Day 7. This was bungee day. That's right, we went bungee jumping off of the Nevis jump; a 340 meter fall into a huge canyon. Surprisingly, no one in our group was freaking out too badly, as for myself I was just pumped to take the step off of the platform of the cable-car extended mid-air in the middle of the canyon.
Pure joy. The first few seconds of free-falling were amazing and the up-down-up-down bouncing was just plain fun. The whole process only took about two hours, so we spent the rest of the day exploring the town.
The next morning, after having cookies for breakfast, we walked around Queenstown once again not sure what to do with ourselves, until we realized all of the cool stuff there was on the way to our next destination : Milford Sound. We left as soon as we could, and embarked on the five hour drive up to the sound. We reached a free campsite right alongside a river and decided to call it a night, leaving more daylight to explore the next day.
The road to Milford Sound is paved in...more ridiculously scenic places. We stopped alongside a huge valley carved out by glacial action, saw the mirror lakes, took a walk down Cascade Creek, and took a peek at Homer's tunnel, a really basic, well, tunnel, that was carved through a mountain.
Once at Milford, we took a short boat cruise through the Sound, which is actually not a sound at all but a fiord, also carved out by huge glaciers during the ice age. Once again, the place was filled with postcard-worth photo-ops. Ever on the move, we then left to take of the six hours separating us from Dunedin, which is apparently a hapening town on a Saturday night. We pulled in around midnight and through the sleepy haze I was in I heard the distinct noises of college kids out drinking their faces off. The next day was spent exploring, we had heard of a cool spot called Tunnel Beach (can you guess why?).
In the meantime, one of the other group's spaceship suffered from some irreparable damaged caused by engine failure. They were stuck in Dunedin for the rest of our time on the South Island, as our ever reliable rental company could not supply them with another van.
We decided to live in luxury again that night, and booked a hostel room for the four of us. To our delight, this particular hostel also boasted free 'continental breakfast' the next morning. Turns out their idea of continental breakfast is cereal and bread with some spreads, but we weren't complaining. Fueled and ready to go, we set out for Oamaru, home of lots of different penguins. The town also had a very cute, very old part to it, filled with craftsman workshops and art galleries. We spent some time walking around the historic-looking place before heading off to make our reservation to see the blue penguins come in from the ocean. The penguins were very cute and the 'show' was very much a rip-off. We paid twenty dollars each to peer through the dark and see about twenty tiny penguins quickly run from the water across a few meters of land into shelters where they remained hidden. But, like I said, they were pretty cute. Photography was not allowed.
We drove that night (again) in order to lessen the distance between us and our final stop before Christchurch: Lake Tekapo. We arrived there in the early morning and immediately inquired about hikes to do in the area. We took on a 3-4 hour hike that brought us around the coast of the Lake and up to the summit of Mt. John.
We were exhausted by the end, but were afforded some great views throughout the hike. With no time to spare, we decided to try and make it to Mt. Cook- New Zealand's tallest mountain- before night fell. I am so glad we did, although we didn't have time to do any extreme treks to the top of the impressive mountain, we did get to walk up to one of the lakes in the area and see icebergs! The sun went down just as we made it back to the van.
And that, friends, is where the adventure ends. We spent the night driving back to Christchurch, and caught our plane (all of us) on time. Now its back to rainy Auckland, and school.
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