New Zealand!
Where you keep your knickers clean, eat your sultanas and capsicums, and there's bugger all to do when it's bloody pissing down all day.
Auckland, Waitomo, Rotorua
8 October...being in Auckland, it's all been a blur. The three of us (Karin, Mariana and I) sitting around in cafes, looking at our photos of Leleuva over and over and over again. Feeling very much out of place without sand between our toes, paying attention to streetlights, and watching our wallets...On Leleuvia, we joked, we ended up bartering half the time: toilet paper for cigarettes, candles for batteries. And here, people everywhere. We were in a dorm room with three others we didn't know, including one guy, so you had to go get dressed in the bathroom and hoped he wasn't looking up your shorts as you climbed 7 feet up to the top bunk.
Took Karin out for a pre-b-day dinner last night (her birthday's today), and we've decided to meet up in Bangkok in January when they're en route to the Philippines and I to Cambodia/Vietnam. Said goodbye to them early this a.m.--they're travelling in NZ for two months, hitchhiking up to the north country first.
I'm now on the "Magic Bus", finally starting off on my next adventure, trying to let thoughts of Leleuvia go and get into the New Zealand mode. The bus trip I've chosen takes about 11-12 days, travelling down the North Island from Auckland, then ferry to the South Island and a deep loop around the west coast, then around and up to Christchurch, where I'll depart from Sydney. Anxious to start seeing the "real" New Zealand.
9 October...Yesterday I probably did more in one day than I've done in weeks. It was one of those on-and-off-the-bus all day kinda things, but if you're short on time, this is the best way to get a good glimpse of as much as possible.
The glow-worm caves at Waitomo were pretty impressive. Humongous limestone caves to wander through, then a little boat which floats you through the dark, save for the endless universe of glowing "worms" on the cave ceiling. In fact they're a certain stage of fly larva, glowing to attract mosquitoes for food, but as the guide said, "If we called them glow-maggots, you wouldn't come see us, would you?"
Also stopped off and hiked a bit in the Ruakuri Reserve, glimpsed the Aranui Cave, then lumbered on to Rotorua to stay the night. I was feeling run-down, slightly irritable, and definitely not in the mood to be around PEOPLE, so I opted for a single room--couldn't stand the thought of being in a dormitory at the moment, and rather than taking off first thing in the morning, I'm staying three nights here.
Cactus Jack's...it's a backpackers (NZ term for "hostel") with a funky American southwestern theme going, big kitchen (which I'll be using as I'm going into the buying-groceries-budget-mode), and very helpful, friendly Kiwi (name for New Zealanders) at the desk who goes by the name "Crispy".
Had a good Maori cultural experience last evening. Went to a marae (Maori meeting grounds, a kind of sacred place) for a reenactment of ceremony, custom, song, dance of pre-European Maori. Each busload of tourists had to elect a chief (a man) to represent their group and to stand before the village chief.
As we arrived and stood around outside the village, waiting to be accepted/welcomed, strange chanting and chirping sounds came from inside the village fence gate. Soon a few men in native dress (piu-piu skirts made from flax) armed with spears, their faces painted (imitating the full facial tattoos which used to distinguish the Maori) crept cautiously towards us, one main character approaching our five "chiefs", doing a kind of "friend-or-foe" dance and taunto to see if we came in peace.
Another distinguishing Maori feature during this dance gesture is the sticking out of the tongue--an act of defiance--and bugging the eyes, raising eyebrows, cockily, to look intimidating and daring the visitor to start something.
During this time we're supposed to be totally silent, and despite the hilarity of the facial guestures (to us), we're asked, out of respect to the Maori people, not to laugh or imitate the tongue-poking.
The "dancer" makes all kinds of grunting, snorting, tsk-tsk-type sounds and finally drops a small branch (peace offering) before our chiefs, then moves away to see if it's accepted, which of course it is, and then our chiefs rub noses with the village chief and we're welcomed in.
The nose-rubbing, or hongi, is actually nose-tapping. They shake hands, and touch the tips/bridges of their noses together twice.
A huge buffet is prepared for us, which is called a hangi, and has been prepared below ground in earth ovens. Rocks are heated to white-hot temperatures beneath the ground, the food is wrapped and placed on the rocks, then covered again--cooked in 20 minutes. It's said that some Maori living in this area have never had food cooked by conventional gas or electric.
