To see videos from the trip, please visit the New Zealand Videos Page.

Day 1 (January 4th 2006)
We arrived on the 4th, we are 17 hours ahead of the states (east coast). The citizens of New Zealand are known as “Kiwis”, just as people from America are known as Americans. This is not to be mistaken with the fruit kiwi, which is actually rather prevalent here and they refer to it as “kiwi fruit”, and it is a lot cheaper than it is in the states.

Ok…so we arrived in Auckland on the 4th at 6am and found a hostel where we gathered our thoughts, looked at a map for a few minutes and made some decisions. We decided to go to Whitianga which is on the Coromandel peninsula, on the east coast of the north island. We arrived in Whitianga by 5 that night and set out for a short hike to the top of Shakespears cliff and then back before it got to dark to see our way down the trail. Whitianga is a quite town and there wasn’t much going on their but someone told us that we should go to the Coromandel Peninsula, and there wasnt anything for us in Auckland except for skyscrapers. Plus we are going to be in Auckland for a day on the way back.Day 2
We woke up and packed our bags and started walking toward Tauranga, we had heard that hitchhiking is possible and we spent $45 a piece on the way their so we decided to give it a shot.
After 2 short rides we had built up enough confidence to keep going which paid off when the nicest lady in the world picked us up. “Hope you dont mind my poodles” she said…She was from Tauranga (http://www.newzealand.com/travel/desti nations/new-zealand-map/interactive_ map_home. cfm), which worked out perfectly becuase she drove us the rest of the two hours there. After talking to her for awhile we started to get a little more used to how the Kiwi’s speak, which is different from australians and the british, but still similar. One expression that stood out as funny when we were passing a gold mining town she said, “yea, all the greenys around these parts kicked up spit about it” —>translation, “all the hippies around here were pissed off’. When we came closer to Tauranga she said she lived right outside of town but she would call her daughter and see if she would take us in to town and show us around before dropping us off at a hostel. Her house was on the top of a hill/mountain near Tauranga with an incredible view overlooking landscapes…water, mountains, and towns. Linda (the lady) did landscaping as a hobby and a job, so her backyard looked like it was somewhere you would have a wedding, and along with the view made the house incredible (for all you morris documentary fans I have video of her backyard so you can see it, hopefully, before 2007). She fixed us coffee and put some chips in a bowl and played Eric Clapton through the house stereo. At this time, me and Nick (i refuse to say nick and i because it sounds weird) were still in shock from the house and just about the whole situation. Her daughter Sarah, who was 20, came home and gave us a ride into town…showed us around and dropped us off at the hostel. We saw the town and walked around on the beach, which had a number of islands right off the shore, which was a cool sight. That night we talked to two guys from Switzerland who were traveling together and said that they were going to Rotorura and then down to Taupo…..this was me and Nicks plan, although we met nice people hitchhiking we decided to ask them if they had room in their car and if we could ride along. They said it would be a tight fit (nicks bag in the trunk and mine layed across our laps in the back seat) , but they said they would be happy to have us join.

Day 3 We arrived in Rotorura around 11 :30 and checked into our hostel. One of the swiss guys is actually working in Rotorura at the time and is just traveling with his friend who is visiting, so he went to visit his friend, and we met back up later and went to some mountain with a gondola. At the top of the gondola was a great view of the city and these track luges that you can ride. We raced down the track 5 times….we were probably going 35 mph or more when we went down some parts of the advanced track (dont worry dad, i was wearing a helmet). After that, me and nick went to the climbing wall that was located in our hostel and climbed for about two hours. Long day…..we were passing out by 9:30.

Day 4 We met up with the Swiss guys (Dave and Andre) and left Rotorura toward Taupo. On the way out of town we stopped at a place where we could go “zorbing” (http://www.zorb.com/). Its that thing that they did on the “Real World-New Zealand” where you get in a big plastic ball with water and roll down a hill, strange concept, but fun nonetheless. After that, we stopped off at the Waiotapu- Thermal wonderland. Waiotapu means “sacred waters” in Maori (the native language).

This was a very cool little hike which ended at a lake that was ridiculously green from all the sulfer. All the trees around this area were caked with some red substance which must have been from the sulfer smoke because it was only on one side of the trees (my scientifical explanation). That night (in Taupo) we went out to the bars with one girl from austria, two swiss guys, one guy from Australia, and a girl from Scottland. It was a fun night.Day 5 Nick woke me up this morning saying, “Zach! Wakeup! We are going skydiving in two hours” …………………………..TO BE CONTINUED (dont worry dad, i’ll wear a helmet)
Well…I’m sure i’ve bored everyone enough for one email. Dont worry, it has only started, i’li try to get some pictures uploaded onto webshots or something for ya.

