Queenstown round two!

So my trip to Queenstown this second time was very different than my first. When I went with my mom it was quite relaxing and we would wander the streets, shop, eat amazing meals and sight see. This time it was all about the adventure! there was a huge group of us that went, around 20! The group I traveled with rented a 12 passenger van, which was really awesome, we left early saturday morning and got to Queenstown around 12:30. We had a quick lunch and then I was off to my first adventure. RIVERBOARDING! We were all given a wetsuit (the river was a glacial river and very cold), helmet and small boogie bard. We then were ushered down to the river where we received about 2 minutes of training and then were off! I was swimming down a river tackling class 3 rapids with no experience with white water and only a little boogie board to hold on to! It was incredible! Such a rush! There were some rapids that were so big that as I came up to them I basically closed my eyes, held my breath and held on for dear life! We got to run a 6 km stretch of river twice, so the second time was so much fun because I felt like an old pro! Crazy stuff.. That night we all went to a BYO (bring your own) at an amazing thai place and then hit the bars to experience Queenstown's night life, It was so much fun to be there with all of my friends! The next morning we woke up and checked out of our hostel, (I was staying in an 8 person co ed dorm style, I felt bad for the two random people in the room with all of us rowdy kids!), and then went out for an amazing breakfast. After breakfast I then had my next action adventure. The Nevis Bungy. The second tallest in the world sitting on a high wire between two cliffs at 134m high! I was surprisingly calm for most of the time leading up to it. I was just so excited I don't think I had time to be nervous. It was nuts sitting out in the little pod on the high wire looking through the glass floor below me and seeing one by one the people before me leap into thin air and about 3 seconds later be 134m below! They looked smaller than ants! Finally it was my turn to go. I sat down in the chair so they could strap me into the harness and to the bungee cord and by heart started racing. I stood up to walk over to the platform and bam, it hit me. I was looking down into a canyon and realized I was about to jump into nothingness. I took three deep breaths, put my toes over the ledge, the guy behind me said three, two one, and I leapt forward into a huge swan dive (I was screaming bloody murder before my feet even left the platform), and was falling, and falling, and I kept falling. I felt like I was in free fall forever and the ground was starting to get closer and closer, just then the bungy caught me and yanked me back up,  then my screams turn to pure joy and excitement! I was having the time of my life! I couldn't believe I had just done that! As I was hauled back up to the jump pod I had the biggest smile on my face! Pure joy is an amazing thing! I just cant wait to do it again!!! :D I eventually made it back to queenstown, got a Fergburger (best hamburger in the world) and we all piled into the 12 passenger van and drove home. Wow what an amazing weekend.

Livingston ridge

Hello all, so two weekends ago I took an amazing trip to Fiordland national park! I went with the university of Otago's tramping (hiking) club. I went on the livingston ridge trip. It was a completely off trail bush bashing hike that took around 11 hours to complete! It was stunning. by far the most amazing hike I have ever done. We were hiking up on a mountain ridge with two river valleys down below on either side and even larger mountain to the left and right! There were also a bunch of alpine lakes that we would wonder past on our trip. This was a really tough hike. It was uphill most of the way, sometimes climbing up huge peaks that would go straight up, all the while carrying a 50 lb pack on my back! It was insane! There was one point when we were starting our descent where we were climbing straight down with no path and barely any mountain to get a good hold for my feet and I slipped, both of my feet were in the air and I was sliding down the mountain very quickly. My mind was racing as I was trying to find a way out of this! Thankfully there was another person below me that saw all of this happening and stopped me before I went plummeting into thin air! That was a close call! We finally made it all the way down the mountain and slept the night in the Mckeller back country hut on the greenstone track. It was so nice to have a nice bed to sleep on (unlike the night before when I slept on he concrete in the divide shelter). We made a nice meal of some curry and lentils and I slept like a rock. The next morning I had a 5 hour easy hike along the greenstone and then the Routeburn to get back to the divide where we were picked up by the bus and started the long trip back. It was truly an amazing weekend!

Catch up!

