Last week was filled
with some silliness in our flat! There
is this kind of strange, but cute at the same time, painting of a fox that was
hanging in our flat at the beginning of the semester. But a couple months ago, Bob stole it and
hung it up in his flat. So last week,
Sophie and I decided it was time to plan a rescue mission. I mean, the fox just looked so sad in Bob’s
flat! So Monday night, while Bob was
cooking dinner in our flat, we snuck out and snatched the painting and returned
it to its rightful place. And being our
crazy selves, we acted like ninjas in the dark jumping around and hiding behind
corners (obviously there was nobody near us), even tossing the painting to one
another to avoid “attacks.” Thankfully,
the fox is now safe with us again J That night I watched a movie
with some mates and worked on a little homework.
Tuesday I went to
class and hung out with some friends.
That night I cooked some baked ziti for my flat and fun fact: NZ does
not actually have ziti noodles in the store and nobody knew what I was talking
about. Thankfully, they all enjoyed my
“foreign” dish! That night we watched a
couple episodes of Game of Thrones as a flat.
Sophie has been begging me to watch this show, and at first I was a
little weary because it looked like something out of a video game, but it’s
actually quite good!
Wednesday I came down
with a little cold so I stayed in most of the day chugging orange juice, tea,
and taking as much vitamin C as possible because I didn’t want to be sick for
my weekend trip! I think it worked
because I felt better the next day!
And then Thursday
rolled around! Erin and I woke up early
and went to the grocery store to get some food for the road and then I headed
to my last tutorial for my geography class.
It’s so crazy that I only have three more weeks left of school! Did I not just get here? Anyway, after class, Erin and I took her Kiwi
host’s car to go pick up our rental car for the weekend. The only rental company that rents to 18 year
olds is at the airport, which is a 20 minute drive from our flat, but it’s
worth it to have a car obviously (NZ public transport is okay, but only to
larger cities). So I drove our car back
into town, we picked up the rest of the gang (Emma, Katie, and Anna), and hit
the road. It was a good 6 hour drive to
Fox Glacier, but it went by super-fast jamming out to music, talking, and being
silly. While Erin was driving, she hit a
bird, which in itself is pretty bad. But
later on, she earned the nickname animal killer when she also killed a possum
in the road. And for some reason, both
times she hit the animals; I started laughing, so of course I earned the
nickname morbid laugher. We were quite
the pair!
But we finally made it
to the small town we were staying at, and the Fox Glacier tourist attraction is
probably the only reason the town even exists!
Our backpackers was super cute and rustic and when we checked in around
8pm, the owner said he was taking a few people to go see some glow worms down
the road and invited us to come. Even
though we were starving, we decided to go.
So the 5 of us plus three guys who worked there led us to a path a few
minutes from the backpackers. At this
point, he told us to turn off all lights, grab the person in front of you, and
walk. The problem: it was pitch black and we couldn’t see
anything. There were even bridges on the
path that had no railings. At one point,
I think we all realized just how trusting we were of these complete strangers
luring us into the woods with the opportunity to see glow worms. I mean, they say beware of people with candy
in the US, but maybe it’s glow worms in NZ.
Anyway, with a little freaking out in the dark and trying to walk in a
line, we finally made it to the hundreds of glow worms hanging out on the
bottom of a fallen tree. The guys were
actually very knowledgeable about them and I learned that it’s their poop that
makes them glow…for some reason that made them less attractive! I was very appreciative of him to show them
to us since it was my first time seeing them!
Afterwards, we grabbed some food in town at the only place that was open
and then went to bed pretty quickly.
The next morning, we
woke up early to walk down the road (like 30 seconds) to the Fox Glacier Tour
meeting place. We had booked the full
day Nimble Fox glacier tramp and it was totally worth it! I am usually not a huge fan of tours and
would rather do things on my own, but this was a tour that provided both
instruction and freedom, which was really cool and unique. The company provided us with boots, crampons
(the spikes on the boots that dig into the ice), and rain gear. Our tour guide was a Kiwi named Sam who was
just a couple year older than us. It
didn’t hurt that he was pretty good looking as well J And he was awesome for putting up with 5
ridiculously silly girls who pushed all the boundaries of what we could
do! The tour started out with a ten
minute bus ride to what used to be the bottom of the glacier, but is now just
forest. The glacier actually recedes up
to 3 meters a day, so it is always changing and in my lifetime will probably
disappear. Glad I came when I did! Anyway, the first part of the tour was an
hour hike up 700 stairs from the car park to the present start of the
glacier. It was a lot of uphill, but
provided some beautiful views of the glacier.
