Updates!

Since our outrageous roadtrip, things have been pretty mellow.  Getting back into the swing of school, homework, and terrible cafeteria food was pretty tough.  Not only did our trip leave us with lots of memories, it left us ... broke!  So, I've been blogging for Waikato and they pay me $12.50 for each blog I do, but since I'm not legally allowed to "work" while I'm here in NZ, they give me gift certificates for Pak n Save (a grocery store.)  Desperate times call for desperate measures, I guess! lol.
For our Maori class, we got to visit the school's marae and take part in a welcoming ceremony.  That was pretty interesting and definitely a good experience.  We also learned about many different Maori musical instruments and got to learn how to use the poi, stick game, and a few other instruments.  We also learned a haka.  Logan is taking a kapa haka class and they have a performance on October 13th.  I'll be sure to record it!

Here's some "kiwiana" for you...

• togs= bathing suit
• jandals= slippers
• torch= flashlight
• fish n chips are the staple food. (we have them EVERY Friday for dinner.)
• hokey pokey is the best ice cream/candy I've ever tasted. 
• rugby=life
• "sweet as bro" = "awesome!"
• beer, beer, beer
• cookies here are amazing!

South Island Adventures Part 6: Christchurch, Wellington

Our last stop in Christchurch was Willowbank Reserve.  It was a zoo type place that had wallobies (?), long finned eels, and a bunch of other native animals.  The only difference with this place was ... there were no cages between us and the animals.  We walked through a door into each exhibit, and the animals were walking, flying, and crawling all around us!  It was so cool!  We saw some real kiwis here too!

We flew into Wellington on Friday afternoon, and on Saturday morning got frantic calls from our parents at 7 am in the morning asking if we were okay.  We just missed the 7.1 earthquake, and were so thankful.  We saw pictures of the damage and some of the streets we had parked on were covered in rubble and some of the buildings we walked past had collapsed.  Close call, but thankfully, we're safe!

Wellington was pretty fun.  Visited Te Papa museum.  It was huge with 4 floors of exhibits, including one for the collosal squid, the largest squid ever! DAD: how would you like to spear one of those?? I think it'd probably eat you.  Its HUGE!!! We went up on the cable car and walked around the gardens for a bit.  Pretty boring, haha!  Logan has been dying to go to the Weta Cave.  Its a store made for Weta, which is a company that makes the props for movies such as Lord of the Rings, King Kong, Avatar and a few others.  It was pretty amazing.  We saw a bunch of different collectibles, props from familiar movies, and watched a cool film on the actual factory.  Logan bought a TinTin book because "it's a collectors item and will be worth a lot of money someday." haha!

Our trip was AWESOME!  Definitely a success.  We got pretty attached to our Jucy camper by the end, and it was hard saying goodbye.  I promised you I'd tell you our total mileage, so here it is ... 2,884.5 kilometers = 1,800 miles!  And, we did all of that in 11 days :) Logan did a great job driving.  Now its back to school, and we've got lots of work to do!

Here's a map of everywhere we drove.  Follow the orange line to retrace our steps!

South Island Adventures Part 5: Dunedin, Akaroa, Adrenalin Forest

We finally got to Dunedin on Sunday afternoon, which was the day we had planned to get there.  That gives you an idea of how long we drove.  We made up a whole day of plans through driving the SS route!  We went to the Larnach Castle on the Otago Peninsula.  It was a privately owned castle that was built ages ago by William Larnach for his first wife.  The castle has some pretty interesting history to it and a lot of it was preserved and we were able to see much of the original furnishings!  We also headed to Cadbury World, NZ's Chocolate Factory!  We took a tour around part of the factory, tried some raw cocoa beans, learned how chocolate is made, and watched a ton of liquid chocolate fall from the sky.  Our tour guide was a cute old man who loved "chocolatey things."