Alright I know it has been a long time since I have posted so I am going to try and do a quick catch up! So two weekends ago I stayed in Dunedin! On friday after class a few friends and I headed out to the outskirts of dunedin to the base of Mt. Cargill. We did the two hour hike up the mountain expecting to see amazing views of Dunedin, but instead we got to take some great pictures of being inside a cloud.. While it was sad we didn't see the views it was cool being on the top of the mountain and seeing the huge radio towers and satellite dishes, and because the clouds were so low it felt like we were looking out on the edge of the world into nothing! It was a weird feeling, but still super cool. On that saturday I had a field trip for my marine vertebrate class. I went out on a research fishing vessel and got to see first hand the different methods of commercial fishing and the ecological impacts of them. It was really cool! The class left from the Otago marine biology lab out on the Otago peninsula in the town of Portobello! We launched the boat from there and headed out to sea. I got to have an amazing view of the harbor and peninsula, seeing seals, sea birds, a whale, dusky dolphins and a few blue penguins! I also got to dig through fish and invertebrate specimens that we caught! It was a a really good time and a great learning experience I am glad I got to be a part of. The next day I went with the tramping club to a nearby river to do a bit of training for our fiordlands trip(which I just got home from). It was really fun, we learned how to properly cross large/ fast moving rivers safely, we also got free hot chocolate and cookies so I was quite content! When I got home from the rivercrossing training I went to tunnel beach in Dunedin. It is an amazing beach with huge cliffs, and a tunnel that goes straight down into the cliff and takes you down to the sand and water. We hung out, took some pictures and relaxed in the sun. I then went home did some homework and had a regular week at school!!

The Routeburn Track!

Hi everyone! Sorry I haven't posted in a few days so I'll try to catch you all up! So last weekend 3 friends and I packed up the car and headed off to Queenstown! We had about a 4 hour drive until we were in beautiful Queenstown! We walked around the city and I showed them around to the sites, because I was the only one that had been there before. We then of course had a Fergburger, the best hamburger in the world, got directions to the campsite and drove off into the wilderness! But actually though.... We were in the middle of nowhere. And we got lost, very lost. It was pitch black outside, we hadn't seen civilization in about an hour and we couldn't find the camp ground. We ended up driving 40 minutes up into the back country of Mount Aspiring National Park to where the Lord of the Rings filmed in the Fangorn Forest and Isanggard. That was pretty cool, but we eventually found our way down sketchy back country dirt roads to the Lake Sylvan camp ground. We pitched our tents and settled in for some well deserved rest. At around 1:00am we were gently awakened by the rest of the tramping club showing up on their buses and setting up their tents for another hour. The next morning we got up early and headed to the start of the Routeburn track which is one of New Zealand's famous Great Walks. It was raining a little but nothing too severe so we kept on. We hiked about an hour to the Flats Hut, one of the first stops on the Routeburn. We took some pics and had a snack and continued on. Then the track changed dramatically. Before the track was a rolling up and down with nothing too bad but all of the sudden we were going straight up. We kept walking straight up for about two and a half hours until we finally made it to the Routeburn falls hut, the second stop on the great walk. We again stopped briefly to take pictures and fill up our water bottles. The falls were a beautiful sight with bright blue water cascading down into lush green rainforest. Once we moved on from the falls we were at a high enough altitude that we were above the tree line and into the alpine scrub forest. This landscape was nestled in a high altitude valley with small kettle lakes from glacial run off all over the place, and high peaks of mountain on either side. We scampered over boulders and across rivers, with the occasional stop to fill up our water bottles straight from the stream! We finally got up to the Harris saddle, the mountain pass that on one side had Mount Aspiring national park and the other looks down at Fiordlands national park. There was a small shelter there to stop, get out of the wind and have lunch at. We then moved on to climb straight up onto the top of one of the peaks to Conical Hill. We climbed up and spent an hour just looking out at the view and taking funny pictures. Then we began the long journey down the mountain. The sun finally came out as we began climbing off the mountain, so I had to stop every few steps to retake all of my previous pictures. Once we were back down beneath the bush line the trail became more well managed and so naturally I ran down! It was so fun and actually much easier! Once we were back down to the river flats we stopped and changed into swim suits. I jumped right into a glacial river! It was freezing!! But so much fun, I loved it! The rivers are just so clear and blue! We eventually made it all the way back to the car and drove back to the camp site. That night was so much fun. There were about 90 students all in the tramping club there, we had a cooking contest, worm wrestling (Where two people have to put sleeping bags on and then cant use their arms to wrestle, it was comedy), and of course beautiful star gazing. Out in the middle of nowhere there was an amazing view of the stars, the southern cross and the milky way! Everyone eventually went to sleep, and I slept like a rock! After an 11 hour hike I was exhausted! We got up around 9 the next day, went to Queenstown for some breakfast and made the journey home. So far my best weekend I have had since being in New Zealand!