Thumbs Up for New Zealand

Well, we’re officially in New Zealand! A lot has happened since the magical layover. Let me try to summarize...

Saturday

We arrived in Christchurch completely exhausted, and somehow found our way to our hostel, “At the Right Place.” We chatted with one of the backpackers there, an Australian named Steve, who invited us to join him in going to a shopping center with him and two of his friends. We joined them and got an immediate glimpse of the quirkiness of Christchurch by playing Giant Jenga (to the apparent pleasure of the crowd that had gathered to watch).

After that, Mariah and I continued on to another shopping mall, in search of an affordable SIM card. The internet junkies that we are, we HAD to get data immediately. Once successful, we turned back home and went to bed shortly after, while it was still light out.

Sunday

Mariah and I hung out with our friendly German roommate, Jonathan, all day. It was probably in the mid-80s, which to us Minnesotans felt like 10000000000 degrees. The three of us walked to the Botanic Gardens to rent kayaks. We paddled through the shallow river for an hour, dodging ducks and getting ourselves stuck by exploring dangerous new routes (okay, it was just a tiny branch off from the river that had some painful thorny plants).

After our kayaking adventure we explored the Botanic Garden until we were thoroughly sunburnt and exhausted from the heat. We returned home, thinking we would head out again in the evening to check out the World Buskers Festival, a festival whose profits go toward rebuilding the Christchurch infrastructure. But alas, exaustion took over and we were soon snoozing instead of exploring any further that night.

Monday

Mariah and I woke up on Monday with a plan. We went straight to the local Burger King to take advantage of the free wifi in order to map our official route for the next few weeks. We thought we’d spend a couple hours there. We ended up staying for five. By the end we had probably applied to 30 jobs near our next destination (Franz Josef and Mt Cook), and by the end of it some serious changes had gone down. Originally we were going to be picked up Tuesday morning and brought to a family’s dairy farm to work for 9 days. Now we would instead be making our way to the West Coast and had two days to begin working for a rainforest retreat in Franz Josef Glacier. The only question that remained was how to get there...

After our 5-hour Burger King marathon, we finally went with Jonathan to the festival. We spontaneously joined a show just as it was beginning. Turns out we spent $3 to watch a guy called the Rubberband Boy put like 10 rubberbands on his head. Can’t say I was expecting that…

After that we came across a fortune teller, and patiently waited in line for our connection with the cosmos to be discovered. When it was finally our turn, the three of us sat down with her/him (spoiler: it was a male actor dressed up as a lady named Moira Mackenzie). This guy turned out to be hilarious. I think Mariah summarized it best in her blog (http://ahardhobbittobreak.blogspot.com):

“She told Hannah that she needed to stop being cheap and upgrade to business class on the airplane [so she can drink classier alcohol and not lose her voice anymore]. She told Jonathan to climb up a hazelnut tree, play a flute, wait for the fairies, and then he will be more naughty. She told me [Mariah] that John was holding me back from watching Game of Thrones and that I need to point and shake a finger at him.”

We obviously needed to get a photo with the fortune teller, so Rubberband Boy came over and snapped one for us…along with a short, awkward video. You can make out the fortune teller’s fake Scottish accent if you listen closely (video to come later).

The fortune teller told us to go to Astro Lounge later, which is a bar with a Tardis door (so it must be really awesome), but unfortunately it was closed that day, so we’ll never discover what the fortune teller looks like behind all that makeup.

Tuesday

And now we come to today, the least predictable day we’ve had so far. We got up early, packed up our backpacks, made signs out of cardboard, and went on our way. That’s right, folks, Hannah and Mariah decided to try out their hand (er--thumb) at hitchhiking.

Feeling a bit silly, we stood and waved and stuck out our thumbs for about 10 or 15 minutes before anyone stopped. When someone finally did, he told us he couldn’t take us all the way to the West Coast, but at least he could bring us to a more opportune location for finding people to pick us up. He was right: we weren’t standing at the new place for more than 3 minutes, I think, before a huge truck carrying two tankards of cream came to a halt.

“Where are you headed?” I asked, running towards him.

“West Coast!” he replied.

Good enough for us!

His name is Worrick. We hopped on and had a surprisingly awesome three hours chatting with him. The route was absolutely amazing. Worrick drove us straight through the mountains, the kind of landscape I’d imagined when I used to think of New Zealand, and he basically gave us a private tour. He told us about dairy farms, cow breeds, weather patterns, the landscape, gave us some great tips for how to plan the next parts of our journey, and even pointed out where one scene from Lord of the Rings was filmed. And, since we were in a tall truck that had an amazing viewpoint, I would say it was even better than a TranzAlpine journey could have been. We took approximately one zillion pictures each.

One of these rock formations was used for a scene in LOTR... Can you figure out which scene? 

Worrick dropped us off in a little oceanside town named Hokitika, which is 1.5 hours away from our final destination, where we found a hostel to stay in for the night. Tomorrow we’ll try our hand/thumb at hitchhiking once again for the final leg of our journey.

Until then, we have an exciting evening ahead of us. Stay tuned!