On Monday, we went on a really cool walking guided tour on the Otago Peninsula and got to see animals in action!  We got up close to a NZ fur seal pup colony, saw some sea lions sleeping on the beach, and saw some rare Yellow-Eyed penguins. Yes, the penguins lived on the beach, and actually never left.  They stay there all year long, and sleep up on the hill under the trees at night and go fishing out in the ocean during the day.  These penguins are the second rarest in the world.  There are less than 200 alive now, and the infant mortality rate is 80%.  The odds of survival are rough :(  They share their hilly home with sheep, the most abundant animal, or creature for that matter, to inhabit New Zealand.  Hmmm ... talk about "opposites attract."

After Dunedin, we headed up North towards Christchurch, and stopped at the Moeraki boulders.  They are massive round, smooth boulders created by nature.  There's the Maori version of how they came about and a scientific version.  Of course.  They were amazing(ly big)! An awesome example of nature's work at it's best!

Finally, Christchurch.  On Wednesday, we drove through Christchurch to Akaroa where we did a nature cruise.  The day was surprisingly sunny and we got to sit on the front of the catamaran and enjoy the sites.  We saw a few swimming penguins, a seal, and a ton of seabirds!  There was a 98% chance that we'd see Hector Dolphins, the rarest dolphins in the world.  (They're only found near the peninsula.)  Well, it was a sunny day, and that was our gift for the day.  We saw NO dolphins.  Not one.  Not even a fin of one. 

We drove back to Christchurch dissapointed, but somehow we found humor in our streak of bad luck.  Thursday morning we put on our workout clothes because we were going to master Adrenaline Forest, an intense high-ropes course!  We asked the people at the holiday park where it was located and they gave us simple directions, so we ditched our maps, and followed what they said.  It was a 70 km drive out of town and our appointment was scheduled for 11.  We stopped along the way to ask and make sure we were going in the right direction and we were told we were.  So, we kept on driving.  Well, we drove past a really shabby ropes course that didn't even have an actual name.  There was no one there and we were a bit hesistant.  Come to find, we were at the WRONG place.  It was nearing 11 and we were at least 50 km from the actual Adrenaline Forest.  We resorted to the touristy map following and finally found the actual Adrenaline Forest!  (We were still the only ones there, and our skeptism only dissapeared slightly.)

The guide strapped us into our harnesses and taught us how to use the safety clips and all that.  There were 6 different stages, each stage increasing in difficulty as well as height.  There were 100 obstacles in all.  We were responsible for our own safety, completely.  We had to strap onto the safety line at each obstacle, unclip and reclip at each one thereafter.  Our safety was ONLY up to us!  They'd never have anything like it in the States.  Too many people sue and don't take responsibility for their actions.  We didn't even have to wear a helmet!

To our surprise, it was so much fun!  We jumped across spinning logs, climbed across a wire, swung on a rope into big nets, zipped on flying foxes, climbed through barrels, and a whole bunch more.  I did the first four levels and that was all I could handle.  The fourth level got to be 20 feet up in the air, and that was just too high.  I even had a mini-meltdown on one of the obstacles. haha.  Logan completed all 6!  I was so proud of him.  The sixth level was 60 feet up in the air and the hardest challenges.  He can tell you about it if you ask him.  It took 5 hours for him to finish the entire course, and the average time is 3 hours, but I think I slowed him down in the beginning.  I'm not too fond of heights :)

South Island Adventures Part 4: Piopiotahi, SS Route

The drive from Te Anau to Milford is a scenic journey in itself.  It's an actual drive with about 16 marked stops along the way.  Some of the stops are short walks off the roadside and others were just outside our window.  We were planning on doing a Milford Cruise that afternoon, so we jammed past all 16 stops and headed straight for the Sound itself.  We got there with just enough time to board the small boat and we were off!  The cruise took us around the edge of the Sound and we were surrounded by steep cliffs covered in different forestry, beautiful waterfalls, and the occasional Fiordland Crested Penguin, the rarest penguin in the WORLD! Yes, in the world.  It's unknown where they come from or where they go, and they're tiny cute little penguins that dip and dive beneath the water surface.  The Milford crew consider them to be "as rare as a shooting star."  The cruise was lots of fun, but of course ... rainy and cold!  Logan's motto for the entire trip was, "we're roughing it!" and he wanted to stand outside on the deck the entire time, but I couldn't handle.  It was too freezing. 

