New Zealand Part 2: Milford Sound, Queenstown

On Wednesday, after staying the night in our little cabin, we woke up at 5am to make the drive to Milford Sound, about 2 hours away from where we were staying in Te Anau. James drove and I navigated while Caroline napped in the back. The drive was absolutely stunning. There was fog settled throughout the mountains and on the ground which made everything look a little eerie and mysterious. After making our way to Milford Sound, we got on our boat cruise. I have truly never seen anything more beautiful in my life. I don’t even have words to describe what we saw on the cruise and my pictures don’t even do it justice honestly. We got to see dolphins jumping beside our boat, seals hanging out on some rocks, and even penguins feeding early in the morning. We also got to see a lot of cool waterfalls and a fault line as well. Needless to say, the drive was absolutely worth the cruise and the view.

We finished the cruise and got back in the car, this time Caroline driving while James and I slept. We both woke up about two hours later in Te Anau. We kept going for a while and then I switched spots with Caroline at a bathroom/playground break since we all had a ton of energy. After switching, I drove the last hour and a half or so of our journey to Queenstown where we checked into the best hostel we stayed in the entire trip. They had nametags for our bunks, free bike rentals, a huge kitchen, different activities every night, and just overall a really good community feeling. As soon as we got to Queenstown, the vibe of our entire trip changed. We instantly went from driving all over the place to a more relaxed and less packed schedule. It was a much-needed change and I’m really glad we planned our vacation that way. It was the best of both worlds.

We hung out for a little while in the hostel and then ventured out to get dinner. Queenstown is actually super small and has maybe a total of 5 streets across, and 3 down. It wasn’t too hard to find good food and we decided on a little fish and chips food truck style restaurant. It was a lot of fried food but it was so good and we had been really good about cooking all week so it was a nice change. After dinner, we walked down by the lake where the view was spectacular just like it was for pretty much our entire trip. Once we got back to our room, we met our fourth roommate Dan who was a 30-year-old who had just received a promotion at work (he works at Twitch in San Francisco) and took two and a half weeks off to travel. He had traveled all over the world and we spent the rest of our night at various bars with Dan just talking to him about his life and asking his advice. It was a lot of fun to talk to someone new and Dan was really cool and offered us a lot of insight.

The next morning, we slept in for the first time since getting to New Zealand. When we woke up, we decided to do the alpine luge. When we bought tickets online, we were pretty skeptical about how many runs we should buy, but James convinced us to buy seven which was as many as we could buy. When we got there, we went up the mountain in the gondola and then to a ski lift to take us to the top of the track. I don’t think we really expected much when we saw it but it was actually so much fun. You basically get into a cart-type thing and there’s no accelerator so you use gravity to get down the track with your brake and steering through the course. We raced pretty much every time we went down, and on the last one this kid decided to race with us as well. He might have been about 10 years old and it was pretty fun actually (see video at bottom for demonstration).

After completing all seven runs and going back down the gondola, we went to go scope out a good lunch place. We settled on a place called Caribe and we got some really good burritos and quesadillas there. For the rest of the afternoon I spent some time in the room editing the video that I’m making (see end of post!) and we all just hung out. By then, Dan had left to go back to San Francisco so we said bye to him as well. Later that night we went out with some other people in our program who were also traveling in Queenstown and we had a pretty fun night.

On Friday, we woke up late again, especially after our adventures the night before and we decided to hike up Queenstown Hill. Sounds pretty innocent, right? NOPE it was the steepest hike I think I have ever really been on and we totally chickened out and just went up to the lookout instead of the top of the mountain. Still, the views were incredible, and it was totally worth it. Plus, we got some much-needed exercise and it was a beautiful day out. After our hike, we went to Fergburger to get lunch. Fergburger is this famous burger place in Queenstown and it was super busy when we got there. Once we got our food though, it was definitely worth the wait.

Once we ate, we headed back to our hostel to shower and change and then we all kind of did our own thing for a while. I took a book and I went down to the lake and I tried to read a little but ended up falling asleep in the sun for a bit. It was really nice to just enjoy Queenstown on my own for a little bit. We didn’t really do much more on Friday, but we did get our new roommate Adam who is 27 and quit his job in London because he hated the corporate world and is traveling New Zealand and Australia for a few months. He was also pretty cool to talk to and we had fun hanging out with him as well.

The next morning, I woke up pretty early because I spontaneously decided to go paragliding. I saw people doing it from the top of the alpine luge area while we were there and I have always wanted to do that/hang glide so I figured why not? And I just signed up the night before. The wind was a little crazy so we had to take off from a different place but honestly it was the coolest feeling in the world. I felt like I was flying. It was basically and upgraded version of Soarin’ in Disney World. At the end, my guide asked me if I liked rollercoasters and did a crazy landing which was really cool. I was pretty proud of myself for doing something totally on my own and it was a really good time so I’m really glad that I decided to do it.

When I got back to the hostel, Caroline and James has borrowed the bikes and we went on a bike ride. The path was right along the water, similar to the esplanade in Boston and it was breathtaking with the mountains in the back as well. The bikes we took were pretty old and definitely needed a tune up so Caroline and I had bikes that didn’t have any brakes. It was a pretty scary ride but it added some thrill so it was fun.

While I was gone that morning, Caroline and James also signed up for clay target shooting. I was really on the fence about doing that because I didn’t really want to spend more money and also guns aren’t really my thing. I ended up going anyway and it was kind of cool but it actually just made me really uncomfortable. I definitely do not like shooting a shotgun and I will probably never do it again. I’m glad I had the experience though because it definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone which is important sometimes.

After target shooting, we walked around looking for a good place to get some dinner. We pretty much walked the whole town but honestly that isn’t saying much. We ended up at a place called “Hell”, which was a pizza place. Each of the pizzas were named after a sin or another hell-related thing. It was a creative theme for a pizza place and the food was incredible. I’m really glad we ended up there.

At 9pm we had a booking at the Ice Bar in Queenstown. We showed up and they gave us coats and gloves and then we went into the -9-degree Celsius bar. It was a little chilly after a while but the ice sculptures were awesome and all of our cups were made out of ice which made our drinks super cold. It was a really cool experience, but I think it was a one and done kind of deal. Afterwards, we went home for a bit and then ended up back out at a different bar, where we ran into some people from our program.

Here I am now, sitting on the plane on my way back to Sydney. I’m really sad to be leaving New Zealand because it truly was the most amazing country I have ever been to. I highly recommend going there at some point because it was unlike anything else I have ever seen. I am also kind of ready to be back in Sydney though. I miss all my roommates and I’m excited to have my own room again. Hopefully one day I will have the opportunity to go back to New Zealand and maybe explore the North Island since we didn’t do that this time. I had a great time this week but it’s time to go back to classes and my internship.

I also made this video to document our trip. Its definitely not a professionally shot or made video but hey, I did my best. Enjoy!