New Zealand in 2022

 Intro to New Zealand 2022:

(This is a long post as it spans two weeks. It took maybe three days to write this and will take about an hour long to read it if you skip all the videos. Movies add another 15 minutes. Plan accordingly, or take a few breaks, or skip around. Enjoy!) 

Included here is the video that Chris made about our adventures. It is 30 minutes long. 

New Zealand Trip

When people think of New Zealand the first thing they ask about is Hobbiton. Yes, we went there. You will see it soon. After traveling to this country, the first thing Amanda thinks about are the green hills all over the place and the winding roads. The entire country is composed of these and it doesn't change very much apart from mountains and beach front here and there. Most of the scenery looks just like this:

You will see either sheep on the hillside or cows.

Sometimes you can see rocks. This is New Zealand.

Every now and then you can spot deer fields, but they are harder to see as hedges get in the way to block the view most of the time. Unless you get lucky.

New Zealand has some very tall hedges like these:

According to Google, hedges are made out of lots of different kinds of trees, but they might be Lilly Pilly's.

 And winding roads.

This is an ambulance. 

Note that people drive on the left side of the road. Chris was our main driver on our trip and he did amazing. He only got a little confused about the windshield wipers and the turn signal sticks as they were on opposite sides of the car from what we are used to. 

Some of the roads are very sharp U-pin turns and require you to turn slowly so you don't fall off the edge of a very tall cliff. 

Photo Credit: Waimak Classic Cars website

It is not uncommon to run into one way bridges where one side of the road has to stop and "Give Way" to the other side. 

Here is an example of us waiting to continue down the road over a single-lane bridge. 

 We did not spend much time in the large cities so our shopping experiences were rather limited. In some places we struggled to find food to eat since shops (even the general store) closed before 4 p.m. We had to drive to a nearby city to get dinner. We managed to discover two larger grocery stores in larger areas called Countdown and New World. When we first entered a store, Amanda was rather confused about what to do. 

This was in front of her face. She wondered if it was an area to push in shopping carts. It's a walk through gate thing so that you only walk through it one way. Chris walked through like it was nothing and then she was like "Oh!" and walked into the store too. :) 

Since we spent so much time out in nature, we heard a lot of strange bird sounds. By the end of the trip, Amanda wasn't able to identify all of them, but she could more or less make out the sound of a Tui bird, a Kea parrot, and a New Zealand robin. 

Lines are called "queue's," and on the road if there is a stop sign coming up or construction, you will see signs telling you that there is a "hidden queue." 

You will also find billboards that tell Dad and Mom to slow down along with this great one:

 I am not sure what it means, but it might mean bring your own food because everything around you shuts down super early.

Since the people of New Zealand were infiltrated by the British, they use some words that sound funny and neat. Trash is called "rubbish." People say "cheers," or "cheers mate" instead of thank-you. Pickles are called "gherkins."

 

As for food, we had a lot of granola bars on the road. New Zealand is known for its savory pies as in they are filled with meat or nuts. Here is a picture of a few that you can find in cafes in the towns. Apart from trying these, our main options of things to eat were noodles or burgers or Mexican or cafe sandwiches and pies so that is what we ate most of the time for lunch and dinner. For breakfast we had cereal or porridge eaten from the mugs provided in the hotels that were supposed to be for tea and coffee. The kettles sure bring water to a boil quickly! 

 

 Done with the Intro:

I know right? You wanted to see some of the things that we did. Keep in mind that each place we went to was about 1-2 hour drive apart (sometimes as far as 5-7 hours), so we did a lot of driving. Chris got a ton of neat video footage on his brand new GoPro so hopefully I can link to that later. 

Into the good stuff:

 We took New Zealand Air from the Chicago Airport directly into New Zealand. It's a 15 hour flight. Amanda had trouble sleeping on the plane going both directions. Coming home, Chris and Amanda were not seated next to each other even, but we managed to be kitty corner. 

This leads to our first adventure. Cheers! Taken from what I wrote in my journal entry:

(We have already had our first mishap of the trip. Chris was asked to show his passport as we got on the plane. We had just shown it to board at the start of the Jetway and had to yet again. It was in his pocket. So, he pulled it out and plop! Down it falls between the edge of the door to the plane and the walkway. Down onto the ground below the airplane. We both stop and stare at it. I'm saying… "uh…" and the flight attendant says, "It's alright." Chris responded with, "It is?" sort of like, "I really need that to get into New Zealand and back home." They have him step to the side for a moment, but eventually send him to his seat without it. All the same, he ends up sitting down before me as I was stuck behind a non-moving line of people on the other side of the aisle. Eventually he is paged on the PA system and he hits the “call attendant” button. He has to give his birthdate to get back his passport and the lady questions him about being born in 1986 instead of '84. I don't know why she was reading the number wrong, but he got his passport back!) 

