Skiing in July!

This weekend Graham and I went on a little adventure to Wanaka, a small ski town three and a half hours northwest of Dunedin. We left early Friday morning and arrived just in time to get an afternoon pass at Treble Cone and do some skiing! The ride there was very interesting. The road takes you right through Central Otago, the region in NZ where most of the Lord of the Rings was filmed. I've never seen those movies, but the landscape here seems just perfect for their filming. There are a lot of rolling hills with hardly any trees, mostly just knee or waste-high bushes, followed by what looks like a waste land of dirt. Some of the mountains look like giant piles of sand held together by small clumps of grass that is hardly visible from the road. Here is a picture of the Clutha River (2nd largest river in NZ I believe) and some sand-like mountains:

The contrast in color is really quite beautiful, but without the river, it looks very much like a wasteland full of large/high mountains. 

When we finally arrived in Wanaka, we headed straight to the ski mountain. After the 4.4 km drive up the access road (so sketchy...no guard rails and muddy switch backs the whole way), we got on our skis and hit the slopes. The day was absolutely beautiful and the views from the ski area were of other mountains in the Southern Alps, and then centralized on Lake Wanaka, basically at the base of the mountain. 

Saturday the mountains were in the clouds, so we decided to do some day hikes instead of skiing in the rain. We first hiked Rocky Mountain, a mountain between the ski area and Lake Wanaka. It was a 7 km loop including Diamond Lake, a view point to Lake Wanaka, and finally the summit. It luckily didn't rain on us too much, and it was sunny enough to see about half of the beautiful views the summit has to offer. 

Diamond Lake

Graham at the summit of Rocky Mtn.

Since the weather wasn't the best, we spent the afternoon at an Illusion museum. It was really neat and had tons of cool illusions like where the water comes from in this floating faucet:

Or these:   Teach/Learn, hate/love, and a neat room that was totally tilted!       

 

On our way back from the museum, we passed by another mountain, Mt. Iron which looked nice, so we decided to hike up that one too! I'm so glad we did, the views were great! The town of Wanaka, Lake Wanaka, and the beautiful Southern Alps. It was a nice end to a great day of fun activities!

Panoramic at the summit!

Lake Wanaka and the Southern Alps

Sunday we spent the day on the slopes again. We had an absolutely beautiful morning with hardly a cloud in the sky! We had such a great weekend in Wanaka! Can't wait to go back to do more hiking and skiing! 

Sunrise on the way to the mountain

And a pit stop at a beach on Lake Wanaka on our way home!

Enjoying Dunedin

This weekend, we were fortunate to have really really nice weather every day! As it's the middle of the winter, the temps average around 45 every day, 30 at night, but the past few days it has been in the 50s and sunny! We couldn't have asked for better timing, as we saw this weather as a great opportunity to explore around Dunedin and the Otago Peninsula! On Friday after class, we took a drive along the peninsula to an Albatross actuary. We then went to Sandfly Bay, a BEAUTIFUL little inlet along the southern edge of the peninsula. We had to hike down sand dunes to get there, but the beach was amazing. There were sea lions lounging around the beach every 100 meters or so, and even Yellow-Eyed Penguins, one of the rarest type of penguin in the world! We saw three, but at nights, they come up out of the ocean and sleep on the beach/in the sand dunes.

Me at Sandfly Bay

Just some sea lions lounging on the beach

Graham & me with a sea lion

Sea lion at sunset

On Saturday, we hiked up Mount Cargill which overlooks the city of Dunedin, the Pacific Ocean, the Otago Peninsula, and the Southern Alps to the north and west. It was so beautiful. Such a great reminder of why we came to New Zealand to study abroad!

Otago Peninsula

Just me!

Michael, Rebecca, me, and Graham!

We loved Sandfly Bay so much on Friday, that we went back on Saturday to show some of our friends! Another great evening on the beach with more sea lions and a beautiful sun set!

Ash, me, Max, ZQ, Michael, Graham, Sarah, and Rebecca at Sandfly Bay

Today, Sunday, we went to Tunnel Beach and St. Clair Beach. Tunnel Beach was a long walk down to beautiful cliffs and the ocean below. We were even able to climb down a little tunnel through a rock to go down to the water...another beautiful spot in Dunedin.

Tunnel Beach!

Down on the water

Panoramic photo of Tunnel Beach from on top of the tunnel!

While making the steep and long walk back up, we decided to go to St. Clair Beach, which is just a couple miles down the road, and much more like an ocean beach where people could swim and surf. It was equally as beautiful. The land scape is so different here, so many hills, mountains, cliffs, and a lot of ocean.

St. Clair Beach

We had a great weekend of exploring and are hoping to do some skiing in Queenstown next weekend!! Hope you all on the east coast are staying out of the heat!

Living the Kiwi Life

Well, I'm all settled in to my flat in Dunedin, New Zealand! I arrived just over a week ago after a 6 hour flight, a 14 hour flight, and a 2 hour flight. I am living in a flat owned by the University of Otago with two Kiwi hosts, ZQ from Singapore, and Michael and Tabor from the States as well. Our flat is great and is in a complex with 5 other international student flats, so we do a lot of complex events. Each flat has 6 bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, dining room, and living room, so I have been cooking 3 meals a day on my own! Feels like pretty grown up stuff!

Uni started on Monday, and it is SO much different than St. Lawrence or any University in the states. As I was signing up for classes, I had a timetable clash where I had two classes at the same time. The advice a professor gave me was "Well, go to one class one week, and the other class the next week." Basically, going to class is optional. And after signing up for classes here, APR seems like the best program in the world. Not many kids go to lectures, especially in large classes like my education class that has 300 students and is podcast online (so going to lecture really isn't necessary to get all of the info). But don't worry Mom and Dad, I'm going to all my classes like a good American student!

In the ten days I have been here, we have done a lot of socializing and meeting other international students as well as Kiwis. We also went on a train ride to the Taieri Gorge which was so beautiful and great to see some parts of the South Island that you can't see from the roads.

The lay of the land is really interesting here, so many rolling hills of grass and then sharp and large rock formations sticking up out of no where! Then you can always look north/west and see some part of the Southern Alps or other mountain ranges. Dunedin, the city I am living in, is on the southern part of the South Island, so right now we are in the middle of winter. The city is very hilly, so there are lots of mountains in every direction, but the city lies on the Pacific Ocean as well. It's really quite beautiful here!

I also took a nice long (10+) mile hike up Flagstaff with Graham last weekend! It was a beautiful day with no clouds at all, so we took advantage of it and spent the whole day outside! From the top, we had a beautiful view of the ocean as well as mountains in the other directions. 

The third picture is us with Dunedin and the Pacific Ocean in the background! It's really so beautiful here, I love it!

I will continue updating this with exciting and beautiful adventures and pictures! Miss you all back home!!