Friday, Feb. 12 (day 2 of the South Island Adventure):
As I left off, we had reached our first hostel in Christchurch, had an amazing dinner, and went to bed after watching Lord of the Rings...
I woke up in the morning after getting a wonderful night’s rest and got ready. We had stayed in a common room style hostel, so I was bunked with a random guy. He didn’t speak English though, so we didn’t talk much. But anyway, the morning… Tomas had gotten breakfast for us, which consisted of sweet rolls, lots of fruit, and granola bars. It was nice. Then we began our adventures.
We started by walking around Christchurch, which turned out to be a lovely town. Tomas had found this walk that took us by the river, so we did that. It ended at the Botanical Gardens, so we enjoyed looking at flowers and bonsai trees and such. It is amazing how much more interesting a botanical garden is when you’re with four biology majors! After the market we went to sweet natural history museum and then to a small market. And then we started traveling.
Our goal was to make it to Fanz Joseph, so that we would be close to the glacier site for the next day.
Along the way, we stopped at Arthur’s Pass, which is a trail to a huge waterfall. It was a fun walk, and Aerin, Drew, and I wandered from the beaten trail a lot. Once at the viewing station for the waterfall, all of us climbed down to the stream and started making our way closer to the falls. I got so close that the mist coming from the falling water got me pretty wet, but it felt great cuz it was a hot day. Aerin and I stayed a lot longer at the falls so we had to run down the mountain to catch up to everyone – fine with me!Then we set off for franz joseph and our hostel there. We made a few stops, one at a lake and another at a scenic view. At the view, we noticed some native birds which we hadn't seen before: the Kea. Note: Close all windows and doors when leaving your car when kea are around. Kea's are known for biting, tearing apart, and getting into anything they can. So, we shut the windows and enjoyed a new kind of bird!
When we got to the place where we were planning on eating dinner, Jay mentioned that he wanted to stray from our journey to the hostel and visit the PANCAKE ROCKS. I was all for it! My logic was: pancakes rocks -> I like to climb rocks -> sounds adventurous = more fun = definitely do it! but most of the group decided not to, since it would put us arriving at the hostel after 11pm. So, a few of us split off to visit the rocks. They were so COOL! They were layered like stacks of pancakes and excellent for climbing on! The signs told us “DO NOT go off the path” but when has that ever stopped me?
Friday, Feb. 12 (day 2 of the South Island Adventure): (Yes, mom, it was safe (relatively) to leave the trail.) I really wanted to climb down into this one place, but there were a lot of viewers and I didn’t want to obstruct their scenic view, so all of us waited. While waiting there, we were looking out to the ocean, and deciding what we would say if some of the viewers walked up and asked why we were waiting. Then I said, “Oh, we’re just looking for dolphins,” and right then we saw dolphins! The timing was perfect, instant! That was cool. So we told everyone there were dolphins, and after getting a nice long look at them, crept back to the spot I wanted to climb. With everyone distracted by the dolphins, we climbed off the trail. Perfect distraction! It was a lot of fun! I crept around trying to stay out of sight, and climbed lower and lower, until the rest of my group motioned for me to come back.
We then left to drive to the hostel. We made great time! We got back to the hostel at about midnight, and crashed. We had a long fun day ahead of us…
No comments:
Post a Comment