 

November 27, 2022

For our first adventure, we went down the Rotorua luge track three times after riding a gondola to the top of the mountain. Riding a luge is like driving a go cart without any gas and no pedals. You pull backward to stop and hold the handle bars in the middle to go forward. We went on two different mountains over our trip, and this one was our favorite location with dinosaurs and tunnels and cool things to race around. 

Next up was the Redwoods Tree Walk. We went back to this location later the next day to see it in the dark when all the lights turned on. It was beautiful, but we didn't walk the bridges in the dark since the line was super long and Amanda's legs were starting to tucker out by that point. There were not many people in the way during the day when we went. 

Because of the nature of the soil and the plentiful rainfall in this region, these trees grow faster than their CA counterparts.

This was the first location that Amanda came in contact with ferns. Did you know that there are over 10,500 different kinds of ferns? This one is the black tree fern, and Amanda got tons of pictures of ferns during the trip.  (About 35 or so all over both islands). Because you can't keep a good fern down!

New Zealand also has a lot of silver ferns. They use this fern leaf as a symbol on signs even.

It was off and on rain during our entire trip. We would have sun and get hot, and then some wind and then some sprinkles of water nearly every day in various patterns. 

We went to the Tamaki Maori Village experience which is considered a top 10 in the world experience. There we tried some traditional Maori foods (from the native culture before they were overrun by the British) and learned about their lives, houses, tattoo markings, traditions, and games. Chris got to learn a Haka welcoming tribe dance that looked both silly and ferocious. He also played a stick game and nearly won the around-the-world challenge. He was one of the last three players, but one person got in his way so he couldn't grab his stick. Amanda tried out a string-on-a-ball dance thing (poi). 

 Then they sang and danced for us and we got a five course dinner which really felt like a lot larger than that!

 

Almost made it to the final two!

Haka! 

 

That night we checked into The Best Western Hotel complete with a kitchen and glass top stove (which we didn't use), small sink, and heated towel warmer rack (which we did use.)

Chris had Amanda grab the towel rack before she knew it was heated, so she got a bit of a shock! 

 

 

November 28

We took 26,819 steps on this day. Some legs were protesting!

Everything started out peachy with a visit to Hobbiton one our favorite stops on the entire trip. 

It was discovered from airplane and is part of a still functioning sheep and cow farm. It's unique in that the set is still up for visitors while most other movie sets get taken down after the films are over. The area made for some strange jobs on the scene like "pebble thrower" to keep frogs in a pond from being too loud during filming and "laundry walker" to carve a natural made path in the grass. There is a fake tree behind Bilbo Baggins house and all the leaves had to get repainted by college students because the director said they came in the wrong color. Birds don't nest in it, but they will sit in it. Our guides next door neighbor made the chimney pots on the house. 

And because I have too many favorites from here, you can see a lot of pictures. :) 

Bilbo's house.

This is the party field. Amanda is standing at the back end of it in this picture, so it's shorter than the movie makes it out to be.

The yellow one is Sam's house.

We got to go into the Green Dragon and get a drink. Chris got some ginger soda and Amanda tried a few sips. It was gingery, cold, and bubbly if you can imagine. Pathways had signs that led around to the Shire, Green Dragon, East Farthing, West Farthing, etc.

 

The day was still going, so we went to Wai-O-Tapu. Beware if you go here. It is smelly. Like sulfur rotten eggs smelly because of the volcano rocking out under your feet at the Taupo volcanic zone. There were several trails to follow around to see the different color pools. Amanda was concerned about the orange moss on the trees that strangely didn't kill them off, but she liked finding the pied stilt birds after hearing them making strange animal sounds that didn't sound like birds.

Favorite part was the campaign pools or rather the Sinister Terraces that the champagne pools flow over. Amanda could make people disappear! According to the sign, "as [the pools] flow over the terraces it evaporates and leaves behind geyserite. This process has been going on for over 700 years, and the Terraces cover an area of approximately 1.5 hectares." Whatever a hectare is!

Some of the waters around this place get to be 100 degrees Celsius which is 212 in Fahrenheit.  

To get the full experience of sticky pools, we then compared the paid-for sulfur pools with the free ones you can see walking around the Rotorua Park in the middle of the town. The costly one has more colors (and the cool walkway), but the free park ones do a good enough job to get the full aromatic effect. The park includes two pools that people can soak their feet in. The water is supposed to be warm, but it was mildly cold when we were there. 

We met a few people from the states while we enjoyed the pool. They were on their way out while it was our second day.

Next was the event that got our legs tired! 

We went on a hike near the redwood trees (the Pohaturoa Track) while we waited for it to be dark enough that the lights there turned on. The sign said the trail was only a 2 hour trek at a "moderate pace." What it didn't say was that the sign was wrong and no one knows what a moderate pace is. Chris looked it up later and learned that even a professional hiker claimed that the time on this was wrong. 

