As most of you know, Amy came over to New Zealand to see me in mid January and we traveled around for about 10 days. I had a lot of fun planning our trip and putting together an itinerary (yes, I see more and more how alike I am to my dad). It would take a SUPER long time to write about everything but I wanted to write about some of the fun memories we had.
Day one. This is actually not too long after I picked Amy up from the airport. You can tell because this is the most "urban" she looked the whole trip. It's funny how little I care about how I dress since being here. NZ people are just way more laid back about stuff like that. Here she'd feeding Esther's sheep with Esther's mom.
Here's Amy and I on the port hills in Christchurch overlooking the city. It was fun taking her around right away from picking her up from the airport. I don't think she was quite ready for the super windy roads and driving on the other side of the road.
Here we are in front of the Christchurch Cathedral in the main center of town. It's sad because the tower behind us got destroyed in the big earthquake and most of that part of town saw a ton of destruction.
Here's Esther and Amy at the Christchurch Botanical Gardens in one of the greenhouses.
And wouldn't you know! A plant from Nebraska in a NZ botanical garden! It's truly is a small world.
And we're off! We headed out for our adventure after a night at Esther's house. Although my car has a giant Canadian flag on it, I'm still reppin' the Huskers thanks to my dad sending me this decal. GO BIG RED!
Our first stop on our trip was Kiakoura. It's about 2 hours north of Christchurch and one of my favorite spots in the South Island. We just hung out on the beach and read our books and then walked down to see the seal colony and then headed to our campsite.
Here is our first campsite. It was RIGHT on the water. It was a part of a bigger motorcamp park just 10 mins away which was nice because then we could use the stove to cook dinner and take hot showers! We tried to camp as much as possible on the trip which worked out nicely except Amy never seemed to be warm enough so each night we would make adjustments and I think by the end she was at least semi-warm throughout the whole night.
This is Amy in front of a HUGE bolder at Castle Rock Village just outside Arthur's Pass. Although Amy and I aren't what you would call "rock climbers" we did have fun exploring and climbing.
Me in Arthur's Pass
Here is where we stayed the second night. It's in Arthur's Pass which is a part of the souther mountain range in the top of the South Island. We stayed at Hawdon Hut which was part of the Department of Conservation so it was free! Our site is where the little car is in the picture. The road to get here was NOT the easiest for me, a very inexperienced manual driver but praise God, He got us there safe.
Ah, the Crossing. The cute little South Island Capernwray school. Amy and I randomly stopped by (I wasn't even sure I remembered how to get there) and we ended up staying for lunch and chatting with some of the staff I know there.
Our third night was at Lake Tekapo. Amy and I took a long walk around the lake (well not ALL the way around because the lake is huge) and had lots of memorable conversations. It was so cool how close we grew just sharing so much time together. And yes, we camped right by the lake which as so pretty!
This is at the top of Mt Iron overlooking Lake Wanaka. We spent 2 nights camping near here at a place called Glendu Bay. It was nice to not have to take the tent down that morning and stay somewhere a little longer than a day. I accidentally locked the keys in the car at the campsite but a lady helped get it unlocked by using her Mitsubishi car key; mind you, I own a Toyota. Hmm, although it didn't make me feel that my car is super secure it was Wonderful to be able to get into the car again!
Here's Amy with some yummy NZ icecream. It's really good since their number one export is dairy here. All the tents behind her were for "the Wanaka Challenge" which was a big triathalon race that took place right after we left.
Here's a picture of the lake and mountains. It was nice to chill and eat lunch here on the grass. Very relaxing!
Here's James and I on the top of Mt Iron. Amy and I got to spend the day with him and even ate dinner with his family that night. He's a friend from school who's family has a holiday house in Wanaka and it was SO cool to have Amy meet another Capernwray friend of mine.
This at a waterfall near KaKa point
After Wanaka, Amy and I headed SUPER south to KaKa point where I had seen pictures of a lighthouse at a place called Nugget Point. It is now my most favorite place in the South Island because it was SO beautiful!
This is Nugget Point. The ocean is SO blue and looking out at that point is breathtaking.
It was really funny because one side of the lookout was SUPER windy but the other side wasn't so Amy and I had a lot of fun taking pictures of the wind making us look really cool ;)
And of course we got in some more "reading at the beach" time while we were down at KaKa point.
That night we went to a penguin lookout near Nugget point and saw PENGUINS!!! They were really far away but they were so cute! I loved watching them waddle onto the beach from the ocean. Amy swore she saw penguins ALL the time and it was a running joke between us because 9 times out of 10 is was just a bird or something white.
The next day after camping we went to this Market in town. I think EVERYONE from KaKa point was there because the town looked super super small and this place was packed.
And we got $1 sausages at the Market. Very kiwi. Served on a slice of white bread. Kiwi's love their sausages!
We drove around the Catlins area which is the very bottom of the South Island the next day but it was really drizzly so we didn't go too far. They places we did stop were nice and we had no clue where we were going to stop so it was fun to just see a sign and go for it.
One of the random places I stopped was this "doll town" place. The lady was seriously crazy and had a billion dolls but LOVE to talk to I stayed and listened to her for like an hour or something. super random.
This is the best thing ever! I came up with it last semester at school and I'm glad to know that Amy has taken it back with her. It's toast with PB and J and then you flip it onto some granola (or muesli as they call it here) and the granola sticks to the PB&J and voila, you have a delicious and hearty breakfast!
This is like the ONE time we went out for coffee because Amy brought Starbucks VIA with her so we had delicious coffee everyday without spending $4 on flatwhites. oh and yes, Amy is sunburnt in this picture despite the million times I told her NZ sun is WAY stronger
Yum, Kiwi fruit. but alas, after buying it we saw that it was actually imported from the US, go figure.
Our first night not camping in Dunedin. I wasn't super impressed with Dunedin. It was cloudy and too much city-like after going from gorgeous nature down south. But Amy and I had fun looking at shops and watching the Fresh Prince with random people in our hostel.
Next we went to Oamaru where we also stayed in a hostel. It was really nice here and I liked the town alot. We went to the Gardens and had really really good talks together. We also walked around their vintage district where they have really old fashion shops. Then we found this lookout point and ended the night with more Penguin Watching!
These are moeraki bolders we randomly stopped to see on the way back up to Christchurch and they were SO cool! They look like dinosaur eggs.
After this we went to Timaru for food on our way back up to Christchurch. We stayed with the Ward's again and it was really hard to say goodbye to Amy when she left. It was an amazing adventure that taught us about eachother and ourselves and most of all we saw God work in incredible ways! I can honestly say I'll never forget this trip and I'm so blessed to have a sister who is also my best friend :)
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