Now that the journey in the Jucy van is over and we have access to the internet again, I’ve got plenty to tell you guys and gals about.  For clarity’s sake, I’ve decided to just take this day-by-day, so here goes!

On Tuesday we picked up our Jucy van from the airport, and being the confident drivers we are, decided to get the full insurance coverage for $25 a day.  We knew it was going to be an interesting six days when we got sympathetic looks from everyone we told that we there were five of us staying in the campervan.  The side of the van even reads “This condo campa is perfect for two, great for three, and a party for four!”  What does that make it for five?  Too small?  We were about to find out.  Once we were all packed up in the van, we left Queenstown and headed for a town called Te Anau.  It didn’t take us long after arriving to realize that there wasn’t much to do in Te Anau compared to Queenstown.  We did find a really cool beach that we hung out at for awhile, and the girls all got sunburned (despite numerous warnings from yours truly about their lack of sunscreen).  After the beach, we met up with our four new Australian friends that we met canyoning and got some dinner.  I ordered a steak burger, and it was delicious.  Complete with steak, fried onions, lettuce, beetroot relish and mayo, it was definitely a nice change from the usual.  After dinner, we all decided to go see a movie we had heard about from a number of different people when asking about what to do in Te Anau.  Basically it was a half hour of professionally recorded camera shots taken from a helicopter flying over Milford Sound and the surrounding area.  It was definitely a worthwhile experience.  Tuesday night things got a little dicey.  Tuesday night marked the first of many adventures involving where we could park our van overnight.  Apparently the Te Anau/Milford Sound area has a lot of campers come through, and in the interest of the towns not being overrun, they’ve developed strict rules against camping overnight for free (we’re talking instant $250 fine strict).  That being said, we were told at the visitor’s center that there were numerous campsites between Te Anau and Milford Sound that would allow us to park our van for $5 per night per person, the first of which was about 20 kilometers outside of town, so we headed that direction.  Problem was, it was getting dark and starting to rain pretty hard, and we had no idea what exactly we were looking for in terms of a campsite.  Long story short, we were pretty freaked out even after we found the campsite because it was tucked way back in the woods and we hadn’t seen another vehicle for quite awhile.  It ended up turning out great though, which leads me to Wednesday.

Turns out once it was light out, our campsite wasn’t sketchy at all.  It was in a great location, and we had our own personal beach!  Even with all the incredible things we’ve done and seen so far on this trip, it was the simple act of bathing in a lake surrounded by mountains in New Zealand that is right near the top of the list for me.  The girls don’t quite agree (something about the water being cold), but I found it quite refreshing and unique.  The big event on Wednesday was driving up to Milford Sound (for those who aren’t aware, a sound in this case is a portion of the ocean that projects into the land).  We were going to the sound to take a boat tour, but we had just as much fun driving there.  Up and down mountains, past other mountains and waterfalls, and directly through a mountain via a creepy, dimly lit tunnel, the drive to Milford was potentially the most interesting one I’ve ever been a part of myself.  AND I got to drive!  Nothing I can say would do the trip justice, and my pictures probably won’t either, but keep an eye on facebook if you’d like to see those.  Something really interesting we came across at Milford were Kias, the world’s only flightless parrots.  These little guys, like the rest of the birds we’ve encountered so far, were extremely friendly.  They tried to join us in the van on a number of occasions, but it was probably just because they wanted to eat our food.  After all this adventure, we finally made it to the actual sound for our boat tour.  The tour lasted just over two hours, and was a fantastic way to see every part of the sound all in one day.  The boat took us all the way out to where the sound became the ocean, and then circled back and brought us to the harbor again.  On the way, we got EXTREMELY close to one of the many large waterfalls that can be found on the walls of the sound (and I mean close as in the front of the boat was under the water).  In addition to the boat tour itself, we found the best deal we’ve found on anything so far on our trip.  Ours was the last tour of the day, so they were attempting to get rid of the food they were selling on the boat.  Let’s just say we got delicious soup and sandwich combos that normally would have cost us $9 for a measly $2.  Pretty sweet.  After our tour, we headed back towards Te Anau, making a couple more scenic stops along the way.  One of these stops was prompted by a sign advertising something called “The Chasm”.  Honestly, how do you pass up something whose name literally means a giant hole??  Surprisingly, after all the hype, we were NOT disappointed.  I have pictures that I’ll put up on facebook, but it literally was a GIANT hole in the ground that has been formed by water rushing over rock for so long.  Eventually we made it back to our campsite (we liked it so much the first time we decided to come back), and concluded what we all agreed was one of our favorite days since getting to New Zealand.