It took us out of the redwoods, up a road, up and around a mountain top, and finally back down adding a good 11,201 steps to Amanda's phone count. It took us two and a half hours. By that point, Amanda was too tired to want to stand in the long line to see the redwood trees lit up as the line was a good block length long, so we walked around beneath the trees, and that was good enough. It was a pretty hike, however. It would have been better to do this before walking a lot of other places earlier in the day.

 

See, the moon came out!

And the crowds were rather large.

We also think we saw a wallaby jump across our path when we almost made it back, but it was a little hard to tell since it was dark. They are supposed to be reported since they breed too fast and don't have any predators in the area for population control. 

The rest of the redwood trees were filled with glowing yellow lanterns and moving green lights that didn't look were hard to make out in pictures. Chris may have gotten a few good ones.

November 29

Another favorite day! We started things out with the Down to Earth cave spelunking event. This cave adventure is not for the weak legged, overly large, or claustrophobic. It requires you to push through rushing river water without being swept away, climb through narrow holes in cave walls, and get wet feet. It is totally worth it!! We had Ash as our tour guide as he is basically leading the entire event on his own right now. Covid wasn't too nice to the business, but the family stayed afloat since they do other things too. Amanda was very glad that they were still running because it was amazing to climb around without a man-made trail. We had to change into stripy pants and shirts with large sweaters and rubber boots. That way we had dry clothes waiting for us when we got back. 

Then we did a secret trial walk down the river so that Ash could judge if we'd be able to make it through the actual cave by seeing how much help we needed in following his directions to walk on the edge of the river and not in the middle of the sweeping river to step over rocks and stuff. We passed his inspection so our group was able to continue. Ash is a very dynamic/charismatic fellow and made the trip enjoyable as he teased and told us jokes and led us safely through the cave system. 

Our culminating cavern room was to see glow worms on the ceiling. These things are really maggots and they live most of their lives in the pupae stage lowering silk string down to catch bugs with their glowing lights. Then when they reach adults, they mate quickly and die of starvation because their mouths malfunction. Not a fun thing to be, but they look like blue stars in a dark sky when you see a bunch of them at a time. 

Amanda coming out of a crawl spot.

Chris and Amanda at the start.

Chris coming out of a crawl spot.

The crawl spot. This is Ash (the tour guide) taking a picture of the next person through.

Ash is in the yellow hat. This is apparently the only picture Amanda got of his face.

The group at the start.

Amanda and Chris in the caverns.

Here you can see the glowworms after using a long exposure shot on the camera to make the blue lights show up on the image.

Our group at the end. Any more people at a time, and it would have been hard to have us all balance on the ledges in a row in some places.

Chris right after he slipped into the water at the end.

The cave that we went through.

All of us before we started our adventure.

I (Amanda) kept seeing these pretty flowers and didn't know what they were, so I asked Ash (a little after he had just told the group that he made things up when he doesn't know the correct answer.) He told me they were dock flowers, but no. They are foxgloves. They were my favorite bell flower that we saw in NZ. They come in pink, purple, red, and white.

These are not to be confused with the NZ lupins, which are technically a weed there, but are also long and tall. 

Here is a compilation of flowers. We stopped on the edge of a road and got a bunch of lupin shots later on in the trip from a field so those are in the lower right. 

 

The red flowers on the left are actually the NZ Christmas trees called Pohutakawa trees, which are red and green during their summertime Christmas. 

Photo Credit Wikipedia. I never did take a full tree shot.

 Our next stop was the Ruakuri Bushwalk which Chris said was one of his favorite hikes. Amanda located a secret cave entrance but without a flashlight and climbing gear didn't go too far into it. There was rushing river water and larger caverns and a small cave to enter along the path. 

 

 

Next up in the day was visiting Spellbound. This is another cave area where you can see a lot of glowworms. We had a little trouble reaching the meetup location because there was a gigantic construction vehicle on the road that we had to wait for. But we made it, and had another good experience. This cave system includes concrete paths and handrails for those who can't or don't want to do a more intense caving adventure. You then sit in a boat that moves back and forth up and down the river a few times so you can see all the glowworms on the roof of the cave. Its a bit different from the Down to Earth adventure, but good in its own way. 

The yellow vehicle is a lot larger than it looks! It took up both lanes of the narrow dirt road.

The Spellbound cave entrance.

These are goat bones that are now safely famous in the cave.

Amanda's attempt at getting a picture in the cave.

The picture taken on the tour guide's phone.

Tour guide taken photo that also shows the glowworms.

