The University of Auckland has a two-week mid-semester break, providing the perfect opportunity for its abundance of international students to get their travelling in. On Saturday night Paige and I began our break with the All Blacks vs Wallabies game. The All Blacks are New Zealand’s national rugby team, and renowned as the best in the world. The game begins with the Haka, the Maori war dance. This shows the strength, unity, and pride of the team and is a tradition at every All Blacks game. While I do not know much about rugby (my limited knowledge coming from an 11 minute “Rugby for Beginners” video I’d watched earlier that day), the game was entertaining, exciting, and resulted in a 40-12 victory for the All Blacks.
The next morning we rose early to catch a flight to our first destination: Queenstown. Famed for its proximity to skiing and Fiordland National park, Queenstown is must in the South Island. We disembarked the plane on the tarmac, surrounded by snow-capped mountains. “Holy shit. This is a real place in the world. This is just the frickin airport!” I said to myself as we walked the short distance into the airport to grab our bags. We arrived mid-day and decided to spend the afternoon wandering around downtown, which is nestled between Lake Wakatipu and the mountains. The hostel we are staying at is right along the lake, and provides unbelievable views of the mountains and beaches. While relaxing on the beach we ran into a friend from school and decided to grab a pint and a bite together. As we ate, we planned our next day and decided it was Lake Wanaka for us. As our friend had rented a car and wanted to go skiing around Mt. Aspiring, he offered to give us a ride up.
We met up the next morning, and after picking up another friend who was going to ski, we head out for the day. Lake Wanaka was highly recommended to me and had many walks and hikes around it’s borders. We were dropped of at what is known as “That Wanaka Tree”, a solitary tree that has grown up just off the shore of the lake.
After a quick viewing of the tree, we proceeded along the coast of the lake. We tramped for a couple of hours, stopping periodically to observe our surroundings. The lakeshore was rocky, framed by snowy mountains and a glimpse of the small town of Wanaka in the distance. After a couple of hours we turned back and explored Wanaka while we waited for our ride. The town was bursting with small local shops, both for souvenirs and food. I picked up a small, teal pin the shape of the country of New Zealand, perfect for my new backpack. The boys finished their day on the slopes and picked us up, heading back to Queenstown where we visited the iconic Fergburger for dinner.
The following day we embarked upon a hike that would take us to the overlook of Queenstown skyline, a height most people take a gondola up to. However, being students traveling on a budget we opted to climb the distance instead of riding up. The trail was steep all the way up, forcing up to stop and breathe every ten minutes or so. As I’ve said many times before, the climb was tough, and at times almost impossible, but the view was, once again, worth it.
I could have stared down at the town for hours, but meat pies were calling and the wind was sharp and cut straight through all three of my layers. By the time we reached the base of the mountain we were ready for a quick rest before meeting up with our friend to walk around the base of the lake. The views were nothing new but the path was pleasant and calm. A few people were out walking their dogs, but we mainly had it to ourselves. Afterwards we wandered into an Irish pub for dinner a drink.
The next morning we were headed out of Queenstown, so after a cup of tea I walked down to the water and sat at the doc for 45 minutes while waiting for our ride to the airport. The deep breaths of sharply cold air were awakening, refreshing, and made leaving all that much more difficult.