Queenstown

Queenstown is an amazing place. It is right on the lake and has some spectacular views of the surrounding mountains. The town felt like Apsen or Vail, a lot of bars, restaurants and expensive shops for clothes and activites but not much beyond that. I spent one night in town at a hostel before getting picked up by my next hosts. I was really tired from the nigth before so I did not stay out as late in Queenstown and instead settled for a good night sleep. The next morning I met one of the hosts and the other two wwoofers I would be staying with. They had run into town for some groceries and picked me up on the way to the property. The house was located 7 minutes from Queenstown, right on Lake Wakatipu.

Tracks in the hillside

Rocky country side

River through the country side

Outside my hostel in Queenstown

Growing wood pile

Elaborate rope set up

Rope to tree connection

View from the top of the mountain

View from across the road down the driveway

Rock in the water

Secluded beach

Viewing platform

Bellbird

Beach in front of house

Tui

45N to 45S

I accomplished something that I realized I could do after booking my trip, if I made it to Dunedin I would have travelled from 45 degrees north to 45 degress south in less than two months. After arriving in Dunedin I basked in this realization until the street light in front of me turned green and I had to contiune on. The car had to be dropped off at the airport, which was 45 minutes away from the city, and there was no public transportation to or from the airport. After walking around the city for a bit, I figured out my hostel situation and went to drop off the car.

Dunedin train station

Train station towerInside the station

NZR tile detail

Oamaru

After my visit to Christchurch I hopped on state highway 2 and drive down the west coast towards Dunedin, my end destination. Traveling by rental car gave me the opportunity to stop where I wanted and do what I wanted to do, and after some quick research I decided to stop in Oamaru for the night. The hostel I found was called Chillawhile Backpackers and had a great set up. It was on the edge of town right off of the highway, which is really a two lane road, and looked to be an old historic house. The hostel offered cheap accommodations as well as musical instruments and free art supplies. I arrived on the third Thursday of November, which means very little to everyone outside of the states, but I got lucky and Thursday happened to be the night the hostel had group dinners, so even though I was not celebrating Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday, I still got to share my meal with friends. After dinner we played games in the living room. The hostel did not have a tv, which forced theeveryone there to engaged with one another. We played giant jenga and cards, both of which were not the main focus, the best part was we all were in the same room and talked to each other. I met some very interesting people the first night I was there which convinced me to stay another night. The following day I met up with some people I had befriended the night before, and since I had a vehicle we all decided to go for a journey around the local area. One person had a fishing pole and knew of a great place to fish so we started there. We went to a rocky beach where a river ran in to the ocean. In order to get there we had to go through some farms, including a cow farm.

Cow crossing

Rock hunting and fishing

Fishing

After our day in the sun we headed back to the hostel, with out a fish, and made dinner together. We had a similar set up to the night before but it was just a few of us instead of the whole hostel. I made a spanish tortilla, or potato pancake, with another american girl and the other people we were with made classic asian dishes. It was a great meal. I took off the next morning for Dunedin and stopped in a few spots, including the Moeraki Boulders. These boulders are all over the beach and look like giant eggs. The boulders are basically cement boulders that have been rounded by wave action and are harder than the surrounding mud and sand which they are found in. To say the least they are very interesting.

Moeraki Boulders

Moeraki Boulders

Moeraki Boulder

The drive to Dunedin was easy and I arrived around midmorning. The car wasn’t due back until the next day but I wanted to get rid of it when I got to Dunedin in order to not worry about parking or dropping it off the following morning.

Christchurch

My trip from Australia back to New Zealand started in Sydney and ended in Christchurch. I arrived in the middle of the night and did not get to my hostel until early in the morning. Check out time was 10 am and I had to get to the airport for a 12 pm pick up, so I had a limited amount of time there. The earth quake that hit in February did a lot of damage and even 10 months later the effects were easy to see. Christchurch is in a big transition. There were churches that were down and churches that were up. There were standing buildings and collapsed buildings. There were abandoned and derelict buildings and recently cleared lots waiting to be used. There were buildings being built and buildings being torn down. The city was morphing into a new place and it was happening at a very visible and measurable pace. The city that was once there is now gone and in it’s place is a city that is trying to survive by any means necessary. The central mall street was filled with containers that had been retrofitted for businesses to use as stores and the new central bus terminal was very well designed. From what I saw the people took what they were give and turned it into an opportunity to improve on what they had. After exploring as much as I could I hopped on a bus to the airport and then met the Jucy van from the airport to the rental office. There I was handed the keys to my relocation vehicle with little interference and started my drive down the east coast of the south island. But first I had to stop at the International Antarctic Centre.

Australia

For starters, there are two very important pieces of information that I did not know before going to Australia that is very relevant once you are in the country. First, the size of Australia is as big as the continental United States, this only occurred to me as I was driving around in the camper van. The second is that the standard of living in Australia is considered one if not the highest in the world. This was apparent after seeing the infrastructure and public buildings as well as how their society functioned, the minimum wage is over AUD15 an hour.
I spent a fortnight in the country and went to a wide range of places. Sydney was a very cool city, and had a lot to offer in terms of things to do, for free and for a fee. I spent the most time in and around Sydney, Becca’s friend lived in Coogee Beach, and became one of my top 5 favorite cities. While in the city we walked the boardwalk from Coogee to Bondi (2km), visited the Aquarium, Chinese Gardens, Darling Harbor, The Rocks, Sydney Opera House, went to Manly, and walked around downtown.
After our stay in Sydney, Becca and I picked up our camper van and struck out on what we would find out to be an over ambitious road trip. Our plan was to make our way north up the coast to Byron Bay which is a very popular destination and about 8 hours away from Sydney. What ended up happening is we never got more than 3 hours away from Sydney and still drove about 1000 km.
Our trip included a night in the Blue Mountains, a night in Hunter Valley, two nights in Port Stephens, and a night in Sydney. We basically did a backwards D.

