On our way to Lake Ohau we stopped to see the Moeraki Boulders, which are huge round rocks on the ocean. The scenic route didn’t end there. The region is full of lakes and views of Mt. Cook, the highest one in New Zealand. By Lake Tekapo we also visited the Church of the Good Shepherd and a monument to border collies (I miss Slick…)

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Lake Ohau is a tucked away place with an eco-lodge and a ski resort. They both have won awards for sustainability and the resort has been voted the best one in New Zealand for years. It was a splendid place and I had a lot of fun at the toga party. Last night with my tour peers! We danced and sang our theme song until 3 am.

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Dunedin is a university town in the South Island. I thought the city was pretty rundown, but I guess after Queenstown, everything will seem like that. We walked to the Octagon, which is the main plaza, with the church and a sculpture of the poet Robbie Burns, and then to Baldwin St., which is the world’s steepest street.

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In Dunedin we also took two very informative tours. The first one was about beer at Speight’s Brewery, and the second one was about chocolate at the Cadbury Factory. I don’t know which one was better. We had all you can drink beer at the brewery, but the chocolate one had a chocolate fountain that dropped 1 ton of chocolate in one minute.

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Okay, here it goes. The highlight of my trip. Can’t wait to go back to Queenstown in the future!

Arrowtown – Wild West 1800’s town like Virginia City in Nevada, built around the gold rush. It’s in the Otago region, near Lake Wanaka, which is a beautiful wine area.

Winery

Arrowtown

Arrowtown

Puzzling World – mazes and illusion rooms in Wanaka.

Maze

Illusion Room

Puzzling World

Shotover Jet Boat – crazy fast boat ride that gets super close to the rocks on the Shotover River. Freezing cold!

Jet Boat

Jet Boat

Skyline Gondola – Amazing panoramic views of Queenstown, the lake, and The Remarkables mountain range.

View from Skyline

Bungee

Queenstown

Queenstown

The Waterfront – that’s where the Botanical Gardens are. Nice marina too.

The Waterfront

The Waterfront

Queenstown Mall  and Beach Streets – pedestrian streets where all the bars and shops are.

Beach Street

Beach Street

Cardrona Ski Resort – skiing in August!

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Milford Sound – a 5-hour drive from Queenstown, but totally worth it to cruise the nice fiords by boat.

Mirror Lake

Near Milford Sound

Mitre Peak

Milford Sound

Milford Sound

Milford Sound

Bungee Jumping Kawarau Bridge – can’t even begin to describe the experience of jumping off a bridge 43 meters high with only a rope tied to your ankles. The Kawarau Bridge bungee was the first one ever in the world started by A.J. Hacket in 1987.

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In the Southern Alps we visited two of the most famous glaciers in New Zealand. Each is at least 12 kilometers long (7 miles) and the ice pretty much descends from the mountains all the way down to the rainforest. First we walked to the Franz Josef Glacier thru a beautiful trail and then up to Sentinel Rock to get a good view of the glacier.

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In the afternoon I took a helicopter ride to Fox Glacier for another hike. The ride was breathtaking and we landed right on the glacier. With crampons on, we started to make our way up the face of the glacier. Climbing on ice was very difficult but so exciting! The heli-hike was my most expensive activity in New Zealand but worth every cent.

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Unfortunately I don’t have much to say about Hanmer Springs because I got sick with a cold and couldn’t go to the hot pools, but as far as I know it was pretty similar to the Polynesian Spa in Rotorua. The trip from the North Island to the South Island was pretty scenic though. In Wellington we got a ferry to Picton cruising the beautiful Marlborough Sounds on the way and then travelled the Kaikoura Highway along the coast to see some seals. It was a long travel day, but it was perfect to just relax and watch the New Zealand scenery unfold. The next day was an even better travel day with views of the Southern Alps and Arthurs Pass, plus a stop to see some greenstones (jade) being carved into beautiful jewelry. South Island is definitely as picturesque as it gets.

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Wellington is the capital of New Zealand and its third largest city, located on the bottom of the North Island. Here are the highlights:

Mt. Victoria – The summit has a beautiful panoramic view of the city and on the way there you can see the Victorian style houses like the ones from San Francisco.