Something to note about NZ is that the people here all function at a slower more relaxed pace. Between caverns here and after the cave at Down to Earth, there was a built in tea and biscuits (cookies) break. It was interesting to have these reflective moments. During the one here, we had the option to feed eels with maybe spam. It was a meat thing, I think, that we put on a stick. Amanda tried to also feed this eel, but it turned away from her so she fed a different one.

Here you can see the silk strings from the glowworms.

November 30

We did a lot of driving to go from Rotorua to Hahei. To break it up and give our legs room to stretch, we stopped a few places along the way which took up our whole day. After the caving and hiking the previous two days, a day of sitting in a car a lot was a welcome break.

 We checked out Haka Falls. It was sprinkling while we were there so we didn't have many crowds in the way. This is one of the fastest (flat) waterfalls in the world that people raft down. Amanda pictured herself being buried under the white waves and was glad for the bridge viewing instead. Due to the bad weather, no one was rafting down it. 

Next up was Otumuheke Stream (Spa Park Hot Pools) where people can wade into the water that is supposed to be warm. It was mildly cold when we were there. Our favorite friends at this place were the family of ducks.

We were going to do some kayaking, but because of the rain, it was canceled so instead we went to the 3D Trick Art Gallery.

Achoo!!

Help!

How?

Got us a ride!

Got a rope?

Nope, but I found a..... shark!

I claim the kiwi!

Never mind! Get me out of here!

Hey, there cool fishy fish.

This may or may not look similar to our Christmas card this year.

Brr! Who turned out the lights?

The mouth is strong with this one.

Wanna go walking?

Can't. I'm having my portrait done.

 

 

Then we saw the Te Waihou Walkway and the Blue Spring.

You can kind of see blue in the back.

It looked mostly green. There was a sign asking people to not swim in it and pollute it. 

 We made it to our stop at the Hahei Holiday Resort near the South Pacific Ocean.

 

Due to Chris not telling me where I (Amanda) was or where we were going until we got there, you can learn about the beach at the same time as me for all eternity. 

We then went on a rather fun adventure after locating dinner (had to drive out of Hahai to find anything open). Our destination was the NZ Hot Water Beach. As far as I understand it, there is a volcanic rock plate under the sandy beach that warms up the sand and water. At low tide, you can find that rock. People come here to dig out water pools to soak in them like a sauna. It was rather fun after we borrowed a shovel to dig a small pool, but we had trouble keeping a consistent temperature as it was either ocean cold or boiling hot depending on what water was flowing in faster! 

Here is our pool that we dug. It was between two other pools so not very large.

Here is the pool that was behind Chris in the previous picture that was larger. We borrowed it for a bit after the previous occupants left. It had better warm water than ours.

Here are seashells that Amada thought were cool that she would have brought home if it wasn't illegal.

December 1

We're going to take a short intermission to talk about this cute stand.

An avocado stand! There were a bunch of these around the roads, but this is the only one we took a picture of. You can also find stands for eggs, or flowers, or everyone's favorite--horse poo! Not kidding. There were at least two places that said you can purchase their horse poo and one of those places had bags available sitting out in case you really needed that stuff.

Here is another intermission to look at some cool NZ money.

These are not all the coins, but the large gold ones are 2 dollar coins.

Okay, back into it. 

We were lucky enough to get on the Glass Bottom Boat tour at Cathedral Cove, Whitianga having booked fairly close to the starting time. The fun thing about these boats is that the floor rises up toward the ceiling to reveal a glass surface which you can look out of to see the fish below. Our tour guides kindly dropped fish food in certain locations so that the trained schools of fish would allow us to see them. Since we went through a protected water zone, fishing there was not allowed. 

We saw the Cathedral Cove from a distance which will be mentioned later when we walked there on foot.

 

After that, we went to Driving Creek Railway. We thought it would be a more established location, but it ended up being a person's lifelong backyard project of spare railroad parts along with a pottery studio. The track was created from switchbacks up the clay filled soil which the man bought for cheap since it didn't make good farm land. He worked on it from age 4-80 only taking a break for college to become a teacher and then giving up after a year to return to the pottery studio life. 

 

This particular switchback made a few people nervous. It hangs over a cliff.

One person said the bathroom was amazing, but I think Epic has me spoiled on fancy bathrooms. 

The wall was made from glass bottles, but the toilet was a hole into the ground.

After that was Wainuiototo New Chum Beach. This was a fun one. It is located off the back side of a rock covered beach, and you have to hike a while to get there. However, once you do, it's fairly secluded and peaceful. There were only two other people there when we arrived and they walked far away from us, so we had a beach to ourselves. Amanda was proud of her photography here. 

It was rather windy, because you know, it stopped raining so it had to be either windy or hot next.

 December 2

Back to the cove! We took the Hubei Beach walk over to Cathedral Cove. I heard that one person ran the whole trail in 7 minutes. We were not that fast. The pathway takes you through the Te Wao Whakamaumaharatanga WWI memorial forest. 