After dinner, Maori songs and the haka dance were performed. Most of us Americans aren't all that much into rugby, but in NZ/Australia/South Pacific, it's a huge sport and the NZ team, the All Blacks, is famous for doing the haka just before each game.
It's a Maori tradition, actually, originally a kind of pep-up for going into battle, the lines recited meaning "I'm going to kill you" (or something like that), but basically it's an intense mental and physical exercise to get the adrenalin pumping.
Though it's always kind of un-authentic to be a tourist watching a performance done for tourists, it was refreshing to watch these people, Maori who retain and practice their cultural traditions, and do so with such sincerity and passion--there was nothing artificial or "staged" about their performance. They are very proud of who they are. (If you wanna see a brilliant movie which depicts "the plight of the urban Maori", "Once Were Warriors" is really powerful, and the soundtrack is excellent.)
Wherever I go, I buy the music of the place I'm visiting. It brings back all the moods and memories of that place in an instant. In my room I'm listening to island songs from Fiji, pulling at my heartstrings, with songs that were song around the yaqona bowl nights on Leleuvia.
10 October...Went off to Whakarewarewa, a geothermal reserve and marae (Maori meeting area) where stands an adorable village, Maori homes plopped between boiling water holes, and bubbling, gurgling mud pools. The people of the village have privileged access to special bathhouses, and all hot water for their homes comes from the reserve. Cooking is done in steamboxes, located outside in a communal "kitchen". A hole in the ground where the earth's crust is very thin, wooden slats built into the ground and a wooden lid cover food placed in the bos and wrapped in flax. "Maori microwave," the Maoris joke. Food is cooked quickly with not a taste of the sulfur you can smell in the air. The whole town and environs of Rotorua, in fact, smell of sulfur, kind of like one big long stale fart from Mother Earth.
In the boiling water pools, corn is placed in a sack, sits for 2-3 minutes in the water, and is cooked to tender sweetness. Cabbage gets a quick double-dip and is done. Eggs--two minutes.
The families that live in the village are all descended from the same tribe--the average family size being 12 kids! One of the older villagers boasted 12 kids and 88 grandchildren. Family and community are precious to the Maori, despite modern-day problems with drug/alcohol abuse, and domestic violence.
A tiny Anglican and Catholic church are situated in the village, the tiny frames decorated with reddish-brown Maori carvings which tell stories of the ancestors. Prior to the European arrival, there was no written language, but intricate wood carvings depicted, and still do, Maori history as well as mythology. This tradition is carried on today as a revitalization of Maori culture and identity has been taking place. As in the years before, a few select artisans are chosen from among the tribes to be the carriers of oral history and the carving tradition. The Maori Arts and Crafts Center selects 3 students from the entire country for a three-year course in teh specialization of Maori carving.
Back at the thermal reserve, tourists are invited into the ancestral house to see dancing (with gestures similar to other Pacific Island groups), singing, stick games, and poi-ball dances performed by the women.
The Maori were a South Pacific island group that made their way to New Zealand, or "Aotearoa", meaning "the land of the long white cloud", which they named when they saw the snow-capped mountains and mistook them for clouds. They were thought to have settled here around 1000 A.D. and having originated in the Pacific Islands, share many cultural and linguistic similarities with other Pacific Island groups.
They arrived, however, in a foreign land much colder than where they had come from, and lacking in certain materials. So they adapted and made use of what they found here: flax plants, the leaves of which they could strip and use the strong fibers underneath for making textiles; the now extinct moa bird (something like an ostrich) and the endangered kiwi (which I got a glimpse of today in a "nocturnal house"...shuffled through a darkened chamber with a bunch of other tourists to view the elusive bird, foraging around in a huge glass terrarium)...
The Maori made use of stone tools until the Europeans introduced metal (not to mention muskets), had made their way in canoes thousands of miles, flourishing as a unique culture--but had never even made use of the wheel. Today's Maori are identified by tribe, by canoe (there has been a story of seven different canoes to go with the seven different tribes, when in fact there were a lot more canoes...), and all Maori speakers understand one another, but can instantly identify each other's tribe by certain variances in the language they use.
Weddings and funerals are huge events. Weddings are so big--and there are often three different services: Catholic, Anglican, and Maori--with such huge families in attendance that ceremonies take place for five hours, allowing time for everyone to come and different stages of the event. When someone dies, the body is brought back to the marae, the tribe's sacred meeting ground or village community, and placed out for three days of viewing. People come to pay respects, but also to talk to the person, let out anger, sadness, whatever, to communicate with the deceased before burial. In places such as Whakarewarewa, the geothermal activity underground has created the need for above ground tombs. "Most people don't WANT to be buried here," our guide laughed.
