New Zealand: Day Two

After spending our first day in Christchurch, it was now time to move on and explore the rest of the South Island in the limited time we had available. I had arranged for a shuttle bus to pick us up from our hostel and take us to Explore More, the rental place that I had booked a car with for the next few days.

Our rental car was this small four door Toyota that I had never seen of or heard of before. It would get the job done: that is, have four wheels and take us to wherever we wanted to go. Of course, in NZ they drive on the left, so that was an initial concern for me. I had to make sure that I was thinking long and hard about what I was doing, especially at the beginning of the driving experience.

The plan was to grab some food and then head towards our first destination: Arthur's Pass. After a quick stop at the grocery store with food that we hoped wouldn't go bad in a few days, I drove.

At the start, the drive was very flat. As soon as the car passed outside of the Christchurch city limits, the landscape was limited to trees of varying shapes and sizes. It was just about as flat as I pictured the middle of the US would be. There were a few small towns that we passed through as well. About an hour into our drive (maybe less) the views began. Along the horizon, mountains began to crop up. And not your Appalachian-type mountains that leave you thoroughly unimpressed; rather, mountains that stirred something inside you. I think this was mostly due to the fact that all I could think about was Lord of the Rings and how much I wanted this to be Middle Earth. But needless to say, it was awesome.

The drive to Arthur's Pass took around 2 to 2 and a half hours. It was pretty tricky driving, especially since I was on the opposite side of the road. Once at the village, we checked in to our hostel and headed out to find somewhere to hike. After all, the mountains called us.

We decided to start with the Devil's Punch Bowl hike. This only took about an hour round trip, and it ended up at the foot of a water fall. After spending some time there, we headed back. On the way, we noticed the sign for another trail; this one went up Mt Aicken. Having no other plans, we headed up.

This hike was much more difficult. The incline was quite steep, and there were rocks and roots hindering the ascent. I felt significantly out of shape. But we pressed on, and made it up about halfway. The view from there was breathtaking:

When we made it to about the halfway point, we lingered for a bit. Part of me wanted to try and make it up the rest of the way (I'll admit not a very big part), but reason won over desire, as we lacked proper food and water supplies. So we cruised back down the mountain and called it a day.

After resting up a bit, we attempted a picnic dinner at a few locations but were rudely interrupted by thousands of biting gnats. Or mosquitoes. Some kind of insect that bit and drew blood. Upon return to the hostel we called it an early night and went to sleep.