Farewell Magic Bus! It was a fun ride!

Waiting at the Christchurch airport right now. Got about another 2 hours until we can start checking in.. but really, we don't fly out for another 4 hours so we have a lot of time to kill.

Spent the last 3 days at Mount Cook. It was beautiful up there. The first day, we did the Hooker Valley hike, which was mentioned in my last post.

The second day was the Red Tarns hike, which was crazy hard cuz it was literally steps all the way up the mountain.. and we didn't even make it to the top (maybe about 80-90% of the way) cuz it got super windy and starting snowing or hailing, and we decided it was not safe to continue going up, so we made our way back down, which was considerably easier.

The last day we took it easy and visited the museum and visitor's centre, and had a nice lunch at the cafe at the Hermitage Hotel. Then we took the shuttle back to Lake Tekapo and spent a relaxing night playing uno with our new friend Jen (sp?).. until this asian guy came out from his room at 11pm and yelled at us and another group of asians playing Monopoly cuz he was apparently trying to sleep and we were being too noisy. Terribly awkward. Our roommates that evening went to bed at 8:30pm o_O some people like going to bed ridiculously early I guess.

Today on the bus to Christchurch, Himika and I got to know this Japanese girl Yuki, who spent the year learning English in New Zealand. Was fun getting to know all these people through the Magic Bus and hopefully we'll keep in touch cuz we had some short but good times!

Anywho, now we're off to Auckland for a day and then to Brisbane. Our Magic Bus adventure has officially come to an end.

P.S. My application for graduation has been accepted!! Yay! So I will shortly have my Bachelor of Computer Science - Highest Honours, Cooperative Education. Score! About time too eh..

Panorama of Mount Cook

View of Mount Cook from the Red Tarns track

Me and Hinks with Sir Edmund Hillary

My congratulatory lunch to myself for graduating lol

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No bus for a few days, yes!

On the morning of our departure to Lake Tekapo, we made a quick stop at the steepest street in the world, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. It is also known as Baldwin St. in Dunedin. Quite a hike up the street, but luckily there are stairs at the sides for a good portion of it.

Lake Tekapo was pretty boring. Not much to do especially since the weather was not nice for hiking.. so we spent most of the afternoon and evening in. We did manage to walk for an hour in the dark and drizzle to the hot pool and ice rink down the road.. but we didn't go into the hot pools or skating. Already did hot pools in Franz Josef, which was much nicer looking than the one at Lake Tekapo.

Today we took the shuttle up to Mount Cook. Got here, dumped our bags, made some sandwiches, and off we went on our 4-hour hike to Hooker Valley. It sounds like a terrible name, but I assume someone named Hooker found the valley or something. Anyway, awesome hike there - lots of rocks and leg-work - and great views of Mount Cook and the surrounding mountains and valleys.

When we arrived at Hooker Valley, the wind was gusting like crazy. Had to whip out my winter hat, scarf and mitts and bundle myself up. Took a few photos and then back we went.

Tomorrow will probably be a more laid-back day. Get to sleep in finally, and then perhaps get a ride up to see Tasman glaciers. Otherwise, we'll hang around the hostel and chillax.

Anywho, here are some pics. Enjoy!

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Last week on the Magic Bus..

Alrighty. I can't remember if I mentioned before that there's no free wi-fi at Starbucks, but there's free wi-fi at McDonald's lol. So here I am in Dunedin at McDonald's.

Just had a little bit of drama. Alyssa lost all the photos off her SLR memory card. Her SD card got corrupted and then it reset itself and erased all of the photos. Really sucks. It's fortunate that she also has her Sony point-and-shoot with her and took a lot of photos on that, but the more cool and artistic ones were on the SLR. Sucks =(

In other news, the past few days have found me in Greymouth, Franz Josef, Queenstown and Dunedin.

In Greymouth we didn't do anything. But on the way there we stopped to see some seals and pancake rocks.

He's just resting lol

Pancakes. Mmmmm

Franz Josef was pretty cool. Very small small town, but we went on a guided hike to see the glaciers and then spent some time at the hot pools to relax at night.

Glacier are cool! haha

Yayyy!

Queenstown was when we finally did our crazy stuff. Initially, we had signed up to go paragliding but apparently the company was closed for the season, so instead, we did the canyon swing! I'm sort of an adrenaline junky but free-falling sort of things so I absolutely loved it! Next time I'll have to try bungy and skydiving!

