New Zealand

As one of our missions on this trip is to keep the tourist industry well and thriving we kept with tradition and did even more exciting and expensive trips. The first of these was a white water rafting trip down the Kaituna River. While originally from Idaho, a land of raging white water rapids, we were drawn to this trip with the promise of a 7 m (~23 ft) waterfall drop.

A sample rapid in the Kaituna River

Arriving at the river, we were again outfitted in wet suits, and this time also boots and warm top layers. After carrying our raft down to the river (down a very slippery hill, which resulted in me slipping and sliding on my butt nearly into the river) and a quick explanation of how and when to paddle we were off to our first water fall.

The first drop was not very high, just enough to get us a little more used to things. While we were able to deftly maneuver our raft correctly down the first drop, we accidentally got turned around for the second and took it backwards in style. Since we were now experienced veterans we were now ready for the 7 m (~23 ft) waterfall.

Waterfall on the Kaituna River

This waterfall was much bigger than the first two (obviously) and we were completely vertical in the raft as we went over the edge.

I would like to point out my superb form, head ducked and all.

Not too shabby.

Following our waterfall experience we did a little 'river surfing'. River surfing is where you paddle as hard as you can into the base of the waterfall, as if you are trying to go back up the falls. This results in the front of the raft being sucked up and down and a very bumpy and enjoyable ride.

Here is our best scared faces we could muster, apparently mine was a split second late.

The front of the raft gets absolutely soaked, yeah for Brooke and Bree.

It was on a river surfing experience that our guide told us to 'wave to the camera', obediently, we all waved, smiled, coo-d - and acted like wonderful tourists. During the waving, Brooke had momentarily chickened out and was grabbing for the raft when the guide yelled out 'keep waving', reluctantly, Brooke began waving hysterically, only to at that exact moment hit a large upsurge and was knocked from the raft into the waterfall.

Woman overboard!

As our guide had instructed us previously, in the chance that you fall out of the boat, immediately roll onto your stomach and swim to shore as fast as possible to avoid going over the next waterfall. Brooke remembering these instructions, immediately began paddling to shore. The guide however, quickly shouted out instructions for us to grab her, and luckily for Brooke (and Bree and my muscle ego's) James was able to grab her out of the river and scoop her back into the raft.

While it was fortunate that Brooke fell out on the same side as James, it would have been absolutely brilliant if she had been on my or Bree's side, as any attempts made by us to rescue her would most likely have resulted in another one of us also falling into the river.

Following our eventful rafting experience we headed to the Rotorua Luge's. While Brooke and Bree had done the luge in Queenstown, we had been repeatedly informed that the luges at Rotorua were much better (aka faster, more dangerous, exactly what we were looking for). As it was fast approaching sunset, we opted to take the gondola and purchase a 5 run all inclusive gondola/chair lift package.

Of course we took photos on the gondola, we are tourists remember?

Hot helmets eh?

The luge at Rotorua held up to our expectations and the next hour was filled with ridiculously fast rides down the concrete tracks. Luckily for us, there was no major accidents, though I did have a small run in with Bree's kart, resulting in only minor damage to my kart...

On your marks, get set... GO!

Looking fabulous in this summer's latest fashion

Following our night time luges, we decided to have one final soak in the thermal water, as we were completely frozen from the rides. The best part of this was our dress, or lack thereof in getting to the hot pools.

Check the kicks

Needless to say we caused a bit of a stir in the hallway and elevator.

A quick stopover in Wellington involving nothing more than sleep and we were back on the road heading to National Park in hopes to complete the Tongariro Crossing to see Mt Doom up close and personal. Seeing as the weather in New Zealand does hate us, when we arrived in Turanaki, the workers at the information center informed us that the crossing would not be able to be hiked for at least a week. Seeing as we were leaving the country before then, we were disappointed, but decided to drive down to the park and at least do shorter walks.

The first walk we completed was Turanaki Falls. Apparently these falls were filmed in the Lord of the Rings, where I don’t know.

Look familiar anyone?

Following the falls hike, we turned in for the evening until the morning, but not until after we posed like a Kiwi in front of our favorite New Zealand traffic sign.

Supposedly the Kiwi is endangered, but there are a lot of these signs everywhere. I wonder how many times a Kiwi bird has to cross the road to warrant a sign being posted? Just wondering.

As a side note, we have begun eating some quite delicate cuisine. We have found that just about every meal goes well with baked beans. For just 49 cents, you can get a can of baked beans in tomato sauce, which, when added to cream of chicken soup paired with brown rice is warm, filling and most importantly cheap. Seriously, the things we are now consuming are not normal by any means.

