Wow, one of the most memorable adventures I
have had the privilege to take part in. From the first minute my heart was
racing and we knew this would be one hell of a trip.
It started when we picked up the rental car
in downtown Christchurch. All they had left at the time were manuals and so we
had no choice but to accept the challenge. Turns out I was the best of the
group and it was my job to drive it back – I soon learned that it would be my
job to drive 95% of the trip. While initially getting out of the parking lot
was not easy to say the least, the rest of the 25-minute drive went
surprisingly well considering the circumstances. There was one succession of
stalls, but nothing too major. The car, a Daihatsu Sirion (nicknamed the
Sirloin), was tiny; we had to repack and compress our stuff to make it all fit
– but it made it.
We left campus at about 6pm and made it to
Hokitika on the west coast of the south island in about 3.5 hours. The windy
mountain roads forced me to learn stick real fast, but again, it all went
surprisingly well. We pitched our tents at a lake campsite that evening and
then left in the morning for Fox Glacier as we had a guided tour booked that
afternoon. New Zealand is pretty much only mountain roads and the “Sirloin”
almost didn’t make it up a few of the bigger hills…
The glacier was incredible. We hiked up to
it and then spent at least another hour on the ice itself. What I found most
interesting was how much it grows and recedes each year. There was a wooden
staircase on the side of the valley where the glacier once sit, a substantial
distance from where it lies today. After the glacier we continued down the
coast as far as we could get to set ourselves up for a quicker drive to
Queenstown the next day. We stopped at another lake campsite, which again was beautiful,
but this time plagued with sand flies – basically the New Zealand version of
mosquitoes, which I came to learn also love to bite me.
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