So, Cathedral Cove is famous because this is one location where The Chronicles of Narnia was filmed. 

And we were there!

A panorama view of the tunnel from one side to the other.

We were not done with water, so our next event was the Whenuakura kayaking in the ocean! Chris got footage of the event on the GoPro so look for that in his upcoming movie. All Amanda got was memories and this picture of the ocean. 

We had the option to be on the water for two hours. It was a half hour row out to that island there called Donut Island. We made it that far on mostly calm water, and then the ocean started to swell a little. Since Amanda's arms were slightly sore, we turned back toward the beach only to have the tide shove us forward onto the sand. We did not tip over, but it was surprising when it pushed us. If was had stayed on the ocean for the rest of our time, we could have paddled up around the other island as well, but then we'd be paddling against the waves coming back.

The island is named Donut Island because there is a large hole/cave in the middle that we rowed into. People used to be able to get out of the kayak and walk around there, but not any longer.

After that was Owaharoa Falls as we were driving back to Auckland to be ready for our flight the next day to the South Island. 

This place was located off the edge of the road, so we parked on the side of the road and walked down.

If you look closely, there is gap between the close edge and the back left log. This is where Chris slipped and scratched up his arm on the way back after walking to the falls.

He walked here, and made it about halfway up to wave to Amanda before turning back.

 

We then went to Karangahaka Trail where there used to be an old mining facility for gold. You can still see some of the old crumbled building and walk through the train tunnel. That's one loooong train tunnel. I think it runs a full kilometer and is another thing that is longer than it looks. It echoes rather well. When we were a little over halfway through a person at the start started singing. 

The bridge to get over to the trail.

The bridge to get over to the tunnel.

Entrance to the old railroad tunnel. Bikes are not allowed inside unless the person walks it or the bike has a forward light.

Behold, the inside. It had leaking water running along both sides.

One of the old mining buildings.

Amanda the four-legged miner.

 

 

After that we drove the rest of the way to Auckland where we had first started, but never saw. 

It was a large culture shock!!! After a full week of hills, waterfalls, and animals, seeing a large city again was like.... Oh my goodness! 

We passed a Prada party where everyone was dressed in black and door security blocked people from entering. On the same street we had dudes preaching about Jesus and abstaining from strong drink on a loud microphone. On the same street still, we had a peaceful protest about the lock down in China, and people experiencing homelessness.

There were also people everywhere and scooters that you could rent sitting around the sidewalks.

 This whole place reminded me of San Fransisco.

But at least they had some holiday dragons in Santa's toy shop, some loud music, and a tunnel that is literally two minutes long. (I didn't put the full 2 minutes in the video clip here. You're welcome.)

Saturday, December 3

We took a domestic flight from Auckland into Queenstown. It was strange that no one wanted to see a photo ID the entire boarding process, not even going through security. All they wanted was the boarding pass. 

The North Island where we were.

The South Island where we were going.

Land beneath an airplane wing.

After getting our new rental car, which was a lot smaller than our first one, we saw some paragliders.

We then went on the Queenstown Luge Track at Skyline which wasn't as good as the one in Rotorua. It did have two steep drop hills that made Amanda shriek, but was missing the cool scenery, and the tracks felt a lot shorter even if it was on a higher mountain. 

After that, we had an appointment that left Amanda feeling nervous. We arrived at the Shotover Jet. Watching the group before us flip 360 degrees on a boat was a bit scary. Amanda was wondering what in the world had Chris gotten her into, but it wasn't as bad as it looked. The seats had more padding than roller coaster seats. Chris got the fancy footage on his GoPro. 

Here is an engine that drives the Shotover Boat. For anyone interested, the boats are designed to work over rocky rivers and can move on only 4 inches of water. They have flat bottoms and very large engines. There are prototypes to go electric instead of gas powered, but so far those only last for one trip in the boat, so are not widely used yet. 

 

We had not gone on a hike in a while, so we walked the Mount Crichton Loop trail waiting for our time slot to check into the new hotel (Crowne Plaza Hotel).  It had a 2-4 hour return estimate. We walked it in 2 h and 15 min. locating Sam Summers's old hut where he used to live and pan for gold in the river. 

Beware: The trees get hungry.

 

 

After checking into the hotel and finding another burger to eat in Queenstown, we wandered around the streets near Lake Wakatipu.

 I know! We only used one of these. What a shame.

Sunday, December 4

Woo Hoo! You have officially made it through the first week! Told you that it was a lot. Let me take a break before I get back into all of this recording business. 

What a nice break! 

