It is safe to say that Luke has defied all odds and is still alive.
"Wow, that's boring. Why do I even bother checking anymore?" You may ask.
Well let me tell you a story; a story of how Luke approached death, and after a brief moment of formalities proceeded to beat the living daylights out of it.
Pop some popcorn and find a comfy seat ladies and gentleman because this is gonna to be a long one.
It's early in the morning on April 15th. Much of Christchurch is asleep, except for two fearless adventurers, myself and my Brother-Man, Kyle Alpert. We stand just outside the city, awaiting our fate, the tools of our trade majestically reflecting the early sunlight that can only be found on a Friday morning.
Destination: Queenstown.
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| "Tools of the Trade" |
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| As if anyone would pick him up |
After a short thirty minutes of standing on the roadside, a car finally pulled over, and thus began our first hitchhike. The driver was a cool dude, and I cannot remember his name for the life of me, so I will affectionately refer to him as "The Electrician." Coincidentally, that is also his job. Now, The Electrician just happened to be going all the way to Queenstown, which about 300 miles away, and it is safe to say, we got extremely lucky. He even stopped at a famous Mount Cook lookout, and for food several times, so we did not get too hangry.
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| Mount Cook |
After a long six hour drive, we finally arrived in Queenstown, the Adventure Capital of the World. This is the cute little backpackers (hostel) we stayed in for the night.
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| YHA Queenstown |
After finding our room and dropping our backpacks, we set off into the great wilderness of Queenstown, dense with Asians in down jackets. Our first decision in this town was, obviously, to find as many statues as possible, and sit on them. There are far too many pictures to include here, so check them out on Facebook; we are thinking of opening our own art gallery. The second order of operations was to find food, and boy did we find it. For those of you that have never been to the legendary Fergburger, I encourage you to rethink your life, and find a way to get to Queenstown, New Zealand. It was honestly the best burger I have ever had. Kyle and I did not say a word to each other for a solid ten minutes while we ate, and the only sounds produced were grunts of pleasure and squeals of utter delight. We returned to the backpackers, quite fat and happy.
The next morning was full of more adventures in Queenstown. First, we found this little store called the "OK Gift Shop." Heads up to all humans everywhere, not a good marketing technique. As intrigued as we were about buying simply "OK," souvenirs, we passed the shop by without a second thought.
Next, we took a gondola up the slope behind Queenstown, where we had an amazing view of the city. I decided to pay someone to let me front-flip off a cliff, which was pretty rad, and there will definitely be a video hitting up Facebook soon. Highest adrenaline rush of my life thus far and checked off the bucket list. Skydiving, here I come (But probably not in New Zealand). While we were up over the city, we drove around a cool little luge track. I'm pretty much halfway to the Olympics at this point.
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| View of Queenstown from the gondola |
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| The Luge track |
Destination: Te Anau
Our second attempt at hitchhiking was not as easy as the first. We stood on the roadside for a long two hours before a local kid offered to take us five minutes further up the road. It was a disappointingly short distance, but it turned out to be just what we needed. He brought us to an intersection where there was more traffic that was definitely heading in the direction of Te Anau. Within five minutes, we were picked up again.
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| Apples! |
This time by a guy named John, who was super awesome. He offered to take us as far as Kingstown, where he and his wife operated a B&B. Along the way, he showed us his favorite apple tree, and we stopped to collect a bagful.
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| Kingstown Pit Stop |
We only waited at the lonely little Kingstown pit stop for about twenty minutes, until we were picked up by a sheep farmer, his wife, and their daughter. They totally pulled over because we bribed them with apples. They were on their way back from Arrowtown, where they had been looking to invest in some land. We learned all about sheep farming and how the rise in the demand of dairy has effected his business. They took us for awhile and then dropped us in the middle of nowhere, but that was fine with us because it was closer to Te Anau!
Our final hitch of the day came from Jamie, who picked us up minutes later. He was a Canadian on vacation in Australia, but had decided to spend a couple days in New Zealand. He was able to take us all the way to Te Anau, where he was staying as well.