Note: Ok, so before I continue I would like to note the hostel we stayed in when we were in Taupo. It’s called “Taupo Urban Retreat” and is probably the coolest hostel i’ve ever been to. All of them cost the same amount (almost), but the people who worked at this one really liked working there which made it even more pleasurable to be there. The first nigtht you are there you can pay 10 NZD for a barbecue dinner and it was the biggest bang for my buck we’ve gotten since we’ve been here. They do that so you can meet all the other people staying in the hostel….friendly place. The same hostel also has a bar, intemet, pool table, and the usual kitchen facilities as in any hostel, but it was all in a pretty small space which made for a friendly atmosphere.

Day 5 (con tin ued) So, as i was saying….Nick woke me up and said we were going skydiving. Me, Nick, and Andre all jumped. I jumped from 15000, instead of 12000, which allows for about 20 seconds extra of freefall for a small additional fee (talk about bang for your buck). After they dropped everyone off at 12000 feet they shut the door, turned on the oxygen, and continued up to 15000 feet. The guy asked me if I wanted to try something different, like backwards exit from the plane followed by a back fiip….Sure, why not? If your gonna jump out of a plane, why not do it flipping backwards! That afternoon we just took it easy and went swimming in Lake Taupo and that night we played “bullshit” (cardgame) with the four of us. If anybbody cares….bullshit is said “sheetz-throck” in swiss.
Day 6 Woke up and went Bunjy Jumping on the way out of town. It was the first bungy jumping place in the world, becuase it was invented in new zealand (im sure somebody had thought of it before, they were just the first ones to charge $100 to jump off a platform). It was only 44 meters high (about 130 feet), but you body goes half-way into the water.After that we went to some national park that we just saw passing on the highway “Craters of the Moon, Next Left”, it was just another thermal activity field…………we also stopped to see Huka Falls…cool, but not recomended to go out of your way for. Later that day we went to a lake back in Rotorura and just hung out and had some beers.
Real quick: the reason why we are back tracking is because David (swiss dude) lives in Rotorura so since we are buying the car that he bought for his little road trip we had to come back with him so we could drop off him and Andre. We are buying the car for fairly cheap, given that we are going to try and sell it when we are done, but even if we cant sell it, we still payed less buying the car than we would have for transporatation for the rest of the trip. for $300 NZD a piece (600 total……which is less than 500 USD) we got the car, the post office handles the ownership papers for you for a small fee. This is good also becuase we can go wherever we want to and in the south island we are going to have to drive to the trails and stuff.
That night (night 6), we saw some girls walking down the street in Rotorura which turned out to be three girls from Elon. Small world, huh. They told us where they were staying so we stopped by and saw some of the kids we knew on the trip, and went out with them that night for a few drinks.

Day 7
This morning we woke up around 9.. of our friends at their house.
…ate….went to the post office to change ownership of the car, and dropped

New mode of transportation
New Destination
New island, soon to come

Cheers Mates,
Quick note: We are driving a 1988 Nissan Pulsar “T-top” convertible. When we drive around with the convertable pieces off we get a number of looks mixed with some thumbs up and “yeah” ’s. Not sure if they are mocking us, or they just admire our old school ride.

Day 7 (continued) When we left Rotorura we decided to go to Napier before heading down to the south island. Now, when I say “we decided” I actually meant that we said that we flipped a coin stating that one side meant we moved on and the other meant we checked out Napier. The coin was flipped as we approached the split in the highway. Napier is on the east coast a little south of Rotorura and it is a little boat town with an cool feel to it. The beech however, is filled with pebbles. Nevertheless it was a nice stop off for a night before heading to wellington to catch the ferry over to the south island. When we were driving to Napier we saw a parachute on the side of this hill and what looked like a person (i thought) stretching. Nick thought he was waving, so we went back. Soon after i yelled “are you ok” and he just continued to wave, the man whose farm the skydiver had landed on pulled up, “did you see him go down”….i didn’t, but we both ran up to him on the hill……the guy was ok, although it looked like his arm was broken it two….we helped him take unlatch his harness and then we figured the situation was taken care of since the man whose farm it was had called an ambulance and everything. As we were walking back to the car his wife pulled up and as she passed us she mumbled, “damn bastard, same time last year it was his back [that he hurt]”. Crazy Kiwis! Also we saw some guy named neal something that we recognized, he went to elon and had been living in wellington for the past 6 months, he was just in Napier on vacation. Small F’in world, huh?