All through the village, little red wooden carved figures, or "teko-teko" (guardians) line the tiny streets, perched on either side with bug eyes and tongues poked out. Children are told that if they get into trouble, the teko-teko can see them and tell on them.
For the mid-day concert, dancing/singing, etc., the performing group closed as the group I had seen two nights before had, with "Now is the Hour", a farewell song sung in Maori as well as in English. I had never heard of it before, but was told it's sung not only in NZ. It's this slow melancholy goodbye tune--seems all the Australians around know it as well, as they all sing along.
Two days of living off canned salmon, cheese bread, dried apricots, green beans and meuslix bars--all the other backpackers cook these seemingly elaborate meals, slicing and dicing veggies and fish/beef. I haven't caught on yet.
Rotorua to Wellington
(still on the North Island, about halfway down)
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12 October...After leaving Rotorua yesterday, we spent the a.m. geyser-gazing at Wai-o-Tapu, still moping around in the rain, a busload of progressively apathetic backpackers...or was it only me who felt like just getting on the bus and staying there?
Fortunately the driver lightened things up with a long stream of goofy commentary on New Zealands, a long stream of Clinton jokes (have received numerous such pokes from Kiwis since I arrived--playful, yet tiresome. Thanks Bill.), and an endless supply of homemade tapes, from Meatloaf to the Buggles--eclectic indeed.
Everything there was to see on our way to Turangi (our stop for the night), including Lake Taupo, New Zealand's largest lake, and the New Zealand "Grand Canyon", was shrouded in clouds and rain, so the highlight of the day was the $6 b-b-q dinner at our backpackers lodge.
Took off for Wellington (southernmost tip of the North Island) first thing this a.m., and somewhere along the way the clouds parted for a fleeting, sunshiney moment, and all our faces turned, noses pressed up against the windows, sighs and gasps of "I can see New Zealand!" Everything is pine and emerald green, rolling hills and lots of sheep, like England, but also impressive spikey peaks--painted green as far as the eye can see.
More rain as we rode into Wellington, New Zealand's capital and sister-city to San Francisco. Understandably, as there are areas of the city almost identical to the Marina, not to mention steep inclines, cable cars, and even pretty little "painted ladies." For all of the above, I liked it instantly. Our driver took us up to Mt. Victoria, kind of like SF's Twin Peaks, and talked as fast as he could as we all stood there with long faces splattered by the rain.
I chose a backpackers no one else was going to, and despite its slight out-of-the-wayness, I've got a dorm room all to myself. I'm still kind of holding back with people, not in the mood to ask and answer the same old questions. I suppose it's kind of cyclical; I'll carry on like this until I start feeling lonely, then put myselt out there again, then pull back. Looking forward to seeing Matt and Justine (friends in Sydney), and Tuey coming into Australia from New York.
When I'm dreaming, please don't wake me, please don't make me open my eyes, 'cause I'm dreaming, dreams of Fiji, Pacific Islands, paradise...
The South Island: Nelson, Greymouth, Franz Josef, Queenstown
14 October...From Wellington you take the Interisland Ferry through the Cook Strait--Queen Victoria Sound and the Marlborough Sound as you approach the South Island. Rain and clouds again but gorgeous blue sea water churning behind the boat and big green islands rising up on either side.
The boat arrives in a town called Picton on the northern tip of the South Island, and from there we caught the Magic Bus with a new driver, Adele, on to Nelson. Stayed at a groovy little place, the Beach Hostel, for one night, and knew I was "home" when I heard some guys there sitting around guitar-picking. Great conversations and singing with an American-Indonesian resident of NZ.
Don't wanna even go into all the gorgeous things I'm missing in New Zealand, on account of the fact I'm on a tight schedule. The Tongariro Pass, the Abel Tasman Park...everyone else seems to have time to stop off here and there a few days, while I'm just off and on the bus again every day. I'm definitely cheating myself--the beauty of travelling, for me, is to get some place and stay there long enough to get to know the people and the place. Hardly a chance with only two weeks to do the entire country.
