Off to Christchurch

After sending off Andrea to go to her next rotation in Seattle, I've been organizing and packing to move out of my place in St. Clair. It is such a cute little place, but I will be up in Christchurch for a few days and then I'll be staying at a hostel when I get back to Dunedin. I'll update more when I'm back from Christchurch, but here are a few photos from Te Anau...

Milford Sound

Sunday afternoon we ventured out to Te Anau which is the closest town to Milford Sound to stay overnight. It was a 4 and a half four drive with a couple short stops in Gore and Mossburn. Apparently Gore is the place to be though, because it holds the title for New Zealand’s capital of country music and the world capital of brown trout fishing.
Milford Sound is actually misnamed... technically it is not a sound, but a fiord. When it was first named, fiord was not yet in the English vocabulary so hence it was named a sound. Here is a little vocab lesson for those of you, like me until yesterday, who have no idea what either of the two words mean. A sound is carved out by a river while a fiord is carved out by a glacier. Either way you call it, it’s gorgeous. Absolutely stunning. I almost feel ashamed to put up photos because it will never do it justice. We did a nature cruise around Milford Sound and even though you may not believe it, the tiny white spot just to the left of the bottom of the waterfall is actually another tour boat. It’s just amazing the sheer cliffs and how vegetation can actually grow. We happened to be there on a great day as the skipper said it was the first time in a week he had to put on his sunglasses. Words cannot describe how beautiful this place is... enjoy the pics!Sweet as...

The castle and All Blacks!

We started our Saturday out with visiting the Dunedin farmer’s market held at the Railway station. It’s a cute little market with local bakeries, farmers, and cheeseries. We had some chocolate crepes for breakfast, but they didn’t quite compare to the heavenly crepes in Arrowtown from our trip to Queenstown. We then spent the afternoon at the Larnach Castle on the Otago Peninsula. Such an amazing view!But the biggest news of the day is the night watching the All Blacks play Wales for the last time in Carisbrook. I went with some of the girls from the pharmacy school who happened to have an extra ticket and it was tons of fun! The rugby game started out a little slow, but the All Blacks came through with a great win. An official shout-out is due to Cori Friezen for the great suggestion of the hand and feet warmers. It was a clear night and it actually turned out to not be too cold, but I had already put on the feet warmers. It felt like a had an electric blanket in my shoes and I stayed nice and toasty all night! It was amazing how quiet the stadium was unless the All Blacks had just scored. So different from American football! I know it's a little hard to see, but the All Blacks just got a try (like a touchdown).

I know that there has been quite a delay, but my internet is not always reliable or lightning-quick. So this past week has been a slow wrap-up of my rotation. We went back to the university to finish up some data collection as well as finish our paper. The sun has been shining and the weather hasn’t been too chilly this week. One evening during a light rain, we witnessed a car hitting a pedestrian 5 feet in front of us. This poor guy had no shoes on and had his pants rolled up to his knees from the rain. It was surreal and completely in slow-motion. He turned out to be alright, but quite shaken up. I have made a resolution to carry my camera with me anytime I run. Andrea and I took a 2 hour walk around the city and out to the harbor. It just happened to be an amazingly sunny day with not a cloud in the sky. Dunedin is the home to New Zealand’s only dental school and also home to what I like to call Molarhenge. Quite a masterpiece, eh?
At lunch today, one of the New Zealand dental students asked Andrea what would happen if she became a sir. I figured I would do some interpreting since I was the only one aware that they had two very different paths for the question. Andrea was trying to decide if she should be offended since she was asked what she would be called if she had a sex-change, while he meant to ask what she would be called if she was dubbed by the Queen. It made for quite the laugh though.

This is the final countdown for Andrea’s last week here and we are trying to fit in as much as we can before she leaves. On the agenda are the local farmer’s market, our favorite breakfast place, and one more trip around the south island. I am so excited about having a ticket for the All Blacks rugby game on Saturday. Apparently rugby is quite the deal down here, so it will make for an amazing night!

