I now begin the
holiday trip I have been looking forward to since I first considered moving to
NZ: I will spend the next ten days traveling through the South Island. It’s sparsely
populated and filled with awe-inspiring works of nature, and every time the
South Island crops up in conversation, everyone I meet swoons over the journeys
and sights they have experienced here. I’m filled with anticipation over what I’ll
encounter on my trip, which I’ll be sharing with twenty other au pairs from
around NZ.
The first leg of the
trip was an evening flight to Christchurch, the largest city in the south. It seemed
to be a journey through time, because the flying experience I had on this domestic
flight made me feel as if I’d been transported to the 1970s. Security consisted
of my placing my bags through a scanner, and a chatty pair of security officers
glanced at the scan before I gathered my belongings and almost immediately
reached my gate. We boarded at a reasonable time, and the plane took off a few
minutes ahead of schedule. I half expected the pilot to announce the
stewardesses would distribute complimentary cigarettes once we finished takeoff.
The flight landed ten minutes early, and I almost got whiplash from how quickly
I retrieved my checked bag. In short: I’m the newest and biggest advocate for
Air New Zealand.
Because of the tour
itinerary, I spent the night in Christchurch but left early the following
morning. We drove around a few parts of the city’s central business district
and a beach, but unfortunately Christchurch was not the most appealing town due
to its weather and its crumbling buildings. Earthquakes devastated the city’s
center in late 2010 and early 2011—claiming close to 200 lives and destroying
hundreds of buildings—and the city has hardly seemed to recover from the event.
On our brief tour we saw areas in the CBD that were still fenced off, and we
passed a large number of homes that were now abandoned but had once had the best
hillside views of the ocean. However, life goes on, and the dozens of surfers
filling the water at Sumner Beach didn’t seemed deterred to enjoy it despite
the dismal weather and the crumbling city they call home.
We drove south along Highway
One, and I enjoyed staring out the window at the scenery that at first felt
very familiar to me. The motorway reminded me of the many drives I’ve taken
through Georgia (particularly US-441, for those reading at home): the two-lane
highway ran parallel to a railroad for much of the way, much of the view
consisted of crop-filled fields or cow-filled pastures, and every so often you’d
hit a wide spot in the road named after some farmer’s relative. We had a
whistle stop in a town called Geraldine; then our tour continued south, while
we watched out the windows as the terrain began to stretch higher around us
until we made it to the first real stop on the trip.
Tekapo, which shares
its name with the lake it almost falls into, grew from an extremely small town
to a very small town in the last decade thanks to its location (near halfway
between Christchurch and Queenstown) and scenery. Lake Tekapo, a glacial lake
surrounded by mountains, left me speechless. It’s fed by high mountain snow,
and glacial movement scraping rock gives it an unreal shade of blue. We arrived
to town in the late afternoon and viewed the lake first from its rocky shore,
and then we drove to the hilltop of Mt. John Observatory to survey the stunning
sight from above. (Although we didn’t get to visit it, the observatory holds a
special place in astronomical research, so its surrounding areas form one of
only four Dark Sky Reserves in the world.) Our final stop for the evening was
the Tekapo Hot Pools, where we took in the beautiful environment while soaking
our travel-weary bones.
Tekapo pictures here.
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