Off again today, stopping in Punakaiki to see the pancake rocks which, appropriately, look like stacked pancakes jutting out of the coastline with powerful waves crashing in and around. The entire drive today was mostly through mountains and along the northwest coastline, which looks a lot like the Pacific Northwest and California coasts, with big rocks and high mountain cliffs hugging the water's edge.
We're spending the night at Noah's Ark, a sweet monastery-turned-hostel with big oak doors, a pot-bellied woodstove and fireplace, and cartoon animal murals everywhere. Each room has a theme, me being in the leopard room with leopard-print everything and a big lazy spotted kitty painted over the mantle.
The local pub offered a cheap b-b-q and karaoke night so I hooked up with Andrea, a German girl, and Jackie and Leslie, two crazy Irish chicks, and we sang song after song, two of us coming away with the karaoke prizes for the evening: a lump of coal with two eyes, authentic souvenir of Greymouth (the coal-mining town we're staying in).
The rain's coming on again, and it promises to be progressively worse as we move down the coast. Fabulous.
Did I mention NZ is the adrenalin rush-seeking capital of the world? Bungy jumping originated here, and just about every place you stop there’s an option to do some maniac thing involving cables and wires and falling, or jetboating, whitewater rafting, cavetubing. One of the latest things is called zorbing, which I haven’t witnessed, but it looks like a gigantic beach ball with a person tumbling around inside. And there’s another thing where people can get all rigged and hooked up and walk straight down the side of a city building...uh, ‘scus me while I wretch my mince pie, oops, I mean, kiss the sky.
16 October...Yesterday another day on the road with stops in Ross, a gold mining town where we panned for jade and gold and got to keep whatever we found as a souvenir. Continued down the West Coast along the Tasman Sea until we arrived in Franz Josef where the famed Franz Josef glacier lies. Fox Glacier is just next to FJ and all kinds of expeditions are available for both. One of the things I’d really looked forward to was the Heli-hike, a helicopter ride up to one of the FJ glacier ridges and a couple hours of hiking on the glacier. But it was raining (imagine that) when we got in, so a bunch of us went off on the 1/2 day hike instead.
A bus takes you to within a few km of the base of the blacier, then you hike over glacial debris (lots of rocks) to get to the base. For those of you unfamiliar with this glacier thing (if you’re like me, you associated them with the Antarctic), a glacier is basically formed when heavy snowfall occurs, and the snowfall exceeds the summer melting. The snow turns into ice, and as more snow falls and builds up again, the ice shifts down (advancing glacier), and more and more layers build up, ultimately forming thick blue ice.
The Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers are also located at a spot greatly affected by the shifting of the Indo-Australian and Pacific tectonic plates, so these glaciers generally shift anywhere from 1 to 5 metres per day. The way the Southern Alps and mountains are formed in this area, coupled with forceful winds coming off the nearby Tasman Sea, also contribute to the formation of the glaciers, which are oddly within walking distance of lush, rainforest vegetation.
Glacier walks are guided by professionals and in the tiny village of Franz Josef, you get a little drawstring knapsack, a raincoat, a pair of thick, woolly socks, and a pair of glacier boots (with ice grips) in your size. Agroup of 35 or so gets split up into 3 smaller groups at the base of the glacier: slow, slower and slowest. Everybody pulls up a rock and switches into their woolly socks and glacier boots. The rain started again so we donned the generic blue raincoats with the big FJGG letters on the back.
Now when they say “glacier walks” you kind of have this picture in mind of just getting up there on that glacier and walking around. WRONG. When you finally do reach the base, you look up at this monstrous mass of ice and snow and realize you’re gonna be climbing. I got in the “slow” group, feeling reasonably fit, and how hard could it be? Our guide soon took off, hacking away at the ice steps, which have to be maintained every day with an ice axe. Steep hauls, starting with your boot (always stepping on the ball, not on the heel, of your foot) about the height of your knee, so every step involves pushing from your butt and quads all the way down to your toes.
Some minutes later you’re already looking far down behind you and realize you’ve barely started; the “walk” is about three hours long. You pass little freezing pools of water and icy caves, which you tunnel through, and soon you round the bend to see the entourage in front preparing to climb a ladder straight up a wall of ice from a ledge bordering a scary ravine. “Don’t stand there mesmerized by what the person in front of you is doing,” says the guide. “As soon as one person goes, the next one goes.” He didn’t mention that it’s probably a very bad idea to look down as you’re placing each clunky boot on each metal rung, hands gripping tightly, eyes focused on the boots above you, wondering how you could’ve misinterpreted the word “walk”.
