The South Island Adventure: Christchurch, Kaikoura & Picton

I've been back from the South Island about a week now and figured it's about time to share my adventures with all of y'all. Overall, I had an amazing experience. Saw beauty that is not done justice by my pictures and did things I know I will never have the opportunity to do again. The trip made me fall in love with a whole new side of New Zealand and has thoroughly convinced me to encourage everyone I can to come to this wonderful, beautiful country in order to see the things I have with one's own eyes as well as do things like climb a glacier or watch baby seals play under a waterfall or two.

With the exception of my time in Queenstown and the explanation of the method of travel below, everything has been prewritten in my journal (I had to do something on those long bus rides, afterall).

The Bus and the crew
A few months back, a few friends and I decided we wanted to do something awesome over our semester break. We resolved to book transportation on a backpacker's bus called Stray, specifically the Willy tour. Below is a picture off the map of our itinerary. We started in Christchurch and worked our way counter clockwise to Kaikoura and ending in Queenstown.

The way the bus worked, was that we could hop on or hop off whenever we wanted. The white circles are places that were mandatory to stay overnight. Some locations required us to stay more than one night. In theory, we could stay longer at any of the dots, but we needed to get to Queenstown on Sunday, which only worked if we stayed the minimum number of nights at each of the places.

The group of us girls called ourselves "Team Natural Woman" and eventually we added "AKA Team Stone Cold Fox" to the title. Below is a picture of the seven of us:

From left to right: me, Katie, Ashley, Meg, Alexs, Melissa and Stephanie.

The Trip

Christchurch
It's day one of my South Island midsemester break trip. I feel like mother because I wasn't excited about the trip until I got onto the airplane. I woke up to my 6:45 alarm this morning and before I could reset it, I fell back asleep. The next time I woke up, it was at 7:18. Meg, Ashley and I were supposed to meet to walk to the bus at 7:20. Luckily I was able to get ready extremely quickly. We were able to get to the airport in plenty of time.

The flight was fine. For the majority of the hour and a half flight I was planning what we would do in Christchurch with the help of my Lonely Planet guide. Once we landed and collected our things, we found where the city bus picks up at the airport and took a bus into Cathedral Square. It's called Cathedral Square because, well, there's a big cathedral in the city square!


Our hostel is essentially in the square and is very nice. We have our own room since there is seven of us and most rooms have four bunk beds. There are tvs and movies as well as computers and a bar downstairs. After we dropped off our stuff we went for a walk around the city. We walked through Cathedral Square over to High Street and back again. For lunch, we grabbed fish and chips from a stand in the square and enjoyed the nice weather and the psychotic seagulls fighting for our attention. The man who owned the stand was simply frying prefrozen fish and chips and selling cans of coke that specifically said "do not sell individually." He must be making an absolute fortune.

After lunch, we stopped by a farmers market. We were kind of bummed we had just eaten so much because we would have loved to eat some fresh fruit and baked goods. Next, we went to the botanical gardens (New Zealand seems to have one in every city). We saw some pretty dahlias that are beginning to bloom, but otherwise the flowers were pretty much still dead. We decided to return shortly afterward for a midafternoon nap, which lasted about until diner time.

For dinner we headed to Dux de Lux. To this day I'm still unsure whether its pronounced "ducks deluxe" or "do de loo" if that makes sense. Anyway, the restaurant was kind of strange because it had a cafeteria feel to it—we were given our salad and had to grab our silverware and a table—but the food was very nice and expensive! I had amazing salmon. It was one of those dishes without much food on it that always looks fancily plated and is delicious. We sat in the restaurant and talked for a few hours. It was nice. The other four girls were not to arrive until around 11 at night. Stephanie and Katie had classes that Friday afternoon that they really needed to go to and therefore took a later flight. I had missed a class in the morning, but it wasn't a very big deal and I wasn't about to cheat myself out of a day of vacation and the opportunity to see another New Zealand city. (In retrospect I'm really glad I came early now because Christchurch is currently in pieces after the 7.4 magnitude earthquake that struck just a week after I left).

After dinner we headed back to the hostel, presumably to go to bed (though it was quite early). Once we arrived, however, a woman at the bar told us to come get free drinks. We looked at each other and decided we couldn't possibly turn down such an offer. We were given two free drinks and a free shot, each. I asked one of the bartenders what the occasion was and he simply said "Why the hell not?!" at which point I decided we were going to have a great trip. The atmosphere wasn't that great though so shortly after, we attempted to sleep, though we were awakened when the rest of our party arrived.

This morning we woke up pretty early, packed up and went to McDonald's for breakfast (another indicator of the good trip to come). We came back and shortly afterward boarded the stray bus.

I was excited for a 'backpacker's experience.' I was hoping we would have people on our bus from all over the world. While there were some non-Americans, the majority of our bus were American, University of Auckland students on their midsemester break. The dynamics changed as people hopped on and off, but for the entire time, 15-20 of the 24 people on the bus were from America.

