Rachel’s visit

Okay, let me pre-empt this by saying for what feels like the hundredth time – yes, I know, I’m slacking with the blog posts.

HOWEVER. I am planning to grace you all with not one, but TWO blog posts this week. This one; dedicated to Rachel’s visit (which just occurred to me was a month ago) and the other dedicated to Easter/the last two weeks. So hold on to your hats people, because there’s a whole lot of Jessie coming your way.

Alright, wine poured. M&Ms within arms reach and fire going. Let’s run this baby down from the top.

Rachel arrived at 9pm in Queenstown on April 2nd, where I picked her up and we drove over the Crown Range home. It’s funny how you forget the things that were once off-putting about New Zealand, and they just become the norm. But with Rachel visiting and pointing them out again, I started to remember how strange this whole place felt to me when I first got here.

For example, the Crown Range is the ‘highway’ that connects Queenstown and Wanaka. But it’s quite narrow and very winding – it feels rural even though it’s a state highway. In the dark, it’s even more disconcerting. Rachel remarked at one point that she felt like she was on a Disney World ride because the road was so winding and dark.

 

April 3rd & 4th, Wanaka & Queenstown

The next morning (Wednesday), I went to work, so Rachel hung out around Wanaka for the day. The following day, we headed for our first stop – Queenstown. It wasn’t a great day weather-wise, so we mostly just wandered around, did some shopping and had some lunch. Rachel remarked at this point that she liked Queenstown the best so far (unsurprising since it was the first place we went…), but I think that has something to do with the city-vibe it holds over Wanaka, which is more small-town.

 

April 5th, Te Anau

On Friday, we headed to Te Anau, which is a tiny lake town that lies an hour outside of Milford Sound. I had yet to visit Milford, but it’s one of those places that you have to go if you’re visiting New Zealand.

Because it’s a protected area, there’s not a lot of accommodation at the Sound itself, so many people stay in Te Anau and then drive there.

We arrived at Te Anau late, checked into our hostel then went to find some food. We settled at this cool restaurant that looked like a little house – but on the inside was cleared for dining. It smelled like the Lodge in there, so it really felt home-y. It also had a bunch of Lord of the Rings paraphernalia in a corner and we found out that the cast had dined there nearly every night when they were shooting in the area.

 

April 6th, Milford Sound

The next morning, we woke up around 6am to drive to Mildford Sound for our cruise through the Sound. It was waay too dark on the way there to see anything, so we would save the driving views for the way back.

Milford Sound might be one of the most gorgeous places in New Zealand. I felt the Jurassic Park theme song should’ve been playing the whole time. It’s a giant Sound with towering rocks that rise straight out of its waters. There’s a ton of waterfalls falling from each of the cliffs and it all feel very moody.

The cruise drove through the Sound and out to the ocean where we turned around and went back up the Sound along the opposite banks. On the way back, we were against the wind and Rachel and I were literally getting blown down the upper deck.

Once we got back to the docks, we quickly ran to the car because we were both frozen to the bone. After a few minutes spent warming up, we started up the car and began heading back to Te Anau.

The thing is, when we drove in, it was so dark that we couldn’t see anything. So we totally missed all the beautiful scenery of the Fiordlands. And it was crazy beautiful – almost better than the cruise itself. There’s so many huge glaciers that you can see as you drive down the highway. At one point, you even have to drive through a mountain – which was sketchy-as and made us both feel super claustrophobic. It wasn’t like a nice concrete tunnel – it was literally the inside of a mountain, cave water drippings and all.

We stayed one more night in Te Anau and then headed back to Wanaka on Sunday.

 

April 8th, Mount Cook

On Monday, we headed off to my favourite place in NZ – Mount Cook. And we caught it on an absolutely GLORIOUS day, so I was super stoked that Rachel got the full effect. The only downside was that I did get a speeding ticket on the way there, which was a bit of a dampener (shout-out for Mom for dealing with my meltdown). But otherwise, it was really cool to show Rach one of the places I’ve come to love the most here.

 

April 9th, Wanaka rest day

On the Tuesday, we hung around Wanaka. I showed Rachel a bit of the town, as well as the “Wanaka Tree” on the lake. The next day we were flying to the North Island to explore some beach towns, so we kind of wanted a rest day before that.

 

April 10th, Auckland and the drive to Paihia

On Wednesday, we headed over to Queenstown to catch flights to Auckland. Unfortunately, we had to book separate flights because there wasn’t room for two on Rachel’s earlier flight. She actually nearly missed it due to our poor planning. She didn’t end up having time to check her bag and had to run through security to get there, so I took it on my flight instead. In hindsight, probably good that we were on separate flights, otherwise we both would’ve been screwed.

Because Rachel got to Auckland first, she went ahead and picked up our rental car before coming back to the airport to get me. Then, it was time to get our priorities in order.

After a quick trip to donut heaven, we headed North to Paihia. Honestly, I can’t even remember how we decided to go there, it just kind of came up and was decided on. But I’m really happy we did. Paihia is in the famous Bay of Islands and man, it is gorgeous there. It’s this beautiful little oceanside town with cool alleyways and great restaurants. Our hostel was also really cool, and definitely the best that we stayed in the whole trip.

