1,700 km and Lessons Learned

Our travel through New Zealand took us a total of 6 days, and approximately 1,700 km. I don't have enough time to write a little recap at the moment because I am leaving for Kangaroo Island in a day, but hopefully the pictures do the area justice for right now. New Zealand is the most beautiful country I have ever seen, it is pretty small with rough snow capped mountains, crystal blue waters, and lush green forests. A quick preview of what is to come later: Our lessons, Jeff: Have your itinerary printed when going through New Zealand customs. Mike: A Nissan wagon should not be ramped off a pile of rocks along side the roade. Molly: Although the car was small, sleeping between 2 dogs (me and Mike) on a 4 dog night will not keep you warm. Group: After 1,700 km through New Zealand, it was amazing.


UPDATE:
We again had to wake up very early to catch our flight out of Adelaide to Melbourne and finally arrive in Christchurch, New Zealand. In Melbourne we had to go to the international departure which means going through a more rigorous security scanning. We were unable to take our face wash in the containers it was in so we quickly bought a new container and emptied out face wash into the containers. I refused to do this with my toothpaste and went through security with it. The security in Melbourne went pretty smoothly, but would not be the same in Christchurch. Upon arrival we needed to go through customs to be admitted into the country. Unknowingly I needed to know some pretty detailed information, which I should have printed out previously. Mike and Molly made it through security without the necessary information, but I was the lucky one to be detained. I was asked to sit in a chair while the boarder security looked at my passport and attempted to see when I would be leaving the country. I was questioned very briefly and they saw my innocence and allowed me to enter their country after they found that I would be leaving in 6 days. Next, we needed to find a taxi to take us to our location where we were to pick up our campercar. Our taxi driver "Stinky Pete" drove around aimlessly when he got close to the place, so we opened our doors threw him some money and hopped out slamming doors to let him know of our frustration with him and his smelly car. We walked to the place to see a sign saying "will return at 5:15." So we walked around town looking for a place to eat. We were unable to find anything or even a place to buy blankets that we would need in the car. We eventually got our car where they man who checked it out for us was very friendly and helpful on directing our travel plans and places to get food before we left Christchurch. Driving on the left side was not as difficult as I thought it would be. The only difficult part was making turns into the correct lane, yielding, and turning the turn signal on instead of the windshield wipers. So now we were in the car; we needed to fuel it up and get some groceries for the following days. After doing both we were off driving down the left side of the road headed for the mountains. This part was my favorite part of the drive. All the vegetation was very green with snow capped mountains in the background. The green grass often had sheep fenced in by natural fences such as tall evergreen trees. This area was very peaceful yet still had houses scattered through the fields. As we made it to the hills our cars little engine pushed its way up hills and took a rest coasting down the other side. It was quite obvious we had a pretty small engine when trucks pulling trailers passed us going up hills. The road became more narrow and lined with rocks. After a few hours of driving we needed to find a place to sleep, so I pulled off onto a little side road which overlooked a stream which had a railroad track following it off into the distance and again snow capped mountains were the backdrop to our parking spot. This night was freezing cold, I don't think it ever dropped below freezing but it had to be pretty close. In our stupidity we thought we might be ok without sleeping bags or blankets for the first night. Well... we were incorrect and were very cold for most of the night. I turned the car on a few times to see the time, once Mike caught me and asked the time. He said, "please tell me it's like 5:30," I laughed and responded with, "HA... I'm not telling you what time it is." The reason I didn't want to tell him the time was because it was only 2:30 in the morning, and we had plenty of darkness left. As soon as we saw a little bit of light our house was quickly turned into a car and we had a new driver behind the wheel. Mike began driving and like me thought it wasn't too difficult until he ran off the road and our left front tire met one of the many rocks that lined the edge of the road. In the battle between our car and the rock, the rock won and punctured our tire. We had to pull over and get the spare to replace our battled car. When we arrived into the next town after driving through Arthur's Pass we looked for a tireshop. It was Saturday morning so places didn't open until later and being that we woke up at 5:45 we arrived in town at 7:30. Also with the freezing cold of the previous night we decided to also get blankets for the next few nights. After getting the tire replaced we traveled to Punakaiki Park which is home of the Pancake Rocks. These rocks looked layered similar to pancakes, hence the naming. The laying occurs from erosion and slowly these rocks will be claimed by the seas. Again we were on the road heading for Fox's Glacier, where we were hoping to do some skydiving. Unfortunately, due to cloud cover and high winds we were unable to go skydiving, so instead we decided to visit the glacier. Fox's Glacier is huge and takes up an entire valley and continues up the mountains approximately 12 kilometers. Instead of just staring at it Mike and I decided to hit the trails unaccompanied by a guide and attempt to walk on the glacier. We were briefly stopped by a guide asking us what were doing on the trail, and we told him we were going to take a hike up to the glacier to get some pictures. He had no problem with this and allowed us to keep walking up the stairs dug into the side of the mountain. I'm unsure of the number of stairs we had to climb or ascend to get to the glacier but my guess is close to 500 steps one way. As we walked up the hill along the path it was very warm where we shed a few layers of clothing. Once we got onto the glacier it was quite slushy that was quickly turning into ice because the sun was going down. Along with the sun the temperature drastically dropped when we were walking along the glacier. Before it got too icy we turned around and descended the glacier where Molly was waiting for us. We drove a little bit outside of town where we pulled off the road beside a bridge and camped for the night. Again in the morning we attempted to go skydiving again but the pilot told us that it again was not going to be a good day so we headed to Queenstown for our next few days. When we arrived there our first objective was to book activities such as white-water rafting and skydiving. Both of there activities went off and were very enjoyable. The skydiving did not seem like free-falling but rather that you were being pushed up by a huge fan. After seeing Queenstown from the air, land, and water we headed to see Mount Cook on our way back to Christchurch. We saw the mountain from a distance but this was perfectly fine with us. The best part of the trip was the freedom our campercar allowed us to have. We did not have to find a hostel to stay in nor did we need to have a planned agenda for the day, we could simply change the plans for the day depending on how we felt and the amount of driving we wanted to do for the day. As you can see the scenery of New Zealand is absolutely stunning, and I would definitely like to visit the island again and possibly take more time to enjoy more of the land such as the North Island as well as the South Island again.