Queenstown

We had the most amazing day in Queenstown on Saturday. We started the morning off with a hike to a look out above the city and the lakes. While we were at the top, we asked a couple from Australia to take our picture. We talked to them for a bit and they asked if we planned to go up the gondola to another look out point. We said we'd like to and they gave us two extra tickets they had for the gondola. We thanked them and later realized that the gondola tickets also included a buffet dinner at the restaurant at the top of the gondola. Talk about generosity. After our hike we headed out to the bridge shown in the picture above to go bungy jumping. This is the place where bungy jumping began.





















Darren and I both chose to be dipped in the water from our heads up to our waists. It was so awesome! Darren jumped first so that I could film him and then I jumped. I wasn't nervous until I stepped up the edge of the bridge with my feet tied together. I didn't think much about jumping - I was too focused on keep my chin tucked and arms extended for the dive into the water but it was such a rush.




















After our jumps we ran down to the pier in town to meet up with some of our friends for jet boating. Through a connection with our host family we were able to jet boat for the price of a child's ticket (half the price of an adult ticket). The wind was pretty strong so the lake had white caps and about 4 foot swells. Our jet boat caught some wicked air and since my feet didn't touch the floor of the boat, I caught some air too. Our driver was awesome and threw a bunch of 360s with the boat and whipped us around all over the lake and the rivers. It was pretty much like being on an hour long roller coaster on water. Darren was on the edge and got soaked from his head to his knees so we sat out on the beach to let him dry off a bit afterwards. We hit up a couple souvenir shops before heading up the gondola and having dinner. The buffet was pretty good but the view was amazing. Darren took this panoramic shot with his camera.

Kayaking Adventures

Our first skill that we have learned for our New Zealand Adventure course is kayaking. Like any water sport, Darren took to it immediately. Water is his element and he always excels at anything in the water. Kayaking was no different and after only four days of kayaking he not only looked like a natural pro but he was teaching and rescue the other students on our trip. I've posted a couple of videos of him playing in some rapids. He flips on purpose in the video to show off his eskimo roll (being able to flip his kayak by himself). I enjoyed the kayaking trip and only flipped my kayak three times on the river (the same as Darren), but I had to be flipped by someone else or wet exit because I can't hold my breath under water for long enough to practice the eskimo roll, but I want to try on our next kayaking trip.

First New Zealand Post

We arrived safely in Invercargill and we love it here. Our host family is amazing and their house is lovely. We're learning all the New Zealand lingo like dinner is tea and dessert is pudding. Darren and I made pizookie for pudding last night and have been permanetly assigned to pudding duty. We're making fudge oatmeal bars tonight. Our host mom is a great cook and is making us all sorts of Kiwi food - we've had two barbeques, kiwi pizza, scallops and corned beef. A kiwi is a native New Zealander. Our host parents are a lot of fun and their children and grandchildren come around a couple times a week which is fun too. Well to catch you up on the last couple of weeks, we've uploaded some photos of some of things we've done. The first picture is of us zorbing. Yep, we're inside one of those little gerbal looking balls that are about to be rolled down that hill. You can't tell, but those balls are filled with a little bit of water and we sloshed around in it while we did flips over each other all the way down the hillside. It was a blast!


This next picture is of Mount Doom from the Lord of the Rings. We hiked to the summit of it, but apparently missed the official trails and crawled straight up the face of it on our hands and knees as rocks fell every few minutes from the loose sandy terrain. It was an adventure, but one we wouldn't choose to repeat. After getting our trashed kicked by Mount Doom we hiked another 12 miles through desolate volcano land, grasslands and a rainforest. It was the most diverse hike we'd ever experienced.

This last photograph is of the Franz Joseph Glacier. We hiked out to this glacier and another glacier called Fox Glacier - both were absolutely spectacular.

New Zealand is such a beautiful country with so much diversity. The coast line reminds me of the Oregon coast but Darren says the ocean is a just a tad bit warmer. There's a beautiful beach here in Invercargill and we spent the afternoon there on Friday. We're loving it here and promise to post more pictures of our adventures.

