NZ: Weindy roads and hiking

I arrived back from New Zealand yesterday night. I had great 10 days traveling around the country and I´m looking forward to writing about my experiences. It may take some days to finish the story, though, since I have to do a bunch of uni work I missed while I was gone.

Thursday 12.4: Carla and I flew directly to Christchurch (the biggest town in South Island) which took 3hours. To our suprise and disappointment they didn´t offer anything to eat or drink for free during the flight :( It was almost midnight when we were out of customs and security, and we took a shuttle bus to the hostel where Denise had been staying the last couple of nights. It was so cold outside! It was also pretty cold in our dorm room and I couldn´t fall asleep.

Friday 13.4: Carla had set her cell phone alarm to wake us up at 7am but for some reason it had independently changed its time during the night so that we didn´t wake up until 9am. Denise had already been up for some hours and wondering where we were, and after eating cereal for breakfast we took a bus to the airport. We had booked a rental car online with Ezy Rentals and they picked us up from the airport to their nearby office. After waiting for them to get our car ready we began our road trip and headed to north! The first impression of NZ were weindy roads over mountains, lots of sheep and cows. I hadn´t imagined NZ being so different from Australia, which I was to fully discover the following days. We stopped to have lunch in Kaikura and I ate this very delicious sweet potato called kumara :P (I´ll go to look for them this weekend at Paddy´s Market. Hopefully they import them to Australia.) We spent the night in Picton, where we went out to eat for dinner.

A view from the car

Saturday 14.4: We woke up pretty early to go to buy breakfast from this Dutch bakery next to our hostel. I bought delicious dark rye bread and two sandwitches to eat during our hike at Queen Charlotte Track. We took a boat to Ship Cove, the end point of a long hiking route along the shore of river called Queen Charlotte Sound. Since we couldn´t finish the whole route in just one day we were to be picked up along the way at the end of the day, and we were debating whether to walk only 15km to Furneaux Lodge or try to make it to a further stop, which would´ve been 27km. We aimed to walk the longer distance and started our hike with decent pace. The beginning of the walk was first climbing up some rather steep hills and then going down. We stopped to take lots of pictures at various lookouts. During our hike we crossed someone´s private land and despite of that part the views were beautiful. Denise made friends with this little bird - Justin - that kept following us for quite a long while :) The weather was really good during the whole day: sunny and warm enough to wear just a tank top while walking. I think we slowed down a bit during the easy flat part of our walk, and decided not to try to make it further once we arrived in Furneaux Lodge. That was because they had certain pick-up times and if we hadn´t gotten there in time we would´ve been left behind. So instead we ate our lunch outside and then had coffee at this cafe. After taking a boat back to Picton (and seeing dolphins on the way - pictures didn´t turn out that good) we drove to Motueka, where we spent our next night.

On Queen Charlotte track

Another picture

Denise and I eating lunch