Monday morning came upon us pretty quick. We caught a 5 am shuttle to the airport and we were off the Dunedin. Amy and Brenda had previously been to the south island, but I had not, needless to say I was ecstatic when I hopped off the plane.
The first thing on our list to do was to get our rental car sorted out. Now would be the best time to mention that this day just so happened to also be the Queen's Birthday....which also meant that nearly every place was closed for the public holiday. Thankfully, I was able to find a place open and headed there. Rent-A-Dent, real name too!!, was quiet the ordeal, with some slow typing on the computer and a 10 minute lecture on how to lock the door to the car. We ended up taking the last automatic car they had available, seeing as non of us knew how to drive a Manuel, especially on the other side of the road!
Before we hit the road for Wanaka, Amy and Brenda took a tour of the Cadbury Chocolate Factory in Dunedin while I did a short walk around the city center and octagon. Below are some places I saw just within a few minutes of each other.
So after about an hour or so, I picked up the girls and after having a little trouble putting the car in drive lol we were off on our first road trip!! There really isn't anything like New Zealand scenery...every corner you turn there is something new to look at, even more beautiful than the last. It was suppose to take us around 3 hours to get to Wanaka, but ended up being over 4 because of the many pit stops and look out points we managed to find.
When we did finally arrive in Wanaka, we checked into our hostel, The Purple Cow. Great views!! Cool set up, like we were in cabins, and closest we got to actually camping I think! We had a guy from Switzerland, Ireland, and Netherlands in our room....interesting characters. We only really made friends with Niels, from the Netherlands though! Cool guy.
The following day, was dooms day. Seeing as that I wasn't able to cancel my skydive and they were going to charge me anyway, I decided that I only live life once and might as well do it. We got picked up a little before 10 in the morning and were driven to the airport. We filled out forms and picked songs for the video they were going to take of us. Another 20 minutes later, we were all suited up and ready to fly! I knew this was meant to be because the plane was orange as well as our jumpsuits ha ha After a quick interview with another fellow skydiver, we were on the plane getting ready to jump. I wasn't really nervous, surprisingly...i thought bungee jumping was way scarier and harder to do. 45 seconds of free fall, then a nice, but also kind of painful parachute down to the ground.
Skydiving really does take a lot out of you, so Amy and Brenda and I decided to take it easy the rest of the day, of course after our stop by Puzzling World. Had some lunch there, then went through some crazy looking rooms and tipsy floors....and ONE LONG MAZE!! We took a short walk back to town and spent the rest of the day just chilling and recuperating.
Our last day of our trip, we drove back to Dunedin, took a side trip up the Otago Peninsula and saw Larnach Castle. The drive up to this castle was worth every minute of it, even if we didn't see the castle. It almost looked like we were in Scotland or Ireland almost. After our side trip up there, we met up with Amy's friend Matt, who goes to school with her back at Indiana University. Later that night, we got all dressed up and headed to Speights Brewery for out tour and dinner. Just like we had done earlier with the wine tour we thought it would be nice to learn about beer as well. Speights is 'the pride of the south', and there is no way you can go anywhere in the south island of New Zealand and not see a sign for this type of beer.
Overall, this trip was fantastic. Lots of great tours and thrills, not to mention the awesome scenery!!! Can't wait to go back there someday! Look out for my next post about my last south island road trip!!
Until Next Time