We popped into this restaurant on the waterfront for dinner and ended up going back there twice more because it was so good. The front patio extended over the water and at night it was so beautiful with all the fairy lights and the sound of the ocean.

 

April 11th, Paihia glow worm caves

The next day, it was raining so we nixed the idea of cruising the Bay of Islands and decided to leave that until the next day. Instead, our hostel recommended we go check out the glow worm caves down the road, so off we went.

I don’t have very many photos of this because you’re not allowed to take pictures in the cave. But I’ll just explain. The caves are on a Maori farm and the tours are run by the family who live there. The caves are sacred to them, as they used to bury their dead there. Creepy, I know. But so cool because the caves also have all kind of Maori history tied to them.

Our guide was a young Maori guy who had the most Kiwi accent I’ve ever heard. Rachel could not stop cracking up. But he was really funny and made what might’ve been a boring tour, really entertaining.

We were given lanterns and our guide led us through the caves. As we got deeper in, he stopped us and told us to turn off the lanterns. It was completely pitch dark and all you could hear was the stream running next to us. But then when we looked up, it was like the Milky Way. The glow worms were SO bright and it genuinely looked like stars. It was the coolest thing. Our guide told us that the glow worms situate themselves on the cave ceiling in a mirror formation of the stream below – because where there’s water, there’s flies and that’s what the glow worms catch and eat.

We stopped a few more times to look at the glow worms before heading back out into the light. It was definitely one of my favourite experiences of the North Island and it was really cool to learn more about the Maori culture as well.

From there, we headed back into town and had a drink and some food before going back to our hostel to chill out for a bit. We both had a nap, I kicked Rachel’s ass at chess and then we made a big pasta for dinner before calling it a night.

 

April 12th, Bay of Island cruise

The next morning, we went on a cruise to the Bay of the Islands. It actually started out so nice and sunny, and while we were on the boat, we were actually able to catch some rays.

But once we got to our destination – a secluded little island with a beach and a cafe – it got FREEZING. The sun immediately disappeared and the wind picked up and it was torture. Rachel was intent on “tanning” and stayed out on the lawn reading her book. But I was dying inside. And because the North Island is generally pretty warm, they had no blankets. And I was in shorts and a tee shirt. So I worked with what we had.

After the boat came back and got us, we returned to Paihia. We then drove seven hours back through Auckland and headed east to the Coromandel Peninsula. We got in super late, checked in to our hostel, went and had the BIGGEST mussels I’ve ever seen for dinner and then tucked in.

 

April 13th, Cathedral Cove, Hot Water Beach & Auckland

The next morning, we had a lot on our plate because it was our last day. First up, Cathedral Cove.

Cathedral Cove is crazy beautiful. It’s this little cove with towering sandstone cliffs on either side and giant tunnel at one end. There’s also these really cool rock formations just off the beach.

If I were a betting woman, I’d say Rachel liked Cathedral Cove the best. She was really stoked to lay on a beach the whole trip and finally we found this really incredible place to do it. And while I’m not usually one for sitting still, it was really nice to just have some downtime in the sun.

After lunch at a local brewery, we drove to our next location – Hot Water Beach. Hot Water Beach is famous for its geothermal activity and when the tide goes out, there’s a section on the beach where people dig holes for makeshift hot tubs. We were pretty stoked to go and try it out, but because we had to be back in Auckland at a certain time, we would have to go dig before the tide was completely out.

The problem with this was that we would start to dig our hole, but then the waves would come and crash into our walls, flooding the hole with sand and filling it again. It was super frustrating. Finally, we were able to get a little bit of a hole going, but by then, there were probably a hundred people in this one little plot of beach and it was hella crowded. Not very relaxing. We had a laugh digging though, so we packed up shop and gifted our hole to another group who had just shown up.

After our hole-digging fiasco, we headed to Auckland for our final night of the trip. We decided to treat ourselves to a fancy dinner out before heading back to the hostel and calling it a night. The next morning, I was up bright and early at 6am to catch my flight back to Wanaka and Rachel would stay in Auckland for the next two days.

It was a real blast to have Rachel in New Zealand and it was nice taste of home. I also enjoyed seeing parts of NZ that I hadn’t had the chance to travel to yet.

However, I think that most important thing I walked away with was a better understanding of  how different Rachel and I are. I mean, I’ve always known that we have different interests and hobbies, but we’ve definitely diverged in life in terms of who we are as people. And I’m not going to lie, we don’t always get along. In fact, we sometimes drive each other crazy. But I think we’ve come a long way from getting in fights and holding grudges (as young siblings often do). I think now that we’re adults, we’re both much better at understanding each other’s differences and working within those confines to compromise. It was really interesting discovering this dynamic road-tripping and I think we both had an awesome time because of it.

Maturity, look at that.

Well, my glass of wine is empty and my M&Ms are almost gone. That was a marathon, thanks for sticking with me peeps and I’ll be back later in the week with more to share.

• JB