Photo Link:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Y8B72xtokjNYJDtQA
So my journey to the south island started with a 3.5 hour ferry from Wellington to Picton, at the northern tip of south island (and basically directly west of Wellington). From there, I had a 90 minute layover and then a 6 hour drive to Christchurch. I saved about 100 USD by doing this instead of flying, but I am getting to the point where I will penny pinch a little for things like this, whereas a year or two ago I would have paid extra for the flight.
Christchurch was another forgettable city, but probably slightly better than Auckland for me. There was a huge earthquake here like 10 or so years ago, and you can definitely tell as it almost feels a bit like Baghdad or Kabul in the city center with all the open plots of land in random prime locations. But there is some cool graffiti work to spruce up these otherwise depressing urban areas, but to me it still just felt empty. And there is a small area by a river (called Avon, lol) which had a ton of cool (if pricey) restaurants and bars, including a very cool marketplace area that was basically like a TimeOut market – tons and tons of stalls with affordable food, drinks (23 NZD wine bottles that you could drink at the bar!) and desserts. One of my nights in Christchurch, I went to this Irish bar with a few people from my hostel that was quite literally an exact (albeit smaller) replica of the famous Temple Bar in Dublin. And this was like the perfect dance floor music bar for me…a good combo of oldies (Hey Jude, Sweet Caroline, a healthy dose of ABBA, Livin on a Prayer, Summer of 69, etc.), pop songs from when I was in college (Call Me Maybe, Starships, Boom Clap, etc.), 90s pop (Britney, Vengaboys – who they seem to love in NZ, Backstreet Boys, Blink 182, etc.), and a VERY light smattering of current pop songs that I actually knew (Dua Lipa’s endlessly catchy Cold Heart, Head and Heart, etc.). Was basically like a really, really good wedding DJ playlist to be honest. I wound up befriending some Kiwis and staying out at the bar til they closed at 4am, and my total bill the next morning was under 70 USD so not bad at all. But yea, any dance floor that is hiphop, or too much modern pop, or electronic, I wouldn’t like at all, so this was really the perfect singalong place to be honest. I also learned the next day that I started a macarena dance with some people here, so I hope that doesn’t become a bad habit whenever I am out on the dance floor.
The main reason I was visiting Christchurch was to take a day trip to the site of Edoras in LOTR. It’s quite a magnificent location, a rocky outcrop in a massive valley that is flanked by snowy mountains on both sides. Of course, knowing my luck, the weather was shit that day, so you couldn’t see the soaring mountain peaks on each side. But it was still awesome to visit this site, and I would say pretty easily my second favorite LOTR place I visited in NZ after Hobbiton. I was basically whistling the Edoras/Rohan theme the entire time, just a very cool and epic spot. And the company provided props, like Narsil (Aragorn’s reforged sword of Isildur), Gimli’s axe, and a giant Rohan flag.
My final day in Christchurch, I woke up at 3am to go to a bar for the 4am World Cup final, which was packed with mostly French tourists. Obviously the game was an all-time classic but the atmosphere definitely would have been better if the ratio was flipped. But New Zealand as a whole has tons and tons of French and Dutch tourists. Generally was very happy that Messi won, and of course was rooting for Argentina because of Marcelo Bielsa. I then went straight from the bar to my hostel, got my bags, and stumbled over to the bus stop where I basically napped for the entirety of my bus ride to Wanaka.
Wanaka was a shockingly nice town. It’s a tiny place – you can walk all of it in like 20 minutes – but it’s just very pleasant, tons of cool little bars and restaurants and bakeries, and it is quite scenic with a lakefront and mountains right by it. I was supposed to go skydiving my first day there, but that sadly got cancelled because of the cloudy weather…yet more good New Zealand weather luck. Still made the most of that day though, wound up going to this vineyard with a few people from my hostel (one of whom had a rental car), which had gorgeous views of the lake and mountains and was basically a free wine-tasting of actually good wines. There were a couple of other super yuppie American couples who were my age there, but I legitimately felt like 5 years younger than them. Me and the other hostel people didn’t know anything about wine and just came for the free drinks while these couples seemingly knew their shit and were asking hard-hitting questions. They were just peak yuppie, I’m sure they’re nice people, but it really made me glad that I am living the life I’m living now instead of not following the typical American lifestyle of corporate focus and owning property and all that jazz. I guess I have never fully grown up, I don’t know.