Day 8 When we left Napier we stopped in a town to get a radio becuase Nick was sick of me singing. We had heard you could buy one for cheap, 40 or 50 NZ. The first place we went to the guy was so nice that he started calling numbers from the classifieds to find us the cheapest one……the second place we went, OUR CAR WOULDN’T START UP WHEN WE TRIED TO LEAVE!!!!!! So, what do we do….We walked back to the nice guy and ask him (he was a repair shop as well). He sent one of his guys over with us to the other parking lot. We end up push starting it and bringing it back to the shop to lift it up and check it out. Everything was fine….just a dead spot in the started, if it happened again we could just push start it, but it started ten times in a row after that so i think we’re good. When we asked how much we owed him, the guy who owned the place said, “No charge for the visitors, just have a good trip mates!” We arrived in Wellingtong later that afternoon. We had two contacts there but received no response from one of them and the other one was out of town. We decided to get a ferry to the south island as soon as possible. The cheapest ferry we could get, with our car, left at 3am.
We hung around a backpackers hostel across the street and planned out what we were going to do on the south island. There was a bar their so we ate and played a few games of pool and had a few beers….it was going to be a long night. We went to go wait in line for the ferry, in our car, at around 11, at which time we just slept in our car until the ferry people knocked on the window for us to pull onto the boat. When we got on the boat i found the first couch and layed down….Nick, however, continued to walk around, I knew he was up to something. He comes back a few minutes later, “you want a bed?”…Nick had found the rooms for the commercial truckers and boat staff….they were unlocked, they had two beds each, and they were dark…very dark! We locked the door and passed out, only to be awoken the next morning by an anouncement over the loud speaker…………………

Chapter 9 (6AM)
“Attention, will everyone who is still on the ferry please go to the unloading deck, You are holding up the unloading of the ferry” We both jumped to our feet….for some reason we had not heard anything prior to that announcement. When we got down to the unloading dock our car, which was at the front of the line, was the only car without people in it….”those two boys were sleeping in the truckers quarters,” I heard over one of the workers walky talkies as we stormed passed them.
whoops….oh well! We got in our car and started to drive. The weather on the south island is a little more wet, but that makes for the great scenery when the sun is out. We drove a good ways, starting early in the morning. We were a little past Nelson when we picked up a hitchhiker, Chris. Chris is a Kiwi, originally from Auckland, but now he lives in Dunedin, works as a builder and has a few weeks off so hes seeing the country. There is a good number of locals that have never seen other parts of New Zealand. He was just going to Westport, but only as a next destination, so we told him to come along if he wanted to. Chris also knew how to install our radio, so now we have music. On the way to the glaciers (Fox and Frans Josef), we stopped at a number of different scenic sights, since we were driving along the west coast. We also saw the pancake rocks .(http://www.newzealandnz.co.nzldestinations/punakaika.html) When the three of us arrived in Greymouth, we decided to stop traveling for the day. Chris has a tent, so we decided to go to a campsite to save some money, but when we found out that it was $40 NZD for a campsite we changed our plans.
Now, we had been told that the Kiwi’s on the south island are even more hospitable than the people on the north island, which we found extremely hard to believe given all that has happened to us, but what happened next proved this theory true. Chris said, “I have an idea, turn left here” we pulled down some streets and up to a farm, and right up to the house. We were going to ask if we could pitch a tent on some guys farm. I had my doubts, but Chris was back in a few minutes giving the thumbs up. As we were pulling off, the man came out and waved us back. “there is a water hose on the back of that shed out there if you need it, the water is good for drinking, just dont forget to turn it off.” Hows that for southern hospitalityl
So we camped out in this guys farm for free, drank cheap beer, and ate peanut butter and jelly, we have to even out our expenses from the adrenaline seeking spree we had been having on in the north island. Chris had great stories from his past (he is 28), growing up as a Kiwi and all the gangs here that kids get caught up in, mostly in the big cities like auckland and wellington.
Ok…im gonna stop for this one since its pretty long. I was just trying ot fit more on one so as to not fill up your mailbox. So, until chapter 10!
Cheers, Zach
Kiwi term: “and that sort of carry-on” = “and stuff’ or “etc.,”

Note: The indigenous people are the Maoris, who came over with Captain Cook, and then the white people came after that. New Zealand is a very young country. Actually, no less than a hundred years ago the Maori people were still eating the white man, but not anymore. They actually joke about it, which is kind of creepy, “dont worry, we stopped eating you white people ages ago”, OK, FREAK! There is a lot of racism toward the Maoris becuase, similar to the native americans, they get money from the government. Apparently, they raised hell about a misprint in the treaty, the two treaties (two languages) had one word different so they said it was invalid and basically wanted all of their land back. The government gives them a lot of money and some land. One tribe on the North Island is worth more than a billion dollars.