Back to the ranch, the next morning Brooke and I woke early to do a sunrise hike around Mt. Tongariro.

We were hiking even before the sun!

The track was supposed to be 1 hour or so, but of course, we took a wrong turn resulting in a 2 hour long slated trek dropping us about an hour up the road from the car park. This brings me to another point: whoever is clocking the times these treks take must be in amazing physical shape. With the hikes we completed today, and the treks completed at Mt. Cook, all of which were slated to be completed in 3 hours return (or roundtrip). Seriously, to complete these tracks in this time you would have to really be booking it. Brooke and I barely beat the specified times and we jogged much of the trek. But that’s just me complaining…

A bonus of getting up early: no one around and crystal clear skies.

Since our trek resulted in us being dropped at the road Brooke and I tried our hand (unsuccessfully) at hitch hiking.

In the end, we resigned ourselves to another run down the mountain to our car in the car park. On a side note, unlike what everyone, including the weather reporters had predicted, the Tongariro Park was beautiful and clear, nearly perfect for the crossing; we however, had already booked a blackwater rafting trip in Waitomo and were not able to do the crossing. We did however get some rad pictures of Mt Tongariro.

Seriously, I think I must have really offended the weather fairy.

How cool are we?

Apparently not that much...

So with the beautiful crossing weather, we were unable to do the crossing and instead had to head up the west coast to Waitomo caves. The drive up the west side of the North Island was absolutely beautiful. It was seriously like driving through the shire, everything was so green and we were surrounded on every side by an obscene number of sheep. Interesting fact: there is a 11:1 New Zealander to sheep ratio in this country. I am sure this does not amuse anyone as much as it does me; however, I have and continue to get a royal kick out of that fact.

You can't see them, but there are boat loads of sheep down there.

Haha! Look at the sheep... how cute.

Another amusing thing I have noticed about New Zealand and Australia is there unrealistic opinions of there vehicles. Nearly every car has a hitch, regardless of how small or insubstantial the engine. Take this Taurus for instance, trying to tow a full size camper up a hill. Obviously, not very successfully.

On a side note, you wouldn't need to buy a truck to haul your boat, heck, use the sedan, slow and steady wins the race right?

On our drive, in attempts to give back to society, picked up our 4th hitch hiker of the trip. Jacob was a real treat, a 'recovering' drug addict, he had recently been arrested for, wait for it, robbing a bank at gun point. Not the most ideal thing to learn about a random kid you pick up, but he assured us all was well, as he had to stay clean and be 'good' to avoid being locked up indefinitely. Upon dropping off our hitcher we arrived in Waitomo Caves, a city of probably 10 that survives on the caving industry. Here we had booked a underwater rafting and caving adventure. Before our trip, we stopped at the Glow-worm Museum where we were informed about glow-worms and their history. Apparently, glow-worms are actually the larvae of a winged insect that create spider-like strands with luminescent droplets that glow like blue stars in the caves of this area. Along with the information session, I decided to attempt the cave crawl.

Yeah, pretty sure this is meant only for small children, but in the spirit of adventure I wiggled through anyway.

After my practice run, we went to our blackwater rafting experience. They fitted us with stellar wet suits, jackets, super hot white gumboots, yellow hard hats with lights and my personal favorite, bright purple pirate pants (the pants went over the wet suits to protect them from ripping against the rocks while we were caving). Our trip began with a 27 m abseil down the canyon into the cave (abseiling = repelling).

Brooke was definitely the most graceful while Bree and I went for the more traditional approach.

Yeah, and the harness, not comfortable.

Once we reached the water we went for a small hike upstream the river to a point in the cave that was completely dark. It was at this point that our guide, Simon had us turn off our lights and look up at the cave ceiling to see the thousands of glow worms above us.

This was a really cool experience. The glow worms produce a blue light that looks just like the fake stars at Space Mountain. If I hadn't been there and saw the actual bug/larvae moving along the strands I would not have believed that the lights were actually the bugs. Truly amazing.

More glow worms

After our glow worm experience, we took to the blackwater tubing portion. This was also neat as we tubed down the river in the pitch black, watching the glow worms on the ceiling of the cave. I had the misfortune of listening to Simon when he told me to 'quick, get out of your tube and walk here' and I, unfortunately being obedient, jumped out in the only deep part of the river, completely soaking myself, and almost loosing my gumboot as I flailed around trying to get back on my tube.

Soaked, but back in my tube

Post tubing, we proceeded to do some caving, through nooks and caverns in the cave walls. Brooke had a bit of drama getting out of the first hole, resulting in all but de-pantsing of the pirate pants.

