Hello All,
I hope you are doing well! Today is Wednesday so I figured another update was needed. Last I updated you was last Tuesday.
Tuesday, Wednesday – I lazed around a lot on Tuesday because I didn’t have any class (because they are all tutorials and they weren’t running). I organized some courses and watched some TV. On Wednesday, I went to my two classes which were pretty good. I find my classes overall really interesting as they are all about social work but also about government policies (some that are different from Canada’s). I also met a few people who are in multiple classes which is sweet to connect with them. I was going to go to the gym because it is free at Otago but decided not to because I needed to pack for the next day. So, packed for the rest of the night and went to bed early because I had a class at 9am the next day.
Thursday – Got up early to finish packing for the day ahead. I had plans of skydiving and hiking and had to be prepared for any type of weather because NZ weather is changes so much. So, after trying to pack everything into one little backpack and my purse, everything was ready for the trip ahead. I had two classes that morning and after them, went over to Alex’s to walk to the bus station with everyone who was going (It ended up only being 5 of us; Alex, Katie, Storey, Mark and I). After getting everyone together, we slowly but surely got everything/everyone together, and made our way downtown to the bus station. We got there with some time to spare but needed to check in and get our backpacks under the bus for storage. We got seats together, and then just talked until the bus started to run. Now, it was a hot day (which is slightly rare in NZ) and because we had limited room to pack we had wore lots of layers in case it was cold in Queenstown. We figured that the bus would have air conditioning and we could strip off some layers and all would be good. BUT as I have come to realize, don’t figure anything because it is usually the opposite in New Zealand. So, the bus’s air conditioning was broken, and here we were on the hottest, very curvy bus ride that I have ever been on. My inherited motion sickness was not an asset to this trip (it really never is an asset but…for the sake of a good story, it could be). So, throughout the four hour trip we attempted to play some card games, but people were starting to feel sick so we decided to stop and just enjoy the beautiful New Zealand country side, mountains that could have been the set for Lord of the Rings (and probably were) ], sea blue rivers and cute country towns. I unfortunately didn’t take any pictures on the way there, excepting that I would take pictures on the way home, but that didn’t happen either. So, I took good mental pictures that will hopefully last me a lifetime! There was a New Zealand girl on the bus ride there who was very friendly (a little too much) that was obsessed with our accents and got us to say silly sayings, like purple curtains, just to hear our accents (More on Purple Curtains later). She was nice enough but we were pretty tired, and wanted to rest so we could have a good night in Queenstown. So, once we got there, I’m pretty sure we sweated half our weight and were pretty hungry. A girl in my class had suggested a burger place called “Fergburger” (which I called Fernbergers for the weekend). So, we tried it out and MAN was it fantastic! It was probably the best burger I have ever had. It was also HUGE but since we had not eaten since before the long hot bus trip, we were pretty hungry. We had earlier signed in to our hostel and had discovered a Canadian t-shirt that one of our hostel roommates had left on our floor, so we also wanted to meet him. He was actually from Hamilton and we had lots to talk about as most of the people who went were Canadian. He had actually come over from Australia for a few days and was leaving on Saturday. We hungout until we got hungry later (which is actually quite impressive after having a “Fergburger”) so we ended up eating Nutella and peanut butter sandwiches (and also a Apple Cinnamon Muffin) in the stairwell of our hostel so we didn’t end up waking up Alex (the Canadian) or Colm (our other roommate, who’s Irish accent was so strong, we barely understood a word he said, unless Mark translated (He’s Scottish). Overall, a good night was had by all, and we were probably in bed by 2am.
Friday- We slept in quite late on Friday because we didn’t have much planned and we had had a pretty late night the night before. Some of us didn’t get much sleep because Mark and Colm both snore pretty loudly. Once we were finally out of bed, we had decided to go kayaking, on the gondola up to the top of the mountain (which included a luge course) and visiting the botanical gardens. This is what we planned, what we actually did was another story. We ended up going down to the waterfront (which was about one street away from our hostel) and realizing the water was FAR too cold and FAR too wavy for us to kayak, so we took some scenic pictures and went on our way towards the gondola. The view from the top was just as breath-taking as the view from Tunnel Beach (maybe even more). The lake surrounded by the mountains just seemed somehow surreal, like it was just a backdrop instead of real mountains! BUT the truth was it was real and the view was AMAZING! (I’ll add some pictures below). Once up there, there was a luge course that is basically like a concrete course that you go down on a turtle (like one of those things in gym classes that when you wiggle the handles you move, in other words, kind of like a wagon, with steering). That was a lot of fun, Mark was speeding way ahead of us girls but we enjoyed our time going down at a leisurely rate. We marveled at the view some more before taking the gondola down deciding what to do next. On the way down the mountain we noticed some sheep just lazing on the side of the mountain. It looked kind of like they were wild, because there weren’t any farms near there, but I’m sure they just escaped and were enjoying their freedom. After the gondola we decided to prepared what we were going to do the next day (as we have heard that we have to make reservations to get on some trips). We first all went to the skydiving place as most of us wanted to go skydiving (some needed convincing), but we all signed up for mid-day. Then Alex wanted to go zip-lining so we went to a place to sign up for that but got convinced that Canyoning was better (which we agreed after we did it). Canyoning consists of zip-lining over the canyon, repelling down the canyon, swimming through the canyon, jumping off waterfalls in the canyon, and a combination of the above. BUT in order to go canyoning we had to switch out skydiving time until 7am so we did that and in the process Alex and Storey didn’t want to skydive anymore and decided to go Hang-gliding the next morning instead. So, we had it all planned out, Saturday we would skydiving or hang-glide, then all go canyoning. We were all excited for the next day. We really didn’t have much planned for the night or afternoon as we didn’t really want to go out because the next day we had to get up early for our morning activities. As it was such a nice day, we decided to lie in a park and enjoy the sun, after a few hours of that, we were getting pretty hungry again and wanted some food. We had decided to take it easy that night so we were just wandering around town when we saw some Arcadia people (Arcadia is a group of students mostly from the states that are all Otago students (Brie is one, and we’ve met people through her)). Among them were a few who weren’t Arcadia like Matt who had hitchhiked all the way to Queenstown that day. Matt didn’t have anywhere to stay and we had another bed in our room so he decided to stay there for the next few nights. He also signed up for Canyoning with us so he hung out with us for the rest of the weekend. Alex (our roommate, male) taught us some card games and Katie really wanted to go ride the mechanical bull (which we had heard about through some people we met). We all rode the bull (some a few times) and it was just plain fun! We got hungry again at around 12:30 and decided to get “Fergburgers” and got in bed around 2am again and were excited for the next day!