Totally psyched!!

Tandem forward jump!

Solo backwards chair!

The sad part about Queenstown was that we had to say goodbye to some of our new friends from the Magic Bus as they were staying a few more days there. But we'll definitely keep in touch and hopefully we'll meet up again for another trip!

See you soon?

Finally, now in Dunedin. Quite boring here actually.. nothing really to say about it lol.

Anyway! So we've only got 5 days left in NZ. Which means we're closing in on 1-month of our trip! A month has gone by fast I guess but it also feels like we've been travelling for ages, which is good cuz you do so much every day.. but I really don't remember what we've done because we've done so many things.. luckily there are photos to help me recall the memories lol.

Peace out!

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National Park, Wellington, Nelson

Ok guys, so no internet for the past couple of days, so I have to compress 3 days worth of stuff into a relatively enjoyable post haha

Right! So National Park. Well, that was the destination of Wednesday. We stopped for a couple of hours at Waitomo where some people did cave water stuff and glow-worm stuffs, but we didn't do that so we kind of hung around the city doing nothing lol.. we wanted to see the angora rabbit shearing but apparently that shut down a year ago.. maybe not enough demand for it or.. they ran out of bunnies!?

No more bunnehs =(

So we walked 1km to see this motel room shaped into a hobbit house. Wasn't that great cuz we couldn't go inside because there were guests staying there. There were other rooms in an airplane, a boat, and a train. Cool concept.

Hobbit-house motel room

Then we headed to National Park and snapped some photos of the beautiful mountains and Tawhai Falls (bus driver told us after that it was Gollum's pool.. didn't know). It was friggin cold there though.. windy as hell. No climbing of the mountains without a guide and previous experience lol.

Tahwai Falls (Gollum's Pool)

Mountain at National Park? Can't remember the name

Thursday we were off to Wellington where we spent a relatively boring day going on a tour of Parliament at the beehive, a short cable-car ride up to Mount Victoria where it was cold and everything was closed, and a very sketchy and scary hostel. The one good thing about that day was the awesome 1/2 price sushi!

The Beehive (NZ Parliament)

1/2 price sushi at Sushi B! This cost $6.50 NZ ^_^

And finally today, a ferry across to the south island of New Zealand, and a bus ride from Picton to Nelson. Nelson is the sunshine capital of New Zealand. Beautiful sunny weather, quite chilly at night though. We did a very steep walk up to the centre of NZ. Good exercise lol. Walked around town a bit, did some shopping, and then back to the hostel for dinner. Hostel is pretty cool, but the washroom sink is ridiculously small.

Interislander ferry across to the south island

Centre of NZ

Useless small sink and crooked mirror

Anywho, that's all! Peace out!

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Lambies!

The Magic Bus tour has begun! Unfortunately, since we are kind of short on time and there are so many mandatory stops on the Magic Bus, we're pretty much only staying in each city for one night.

Yesterday we made our way from Auckland to Rotorua. On the way there, we stopped by the set of the new movie The Hobbit, but the tour was a bit too expensive for our taste, so we just had lunch and continued on with the bus. There were however some really cute lambs there! Apparently there used to be like 80 million sheep in NZ but now they're focussing on dairy farming.

Awww..

Bahhhh

Even this door is too small for me..

By the time we got to Rotorua, it was about 2:30pm, and things close at 5pm so we only had a short time to do activities. We were going to do both the Zorb ball and luge, but only ended up getting to do the luge. Weather-wise, it was rainy and cold as hell. But damn, the luge was super fast and exciting! So awesome!

Kawabunga!

Finished all our luging

Look at all the lambies!!

As we were waiting to catch the bus back to the hostel, we got picked up by the free shuttle and the driver suggested to us that we watch the Mauri show since the hostel can give us a discount, so we did that. It included dinner as well. Awesome show. We also go to walk through the rainforest and see glow-worms..

Traditionally cooked by the Mauri over coals?

