After 10 days, 9 cities of various sizes, and over 2234 kilometres by bus (plus 1000 more by plane and ferry), I've made it back to Auckland! I had an awesome, exhilarating, and at times exhausting trip, met a bunch of interesting people, and saw some of the most breathtaking scenery I've ever seen in my life. I climbed a glacier, saw a kiwi in the wild, and bussed through rolling green hills, snow-capped mountains, turquoise lakes, and amber grasslands. It was an amazing experience that I'm unlikely to soon forget.
Due to the Christchurch earthquake, I decided to rebook my flight so that I left from Dunedin on Wednesday night, instead of from Christchurch on Friday morning. It's probably all for the best; although Christchurch probably would have liked my tourism money, I wanted to wait until they had a chance to clean up before I visited. I was also starting to get a bit weary of traveling and staying in a different place every night, so I came back a little earlier than I first planned.
Other than skipping over Christchurch, I was able to make all of my planned stops and bus connections. On the travel front, it was a pretty seamless journey. Staying in the hostels were generally good experiences as well, as some of them are even more comfortable than my dorm building! New Zealand definitely knows how to cater to backpackers.
Of course, you can expect a full, day-by-day report of my trip to be posted in the coming weeks. I took notes every night so I didn't forget everything, and I've got hundreds of photos and several minutes of video (from the bus rides) to sort through. I also, incidentally, have a couple of big tests to study for next week. I'll try to get the posts up as quick as I can (the photos are the most time-consuming part), and I hope to have the whole trip documented by the time I leave for my weekend in Sydney in...holy crap, two weeks from tomorrow! I'd better start writing! But, just to give you a taste of what's to come, here's a view 50 metres from my hostel's front door in Queenstown:
That's not real. I know it can't be.
ReplyDeleteAlso, "metres?"