We planned to tour New Zealand with a group called Adventure Junkies (www.adventurejunkies.com), this seemed to be the easiest thing to do considering we didn’t feel like planning a whole trip on our own and the tour included most everything we wanted to do and then some. 2 weeks in NZ is definitely not enough to do everything that we wanted to so we definitely have lots of things saved up for another trip.
We met up at the Cathedral Café a short walk from our hotel and had a bit of “brekkie”. I love muesli and I wish that they offered this cereal in the states, I’ll just need to learn how to make my own. It’s just cereal but the base is raw oats and dried fruit, kind of like a trail mix but better and you eat it like a cereal.
Our group leader is Russ. He’s 33, from England but lived in NZ for 7 years now. We come to learn that the areas of NZ that we visited are pretty settled by world travelers who just come to love it. Another in our group Dan, 19 from London; Tammy, 25 from Australia and a newlywed couple, Anusham and Duala from India who were doing the 28 day Adventure Junkie tour, while the rest of us were on the 10 day tour.
We loaded up into our Adventure Junkies van and set off to our first activity.
JET BOATING! The company we boated with was Waimak Alpine Jet (www.alpinejet.co.nz). The boat follows the same mechanics as a jet ski so can traverse through really shallow and narrow areas of water and spin around in fun circles. Our guide (shoot forgot his name) started us off with our first taste of Aussie and Kiwi rivalry. Upon making the first of 100, “Where are you guys from?” rounds, he moaned in distaste when Tammy mentioned she was from Australia. Those ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘ew/gross’ moans though are always followed with lighthearted “whereabouts” so you knew they were never serious. Along the river that we jetboated through we saw an area on the top of a hill where they filmed Narnia!
We stopped off for lunch in a town call Springfield. They were so excited when the Simpsons movie came out that they erected a statue of a pink frosted doughnut. And here is where we began the epicurean portion of our trip. We love to eat! And love to travel! So eating while traveling is really the utmost high, this is especially considering the adventurous things we did during this particular holiday. Lunch today was at an adorable café: carrot muffin, meat pies and an amazing chicken Panini. We learned here that Kiwis love their meat pies, you will find them everywhere!
HIKING! After lunch we drove a while and had our first view of NZ with a nice hike to Washepn Falls (www.washpenfalls.co.nz/) and the Rakaia Gorge. NZ is filled with sheep farms. There are lots of jokes regarding shepherd and their sheep and what might be going on at night.
We spent our first night in a town called Methven, sadly with all of the excitement I don’t remember the name of where we stayed! Dinner was a The Blue Pub (www.thebluepub.co.nz/), which is right across the street from the Brown Pub (www.thebrownpub.co.nz/) – hilarious rivalry!
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