning we started packing up to make our departure for Queenstown and by early evening we were on our way. We arrived late at night and set up our tents at a campsite nearby after realizing that every Queenstown accommodation was completely booked out due to a Marathon the following day. The next day we lazily woke up and waddled on down to the city center to buy beer bacon and bread. We ate all of our food and selfishly gobbled up all the free internet we could find from nearby cafes as we watched panting heat exhausted runners pass us by. Queenstown is really nice, but it's nothing like what I remember it being. About 6 years ago I traveled to Queenstown with an American friend of mine Johnathan Effgen to go skiing. Either the town has changed dramatically, or my memory has because it looks completely unrecognizable. Either way it's amazing. There were ducks, seagulls and buskers everywhere all desperately looking for a meal. Later on in the day we said goodbye to Sunny and Peter and said hello to two new travelers Tim and Rebecca - they are Sweedish friends of Max who were going to join us for Milford Sound. We were mean't to pick up my Italian friend, Federico from the airport today to join us as well but sadly he had to cancel his plans last minute for work reasons.
The next day we made our way to Te Anau - a small town that's convenient for hikers because it's located so close to the Milford Sound ferry. Federico had planned to avoid the Ferry cost ($60 each) by crossing the famous Dore's Pass. After looking at the map it seemed like Dore's pass was only 10km long so we assumed it would only take 2 hours to complete. We were so wrong. The department of conservation refused to print reservation tickets to Max, Tim and Rebecca because they thought Dore's Pass was too dangerous - they panicked and purchased last minute ferry tickets leaving Lucas and I alone with the car. Fueled almost entirely by Lucas's optimism we decided to commit to the Dore's Pass. This was by far the hardest hike I'd ever attempted. There were huge rivers that we needed to cross, it was completely deserted, no signal, huge muddy uphills, branches everywhere, eclipsing forests and giant overgrown trees/plants that we needed to avoid. Oh yeah, and there WAS NO PATH! just small little orange triangles pinned to some trees just to let you know you're going the right way. We got lost dozens of times. After a full 5 hours of hiking we decided to set up tent only 5km into the trek. The morning after Lucas expressed his desire to continue the hike so we could still meet up with the others along Milford Sound and celebrate his Birthday with them. Because I was the more experienced hiker I vetoed his decision because it was wet and cloudy and we may have needed an ice axe and crampons to get out of the valley we were stuck in. After being defeated by the deceivingly small 10km track we got back to our car and drove all the way back to Queenstown.
We ended up celebrating Lucas's birthday in Queenstown instead of along the Milford Sound track. Sadly though, Lucas found out on the morning of his birthday that he'd been rejected from the Canadian Uni he'd applied for which put a damper on the whole night. Not even the famous Fergburger could raise our spirits.
Wow this is getting tough to continue writing like this, I'm just going to dot point the rest:
- Drove back to Milford Sound to pick up Sweedish friends
- Snuck into area where we could see MASSIVE waterfall
- Spent a night at Te Anau. Met a really aggressive elderly New Zealand woman.
- Went back to Queenstown
- Tried Fergburger again! So good!
- Enjoyed eating by a special designated creek where we could drink beer and feed the ducks. Very cool.
- Drove to Dunedin
- Passed Wanaka and hiked Roys peak! Views were great. More philosophy!
- Arrived in Dunedin
- Uni looked quite disappointing
- Went on speights brewery tour. Amazing!
- Finished last part of the trip in an internet cafe and playing counter strike!
- Developed fantastic appropriation of the popular saying "whatever floats your boat" which was "whatever chokes your throat". Very proud.
There I did it! Wahoo!
