French Polynesia & New Zealand Wrap Up

Our stay in French Polynesia wasn't long enough to warrant its own wrap-up, so we are lumping it with New Zealand. New Zealand is technically within the Polynesian Triangle, so we feel justified in doing this.

Facts and Figures
Length of Stay:  Twenty-two days
Miles Traveled to Enter:  2,600 by plane
Miles Traveled:  2,050 by car + 2,500 by plane + 75 by ferry = 4,625 total (17,571 since landing in Quito)
Places Visited: Papeete, island of Moorea, Faa'a, Auckland, Rotorua, Waitomo, Wellington, Christchurch, Lake Tekapo, Hikotika, Fox Glacier, Lake Manapouri, Milford Sound, Queenstown
Intercity Buses Taken:  Just 1!
Ferries Taken:  3
Flights Taken:  1
Rides given to other travelers: 4

Rankings in the full post.

Shotover Jet

Let me start off by saying that I am in no way embarrassed or ashamed of the fact that I did not bungy jump.  It's simply not something I am interested in doing and I do not see the point in spending a lot of money to do something I don't want to do.  I rappelled 100m, I think I proved I can handle heights when necessary.

I do, however, enjoy a little adrenaline rush and wanted to partake in at least one of the many crazy activities that are abundant in Queenstown (you cannot walk down the street without seeing at least a few people paragliding overhead.)

Due to time constraints, rafting and river sledging really weren't options.  So I decided to go with Queenstown's original adrenaline rush: jetboating.  These types of boats were invented in New Zealand in the '50s to explore the shallow, braided rivers that are common here.  They can reach speeds of 80km/h in water only four inches deep, and can turn on a dime.  Watch the video to get a taste of what Jeff and I experienced during our thrilling ride on the Shotover River.  And yes, we did come as close to the rocks as it looks.

Photographs from New Zealand's Roadsides

Following the theme I started in the Life on the Road in New Zealand's South Island post, here are pictures taken from New Zealand's highways.  Most of them were taken off the shoulder or from lookout points, and the longest we walked to get any of these was fifteen minutes.

Drive from Fox Glacier to Lake Manapouri

Sorry, Mom, but I Had to Try It

More in the full post, including pictures

Pining for the Fjords

Throughout our time in New Zealand, we had repeatedly heard and read that the Fiordland (part of the enormous Te Wahipounamu UNESCO World Heritage Site) is the prettiest area of the country.  Given how stunning the rest of New Zealand is, we've been excited about getting to the Fiordland, but we still wanted to temper our expectations to avoid being let down.

Queenstown at Dusk

We should have a number of posts coming up over the next few days (including Magge's long awaited second post on Tahiti). In the meantime, here are pictures of Queenstown taken tonight from our hostel.  The mountains in this picture have the very cool name of "The Remarkables".

Hiking on Fox Glacier

We wanted to go on a guided hike on Grey Glacier in Torres del Paine in Chile, but the logistics of getting to the meeting point at 7am when we were a five hour hike away didn't allow us.  I promised Magge we would would do a glacier hike at some point, and the opportunity quickly presented itself in New Zealand.  Fox and Franz Josef, two of the many glaciers in this country, are among the most accessible in the world, with tours getting on the ice every day.  Only 20km from each other in Westland National Park, part of the Te Wahipounamu UNESCO World Heritage Site*, the glaciers are unique in that they descend into a rain forest only 300m above sea level and that they have actually been advancing for most of the last twenty-five years while most of the world's glaciers have been retreating.  I could go on and on about Fox and Franz Josef facts (the ice at the top of the glacier can move as much as 5m in one day, while the ice in the middle can move as much as 2m, about ten times more than the average glacier's speed), but you probably want to hear about the hike.

More on Hokitika Gorge

For the first time on this website, I'm posting a video.  We'll try to this more going forward if we get video of interesting things, but for this first time, I'm just trying to break the ice.  We took this video of the Hokitika Gorge because of the bird calls, which you can still hear, but don't sound as pretty as they did in person.

Life on the Road in New Zealand's South Island

We racked up more miles on buses in four months in South America than anyone should in a lifetime. Nevertheless, we were planning on tackling New Zealand in the same manner before being convinced by a number of travelers that getting our own car was the way to go. It’s the best decision we’ve made in this country. Just being freed from the Traveling Problem Child Corollary to Murphy’s Law validates the decision, let alone the added scheduling flexibility and ability to get to places the buses do not travel.  But our favorite feature is that we can pull over whenever we see something interesting.  New Zealand is incredibly beautiful, and much of that beauty is easily accessible from the road.  Aside from the picture from the ferry, every picture in this post was taken within an hour's walk from the road, and most were within much shorter walks than that.

Happy Birthday, Liam!

My youngest sibling turns nine today.  We weren't sure where we going to take the picture, but when you're driving around New Zealand, it doesn't take long to find an interesting location.  About halfway through our drive from Lake Tekapo to Hokitika, we saw huge, wavy boulders sitting on a hill, and thought it would be a good place to take pictures.  They turned out to be part of a national park called Kura Tawhiti, and we were able to climb on the boulders to get our picture with the sign instead of just standing in front of them.  The pictures of us on the boulders were taken too far away to see the sign clearly, but there's a closeup at the end.

Climbing...

Magge also did some climbing for her shot

Closeup of the sign

Too Little Time on New Zealand's North Island

We arrived in New Zealand more unprepared than we have been upon arrival in any other country so far.  We had bought guide books for Ecuador, Peru and Chile back in August of last year and had spent hours looking at each before entering the respective country.  In French Polynesia, we knew where we would be spending each night before we left Santiago.  All we knew about our plans in New Zealand was where we were staying the first two nights in Auckland, and that we are flying out of Queenstown on April 10.

The first thing we did after checking in was buy a New Zealand guidebook so we could start planning our three weeks here (we originally had four weeks, but the earthquake in Santiago and subsequent plane flight changes cut nearly a whole week out).  Following the advice of a number of travelers we met in South America, we decided to spend only a week on the North Island and the remaining time on the South Island.  I left Magge to find us a rental car while I did our taxes, which will be much easier next year when neither of us has income to declare.  By the end of the day, we had our car and picked out and the two spots we'd see on the North Island: Rotorua and Waitomo.