South Island, New Zealand

The South Island of New Zealand, in my opinion, is infinitely more beautiful than the North Island, which was pretty beautiful itself. We started off in Dunedin, which is a fairly small town with only a few things to do. Our first night was pretty calm. We walked around the city center and got dinner at a little Italian restaurant then went back to the hostel to sleep. 

Wednesday, we woke up, got a delicious breakfast and then headed to one of Dunedin’s only to main attractions, the Speight’s Brewery. Although I don’t particularly enjoy beer, it was cool to see how it all works and do the taste test at the end. Then we took a nice drive along to coast to the Otago Peninsula lookout point. After grabbing dinner we again headed back to the hostel for an early night.

 

Thursday was the big day Christy had been waiting for, Cadbury World.  Dunedin’s real attraction is the big Cadbury chocolate factory and touring it for Christy was like going to Disney World. We got to see a chocolate fountain that dropped 1000 kilograms of chocolate within like 10 seconds. Then we got to drink some of the liquid chocolate. We also got tons of free samples and stocked up on some chocolate for our road trips ahead. As soon as we were done at Cadbury World, we drove four hours to Queenstown. It was an absolutely beautiful drive. After some issues with traffic, we arrived at our hostel and walked around the quaint city.

Friday morning was the day of our big adventure. We had signed up to go canyoning not really knowing what it was or what to expect. It turns out it was unlike anything we’d expected. The three of us, plus three other Americans and two Irish girls piled into a van and were driven down to the canyon. Once there, we were given wet suit jumpers, wet suit socks, wet suit sweaters with hoods, water shoes, life jackets, helmets and harnesses and that’s when we started to worry. It was 50 degrees outside tops and the water was even colder and it was becoming apparent that we would be in it quite a bit. After getting geared up and rocking my helmet which gave me the name ‘Ke$ha’… the most fitting thing I could have chosen…. we were led up to the edge of the canyon. It started with a few nice zip lines across the canyon and then they attached me to a rope and said sit back. Before I knew it, I was abseiling 35 meters down the side of the canyon.  Then we really saw the raging river we would be in. The next two hours were filled with cliff jumping, me chickening out of cliff jumping and being lowered down the cliff by a rope, sliding down rocks, swimming through rapids and scaling rock walls. It was incredibly intense and I’m not gonna lie and say I wasn’t terrified. Although we were all a little battered and bruised, we survived and had a good time! We had worked up quite the appetite so we got in line and went to lunch at FergBurger, a super popular burger place that was absolutely delicious. 

Then, after recovering from our hypothermia, we decided that we needed to freeze just a little bit more and went to Below Zero, a bar made entirely of ice. They give you gloves and a coat when you get there and everything, even the cups, are made of ice. It reminded me of winter and home and why I much prefer the beach to the snow. Of course, in typical Maggie fashion, I then felt my tonsils swell up like crazy and spent the rest of the evening laying in bed as my friends went out on the town.

Saturday we packed up and headed to our last adventure in Queenstown, bungy jumping. We hoped onto the gondola that took us to the top of the mountain and that’s when I started to panic. Normal people don’t jump off ledges like that. Christy and Alex were up first so I stood across the way to video tape them. If I thought watching them fall out of a plane was bad, this was 100 times worse. By the time it was my turn, I was thoroughly panicked and as they strapped me into the harness, I just kept saying ‘nope, I definitely can’t do this’ and so low and behold, I didn’t. Everyone tried to get me to do it but I just stood there paralyzed. There was a 3 second period in time where I thought I could break loose and just do it but the guy was standing in my way and I didn’t want to risk death. Then my moment of courage was over and I was panicking again. Eventually I got out of the  harness and walked away in shame. Then we got in the car and again drove another 5 hours to Fox Glacier!

Sunday morning we put on all our warm gear and got ready to hike the glacier. They gave us special hiking boots and crampons so that we could grip the ice. There was a big rock slide a few weeks ago so there were issues with the route we took to the canyon, meaning we had to cross a river in a raft that was pulled across using a lovely pulley and lever system. It was kind of sketchy but it did the job. Then we got to actually climb up the ice and learn more about how the glacier is formed. I only slipped a few times thanks to the handy crampons. It was the first time I’ve seen ice or snow since I left home the day before the lovely polar vortex hit. We then packed back up into the car and drove the long way to Christchurch. Our hostel there was an old jail that has been renovated. It was really nice but still kind of a spooky feeling.

Now we’re off on our flight back to the Gold Coast, where we’ll spend less than 12 hours repacking and then catch our series of flights back to Chicago. It’s absolutely unbelievable. I guess I’ll see you all soon then!