View from Mt. Victoria

Just like San Francisco

The waterfront – Because of the cold (and my laziness), I hadn’t gone on a jog in NZ yet, but I had to do it here since it was our last stop in the North Island. The waterfront was the perfect spot for it, alongside the harbor and the super clean beaches.

Wellington

Parliament Buildings – Nothing special besides the weird beehive building and Katherine Mansfield’s house a few blocks away. She is NZ’s most famous author and now I’m eager to find some of her short stories after reading this quote: “What can you do if you are thirty and, turning the corner of your own street, you are overcome, suddenly by a feeling of bliss – absolute bliss! – as though you’d suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that late afternoon sun and it burned in your bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into every particle, into every finger and toe?”

Parliament Buildings

Bee-hive building

Katherine Mansfield’s house

Cable Car and Botanical Gardens – An old fashioned cable car takes you up the hill to the gardens, where you follow a path back down to the city. There are many different trails that make it one of the most beautiful city gardens I’ve seen.

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Te Papa Museum – full of history about New Zealand and its earthquakes, marine life, Maori natives, and immigrants. Too much information, but I enjoyed a house that shakes as if in an earthquake and the giant squid they caught in 2011. They were also having a temporary exhibit on Impressionism and Renoir (yay, my favorites!) and another one on Andy Warhol that was amazing. I finally got to see his Marilyn Monroe pop art work up close.

Te Papa Museum

James Cook’s “Endeavor” cannon

Cuba Street – The place to go shopping and see the famous water bucket fountain.

Water Bucket Fountain

Courtney Place – The theater district full of bars and restaurants, but unfortunately I still haven’t had a superb meal in NZ. Everything is super salty. The highlight was watching “Swan Lake” by the Royal New Zealand Ballet. Wellington was the perfect place for my culture fix (especially after watching all the bar games the night before).

Swan Lake

My German roommate and I

Lake Taupo, the largest one in New Zealand (a bit smaller than Lake Tahoe though), is also a volcano, so there are many hot water springs like the one we went to in Spa Park. From there, it’s a short hike along Waikato River, which is also the longest in New Zealand, to the majestic and bright blue Huka Falls. We also watched a couple of people do bungee jumping at the lake, but I didn’t have the courage to do it, especially after they all said they felt they were going to die. To end the day, I took a long walk around the lake and watched the sunset while drinking some wine.

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The scenery so far in New Zealand has been amazing. Everything is green, picturesque, and full of cows and sheep. On our way to Rotorua, we attended a sheep show at the Agrodome where they sheared a sheep  and showed us how the dogs herd them.

Sheep

Sheep Show at the Agrodome

New Zealand loves to invent new adventures, like the black water rafting in Waitomo. In Rotorua we got to see another invention: zorbing, where they put you inside a plastic ball and shove you down the hill. It looked pretty fun and not too scary, but I didn’t do it because I knew I would throw up inside and roll down in my own vomit. But I did try the small race car called luge down the hill. First you have to take a gondola (cable car) up the hill where you have a beautiful view of Lake Rotorua. Very similar to Lake Tahoe and the gondola at Heavenly, but I don’t think you could use the luge to go down with all the ice and snow in Tahoe.

Rotorua is actually a city INSIDE a volcano. The city limits is pretty much the crater rim, so when you’re in town you are actually in a caldera. The area is full of geothermal activity and everywhere you look there is steam coming off the ground along with a pungent smell of rotten eggs because of all the sulfur. In the 1800’s they capitalized on the thermal hot pools and built a bath house attracting tourists for its medicinal purposes. Now the bath house is a museum holding tons of Maori artifacts.

Speaking of Maori, we went to two of their villages. Ohinemutu is a functional one by the lake where they live and worship. We learned a bit about their culture (they take pride in tracing their ancestors and sometimes tattoo their genealogy on their faces) and their mythology (like the one princess from Lake Rotorua who swam to the island to be with her lover after he played the flute for her.) There is an Anglican church carved with beautiful Maori art and a Marae, which is a meeting house used for ceremonies. In Te Puia we also visited a Maori carving and weaving school, but the most beautiful area was the Pohutu Geyser, full of hot-water springs and mud pools, with a geyser going off every few minutes.

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Back at the hotel we relaxed at the Polynesian Spa and their thermal hot water pools overlooking the lake and had a hangi, which is a dinner cooked under hot stones on the ground. For dessert, we tried some pavlova, a merengue cake with fruit.

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