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| The sleepy town of Te Anau |
While we were in Te Anau, we met up with Kyle's girlfriend, Rachel, and her family who was visiting New Zealand. We ended up going on a Glowworm tour with them, and then crashing at their accommodations for the night. Unfortunately, I do not have any good pictures of the glowworms because we could not take pictures, but I have included a picture from the Internets that we can just pretend that I took.
Wow, only two days in! Congratulations if you are still reading!
The next part of our adventure was the Kepler Track, which I am going to create a separate post about. Either finish up here first, or hop over there and come back after. I'll be waiting right here.
For those of you that are going to stay, let's continue with the post-Kepler Track Journey.
Upon completing the Kepler Track, we had to hitchhike our way back to Te Anau. After only a few minutes of trying, we were picked up by Joan, a sweet old lady, who wins the award for being the oldest person to give us a ride. She was nice enough to drop us right outside our hostel, where we collapsed in a smelly heap on the floor, and didn't move for a couple decades.
Later that afternoon, I consumed the second best burger I have ever had at the Fat Duck. It had beef, American bacon (Finally), and pulled pork on it, and it was amazing. Moral of the story, New Zealand really knows how to make a good burger.
Check this sucker out.
The next morning it was back to hitchhiking. I know you all are extremely bored at this point, so I am going to make the ride back short, sweet and to the point. We had to travel 400 miles in one day.
Destination: Christchurch.
We arose from our slumber early to make it out on the road just outside of town by 7am. We wanted to make sure that we had every opportunity to be picked up. Turns out, we totally could have slept in longer because we did not get our first ride until 9am. We were picked up by Duncan and Natashia, who were Aussies taking a small break from life and their two young boys. They were on their way back to the Queenstown Airport, so we covered a large distance in one go, which was quite helpful. Three hours later, we arrived at the airport.
Our next rides were two short lifts that helped get us out of the busy Queenstown area. First was from an Indian guy named Raoul, who on Luke's official Creeper Scale from 1-10, was definitely pushing an 11. The second ride was from two nice ladies, who brought us from the terrible location where Raoul had dropped us to Arrowtown.
We did not have to wait in Arrowtown long before we were picked up by a weird man named Lockey. His family runs an off-road ATV Lord of the Rings tour business, which some absolutely AWESOME. He told us about the time that he met Elijah Wood, Orlando Bloom, and Sean Bean in person. However, he has never read the books.... or even seen the movies. Apparently, they are not interesting enough to keep him awake. Ok Guy. He was gracious enough to leave us in the middle of nowhere, and probably most desert-like area in New Zealand.
We were rescued from certain skin cancer doom by a older gentleman named Graham. He owns a lodge in Otago, right in the middle of a popular multi-day bike route. This is an example of a good business to own; as long as it is not called the "OK Bike Lodge."
Whew! Hanging in there? You should go congratulate yourself with more popcorn.
Two more rides to go! We were next picked up by a Spanish couple named Habbie and Ilana, who were in New Zealand on their honeymoon. It first, it was really weird because they offered to take us quite far, all the way to Tekapo, and we did not want to intrude on their time. We showed them were to get a sweet picture of Mount Cook, and they insisted on taking a picture with us. At that point, we knew that we were not intruding, and we enjoyed hanging out with them for a couple hours.
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| Habbie and Ilana |
When they dropped us off in Tekapo, it was 5:40pm, and the sun was beginning to set. We had a couple minutes to snag a ride, or we would be spending the night on the side of the road. As twilight slowly rolled in, our hopes slowly disappeared....until... a car slowed down and stopped beside us. Enter Doug, with the most clutch ride we had gotten all day, and he drove us the rest of the way to Christchurch. Now, this ride should have taken us about three hours, but it turns out, Doug is a drag racer, and he got us home in two hours, easy. Apparently, he is also a DJ, and has set up staging for Lady Gaga's shows before. In short, it was by far the funnest ride we had received, hurling along the highway at high speeds, jamming to Eminem, with some random half Maori, half Scottish guy we had just met. Humans are awesome.
Well guys, thats all for now!
Thanks for reading, and if you haven't read the Kepler Track post yet, feel free to head over there!
Cheers,
Luke out.
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