back in the states… trying to remember who my friends are. 

We did walk down a train tunnel in the middle of the night at one of the campsites by the ocean on the west coast, and on the way back Brett tricked me into thinking a train was coming… so i ran and dove into the nearby ditch (and somehow i managed to not spill my beer). providing many laughs…

NZ: where people know how to have fun… even when they are 30. 

The rest of the trip was more tame though. Full of beautiful sites and the itchiest creatures on the earth… SANDFLIES. They swarmed our van unexpectedly and we were unaware that these things actually bite you so our pissed off about being swarmed by bugs only got amplified hours later when the horrible itching arrived.  They love love love ankles, good thing i brought tall socks to wear after the first incident and i had anti-itch cream with me as well.. whew, even though it didn’t work all that well it was better than nothing.  

Out in town and bar hopping. First we head to this bar that has a mini ramp on the inside, which is pretty rad if you ask me. (growing up i always wanted to build one but never got to, perhaps the the lack of tools and the fact that i lived with my mother haha) I’m pretty sure in America having a mini ramp in a bar would never fly but here in NZ you can’t sure people when you do something like break your arm on someone’s property.. sounds like a great law to me. Back to the story, we went to Winnie’s next and it was tattoo night and since none of us have tattoo’s we put on fake ones, scott put his on his neck, i put mine on my hip and melanie put her’s on her chest, a trifecta of winnie’s heart tat’s. 

(this lasted at least 2 weeks… esp since the first week didn’t involve showering.) 

Next we went to Buffalo Bar.. and it was topless tuesday, so if you took of your top you’d get cheeper drinks, and of course scott easily talked me into partaking (because if he was doing it then i had to too right? and it’s not like i was drunk at ALL- sarcasm.) Then all of a sudden there was talk about a bikini contest and some how me and melanie agreed to do this. We almost chickened out but then finally went back and got on a swim suit (which i got to keep and it’s even billabong- which are expensive suits!) they gave us a free tasty shot and sent us out… we had to walk out on top of the bar. Everyone is starring at you, it was nerve wrecking. At first I had some confidence but as we were standing up there it wasn’t as strong. Of course all the guys were all googly eyed and some didn’t even keep their hands to themselves very well. The other two girls start making out so me and mel decided we had to too in order to win but the girl with the big boobs obviously won. Some of the people even booed at us which is what made me real angry so i ended up walking of the stage flipping everyone off but in a semi-happy manner. Pretty sure we had a conversation later with scott about how big boobs are saggy anyway haha. So basically it was an interesting experience that i’ll never do again. Good thing there aren’t any photos!  

The Remarkables was fun. Not much snow but they had a fun baby park that i basically ended up playing in all day once I had attempted to check out the rest of the mountain. I hadn’t found my friend yet so I was just riding alone, but snowboarding is always a good time! After I had eaten lunch and headed back out I’m in line for the chairlift and i hear someone being introduced as Scott so I look up and there he is, i wasn’t 100% confident but his gear was they style I thought he would wear and i could see some blonde locks poking out from under his helmet so i yelled out his name and surely it was him! Rode the chair with him the rest of the day and took a ride down the stash, even though i was basically the only one without a stash and scotty only had some blonde mexistash. The stash is an all natural terrain park made out of logs and that, it had a small building with a smooth concrete roof you could hit and a stair set and some other concrete jibs and that as well, if only i was good enough to ride it… 

(uncomfortable chairlifts…) 

Scotty was a sweetheart and let us crash at his place so we didn’t have to pay to park the campervan and some of us finally got showers. Since we didn’t have to camp at some remote DOC (department of conservation) campsite we got to go out to town that night. My second night in a row… eeks! but once again because I’m a girl I didn’t have to spend much money at all on drinks (yay for boobs!). And now we get to the part where i think “what happen’s in queenstown stays in queenstown… right?” i mean i am on the other side of the world with people i’ll probably never see again.. except scott of course (ha). 

Wow South Island, you blew me away and I’m not sure of what I should share here… but basically I just had some of the best days of my life, all ten of them. It started out with a bus trip the day before our flight with melanie and sara. We spent the night in the auckland airport, not getting much sleep because the benches we decided were the best to sleep on happened to be in front of the McDonald’s that starts opening up at 4 AM and the last thing they are concerned about is being quiet.

Fast forward we’ve landed in Christchurch, picked up the Jucy campervan aka the Mystery Machine and we’re off to Queenstown. The drive was amazing, beautiful glacial lakes along the way and snow capped mountains.

(lake tekapo)

Then we arrive, and basically i’m thinking “holy sh*t this town is absolutely amazing” I can’t even describe it. In reality, it’s probably nothing that special, just a small town on a lake surrounded by mountains but that’s exactly where I want to be.  

(this photo doesn’t do it justice.. at all)  

After getting lost on the way to our campsite… in which turned out to not matter, we set up camp (parked the van) and attempted to cook some pasta for dinner. But try as we might we could not get the gas to open. A fellow camper and kiwi guy tried so hard to help us but alas we did not succeed… pb&j’s for dinner! And the most amazing stars I’ve ever seen in my life were that night. I’ve always thought they were the best in Colorado but really you still get light pollution from the cities but here, with only 4 million people in the entire country and even less on the south island light pollution felt like it didn’t even exist. 

The next day was full or errands, fixing the gas situation, and picking up the guys from the airport. We were supposed to bungee jump that day but their flight was delayed so we pushed it back to wednesday morning and Melanie and Sara still went because they were doing the smaller one. Watching them just made me want to jump even more. The river they jumped over was gorgeous as well and I took a bunch of photos. That evening we split up as a group as well. I wanted to snowboard while my friends went off to milford sound since I plan on going there with my parents anyway (even though it sounded amazing, but i couldn’t do it all). It was interesting being on my own for the night. I was originally supposed to stay at my friend Scott’s (who is taking a semester off to just work and snowboard down here and is also from Boulder, CO) but since he didn’t have internet in his house he hadn’t checked it so we didn’t have each others numbers, etc. So I had to pull out the wallet and pay for a hostel… Being shy and staying in a hostel isn’t that exciting so I went out to town. Walked around Queenstown a bit till I thought it was late enough to be acceptable to drink/there would actually be people at bars. After going into a couple that either had no one or was still busy serving food I found one with some people and a snowboard film on the t.v (and I had a buy one get one deal from the hostel…). Had a shot, got a beer and sat down. after about 3/4 of my drink was finished I finally got a guy to come up and talk to me. Turns out he was a Aussie on vacation with a couple friends. He was really nice so I hung out with them the rest of the night (and got free drinks out of it!) Aussie’s really don’t like cider or at least the ones i meet haha, and they had never heard of Foster’s the “Australian” beer, we all also hung out with a Britsh guy as well so much for my plan on meeting the locals (later i’m told queenstown doesn’t really have locals since it’s basically a ski bum town oh well). So even though I was alone in a new place I still managed to make friends, he may have only been my friend that night because he thought i was cute but i was safe, went home alone and had a good night so i’d call that a success! 

(Jeremy) 

(the alcohol) 

The next day I headed up to the Remarkables 

It’s already mid-semester break. wooah. Going down to the south island and traveling around in a campervan.  Bungy, hiking, snowboard… can it get any better? Hopefully going to see penguins too.  It’s going to be an epic adventure…

could use a reminder that i’m missed. not sure why i want this but it would make me feel much better.