Once to the ice, we strapped on our crampons and away we went. Sam took us through crevices, caves, and
tunnels up into the glacier. It was
sweet as (a kiwi phrase meaning sweet or awesome)! He even let us carry his pick ax and take
pictures with it. And although weary
every time we decided to wander off from the rest of the group for a picture or
just to explore, he was willing to give us some freedom! And except for a little rain around
lunchtime, we had great weather and even saw the very rare NZ blue sky for part
of the day! When we were on our way back
down from the glacier, we decided it was beer o’clock and opened our few beers
that we had packed and drank them on the glacier. I mean seriously, when am I ever going to
drink beer on a glacier again? Sam and
the two couples that were with us in our group loved it! We really lucked up with an excellent tour
guide and group. Once off the glacier,
we took the shortcut back to the car park and passed by a glacial pool. Sam told us that he had only had 4 people in
one group to jump in it in one day. Well
there were five of us, and we took that statement as a challenge! So we took off our boots and jumped it. Burr…it was freezing, but so fun at the same
time! We quickly hopped onto the warm
bus and headed back to town.
However, on the bus
ride we heard that the road back to Wanaka (where we were headed that night)
closed at 7pm due to a rockslide. I
remembered passing the rockslide because it covered most of the road and was
pretty bad, but I never saw a sign that said it was closed. Well at this point it was about 5pm and they
said it would take about 2 hours to get past the slide. So once the bus parked, we flew out of it,
exchanged our boots for our normal shoes, received our certificates saying we
survived the glacial hike, thanked Sam, changed half of our clothes in the
parking lot and away we went. Some of us
were even half wet still. But we headed
out of town not even checking the gas level.
And we remembered literally nothing in between Wanaka and Fox
Glacier. So when Erin noticed the gas
light come on, we were hoping we would somehow make it. But we were still 2 hours outside of Wanaka
and we had not even hit the rock slide yet and it was already past 7 and I was
beginning to think that even if we did make it through the road, we were going
to be spending the night in the car without any gas. Then out of nowhere, a gas
station/accommodation/café appears on the side of the road. So we whip in there and even through the gas
station is closed, Anna runs inside to beg for gas. But while doing so, we talk to a guy that had
just been turned around from the road block so we figured we were stuck there
for the night. So we grabbed some dinner
and I called the backpackers in Wanaka to make sure that they would refund
us. Thankfully, we only had to pay the
10% booking fee! So we ended up staying
at this really cute place and going to bed not having a clue where we
were. A little stressful, but it all
worked out! We woke up the next morning
to a beautiful little cottage area surrounded by snow covered mountains and
figured out we were in a small “town” (as in a school and this café) known as Makarora. Once we ate a little breakfast we had packed
and grabbed some petrol, we hit the road again.
And thank goodness that place was there, not only because we were sure
we would have run out of gas before Wanaka, but also because we were able to
see the beautiful scenery of Lake Hawea that we would never have seen in the
dark! The sun was shining, we had our
shades on, and we were happy J 
We stopped in Wanaka
to grab some coffee and sit by the lake for a little while. I have been/passed though Wanaka three times,
but this was the only time I had seen the town and lake when it was not
raining. And it was just so perfect of a
day! The rest of the drive back was
great and Erin and I took the car back Saturday evening. That night, some friends came over to my
place and then we went to town!
In town, we met up
with some people, one of them being Michael, who happened to have corporate
tickets from where he works (graduated from uni last year) to the Otago vs.
Tasman rugby game and so Erin and I went to the game with him and some of his
friends. It was such a nice day and it
was fun experiencing more Kiwi culture through sports! After the game, the guys dropped us back off
at my place and Erin and I experimented with making potato and leek soup. It turned out pretty tasty!
And today I went to my
last tutorial for my religion class, cleaned my room, and worked on some
homework. And then after dinner Werner,
Erin, Rachel, Liam and I watched the movie “Taken” and now I am sitting in my
bed well past midnight writing this blog!
But I probably should get some sleep.
Cheers!
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