Chapter 10 When we woke up (8:30) it was pouring down rain. We had the tent down and were on the road in about 10 minutes after setting foot outside of the tent. We arrived in the town of the Franz Josef Glacier later that day, but it was still pretty early. It had been raining all day long (on the West coast of the south island it rains 250 days a year) so there wasn’t much for us to do when we got there except for to relax. The town is a cool small town with only a few bars (still more than Elon though). We booked a glacier hike for the next day and then just read…watched a movie…went to the bars.
At the bar near our hostel we met a girl from the USA who had been living there for a couple months working in the reception of one of the hostels. She said she meets something like 70 new people every two days and doesn’t feel like she needs to travel becuase everyone is traveling around her….interesting concept. The longest anyone, since she had been there, has stayed at the hostel is four day because everyone just stops here on their way north or south.

Chapter 11
Me and Nick went on a 6 hour, guided glacier hike. It was pretty cool and I got a lot of good video and pictures from it. When we got back to the hostel, Chris said that he is moving here to become a glacier guide, he starts tomorrow (the 15th). While we were hiking he had talked to a number of people, got his friend to email his resume, and signed a contract to start tomorrow. He also said he would buy our car if we cant sell it. he’s going to pay us the same price we payed for it (600), we are going to try and get more for it though. Crazy, huh? We pick up this hitchhiker, and the second town we stop at with him, he decides to quit his job at home and move there (I bet his boss is gonna “kick up spit” about giving chris such a long vacation) to work for probably the next 5 years.

ITS A COIN FLlP- We pretty much make all of our big decisions based on the outcome of coin flips. Whether to hike this glacier or that glacier. Sleep in the car or pay for a hostel. Hike the trail or not hike the trail. Go to this city or the other.Chapter 12-13 We woke up and started talking to people about where we should go. Many people had told us about this trail called the “copeland track”, which was a little south of Fox Glacier, about 45 min from where we were. Also one of the kids who had been living in the hostel, Sabastian, was continuing his travels south so he joined us in our journey. Sabastian (22 yrs old) is from Germany and has been living in Australia for a few months but wanted to come over and see a bit of New Zealand. The trail that we hiked was about 17 K ( a little over 10 miles). The trail started off pretty easy for the first 5 K but the rest of the way had some pretty difficult river/creek crossings, especially because it had just poured down rain so the water was high. It took us about 6 hours (6 long hours). At the end of the 17 K is a cabin with running water (rain water) and about 35 sleeping mats laid out. The best part of the hike ( and the main motivation for us doing it) was the hot water pools (geothermal) which are located about a minutes walk from the cabin. We hung out in the pools for a little bit, which were awesome becuase around us were towering snow-capped mountains. A couple arrived soon after us whom were also from the states. One was from NH and the other from Louisiana (sp?), but they had both been living in Hawaii, working and saving up money to come and travel NZ. The next day we hiked back…. took us about 5 hours, and got a room and a hostel for the night to recover.Chapter 14
We woke up around 6 am in order to give ourselves enough time to make it to Lake Matheson to see the sun rise. The waters are the calmest before sunrise and the scene of Mt. Cook reflecting off of the water is amazing (mirror image). After that we packed up our stuff and continued driving south. We stopped in Wanaka and just ate lunch on a field and laid there for a couple of hours before continuing on to Queenstown where we had a contact and luckily a free place to stay. Queenstown is a small town (but big enough to be more of a town than other places we have stayed…without being a city). If it were cold, it would probably remind someone of Aspen on a lake. The mountains that surround Q-town are called the “remarkables” mountain range. Basically seems like you are surrounded by the “lord of the rings” set. Our contact (Barbara) was Nicks friend from high schools dad’s friend from college, because he went to college (”uni”) in NZ. She was very friendly. Her job, actually, was the manager for some helicopter company and she worked on the set and rode in some of the helicopters that filmed scenes around that area for the movie (LOTR) That night we just went out to a bar (world bar), had a few drinks, and played pool.

