Backpacking Through A Country Is Not As Glorious As It Sounds..

Alternative Title: My Shopping Habits Don’t Fit The Lifestyle Of A Backpacker


When we were enrolled in our original class, International Business class, we were supposed to have a 4 day weekend. Sarah and I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to hop over to New Zealand. When our IB class was canceled, our 4 day weekend went out the window. We decided we were just going to skip class and go to New Zealand anyways. Sarah has a friend, Erin, from IU that is interning in Sydney this summer. She booked a ticket to come on our long weekend with us!

Being the intelligent travelers that we are, we arrived in New Zealand with NO plan (AKA no hostel, no tours, no sites picked out.. nothing except the determination to bungy jump). Let me back up a night. We went out on Wednesday night in celebration of my GMAT scores, Tommy’s MCAT scores, and Ben’s job offer. It was a really fun night full of $2 steaks, pitchers of beer, shots of tequila, girl’s kicking ass at pool, and Wii tennis. Sarah and I had great intentions of waking up Thursday morning and going shopping for some warm clothes to wear this weekend. FAIL… we woke up at 11:30! After grabbing some lunch, throwing (random- Sarah didn’t even bring a jacket/sweatshirt!) clothes into a backpack, and hailing a cab, we were on our way to the airport. It’s worth recalling that the time is now 1:30 and our flight was scheduled to leave at 2:50. We arrived at the airport and discovered the check-in line was super long. After waiting in line for 30 minutes (and getting near the front), we were moved to another line. This second line CREEPED by and took FOREVER. It’s also worth pointing out that Sarah and I were DYING (or felt like it) and super hungover! We got through that long line only to discover the line through Customs was also huge! Sarah and I had to keep motivating each other to keep moving and not curl up on a ball and die. When we finally reached the Customs counter, the Custom’s officer made fun of us for looking like death. Her exact response was “Please keep moving and not die at my counter!”. I’ve decided, by the time we reached security, that everyone was enjoying messing with us. I got into it with the security officer after he tried telling me all my makeup had to also fit in my liquid baggie. Last time I checked, my face powder and blush was NOT LIQUID!! It’s time to mention that our flight had been delayed until 4:00, which was really good considering it was now 3:30. After getting through security, we stopped to grab a drink. It was during this break, that Sarah looked out the window and goes “I always wondered how planes went backwards… I thought it was really cool they had reverse too.” Fail Sarah, Fail! Again, we wanted to die when we realized our gate was THE LAST GATE in the wing. We got up from our break and made our way to our gate. We arrived at 4:00, thinking we could board our flight and fall back to sleep. Wrong… we FINALLY boarded our flight at 7:00 PM. We pulled out my New Zealand book to start finding sites and activities we wanted to be sure to see. After involving a few rows in this mission, we had a semi-game plane figured out. I immediately fell asleep on our plane (I’m getting great at finding ways to get comfortable enough to sleep on planes, buses, and boats!). When we arrived in Auckland at 11:00 PM New Zealand time (2 hours ahead of Sydney), I learned from Sarah that the guy sitting next to us on the plane looked over and goes “hmm, someone have a rough night?”. Fail.

New Zealand security and customs was the WORST we have seen. The lady at the ticket counter in Australia tried to warn us that New Zealand was the hardest country to get into and she was correct! Sarah had a chicken wrap that I had put in my bag before the flight and threw away on the plane. We got through the first of 4 rounds of customs and started to walk away when a lady comes running up to me and informs me to put my bag on the ground immediately. She says the dog has smelled food and she needs to search for it. I tried to explain there was food in my bag, but I had thrown it away on the plane. I got hounded about that bag every step of security!! We got something to drink, grabbed a couple hundred (okay, so like 30!) brochures about tours, sites, attractions, and hostels and started planning out our trip. Erin’s plane arrived around 11:30 and we met up with her right outside of customs around midnight. She joined in our quest of planning out our next 3 days. We finally settled on a hostel that had openings available for at least Thursday night. By the time we caught a cab and drove into downtown Auckland, it was 1:30 before we were checking into our hostel, Queen Street Backpackers. There was a really nice guy at the front desk that stayed up with us until 3 AM and helped us get everything booked for the next few days.

