I decided to spend the majority of my midsemester break on New Zealand’s South Island. Some friends and I rented a campervan that we will be living out of for the next nine days. We will be starting and ending our trip in Christchurch and then a few of us will be stopping in Sydney for three days on the way back.
Day 1
Our flight from Adelaide to Christchurch had a seven hour layover in Brisbane, so we were able to go out into the city in Brisbane. After stopping for lunch at a sushi place, we explored some of downtown. There were a few street performers outside the mall, which looked like a bigger version of Rundle Mall. We went back to the airport that afternoon and boarded our flight to Christchurch.
Day 2
We picked up our campervan in the morning and went to see the Transitional Cathedral, popularly known as the Cardboard Cathedral because of its building materials. It was intended to be a temporary placeholder for the ChristChurch Cathedral, which was badly damaged during the 2011 Christchurch earthquake. After construction started, it was decided that the building should be permanent and the cathedral ended up becoming a major attraction of Christchurch. We left Christchurch and headed towards Punakaiki on the west coast. Punakaiki is known for its blowholes and “pancake” rocks, which are striated rock mounds.
Day 3
Most of the day was spent driving to Franz Josef Glacier. We were only able to see the glacier from a distance, due to road closures. The drive there was beautiful and took us through hills, mountains, valleys, and plains. The landscape of New Zealand can change quickly. We stayed at Lake Paringa Campsite near Haast Pass. Lake Paringa was one of my favorite places that we visited in New Zealand. The sunset was spectacular and the reflection of the mountain range on the lake was picturesque.
Day 4
Today we drove through two major valleys: Haast Pass and Lindis Pass. Haast Pass was on our way to Wanaka, where we did a short hike around a lake. In the distance, we could see the mountains where people go heli-hiking. Heli-hiking is a fairly new invention where a helicopter drops people off on a mountainside and they hike from there. After leaving Wanaka we drove through Lindis Pass to find a place to camp. On the way, we saw a lavender farm that was closed for the day, but we decided to come back and see it the next day. We ended up camping right outside Lindis Pass.
Days 5 and 6
After packing up our tent, we went back in the direction of Wanaka to see the lavender farm. It ended up being a great stop. In addition to the advertised lavender field, there were pigs, alpacas, and horses. The owner was a Canadian woman who moved to New Zealand and opened the lavender farm after visiting the country with a tour group as a teenager. She was incredibly friendly and let us sample all the varieties of honey that she produced on her farm. I bought a jar of Kamahi honey to bring home with me.
We reached Queenstown on our fifth day and it quickly became one of my favorite cities in the world. Though it is one of the biggest towns on the South Island, Queenstown felt like a small town with its port-side marketplace and unique restaurants. We waited around 45 minutes in the rain to get lunch at Fergburger, a famous burger joint that is a culinary institution in Queenstown. Fergburger was definitely worth the wait and I would definitely recommend it to anyone visiting Queenstown.