Kaikoura
When we arrived in Kaikoura we checked into the Adelphi Lodge, our hostel. It most definitely has a character of its own. As soon as we came in, Melissa said it smelled like her grandmother's house. The floors have patterns on it, the walls have black and white pictures framed by old scraps of wood. The wallpaper is textured. Eventually, we walked around for a bit and went into the touristy shops. We stopped by the beach and took many pictures enjoying the beautiful scenery. I think Kaikoura is the prettiest place we went throughout the trip. Here are some pictures.

A stop we made on the way to Kaikoura

Starting that night and for the rest of the trip, we made our own dinners. It was much more cost effective and since being back in Auckland I've realized it helped me become more independent and more confident in my ability to cook (or at least to organize meals). The hostel offered free pumpkin and coriander soup and we watched Feris Bueller's Day Off. For the rest of the evening we hung around the hostel and went to a pub across the street.

The next morning we got up and packed and went to the beach for a bit. It looked quite different with the morning sunlight. I plugged my iPod into the bus's speaker system on the bus ride to Picton. We started out with some chill Counting Crows, John Mayer, James Taylor and Jack Johnson, etc. Then, I realized most of the girls in our group (myself, Meg, Alexs, Melissa and Katie) really like country music, which I took as the perfect opportunity to play my favorite country playlist. It was so much fun. We were all sitting in the front section of the bus and essentially had a sing-a-long. It totally made me think of/miss my roommate from the past two years, Amanda.

We got off at one point to see some seals. They were so neat/cute! They liked to play around and swim and pose for pictures. Sometimes they talked to us too! They were quite interesting to watch. The second seal stop we made, we walked along a really pretty path and ended up at a waterfall. There were at least 50 seals there.
Picton
We, semi-unfortunately, were in Picton for over 24 hours. It's a nice, but extremely boring town. We arried at our hostel, called 'The Villa' sometime shortly before lunch. We stayed in room number seven, a.k.a. "The Swamp" (I'm still not quite sure where the nickname came from). After we dropped off our stuff, we went into the small town center and ate at a cafe/diner/restaurant thing. We each had a burger and chips. Extra ketchup/tomato sauce (there IS a huge difference) was 50 cents each. It's pretty commonplace here and I don't like it.

For the rest of the day we mostly wandered around. We tried to go to the Edwin Museum, which holds the ninth oldest boat in the world, the only surviving immigration boat to Australasia. The cost was $10 though and we were unwilling to pay that. We looked around the lobby for a while and tried to find someone with a boat to take us out on the water. Unfortunately, it was a rainy, Sunday afternoon in the winter. There was absolutely no one out. Half of the group decided to go for a walk, but my feet hurt so Steph and Alexs and I went to the library to use the internet. We also walked around and visited some shops. We stumbled upon a craft store and bought some friendship bracelet string.


When we came back, we made bracelets! I hadn't done that in years and really enjoyed it. I only made one for myself but I intend to make another one for Katie. The rest of the afternoon was spent talking, playing Scrabble and drinking a lot of tea.

We made soup for dinner with garlic bread and salad. We played a few rounds of cards and then it was time for free apple crumble with free ice cream. It was delicious! Eventually, Katie and I decided to get into the hot tub and Meg joined us. It was nice talking with Meg because I didn't know her at all before the trip. Some other people from our bus eventually joined us. It was nice getting to know them and I would consider them friends by the end of the trip.

Soon after, we took showers and got ready for bed.One of the men sharing our room with us was from Israel. I told him "Lila Tov" or good night in Hebrew. He told me it made his night. You know what they say, wherever you go, there's always someone Jewish...

When we awoke the next morning, we were greeted by sunshine. We headed over to the kitchen for free breakfast and more tea. We found out that unfortunately the ferry had broken down and our new bus driver would be three hours late. It did give us the opportunity to take a hike before leaving though. A group of us headed out and walked up to 'Bob's Bay.' It was a nice, but muddy walk. Alexs and I walked around the beach for a bit and walked back together. Again, it was nice getting to know another person better. She's very nice. Once we got back from our walk we had lunch and went back to the villa. We had time for another cup of tea and game of scrabble before the bus picked us up. There was also time for a picture of me in the hammock in front of our lovely hostel:
The one thing that did bother me about leaving Picton so late (2 p.m.) was that we couldn't go wine and mussel tasting. Trouble (our new driver) explained that it was because we would arrive in Abel Tasman at 10 p.m. that way. The thing was though, that we arrived after dark anyway so I thought we might as well do the tasting. I was not very happy about that. His idea of consolation for not taking us tasting was to take us for the scenic route to Abel Tasman. Let me tell you, the scenic route should be called the nausea route. I've never gotten car sick in my life, but there was a two stretch in there when I was constantly nauseous. It was horrible! We made a stop at one point and I got ice cream, which totally hit the spot and made me feel a bit better. Plus, I asked Trouble to put on some air conditioning or something so it wouldn't be so stuffy.

Outside Able Tasman we stopped at a Pak and Save grocery store and got food for the next few days. I gathered food for lunch the next day as well. I needed to pack my lunch because I spent the day sailing. It was definitely a highlight on my trip. I will detail it in my next blog post, which should also be posted sometime this weekend.