Thursday was one of the more stressful days we’ve encountered so far on the trip.  We drove from Te Anau to Dunedin, which was fine until we actually arrived at our destination.  We found out very quickly that driving straight into the heart of a city the size of Dunedin without any sort of plan when you aren’t familiar with the area is NOT a good idea.  While seeing the part of Dunedin known as “The Octagon” was a unique and interesting experience, it would have been much more enjoyable on foot than in our big old Jucy van.  As a quick side note, we did find a Subway, and I concocted a new and amazing soft drink.  It’s a mixture of a pop known as L&P, Schweppe’s Raspberry, and Orange Fanta.  Fantastic stuff.  Finding a place to park the van at all was stressful enough, but we were also quickly informed that “freedom camping” (camping overnight for free) was not condoned by the Dunedin City Council.  Additionally, all the “recommended” campsites would have run us at least $20 per person per night.  In other words, we needed to find a place to camp for two nights that wouldn’t get us a big obnoxious fine, but we didn’t want to pay 20 bucks apiece.  This ended up being WAY more frustrating than any of us could have imagined.  After driving around for what seemed like hours, and probably spending just as much money on gas as we would have on most of the organized campsites, we settled on a gravel lot near the top of a hill on the outskirts of the city.  Sketchy?  Yes.  Just when it seemed as though Dunedin had absolutely nothing to offer to a group of young, inexperienced travelers such as ourselves, we discovered a small path leading into the woods from our otherwise disappointing gravel lot.  Guess where it led?  If you said the moon, you’re wrong…Give up?  It was the ocean!  Our seemingly worthless camping spot turned out to be just a hop/skip/jump away from one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever seen.  Funny how life surprises you sometimes.  We hung out at the beach for a while, and then a giant raincloud came and spoiled the fun (although it was cool to watch it roll in).  We set up camp, watched a movie (The Other Guys), and crossed our fingers in hopes that we wouldn’t get busted for freedom camping where we weren’t allowed. 

Friday morning we woke up to heavy engine sounds, and I personally was SURE we were getting towed.  Once I finally worked up the courage to look outside, I was pleased to find that it was just a city bus getting ready to make its morning rounds.  Once we were all ready for the day, we headed to the one thing that sounded interesting in Dunedin, the Otago Peninsula.  I had spoken prior to this trip with someone who lived in New Zealand for a year and a half, and she said that Allan’s Beach was a must-see while we were here, and fortunately it was a part of the Otago Peninsula.  We headed in that direction, and despite some less than fantastic weather, made our way out to the beach itself.  It was as good as advertised.  Not only was Allan’s Beach another incredibly beautiful place, it had more than just sand and water to look at.  It didn’t take us long after getting to the beach to come across our first pair of sea lions resting together on the beach.  As we continued walking, we realized this wasn’t an uncommon occurrence.  Towards the end of the beach, we came across an injured sea lion resting on a rock.  He looked like he’d been attacked by some sort of shark, and has several long, deep gashes on his stomach.  We named him Frank and decided we would pray for him as a group.  We can only hope things worked out on his end.  One thing I had been told about Allan’s Beach that didn’t end up being true was that there were penguins there.  Since this was the main reason we all wanted to go there in the first place, we decided to continue up the peninsula to a place called Penguin Beach, in hopes of finding a few of the little guys.  This is where the disappointment started.  We drove for quite some time, up a number of steep inclines, just to be informed that the only way to access Penguin Beach was to take the $55, hour-long nature tour that included the beach as one of its stops.  Being on a budget, we all agreed that we could spend our money more wisely.  As long as we were now at the top of this mountain, however, we wanted to make the drive worth it by making use of the restaurant’s power outlets.  We hadn’t had access to any of these since picking up the van, and most of us were about to lose our ability to take pictures (which is the last thing you want on a trip like this).  We ordered shakes, and sat down to wait for our cameras to gain some life.  There was only one problem with this plan.  Once we got back in the van and started down the mountain again, two of us (myself included) realized that we hadn’t turned on the outlet that we had plugged our chargers into (an easily overlooked necessity in this part of the world).  In other words, our cameras were still on their last leg, and we had gained nothing from the long uphill trek.  As unfortunate as the lack of penguins and battery power had been, none of us were willing to let it ruin our day.  Once we were back into town, we decided to seek out another challenge we could conquer.  It came in the form of Baldwin Street, the “World’s Steepest Street”.  We had been told that if a person walked up and down this vertically imposing roadway, they would be rewarded with a certificate of achievement, which is exactly what we all needed after a disappointing afternoon.  We found the street (I have no doubt whatsoever that it IS in fact the steepest street in the world), and climbed up and back down, with a few pictures along the way.  Back at the bottom, we got our certificates and headed on our merry way.  We hadn’t spent much money on food so far on the trip, so we decided to end the day with a night out for dinner.  We found a cool little pizza place called Filadelfio’s, and Brenna and I split a chicken pizza with cranberry sauce.  It was amazing.  After dinner we all walked around the flower garden across the street from the restaurant, and we came across a very friendly one-footed duck.  He came right up to us and sat down, as if expecting some sort of help.  Unfortunately, we didn’t have anything to feed him, so instead we named him Jeff and decided to pray for him as well.  We had a fun night back at the same gravel lot campsite.  We made a music video and watch Despicable Me.  It was a good way to end our last day in Dunedin.