Aye-eye matey

The smallest cave I did was alongside another larger hole, the only problem I had was my helmet and light battery getting caught on the rocks. All was well though and we all managed in to get a photo.

After a quick snack (3 pieces of chocolate and wassail) we began our hike back up stream to the beginning of our trek where we would rock climb out of the cave.

Scaling down the rock walls

The climb out of the cave

Keeping with tradition, we woke early to drive the remainder of the way into Queenstown. We had stayed in a town called Wanaka, about 100 km outside of Queenstown and were anxious to get to Queenstown to experience some more adventures. Our speedy departure was thwarted however as Franklin (our stellar Nissan), had the unfortunate experience of getting a flat tire. I, being the mechanical engineer that I am, set to work on removing the tire and replacing it with the donut.

How handy am I?

The first accomplishment was to get the donut out from under our masses of bags and food in the trunk. From a previous Manhattan flat tire experience (seriously I am beginning to believe I am cursed when it comes to tires) I knew not to rip the jack out of the trunk and we soon had the jack placed and the lug nuts ready to be loosened. After an unfortunate experience involving the removal of a plastic decorative lug-nut via Brooke's Herculean strength, we removed the plastic hub cabs (Franklin is rollin' in style). As has been my experience with previous flat tires, I was unable to remove the actual lug nuts as they were on much too tight for my 'massive' muscles to handle. Luckily for us, a friendly New Zealand farmer (I know Dad, all farmers are fabulous eh?) came to our rescue and with what appeared to be minimal effort removed our tire and replaced it with the donut and sent us on our way back to Wanaka to the garage to get our tire looked at.

Turns out I am not as handy as we'd hoped, but our wonderful farmer friend rescued us, deftly removing and replacing our tire.

Fortunately, the tire was repairable and what could have been a very expensive detour turned out to be a minimal cost and yet another car issue to ad to our experience. With newly filled tires, we continued our journey into Queenstown. Queenstown is a bustling tourist city. It is populated with 15,000 locals, but during the busy tourist seasons the population is quadrupled with an addition of 45,000 tourists. With that being said, Queenstown is as you would expect, flashy, over priced and full of fabulous things to do, if you're willing to front the bill anyways. Since we were all a bit sore from the previous days trekking, we opted for a more laid back day filled with tourist meandering and shopping. Brooke and Bree chose to hike up the massive hill outside of Queenstown to do the luge ride. After a grueling 50 minute hike (of course they were too cheap to pay the 20 $NZ fee to take the easy way with the gondola), Bree and Brooke enjoyed the luge ride.

The not so terrifying chair lift to the Queenstown luge

As you can see by the look on Bree's face, the luge is really fast. There is no way this would fly in the States. Way too many lawsuits. (On a side note, this picture, unlike many of our previous scared photos is not staged, Bree was just cruisin!)

After the luge hiking experience, we decided to do a less strenuous, but just as adrenaline producing activity- bungy jumping. Bree opted to do the 47 m running leap version of the bungy, while Brooke and I insanely chose the 134 m Nevis high wire bungy (yeah, that is 440 ft).

To access our jump site, Brooke and I took a 45 minute bumpy bus ride out to the huge gorge we would be jumping over.

See our sweet harnesses? Not the most comfortable experience anyway. Also, see the guy jumping? Hearing him scream like a little girl? Also not so good for the nerves...

To access the jumping platform, we had to take a trolley/tram out to the middle of the canyon. The best part of the platform was the insanely loud music, as to block out the terrifying screams of the jumpers as they plunged over the platform into the gorge below.

Adding to my apprehension was the glass floor of the platform, allowing the jumpers to watch the current jumpers go. After watching a few jumps I had to focus on something else, as my stomach was not doing so hot to say the least.

Because of the height of our jump, we were attached to the bungy cord both by our harness and at our feet. The idea was to jump out head first and fall down 134 m over 8.4 s. For those of you thinking that is quick, let me tell you it is a long time. Once you fall the initial height you bounce back up and fall again. At this point, you pull the cord, releasing your feet from the bungy cord, putting you upright to enjoy the remainder of the bounces and retrieval back to the platform.

Getting ready to jump with the cord firmly attached... can you see the apprehension?

Brooke taking her leap... down, down, down...

The most shocking part of the bungy was how comfortable it was (minus the whole jumping off a perfectly stable platform part). The actual jump didn't hurt a bit and was absolutely brilliant. While I am not completely cured of my fear of heights, I can say that I am much less apprehensive about heights to say the least.

I survived! Believe me, I felt like it was touch and go for a while walking out to the edge.

