New Zealand! Yippie!!

Well, we've arrived in Melbourne (*nudgenudge to Colin and Vera) two days ago and I finally have internet working! Time to tell all the goodness of my New Zealand trip because I know some of you are so exited you're riding the seat of your chair with faces glued to the internet to hear about my latest adventures... or something. haha, ok here goes:

Day 1: Travel.
Lots of airports and flying. You heard a little about this in the Blue Room post, so I won't get too much into that. The flight to Auckland was about 4 hours, with a two hour layover, and then another two hour flight to Christchurch. On which I got to watch Memoirs of a Geisha!! which I've been dying to see since Laila gave me the book for Xmas. I arrived in the Christchurch airport to this:
Yayy!! We then drove in our amazing, wonderful rented Honda CRV to the Rolleston hostel and after a rousing game of NZ version Monopoly (which I SUCKED at) just went to sleep.

Day 2: Greymouth.
Sunday was mostly driving to Greymouth, soaking in the breathtaking views of NZ. We stopped at a place that looked a lot like the pinnacles that we visited back in Perth and took a hike to a waterfall that was called "The Devil's Punchbowl." We continued on to our Grey- mouth hostel, where we stayed in a room that used to be an old chapel and I literally had an etching of an old man watching me sleep from the window next to my top bunk. Not my favorite. We also met two girls from Colby college and after they introduced themselves I was like "Oh, I have an old boyfriend who goes to Colby" and they asked who, and I told them Tom Testo, and she goes "No way!! He just got elected class president!!!" ...small world...? Then we played yet another rousing game of Monopoly which I again blew at. Oh, and this was the random, unsettling cover of a garbage can: completely unnecessary if you ask me. Caught my eye, but for all the wrong reasons. Who even notices or understands the fine lettering?

Day 3: the glaciers.
From Greymouth we woke up early to drive to the glaciers. The drive was beautiful yet again, mostly temperate rainforest all around. And we discovered it was another World Heritage area! Check another off the list! Well, we found our hostel at Franz Josef (which was by far our favorite) and unpacked before we drove another 20 minutes to Fox Glacier, where we had our guided hike. First of all, Fox is one of the only glaciers to connect to a rainforest. It's about 1000ft thick and the tongue ends only 3 miles from town and is one of the fastest moving glaciers today. We had to wear special waterproof boots of which one shoes was always too small, and once we got to the glacier we had to attach crampons, or special spikes, onto those boots. Our guide carried a special pick axe to pick away at the ice, and which almost hit me in the face a few times climbing through the rainforest. We travelled on a series of one-plank bridges and narrow passage ways, but finally got onto the glacier. We hiked around for about an hour seeing some amazing scenery and were generally freezing to death. The rainforest hike we had even been getting hot on, but the second you step onto the glacier you immediately notice the temperature change. We saw big holes of ice filled with near-frozen water,
Midway through we got to go through this ice hole someone had carved out, which was totally cool.


Well, sorry, but it's dinner time now. Will finish more tomorrow. Byeeeee.