Wanna go back to Wanaka

As we left Queenstown and headed for Wanaka, we had a few stops in Arrowtown, a bungy jump, and another vineyard along the way. Arrowtown was originally a gold rush town, so it’s not exactly the busiest place in the world anymore. But we had brunch at this amazing creperie run by a French family that had moved there about a year ago. Fantastic! Nutella and bananas make the perfect pair. We didn’t do the bungy jump, but got to see some jumpers. At this bridge, you can tell them exactly how much to dunk you in the river below. It would be quite the rush to get your head dunked in when it was so chilly and with the wind. The vineyard was beautiful with a fog just lifting out of the valley and frost on the leaves. We travelled the Crown Range road that is a shortcut between Q-town and Wanaka and saw some amazing scenery. It sometimes closes when the weather is bad, but luckily the weather had cleared up from the constant rain of the week before. I was especially thankful for the clear skies because of the hairpin turns and the odd aspect of driving on the left side of the road. Wanaka is a beautiful town right on the lake and quite a bit quieter than Q-town. There is this great place called Puzzling World in Wanaka that shows some of the tricks used in filming Lord of the Rings. It was quite fun to look around this place and try out their maze. We did fine at finding all the towers but getting back to the beginning took longer than we would like to admit! There are also some Roman-style restrooms that we thought we should try out. On our way back we decided to take the scenic route that goes the north way back to Dunedin through Ranfurly and out to Palmerston. It was absolutely amazing and we even stopped to play in the snow for a bit. I think Andrea was a bit confused on what that white stuff could be. On our drive back, there was a motorcycle rally that I was told is called Brass Monkey and occurs over the Queen’s Birthday holiday weekend every year. We saw hundreds of motorcycles everywhere we went going all directions. Andrea kept saying that maybe Saturday was a big day for motorcycles, but I think every motorcycle owner on the south island turned out for this thing. Ray, you would have loved it! It would have been a bit on the chilly side, but the views totally make up for it. All in all, this was an amazing little getaway!

Out to Queenstown...

The past week has been incredible! We started out at a local pharmacy in Caversham for a few days and then we rented a car to drive around Central Otago. I was the full-time driver since it’s cheaper for insurance because I’m 25. It took a little while to get used to the whole driving on the left thing, and they have this crazy right of way (give way) rule where if you are turning left, you must yield to other people turning into the lane you are about to turn into. I know that was kind of wordy, but pretty much it’s equivalent (back to the correct way of driving on the right hand side) to yielding to a person in oncoming traffic making a left-hand turn when you are making a right-hand turn. Absolutely insane. They are the only country in the world that does it this way and they are working on changing it because they realize it is so not the best way to drive. So after every stop or when we were driving in the city, Andrea would remind me which way I was going. Sometimes I would just talk out loud what I was doing and to whom I needed to give way just to make sure I was thinking like a Kiwi driver. Rather amusing at times, otherwise I got the hang of it. The roads are pretty windy and there are often times when there is no guard rail along a cliff. We drove out to Queenstown and stopped by a vineyard and cheesery on the way. We did the tour of their cave cellar and we timed it perfectly since they were filling up the barrels during our tour. Quite interesting.
We made it out to Queenstown pretty late in the day so we got a place to stay for the night and went walking around downtown. It is nice in New Zealand for walking around town because the town centers are very compact. They next morning we drove around the lake to Glenorchy which is the gateway to where some of the filming for Lord of the Rings took place (for those that would like to know, a little town, named Paradise, past Glenorchy is the setting for Isengard). I realized that I need to watch the Lord of the Rings movies again, because I don’t remember the movie names of any of the places on the map where they say filming was done. I know I keep saying this, but it is beautiful here. That was the hardest part about driving was that I didn’t get to take in all the scenery along the way. Once we made our way back to Q-town, we took a gondola ride to take in the incredible views. The Remarkables mountain range is gorgeous! While at the top of the mountain, we did the luge track and even though Andrea and I have both luged some pretty phenomenal places, we had a blast on this track. Cheers!