Mauri performance

Today, the Magic Bus picked us up at 8:50am. Destination: Taupo. Actually, all the fun stuff happened before Taupo. We saw the Lady Knox Geyser, which is apparently one of the largest geysers that shoots up to 20 feet. Then we went to Wai-o-Tapu Thermal Wonderland, which is a geothermal park. Crazy stuff there. Too many awesome photos so I'll just show you one. And cute lambies at the gift store! Bought one of those and a kiwi bird ^_^

Lady Knox Geyser

Check out the colour of that water! Yucks lol

So purdy

Lamb and kiwi bird!

The last stop before Taupo was the Waikato river. Really beautiful blue and white rapids.. Anywho, tomorrow we're off to the National Park for lots of hiking fun. See ya!

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A day out in Auckland

New Zealand is a beautiful country. Their natural scenery is just absolutely gorgeous.. and the grass is actually greener here! No lies! Himika's relatives kindly took us around so we got a nice personal tour.

The first stop we made was nearby at a really high, although small, hill where you can see pretty much everything. When you're walking towards the top, it looks like you're walking up into the sky..

Check out how green this grass is! Looks kinda yellow in the picture though..

We then headed into the city. Man, did I mention how expensive gas is here?? And I thought it was expensive in Sydney at like $1.50/litre.. Auckland is $2.15/litre!! Dang! And public transportation is bleh here so you're pretty much forced to drive anyway.

Holy smokes!

The next place we visited was the Nancy Steen Gardens. Most of the flowers were kind of dying or whatnot cuz it's fall weather.. but there were still some really pretty roses. Now, I don't really care for having flowers in my own home, but they sure look nice in photos haha

So purdy

Then was the Michael Joseph Savage Memorial. Really nice view.. skies were blue, warm breeze, green grass and blue seas.. could not have picked a better day to be out there! You can have events there too like weddings and other ish.

So nice!

After relaxing at the memorial for a while, we made our way to Mission's Bay. Lots of people there.. apparently it's busy every weekend, and who can blame them? It's a great place to have a picnic, or take a stroll along the beach..

Fountain at Mission's Bay

The last stop of the day was the Auckland War Memorial Museum. Awesome building.. always loved pillars.. we didn't have time to go inside but got some nice pics outside. People were just sitting on the steps outside the building.. not sure if they were waiting for a ride or something, but perhaps they were there just enjoying the view?

Look, almost as tall as the building! hehe

Well, that actually wasn't the last stop of the day, but last stop for the afternoon. After that, we grabbed some fish and chips, and headed back to have a late afternoon snack and rest. Then had an awesome dinner, for which I probably ate too much as usual, and then off for a short while to Auckland's Night Market. The night market is apparently a fairly new addition that happens once a week on Saturday nights, but it's pretty much like any Asian night market.. the food is cheap, the merchandise somewhat inexpensive.. so if you're homesick for those types of things, visit the night market ^_^

Butter chicken, lamb curry, quail eggs, etc. Delish!

Now I would've posted the close-up shots of the food, but there were just too many, so here's the overall picture of what we ate for dinner last night. Really great food. No more home-cooked meals for a while once we leave for our bus tour.. unless you can count the mangled dishes that us three girls will make haha

Whole row of food at the night market

Merchandise and stuffs at the night market

Anywho, probably won't have an internet connection for a while, so I dunno when my next post will be.. until the next time, peace out!

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Kangas and Crocs.. yumyum!

Aight, so I'm in Auckland now, but since I just got here, I'll wrap up my Sydney posts and begin New Zealand blogging after.

So I spent the last 3 days of Sydney at home in bed recovering from my cold. Still not better.. I have a feeling this cold is going to drag on for another week at least, but I'm going to move on with my life lol.

The one time I did go out this week, my kind cousins took me and Alyssa out to dinner to have some exotic meats (Himika was staying with her cousins that night). We drove into the city and went to The Autralian - A Heritage Hotel, to have some pizza.

Crocodile pizza

Duck pizza (sadly, they were all out of emu)

Kangaroo pizza

Unfortunately, still being sick, I didn't get to enjoy the full experience as I did not really have my sense of smell or taste. So the crocodile tasted like chicken and the kangaroo tasted like beef. Alyssa says that they have distinct aftertastes but I didn't notice it. Either way, the pizzas were still delicious ^_^

We'll be making a short stop in Brisbane after New Zealand so perhaps I will get a second shot at crocodile and kangaroo.. hehe

Anywho, until the next time, seeee ya!

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