After the cruise, we stopped off at nearly all 16 stops along the scenic drive. Our mutual favorite was Mirror Lakes.  The name is pretty self-explanatory.  The lake literally acted as a mirror, even on a windy day like the day we went!

Nice mountains huh?  Well, actually this is the reflection of the mountains in the water.  I cropped, cut & flipped the picture :) Gotcha!

We were now a day ahead of schedule because we had left Queenstown earlier than expected, and we didn't know what to do!  Logan had talked about driving down to Invercargill, the most Southern city on the South Island, while we were making our plans, but it didn't seem like there was much to do there.  Well, we had a whole day to spare, so we drove down there anyway!  (This largely added to outrageous mileage.)

We drove down to Invercargill and stayed in a holiday park for the night.  The next morning, we woke up early and drove along the Southern Scenic route to Dunedin.  It was a long drive that we hadn't planned for, but we're both really happy that we did it because it was amazing!  It was a similar drive like the Milford scenic one, but a lot longer. A LOT.  It went along the coast from Invercargill to Dunedin.  It took us the entire day on Saturday, and even part of Sunday morning.  Along the way, we stopped at different beaches, lookouts, saw some sea lions, and the most beautiful waterfall we've ever seen.  The name of it was Purakaunui Falls.  We saw a picture of it on the brochure, and we had to see it for ourselves.  The drive into the falls was 2 km along a dirt road covered in large, sharp rocks and the entire time we were hoping our tires wouldn't pop.  Well ... thankfully, it was worth it!  The waterfall was amazing! See for yourself!

South Island Adventures Part 3: Queenstown

Enjoy Logan's blog? I think he should write some more :)

After Puzzling World, we continued our drive to Queenstown where we stayed for a few days.  It was our first stop in an actual city and boy was it different than driving in the lonely one-lane roads we were used to!  There were cars and roundabouts everywhere!!  It didn't help that we had no idea where we were OR where we were going.  We managed to find a parking lot and followed the flow of people to the lakeside for some shopping.  There were a bunch of different stores, mostly ski/snowboarding ones.  Queenstown is known for it's snowy mountains, but we weren't really interested in skiing.  We went to bed early so that we could get an early start the next day.  Actually, we went to bed early nearly every night!  By early, I mean by 8 pm.  haha!

Our first stop on Thursday morning was Zip Trek Eco Tours, a ziplining experience at the top of the one of the Queenstown mountains.  Of course, like Logan mentioned, it was raining.  We rode a LOOOOONG gondola up to the top of the mountain and walked down a gravel path to the small treehouse representing the Zip Trek office.  This company prides itself on it's "green" ways of operating and part of the money we paid goes to protecting the environment and all that good stuff.  The actual Zip Trek experience was awesome.  The rain cleared up a bit, which was nice.  We got to zip on four different flying foxes, each one a bit longer than the previous.  We got to flip upside down and Logan mastered the "flashing star" and the "running man."  Heaps of fun!

Up until now, our trip was going exactly according to planned.  We had made an itinerary before we left, and it probably would have been good if we emailed it to you guys considering the recent events and all.  Oops!  Anyways, we were planning on going luging like we had done in Rotorua, but the rainy weather didn't make luging sound too appealing, so we headed back into town and ate a Fergburger.  Now,  I wouldn't spend too much time writing about this particular burger if I didn't think I had to, but I do.  It was amazing; I mean the best burger I've ever had.  I'm not a big burger fan, but this one was good!  Apparently, it's preeeeetty well known; the place was packed!  Logan was nearly in Heaven.

After inhaling our burgers, we drove to Te Anau, which was our final stop before the infamous Milford Sound!!

