Back in Auckland

We’re finally home! As much as I love traveling around and seeing new places – there’s no place like home. It’s been a wonderful past 10 days though!

Monday morning about 10 of us in the group went horseback-riding - which I loved. My horse was Jack – he was young and good looking – and he knew it, so he was pretty cocky and bossy with the other horses. It took a while to gain some control with him, but we got comfortable with each other and the scenery was perfect.

Later that day others in the group were going river rafting, but James, our tour guide, asked the rest of us what we wanted to do. One kid went hand-gliding, and others had other plans. So, half jokingly in answer to James I said, “Hike Mt. Doom.” He said we could. Mekelle, Megan, and I went with James and Johnny, a YSA in Queenstown that showed us around a lot, went and grabbed some lunch then headed up the mountain for the rest of the afternoon. It was awesome! I got to hike up the famous “Mt. Doom” (a.k.a. Mt Ngauruhoe, part of the mountain range called The Remarkables). We were about 2000 meters above sea level. At one point I looked DOWN and saw a helicopter. It was weird to be higher than the helicopter, but it eventually got higher than us. We also stopped at a few more LOTR film spots, and I loved seeing the view of Queenstown from that perspective.

Tuesday morning we packed up and left Queenstown. I caught a cold, so it was a long, miserable day for me while we traveled for about 12 hours to Christchurch. We took a different route than we had driven originally because we drove up the east cost and stopped at several places. We even made a special stop in Cromwell where they sell some amazing fresh and dried fruit. It seemed like the drive would never end, but I just put my earphones in, curled up in my seat and slept the entire day. We got in around 8:30 Tuesday night. We stayed at a really nice motel where each room had a kitchen. So we all headed to Pak N’ Save (my new favorite store) to buy groceries to last us for the next 3 days in Christchurch City. It was cheaper this way. When we got back to the motel, we popped in the 1^st Lord of the Rings movie because some girls in the group hadn’t seen it yet. It was fun to watch it now that we have been to some of the spots and could recognize them.

Wednesday we left pretty early to spend the day in the city. It was spitting a lot and really windy and cold – quite different from what we’ve been used to. We rode the trolley around town and hopped on and off at different spots. We went through a museum about the early days of Christchurch and the early settlers in the city. We walked through an art center that had numerous artist studios you could walk around and watch the artist at work. We also browsed through the market at Victoria Square, then stopped at a pier on the way home. All four of us crashed for a couple of hours when we got back to our motel. We finished the night off with more LOTR.

Thursday was our last day in ChCh (we saw Christchurch abbreviated this way and called in “ChCh” for the rest of the time.) Joy and James told us they would drive us into town whenever we wanted; there wasn’t a designated time we had to be ready in the morning. It was beautiful. We got some extra sleep and were ready to go around 11. We stopped at an art museum, the Botanical Rose Gardens, and we all went punting on the river.

Friday morning we headed to the airport to fly back to Auckland, and now we have the weekend to relax until we start going into the Primary schools on Tuesday.

Here are some pictures from the boat ride at Milford Sound:

Boat ride around Queenstown:

Sunday afternoon drive to Glenorchy - LOTR film spot:

Botanical Rose Garden in Christchurch City:

The night before we left for the south island, a couple guys took Mekelle and I to a west coast beach – with black sand! So BEAUTIFUL. My favorite place so far. We went to Piha beach for a couple of hours and just walked around. We had some trouble getting there – his car broke down and we had to come and get rescued. It was quite the adventure, but we all just laughed about it. This is the beach where they shot some scenes for the movie Chronicles of Narnia.