And that's a wrap, folks. Without exaggerating, I can safely say these past three weeks in New Zealand have changed my life for the better. I love this country, and I wonder if I don't have a little Kiwi blood in me—it just felt like home from Day One.
I'm heading back to California tonight, and so I wanted to share my crazy bungy jump photo (just incredible—two or three good arcs of pure weightlessness, with no jerk or yank at the bottom at all!) with you all. I cannot wait until I get to do another bungy jump! They're seriously addictive.
I'll leave you all with a few Very Important New Zealand Ratings:
Well, it's about time for me to start getting ready for the 13 hour flight back to California. I'll be leaving Auckland at 7 pm Monday… and arriving in San Francisco seven hours earlier the same day. Isn't time travel fun?
I'm heading back to California tonight, and so I wanted to share my crazy bungy jump photo (just incredible—two or three good arcs of pure weightlessness, with no jerk or yank at the bottom at all!) with you all. I cannot wait until I get to do another bungy jump! They're seriously addictive.
I'll leave you all with a few Very Important New Zealand Ratings:
- Most Adorable Award:
- New Zealand Lambs (they also receive the coveted Most Tasty Award).
- Most Sweaty Place:
- Franz Josef Glacier (no, really!)
- Best Skiing:
- Treble Cone, Wanaka
- Best City:
- Dunedin (love the architecture, the college town atmosphere, great music, and great cafés!)
- Worst City:
- Queenstown (total tourist trap; since they don't mine gold there any more, now they get their gold out of rich foreigners' pockets. Wanaka has pretty much everything Queenstown does, and does it better.)
- Best Place to Stay:
- Top Ten Holiday Parks. I stayed in these great, cheap little cabins all over the place.
- Worst Place To Stay:
- Amber Lodge in Queenstown. Ask me why sometime: I have photos. Ugh.
- Most Scenic:
- Bar none, driving the Haast Pass was the most stunning and emotional experience.
- Best Seafood:
- Kaikoura! I loved the roadside stand seafood barbecue where I had dinner. One of my favorite meals of the trip.
- Best Day Trip:
- I can't recommend strongly enough that everyone in Auckland take the day trip to Tiritiri Matangi Island, the endangered bird sanctuary.
- Most Expensive Activity:
- Internet access. Man, I can't believe how much they charge here to use your own laptop to get online! NZ$10/hour wasn't uncommon. Still, it was worth it to get all these photos to everyone.
- Total Distance Driven:
- 4316 kilometers (2682 miles), an average of 216 km (134 miles) each day
- Total Photos Taken:
- 2273 photos and 42 movies, a total of 6.1 gigabytes, or two DVDs
Well, it's about time for me to start getting ready for the 13 hour flight back to California. I'll be leaving Auckland at 7 pm Monday… and arriving in San Francisco seven hours earlier the same day. Isn't time travel fun?
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