After our extended stay in Queenstown, we still had to keep our reservations in the small lakeside town of Te Anau. With nothing to do the next day and a lot of tension within the group, we took the opportunity to have too much to drink at our hostel.
Unfortunately, a 10am checkout means a 10am checkout and the powers that be on our trip made it a point to get to the next town, the abandoned industrial city of Invercargill, as soon as possible. Despite their urgency, we hung around Te Anau for a little while and just walked around the lake before heading towards Invercargill. After we had already arrived, we decided to keep driving to Bluff, a town 15 minutes south of Invercargill that is advertised as the southernmost town in the world. (This was our main reason for coming here. Cue my sarcastic “woo!”) Naturally, we got a flat tire on the way to Bluff and had to put the spare on, leading to another car stopping with us and ten people standing in the middle of the road telling people what should be done instead of five. Good times!
Invercargill itself wasn’t much of a destination. The hostel was nice enough, and I took the car to a tire place and got a new one put on before anyone woke up, which led to me getting yelled at for not bringing everyone along or asking the other 13 people their opinion on the matter. (Ok, so that last part isn’t true, but I was half expecting it. The particular car that got the flat’s screens and meters were all in Japanese, but while I was driving it, I’m pretty sure a red light started flashing that said something along the lines of “WARNING: SNARK LEVELS EXTREMELY HIGH.” In fact, it's still going off right now.)
From Invercargill, we took the scenic route through Catlins National Park to Dunedin and stopped at a nice little beach just to relax. The guys played a little football and the girls went for a stroll along the beach, which led to a situation that would have been the low point of the entire year, let alone the trip. Meryl had the keys to our car in her jacket pocket, and her jacket pocket had a hole in it. Combine this with our car key’s affinity for falling off of the key ring, and you guessed it, we lost the car key. With the tide coming in and a rather large stretch of beach to search, we were very lucky to have everyone help look for them -- oh wait, that didn’t happen either. (“What do you want me to do? I don’t know where she lost them.” Thank you very much!) A few people did help, and luckily, Athina found them in the only place they could have been without being washed away by the tide. We were far, far from anywhere with cell phone reception and in all likelihood, it would have taken the entire rest of the day to get AA out to get the car started if we were lucky.
This drive also provided a moment that captured the entirety of the trip well. We spent an extra ten minutes driving around looking for Niagara Falls, which someone saw in their guidebook and decided we all needed to see. After turning around a few times, we finally made it, only there wasn’t another majestic waterfall (we’d seen a few of those, and they were beautiful), but a little stream. Someone thought it would be funny to name the little babbling brook after Niagara Falls, leading to the obligatory “Well maybe this isn’t it” conversation even though the sign was right there.
That particular disappointment summed up well how the whole trip went. Instead of doing things by feel and going with the flow, all 14 of us had to stay together and stop because one person saw something in a book that caught their eye. Everything was done by the book. We stopped in every town on the map, regardless of whether we ultimately needed to. The reason we rented cars instead of doing a bus trip was so that we could split up if we wanted to, but when the time came, that wasn’t allowed.
Dunedin was our next overnight stop, with the nightlife in the South Island’s big college town serving as the main attraction. People had been “saving up” their energy to go out here in anticipation of a wild night, and needless to say, it didn’t quite live up to expectations.
The next day, however, was a lot of fun. I started off with a nice breakfast sandwich from the burger place there whose name escapes me, and then we went on a tour of the Cadbury chocolate factory. There, parked out back, was a purple, Cadbury version of the 1930 Model A Ford that I have sitting in my driveway, which was very cool to see.
From there, we went to see another seal colony, and more importantly, some penguins, but they were a three hour hike from the parking lot so we decided against that. However, we did get to see a baby sheep that had been born minutes before take its first step and promptly get knocked over by another young sheep. Doesn’t look like that little guy will be getting picked first for kickball anytime soon.
From Dunedin, we were on to our final stop, Christchurch. It was another low key night, as everyone except for Meryl and I were getting up early for a Lord of the Rings tour. We stayed behind and ended up seeing what had to be the most English city in the southern hemisphere. Set up like an old British town with the Anglican Cathedral at the center, everything in Christchurch screamed “nostalgia,” from the punting ride down the river to the Botanical Gardens. There were art museums and galleries strewn about the city and a tram to take you from place to place. The downtown area was bustling with tourists, but even so, Christchurch gave off a very quaint vibe and was a nice, relaxing end to our trip.
The next day, of course, our flight was cancelled and we had to spend the whole day in the airport waiting around. When we finally arrived in Auckland, we had a little time to prepare to go out for Rob’s 21st birthday that evening, and the following day was an off day before our Loyola-sponsored trip to Taupo and Rotorua.
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