We sat in a bus for most of the day driving to and from Milford Sound. Chris was glad that he didn't have to do the entire drive as it was a lot. Amanda was hoping that she understood the bus driver better because he talked in a low voice and mumbled a lot. More than half the bus was asleep as we got going, and any cool tour information was lost. We did pick up that NZ has deer fields like sheep and cow fields, and that lupin flowers are plentiful. Other than that... nothing. 

We saw a rainbow on the drive over.

We also stopped at Mirror Lakes. On a calm day you can see good reflections. The slight wind kept making ripples on the water so that reflections were not the best, but we did get a few.

We stopped at the side of the road again to check out the tallest mountain in the fiord land called Mt. Tutoko. The nearby sign informed that the mountain represents a connection between the physical world and the spiritual one, and that chief's who were over the mountain wore special cloaks called topuni that gave them special authority.

We arrived at Milford Sound and got a sandwich sack lunch that we enjoyed as our boat started to head out around the "sound". We circled around the water in a loop touching the edge of the larger ocean and then coming back into the "sound." A "sound," when it applies to water, is a body of water that is not fully open to the ocean. 

 The boat we got to ride in was called Pure Milford and it was larger than we expected it to be.

Here is inside the "sound."

We got close to the cliffs at this part to see the waterfall. Chris got his glasses wet. :)

It was rather windy outside, but we still enjoyed being on the front end of the boat most of the time instead of inside. We also managed to see some seals and a penguin. They are hard to spot even in the videos.

On the way back, we had our first run in with a Kea parrot while we waited for the light to change so we could go back through the long one-way tunnel. They can be pretty inquisitive thieves and destroyers. This one was tearing off chunks of rubber surrounding the car windows. It got a few sizable pieces off too.

Then we sat on the bus for the long drive back. We were there from 6:30 a.m.- 8 p.m.

 

December  5

 We drove into Wanaka and Amanda learned what via ferrata is. It is rock climbing with carabiners, harnesses, and helmets. Our tour was the Wild Wire in Wanaka which contains the "highest waterfall cable climb in the world."  On this, we got to go on the practice boulder, bridge one and five, picnic falls, and the wire bridge. This was another case where Amanda wondered what we had gotten into upon first arriving, but then she decided it was super exciting and fun. 

This is the mountain we went up. Seeing it made Amanda wonder if she'd make it when from a distance. Up close, with the metal climbing brackets to stand on and the clips, it wasn't hard at all.

In the picture you can see the group ahead of us. (Level 3 group, which meant they were going farther than us). They were rather slow climbers and we kept catching up to them. Two of them decided to not continue the climb and to exit with our group. They had another 2-3 hours to go to reach the top and then get a helicopter ride down. That route was more expensive and a total of 7-8 hours long. Our estimated track was 5 hours but was closer to 4.

 Chris got some better views on his GoPro. Amanda didn't pull out her camera on her phone too much because she didn't want to lose it.

The view heading back down. We didn't climb down, but walked down a switchback dirt path. In some places the grass was overgrown on the route. One group the day before reported getting lost on that part.

Up next, we were going to go on a kayaking adventure, but it was canceled due to strong waves on the water. 

So instead we bumbed around the hotel longer and talked with the kids over Facetime on the phone. 

After that, we had extra time due to the canceled kayaking so we went up Rocky Mountain trail. It was very windy! 

Some views from the trail.

Okay, so the cows nearby were super loud! They were having a cow-off battle right here. There is a fence in the middle of this picture. The cows on the right are chattering to the cow on the left.

Had to take a few pictures of horses for the kids.

 

 

After dinner, we went to check out the TikTok famous #thatwanakatree

Here is Amanda's picture before she knew what she was supposed to be impressed by.

And here is That Wanaka Tree.

Wanaka:

December 6

We took 7 hours to go from Wanaka to Franz Joseph with a few stops along the way. 

Here we are visiting the Blue Water Pools which did have blue water! Below is a swing bridge. Don't have more than ten people on it. Okay, guys? 

  So Amanda feels bad about this picture. She didn't know what these things were (at the time) and they were flying all over the place. This is a black sandfly and they bite! Chris got three bites on his hand at this location and they still itch him a week later. That really says something as mosquito bites don't bother him much, generally. Hopefully the taking of the picture wasn't what got him those bites, but they stay away if a person is moving.

 

At the bottom of the map you can see Wanaka where we came from and the blue pools at the middle top. Above that you get the Fantail Falls and then Thunder Creek falls which are pictured below.

The most interesting part of the Fantail Falls was the rock covered beach.

Oh, and the falls, of course. Here is Fantail Falls.

This one is Thunder Creek Falls. It was kind of loud, but not overly so.

We had to walk a 25 min trail to reach Roaring Billy Falls. 

Here it is. Roaring Billy Falls. 

The most fascinating part was the river below it. 

 

Steps leading out of Roaring Billy.

