Last week in New Zealand! and Fiji :) then home!

The last week in Hamilton was very exciting. My flattie Jodie stole me for lunch one day to see the pukekos at the lake in the city. We had fish and chips, sorry fush and chups, and fed most of our chips to the pukekos and watched them fight over them. I tried going up to them to pet them, but they wouldn't let me go too close :(

I'm not sure what it means when they do this, but I think they were fighting eachother? Certainly not attacking us, they look pretty crazy though. At the Otorohanga Kiwi House they told us that the amount of white tail that they show signifies their rank in the hierarchy, maybe this is when they show it? All I know is that they're funny looking and I wish that America had them.

 The Saturday before I left there was a casual race between Waikato University and Auckland University, and I competed with Waikato in a few of the races. This is the intermediate 8 race, and my flatties Greg and Rich are in it too.

This race was the costumes race, and the grande finale. We were the superheroes and Auckland was the smurfs. The guy who was supposed to be behind the orange guy was in a spiderman costume, but he's not in the pic, and it's hard to see in the photo but the guy standing in the back has chopsticks on his hands like claws. I am obviously a superhero already so I didn't need a costume. They said it was very difficult to row with the slippery spandex gloves on, but we won anyway. The smurfs didn't stand a chance.

Next it was off to Fiji!
This is a photo that I took out the window of the plane in Auckland on the tarmac. Such a nice rainbow! Thanks for that New Zealand! I miss my flatmates and friends, but it softened the difficulty of leaving to be going to Fiji, which was absolutely beautiful!

 This is what it looked like flying into Fiji. I'm not sure if those are mountains, they kinda look like it, but for the most part the country is lush and green and beautiful!

 This is the shower that was attached to my hut. It had walls on all sides but no ceiling, so I could literally shower in the rain and it was fun.

 This is the view from outside my hut. I wasn't more than 15 meters from the beach!

 This is my hut. They really call them bures in Fijian, but I like calling it a hut. You can see the mosquito net on my bed inside. I came home covered in mosquito bites, but who cares, I was in Fiji!

This is the hotel grounds. I had to take a bus 2 and a half hours to get to the hotel, and the whole island is a tropical paradise and it's all as green as this photo, and just so beautiful. Most Fijians live very poorly, but they don't need anything because they have a beautiful communal way of life and they live in a tropical paradise, so they're some of the happiest people I've met.

In Fiji they are also the most laid back people I've met. They operate on what they call "Fiji Time" where everything is 30-90 minutes late, and it's actually a pretty good system. If anything were on-time the system wouldn't work, but everything in Fiji is uniformly late and relaxed. I was supposed to get a bus to the airport at 4:30, but they didn't take me to the bus stop until 4:50, but the bus wasn't there until 5:10, so it's all good. I think that Fiji Time is the key to their happiness. This is a photo from my last day in Fiji, just before going to the airport. I had made friends with some Irish girls there and we were posing with bottles of Fiji Bitter, which we had become quite familiar with in the days before. I would love to go back there with a flower in my hair and a bottle of Fiji Bitter in my hand, but it was definitely nice to come home to New York.

This is what it looked like coming into New York at 11pm on Wednesday. After 17 hours of flying, hardly sleeping since 4:30am New York time, it was nice to be home. My dad and sister picked me up from the airport with a bagel and lox and a chocolate bar, and I was officially back home in New york.

South Island!

I spent a week in the south island, and it is so pretty there I wish I could have stayed longer! The first weekend there, I went to Mt. Hutt with my friend Clare and her family. The Southern Alps go all along the middle of the South Island, and it looks like they go on forever!

After Mt. Hutt I went to Queenstown, and to get there I took nakedbus for 8 hours. Halfway through the bus ride we stopped at Lake Tekapo, which is in the photo. It was the most peaceful place I have ever seen, and I've decided that I will live there someday. The water looks bright turquoise, but it was perfectly clear, and there are mountains all around it. I really wanted to go swimming in the lake, but the stop was only 45 minutes and it was still winter anyway.

 First-Night-In-Queenstown-PRE-First-Ferg-Burger-Face

 First-Night-In-Queenstown-POST-First-Ferg-Burger-Face

Queenstown is the adventure capital of the world. Most people go there to bungy-jump, skydive, or go on crazy jetboat tours, but I went there and did none of those things. I stayed in a backpackers for the first time ever and discovered how awesome those places are. Everyone there was traveling just like me, and so excited to be there just like me. So I made a lot of friends and ate a lot of fergburgers, which is a must in Queenstown, saw Arrowtown, and took a boat tour on the lake, which was really nice.

This is a photo of my friend Jess and me in Arrowtown. Jess and I met when we were both counselors at summer camp. Funny story, she was supposed to hang out with me that night, but she got engaged instead! Bummer, right? Just kidding! Arrowtown is an old mining town, and one of the few places in New Zealand that has historical buildings in tact.

You can also still pan for gold in the river, and engaged couples will go there to pan for gold for a wedding ring, but it takes two weeks. So if you still want to get married after that it's probably a sign that your marriage will last. This is a Chinese house. By the river there is a whole group of them, and they're all the perfect size for me! I'd move right in, but I'm pretty sure they're even less insulated that the rest of the houses in New Zealand, most of which are really cold from what I've seen.

This is Queenstown from the boat that I took a tour of the lake on. I told the woman I was 14 and paid child's fare for the tour. I didn't even pay much less than the adult's fare, but I really just wanted to see if it would work. It did.