To Australia.

I spent a little over a week in Picton with my host family, and at the end of my stay I was ready to travel to Australia to met up with Becca. I actually was very lucky to stay with the family I did because they were well connected in the small town and through them I met an American family that had recently moved back into the area and lived close to the small airport that I flew out of to get back to Wellington. As it turned out the American family invited me to join them for coffee the night before I was scheduled to leave to talk and give me some advice on the south island, this meeting quickly turned into tea (dinner) and the next thing I knew I was spending the night and had a ride to the airport. This was all worked out a few days before I was scheduled to leave the cabin and really helped me because I was set to get a room in town for the night and take the bus to the airport.
The next morning after leaving the cabin and spending the night with the fellow Americans I jumped on a Cessna 208 Caravan. It is a relatively small plane and it was full, but since I was the second one onboard I got to sit right behind the pilot with my own window. I really enjoy flying in these smaller planes because you get a better sense of what is going on around you, plus the bumps are more fun.
Wellington airport was a lot smaller than I had anticipated, but like most places in New Zealand was well designed and very tidy. I was fortunate to find free wifi in the airport and was able to kill some time before my flight. The trip to Sydney was only 3 hours, I fly on Air New Zealand which is a really nice airline. I arrived in Sydney at 6 pm and made my way to Becca’s friends apartment.

The south island

After my stay at a bed and breakfast on the north island I headed to a bed and breakfast on the south island. I took the three hour ferry from Wellington to Picton, and arrived before nightfall. My next host picked me up at the dock and we drove 5 minutes to their property. The house was situated on a hill with a pine forest behind it. The pine tree was imported to New Zealand from North America and is used for building materials. The trees grow twice as fast in New Zealand because of the climate and were an ideal choice for the early colonizers. I stayed in a frontier style cabin located about 5 minutes walk behind the house. It had no running water or electricity, so I used a camping stove for cooking, oil lamps for heat, and candles for light. The outhouse was a short distance away.

The cabin

Outhouse

Most of the work I did dealt with the weedwhipper and the chain saw. The weedwhipper can have different heads attached to it, like a triangle saw and a circular saw, both of which I used to cut down the gorse and broom that is everywhere in New Zealand. Both were bought in to create hedges and natural fences for animals because gorse is prickly and broom is very thick. Anytime an area of land is clearcut the first species to pop up are grass and gorse and broom. Like all other introduced species they have become a huge problem because nothing can keep it in check, humans or grazing animals, and the native animals don’t use it.
The other main task I had was helping to cut up the 50 year old pine tree that was cut down while I was there. The pine tree was sitting on an eroding cliff and would have fallen in a big storm, so instead of dealing with it after it had fallen by itself, Nine, one of my hosts, decided to have it cut down where he wanted it to fall. The tree was massive and I spent about 2 days just clearing away small branches and cutting up useable pieces of wood.
I made my own breakfast in the cabin, leaving lunch and dinner, both of which I ate with the family. The family consisted of a husband and wife, with two daughters. One was 15 and the other 19, and it was great fun to hangout with the whole family. There was no tv and limited Internet. This left a lot of time to talk, so after dinner we usually sat around the table for an hour or two drinking coffee or tea and eating dessert.

Wellington

While I was staying in the Wellington area I took the liberty to explore the city on two occasions. The first time I went in was on a Friday night to see what it was like downtown on the Friday before Halloween. Apparently nothing special but it was still a good time. Courtney Place is the main bar street and was filled with folks. I went to a bar and a restaurant and met a few people, two of whom had recently got an apartment together downtown and were enjoying the city. I had fun but had to leave early to catch take the last train back to Pauatahanui.

Wellington train station

The next time I went to Wellington I had the whole day to walk around and spent about five hours in Tepapa, the national museum of New Zealand. The water front district was also very cool and the whole city has a great feel about it. Wellington is a city I could go back to, especially since the premier of the Hobbit movie is set to take place downtown next spring.

Te Papa museum

Bed and breakfast

My bus ride from Napier to Porirua was a short ride filled with rain and wind mills. The rain was typical weather for the southern part of the north island and the wind mills were a recent addition to the landscape, but a much needed one because the wind blows almost all day everyday in the Wellington area. I met my next host at the bus stop and got a ride to the property, which was about 20 minutes away. The house was located adjacent to the nursery that the family owned and the two entities shared most of the property. I stayed in a very nice bed and breakfast they run out of their guest house.

Guest house

Free wifi

The Internet is a very useful tool, especially when you have access to it. As a traveler, the ability to get on the Internet is limited to a two options: pay for it or find a free spot to use it, which is rare unless you have your own device. In this technology driven age the consumer has found a sweet spot in the throws of the business world, free wifi. Businesses use it as a tool to attract patrons with a “buy something get free wifi, and in small print for 1 hour or 50 mb”, which is quite nice with a morning coffee. But there are still better offers for the smartphone or computer wielding tech savvy person, FREE WIFI, with no fine print.
Almost every town or city I have been to has this kind of free wifi, either at the library or throughout the city, for example in Wellington it is free for 30 minutes, and Mcafes have it free for an hour. Better yet are the rare gems that seem to appear where you’d least expect them, like a rural town in the county or in a museum. The ability to find these places can turn a boring wait for the bus into a way to connect to the world.
So far I have found that most libraries have free wifi as well as some airports and museums. A lot of cafes have it as a bonus for buying something from them which is great when you have time to sit down, but when I just want to check my email or find out when the next train is the free wifi is much more handy.