(September 21-September 26)
In the morning, Franz Josef Glacier awaited us. It took six hours to drive south along the west coast of the South Island until we got to the town, with just enough time to hike to the glacier. It’s only a twenty minute or so hike to the rock bed where the glacier has retreated from. It’s been retreating I think for several hundred years, and there is now just an open area of rock, mostly limestone, where the glacier used to be, surrounded by cliffs that were formed from the glacier however many years ago. We wandered around the rocks, past some waterfalls, to the foot of the glacier. You can’t actually get to the glacier without hiring a guide with a pick-ax, and even with a guide you can’t actually climb the glacier. So we just admired from afar, and found a place for the night. We stayed at a cute little hostel in a miniature town that only exists because of the glacier (there are more hostels and motels than homes) and watched rugby that evening. It’s funny how much of a routine we have taken on in this trip, spending the day exploring or driving, and setting aside most nights to watch rugby. It’s great that rugby is everywhere, but then every night becomes consumed with the games. On nights when there is no game, we’ve often found ourselves with nothing to do, because all we want to do is watch rugby! But it’s actually been really nice to have the consistency every night, amidst all the other activities we’ve been doing.
In the morning, we took a long hike to get a different view of Franz Joseph Glacier. It was an amazing hike. Even though we saw no more than four people the entire time, the trail was well maintained and took us through fern forests, along cliffs, through dried river beds, on top of boulders and across rivers to a little patio that looked over the glacier. It was a really cool view, and we could sometimes see parts of the cliffs crumbling down. It sounded like an avalanche, but it would usually only be a couple rocks sliding down the glacier. Round trip, it probably took us 4 or 5 hours, then we had a long drive to Queenstown.
Queenstown is a beautiful little city on a lake in the Southern Alps. It was dark by the time we got there, so driving in, all we could see were the lights from the city reflecting on the lake with the snowy mountains in the close background. We had the next day to explore Queenstown. We took a gondola to the top of a mountain, where we could “Luge” down. “Luge”-ing is like Alpine sledding, if you’ve ever heard of that…it’s basically a sled on a track without snow. Its kind of fun, and a lot of people seem to think it’s the thing to do in Queenstown. It was goofy, and worth the trip to the top of the mountain that had a gorgeous view of the lake. Later we walked around adorable little Queenstown, along the waterfront. New Zealand has some really great waterfronts. I think most countries do, it’s just that Philadelphia’s really sucks, and I’m always impressed with good waterfronts. In the afternoon, we went to try some South Island wine! The central Otago region is well known for their Pinot Gris (yuck) and their Pinot Noir (yum!). We had a tour of a wine cave where they store the wine for the fermentation period. The cave keeps the temperature consistent no matter the conditions outside, so it saves them loads in cooling costs and makes money for them because who doesn’t want to go on a wine cave tour? Then we went to a beautiful winery on a cliff with a very dangerous driveway, especially considering the copious pours of their many varieties of wine they offer for free. Not smart, but very beautiful!
That night was a dreaded night for us. It started out so promising- Jillian made mac and cheese, and we had a champagne toast out of plastic wine glasses in the hostel kitchen, in anticipation of the USA v. Australia match! We had to give up the tickets to the match to have time to explore the South Island, but I was confident the US would so okay. Well no surprise, I was wrong, and the USA lost. Pretty terribly. There was hope during the first 30 minutes, but they lost it in the end, a brutal 67-5 loss…okay that sounds really really bad, but at half time the score was only 15-5, then who knows what happened in the second half. It was heart wrenching.
In the morning, we were off to Dunedin, a college town that would be hosting the England v Romania game that night. We went in knowing there were some tickets left, and headed straight to the stadium. Unfortunately when we got there, there were only $99 dollar tickets left. No way! So instead of going to the game, we saw what Dunedin is all about. We went to a free museum, where I learned about the crazy rich geological history of the South Island. While the North Island has volcanoes from ocean plates colliding with a continental plate, the South Island, oddly enough, has so much geology because the Southern Alps where formed from two continental plates colliding. That explains while the rock is mostly granitic (as we saw on Franz Josef), and why there’s no volcanoes. No wonder New Zealand is so beautiful. It has so many geological features for such a small mass of land.