The lake is called Wakatipu and is really pretty. It's surrounded by mountains on all sides and is glacier-fed so the water is absolutely clear. In this photo you can see two tiny waterfalls int the center of the rock, and the water looks very blue. We filled our cups straight from the lake and could drink the water as it was. I didn't know that places like that existed anymore. There was nothing at all in the water, not like in American lakes where there will be stuff floating in it.

 Next I went to Christchurch for a couple of nights, but I just hung out in my pajamas with my friend Clare, so I don't have any pictures, but here is a photo of flying into Wellington! Wellington is the capital city of New Zealand, and this city's quite stylin'.

While I was there, there was a rugby match between Australia and New Zealand, and NZ won! I went to the pub with my camp friends Nick and Char, and every once in a while I'd look around and the place was packed to the brim and every eye in the room was intent on the game. The rivalry between Aussie and NZ is big so it was very exciting when NZ won, but the game was in Auckland so it would have been a good night to be in Auckland! I went to Auckland next, but just for one night to catch up with another camp friend, then home to Hamilton!

More of the North Island

Alright so I'm home now so I'm a bit behind on this whole blogging thang. So the rest of the roadtrip is when Daisy joined in, we hit up the Tui Brewery, New Plymouth, and a seaside drive up the west coast of New Zealand's north island.

Tui car at the brewery!

The Tui billboards are pretty hilarious, we got to make our own.

The group! My flattie Jodie and our friend Daisy.

This is a wind farm that we drove through to get to New Plymouth. Such amazing weather that weekend, and could the hills possibly be prettier? The wind power provides a very small percent of the electricity in New Zealand, they actually get 54% of their electricity from hydro-power from dams, and 73% total from renewables. That's pretty good, most countries have less than 20%, the U.S. is at 11%. New Zealand's goal is to be at 90% by 2050, and may actually reach it, but few other countries can even dream of that.

This is the beach at New Plymouth, such a gorgeous place! You can kinda see the town in the background and on the horizon on the right there are bumps of volcanic rock in the sea.

 This is a marae in. . .a very small town on the way home, I think it was Te Kuiti? It has one big street and a few tiny ones off of it, and it's home to this marae. A marae is an important building to Moari people. They use these buildings for funerals and I think also community meetings. They're decorated in intricate carvings, and have photos on the inside of the people whose funerals have been there. They're sacred buildings, and you're supposed to take your shoes off to go inside. The Maori caretaker let me and Jodie in and was very casual about it all, but I think we're not supposed to be allowed to see the inside.

My flatties and I went to a rugby game at the stadium at the opposite end of Rimu Street from our flat. It was between Waikato and Taranaki; Waikato is the region that Hamilton is and Taranaki is the region that New Plymouth is in. Rugby is a great game, much better than american football, and the country is getting all geared up to host the rugby world cup this fall. Sadly I won't be able to go back to New Zealand to cheer them on.

This is my favorite place in Hamilton other than our flat on Rimu Street. I've never actually been to Fush and Chups, but one of my bus routes passed by it, and it made me very happy. When you ask an Australian what a Kiwi accent sounds like, one thing they'll say is that Kiwis say "Fush and Chups" instead of fish and chips. Most of them don't actually speak that way, except Maoris who have reallyyy strong accents. I never got the opportunity to ask a Maori person to say fish and chips for me though.

A beautiful country

The trouble with an adventuresome lifestyle (e.g. that which I have adopted in NZ) is that it's hard to find time to stop and do things like write about adventures rather than continue to have them. I have not taken enough care thus far to write about how gorgeous this country is, so I need to make sure to do that now before you think it's all about funny lingo and candy and beer.

One thing that totally kills me about Hamilton is that they see so many rainbows that they don't even appreciate them anymore. Every time I see one I'll point it out to my friends and they'll respond "Are you serious? It's just a rainbow." The climate in Hamilton is such that on a rainy day it will be more like patchy rain rather than rain all day, so there will usually be patches of sun as well so they see a lot of rainbows. However, there really isn't much to do in Hamilton and most people I meet will ask me why I'm based in Hamilton of all the way beautiful places in NZ. At least they have rainbows?

 I took a wonderful roadtrip with my wonderful flatmate Jodie, and we saw some great stuff :)
First stop: Orakei Korako, a thermal park thingy just outside of Taupo. Taupo and Rotorua are in an area where there is crazy geothermal stuff going on and there are some parks where there is steam coming out of the ground, boiling mud, cool colored water from minerals, and hot springs.

Most of the North Island is covered in these amazing green hills that are just everywhere and dotted with cows and sheep. The farther South we went on the island they got more and more picturesque. Up by Hamilton they're nice, but down by Eketahuna where Jodie's parents' farms are, the hills just couldn't have been prettier!

We visited the Mt. Bruce Bird Reserve while in Eketahuna and this is Jodie's favorite bird. It's called a Takahe, and it looks like a fat Pukeko, which means it's pretty much one of the most awesome New Zealand birds.

We saw some kiwis too! They actually had recently hatched a white kiwi bird chick but they only brought it out on Sundays and we went on a Monday :( Brown kiwis are still pretty awesome though!

We also visited the cows on Jodie's dad's farm. I'm a big fan of cows, we don't have them in New York City. They were all scared of me though! I tried to pet them, but they would all just run away!

This is what their farm looks like, no big deal, only one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.

This is how we got to that beautiful place, a 4 wheel motorbike, and I was holding on for my dear life!

The next morning they dressed me up like a farmer and I got to feed out the cows with Jodie and her step dad. These ones were scared of me too :(
I'm going to have to finish writing about the roadie another time so that I don't miss my shuttle to the airport to go to WELLINGTON!  :) many more adventures to come!