Saturday – Katie, Mark and I set our alarms for 6:45am so we would be up in time to get to the skydiving place for 7:15ish. With the lack of sleep kicking in, we slowly got dressed and got ready to go, but unfortunately it was raining and when we got to the place, the instructors said that the run that we were supposed to go on was cancelled due to the rain. So, we went back to the hostel and went back to bed. Well we were catching up on some much needed rest, Storey and Alex (female) went hang-gliding, which looked like SO much fun! While they were still out, the rest of us (Katie, Mark, Alex (male), Matt and I) got up and decided to go check out the botanical gardens (because we didn’t get to that the day before). They were quite nice, lots of flowers and trees, and a pretty river running through it. We ended up sitting on the edge of a swimming pool/skateboard park (I actually don’t know which one it was…hahah!). Matt and I ended up on the subject on parkour and how cool it was and that was just the theme of the entire day. We screamed HARDCORE PARKOUR during canyoning and throughout the night! All of us talked until we got hungry and wanted to get ready for canyoning. We met up with Alex and Storey just before going to canyoning. There are really no words to describe the way you feel zip-lining, swimming through, jumping in, etc. in the canyon except for awesomely amazing! It’s a total thrill and it’s definitely gets your adrenaline pumping as you jump off a 15 foot waterfall! We were decked out in water-suits, lifejackets, little boots (mine kept unzipping) and helmets to protect us from the elements and rocks. We first zip-lined across the canyon and then repelled down the side of the cliff where we stopped and jumped for a picture. I was more focused on the jumping away from the wall, that I forgot that I had to catch myself on the way back in so I bashed against the wall. It’s all good though, with all the equipment on, I didn’t even get a bruise! J We then swam, jumping and navigated through the water and then climbed up a hill to zip-line over a pool of water and then lower ourselves down a rope to jump back into the water. Now, the rope was attached to a pulley system which was attached to the zip-line and each person so that you would only have to lower 10% of your bodyweight instead of the full thing, BUT I was the smart one that instead of holding the rope below the pulley system, I held it above and lowered my entire bodyweight down the rope. Let’s just say my arms hurt the next day, and I had horrible rope burn on my hands (but didn’t notice until after because by this time my hands were so numb that I really couldn’t feel them). Anyways, the rest of the course was just jumping through the rocks and swimming down the river, but it was SOOO fun! I highly recommended the activity to anyone! The water was so cold and actually 5 degrees colder than usual because the rain in the morning had melted some snow up in the mountains. The effort to take off wet water-suits, and the gear was a feat to itself which involved a lot of laughing! It was SO cold after swimming in the water that we were shaking and our skin was tinted blue, but we survived and were super hungry. So, once we got back into town we went to get our third and final Fergburgers of the weekend. The night ended up being fun, we really didn't get up to much but were up pretty late.
Sunday – With the early morning packing, and the signing out of the hostel we were already tuckered out by the time with got to the bus stop. It was a pretty chilly morning and we hoped that the bus home at heating. After the cold afternoon the night before and the chilly morning we decided that it we should have never complained about the hot bus ride to Queenstown. So, once we got everyone piled in, all the girls took a Gravol and tried to sleep as much as possible with the twisty, hilly roads, and a bus driver who didn’t understand the size of the bus plus the curvy roads made for a bad combination that resulted in the bus feeling like it was going to tilt so far that it would fall off the cliffs. After 4 long hours of trying to sleep on the bus ride we were finally back in Dunedin, ready to go back to bed. Greg was gracious enough to drive down to get me and I spent the rest of the day resting and relaxing and went to bed at around 9pm.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday- After the busy weekend, it was nice to be able to relax. I went to classes but they weren’t too stressful yet. I also came down with a cold, and had the worst sore throat and runny nose on Monday. The cold is still hanging around but it isn’t as bad as Monday. Tuesday and Today are just about the same, went to class, hung out with friends for a bit, got to know a few more people in classes. I need to get reading for classes so I don’t fall too far behind. Today was beautiful out. The sun was nice and bright again! I got sunburned again but it’s not as bad this time.
No plans for this weekend. Greg and Celia are away so I have the house to myself which will either be great, or really boring. I might ask if they have a bike that I can go into town with on the weekend. We’ll see!
Love to all,
K
Picture Time:
Canyoning - the jump that I failed to land.
Queenstown:
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