Scenery as we kept driving.

 

 

 

Cows and driving onto a one-lane bridge. You can ignore the bird droppings on the window. :) 

Also note that the trees here are all bowed over one direction due to the coastal wind. They were strange looking when both sides of the road showed tilted trees in the first clip with the cows.

 

We made a stop at Ships Creek because Amanda needed to use the bathroom, and we were rather happy to do so, because we got to see something amazing!

This is a tower that leads to this view below.

Seen after climbing two flights of stairs like this:

But if you walk to water you get a view like this....

Did you see it??

 We didn't walk too far down the swamp trail here, but it was right beside the beach.

We made it into Franz Josef and took the Minnehaha Walk which had some rather funny looking trees.

Hello there!

Enjoy the bird song of a Tui bird!

 Checked into the Rainforest Hotel in Franz Josef. Our door was a sliding glass one and this room came with a heater instead of a fan. It was hot and muggy inside the room. It wasn't until the next day that we discovered the other part of the door opened into a window to air it out. 

 

After getting things out of the car, we went on a walk down to the Tatare Tunnels. It was a longer walk than Chris expected at about an hour along this rocky stuff.

Once we made it, we found water along the inside of the tunnel. That discouraged Amanda from going too far because she wanted dry shoes for the "lots of walking" she was told would happen the next day.

Apparently, if we went farther down, we would have seen some glowworms. We'd already seen some, so we felt fine that we turned around before soaking our shoes too much.

On the way back, we saw some birds. They ended up being kea parrots.

They were the reason that the fantail birds were freaking out in the video below. You can hear the fantail's twittering, and then the kea parrots sounding like weird cats and parrots. As we walked a bit farther away, the parrots decided that we looked pretty interesting too. They started to swoop around us. Scared that they wanted to take off with our phones or cameras like you can see happen in Youtube videos, we put those away. Two of them followed us into the town and were circling us still for a while.

The town of Franz Josef has Two main streets. This is one of them, and the parrots followed us down to around here.

December 7

We started off the next morning with Franz Josef Glacier Guides. All Amanda knew was that she needed to dress warm so she was guessing the activity involved snow. Not exactly. We went up to a glacier of ice. After running back to the hotel to fetch sunglasses that were required, we got dressed in our gear to make it up. 

These spikes attached to the bottom of the boots that were provided.

Here are the harnesses.

Here is a model of the attire.

 

To get there, we had to take a helicopter up. That's the safest way to reach the glacier these days as it's receding. If they want to toss in a helicopter ride, well, sure!

 

We got to sit in the very front with Amanda sitting right beside the driver. There were about four other people behind us.

It was pretty amazing!

 

 

Here's our whole crew that came up in 2 helicopters.

A blue ice tunnel.

A lot of the "hike" was spent waiting for the guide to carve out more ice steps that were already carved. Meet Drew. He's American and here for the job. Chris read that they have a shortage of workers around this part. They all come and leave quickly, hopping to the next thing. If they are like the guide on our via ferrata trail, they go back to the states when it's summer so that they get summer all year round jumping back and forth. (At the time of the trip, it was summer in NZ and winter in the U.S.A)

These tunnels form from water dripping into cracks in the ice and then hallowing the area out.

The chunks of ice were taller than Amanda expected.

After doing via ferrata before on a mountain, this was rather simple. It used the same clipping on technique of clipping one carabiner up and the other one down so you don't accidentally grab them and disconnect from the rope. However, this trek didn't include the third "shorty" clip that was attached to your step before changing the other two longer clips onto the next rope.

In the middle is a drill used to cut through the ice to put in the white poles that the ropes were attached to.

 Some additional information: 

 Franz Josef Glacier was originally named after a native woman who cried there when her husband slipped behind her on one of their treks and died. Her tears created the river, so they say. That name is Ka Roimata o Hine Hukatere which stands for tears of Hine Hukatere. If you look at pictures from 2013 and then today (2022) the glacier has already noticeably receded due to global warming. It is melting more than the air currents have time to compact more snow and ice into it. The glacier used to be all the way down to the coast line back in the day.

What did we do after that? Go see kiwi birds, of course, at the West Coast Wild Life Center. They are endangered so no one can take pictures of them. We saw two Rowi kiwi's. One spent the whole time walking beneath a stick to scratch its back. The other was digging in the ground for worms. They have such long noses! They are also larger than expected, about the size of a watermellon. As a nocturnal animal, their largest predators are stouts and ferrets that eat their eggs before they hatch. Kiwi's are endangered. In 2021 there were only 600 recorded. 

Answer: It's the white one on the left.

A stuffed animal of a kea parrot.

