Sadly, my time in NZ will be done tonight, as we head on an overnight flight back to the States this evening. We leave Queenstown at 4:45 on a Friday, and arrive in Burlington around noon on Saturday- but fly for about 30 hours in between. This time change is so weird!!
Last saturday 15 out of the
20 Vermonters headed back to Vermont- and five of us headed down to the south island for a week long "holiday" or "vacation." It has been an incredible week, full of hiking, biking, horseback riding, bungying, and of course a lot of driving!We started our adventures in Christchurch, then took a train over the Southern Alps to Greymouth. From there we rented a car, headed north for a detour to the "Pancake Rocks," and then drove south to Hokitika for the night. Hokitika was our one rainy day of th
e entire trip (well, other than today), but we hiked anyway- which turned out to be a crazy hike!From Hokitika we went south again, spending the night in Franz Josef before going to explore Fox Glacier and Lake Matheson the next day. Alaina properly described the landscape as looking like Switzerland- beautiful lakes and snow covered mountains. We stopped at the beach a few times as we drove south from there, and then turned inland, driving through the mountains to Wanaka- a small lake side town. In Wanaka we enjoyed some shopping and an absolutely beautiful horseback ride through the mountains near Cardona while Chris, our one boy on this portion of the trip, spent the day mountain biking.
From Wanaka we drove to our last destination, Queenstown. Queenstown is known as the "adventure capital," and is a great outdoorsy (albeit touristy) town with big mountains, a beautiful lake, and really fun people. Here, to celebrate my last day, I took the plunge and went bungey jumping!! Becaus
e of flooding in the area I had to wear a full body harness, not the one that straps around your feet so that they could pull me back up instead of letting me off on a boat at the bottom- but it was still incredible. It is the first bungey place in the world, and I was so impressed with their safety. AJ Hackett- you know your stuff! After the rush of jumping off a bridge, we hiked up one of the big, steep hills that overlooks Queenstown, watched the sun set, and took a Gonodala back down.
All in all it has been an incredible three weeks! I have learned tons about teaching and schools, had many adventures and experienced the wonderful country of New Zealand. Kia Ora NZ!