We woke up EARLY on Friday morning and left for our first day trip at 7:30 AM. We had booked an all day Auckland City Tour, Auckland Harbor Cruise, and Wine Tour. We drove around Auckland (which is known as the “City of Sails” because 1 in every 4 Aucklanders owns a boat) and toured sites such as Westhaven & Bayswater Harbors, Mount Eden, the Sky Tower, and Parnell Village (shopping!!) Mount Eden is a dormant volcano that became a crater last time it erupted. You can literally see the lines in the grass where the ground gave way and sunk. It looks like there is just a layer of green grass with lava below it. We grabbed lunch at the harbor before boarding a ferry that toured the harbor and then headed on a 40 minute boat ride to Waiheke Island, the Island of Wine. Waiheke Island has over 25 different wineries of various sizes. Our wine tasting group was small, consisting of only 5! Considering Erin, Sarah, and I were the only English speaking members of the group, it was more or less a private tour. The North Island is known for making white wines and the south part of the North Island and South Island is known for red wines. We visited three very different wineries. Our first stop was to MudBrick Vineyard. This was probably my favorite winery. We tasted several kinds of wine including a chardonnay, sauvignon blanc (my favorite), cabernet, merlot, and a cabernet/merlot mix. Our next stop was The Ridgview Estate Winery. This one wasn’t as pretty and scenic as the first, but had some amazing wine as well. This is the winery that we all purchased wine from. The final winery was the Te Whau Vineyard, which offered 360 views of the island. This winery produces some of New Zealand’s finest wines and more expensive wines. We tasted a merlot made in back to back years (2006 and 2007) to see how the grape crop changes the flavor of the wine each year. After catching the ferry back (yup, I slept!), we went back to our hostel to change and freshen up before heading to dinner. We discovered that no Auckland restaurant was BYO, which was unfortunate since we purchased some wine throughout the day! We were all exhausted and had another early day on Saturday, so we finally settled on the idea of grabbing a quick dinner and heading to the movie theater to watch “The Proposal” (laugh it up..).