Backpacking Mount Timp

The hike is totally worth it - especially if you can make it to the summit for sunrise. We hiked up late Friday afternoon with our packs which made it pretty rough coming the steep switch backs but we made it up and set up our camp at the base of the summit before it was dark. It was pretty cold (we woke up to frost) but luckily our new mummy bags kept us warm. It was pretty hard to part with our warm, cozy mummy bags in the morning because it was still really cold and dark when we planned to get up to finish the hike to the summit before sunrise. We did eventually get up and we made it part way up the summit and stopped to watch the sunrise. Absolutely stunning.

Then we hiked the rest of the way to the top and took in the spectacular view. While at the top we met a really nice guy who asked if we were planning to slide down the glacier (which really isn't a glacier - it's just a permanent snowfield). We had thought about, but didn't really know how to go about it or where the trail lead to it was. He said he had done it 10 years ago and it was a lot of fun and much quicker than hiking down the summit.

So we followed him to the glacier. It was definitely an adventure, but not one that we would like to repeat.

The snow was really ice over rocks which cut and bruised our hands and rears the whole way down. It was also pretty challenging to keep yourself from going too fast and sliding out of control on the ice - it's really steep. So after tearing holes in our pants, bruising our rears (bruises which are still massive and sore over a week later), and cutting up our hands on the first patch of glacier, we devised a strategy. As much as we didn't want to keep going down the glacier, we couldn't turn back, but we could control our speed thus minimizing the pain if we went down the more bumpy part of the glacier. Darren would go first get to a point where he could stop himself and uses a rock as leverage. Then I would slide down and run into Darren.

We took it slow which made the "shortcut" not so short whenyou factor in that we also had to hike an hour back to the trail from the glacier. In the end, we determined that sliding down the glacier not only gave us some wicked bruises but added two hours to our hike and trashed two pairs of fleece pants.

Our recommendation to other hikers: Hike the summit for sunrise. Don't slide down the glacier.

Weekend of Celebration

Darren has been studying for the DAT since May when Winter semester ended so he hasn't had much of summer. The last couple weeks were intense for him - studying every free moment - which meant little play time. Wednesday was the big day and he did fantastic. He scored a 23 which is above what he was even hoping for. So to celebrate we played this whole weekend. We went out to eat at Outback, saw Lonestar in concert, and spent all day Saturday at Lagoon going on rides. Tomorrow we start school again, but it's my last semester of the public relations major and the Italian minor - then it's off to New Zealand!

Catching up on blog posts

I lost my camera cord for about a month so that's why I've been slacking on my posting, but I found it today-yeah! 

This has month has been the month of weddings. We were at wedding up in 

Rexburg, Idaho and were able to stay with my old college roommate and Allison and her husband Matt which was a ton of fun. The wedding was on Friday so Saturday we went to Yellowstone for the morning and then went white-water rafting on the Snake River in Jackson Hole that afternoon. 

In Yellowstone we did the bottom loop and saw

 Old Faithful and a few other pools and geysers along the way. This one geyser White Dome just looked cool so we stopped even though it's eruptions are not predictable or frequent. We walked around it and then asked the only other fellow tourist to take our picture. As we're posing for our picture, the geyser erupted--so cool! The water shot up super high and went for a few minutes--we

 were lucky we caught it. After it was over a tourist bus full of people pulled up--they just missed it. 

Water rafting was so a lot of fun too. It was pretty cold and started raining about 20 minutes before we were out of the water, but it was a blast. We'll have to do it again sometime on warmer day. 

The second wedding we went to was in San Diego. We stayed with our brother-in-law's extended family there which was a lot of fun to get to know them better. The day before the wedding we went to San Diego Zoo. I've posted some pictures of our favorite animals. 

We spent the afternoon on the beach and walking around the Embarcadero--a fun relaxing day on the coast. 

Pete and Carly's wedding was beautiful. The weather was perfect, the San Diego Temple is incredible inside and out and their reception was at her grandpa's house on the lake. We had 

fun celebrating with them, dancing, eating, and seeing them so happy together.

 

Summer Lovin'

So Darren and I are both in school and working right now, but we're trying to not let that ruin our summer fun. We've been off-roading in the Manti-La Sal National forest, hiked the timpagnos caves and this week were heading to Monticello for more summer fun and some family time. Darren is taking anatomy right now which he really enjoys and he's doing really well in the class. I'm taking beginning tennis (watch out for my backhand) and a business marketing class which are both a lot of fun.