Queenstown and Htiching

December 1, 2011

This past week has been filled with fun and adventure to say the least! I’ve met so many great people along the way. Queenstown was easily one of the most beautiful places that I have ever seen in my life by far! Right in the backyard of the hostile there was a very pleasant patio with lawn chairs and a picnic table that looked out to the lake. Behind the lake was the “Remarkables”, this is a beautiful mountain range that everyone in New Zealand was raving about before we arrived in Queenstown. You can definitely see why all the Kiwi’s love it.

The first night we spent there we ended up going out and we had a couple of beers. Everyone was extremely nice and easy going. A lot of foreign people populate Queenstown because it is such a large tourist attraction. Not to many Kiwi’s actually live there.

We decided to do a hike called the Ben Loumon hike, which was a daylong track and lasted about 6 and a half hours up and down. Going up initially wasn’t to bad although I did realize how out of shape I am. Nolan and I were joking about that and we had a couple good laughs because at points we were huffing and puffing. When we arrived at the final ascending point a man and a woman that had to be in there 70’s walked past Nolan and I. They smiled and said, “Come on boys you almost got it!” I was thinking to myself how the hell did they make it all the way up this mountain…this is not easy. Good for them! Once we made it to the top I was amazed by the view. I can say that this was the most amazing view that I have ever experienced in my life. Full panoramic view of the all the mountains that surround us! You feel so small when you are at 5000 feet elevation. It was remarkable and I was so glad that I completed that hike to the top of the mountain. At the top I made friends with a couple of English fellows and one American girl. They were so nice and we ended up descending with them. It was funny because later that night when we went out for a drink we ended up seeing out friends from the hike and we had a drink with them. Pleasant surprise!

We planned on leaving Queenstown on Monday and hitching to Greymouth. That plan didn’t quite fall through because the weather was not very cooperative. We had to end up staying one more day at the hostile…that also gave us a little more time to look up host for our next destination because we didn’t really have anything lined up yet. On Tuesday we got up early and I checked my e-mail and saw a host had e-mailed me back from Greymouth! They asked if we could stay longer than a week... we couldn’t stay longer then a week because we already made plans for leaving Greymouth on December 7^th and heading to Punakaiki, which is about 70 Kms from Greymouth. The last e mail I sent her before we began our travels was just letting her know that we could only stay a week. I was not entirely sure if that was ok with her or not but we already had plans to travel up the West Coast so we figured we’d go to Greymouth and talk to her in person and see what she had to say.

Our first ride of the day took us the longest. We waited about a half an hour and then got picked up by two Argentineans. They just brought us to the next town up…just about ten minutes up the road. We then waited right outside of a very busy intersection. We knew that we would get picked up quick because this was such a prime location to hitch from. A very nice middle-aged lady by the name of Debra picked us up within ten minutes. She was so nice and we were getting such greaet vibes from here. She loved to pick up hitchers…she told us. We were told that her only condition was that we had to sign the visitor’s book. She had a little book in her car and we had to sign it and tell what country we were from. She had picked up so many hitcher’s in the past it was great! People form all over the World! We had such great conversation so she decided to take Nolan and I out to lunch. She paid for us which was so generous of her! We spoke of politics, family, and life in general. She was an interior designer and she gave us her card and told us if we ever needed a place to stay then we could stay at her house, which is about two hours from Christchurch. We might take up that offer who knows.

She dropped us off in a little town called Wanaka, which was about 6 hours from Greymouth. We just had to ride up the West Coast now. We literally waited two minutes and then two Austrian girls who were in the mid 20’s picked us up. One of them was going to study at MIT in Boston and the other girl was traveling around. They had a really spacious van so I lied down for the majority of the ride it was quite nice actually. We stopped in a couple of places and took in the views.

They dropped us off in a town just out side of Fox Glacier and then we were picked up by two Swedish people. They were brother and sister. The girl was 27 and her name was Annie. The brother was 24 and his name was Bjorn. Such nice people! They took us a couple towns up, which was a nice help. We figured it was getting late so we would walk to the nearest campground, which was about 10 miles away.

We walked about two miles and we tried hitching to the campground although it was a pretty short distance away. We ended up getting a ride form the Austrian girls that picked us up earlier! It was too funny! We were all in laughter as they asked us if we needed a ride yet again. We got to the campground and set up the tent and took amazing pictures of the sunset( I’ll be posting that soon) We met the Swedish brother and sister at the sight as well and had a nice fire that we all sat around and watched the stars. It was a great couple of days!

Now Nolan and I are in Greymouth but we are not in the hostile that we intended because the one we intended on was overbooked with helpers. We found one just down the road and they needed help so now we are here for a week before we head to Punakaki J

Bye for now J

Jon