South Island Adventures part 2: Fox Glacier, Blue Pools, Puzzling World

Hello family. Kailee said I had to contribute to some of the blog so I decided to write about my favorite part of the trip! Here we go...


So climbing a glacier was something I really wanted to do. I have been training at the gym for 3 weeks prior to make sure my climb was a success!! (just kidding, but seriously:)) My workout plan will be included in a different blog so that you all can use it haha!  So there was two glaciers in the south island worth climbing, Franz Josef and Fox glaciers.  The Franz Josef is much more popular, but I went with the Fox Glacier tour because only this tour group had access to climb the actual face of the glacier making it completely untainted by tourist (it was also like $10 cheaper which was a plus).  So story of our trip was that it was rainy whenever we wanted to do an outdoor activity, and this day was no different.  The weather did get better as our hike went on which made us extremely excited.  Our tour guides name was Passang, originally from Nepal, and he had a heavy Filipino sounding accent that kept me entertained for most of the journey.  Before we began, we had to get equipment, including a rain coat, gloves, crampons (the spiky things for shoes), steel toe boots, a beanie, and my favorite...WATER!  We then made our way by bus to the glacier itself.  When first looking at the glacier I didn't think we were gonna make it! The thick, gray clouds covered the valley and it was gonna be a very far hike.  We first had to bush walk (bush = forest) up about 800 stairs to the spot where we would start walking up the glacier.  Passang was good about letting us rest, so we would walk and stop about every 15 mins for a quick water.  Some parts were pretty scary, going up on the sides of cliffs and only holding onto a chain which they nailed into the mountainside, but he was very aware of the safety precautions and made us very aware as well.  When we finally got up to the clearing to start our glacier walk, the view was incredible.  I felt so accomplished to be up there. A glacier is such a natural wonder, and how many people do you know that can actually say "I climbed a glacier"?  We tied on our crampons to our boots and made our way onto the ice! It was amazing, the company cut out "ice stairs" with a pick that made it a little easier. Still it was pretty slippery, and Passang made sure we were super careful.  We got to see Ice caves, and drank pure water from the glacier runoff.  It was my favorite experience of the entire trip! We walked back down a different trail on the side of the glacier, and got to see its actual mass! After a 5 hour hike we were pretty tired, but the experience was totally worth every penny!
The next day we visited this place called the Blue Pools in Haast.  The Blue Pools were a 20 minute hike off the side of the motorway (motorway = highway) in the middle of a gigantic national park.  That was a short hike for us now.  It was very cool and very BLUE.  The title did not disappoint! The blueness is caused by snow runoff from the mountains.  It was a very worthwhile little trip, and I made the most tranquil little stone stack. (it definitely was the nicest one there haha, maybe kailee will put up the picture)  Than we had to drive another few hours, so we made ham sandwiches (that was all that we ate on our trip) and hit the road.
We finally arrived at Stuart Landsborough's Puzzling World in Wanaka.  It was soooo trippy.  This guy had to be a real puzzle genius to put together this entire museum of puzzles.  There was many deceiving pictures that we took and we still can't figure out how he did it.  I hope you guys can see all the pictures from this place.  Built around his museum is a maze that takes on average an hour and a half.  It took us longer than that I think haha.  But it was very fun.  Basically you had to find all four corners and the way out.  The way out took us the longest and we were getting pretty frustrated by the end.  After completion we had fun looking at all the quirky gifts at the gift shop and settled on buying this hologram bookmark of these giraffes. Its hilarious.  That's all for me folks.  Hope you enjoyed it.

South Island Adventures: Jucy, hot pools, Pancake Rocks

We caught a plane to Christchurch on Monday morning, and it was surprisingly a breeeeze to get through security.  I was allowed to leave all my clothes (including my shoes) on through the metal detector, took a bottle of water through, and the craziest part of it all was that I was never ID'd. Only when we checked in did they ask for our passport.  Other than that, someone else could have been Kailee and/or Logan for the day and flew to Christchurch!  We got to our gate only to hear an welcomed voice over the PA system announce our flight was delayed due to bad weather in Christchurch.  Not a good start to our trip!  Over the next 20 minutes, the Christchurch airport had closed & reopened again and we were back on schedule.  The airlines didn't waste anytime; everyone boarded the plane, and we were off.  Somehow, we miraculously got to Christchurch only FIVE MINUTES after our scheduled arrival!