The next day was what is probably New Zealand’s second most famous dayhike after the Tongariro Crossing, Roy’s Peak. It was about 1300m in elevation gain over 8km (so 16km roundtrip). The sign on the front said 6 hour roundtrip, so I knew I would be faster as this is a tourist country so these signs are targeted at non-hikers (whereas in a place like Kyrgyzstan, I would be slower than the suggested time). Turns out I did the uphill in just over 2 hours, and I was quite proud of myself. Unfortunately, I did it so fast that by the time I got up it was still cloudy, and I had to wait 2+ hours in the cold before they cleared, but the views were sweet enough where it was almost worth it. The hike down took a little over an hour, and my biggest takeaway from this hike is that I am slowly approaching “hiking in crocs” territory. Another Wanaka highlight was this excellent excellent Kashmiri restaurant I went to for dinner after Roy’s Peak – had a very good lamb rogan jhosh dish, and she definitely made it extra spicy because I’m brown so that was a nice added bonus. Lowkey might have been the best meal I had in New Zealand to be honest.
Sort of chilled out otherwise – the hostel was really nice – and wandered around town, but overall Wanaka was a very, very pleasant stay. I eventually took a 2 hour shuttle to Queenstown, where I was going to be parked for five days. For dinner that night I went to this stupidly overhyped burger shop called Ferg Burgers, which already had a 30 minute wait at 5:30pm. Everyone in NZ raves about this place and it was the definition of a forgettable burger.
The following day was, of course, a full day LOTR tour. Saw a whole bunch of minor sights, but the highlight was probably just the general scenery of the Queenstown area. Very scenic, I would say like a prettier Ushuaia (southern tip of Argentina). Just a nice bay that is ringed by (short) mountains. One great part about this LOTR tour was seeing exactly where the famous “Potatoes” and Olifaunt scene was shot. It was actually very cool because when you walk in here, you can actually see it and recognize it right away – in many cases, Peter Jackson’s tricks sometimes make the film locations look only faintly like they do in the movies, so I thought this was awesome.
Objectively, Queenstown sucks as a city. It’s a small strip that you can walk and see everything in 5 minutes, and there is nothing of value to see. All the cool stuff is in the surrounding area so it is basically a base with a bunch of bars to get sloshed at every night. I wound up drinking a ton here, but that was mostly because I got into my top choice grad school – Columbia SIPA – and my safety school – Hertie in Berlin. Hertie actually gave me a fantastic financial aid package, where the tuition would be <10k euros a year. SIPA won’t get back for a while, so fingers crossed that the aid there is good because I would love to live in NYC. And SIPA is honestly probably second to none (or maybe second to Harvard Kennedy, which required 3 rec letters so I didn’t apply there as I only had my old boss and his boss) for what I want to do, which is ultimately to work in conflict zones – either with refugees, in disaster aid/recovery, or in global health. Not 100% set though, but definitely more or less set on human rights and/or humanitarian policy. No idea beyond that on geographic focus, but I guess that’s what the next 2.5 years is for. But I do think given the recent Taliban news and my overall experience in Afghanistan that I might want to focus on that area? Honestly, I was surprised at how deflated I felt when I heard about the Taliban banning women from colleges and subsequently banning international female NGO workers. I guess I got suckered into that low-level optimism that even my guide had (we have stayed in touch texting), but it really does suck.
The best hike I did in NZ by some distance was the Ben Lomond hike out of Queenstown. I was actually drunk for this hike…3 hours of sleep and woke up drunk. But that’s a part of the fun, and harkened back to my high altitude “handicapped” hiking in Ecuador, so these sea level hikes were still a piece of cake. Ben Lomond is supposed to be a 6-8 hour roundtrip hike from the base of Queenstown. I hiked up the first 600m in about an hour and to be honest barely remembered it, then did the next 400m in an hour (this was way flatter and longer, so much easier), and the final 400m in an hour. This was the hardest part – basically a 400m climb in under 1km. Great hangover cure though, and honestly the epitome of an enjoyable but easy hike for me. Just to the limit of easy where I got a good workout, but still easy enough where I could do the entire 3 hour hike without stopping. And the views from the top were fantastic. Above all these small mountains, but the waves upon waves of ridges were such a cool view. And an awesome view of the sound from up there. It was a fairly easy 2 hour hike back to the city.
I happened to make a bunch of friends in Wanaka who went on to Queenstown with me, but also made a few “local” friends in Queenstown. Basically all these Brits who took working visas to travel in NZ and now work in Queenstown, so I kind of joined this local group when going out every night and hanging out. Good group of people. On Christmas day, I got invited to some house party by one of these Brits, and it was straight up like a college frat party. In the backyard, shitty beers, beer pong, slapcup, flipcup, beer bongs, and Wagon Wheel even made a cameo on the playlist. Wound up going to bed by 8pm that night but it was a fun day. One of these Brits actually worked at this incredible fresh cookie shop in Queenstown, so whenever I visited she would give me a few extra cookies for the cost of just one.
