New Zealand

I’m back from New Zealand! My roommate and I were lucky enough to have a group of our friends from Canada come visit us in Melbourne for 1 week. Then all 7 of us headed to New Zealand for 2 weeks of road tripping, camping, and exploring! We spent 1 week on the North Island. This part of the country has tons of green rolling hills and is very pretty.

One day we decided to raft over the world’s highest commercially rafted waterfall (Tutea waterfall close to Rotorua)! It was a 7 meter drop. I was terrified at first, but I love white water rafting and the experience was great! Lets do it again please?

We also saw glowworms in a cave; no pictures allowed sadly. But the worms look exactly like a night sky full of a million stars!

The funniest story from the North Island is definitely the night my friend and I camped a little too close to the river and woke up floating in the morning. Yes. Floating.

After taking the ferry to the South Island and picking up new rental cars, the adventure continued for another week!

The views on the South Island are just as impressive as the North Island; more rolling hills, but now mountains as well! We stopped at Fox glacier to see one of the only glaciers in the world that bridges temperate rain forest.

Another one of my favorites from the South Island was the day we quickly stopped in to see Split Apple rock in Abel Tasman National Park. I was a bit disappointed we didn’t get to explore this park, but most areas are only accessible by multi-day hikes or boat—so I’ll just have to come back! It was cold and windy looking at Split Apple rock from the beach… but that didn’t stop a few of us from stripping down and swimming out to it. We climbed all over the rock and stared back at the beach. The water was soooo clear! the rocks were covered in tiny little black mussels.

We spent a lot of time in Queenstown, where we explored the town and cafes and sat in the gardens. Fergburger provided us with some of the best burgers we’ve EVER had in our lives!