Our first stop and most important was to get our Jucy Chaser campervan!  A Jucy camper picked us up, and drove us to the dealership.  After some wheeling and dealing about insurance, diesel fuel tax, and a few other practicalities, we jumped in our Jucy and were off!  I must say, Logan did a GREAT job getting us from one place to the next.  You won't believe how many kilometers/miles we drove, but I'll save it for a later time to tell you ... create some suspense :)  We drove up North for about two hours to Hanmer Springs, a small town with award-winning hot pools.  To our surprise, three of our friends from Hamilton were in the exact same place at the exact same time as us!  There were about 20 different pools we could have chose from, and we all ended up in the same pool!  The scenery was really nice and we relaxed for a while in the nice geothermic hot pools!  It was great!  We went to get a quick bite to eat with them afterwards and then, we continued on to the West Coast. 

We got to Punakaiki at about 6ish and got a quick dinner and tried to find a place to sleep.  We didn't want to pay to stay at a motor camp, so we tried to find a "freedom camping" spot.  We saw a local campervan parked along the coast, so we pulled up next to them for the night.  All around BAD idea!  It was absolutely freezing!  The wind from the ocean went right through our windows and we nearly got hypothermia, which also made it hard to fall asleep, for me at least.  At about 9:00, I thought I heard some footsteps outside our van, but thought nothing of it.  In the morning, we woke up to find someone had drawn a Swastika right infront of our van!  How nice.  I was pretty scared, so we jetted out of there.  Since then, our nights were vandalized-free! Phewph!

In the morning, we headed over to the Pancake Rocks.  It was a 20 minute walk to see all the rocks.  Definitely worth it!  They were created 30 million years ago underground, and earthquakes have brought them up. 

Here's our pictures from our whole South Island Adventure (of course not ALL, there's a ton!):

South Island
South Island 2

Always start with A(uckland)!

We started our teaching recess adventure in Auckland!  Caught the Nakedbus on Saturday morning and got to Auckland around noon.  We lugged our 20 kg bags up steep streets to our friend Dani's dorm.  She's going to University of Auckland for the semester and we're so happy that she let us stay with her for the weekend!  She lives in a flat with 4 other roommates, and all but one are from the States.  Our first stop was Kelly Tarlton's Underwater World, or something.  I made up the second part of the name, but it fits :)  It was a lot more "kiddish" than we expected, although there were some pretty cool animals including the most ginormous stingray I've ever seen!  I can't even describe how big it was!!  We went on a cute ride around the penguin exhibit, and then took a dive in the shark tank!  There were makos, tigers, and a few other types of sharks and we got to go "shark caging."  It wasn't as intense as the ones at home because these sharks were kept in an exhibit, and therefore well fed so they weren't looking for an afternoon snack, thankfully.

That night, we went to a House of Shem concert.  It was a lot of fun.  They're really popular at home in Hawaii, and kinda old news here in NZ.  Consequently, the concert wasn't too packed and Logan got to meet/talk with the band after!

The next morning we took a ferry to Rangitoto Island and hiked up to the top.  It was about an hour hike, but on a hill.  It was pretty tough and we were pretty sweaty and tired by the end.  It didn't help that about halfway up the mountain, Ke Akua decided to pour on us.  Good thing I brought my trusty umbrella!  The view from the top was beautiful and we were able to see Auckland across the harbor!

Dani showed us a really good Japanese food place near her dorm and I got Chicken Katsu and Logan had some Teriyaki Chicken plate.  It was really good!  She said they even have L&L about 20 minutes away from her dorm.  Amazing!!! I wonder if it tastes like home?