Not to be outdone, Bree also bungeed, a 47 m leap from a platform above Queenstown. Luckily for her, the jump included a Gondola ride and she did not have to hike up the hill two days in a row. A cool thing about Bree's jump is that it involved a running leap off of the platform. Being a bit apprehensive, Bree had to have some coaxing to jump off the platform, including the worker dragging her part way over the edge.

With a bungy jump each under our belts, and bad weather in Queenstown, we decided to drive in attempts to escape the rain and view the glaciers in Franz Josef. Unfortunately for us, bad weather followed us the entire way. At Franz Josef, the rain was so hard that most of the glacier tours were cancelled or greatly reduced.

Check the rain... intense.

As we had a lot of ground to cover we chose to do a walk out to see a bit of the glaciers.

There are glaciers in these shots, in between the rain and our wonderful faces...

Brooke and I continued on in the downpour to see a reflection pool, which is apparently rad on a clear day, but of course had no reflections as it was raining buckets upon buckets.

Peter's reflectionless pool, apparently you can see the glacier in the pool on a clear day.

After the reflectionless pool experience, Brooke and I went for another run, ending at a really cool suspension bridge over the river, raging due to the large amounts of rain.

Suspension bridge, apparently with a 5 person maximum allowance.

Completely soaked, we returned to our hostel to dry our clothes and pick up 2 fellow Americans we had felt sorry for earlier when we saw them trying to hitch in the rain. A large feet of engineering/Tetris was accomplished here: fitting 5 large backpacker’s packs in Franklin's trunk. Apparently we have a Mary Poppins trunk, as somehow we were able to fit nearly all of our gear in the trunk, amazing really considering how much gear our hitchers had.

Seriously, do you see the amounts of stuff we shoved in the trunk?

Think they were comfy back there? Think again.

With all the gear in, Franklin was so back heavy that nearly everyone thought we were flashing our brights, and continually and very angrily flashed there's at us in return. Not the most pleasant experience on windy roads in blinding rain. Needless to say, over the next 8 hours we were able to safely maneuver through a constant downpour around windy roads over one lane bridges to get to Picton in time to catch the 10 pm evening ferry back into Wellington and the North Island. Our arrival in Wellington met us with even more downpours. Tomorrow we head for National Park and the Tongariro Crossing. Currently we are going on 48 hours of straight torrential downpours, so hopefully the weather will be on our side and stop raining so we can do the crossing in the next few days?

In order to maximize the daylight hours we could enjoy, we decided, much to Bree's despise, to leave Christchurch at 6:45 am and make our way leisurely towards Queenstown. As our plans are flexible our drive was littered with many stops. Our first stopover was in the town of Tekapo. Here we stopped to see Lake Tekapo (shocking name choice, eh?). The weather was absolutely beautiful, and the reflections on the lake were amazing. As usual, pictures do not even begin to do justice, but here are some of our futile efforts...

A few pictures of Lake Tekapo, again, my futile attempts at National Geographic photography are a struggle and it really was much better in person

Along with its gorgeous lake, Tekapo is also famous for the Church of the Good Shepard. This is a small church that was built in the early 1900's and overlooks the lake. It is a picturesque setting and beautiful against the lake.

The Church of the Good Shepard

And of course, what town is complete without a sheep dog monument? While I am not really sure what the monument is for, in true tourist style we snapped photos anyway.

Sheep Dog monument, I really wanted to ride the sheep dog, but decided it may be offensive to the reason of the monument and decided against it. How mature am I?

Following our church and sheep dog experiences, we continued on our journey to the base of Mt. Cook. Mt. Cook is the tallest mountain in New Zealand, reaching 3764 m.

Mt Cook through the brush

Because of its height, 1/3 of the mountain is covered in snow all year, and its summit is not easily accessible to much anything other than helicopters, and perhaps rock hard mountain men. Because I am not a gear head and recently misplaced the keys to my personal helicopter, we had to settle for a trek up a neighboring mountain in the Southern Alps chain.

The trek we took led us initially along a boardwalk through a grassy field directly to the mountain range. We hiked up to a lookout point where we could see crater pools and other volcanic and glacier formations.

Though not Mt Cook, this is right next to it, I don't know its name, but cool reflection eh?

All of us at the lookout, how precious!

The lakes in this region of New Zealand are unique in their coloring as they contain rock flour, which is essentially the rock dust created when the glacier slowly moves over the mountains and then melts into the streams, which in turn feed the lakes, causing a very bright and strong blue coloration for the water.

After our short trek to the lookout we decided to embark on a more difficult track. This track was a route heading straight up the mountain (1.2 km elevation increase) ending at a hut designed for hikers to camp in and then head further into the mountain the next day.

