South Island Trip Day #6

Good morrrning!!!!

This day starts with Becca on a hanglide trip. She was supposed to leave us the key to the car and her room key for the hostel but didn't actually do either of those so when we went to check out at 10, we couldn't technically check her out and we had to explain to the people working at the front desk that we were leaving and had all of her stuff out of the room but that she wasn't able to be there to turn in her key because she was floating in the air like a bird. NBD. So Sarah and I head out to wander the town because we can't load anything into the car because we think that Becca has the keys and that means that we aren't able to leave Queenstown to go explore the small places around the city. So what do we do..... we get a hot dog and chips and go lay on the brick wall that overlooks Lake Wakitipu and stare and the Asian tourists giving their stereotypical peace sign pictures with their iPhone. Talk about hilarious. We then get a text message from Becca saying that she's on her way back from hangliding and asking us where she should meet us. We tell her that she's got the keys so we haven't been able to go anywhere and she says she swears she doesn't have them. Turns out, Sarah has had the keys in her purse the entire morning and we could have been exploring cool things instead of gawking at Asian tourists. We go and get the car, load it up and then head off to Arrowstown, a small town north of Queenstown. We first stopped at Coronet Peak where Becca spent the morning and just looked at the beautiful landscape and view of Queenstown from atop this gorgeous mountain. Then it was off to Arrowstown. I wasn't feeling well at this point so I decided to take a nap on a hillside while the others were off exploring the little colony. Let me tell you... it was probably the best I had slept the entire trip!!!

After Arrowstown, we started for Te Ana, the last place you can get food or gas before Milford Sound. We had to drive through all of this little bity towns to get to Te Anau and I spent most of the day sleeping across the backseat. Motion sickness was killer!!! At one point Sarah turns around and says "Dakota, sit up and put your seat belt on, there's a cop" and I was like "are we getting pulled over" and she goes "yep". So I sit up quickly and put my seat belt just as the cop was approaching the window. In New Zealand, if someone isn't wearing a seat belt, that person gets fined and the driver of the car gets fined so it was a good thing Sarah was looking out. The police woman starts talking to Becca about how she was speeding and how her license was about to expire and how she was going to write her a ticket. Holy crap did I feel bad!!!!!!....but it did provide us with something to laugh about for the rest of the trip because it happened in the smallest town with nobody around. From them on... we referred to it as "stupid Mossburn" About an hour later we arrived in Te Anau, headed to the grocery store to get some food for our trek to Milford and sat by the Lake Te Anau just at sunset to enjoy the last bit of sun on the lake. We then left Te Anau to get as close to Milford as possible to camp for the night and we found a cute little campsite that was like 5 bucks a person to stay at. Luckily for us, Sarah put the envelope in the wrong place so we ended up getting our money back the next day. That night, sleep was rough because it rained all night long. The cold and loud of the rain, along with the uncomfortableness of the car made it fairly difficult to sleep for the night but we were determined to be well rested for the next day at Milford Sound.

South Island Trip Day #5

Day 5 was pretty uneventful. We laid around for most of the day, did a bit of laundry, and went for a walk around the town. Then our hostel had free dinner that was delicious and a $1000 bar tab at a local bar for all the people staying in the hostel. Before we headed to the bar a friend from school walks into the hostel and we find out that he's staying in our room. Talk about strange. We also met two other people who were moving into our hostel who had met Brock, our friend, on a Milford Sound track a few days before.


Talk about a crazy turn of events. The next day we would be off to Te Anau before heading to Milford Sound.

South Island Trip Day #4

The day had finally come for the first time since we'd left Auckland that we were finally going to...... you guessed it....... SHOWER!!! We woke up at sunrise yet again and all we had on our minds was that nice hot shower and finally getting clean, but then we realized we couldn't actually check into our hostel until 9 am so we drove to the lakefront and just sat there. Well stupid me forgot to turn the lights off and the car died, while we were sitting in front of a group of people who I then had to go ask if I could borrow some jumper cables (really a rental car without jumpers.... that should definitely be included). After a few attempts I finally came across a German boy and and Austrian girl who had a set of jumpers and were willing to help us get our car started back up. The girl comforted us by telling us that their car had died like their second day into their trip. At 9 we then headed to the hostel where we found out that we couldn't actually get into our room until 2pm. Sweet. Luckily, they were nice enough to let us use the showers before we were headed out to wander around Queenstown.

Queenstown is probably one of the cutest little towns I've ever seen. It's full of tiny little shops, gorgeous architecture and wonderfully nice people. We first went just walking around and then we saw a couple of souvenir shops to go into to get some things for back home. While walking we saw the first Mexican restaurant in all of New Zealand. I swear to you that they are nowhere to be found here. Thai, Chinese, Indian..... all over the place.... but Mexican, nowhere. After seeing the restaurant, we knew we had to eat dinner there for Sarah's birthday and then we sent her off on her skydiving adventure. While she was gone Becca and I did some more roaming around until it was finally time to check into our hostel. Once we got there we met all  9 of our hostelmates. The rest of the day was pretty boring. We laid around and got ready for a night out because we had heard about a blindfolded bar crawl that our hostel was putting on and we knew we had to do it.


First we headed to dinner at the Mexican restaurant for Sarah's birthday where I had the tastiest enchiladas of my life. It was soo nice to finally have Mexican in my life again. After that we were off to get some green monster (for those of you who want to know, message me and I'll tell you all about it) and then it was off to the blindfolded bar crawl which was a crazy experience and something I don't think I would do again. Somehow being led across a strange town in a line of people just freaks me out. :) Then it was home for the night to get up and explore some more the next day.