Day 1:
Stathi said he'd drive us to the airport, but was convinced we didn't need to be at the airport super early, so he dropped us off about....an HOUR before our flight was supposed to leave, so we had to awkwardly get pulled out of the line to check our bags and sprint to get through customs (apparently you have to go through customs BEFORE getting to NZ, and then again upon arrival, it's weird...)
Then we arrive in NZ, and forgot to print our itinerary for our return ticket, which apparently New Zealand customs didn't believe that we were genuinely planning on leaving after a week, so we had to sit and wait while they called Qantas to check our return flight. Embarrassing? Yes....
SO we finally get out into Wellington, and the weather is.....gross. We picked up our rental car and decided to head up to Taupo that night (about a 5 hours drive) because we were going to go bungy jumping up there, so our night pretty much consisted of getting that far.
Day 2:
When we woke up, we for some reason decided that bungy jumping would be a good way to start our day off, so we drove over to Taupo bungy. When we got to the bungy place, holy crap nerves set in! I looked out on the platform which was over this lake, and it finally registered in my brain that I was about to....jump OFF with nothing but a rubber band on my feet pretty much.
We had to stand around for a while to wait for the weather to clear (theme of the trip), but then we finally headed out to the platform to get ready to jump. There was this one guy in line in front of us, and he got all strapped in and everything, but as he was ON the platform chickened out and couldn't do it, so I got called up as the FIRST jumper of the day. EEK!
So I'm standing out on the platform FREAKING OUT as I'm about 150 feet over this river.....
"3....2....1...BUNGY!" My brain couldn't decide if it wanted to keep my legs locked out, or to jump, so I bent my legs to jump as I was leaning forwards, but I guess fear took control of my muscles and I didn't extend the jump, so I sort of just......toppled.....but I made it off the platform! It was SO scary to feel COMPLETE freefall in your entire body, but it was really fun!
As we left, we were going to drive to Rotorua to Zorb (rolling down a hill in a giant plastic human hamster ball...) but on the way, actually got clipped by another car, which then proceeded to drive off! Hit and run! Arg. Luckily I wasn't driving/liable, but it was still scary, and we had to drive to Rotorua to instead file a police report. Not as fun as Zorbing I think....
So that sort of killed the Zorb mood, and we just drove up to the northern coast of the island and collected ourselves that night.
Day 3:
We returned to Wellington that day (long drive), got a replacement rental car, and I got to meet up with Courtney!!! Oh MAN it was so exciting to see a familiar face from home!! I still can't believe we managed to meet up in NEW ZEALAND! So we wandered around Wellington for the night, and planned out our next few days. She wasn't free for a bit of the trip, so we opted to cruise around the North Island to track down sites where they filmed Lord of the Rings, until she was free to come around with us.
Day 4:
We set out the next morning to check out Mount Victoria with Courtney, which is where they filmed the scenes with the hobbits in the woods with the black riders. The top has an AWESOME view of Wellington, which was so pretty, and after checking that out, we wandered the woods for a bit looking for the sites, but failed to find them :/
We dropped Courtney off in the afternoon since she had interviews to do after checking out the Te Papa museum for a little bit, then we drove off to hunt more LOTR! We arrived in this place called Otaki where they shot a bunch of scenes with the hobbits fleeing Bree, and saw this really cool canyon in the middle of nowhere, which was pretty sweet, and then drove to Matamata for the night.
Day 5:
We signed up the next morning for a tour of the Hobbiton set in Matamata, which turned out to be super cool! New Line cinemas apparently required all of the sets to be destroyed as soon as they were done filming, which is why the set only has the frames of the hobbit holes left over, but it was so neat to check it out! We roamed around there on our tour for a while, then at the end got to watch a sheep-shearing demonstration? Weird. Oh New Zealand....
Later that day we made our way to Tongariro National Park where Mount Doom is located, but due to shoddy map-work, were unable to find a way INTO the actual part to get to the base, so we only got pictures from afar. Curse you Mount Doom! In our attempt to get into the park, we turned onto this road which apparently lead to a ski-resort, but began as gravel....then rocks.....then deep sand....yeah we opted to turn around before our rental car died....that would have been BAD.
Day 6:
After stopping in Wanganui for the night, we went to check out Rivendell, which was pretty much just woods, but again was really pretty and was neat to hike around in. On our way back to Wellington, we checked out the park where they filmed Isenguard scenes and where they shot some of the Anduin river scenes too. SUCH a nerd :D
Once we got back to Wellington, we met up with Courtney and her friend again and grabbed dinner at this really tasty Indian place before turning in for the night and preparing for SKYDIVING!!
Day 7:
We woke up WAY too early, grabbed Courtney, and drove BACK to Taupo for skydiving, except on getting there, the weather looked.....bad. REALLY cloudly, going through spurts of rain. Not what you want to see when you're running out of time and want to jump out of a plane....So we ended up just riding around the Taupo area killing time for a few hours hoping the weather would improve. We did stop at this glass-blowing place where Courtney and I watched a SUPER cool demonstration and had some good talking time, before heading back to the skydiving place with fingers crossed....
When we got there, they said we could wait around for LONGER to see if the weather cleared up. We didn't have much other option, since we had come too far to give up at that point, and finally there was a break in the weather and they said we could jump!
SO we got suited up and were tingling with nerves, and climbed into this tiny tin-can of a plane and climbed up to 12000 feet, connected to our tandem instructors. I AGAIN was the first to have to go, so they slide the door of the plane open, and we are ABOVE the clouds. EEK! I shimmeyed over to the edge, gave one last frantic look at the camera, and tumbled out of the plane! It was really scary at first because you feel yourself in complete free-fall, but once you hit your terminal velocity, you just feel like you're floating, and it was so cool!
Then my instructor pulled the chute and we got to parachute down through the clouds and cruise around on the air currents for a bit checking out the awesome scenery from 4000 feet over Lake Taupo!
A pretty sweet end to the week, I must say. All in all, New Zealand was great. It's a beautiful country, and I enjoyed getting to wander around in nature for a week and getting my adrenaline rushes and seeing Courtney :D
Now it's back to the real world of.....papers due on thursday etc. etc. ARG!
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