A crazy last week - Bungy and Milford

Today is Sunday, November 22nd in New Zealand and it is my last final day in this amazing country before I depart to Auckland, then to San Francisco, and then ultimately to home in Chicago. It is a very bittersweet time because although there are many reasons I am ready to come home and want to come home, I know I am going to miss this country incredibly once I am gone. The past five months have been amazing though and I topped it off with a perfect, small 3 day mini roadtrip with two of my best friends.

On Monday the 16th Case, Marshall and I rented a car (Marvie has been sold for a couple weeks now...) and drove up to Queenstown. We hungout, showed Marshall around and then drove to Arrowtown to hangout at our kiwi buddy's place for one last time. The next day we woke up and had a 1:00 pm bungy jump scheduled with AJ Hackett. The three of us decided to do Nevis, the 134 meter bungy (largest in NZ). It was expensive, but you might as well go big or go home right? It was well worth it. The feeling of bungy jumping is like no other feeling I have ever felt in my life. 134 meters is the equivalent of around 440 feet for those of us in the world not using the metric system, and that is preeeetttttyy high. At the Nevis highwire, the pod you jump off of is suspended on cables hanging in the middle of a valley about 150+ meters above the river. You put on a harness, get in this cable car that takes you out to the pod, then they hook the bungy up to you, have you step onto the edge and you jump. With no hesitation I did a massive swan dive and enjoyed every second of it. You actually have enough time to realize, "Wow, I am still falling." The ground is rushing towards you and then before you know it the bungy cord pulls and you are just bouncing up and down in the middle of the air. It was amazing.



After bungying and spending the night in arrowtown again, we woke up early the next day and made our way to Milford Sound. To get to Milford you have to make a massive loop southwest of Queenstown and then head back up north. The drive actually getting to Milford Sound is half the fun. There were many amazing things to stop and see on the side of the road.

Mirror Lakes

The Chasm

A Kea

Waterfalls

Milford Sound

A waterfall in the Sound



Marshall and I

The Catlins

I really do apologize that I have gotten lazy with my blog. I forgot my password and blogspot was being weird about email addresses not letting me log in. After some tinkering and a little help from Mama Tarras things worked out and now I am back.

A couple weekends ago in early November, some friends and I went on a day trip down to the Catlins. The Catlins are literally as far south as you can go on the south island of New Zealand. Stewart Island, which is technically not a part of New Zealand because its an island, is the only thing further south. The Catlins are about a 2 hour drive south of Dunedin and then you have to do a bit of driving once you are there to see the various things. In the Catlins we did a few different small hikes and saw plenty of amazing beaches, waterfalls, cliffs, and other things. Here are a few photos of some of the beautiful things we saw.

McLean Falls


Up higher at McLean

The top of McLean

Another waterfall, can't remember the name

Slope Point

The cliffs near Slope Point

Southern most point on the South Island

Windswept forest

On our way out of the Catlins we saw this yard that had crazy metal sculptures and objects all over the place surrounding a large bus. On the side of the bus it said "Lost Gypsy Gallery." We stopped. Inside was a guy who spends all his time in a room full of hundreds of tools and pieces of junk. He sits there all day listening to music making gadgets and trinkets for people to play with. He said the bus took him 5 years to make. This place was amazing, I could have spent hours in there looking around.