West Coast, New Zealand!

Hey everybody!!

A couple weeks ago, we went to the west coast of New Zealand for a weekend trip! We heard it was absolutely gorgeous there (where isn't) and everyone was right! We went to a place called Franz Josef, which is home to the Franz Josef glacier. 

See? Proof of me driving on the left side of the road!! 

We all really loved kayaking in Wanaka and wanted to give it another go in New Zealand. The company we went through was ranked #1 in NZ and boy, do they earn that title. We got to spend 3 hours on the water. Even though, my kayak was a little broken (The rudder wouldn't turn my boat to the left!) it got fixed quickly and I had an amazing rest of the time! I couldn't believe all the beauty in the water. The tour guides let us do some pretty cool stuff too:)

We got to sit in the middle of a Kiwi sanctuary! We didn't see any because kiwis are nocturnal and we were there in the middle of the day, but it was still very cool to know they were around!

Then the activities began! We got to stand up in the kayaks and sing "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" but instead of toes, we had to jump! It was scary at first but then really fun!

This guy had to eskimo kiss the top of ANOTHER PERSON'S kayak!

They had me dip my hair in the water and flick it and hit the person next to me!! Not very nice!

Here are just a couple more cool kayaking pictures!

On the way home, we took our time and stopped at a bunch of beaches!! They were absolutely beautiful. I think we stopped at a total of 4 different ones! Gorgeous! 

One of the beaches we stopped at had a ton of stones with pens by them. People wrote messages to loved ones, or wrote down inspirational quotes, or just wrote down something silly on them. Here are some of my favorites! 

This might be my last post, at least for a little while, because we're off on our next adventure now! Today we leave for Queenstown and then on Monday, we're off to Sydney, Australia! I'm not sure how god on internet I'll be getting so I'll definitely update ASAP once I get home, if not before!

Thanks for reading!

Curio Bay and Christchurch!

Hey everyone! 

Well, since school is officially out, we are on holiday! We have been having an awesome week relaxing and going on longer trips that we wouldn't have been able to during the school week!

We went to a place called Curio Bay down in the Catlins, which is in the Southernmost part of the South Island. There is a little island called Stewart Island below us, but after that, the next piece of land is Antarctica! How cool!? The main reason we went there is because we heard it is the top place to see dolphins and penguins!! Ahh! We've been wanting to see them the whole time we've been in New Zealand and we actually got to!

Of course, the drive is never a disappointment, so here are some pictures of the views on the way down to Curio Bay!

Our hostel was right on the beach which was incredible! Of course, the first thing we did was walk down to the beach to see if we could spot any dolphins. We saw a few, but really wanted to get more up close and personal with them so we decided to see if there was anywhere to rent wet suits to go into the water. (It was very very cold water!)

Apparently, it's illegal to rent our wetsuits to just swim but we were in luck! The guy renting the wetsuits was giving a surf lesson in an hour and a half and had room for us! We've all wanted to learn to surf before and we definitely all wanted to see the dolphins closer so we took surf lessons! I actually did it! I didn't think I'd be able to, but I did! I stood up on the surf board quite a bit actually and it was so awesome. I might just become a surfer chick now and be a beach bum:) There was a girl getting her pictures taken on the surf board and the photographer was nice enough to email me the photos! There are none of me actually standing up on the board (I obviously wasn't priority #1) but there are still some awesome pictures, and I promise I was able to stand up on the board! These next pictures are courtesy of Ethos, NZ photographer, Robyn. 

That night, we went to the petrified forest at low tide and saw some penguins and a LOT of huge kelp! 

We also went to Christchurch, which was an area really impacted by earthquakes a couple years ago. There is still so much damage there, it's really heartbreaking to see, but also inspiring because of how well the city is moving along!

This sculpture was sent from the U.S. and it's some of the steel from the World Trade Center. Pretty awesome to see. 

The night life there is great as well! We had a really fun night out!

We stayed in a hostel called "The jailhouse" so named because it actually is in an old jailhouse! The rooms were all the old cells, it was really cool. They had an area where you could take your "mug shot."

Next, we're off to Queenstown and then Sydney, Australia!