Can you sense the oblivious enthusiasm?

Initially this trek was similar to those we had done before- challenging but not horribly difficult. It was at this point that we reached the base of the actual hike. As we were heading up the mountain, we met 2 hikers coming down. Being a bit hesitant on the difficulty of the hike ahead of us, we asked the hikers if we were going in the right way, as it seemed to us to be heading straight up the mountain through huge rocks and boulders. The hikers assured us we were correct, and that the summit was a solid 2 hour hike up and that we had better hoof it if we were going to make it down before dark.

Me climbing, Brooke attempting to thwart my efforts

Not to be outdone by old New Zealand hikers, we started the journey up the rocks and boulders. The sheer difficulty of the track we were treading was very funny to us and being the tourists that we are, we decided to take pictures to document how 'hard core' aka stupid we were.

Where's Waldo... amongst boulders.

These photos do not really do justice to what we were climbing. It was straight up and over huge rocks and boulders. While we were taking photos and debating whether we could hack this difficult of a climb (again the pride was setting in, as we did not want to be shown up by an old man with a walking stick) I noticed a trail indicator, pointing not in the direction we were heading (straight up the mountain), but barely off to the left, with a track, though still difficult, not directly in the avalanche and rock debris path.

Realizing we were on the wrong path (thankfully, as we would have probably attempted to climb up the mountain... no wonder tourists get hurt, we as a general rule are not very bright) we back tracked down and started up the correct trail. If you are thinking the actual trail was easy you would be gravely mistaken.

This is why stupid tourists get hurt eh?

This path, while not as littered with huge boulders, still went mostly straight up the mountain face, and had many medium sized rocks you had to step around and over. Brooke and I hiked this trail for approximately 45 minutes reaching nearly half way to the summit and base camp when we rightly decided to turn back as the sun had all but set and it soon would be dark and we would have trouble finding our way down the mountain with all the rocks and holes.

Look mom, we are being responsible... even though we wanted to hike to the snow line, ah well, another time.

Even with the wrong turn, and having to turn back early due to lack of sunlight, our treks were fabulous and memorable to say the least. If I ever return to New Zealand, I would love to complete this trek and stay in the huts along the circuit, but I will definitely come during summer, and avoid the frigid temperatures of the winter.

In attempts to maximize our time spent exploring New Zealand and minimize time spent traveling, we opted for the 7:30 am Wellington ferry crossing.

Driving onto the ferry, just as the sun was rising for the day.

The Interislander is a huge ferry ship that transports passenger vehicles as well as large freighters across the Cook Straight from the North to South island. All in all the journey takes 3.5 hours and travels 92 km. The ferry is quite elaborate with all sorts of activities (including but not limited to a full size movie theatre and a child's play gym) and cafes to conjure even more money than the initial passenger and vehicle booking fees.

Not to shabby eh?

While I have been told the trip is beautiful and am sure the overpriced pastries are delicious, I was more interested in catching up on some much needed sleep, as this ferry was leaving at 7:30 am. Luckily for us, we were all able to commandeer our own private couches located in the coffee lounge and enjoy a 3 hour long nap.

But not until we had taken ample photos from the boat deck of course...

After our nap and arrival in Picton on the South island, we began our journey to Christchurch. As luck would have it, the weather was absolutely beautiful (albeit cold) and the drive was lovely and filled with beautiful scenery, all of which was unable to be caught on film due to the very narrow roads in New Zealand, but I'm sure you can imagine the grandeur right?

Doesn't even come close to doing the views justice, but we tried...

Following our drive, and unsuccessful attempts to make purchases at a local 'Funk & Junk' shop (I for one was disappointed the shop was not open), we arrived in Christchurch to Brooke's friend of a friends Farrah's place. Upon arrival we were informed it was time to head out and due to our limited wardrobes, pieced together interesting outfits and hit the town.

Christchurch, like Wellington, is a beautiful city. On the eastern coast of the Southern island, it is a decent sized town with Universities and sights galor. Farrah took us to Godly Head, a lookout over Christchurch that was originally used as a lookout and armory to protect the harbor against invaders.

Shot taken on the drive up to Godly Head.

At Godly Head we enjoyed a short 30 minute walk to the coastal lookout, where you could see the entire harbor and ocean for miles.

Overlooking the ocean.

Apparently I have a problem with authority, but come on, the view was so much better on the roof.

Following our trek, the remainder of the day was spent exploring Christchurch, its markets, gardens and shops. Overall, Christchurch was a great city. We ended up spending an extra day here and would love to go back, we'll see how the remainder of the trip goes eh? Tomorrow, Mt. Cook...