Early Wednesday morning, 5:30 to be exact, we left with
Coralie, Reuben, Andrew, and Luke for Wanaka.
Susan works at a resort there and Reuben was going to an agricultural
conference, so Coralie said that she would take us to Queenstown, an
hours on the other side of Wanaka, to pick up our rental car and start our week
long traveling adventure. When Coralie
dropped us off, we met Stella. She is a lovely
silver Hyundai Accent, oh, and did we mention that she is a manual?!?! So it was a very interesting time driving a
stick shift on the other side of the car on the other side of the road. Our first order of business was to drive to
Arrowtown, a cute little gold rush town that is set up the way that it used to
be about a hundred years ago. This town is by far our favorite city in New Zealand. We
explored the town and finally found a campground where we parked the car for
the night. Then it was time for a walk
down to the creek, a water hike (this was Courtney’s first water hike) and rock
skipping. We wrote some postcards to
people, wrote in our journals for a little bit, and ate some ice cream, enjoying
the sunshine and outdoors.
It was very interesting to sleep in the back of the car, but
we made it work. We were able to sleep
in a little bit, packed up Stella, and started out. First, we stopped at a Lord of the Rings
site, but we weren’t really sure what it was exactly so we looked around and
took some pictures thinking about the actors that had probably been
there. Later we found out that it was
actually the road where Isildur was attacked by the orcs and lost the
Ring. After that we drove onto
Queenstown, went grocery shopping, and wandered around the town. We were actually waiting for 2:00, when we
would stare death in the face and laugh as we jumped off a 43 meter (141 ft) bridge. You got it!
We went bungee jumping, but this was no ordinary bungee jump, it was the
original bungee jumping site! The crew
there talked us out of going together and we were so thankful, because it was
so much fun to go by ourselves and have our own experiences to share with each
other. Trina closed her eyes for the first part because she
had asked to get wet in the river below, but sadly she didn’t cause the drought
made the river line too low. After
looking at our pictures and video of ourselves, we explored some
more. It was such a nice day that we
decided to take a walk around the Queenstown gardens and walk by Lake
Wakatipu. Queenstown is surrounded by
the Remarkable Mountains, and they sure are remarkable. That night we decided to travel out of town
to find a place to stay so we headed north to Moke Lake, a nice campground tucked
in the mountains where we could park Stella and sleep in the back again. While we were having our tea, a duck came up
from the lake to visit us, we named her Fiona.
Courtney wanted to know what it felt like to be bit by a duck and
decided to find out. So she got Fiona to
take a potato chip from her hand and Fiona actually bit her a couple of times, pretty
entertaining. She said it tickled more than hurting. :)
The next morning we got ready for a hike around the lake,
but decided to climb one of the mountains surrounding the lake instead. It took us a couple of hours, but we were
able to get to the top and see for miles and miles. The way down was super fun,
sliding on our bums most of the way, which resulted in both of us ripping our
shorts; just one less piece of clothing to have to carry around the rest of our
trip! Then we went for a nice,
refreshing dip in the lake. It was so
cold! We then decided it was time to
move on in our adventure, this time the destination was Milford Sound. It was only a hop, skip and a jump away from where we were, but there was only one way to get to Milford Sound
and that meant we had to drive back south, through Queenstown and head back
north at Te Anau (three hour drive). It was a beautiful
drive though. The mountains just rose out of the plains as we drove and we were
just in awe of God and His beautiful creation.
After stopping in Mossburn for dinner and Te Anau for petrol, we found a campsite near Milford Sound and stayed the night there. We even made some new friends (and no not the sand-flies) who invited us to join them for tea (dinner). They were two travelers from Germany and another guy from Israel. How ironic, two Americans, two Germans and an Israeli enjoying a meal together. :) We all were entertained by the irony.
At Milford Sound, we took so many pictures, but they just don't do the beauty of this place justice.
We were in the wilderness surrounded by amazing mountains flowing with
waterfalls and topped with clouds, making them look that much more beautiful.
The Milford Sound is an amazing fiord weaving through the mountains out to
the sea. A fiord, if you didn’t know, is a stretch of water that was carved out
by a glacier, whereas, a sound is carved out by a river. The Milford sound is
actually a fiord but they originally named it a sound to match all the other
sounds in the area. “The cruise is the best way to see Milford Sound” is what
we were told so that’s what we did. It
was a two hour long ride and most definitely worth the money that we paid. We saw sea lions, waterfalls (even drove
right up under one in the boat), minerals in the rock such as gold, copper and
iron, and some very beautiful mountains that eventually led to the ocean. The word “beautiful” doesn’t even describe
this place; you just have to see it for yourself, and not in pictures, but in
person. We can only imagine that if it
is this beautiful on earth what will it be like in the New Earth?
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