Hi everyone!
I’ve now been in New Zealand for two weeks and they have certainly been two busy weeks. I left Kate and Gem at Sydney airport and started out on the second leg of my travelling to Christchurch. Coming here has certainly been a big adjustment to make, to the colder weather if nothing else. But I’m adapting and starting to really love it here. I arrived on the Monday and my mum flew in to meet me on the Tuesday. That was interesting in itself because although i was absolutely fine getting on a plane by myself, checking into the hostel, spending an evening by myself in a new city – I failed miserably at getting up on time to be at the airport to meet my mum. In my defence my phone was broken so I had to try and use the alarm clock in the room, which I’m not sure works. But I was finally woken by a phone call from the desk telling me that someone was waiting for me at the airport. I got the phone call at 8:37 and was dressed and left my room by 8:40. I still think, in spite of everything that was quite impressive. Anyway we eventually met up and everything’s been fine. We decided to rent a car so that my mum had the chance to see as much as possible in the two weeks she’s here. So we both flew into Christchurch, which is on the South Coast and spent two more nights there. It’s said to be more English than England and it is very quaint with the river Avon running down the centre with Cambridge terrace on one side and Oxford on the other.
The view over Christchurch
It’s definitely a beautiful city and has quite a lot of history for such a young country. In the time we were there we saw the Christchurch Cathedral, took a trip on the tram that ran around the city’s route, went to the museum, visited the botanical gardens and took a ride up on the Gondola that looks out over Christchurch. All in all being very good tourists and doing all the expected things. But we feel that we got to see a lot of what Christchurch has to offer.
After Christchurch we headed south for about 3hours to a place called Tekapo, named after the nearby lake. This really was a tiny place with a population of around 600. We only spent one night here but we got to see the little church which looks over the lake and is a popular stop for tourists, especially the buses. But when we actually got to it, it turns out this famous church was only built in 1935.
Lake Tekapo
Not quite as old as the famous churches we’re used to but very cute all the same. That night I had New Zealand ‘fush and chups’ for dinner and we went out on a star gazing tour which was actually quite amazing. I saw the rings of Saturn and the colours of Jupiter as well as finding my zodiac sign in the stars. (I don’t see it myself but the cancer crab actually looks like a big Y).
The next morning we started down to Queenstown, the adventure sport capital of New Zealand and possibly the world. You can throw yourself off anything that stands still long enough and even some things that move. (Acouple of times I sat just watching the parabungy boats, where someone parasails behind a speed boat, up to the maximum height then bungys from the parachute). So naturally the first thing we did here was a nice relaxing cruise across the lake.
Queenstown
It was the original old 1912 steamer and came complete with a guy playing the piano and singing lots of old tunes. Although he also played some Korean songs for the lively group of Korean ladies there, who all looked a little dangerous with their excitement to join in. The scenery was astounding and definitely the element lacking from Australia. While we were in Queenstown we took few drives out to some spots around the area. For those who don’t know, my mum is a big Lord of the Rings fan and my aunt had bought her the Lord of the Rings location guide. I.e. a guide to all the places the movies were filmed in NZ. Now part of the filming agreement was that once finished everything had to be removed and returned to it’s original condition. That means the book is really saying if you go here you’ll be able to see the place where they digitally inserted a castle for example. But since this is my mum’s two weeks here I obliged in visiting such spots and if the novelty wasn’t there for me in seeing ‘the misty mountains’ then the real things were spectacular enough on their own. Our chosen adrenaline sport in Queenstown was Jetboating. This involves a boat with a special kind of engine that allows it to go into water only four inches deep without problem and also make incredibly sharp turns. It was really good fun even when our boat broke down because the engine threw a belt and we were asked “you can all swim right?” but we were rescued and swimming wasn’t necessary. We had dinner booked at the top of the gondola up to Bob’s peak, the mountain overlooking Queenstown. For days I’d been watching the paragliders come floating down off the mountain, twirl over the town and the lake and then disappear behind buildings. So at the top I went to find out about it, with the thought that I might do it when I get back into Queenstown when I’m travelling on my own. Five minutes later I was on a chairlift towards the launch point. I guess it really hadn’t been that difficult to talk me into it and since my mum was standing there, credit card in hand, I couldn’t really pass up the opportunity. So I found my self at the top after a knackering ’10 minute’ hike. I was doing a tandem jump, since obviously I’m not qualified to go on my own. So I had a seat in the back of my harness and then my instructor, Clarke, was strapped in behind me. Asked if I was alright I said yes which was probably a lie considering I was about to jump off a mountain. But I ran off that hill and suddenly we’re gliding down from 2,500ft at about 50km/h. It was the most amazing experience and not at all scary, but just an incredibly weird feeling to look past your toes and have nothing for 2,000ft until the ground.
Paragliding in Queenstown
We landed, thankfully without any thud or broken bones and I had to walk on jelly legs to the hill to get back on the gondola to meet my mum and try and stomach some dinner. The adrenaline had me bouncing off the walls of the litttle gondola cart but I eventually made it and managed to have 4 courses of buffet dinner! We tried to go on a flight and cruise over Milford Sound the next day but weather meant we couldn’t so instead, to fill time, we fed my mum’s new addiction – jetboating. We went with a different company this time who actually go down the canyons and get ridiculously close to the walls. But we survived and started the drive to our next stop Haast.
We only stayed in Haast for one night and after three hours of winding mountain pass roads to get there we were greeted with a big drizzly cloud called Haast. To be fair the weather is supposedly not always that bad, but unfortunately we caught it on a bad day. Haast is a very tiny place with a population of only 295. But we spent the night in a very nice newly renovated triple room and started out the next morning for the glaciers. We were staying that night at Franz Josef, nearby the glacier of the same name but the weather was definitely against us as we arrived to yet more clouds and so didn’t have much to see for our one night here.
We had a 500km drive the next day which we were not looking forward to and although the scenery was beautiful it did get a bit monotonous towards the end. We did pick up two hitch hikers during the day, although mum’s indecision meant that I was subjected to whiplash each time she suddenly braked. The first was a kid who told us he’s missed the bus (It was about 10:30 by this point) and was on his was to school. The second was a German girl hitch hiking around NZ on the working visa. We finally arrived at our destination – Motueka, which was pretty indiscriminate as a town and is mostly used as a gateway to the Abel Tasman. Again, just one night there before we drove to Picton to get the ferry to Wellington. The three hour crossing was unbelievably beautiful and I’m not even sure my mum’s super duper high res camera does it justice, so you’re all just going to have to come here. We arrived on the North Island in one piece with three days to spend in Wellington.
Since I’m now rapidly running out of money I’ll talk about wellington in my next email.
I hope everyone’s well and feel free to email me 
since I’ll soon be all alone 
Sarah xx
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