The South Island! Seals, Restart Mall, Cadbury Chocolate and one STEEP HILL. Part 2 of our NZ adventure!

New Zealand...

After a long day of driving, and the sketchiest road EVER (Queen Charlotte Road..ridiculously windy, and dark.. YUCK!) we stayed the night in Nelson and headed off to Kaikoura. The South Island is incredibly beautiful, and despite the fact we drove SO MUCH over our 13 days in NZ, it was worth it to see the beautiful country. 

Coming in on the Ferry :) 

Too true. 

Quick break from driving to get some air and check out the scenery.

KAIKOURA

After free waffles and mocha (the breakfast of champions...), we left Nelson and headed to Kaikoura. Kaikoura is on the east coast and is small town with whale watching, a seal colony and many interesting walks. We wandered around town, then hit the Seal Colony and the Peninsula Walk.

The Seal Colony WAS INSANE!! We read that Seals would be visible but we had no clue how close and how many there would be. They were EVERYWHERE! Some were just basking in the sun on the wooden footpath. Nuts. 

View from the Seal Colony.

The older, and grumpier seals.

Albatross Birds. They are MASSIVE in real life.

Happy to see the Seals!!

Our new friend! This guy kinda followed us and hung out with us while we were there.

The Peninsula walk was awesome as well. We were up on the cliffside looking out @ the ocean. There were hundreds more seals on the rocks below and many awesome landscapes. 

CHRISTCHURCH: RESTART MALL 

We drove from Kaikoura to Christchurch and hit Restart Mall and the Earthquake site in the CBD. The mall itself is made out of old storage containers and is right in the heart of all the earthquake's devastation. Even though it happened in 2011, there is still tons of damage and work to be done. We wandered around the mall and then drove to Sumner, a great suburb on the coast. It had the most beautiful beach and great surf.

Lil chilly on the coast... definitely keeping our hoodies on and not diving in today!

DUNEDIN

After Christchurch we drove to Dunedin and walked around the CBD. It is a really cool place with lots of shops and restaurants. 

At 2pm we went for our Cadbury Chocolate tour. To be honest it wasn't the greatest...being that it was a Saturday we didn't get to see too much but we did learn a bit and see a few things. BUT we did get to see 1 ton of Liquid Chocolate drop 200ft, so that was pretty neat and we got some free chocolate as well :) 

The next day we got up and hit 

THE WORLD'S STEEPEST STREET..... 

Yup that's right, we were just about to leave our hotel and the receptionist said "Have you seen the World's steepest street yet?" and so we decided to tackle it. The street itself was MAD! It had stairs on both sides and signs warning cars not to drive up if they weren't totally sound.

 This picture is from the bottom of the hill looking up. Trippy right?

 We made it!! 

The North Island! Glow Worms, Waterfalls, and Biking the coastline. Part 1 of our NZ Adventure.

New Zealand...

On April 13, 2013 we flew out to Auckland, got out rental car and checked into our hostel. It had already been a really long day and we just wanted a good meal and a cold beer! We wandered around downtown Auckland and found this awesome pub chain ~The Belgian Beer Cafe. We went to The Occidental and had the best night! They had german beers on tap in 500ml glasses and an amazing menu. We ordered Blue Mussels in Chili Lime Sauce, and Fish and Chips and shared the lot. The mussels were HUGE and so delicious and we both agreed the Fish and Chips was the best we had ever had. We have some family back home who would have really appreciated this place ;) 

The next morning we headed towards Waitomo to do some Caving and see the glow worms. After a big OOPSIE in the the directions... and a whole lot of fast driving and amazing skills (by Adam) we made it to our Caving excursion center and headed out! We went with a company called Waitomo Adventures and did their Tumu Tumu Toobing trip! We drove up a moutainside to some very scenic farmland and stopped in at a shed to change into wetsuits, jackets, booties and rainboots. We put on helmets and headlamps and were ready to go:) 

We climbed down a ladder into the cave and began our journey. We learned about stalagmites and stalactites and learned that for them to grow overhead it takes about 1000 yrs for them to grow 1cm. There were some so wide I wouldn't be able to wrap my arms around. These caves were found when farmers would lose cows or sheep and would go looking for them. They would find them in holes/caves and since then 1000s of caves have been discovered.

Once we got deep into the caves, we turned off out headlamps and saw millions of glow worms. They were unbelievable. We walked around in the dark looking at them. And later we tubed through the cave with them above us, and the silence of the water around us (until I started singing Sweet Child of Mine). 

The glow worms live a pretty simple life. For the first months of their life they dangle strings to catch food. They eat the food, and then their bums start to glow (from the waste of the food). I know this definitely takes all the romance out of them... glowing poo... Anyhow, when they become adults they only live for 2-3 days and that's the end. Regardless, they are still pretty amazing and cool to see. After three hours of caving, tubing, jumping off rocks into the water, and a short (and very cold swim) we emerged just over a km away from our drop in point. We loved it!

After grabbing some food, we drove to Rotorua and checked into our hostel. That's when I started to get nervous for the next day! 

In the morning, we woke up and wondered around Rotorua, ate breakfast in a French Cafe and got ready to hit the Kaituna River with River Rats. Once we got there, we got all geared up in wetsuits, fleeces, helmets and lifejackets. Armed with our paddles we got on the bus to the drop in site. On the ride they gave us a few safety tips...

      1. Hold On

      2. Get in the fetal position if you can't swim back to the raft and ride down the river looking for a place to get out. 

      3. If you fall out and have to ride a waterfall, curl into a ball and think happy thoughts. 

THIS DID NOT HELP WITH HOW ANXIOUS 

I WAS FEELING ABOUT RAFTING A 7M WATERFALL...

Before the trip :) 

The first two waterfalls we rafted. 

The succession of photographs from the 7m waterfall :)

 WE MADE IT~ AND IT WAS EPIC AND AWESOME!! 

Good thing I didn't waste more than 8 hours being scared for my life... 

After riding the big waterfall, we got to jump out of the raft and ride down some rapids on our own. It was really fun and the water was great!

Us paddling in for some surfing...

We finished off our great day by hitting the Polynesian Spas in Rotorua. We splurged and chose the Lake View spas.. which were amazing. There was four spa pools that overlooked Lake Rotorua and were varying temperatures of 36,38,40, and 42 degrees. We spent 2 hours relaxing and trying them all out. 

After Rotorua, we drove off to Napier. The scenery in New Zealand is so beautiful. We had to pull over and take pictures along the way :) 

Our lovely Ruby Ruby Ruby RUBY. A good lil rental car that ended up seeing approx 3000km. 

Napier is a beautiful town on the east coast of the North Island. They have a lovely coastline, lots of seafood and many wineries. We did a cycling tour of the coastline that ended with 2 wineries. The trip was 35km and a great ride; the weather wasn't the greatest but the rain held out until we were happily drinking wine which was great! The two wineries we visited were Elephant Hill and Clearview Estates. Elephant Hill was a large german owned winery with some good wines. But Clearview Estates was the real gem! We loved it there. It was older, rustic and fabulous. The wine cellar manager, Cushla, was fantastic! She helped us find some wine they were practically out of, and she did a great job with the tasting and was incredibly friendly and helpful. We are pretty excited to take those bottles back to Canada :)

This massive orchard we biked by. It was incredible.

Napier ended our quick tour of the North Island... the next day we took the ferry to the South Island :)