Greymouth and Cromwell...

The end of our journey! Both of these cities were basically stop overs until we got to Invercargill. Greymouth is a small town, but we were staying right on the beach so that was so nice. We went and watched the sunset over the beach. The next day we drove 9 hours to drive to Cromwell.


On the way to Cromwell we stopped at the Franz-Joseph Glacier and Fox Glacier. They are both neat glaciers that are tucked away in between two mountains.

Franz-Joseph Glacier

Me and a piece of the glacier!

Fox Glacier

After we saw the glaciers we stopped in this practically non existent town called Haast for dinner. We all got fish and chips which was made with whitebait fish and really delicious. The bad thing about Haast however is this disgusting little things called sand flies. They are tiny little black flies that bite quite viciously. They actually draw blood and leave you bleeding a little bit when they bite you and then they start to itch! And if you itch them at all they last for weeks before they finally go away and stop itching. They are some of the most horrible bugs I've ever had the displeasure of meeting.

Christchurch...

(Me and my tent mate Ann in Christchurch)

This is the second biggest city in New Zealand and the largest city on the South Island. The Young Single Adult ward in Christchurch fed us lunch and then we went into town and wandered around. We checked out the cathedral in "Cathedral Square" and then we went and just wandered around shops. We had Indian food for dinner which was super yummy.
While we were in town the Buskers Festival was going on which meant that they had various booths open with various goods and foods for sale. They also had a comedy show going on in the town's main square which was quite funny to watch.

On Sunday we went to the Christchurch Botanical Gardens. They were so beautiful. My favorite area of the gardens was the rose garden. So many beautiful and different varieties. We also saw various other beautiful flowers throughout the garden. There was one that was particularly cool from Australia, and it's called a chocolate lily. If you grind it up it actually smells like chocolate. They had a sample of it in the visitors center. Best flower ever.

Hydrangeas Pretty flowers in garden

The other neat thing about the park is that they have a concert series every Sunday and have local bands come and play in the afternoon. We listened to a band called "The Unfaithful Ways" who were actually quite good. It was so neat to just be sitting in the park listening to the band play and relaxing. I would love to be able to do that every Sunday.

We couldn't resist taking a photo of our "stunning buns."

Picton and Kaikoura...

These were two very small towns on the South Island that we mostly just stopped in, slept, and left. But a few interesting things happened. In order to get to Picton from Wellington we had to take a ferry from the North Island (Wellington) to the South Island (Picton). We heard from a lot of people that the ferry ride can be very rough and lot's of people get seasick but luckily nobody from our group had to suffer through that. It was quite a peaceful ride and took about 3 hours total. So then we arrived in Picton, slept, woke up and moved on to Kaikoura.

View of Picton from the ferry.

Kaikoura is a small coastal town that is actually known for whale and dolphin watching but unfortunately it was quite rainy when we were there so we didn't get to stop and see any of those. We did get to spend a little time on the beach and see some seals however. There was a little turn off the road that we stopped at and their were tons of seals and baby ones too. All the little babies would hang out around this one rock that had a small tide pool made and they'd hop in it and swim around. It was very cute. Then we went down to another beach and wandered around some tide pools and saw a cool starfish!

And another seal that actually let you get quite close to him. I tried to get a little to close to him however and he hissed at me like a cat before waddling away. I didn't get to close anymore after that.

The hissing seal.

The other thing that we did in Kaikoura was stopped at a Jade Jewelry store. The big thing to give in New Zealand as a gift is New Zealand jade that is carved into various Maori symbols. The Maori's have various symbols that they carve into the jade that mean various things such as friendship, and unity. Something interesting about it is that they believe that you shouldn't buy one for yourself but you should only give or receive them as a gift from someone else. They're quite expensive though so don't be expecting them as a souvenir! We stopped at a store run by a guy named Jeremy who finds all the stones himself (you find them on the beach) and carved most of them. It was very neat to see his work, because they are truly pieces of art.

This is just an example of one of the necklaces Jeremy has carved and what a traditional green stone (as they are called) looks like.

Wellington...

This town didn't have as many exciting adventures as our other cities but it was still fun. Wellington is the last city we went to on the north island. We went into the city and got some money so we could go eat dinner and explore a little. I had a delightful hamburger that was huge! It was probably a good 6" in diameter and was so good. Yum!! They do burgers well here and it had avocado and bacon. All kinds of goodness. And my coke. The coke here is so good because they make it with cane sugar not with corn syrup. Double yum! Then we wandered around and looked in the windows of stores. Something really interesting about New Zealand is that everything here closes super early, around 5:00 pm, and we didn't get into town until around 5:00 so we pretty much had time to eat dinner and then all the stores were closed.

My first coke in New Zealand.

Luckily we went into town the next morning too and my friend Heidi and I went to a store we had seen the night before called... (wait for it).... Missy's Room. How perfect no?! So of course we had to stop and of course I had to buy something. Fortunately things were on sale so I got a skirt for a great price. Now I have something from my room. Of course as my mom would say I could just go to my own closet and find plenty of things to wear, but still. It's New Zealand.



So after we bought my skirt we went to McDonalds and had a $ 0.60 ice cream cone. Ice cream here needs it's own discussion. It is so creamy and tastes so much richer and better than American ice cream. Even a cheap soft serve cone from McDonalds is creamier than back home.

This awesome giant umbrella in the middle of a square.

Waitomo Caves...

These are the coolest things in the world. We got to go black water rafting in a cave. So we got down to the caves in the morning and had to put on these awesome wetsuits. You had to put on booties, and a full wetsuit, jacket, and these hard waterproof boots. We also had hard helmets and head lamps. We were all decked out. Then we got our tubes and had to go practice jumping off a 5 ft high platform into the river because we were going to be jumping of a waterfall in the cave. Then after we had been deemed decent enough jumpers to hop of a waterfall in the caves we headed in. The water was so cold but you couldn't really feel it through your wetsuit and we started to walk through the caves. The water wasn't super high in parts so we had to walk a lot on the rocks and the guides liked to have us turn off our head lamps so a lot of the time I was stumbling over rocks in the dark. I think I fell like 5 times. So we finally got to the waterfall and hopped in and it was so neat to just float down these caves. But that's not even the best part. The reason that these caves are so cool is because the have glow worms. They are these small worms that live on the ceiling of the caves and the glow phosphorescent blue. They also are silk worms and have little threads of silk that they produce. You look up at the ceiling of the caves and it looked like you were out in the night sky looking at up the stars because there were just so many of them. It was beautiful. If any of you have seen Planet Earth they actually do a little segment on the glow worms. Check it out and I saw those in person.

This isn't a great picture but this is what the ceiling of the cave looks like. Stars in a night sky, but on the ceiling of a cave. And their worms.

The silk threads from the worms