On The Road Again!

Yesterday we made it Christchurch. I was really sure what to expect when we got there with all of the damage from the Earthquakes, but it was pretty devastating. The whole town centre is shut down and it really feels like you are walking through a ghost town. It was a very eye-opening and sad thing to see.

Not all of Christchurch was sad though! We found another nice hotel to stay at. When we got there we started looking at various brochures trying to find something to do. We looked into hot air balloons, but they were a little pricy so we found one for a place called High Adrenaline Forest. At first I thought it would be a zip-lining thing and I was pretty excited. It was super cheap and seemed fun! We all laughed when we read that is was emotionally and physically challenging; we soon realized they weren’t kidding! When we got there we didn’t have to sign anything, we just paid our money and got a super short lesson on what some of the ‘obstacles’ would be. It started out pretty easy. We would climb various things to get higher in trees and we would zip-line. There were six courses. Number one was easy, so we skipped two and moved to three. Three had it’s challenges but wasn’t bad so we moved on to five. Five was pretty challenging. The obstacles were super high up and required a ton of strength. Six was down right HARD! We saw two or three people get stuck after the second and third challenges, but we were not going to leave without doing it! It was scary because there were no safety nets under us, just the forest ground, and we were responsible for hooking our harness to the various safety wires. We were doing pretty well until about the seventh obstacle where you clipped onto a rope and then jumped over NOTHING into a spider web-type net. It was by far the scariest moment of my life. I screamed bloody murder the whole time! We were 60 feet above the ground and the jump was about twenty feet wide. SO scary! After I finished I felt so accomplished! We went to the beach for a little bit after the forest and then headed back to our motel.

We went to the local mall next where we learned that clothes in New Zealand are great, but SUPER pricey! For dinner we went to a pizza place outside the mall. They had amazing pizza! We ordered garlic bread and a Caesar pizza.  Probably some of the best pizza I have ever had! We ate and a few drinks before heading back ‘home.’

Today we drove all the way to Dunedin. We stopped a few times a long the way. We stopped in a super cute town called Timaru. I absolutely loved it!! It was super cute and right on the coast. We also stopped and saw the Moeraki boulders. They are these huge boulders that are perfect circles. The beach that they were on was COVERED in sea shells. I was so beautiful, a really neat thing to see. Tonight we are staying in a hostel and I am pretty excited, as I have never stayed in one before. There is one other person staying in our ‘dorm.’

I am excited to see all that Dunedin has to offer! It is fun being back in a college town, especially one so big. Tomorrow night is the final game in the Rugby World Cup. New Zealand in playing again France, so it is a great time to be here!

As usual,

Michelle