We woke up early again on Saturday and left on another all day tour at 7 AM. I’d like to point out that NOTHING in Auckland is open (nor is the city “awake”) at 7 AM, which seemed really strange to me. I’m used to being able to get most things I want at pretty much any hour I need it at. We boarded a double decker bus and headed down through the Waikota River region, known for its dairy farms. We passed through a few small Maori settlements, Whatawhata, Pirongia, and Otorohanga, which is home of the official residence of the Maori King (FYI, not impressed). The rocking motion of the bus had all three of us dosing off and sleeping majority of the time we were on the bus. The scenery of New Zealand reminds me a lot of that seen in Scotland (you were right dad!). This made me really excited since I fell in love with Scotland last summer! Our first official stop was at the Waitomo Glow Worm Caves. We took a guided tour through one of the smaller caves and saw how the Waitomo landscape had evolved over millions of years. We boarded a boat and floated off into the darkness. We rounded a corner and it looked like someone had flipped off the light in a room with those glowing stars (remember when we were little and would hang them all over our ceiling??). The glow worms were this amazing little creature that lit up from their stomach down to attract their food. The caves had no bugs because the glow worms eat them all. Although the cave was small and the boat tour a little short, it was still pretty amazing. I must point out that I hate when you can’t take photographs in tourist places. Our next stop was at the Agrodome complex. I must admit that I had a pre-conceived notion that I would not enjoy this place although it is one of New Zealand’s premier tourist attractions and every tour that we found stopped at it. It was nothing more than a sheep farm!! It was quite comical to see the (not being racist by ANY means!) Japanese and European tourists fall in love with it! We boarded a trailer pulled by a tractor (see where I’m not impressed?) and took a tour of the farm, which had animals such as the American pig, American sheep, American cattle, American mini horse, and American deer. Wow… what a trip! I am dying to get home and call one of my good friends, Kate, and tell her all about this place. Kate and her husband, Matt, breed show sheep and will get a great kick out of this place. It’s advertised as mainly a sheep farm that has a few other animals. We also got to watch a sheep get sheered and watch how wool is made. There was one cool part and that was when we got a demonstration on how the sheep dog rounds up the sheep and pens them. All in all, I felt it was a very wasted hour! I was even more upset when I found out we could have paid an additional $15 AUD, skipped the farm, and spent an hour at a day spa!! We departed Agrodome and headed on into Rotorua, a town known for its hot springs, natural geysers, and boiling mud. We drove along the Rotorua lakeside, past the Government Gardens, and stopped at our first geothermal steam pool. Let me start by saying the whole town stinks like sulfur!! The steam pools were really neat and I started to notice my cold and sore throat going away immediately. We boarded the bus again and headed to Te Puia, New Zealand’s Maori Arts and Craft Institute. We started the experience off with a 45 minute cultural show put on by some Maori performers. The Maori’s are the Aboriginal people of New Zealand, arriving from I believe the Philippines, and were displaced when the British discovered New Zealand (hmmm sound familiar Australia or America??). We then took a guided tour through the park which was nothing but a giant geothermal area with boiling mud pools (reaching temperatures of 212F) and the famous Pohutu Geyser. The geyser was performing for us, but we couldn’t see it because it was so cold, foggy, and misty. Everyone we talked to said we couldn’t miss out on Rotorua. It was neat, but the weather wasn’t cooperating and Yellowstone National Park is just like Rotorua only larger and more spectacular. We got back to Auckland around 8:30 Saturday night, grabbed dinner at a really sketch Chinese restaurant (we were tired of wondering and wanted something cheap!), and went back to the hostel to repack our bags and get some much needed sleep. I hadn’t been feeling the best and the weather made us all feel blah.

Erin and I had a VERY exciting day planned for Sunday morning: the AJ Hackett Auckland Harbor Bridge Bungy Jump!! This is the site of the very first harbor bridge jump. It was actually a smaller jump, only around 200 feet high. I was super excited and fired up, until I got to the edge of the platform, had the weight and my toes off the side of the ledge, and LOOKED DOWN! Don’t EVERY look down when you are about to jump off a bridge!! After a minor freak out and 3 minutes of calming myself down and getting encouraged, I buckled my knees and went flying!! When you first jump, the bungy isn’t tight and it is absolutely the freest feeling in the entire world. My heart didn’t start beating nor was I able to scream until after the bungy caught and started to pull tight. As soon as I came up, I wanted to do it again! I later learned that bungy is actually about challenging yourself to find it in yourself to jump off the bridge. It’s the body’s natural instinct to tell you not to jump and they won’t push you off the ledge. It’s seriously this huge mental battle to make your body move and jump off the ledge. It’s rewarded with the most amazing, heart-pumping feeling in the world!! After that nice morning wake up, we hit some stores to do some touristy shopping. New Zealand is known for producing Jade, so I naturally wanted some jewelry!! After shopping (I should not be allowed to just bring a backpack into a country!), we headed to the Sky Tower to eat a seafood lunch. The Sky Tower is 1076 feet tall and is the tallest freestanding structure in the Southern Hemisphere. It actually tops the Eiffel Tower by 8 meters and the Sydney AMP Tower by 24 meters. After lunch, we went to the highest observation deck (722 feet) to take photos of the city. We jumped on a bus, headed back to the airport, smoothly went through customs and security (a little more pleasant experience at the Auckland International Airport!), and boarded our flight to Sydney.

All in all, New Zealand was gorgeous and I’m really glad we took the chance to hop over and explore. I wish we would have had more time to see more and the weather would have cooperated more!!