After that was the Roberts Point Track. Okay, so something to note about this particular hike. Amanda was whining. It was a hard one with a lot of uphill on rocks. After a full week of hikes nearly every day, her legs were tired. An hour into the hike, she was wondering how long they were goign to go because this is a 5 hour hike and takes you up to a vantage point to see the glacier she had already walked on. It got a little easier to hang in there once Chris told her there was an actual goal. He wanted to see the longest swing bridge and some stairs hanging on the side of a cliff. On the way down, after seeing the cool things, Chris slipped and ended up scratching up his leg and arm several inches.

About 18,935 steps that day (with an average of 15,410), there were tired legs all around.

 

Not the longest swing bridge.

Not it either.

It's this one!

You get half way across and start thinking.... "I'm still going!" It's longer than it looks.

Here are the wooden stairs held up onto the cliff by metal bars.

After reaching this point, it was declared that we could turn around. It took about 1.5 hours to get here, so a 3-hour round trip. 

December 8

Our last full day in New Zealand! You made it down this far! The day was spent mostly driving to Christchurch where we would need to board a plane on the 9th, travel 30 hours or more and arrive back on the 9th in the states due to the time zone and day difference. (It took Amanda about 5 days before she was sleeping through the night again not being awake from midnight to 2 a.m. due to jet lag.)

Anyway... On the drive to Christchurch we saw... the Pancake Rocks. (And then ate pancakes for lunch.)

Amanda really enjoyed this spot, particularly the actual walk around the rocks, which looked like walking through an open castle walkway. Combine that with salt water air, and it was fabulous! A good way to tickle the love of castles fancy.

Our next stop on the drive was Punekaiki Caverns where we managed to locate three glowworms after rummaging around in the crevices for a while.

The glowworms were down there.

 

After that was the Paparoa Track walk.

This is a palm tree.

We saw some kayakers get stuck in the shallow water on the rocks while we walked. They managed to get away again, and Chris expressed that if we had more time, he'd have liked to kayak down the green river, too, as two of our kayak adventures were cancelled. The ocean one was planned last minute, so he was glad we got to do that one at least.

We reached Christchurch and checked into the Carnmore Hotel. Then we walked around the city and Amanda decided it was rather pretty, albeit strange. There is grafitti on the walls and sometimes it is hard to tell if the pictures were commissioned on purpose or not. Some of the below pictures were taken on the 9th before we had to go to the airport, but it's all the same city, so they are lumped together here.

What is a baby seagull called? A chick. These were located in this watery, weird, car art area.

This is the car art. Water dripped off it, and in Amanda's opinion, it should have at least looked like a cool car if it was going to take up a full building plot in the city and sprew water and become a seagull nesting ground.

Here you can see how the street tram, road, and sidewalk merge together.

One of the prettier painted walls that was done on purpose. Here you can see the tomtit and falcon birds of New Zealand.

This is Bellamy's and the Timber Chamber being restored. This city suffered from an earthquake in 2011 and things are still being slowly restored from that time period. Inside is medieval architecture copying Westminister designed in 1864.

This bridge was made in 1855 and is called the Victoria Bridge. It was first 16 feet and then widened in 1875 to be 66 feet across.

These arches represent the path taken by the Ngai Tahu tribe when they came to trade from the nearby Otakaro Avon River.

A dude walking through the water after he fell out of the double canoe at some point. Onlookers were racing after the party to gawk at him. It was pretty funny.

A rotunda in honor of T. J. Edmonds who lived in Christchurch for 50 years (or more).

No idea what guy decided to do this.

This is the Bridge of Remembrance that has some other countries listed down the sides.

Invercargill Tramways running down the street.

This is a funny place that used to be a laundry mat. It is now called the "Dance O Mat" and people can hook in their phone or other device for a fee and play music here to dance. It's located right next to a busy road so that would make things interesting. Chris and I saw a few kids walk into it, but we didn't linger to watch them dance.

December 9

We flew and flew and flew some more! 

 

One mishap was that Amanda's buttons on her shirt went off so she had to get patted down. She changed out of her shirt for a sweater shirt to avoid having another round of beaping when going through the heavier customs security later. We discovered that if traveling, to use the Mobile Passport Control which lets you get through customs and immigration a whole lot faster! (This is an excellent traviling pro tip!!) We skipped a very long line once, which was good, because we made it to our connecting flight on time. 

Another mishap we had was that United Airlines, who booked our flight, booked us to a flight that didn't exist. Our flights from Auckland to Chicago to Madison airports were fine, but our first one from Christchurch to Auckland didn't even run until the next day, and the time for which it ran wasn't the same as on our intinerary. So the night before, Chris decided to book us a flight that would connect to our other three, which means that we had to pay extra for that (or rather Epic will since they cover plane tickets as part of the sabbatical.) We couldn't take it up with United because they didn't exist in the Christchurch airport.

Farewell, New Zealand!

Byee Byee!!