south island road trip!-Day 10

on our way to Milford Sound

can u see the itty bitty waterfall?

Day 10- Milford Sound

We woke up outside of Queenstown and met some of our friends from school in the city for some breakfast.  It was fun catching up with everyone and seeing how their trip was unfolding.  

After breakfast we went to check in for our rafting trip, only to find out it had been cancelled because of rain the night before.  We decided to not spend anymore time in money eating Queenstown and  head straight for Milford sound.  

The drive into Milford was incredible.  All of a sudden the road began to spiral down and cliff faces just sprung up all around us.  It was very foggy, but the fog added to the mysterious and monolithic effect.  We passed waterfalls coming down from the cliffs that seemed to be flowing right out of the misty heavens, and we drove through a tunnel that went straight through a mountain.  It was an amazing, but slow drive.  

When we finally got into the "town" we decided the only thing to do at dusk was to hang out in the only cafe/bar  there was in town.  Luckily this lead us to some friends we had been hoping to meet up with.  We found them playing pool, and we hung out and exchanged stories till pretty late (well late for those of us packing it in everynight around 7:30 . . .).  Then we decided to sleep right where we were already parked and we fell asleep to soft raindrops tapping on the roof of the van.  

south island road trip!-Day 11

our view of the waterfalls as we leave milford

on the road again

fanghorn forest!

Day 11- The Catlands

So to our dismay as well as amazement we woke up to a pounding rain and thunder in the Milford restaurant parking lot where we had crashed the night before.  The sound of the thunder rivaled the volume of the thunder that struck the tree near our campsite that one time at swallow falls (I know Hollin and Alex definitely remeber).  It was incredible.  We decided to not go on a cruise of the sound, but to book it to Dunedin instead.  We didnt want to be stuck there incase the weather didnt clear up.  So it was a bit disappointing because Milford sound is said to be one of the most beautiful sights in New Zealand, but at least we had seen how immense the cliffs and mountains were while while driving in the day before.  And, to pull a Pollyanna, seeing the waterfalls cascading down all the cliffs as we escaped was a pretty incredible sight.

We decided that we were going to take the scenic route through the catlands and drive the almost 800 kms to Dunedin that day.  We were running out of time and we had plans in Twizel so we had no time to waste down south, even if it would have been kind of cool to go to the southern most tip.  O well.  I drove half the trip to Invercargil, and Jenny drove the second half of the trip the rest of the way to Dunedin where we immediately crashed at a picnic  pull off outside of town.  

Some of the highlights of the drive were buying some hokey pokey icecream at a gas station, and stopping near Te Anu to explore Fanghorn forest (another dorky lord of the rings thing).  The forest was incredibly moist and green and the ground was so moss covered and undisturbed that your foot sank in a few inches every time you stepped.  It was really cool. (thank you again Mrs. Kolb!)

south island road trip!-Day 12

around the city center in Dunedin

creepy little workers at the cadbury factory

drinking up some southern pride!

Can you guess who?

Day 12- Dunedin

So after waking up next to another Wicked van a few kms outside of Dunedin, we headed into the city. The night before we had had a bad impression of it while driving through because we decided we no longer liked lots of lights and people.  We definitely preferred small towns and mountains or beaches to big cities at this point.  But when we found our way into the "octagon" (their city center) we decided Dunedin wasn't so bad.  It had a very british feel because of the cathedrals and some of the old buildings.  

When we found some parking and made our way to the info center I was disappointed to find out that you had to book a tour in order to go to the penguin beaches.  I really was sad because I had really been looking forward to seeing penguins, but we really didnt have time to book an all day tour, plus it was rainy and yucky out.  A much better day for indoor activities.  

So I took my broken heart and hauled it on into the cadbury factory to drown my sorrows in chocolate:)  To tell the truth the tour was kinda cheesy, but you did get some free chocolate and the shop at the end sold really cheap giant chocolate bars.  I controlled myself and only bought 2 giant bars (fudge brownie and macadamian nut), but it was pretty hard not to try and buy a 2 months supply since chocolate in auckland is SUPER expensive.  

