In the Land of Hobbits, Wizards, and Elves

Wow.  Where do I begin?  

Last Friday I left the wonderful country of Australia to go to New Zealand.  My flight went well (we had our own "on-command" TVs again) and I checked into my hostel in Christchurch for the night.  The next day I took an 8 hour bus ride through the south island to the city of Queenstown.  I spent two nights there in a cute hostel called the Hippo Lodge, where I met some fun kids from the U.S. as well. 

I had one full day in Queenstown (Easter Sunday) before I left for my hike on the Milford Track, and I decided to jump off a bridge over a river with my feet attached to an elastic chord.  In other words, I WENT BUNGY JUMPING!!!  I had left for this trip not planning to go bungy jumping, but as soon as I got here, I knew it was something I had to do.  Queenstown is a cute little town nestled in the mountains, and attracts people from all over for the adventure sport lifestyle it provides.  You walk down the street and there are stores for skydiving, bungy jumping, whitewater rafting, heli-skiing, heli-mountain biking, high speed jet boating, 4-wheeling, ect.  The place where I went bungy jumping, the Kawarau Bridge, was the first commercial bungy jumping place in the world, and it was 43 meters high.  It was by far the scariest and craziest thing I've ever done, but it was truly amazing.  

After my adrenaline filled morning, I just wandered around the town and explored the shops.  I had a pre-hike meeting and met a girl around my age from Canada named Jane.  After the meeting we hiked to the top of a mountain that overlooked the city of Queenstown and rode the Gondola back to the bottom.  Then we went to a busy burger spot called Furburgers and I ate the most delicious hamburger in my life.  On Monday morning we woke up early to leave for our hiking adventure!!!!

It was a 3 hour bus ride to the town of Te Anau, where we caught a boat across a lake to where we began our hike.  Right from the beginning I knew it was going to be an extraordinary couple of days.  The mountains rose up for the water and towered over us in the misty clouds.  There was a light drizzle, which was to be expected since the area gets 7-9 meters of rain every year! There were about 35 people in our hiking group, and luckily 7 of those people were my age.  About 1/3 of the people were from New Zealand, 1/3 from Australia, and the remaining people were from the U.S., Canada, Japan, and Spain.  Everyone was super friendly.  The first day was a very easy one mile hike to our accommodation, where we were pleasantly greeted with hot showers, a full 3-course meal, and a nice game of monopoly!

The second day we woke up early to a beautiful, sunny day.  We hiked 10 miles through the valley, drinking water straight from the crystal clear streams and swimming in a frigid (5 degrees Celsius) lake with waterfalls.  The forest truly felt like a magical place where elves and fairies would live.  Even though we did have a large group, people could leave the lodge at different times in the morning and walked at different paces, so you were usually only walking with one or two other people.  

Day three was the toughest day.  We went up and down the MacKinnon pass to an elevation of 1154 meters.  Again, we were extremely lucky with the weather and had a clear view of the valley below.  Our guides told us that they hadn't had a clear/visible day like that in over a month!  After our 10 miles up and down the mountain (we saw an avalanche too!) we went on another hour hike to Sutherland Falls, which is the 5th highest waterfall in the world.  Our guide took us behind the waterfall, and it felt like buckets and buckets of water were being dumped on our heads.  By the time we made it back to the lodge, around 6 pm, it had started to rain pretty hard.

That rain continued through the night and by the time we were ready to leave the next morning, we were getting 12-15mm of rain each hour.  We were told to hope for rain the 4th day, since that would form heaps of waterfalls in the valley, but we got so much rain that our hike was postponed for 2 hours.  The guides were thinking for a while that we would have to be taken out in helicopters because the water levels on the track kept rising.  With our amazing luck though, as soon as we got the go ahead to walk, the sun came out.  It was perfect-we got the rain to see waterfalls, but since the rain stopped, the water drained off the track into the rivers fast enough that we weren't in water up to our knees.  Our guide told us that the water level was 3 meters higher than normal in some spots where we were crossing bridges.  After 13 miles of walking, we finished the day, and had also finished the 33.5 mile Milford Track!! From there we took a boat to the city of Milford (population=150) to spend our final night in the hotel there.

On day 5 we went on a cruise in Milford Sound and admired the mountains surrounding us, knowing what we had just accomplished.  It was a great feeling.  After the cruise we got back on the bus to Queenstown, and when we arrived there we had to say goodbye to each other, which was sad because we all became pretty close throughout the hike.  Hopefully I'll cross paths with some of them in the future.  2 of the guys my age were brothers that live in Melbourne, and we might try to meet up when I go there for the 1/2 marathon, which would be cool!  There was also a family from Minneapolis (small world!).  

I'm back in Australia now, having experienced another wonderful little slice of the world.  Traveling always makes me want to see more, it has become some sort of addiction!  I love meeting people from all over and hearing about their lives and adventures.  Going other places makes me miss home more.  I love, love, love seeing all these cool places, but it would be even more amazing to share my adventures with my best friends and family.  Yea, I've made a lot of good friends along the way, but none of them know me as well as you all do.  I miss you and love you guys very much! 

Okay enough sentimental stuff! Here's the word/saying of the week! (I'll give you two since I didn't do one last week)

"Sweet as!"- I don't know why, but they add the word "as" onto a lot of things to emphasize it.  The saying works with other words too, so you could say "Crazy as, scary as, fun as, hungry as, parched as, ect." 

             Example:  "That view of the mountain is sweet as!!" or "Jumping off that bridge was crazy as!"

"Rock up"- This pretty much means show up.

              Example: Girl 1-"What are you going to wear tonight?" Girl 2-"I don't know, I'll probably rock up in some jeans and a t-shirt."

There you have it folks.  You'll be speaking Australian in no time!

xoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxo