Hobbiton- The Shire

The Best part of the spring break trip up north was visiting the Shire. It was so cool to walk around the set of something I had seen so many times in the movies. I could recognize many things and learned quite a bit about the filming during the tour. I should probably get a job there seeing as how I knew a Lord of the Rings fact that the tour guide didn't even know!! I got tons of pictures and enjoyed every minute of. The only bad thing was the large size of the tour group but that was easily forgotten. At the end of the tour we were all given a free hobbit beer of our choice at the Green Dragon (the pub in the shire) the beer was actually quite good. I wonder if I can find it anywhere else in the world? Over that was definitely the highlight of break and something that I did not want to leave New Zealand without doing. I'm glad I was able to. Any lord of the rings fan would be! 

Rotorua

Rotorua was a nice little city though the sulphur smell was a little unbearable at times. It is known as the Maori Capitol of NZ but all the visits to Maori villages were way out of my price range, though I would've loved to go to one. In Rotorua we walked along the giant lake, went mountain biking through a redwood Forrest (first time seeing them, haven't seen the California ones), and got quite a bit of souvineer shopping done. There were tons of shops to go to around the city and we ended up constantly just going in circles through the town. The hostel was decent, I liked it better than the one in Wellington. The reason for the sulphur smell is because of thermal activities below ground from a nearby volcano. We went to the thermal park one day and relaxed with our feet in one of the warm pools it was nice. 

Wellington

Well the 2 weeks spring break began very well and we (my roommate and another friend) set out to Wellington. We rode the ferry across the cook straight and had quite a nice ride. We even saw dolphins! Once we arrived in Wellington we found our hostel after about an hour walk from the ferry terminal and relaxed for a bit. We spent 2 days in Wellington where we walked through most of the downtown area, visited some shops, museums, and went to parliament. Wellington is a very big night life city but neither of my companions wanted to join me in going out so we just hung out in the hostel. I guess it saved some money. I did go to a good micro brewery called Black Dog brewing and enjoyed quite a few good beers. After leaving Wellington we headed further north to Rotorua. 

Middle Earth: Rohan

This past weekend we had a group of 9 travel to Middle Earth from The Lord of the Rings. We visited the filming spot of the capitol of Rohan-Edoras. It was pretty cool to see that in the movie and then in real life. We went and saw that on Saturday, in the rain :/ we finally had a bad weather weekend but we didnt let that hinder us. Friday we left around 330 and got to the campsite area around 530, 6ish. After setting up camp next to a huge lake we all just hung out, explored some, and enjoyed the views. Once it got dark we had some fun with lights and a slow mo camera. This may have been one of the best groups we got together for a trip, we all had a good time. We brought our friend Sharon (an Indian guy) camping for the first time- he loved it! One of the guys tried to fish before it got dark and didnt catch anything. He went out again at night with my suggestion of using a piece of wood as a bobber (he didnt have any) and ended up catching a fresh-water eel. It was pretty cool. My guess is it was about a yard long. That ended up being quite an adventure and led to many talks and jokes later on in the trip.

Later that night all 9 of us crammed into a 3 person tent and played some cards. It was quite cramped, but made it warm and cozy ha. We played for as long as we could handle being all cramped up then slowly everyone drifted off and eventually went to bed in their own tents. The next morning was when we went to Edoras, we didnt stay too long because of the weather though. It was an alright hike either way though. ON our way back to the camp site we stopped at a cafe and some people got some warm drinks while a few of us played pool. After that we returned to camp and split into 3 groups. The other 3 guys went fishing at another lake, 2 girls went to do a hike up a mountain and 3 girls and myself did a long walk around the lake. The walk took quite some time as it was 10.2 km or about 6.5 miles long. We were ot expecting that. My feet were quite sore, though I got some good pics and the weather stayed decent during this time. Once back to camp we relaxed until everyone returned. That night we all hung out again but not as long as everyone was just exhausted.

The next day we packed up and headed home. Overall it was a good weekend and I have a two week mid semester break coming up now. This is a busy school week for me though so its crunch time and time to study and do work. Seeya!!

4 Day Weekend!!!

Well this was a very long but fun weekend. Thursday Taylor (my roommate) and I went into the city of Christchurch and witnessed some of the Earthquake damage and the new things that the city have done and are planning for the future of their city. One of these is the Re-Start Mall, otherwise known as "The Container Mall". The reason for the nickname is that all of the stores are made out of large shipping containers. It was an outdoor mall in the heart of the city. Before the quake it was one of the site to one of the main central hubs in the downtown area, all of which was destroyed.

Friday's main event was going to the rugby game that night. It was the local team, The Canterbury Crusaders, vs a team from the North Island, The Hurricanes. it was a real good game and came down to the final minutes. Unfortunately the right wing (my old position) of the Hurricanes scored a great try but made it a loss for the home team. I was able to get a free flag though!

Saturday was a long and fun day. I did something I've never done before and had a great time in the City of Chrustchurch. The Great Kiwi Beer Festival was going on and I went with a lot of the other international students to the event. There was a very wide variety of people there. Some seemed like old hippies, some were the rocker type, and others were just weird.  This one lady around 60ish was going strong on the dance floor area to all the bands all day long. It was quite a sight. There were quite a few college students or at least college aged as well. Even the occasional baby or child, I didn't really get why you would bring your kids there. I found quite a few beers that I really enjoyed.

After I returned to school with some of my friends and headed over to the international flats. I spent the night hanging out with people from all around the US, France, The Middle East, India, New Zealand, and Norway. It was a great night and I really enjoyed branching out and meeting people form all over the world.

Sunday we had a BBQ for our flat complex. I enjoyed lots of free food and spending time with everyone in the complex. We also had guests from other dorms and the international flats as well. Over all it was a long and great weekend. Got to do many new things, met new people, and still got class assignments done.

Akaroa

This past weekend was the first weekend I have had that didn't leave me exhausted for the upcoming week.  I went to a town called Akaroa with one of my flat mates and another girl from CSU. Akaroa was the only French settlement in New Zealand as the rest was claimed by the British. There is still lots of French influence in the city from the style of buildings to the street names. Akaroa is a town thats further south than Christchurch and along the ocean. It was a beautiful place with rolling hills leading to multiple peninsulas and the ports. It is a well known town for dolphin sightings. They have a smaller kind of dolphin than the bottle nose and we may have seen one while standing at the end of the dock; they are known to come in pretty close to the shore. Its movement was like a dolphin but we weren't able to see the whole thing so we were uncertain (lets just say that it was one to add to the experience). The original plan was to go ocean kayaking but we decided to save some money and avoid the cold and just explore the small port town. It was a very nice town with tons of souvenir shops. I was able to get some gifts for family members, postcards, and a few items for myself as well. We went to almost every shop, explored the coast, and went through the entire town. It only took about 45 mins to walk from one end to the other. We went to a nice cafe and I got a pie; which was delicious, and relaxed for the rest of the day until our shuttle came to pick us up. I had some amazing NZ fudge made in Akaroa as well.

Spelunking!!!

The adventure for this second weekend of school was Black Water Rafting. 7 of us rented a car and drove to the West Coast of New Zealand. The drive was about 4 hours long. I slept for about half it each each way. We arrived at our campsite Friday night, set up camp, and my roommate (Taylor) and I hung out in our tent for a little before going to bed. Saturday morning, we were woken up bright and early by a very annoying rooster. We went off to the cave tour company and our adventure began. They outfitted us in wet suits and we headed off to the cave. We had a short train ride to get there and once we arrived we got our tubes and went into the caves. It was a limestone cave that has the largest glow worm colony of about 1 million glow worms. We hiked throughout the cave for about a kilometer or so. The stalagmites and other formations were amazing. I got a cool rock but it unfortunately snapped in half.

Before we got into the river we went and got our first glimpse of the glow worms. They had cool web like strands hanging down which is how they catch food. I touched a really long one and a ton of dew droplets fell off. When we looked closer at them I saw a few moving around, that was cool. We also saw a pupae form and were lucky enough to see an adult one which is very rare. It had just transformed.

Afterwards we got into the river finally and the rafting (more like tubing) began. It started off like a lazy river and we saw the entire glow worm colony. It was amazing!! It looked like an entire galaxy in a cave. They glowed green and occasionally saw a few blink red. That part lasted for about 5-10 mins, it was all dark, with just the glow worms for light. Once past the colony and out of the cave we went down the river to the pick up point. We hit some "rapids" a few times and continued to float along. The rest of the day we went and explored along the west coast.

I saw black sand beaches that had pretty firm sand actually. It was cool, the waves would come in, circle this rock formation and cut away at the beach. the swells were huge and the spray would go so high up as it crashed against the cliffs. Its always so cool to see the ocean coming from Colorado. Its so vast! There were these crazy cliffs that people climb. I wish I had the gear in order to do so. It looked like a crazy fun climb, you climb above the ocean pretty much.

After we went to this little German pizza place at another campsite. It was expensive but they had cheap beer at least. We went back to the campsite, hung out a little, and went to bed. The next morning we left pretty early and got drenched by the rain once we were getting back.