After our delicious chocolate tour we had some time to kill so we wandered around  to look at some shops .  Eventually and we found our way into their pubic art museum.  They had some really great exhibits on women as a subject in art and on German fashion.  Unfortunately we didnt get to see everything because our next tour was about to start, but it was enjoyable to just be able to look around.

After that we made our way over Speights for our brewery tour.  Now this tour was definitely a lot cooler and pretty hilarious.  We were first shown an epic video of a bottle of speights bursting open for about 5 minutes and then we were lead into a kind of wax museum of beer history.  After learning about the history of Mr. Speight and seeing all the brewery equipment we watched a bizarre video about the southern man ( which is  their advertising campaign).  Their southern man is strangely similar to our american cowboy and the song they played with the montage was priceless.  At the end of the tour we got to sample all of the different types of beer that they made at the brewery.  Wesley you would have loved it!

At the end of the night we decided to grab some dinner at a restaurant instead of trying to cook in the spitting rain.  We found this really amazing and cheap vegan restaurant where we got to sit around on couches and eat at our leisure.  They had lots of board games and we ended up hanging around for awhile, ordering dessert, and playing Guess Who, Scrabble, and Cluedo (the spanish version of Clue).  

Id say overall, Dunedin was a really nice city despite their stupid penguin rules.

south island road trip!-Day 13

the stream gandolf crosses on shadowfax to warn the steward of Gondor about oncoming battle

yep, we were in the battle of Pelennor fields

our view of mt cook, the tallest mountain in New Zealand

Day 13- Twizel and Mt Cook

So this was easily the nerdiest day of our entire trip.  

We had slept just outside of Twizel and woke up to a cattle drive going right past our van.  After that amusing wake up call  we made our way into the small city and booked our Lord of the Rings Tour of Pelennor fields (That is where a really big battle takes place in the 3rd movie and there are elephants and such).   The man at the info desk smiles and asks us "so ur really into lord of the rings?".  We are used to being embarrassed about it by now so of course we tell him yes and to our surprise he whips out photos of himself as an orc in the movie!  Apparently we chose the right place to have a tour because Peter Jackson pretty much rallied the entire small town into working on his film. 

To our delight we ended up being the only 3 on the tour and we rode happily with our tour guide to the battle fields!  Our tour guide was very friendly and showed us clips of the movie while we gazed excitedly at the matching scenery.  She also told us a lot of background info about her friends who were orcs or some of the kids who got to be rohan riders in the movie.

But the real fun began when the tour guide lead us out of the van and to the trunk.  What was back there . . . can you guess?  Costumes and replicas of all the armour and weapons in the movie! Since it was only the three of us we had free reign and you can imagine the dorky scene that followed.  we ran around  with the tour guide snapping our pictures and uttering suggestions of what reanactments we should do.  We must have been a sight lol.

Anyways, after the tour we decided to drive to the Mt Cook township and try to take a short trek before heading back to Christchurch.  We did a short 30 minute trek to the view point where we luckily got a fairly clear view of the tallest mountain in New Zealand.  It was neat to see these snow covered mountains because most of the mountains in the southern alps chain that we had seen were not yet white on top.  We made good timing, because as we were hopping in our van a storm cloud overtook the valley where we had just been and it looked like it was about to get really rainy.  We raced the storm cloud back through Twizel and began our 300km journey back to Christchurch.

south island road trip!-Day 14

walking down regent st with our fish and chips

jenny writing in her journal at base backpackers

Day 14- Christchurch

 

So after waking  to yet another sheep field and some really big trucks trying to park near us we decided to book it into the city and drop our van off early so we could walk around the city and get lodging at a Base Backpackers right in Cathedral Square.  We washed it twice (caveman was pretty dirty) and checked out A OK.

Unfortunately as soon as we checked into our hostel it started to pour!  We just decided to take showers (the 3rd shower of our entire trip) lounge around.  We were pretty tired anyways.  Later we got some fish and chips and I tried pawa (like abaloney) and it was kinda yucky.  Good ol fish and kumara chips were good as usual tho.  

Under all of the bunks people had written their names and funny messages so  Leah and I decided to leave our marks.  

It was a relaxing end to an amazing trip:)