Despite having only 12 weeks of instruction (only two more than a UC quarter), the semesters here in New Zealand last a lot longer because we have a total of three weeks of break and three weeks for final exams. After the first 6 weeks of school, we had our "spring break" (not that anyone from New Zealand actually called it that). I spent this time road tripping for 11 nights through New Zealand's south island with the same group of girls that I travelled around the north island with before school started. It was really fun to have KARMA reunited! (If I haven't mentioned it before, out first initials spell out the word "karma". It's pretty cool.) From Wellington, we flew down to Christchurch, the biggest city in the south island. We found it to be pretty flat and lackluster (if Wellington is the San Francisco of New Zealand, Christchurch is the Davis/Sacramento area), so after a quick grocery trip we set off on our way north.
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| After driving only about an hour outside Christchurch, we were immediately immersed in the giant mountains which populate the south island. These weren't nearly as cool as what we would soon see, but they were still much larger than anything we had seen in the north island. |
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| Alexandra and I at Castle Rock, about an hour outside Christchurch. The sun wasn't even down yet and already it was getting really cold so as you can see we were a bit bundled up. The south island skies were much clearer than the foggy/rainy conditions of Wellington, so even though it was nice and sunny pretty much every day during our trip, it was always close to freezing at night. |
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| Some photos from the drive north towards Kaikoura, which is a few hours north of Christchurch. After spending the night in another town because of how late it was getting, and taking some wrong turns, we eventually got there, albeit a day behind schedule! |
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| After our time in Kaikoura was shortened to one day instead of two, we had to pick one activity to do, and decided on sea kayaking. But first, we visited the famous seal colony, pictured above. We lucked into seeing some babies since it was almost spring at this point. |
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| Getting ready to start kayaking! |
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| The kayaking trip was one of my favorite parts of our trip. Despite not getting to see any dolphins, we did paddle by a bunch of seals (including some swimming really close to us!) and had beautiful views of mountains and hills in the distance the whole time. |
