My day at Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park consisted of a hike across rivers and up to a glacier lake. The mountains were absolutely stunning, and I don’t think I’d ever been on a more beautiful hike.
However, the days just kept on getting better and better. After the hike, I drove a few more hours to Wanaka, a small town on a lake from which I would start my next day’s hike. I drove around the town and the surrounding area, did a short walk at a local nature park, checked out a waterfall, and grabbed some dinner.
The next morning I was up right after sunrise in order to go on my longest hike of the trip, Roy’s Peak. It was a 10 mile hike that was supposed to take between 5 and 7 hours. I began the hike around 8 and summitted at 11. I took my time at the top and on the way down, since the path was snowy in places, and finally was down around 1.
I then began my final drive to Queenstown. I stopped at a few viewpoints along the way, but I made it to the city by 2:30, where I was able to find my hotel, visit an old mining town called Arrowhead about 20 minutes from the city, and finally take the skyline to the top of a mountain to see the sunset. I grabbed dinner on the wharf by the lakefront and headed back for an early night.
Queenstown was the base from which I spent my final days in New Zealand. The next day, I took a bus tour to Milford Sound, passing through the town of Te Anau, Fjordland National Park, and along the way running into some Kea birds and waterfalls along the way. My tour took us on a boat tour, where I was able to see both Dolphins and seals from the boat. Many waterfalls also accompanied our rainy trip, and I was so thankful to have bought myself an MSU rain jacket on a whim shortly before the trip.
The second to last day was a day I’d been thinking about for a while, but I wasn’s sure if it was going to work because of conditions. As part of my Mountain Collective Ski pass, I had passes to two ski resorts in New Zealand. Both were coincidentally within an hour’s drive of Queenstown. I didn’t have four wheel drive on my car, and it had been a little snowy the day before, so I wasn’t sure that I would be let up the mountain or even if there was enough snow to ski. It certainly wasn’t my favorite ski trip, being kind of icy and with almost whiteout conditions, but I can now say that I’ve skiied in the southern hemisphere.
I got back to town, enjoyed a walk around the city, and just enjoyed the views of the lake as the sun started to set.
On my final day in New Zealand, I visited the Kiwi Birdlife park, where I was able to see Kiwis, Keas, and other birds native to New Zealand. I stopped for a quick walk across a bridge on a river I’d seen on my way into town, then headed off to the Queenstown airport. I dropped my car off at the Queenstown airport and flew back to Auckland, getting some very good views of mountains on the short flight. I spent the rest of the afternoon in the airport. After a very long flight in which I left at nighttime and got back to Chicago at an earlier time in the same day that I’d left, I was finally home, rejuvenated and ready to focus on the next stage of my life.
WANDERING 