My final day in Queenstown was a full day trip to Fiordland National Park and Milford Sound. This was honestly a beautiful area, probably the most scenic part of New Zealand that I saw. Was basically like a more beautiful Montana, or a less beautiful (I can’t help but compare) Kashmir or Kyrgyzstan. Still an incredible spot, and the Milford Sound tour (which is actually a fjord that is incorrectly labeled as a Sound) was very cool, seeing all of these jagged rock formations rise up in the water. Honestly got like a Jurassic Park vibe from this.
I then had a full day drive back to Christchurch. The scenery here (when I wasn’t catching up on sleep or reading the plethora of articles my dad emails me. Which is actually very useful for staying in touch with the world given my post-retirement interests) was very much like the Scottish Highlands. Just large mounds of hills left and right while the road weaves between them. Pretty cool, but again, not to sound like a dick, I’ve seen better.
My final day in New Zealand was a day trip to Mount Cook National Park, which was another loooong day of driving here. Honestly a very impressive mountain, seeing it rise majestically over the perfectly blue waters of Lake Pukaki. It was also quite prominent – roughly 3000 meters in elevation rise from the base, for a total of ~3700m above sea level. I wouldn’t say it *quite* compares to the best peaks that I have seen – seeing FitzRoy in Patagonia takes the cake, and Shivling in Uttarakhand, the mountains beyond Lake Karakol in Tajikistan are also in my top 3 I think. Would put Cotopaxi in Ecuador up there too (never really saw Kilimanjaro fully from a distance because of all the clouds). In the park itself we did this really easy walk called the Hooker Trail that was pretty cool. Basically a flat walk but you could see these mountains up close, and in a way reminded me of the Indian Himalayas, specifically my Gaumukh Tapovan trek where we were just walking right next to these awesome mountains. I think Gaumukh was a slightly better view but this was still very very cool.
Flying out to Fiji for New Year’s to end the trip. Overall, New Zealand was great. Maybe a *little* underwhelming in that it was merely a “good not great” country and not an all-time favorite, but it was still very cool to see all the LOTR spots that I did. I think I was also spoiled by seeing all the mountains in India the past few months, and even spending time in the Andes earlier this year, so New Zealand was never going to compare with those. If anything I would say that NZ is like a prettier version of the best of US mountains that I have seen (Montana and Yosemite, and easily over Colorado), or a better version of South Africa. Still absolutely a great place to visit, and it is shockingly easy and (relatively) cheap to do without a car, as all of the sights are either well connected by a good bus system (with cheap hostels there), or available to visit as a day trip via coach (much like in Iceland with all of the sights).
There’s also tooooons of adventure activities to do in the Queenstown/Wanaka area…I only tried for skydiving and it sadly got cancelled due to weather, but there’s also bungee jumping, canyon swings, and all sorts of other things that I haven’t even heard of. These all cost a pretty penny though, and it’s almost like a way bigger version of what’s available to do in Livingstone around Vic Falls in Zambia.
Overall, South Island was definitely the better of the two islands, though I think that North Island was better strictly for LOTR. And Wellington is by some distance the nicest city in New Zealand (Wanaka is a small town so doesn’t really compare despite being great). And Kiwis as a whole are all incredibly nice people – probably the nicest I have met in a “wealthy” country to be honest. Kind of goes against my pet theory that the less economically well off a country is, the nicer the population, but I think that this still largely stands true from my experiences. Food here was eh, but the best consistent food I had was the pies in the bakeries – no Greggs, but still very reminiscent of the UK.
After New Year’s in Fiji, I’ll be in Singapore for a few days (since I used AA miles for a free flight to Singapore), before heading off to the island of Sumatra in Indonesia for a week-long jungle trek to (hopefully!) see wild Orangutans. Nothing formally set after that but I would like to see some of the ancient Hindu and Buddhist temples in Central Java afterwards, and then do some Manta Ray scuba diving and see Komodo Dragons on Flores Island. After those three trips, my one month Indonesia visa should basically be up…will figure out my post Indonesia plans while I’m chilling in Singapore. It’s weird, I only have like half a year left of travel left but I’m not really feeling disappointed like I thought I would. I think a part of that is because I have achieved a lot and done and seen a lot the past 3+ years, but also because that I am genuinely looking forward to my next step of working in the fields that I want to work, so it’s not like grad school is a step back. In a way I think my travels sort of naturally led to this potential life/career path, so fingers crossed that Columbia gives good aid. If not, Berlin should be pretty fun and a decent program to (or even Singapore, if I get into LKY and they give good aid while Columbia does not).