Chapter 15
We arose from our slumbers and ate breakfast in our humble abode… We decided to go exploring around there and stay the night in Q-town since Barbara said “you guys can stay a couple more nights if you need to”. We went to a town about 45 mins away (Glenorchy) and just drove around, sporadically getting out of the car to take pictures/video. We ended up in a place called “paradise”, located on a road called “paradise road”, which was all very fitting to the views it had. Later that night, when we head into town for beers, we got pulled over for our rear lights not working. He didn’t pull us over until we were already parked, so he just pulled behind us and put his lights on. We all got out of the car to talk to him (which would never fly in the states, but is actually pretty normal here). He asked us a few questions to which Nick answered “yes sir” or “no sir” and he started laughing and said “you buggers from the states are the only ones that call cops ’sir’, we’re just ’scum’ to everybody else here” The cop was really nice and explained how our warning would work. We smiled, shook our heads, and added it to the parking ticket from Rotorura which isn’t due until we are back in the states.

Chapter 16
We head to milford sound in the morning. A sound ( i think is also called a fiord and this area of the south island is called fiordland bcause of all the fiords) starts out as a river and from continuous erosion leads to the formation of a sound. http://www.fiordland.org.nz/html/milford1.html. The sound had incredible sights. There are only a few different ways to see the sound in its entirety. Some of these include scenic flights; boat rides, and overnight cruises. There is one overnight cruise that is pretty cheap because it is run by one of the hostels here (YHA) and it only cost $150…so we decided to do it since its kind of a long drive to just take an hour boat ride. The cruise went through the whole sound and out into the ocean, and back. We parked in a cove and went kayaking before we stuffed ourselves with the chef prepared meal. There was a family from Australia on the cruise and we ended up playing board games (provided by the cruise) with the mom and two daughters.

Day 17
We woke up at about 7 to eat breakfast on the cruise and we were docked by 9. At this time we got in the car and started the last leg of our trip, which would be the “southern scenic route”, a road that loops around the southern coast of the south island. We stopped at a few beeches along the way, as well as some scenic lookouts. This night we stayed in Invercargill, which is the southern most city, besides the port town which is on the coast.

Day 18
Arrived in Dunedin (pronounced Daneeden), our last location on the South Island. We had a contact in Dunedin but they were going out for the night so we still needed a place to stay. I started talking to a girl in a store, the store whose phone we used to call our contact. After a long meaningless conversation she finally said “you guys can stay at my place, one of my flat mates just moved out and there’s an empty room. 1m going to be working all night but you can just go knock on my door and say i said it was OK.” Excellent……we flipped a coin to see who would go knock on the door and nick lost. He said the girl who answered the door (Georgia), even though she didn’t know her roommates name who said it was ok, said “yeah, thats fine come on in….Toby (the other roommate), this is nick, he and two other guys are going to be staying here tonight”….Toby, without looking up from his magazine says “cool”. She showed us where the room was and where an extra mattress was, we put our sleeping bags down and went to town for a few beers.

Day 19
Soon after we woke up we went to our contacts house who invited us in for tea and bread. They had scheduled a band practice for that day, but the whole band wasn’t there so they just hung around and talked. One of the band members was from Charlotte (Steve), and went to UNC. Steve was friendly and gave us his address and told us where the key was, “if you need a place to stay we have an extra room, and we have two mountain bikes if you want to borrow them”
That night we went into town for some beers and ran into another guy from Chapel hill who went to UNC, Peter. Little did we know, until the next day, they were best friends.

Day 20
We dropped off Sebastian (the German kid who had been with us for the past week) on the side of the highway so he could hitchhike up to Christchurch to catch his flight the next day. Nick and I went to the beech. Later that day we decided to go to Steve’s house, because we didn’t really have any other place to go and we didn’t want to wear out our welcome at the elderly contact’s house(not that elderly, but still) . Steve invited us in and offered to cook spaghetti….soon after we arrived, Peter showed up, and we all ate dinner together.

Day 21
Beech….Beer…..Hang out with people from North Carolina….Peter used to be a “power broker” (broker of electricity) and he hooked us up with some contacts in chapel hill for a possible job opportunity as his brother still worked at the company. Peter bought our car! (we cut it close but it worked out).

Day 22-23
Flight to auckland…..stayed in a hostel, lots of lamb Kebabs…i promise im as sick of writing this as you are reading it.. ..if you actually get to point I’ll give you a dollar.
Signing out,
Zach