Well, it has been a few weeks since my spring break and I have found it hard to concentrate on my studies once again. My plan to head to the mountains and train for a week did not fall through, so instead W.W.A Porangi and Aotura went on a road trip with me to Lake Tekapo, Mt. Cook, and the Catlins. But before we hit the road, W.W.A. Porangi and I explored a lot of the surroundings of Dunedin. Here is a bried overview:
1. we walked out to the coast on the Otago Peninsula. After about an hour of walking, we finally saw the ocean but were no where near it. So we decided to just walk straight until we hit it. This led to an interesting adventure through a golf course, bushes, and finally to edge of cliffs. All in all, it was quite fun.
2. Later that day we hung out with our our friend Lydia and played loads of S***head. It is a card game which we are absolutely obsessed with (the rules can be found here). After a good 2hrs of play, we decided to go see the glowworms. These are literally tiny little worms that glow at night. So we hopped into a car and drove out to the trail head. For obvious reasons, we could not get a picture of these creatures. But it was pretty amazing. I had my head lamp on, and once we hit the end of the trail which was at a river, we stopped and I shut off my lamp only to look up and see millions of little "stars" along the walls of the river. It was beautiful!
3. The next day, Porangi and I decided to head back to where the glowworms were and check out Nichol's Falls. If was a hidden gem surrounded by greenery, with a trek similar to walking in the amazon. It was quite fun and well worth the trip. =)
4. After that, we decided to plan out our road trip.
Firstly, I got to drive in NZ!!! It was so fun! And I can't tell you how much I missed driving! It was an automatic and it was not exactly the most powerful car... In fact, we named her "Princess Cherry" because she was bright red, and took her sweet time. ;p
The first destination was Lake Tekapo. It was simply gorgeous and breathtaking. W.W.A. Porangi, crazy as she is had decided that she simply had to put her feet in the water, despite the water being below freezing! But what a hoot she can be! After that, we explored the country side along the lake and found a camp ground. Porangi and I sang our hearts out because we could not hold in our joy any longer, while Aotura ran about like a crazy person.
We then spent the night under the stars and saw the Milky Way! The next morning I woke up frosted over, the sun slowly rising over the mountains and a black swan in the lake. Porangi enjoyed chasing a couple of ducks that constantly hovered around us for food.
We then hit the road for Mt. Cook. Once there, we headed for the Tasman glacier located behind Mt. Cook. Once again, W.W.A. Porangi dipped her toes in the water, and this time I joined in. We also drank from it. It was so refreshing and cold! But delicious non the less. We crossed paths with some French people there too, and I think they may have thought me crazy because it was extremely windy and not all that warm, but after having run around and laid in the sun, I was rather warm, so I was walking about in a tank top, whilst everyone else were bundled up... After that we went to the Hermitage, a restaurant, hotel, and resort with a museum about Sir Edmund Hillary and his Mt. Everest feat.
From there, we decided to make our way towards Awakino Resort to hit the slopes! Unfortunately, once we got there, we found out that they were closed. Why? Well, quite simply they had no snow. So that made it a little hard to ski. Instead kept heading East and spent the night in Waimate. Home of some Wallabies. These are basically mini kangaroos. They are in no way native to NZ, but we thought we would check them out anyway, since we weren't able to ski.
Again, this did not happen. See, when you are camping you have this tendency to go to bed early and wake up early. We were up at about 7:30am, and the place did not open til 9am, so we hit the road. We went to find some penguins instead along the East coast. Unfortunately, they are only around in the afternoon, but we did find sea lions lazing about in the sun. We also went to see the Moeraki Boulders again, as not all of us had seen them yet.
Finally, although our trip was meant to last 4 days but only took 3, we returned to Dunedin. We decided that the next day we would explore further south. So the next day we set out to see the Catlins National Park. I don't think I have ever seen land quite so green! We saw lots of sheep and open green fields, as well as many waterfalls. Once back, we ended the trip with some good old fish n' chips along St. Clair's Beach.
On the last day of having our rental, we decided to wake up early to watch the sunrise over the ocean. So we headed back to St. Clair's Beach around 7am, and then went to the Farmer's Marked before returning home.
Although this trip did not go entirely as planned, it was rather amazing! The girls and I have concocted a Bucket List of things to do while here, and from now on each weekend we hope to scratch something off it. A new one I just found is this... It is going to be epic!
Until then, this is W.W.A. Rhondiggity, signing out.