From time to time, the guide stops to allow everyone to catch up, and encourages us to stick close together and not get too far behind. The reason being, if you miss seeing where the person ahead placed their feet, you don’t know where to step for sure footing (reminding me so much of “Into Thin Air”, the book about the Mt. Everest tragedy a few years back, which, consequently, I was plagued with thoughts of my entire glacier adventure).
So then you find a wooden box of ice poles (walking sticks with metal spikes on the bottom), grab one and keep going up. You’re fully on the glacier now, and it is BIG, I mean massive, and the only way is down but you’re still going up, hopping across deep crevasses that drop down into nowhere, taking timid steps on ice shelves which barely fit your boot, shuffling left to right in a passage formed by two big ice walls, up and up and up, and all you can think about is the fact you’re gonna have to go down again.
You’re in shorts, by the way, recommended for less restrictive movement, and it’s not alarmingly cold, though with the rain and the disappearance of any afternoon sun, your skin’s turning red and raw as cold droplets of rain drip down your legs. The climb takes you a tiny fraction of the way up the glacier, but looking down the glacier at the tiny figures making their way up from below, it’s unfathomable that there are huge ridges and the glacier actually widens above and beyond your own view. But you’re only going as high as the first ridge, so you catch up to the guide and the group, just in time to take a quick look around before you’re being led back down a parallel route.
If you’ve ever been on a horse, tripping and stumbling downhill, you know what it feels like tosee his head and ears and any sudden lurch makes you feel like you could go tumbling powerlessly over his head. Only on the glacier, there’s no horse, just you and your equilibrium and a stick. More than a few times I lost track of the person’s steps in front of me and found myself standing helplessly staring down at a maze of icy bumps and impressions, one set which slanted downward toward a crevass, and across from where I stood, the muddy tracks of the other hikers, just coming up out of nowhere. The girl in front of me stood at a higher elevation and pointed out where she had stepped, and the man behind suggested a good one from the side where we were standing.
And then you have to deal with all those nasty steep steps again, almost every time your foot sets down you take a mini-leap of faith as it never feels quite safe (your balance, your footing). In the middle of one steep descent, I had taken two big steps already and was about to take the third, most daunting one, but my pole kept sinking through soft snow and into air, and as I made the step, I went rear first right down to the bottom--another, less desirable, way of getting down.
By the time you’ve made a few tricky descents, all you can think of is getting off the damn glacier, the end of which looks tauntingly near. If you were walking on a flat surface it’d take less than five minutes. But you’ve still got to ditch the poles in the box and climb backwards down that ladder on the edge next to the ravine.
Eventually the drawstring knapsacks with your own boots and dry socks are in sight at the bottom, as you jump down the last few steps and inwardly express gratitude for being on solid ground again. After receiving a certificate of achievement, everyone arrived back at the backpackers soaked with rain, competing for hot showers and space in front of the woodstove.
Another day-long drive down to Makarora where there’s only one place to stay, and a tiny general store that closes at 5 p.m. Stayed in lovely triangular chalets surrounded by snow-capped mountains.
Amazingly, the sun was shining the next morning, so I got dressed, packed, at some Meuslix, got on the bus, jumped out of a plane at 9,000 feet....
For some reason I have had no attraction to bungy jumping, NZ being THE place to do it (the first one having been performed here by A.J. Hackett). But if I were gonna do any jumping, I may as well REALLY jump. Skydiving has been a fleeting thought for a long time, but it’s not something I thought I’d ever do, or would pay to do at home. But why not do it in Wanaka, New Zealand, with a superb view of the Souther Alps, the longest alpine range in the southern hemisphere.
Nine of us got off the Magic Bus at 10 a.m. and were taken out to the Wanaka Airport, flipped coins to see who would go first (I wanted to go first as I’d heard it’s harder to watch the person in front of you falling away from the plane). Mind you, this is tandem skydiving so you’re hooked up to an experienced instructor who’s responsible for checking everything over and pulling the cord for the parachute. Leslie, one of the crazy Irish girls I’ve been travelling with on the bus since Nelson, and I won with “heads up”, so we were to be on the same plane together (two jumpers and instructors go up at a time).