Saturday was relatively uneventful compared to the rest of the trip.  We woke up to another city bus, celebrated another night of not getting a ticket, and packed up to head north to Christchurch.  Most of the day was spent driving.  We thought we would be smarter about driving straight into town in Christchurch than we were in Dunedin, but it didn’t end up working out that way.  It turns out that “City Centre” around here literally means the center of the city, not a useful place to get information like its name implies.  At any rate, we basically drove into town, parked, and did some exploring.  We saw some areas that were still pretty beaten up from the earthquakes they’ve been having recently, and we came across a couple pretty cool beaches.  Ultimately, we found out that freedom camping was permitted in Christchurch, so we settled into a nice parking lot in the middle of a park and set up there for the night.  The girls decided they wanted to make a video of how “repulsive” we had all become from not having bathed in so long, so that ended up being our activity for the night.

Sunday was basically a continuation of Saturday in Christchurch.  We were going to walk one of the local trails that supposedly led to a cave, but it was closed due to potential falling rocks…we didn’t think this was a safe warning to ignore.  Instead, we headed back over to the beach and watched some surfers, in hopes that we might pick up some useful tricks for our time in Freo.  It didn’t really work.  We made lunch by the beach, and then a couple of us bought some ice cream for dessert.  I got the flavor “hokey pokey” just to try something different, and it ended up being really great.  In the afternoon we went downtown and walked around what’s known in Christchurch as “The Red Zone”.  Basically this is the area that took the hardest hit after the earthquakes, and has been deemed unsafe for civilians.  For this reason, it is entirely fenced off, and you aren’t able to get very close to any of the major damage.  Even the buildings in the surrounding area that aren’t part of this zone have signs on the door indicating that they’ve been inspected, and many of them are considered structurally unsafe and have been shut down.  Seeing this area was one of the more sobering things we’ve done so far on the trip, but at the same time it was extremely interesting.  Don’t be sad though, it’s not all bad for Christchurch.  Due to the fact that so many businesses have had to shut down, there are all kinds of railroad cars around town that have been converted into makeshift shops, and it has formed some extremely interesting communities.  You also get the sense from walking around that the hard times in Christchurch have brought the city together, and forced them to rally around one another, which is really cool to see.  After seeing the earthquake damage, we stopped at a nearby candy shop and bought some mango licorice.  It was fantastic.  After we were done exploring, we drove out of Christchurch, stopped to grab a quick dinner, and ended up stopping in a little town with a population of 318 called Lake Tekapo.  This is where we spent our last night in the Jucy van, and basically wrapped up the second leg of our pre-travel adventure.  Now off to Australia!