The reason I had really wanted to see Dunedin was because there are a bunch of places along the coast to see penguins! But when we got there, it was raining and so cold! (I don’t know if I will ever be this close to the South Pole ever again!) So we ditched our penguin scoping idea, and headed to Speights brewery instead! Their beer tasting is really cool (tour was kind of lame) because they let you pour your own tastings from the taps and take your time trying their selection of beers. After the tour, it was about time for the games to start, so we settled for burgers at a bar (not quite the same as the gorgeous Dunedin stadium...but good enough) and watched England completely demolish poor little Romania. Then All Blacks wiped out France, thank goodness (I still don’t like the French). Great game, and All Blacks played brilliantly. After the match was the much anticipated semi-final game of rugby league, and the Warriors won! It was a very tight match, and everyone was more excited over this then the rugby! Since Dunedin was full, we spent the night in our little car (sounds pathetic, but was actually not bad at all), which saved us a ton of money and let us get on the road fairly early to Christ Church. We stopped on the Otago Penninsula on the way to at least attempt to see some penguins, and I could say I tried! But Dunedin is really just too cold, so we drove around the gorgeous peninsula then hit the highway for Christ Church.
The cool thing about road tripping around New Zealand are that major highways are hardly highways. They’re literally all country, mountain, or coastal roads, or a combination of the three. So we constantly find ourselves winding up hills or along the beach, or riding along cows and sheep. We got to Keiran and Karen’s house in the late afternoon. They shortly started preparing dinner, and asked how we felt with the day light savings change. Then all of a sudden we realized why all the game match times were written wrong all day. How long had we been an hour behind everyone? Thankfully only one day. Thank goodness we were staying with Keiran and Karen that night! Who knows how long that would have taken us to figure that one out.
Keiran and Karen’s was the perfect rest stop. In the morning, Keiran showed us their dairy farm. We stopped to fill up large canisters of milk, then drove it over to the calves. They’re a couple months old, and they have three fields of about 50 calves each. We didn’t have to do much but just let the calves drink milk, then drive to the next field, but Keiran was really excited about it. He had a great smile on his face the whole time, and would stand and watch the calves drink and say, “Yep. And that’s how you feed the calves”. Then he had me jump out of the truck and open the gate to the next field while he drove through, so I could close the gate behind him and stop the raging calves behind him from following the milk dispenser. This, also, was anticlimactic, since the calves were quite complacent with the amount of milk they had gotten, and didn't even follow the truck. Keiran assured me that normally the calves come running after the truck, but they must have gotten enough milk that day. Regardless, I still got to open and close the gate each time, in case the calves went crazy over the milk.
After successfully feeding all the calves, and having a traditional spaghettio and poached egg breakfast (not my favorite, but not bad either), Jillian and I headed into downtown Christ Church to see the damage from the earthquake last February. It's amazing how the fault line runs right through the middle of downtown Christ Church, and they didn’t even know it was there until the earthquake last fall just outside Christ Church, closer to where Keiran lives. So the earthquake in February was the first earthquake to hit the city of Christ Church, and completely demolished their entire downtown. The impact is devastating, and the city is so eerie. It’s so sad to hear about because Christ Church, as I’ve heard, was a lovely little city, and they were supposed to be one of the larger stadiums for the World Cup. Economically, they are losing out a lot on not only losing the world cup, but because they can’t even rebuild the city yet. There are a lot of delays with insurance because they’re waiting for the earthquakes to be over before they can build again. Meanwhile all of the businesses outside the destroyed areas have closed down because there is no business, and no upcoming business. So they’re stuck in a catch 22, and all they can do is demolish the broken buildings. It’s really so tragic. We could still see a hotel that is leaning sideways, and everything around it has already been taken down. And everything is shut down, with posted signs saying things like, “7 months gone, when does rebuilding start?” Anyway, we couldn’t do much besides walk outside the blocked off downtown, so we headed back to Keiran and Karen’s for dinner.
Keiran’s son Matt took us to the local rugby club to see a bunch of rugby paraphernalia in South Bridge, hometown of the All Blacks fly half, Dan Carter. Of all the All Blacks players, I really do like Dan Carter, not only because I got to see his hometown, but he is a great player that has a lot of confidence without being obsessed with himself like Sonny Bill Williams. Haha. The place we went to was a bit lackluster, and Matt was really disappointed the owner wasn’t there to show us all the trophies and things. But we watched Wales beat Namibia on TV, but since poor Namibia is so pathetic at rugby, Wales didn’t play my favorite player. As we were leaving, Matt apologized again for it not being that cool. I said that's okay, I just wanted to meet Carter’s dad. And he said, oh shoot! He was sitting right behind you! Oh well, at least I know what his dad looks like. And if anyone asks, I’m going to say I met his dad.
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