On the ground we signed our lives away after reading a form about pre-existing health problems and risks involved (I’m not pregnant, don’t have a bad back or angina, so I figured I was doing alright). Then we got into our jumpsuits, which look like something out of an alien B-movie, and leg harnesses you step into, pull up to your crotch (very comfortable...), then stick your arms through and strap on in front.
Dino, my instructor, pulled everything in tight, all along briefing me on what to do (just before the jump I would be hanging out of the plane, hooked onto him still in the plane, and we’d give a big smile for the camera perched on the plane’s wing, he’d say “Let’s dive,” and off we’d go...put your head up so you can enjoy the view, assume full banana position, with thumbs tucked into harness, back arches, knees bent with feet facing the sky)...Then we waddled out to the plane with Leslie and Ants (her instructor) and took off.
About 10 minutes into the very scenice flight, with lots of joking and banter between the four of us, Dino instructed me to sit in front of him as he hooked all my hooks up to his hooks, locked them in with metal pins, gave me a leather helmet to keep out the wind and noise, plus gloves...Then he asked me how I was feeling (amazingly calm; I just felt completely trusting in him, and in the fact that I’d be okay), and unsnapped and peeled away the plastic door. The freezing air of 9,000 feet (actually 10,000 above sea level) rushed in as we scotted over to the plane’s edge, my feet, legs, and butt dangling into thin air as I gave a very strained thumbs-up and smile into the camera.
All I heard was “Let’s go!” and suddenly we were tumbling out into nothingness. The first few seconds of freefall you somersault and spin around, probably the hardest part because I felt disoriented and dizzy, but then you’re just falling with your body in the banana position, and Dino put out his arms, gave a big “woo-hoo!”, so I did the same, and it was MAGIC. The snow-capped alps and mountains, Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea, with a totally unobstructed aerial view. You fall about 5,000 feet for 30 seconds at 200 kph, yet there’s no sense of feeling your stomach drop or having your breathing stop. The air was freezing but I could breathe totally normally.
At about 4,000 feet, Dino pulled the parachute (still very far above ground so you never experience the earth coming up to meet you), and with a slight jolt, we were suddenly just floating. He pointed out all the lakes and rivers, and I took out my disposable camera which they had rigged up with tape and string to go around my neck and tuck into the top of my jumpsuit. (DEFINITELY check out the photos, link at the bottom of this page!) By now Leslie and Ants were floating above and nearby, so we took photos of each other and surrounding views.
Dino controlled the parachute ropes to center us over the landing field and asked if I’d be into making a few whirls, so we spun around and around until I told him I wasn’t into chucking my breakfast, so we drifted the rest of the way to the ground. As you’re approaching the ground you lift your legs up, he locks his under and around yours, and you just kind of scoot in on your butts. And then you’re just sitting there getting unhooked, feeling phenomenal with a big smile on your face and feelings of utter incredulity that you’ve done it, and it was one of the most amazing things you’ve ever done in your life.
I turned and gave him a big smile and thank-you and handshake, and Leslie and I headed back to the terminal, swapping experiences. The others went up two-by-two until everyone had gone, and all the skydivers on the bus wore silly grins for the rest of the day. Rolled into Queenstown where we’re stopped for two nights, an adorable town/city, but even the cities here have a real smalltown feel.
I stopped into Abbey Road, a bar/cafe where everyone was hanging out, and ran into Jenny, Lindoa, and Mia, the Swedish girls who spent a week on Leleuvia, my Fiji island--small world. It was fun to see them and catch up on life since Leleuvia. Such small world encounters happen all the time while travelling. The other night at the b-b-q in Makarora, I was talking to two other Irish girls who proceeded to tell me they’d been to Maryland (few Europeans seem to have heard of it), that they worked in Ocean City the summer of 1995 at the Sheraton, and they knew a lot of the Sheraton staff I had worked with three years prior!
Everyone’s off to Milford Sound and a boat cruise today, which I decided I’m not up for, nor do I feel like spending any more money, so I’m kicking around Queenstown, trying to get organized for my 10/20 departure from Christchurch to Sydney. I can’t continue the final leg of the Magic Bus journey to Christchurch, so I’m leaving Queenstown and going directly to Christchurch on my own.
I guess this is the end of the New Zealand adventure. It’s ended up a lot better than it started, and I think I’m still dazzled by my glacier adventure and the fact that I jumped out of an airplane at 9,000 feet. Kinda makes you feel like you could do anything.
New Zealand photos!(glacier climbing, skydiving, etc.)
On to Australia....