What a month! Getting back from my semester break had a hard start. The first week I had three of my papers due so I was very busy and had no time to relax. I was glad that I had the break in Fiji for sure.
However, after that week the rest of the month was my favorite. This was the month where I was able to travel and see all of the places that I wanted to see. I’m going to write about two of my favorite hikes. The first one was that I really wanted hike up to Roy’s Peak. I was a 16km hike round trip but it was very steep. My flat mate and I decided the night before that we wanted to go and the next morning we drove 3hrs to Wanaka to do the hike and drove back that same night. The climb was so steep that the weight of my body was on the back of my ankles. The higher we go the further we felt but we kept on walking. Once we got to the top the views were incredible. We were able to see all of Wanaka. So many lakes and mountains meeting. Something I found interesting was that even though I was sweating the whole way up, I was freezing at the top. Finally, the way down was so much easier. Since gravity is strong, we would run and let gravity pull us down. Yes, we were going crazy, let’s just say we slept well that night.
Another of my favorite trips was Mt. Cook. Mt. Cook is the highest mountain in New Zealand, so no, I did not climb it. There are many hikes and cool glaciers around Mt. Cook and that’s where we went. Two friends from the TEAN program and their flat mates go together and we drove through the night to a campsite. When we got there, we set camp and slept. The next morning was awesome. Coming out of the tent we were able to see mountains everywhere. We started the hikes early and walked all the way to the lake that shows Mt. Cook. The whole time I felt like I was walking in a 3D simulator in Avatar world. The views were breathtaking. We also went to the Tasman glaciers and saw different types of glacier water and icebergs.
That night we camped by Lake Pukaki, a blue lake, and went star grazing. I saw one comet, two shooting stars, the milky way, and the southern cross. When we woke up we all went swimming in lake Pukaki which was freezing, being that its glazier water, but YOLO. We drove around those towns and stopped for pictures.
These two trips are my favorite of all the trips I took around New Zealand this month. There were times of adventure, site seeing, reflection, and exhaustion. I don’t usually get to camp and see mountains since it is so flat in Florida so seeing all those views was worth all the hiking and sleeping in tents.