South Island 1 - Bungy Jump, Ice Bar, Tours

I returned from my two week South Island trip two days ago, and have been incredibly busy sorting everything out since then. But I think it's about time to start writing things down. It was an amazing trip, and I've decided to write a separate blog post for the first and second week, since there are so many pictures and adventures to divulge.

So, to start at the beginning, Nikki and I spent the first week together, traveling by bus and pitching our tent wherever we could. We landed in Queenstown in the morning, and had an incredibly busy first day. We first pitched our tent at a campsite, and then walked through the Queenstown gardens and lake:



Then I split from Nikki to catch the bus to the Kawarau Bridge Bungy- the world's very first commercial bungy. I actually wasn't afraid, although these Canadian and Australian guys who took the bus with me found that hard to believe. Bungy jumping definitely takes more guts than skydiving, though, because you need to jump off yourself instead of being shoved by a tandem diver. I wanted to touch the water below the bridge, so the man who tied my feet told me to simply fall straight forward off the bridge (as opposed to jumping which would reduce the pull of my bodyweight). I wasn't afraid, even when hopping up to the edge of the bridge with my legs tied and looking down at the rapids. The closest I came to fear was the split-second after plunging from the bridge, when my brain registered that I was heading towards the ground and seemed to ask me "have you forgotten about your evolutionary goal of self-preservation? What the HELL are you doing?". I didn't feel that when skydiving; I was so high up, my brain never really processed that I was falling to the ground.




Later that night, Nikki and I met up with some other kids on our study abroad program who are currently studying in Christchurch but happened to be in Queenstown that night, and we went to an ice bar. It was negative 8 degrees in there, so we were required to wear parkas and gloves (the gloves helped with the ice glasses, too). The entrance fee was a little steep, but I'd always wanted to go to an ice bar, and I've been steadily chipping away various life goals New Zealand, so why not this one as well?




Afterwards we tried enjoying the local bar, Buffalo, but were drained and decided to call it a day. Camping in Queenstown was alright, but it was definitely frosty, and we both woke up in the middle of the night shivering. We also had to wake up early to catch the long bus ride to Milford Sound. Milford Sound is definitely one of the more famous scenic places in New Zealand, most well known for it's starkly tall mountains, which were carved through by a massive glacier. Pictures definitely can't do this place justice; I literally couldn't capture the scale of a cruise ship next to one of the massive Milford mountains because they were just too big for my lense. But seeing a cruise ship look like a toy boat next to a mountain definitely gave us a sense of perspective (you can sort of see on on the left):


I was also wearing a hat and sunglasses during the cruise, and a few Japanese tourists mistook me for a celebrity. They approached me with their camera and asked for a picture- I thought they were asking me to take a picture of them, but instead they wanted to take a picture WITH me. I wonder who they thought I was?

We arrived back in Queenstown later that night, and had a Fergburger- a large burger from a restaurant that we'd heard about from a few different people. We met two Brazilian men at Fergburger who ended up challenging us to a game of pool. Nikki and I were severely lacking in pool skills, but we ended up learning a bit of Portuguese (which I promptly forgot by the next morning). We woke up early yet again the next morning, to catch a bus to Dunedin. This coastal city was modeled after Edinburgh, and had a lot of nice churches. We took a bus out to the Otago Peninsula, a more rural area outside of Dunedin where were were hoping to camp. We ended up setting up our tent on land labeled as a "Nature Reserve", overlooking the coast:


We thought we were all alone up there, until a man came upon us eating dinner, and asked us what we were doing on his land. Whoops! He let us stay as long as we promised not to start a fire or leave any rubbish behind. Perhaps it would have been better if we'd moved, because that night there was a powerful rainstorm, and we got the worst of the winds and rain on the top of the mountain. We were a little worried about the sturdiness of our tent, since we bought it used and later realized it was labeled as a "tnet" instead of a "tent"- if the manufacturers couldn't spell tent right, what else would be wrong with it? But our sturdy tnet never fell over. It did sway in the wind, though; at some points it bent so low that it touched our noses. The next morning we headed back into the city and decided to check into a hostel and have a shower. The shower and the hostel were heavenly: our room had a balcony along with a friendly cat sitting purring on the edge of the bed.

The next day we took the tours of Cadbury Chocolate Factory and the Speights Brewery. They didn't allow us to take pictures inside of the factory, but I was still excited because Cadbury is to New Zealand what Hershey is to America; the chocolate king. And Speights' slogan basically sums the brew up: "Pride of the South". It's a South Island brew, and has a rich history as part of Southern culture. The parallels between American "southern pride" and the pride of the South Island were pretty striking, especially when looking at how Southern culture was marketed; a glorification of small town values, cowboy-like farmers, the simple life, and lots of folksy banjo music. After our tour we got to try as much of the different Speights brews as we wanted; if you ever get a chance to try Speights, I'd highly recommend Old Dark Ale.


The next day we hopped on a bus to Christchurch to meet up with my flatmate Jake- the guys he was originally sharing a car ended their vacation early, and Nikki and I decided it would be nice to hop in a car for half our trip. I was planning on helping Jake drive, but the car had a stick shift, and neither Nikki nor I knew how to drive manual. Jake had only learned the day before, so getting the car to cooperate was a bit of a hassle. Christchurch was the largest city in the South Island, and it wasn't particularly fascinating, so we decided to head out to Arthur's Pass National Park. It was Saturday by this point, so I think I'll stop this entry here.