Life has been crazy busy lately but amazing as always! I was
working 60+ hours per week over the Christmas to New Year period, which was
exhausting, but at least I have an awesome job! I’m now past the point of
making stupid mistakes at work, so they started giving me more freedom and
responsibility which was good too.
Anyway, after those couple weeks, I was definitely excited for Brynn to
arrive for our roadtrip!
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| Paihia Lookout |
After a flight delay, which caused her to get to Paihia a
day later than expected, we didn’t waste much time before starting to have
fun. Basically as soon as she got here,
we were on jetskis for a tour through the islands. The weather was beautiful, the ocean was flat,
and we ran into dolphins so it was about as good of a jetski tour as we could’ve
gotten! I think it made Brynn a bit
jealous of my job though…That afternoon we went to my friends kayak shack and
paddled around the Bay just for a little bit and otherwise just laid around and
I took her up one of the lookout hills. On top of her being jetlagged and
dealing with the stress of the delayed flight, the next morning we got up for
our longest day of travel—a 4 hour bus to Auckland, a 1.5hour flight to
Christchurch, then a 5 hour drive to Dunedin.
We started at 7am and made it to my old flatmate’s house in Dunedin just
before 10pm, but did make a stop at the Moeraki Boulders. The next day I showed her where I used to
live, some of campus, Baldwin Street (the steepest street in the world), Mt
Cargill, and Sandfly Bay on the Otago Peninsula where we saw sea lions, but
couldn’t find a penguin. That night, we had a bonfire (which may or may not
have been legal), listened to music, played cards and camped in one of the
caves on Long Beach just outside of Dunedin.
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| Key Summit |
When we finally woke up and found our way back to the car
(which took a few tries…), we were off to Te Anau. The drive that night was fairly uneventful
except we did pick up 2 hitchhikers, which I think was Brynn’s first experience
with hitch hiking! In Te Anau, we stayed
with Des, who was the first guy I ever couch surfed with and is now the first
Brynn has as well. He was awesome. He took the Monday off work to show us
around, so we did the Milford Sound cruise first. Last time I did it, we had perfect blue sky,
but this time it was very cloudy and misty, which made it much more
mysterious. Afterwards, Des showed us
all his favourite spots along the Milford Sound road. Our first stop was at The Chasm, but rather
than just see the waterfalls he took us off the trail to a swimming hole just
below the falls which was amazing! We
drank water from Monkey Creek, climbed up Falls Creek Falls, walked up to a
place called The Cathedral, hiked Key Summit (which was beautiful), saw the sun
gleaming over the mountains from Lake Gunn, and saw the reflections of grasses
and peaks in Mirror Lake. We couldn’t
have asked for a better day, but there are still a few spots that we didn’t or
couldn’t get to, so I’ll have to go back there!
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| Swimming Hole at The Chasm |
Des hosted us for 2 nights, then we were on to
Queenstown. Our time in Queenstown
started off with a hike that may have been a bit harder than I remembered, but
I dragged Brynn most of the way up. We
came across wild goats, or Tar as they call them here and made it to the saddle
just below the peak. When we got back
down we went to check into our hostel—the only one we stayed at all trip—and
made dinner, then sat down by Lake Wakatipu on the little beach. The next day we slept in, finally, and did a
wee road trip to Glenorchy. I tried my
luck at the casino but ended up frustrated and twenty dollars poorer. Otherwise, Queenstown was relatively
uneventful and then we went on to Wanaka.
In Wanaka we stayed with another couch surfing friend of mine and did a
hike up Diamond Lake and Rocky Mountain Summit, which had beautiful views over
Lake Wanaka. While laying on the beach,
I saw a boat water skiing, so of course I started chatting with them and talked
my way into getting a ski! Unfortunately
it was a bit of a struggle, but we won’t get into that… Otherwise, we had a
pretty laid back time there, played a lot of cards and drank pina coladas. From Wanaka, we went on to our last
destination—Mt Cook National Park and Lake Pukaki/Tekapo.
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| Mt Cook behind Lake Pukaki |
As we drove in, the weather was beautiful and Mt Cook’s
summit was poking out of the clouds behind the bright blue water of Lake
Pukaki. I had only been to Mt Cook once
before, but the weather was awful, so I was really happy to have good
weather. We just did one short hike to
Tasman Lake, where I lost a bet and had to swim in a lake with icebergs
floating in it. Afterwards some rain
started moving in, which was the first time of our entire trip that the weather
wasn’t ideal! I gave Brynn the option of sleeping in the back of the car
(obviously what I would’ve done if I was alone) or going to a hostel (what I
expected her to pick) and she picked the car! Luckily there was a shelter
because it rained a lot, but only started around 7pm and by the time we woke up
it was clear again. We had no trouble
killing the time by playing cards, meeting people, and eating everybody else’s
extra food! I was up early despite being
surprisingly comfortable and dragged Brynn out of “bed” for some hikes. We did two hikes and it was rather sunny out,
but the wind was howling so strong that it blew an Asian lady off the
boardwalk! After the hikes, we ended our
trip driving to Christchurch where we stayed at a friend from Otagos house then
flew back to Auckland where I caught a bus back to Paihia and Brynn flew back
to America.
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| Brynn and I at Milford Sound |
I hadn’t traveled with someone else quite like this before,
so wasn’t quite sure what to expect. At
the beginning I found myself being a bit selfish and impatient, which worried
me. However, as the time went on, I got
used to accounting for someone else and actually loved it. We got along really well, she put up with me
dragging her on hikes and out of bed, constantly doing something, etc. I found it to be really cool to show off some
of my favourite places and to share the experiences with someone else. It was amazing to catch up and hard to say
bye, but also made me realise how much I miss my friends and family. In my 9.5
months of being abroad, the two weeks with Brynn were among, if not the, most
fun I had.
Now I’m back in Paihia and worked my first 4 days back. However, after the 4th day, I was
walking home when my mate Dan asked if I wanted to sail out to one of the
islands overnight—so I did! It was
awesome and I am finally starting to feel confident sailing. We caught a kingfish on the way, which we
tossed on the barbeque and thoroughly enjoyed and had a really clear night with
spectacular stars. The sunset was stunning too, but I couldn’t get a picture
since I was controlling the sails—sorry. Besides waking up at 3:30am to find
that the tide had gotten unusually low and we were sitting on the ground, it
was a great trip. We tried to move the
boat deeper, but it was stuck good, so we had no choice but going back to bed
and when we woke up, the tide rose and we were off! My plan for now is to stick around here until
the end of February, then head to the South Island for a few months—and that’s
where plans end
for now!
