Dec 31, 2011
It's a pretty unique New Years Eve when you wake up, and other than your group of 9, there are literally no human civilization for 50 miles.
Our camping area:
Our transportation back to the main arm is our kayaks and our own arms. We woke up around 6am, it was light out, but there was no sun light, the canyon walls blocked it from coming into our camp site.
We explored the area around our tents, I walked to where we would place our kayaks back into Hall Arm, and the tide had completely come back in, hiding everything we had seen just prior to falling asleep last night. We changed into our hiking gear, packed up the camp site, loaded the canoes and we were on our way for day 2. It took awhile for the sun to finally hit us, and it was very welcoming, warm, and it was time to bust out the sunnies again. We kayaked into a semi-cave on the side and exited it with the canyon walls dripping water down onto us. We made our way to the main arm and set out towards the ocean.
At this point, we were going downwind, and decided to "raft up" (all 4 canoes together), take out our "sail" and instead of using man power, we sailed down Doubtful Sound with our sail leading the way!
What a reprieve for our muscles and a cool experience to partake in!
To our right this whole time was an island, that, from a distance looks like an alligator:
We finally made it to the end of it, and circumnavigated it on the far side, staying as close to shore as possible as we fought the head wind on our way back to our starting point. We kayaked into various inlets, found more water falls to fill up our water bottles and climbed up a nearby stream to fill up again too. We passed several water falls on our way back to our starting point and definitely were paddling full steam ahead at various points, both for fun, but also to fight the brutal head wind. It was such a relief to get back and out of the kayaks. It was a great experience, I'm glad I did it and it was much more of an adventure / outdoorsy sleeping in the Sound, but two days was more than enough. We unpacked our kayaks, packed up our bags, I took a glorious dip into the Sound, which you could noticeably tell that it was part fresh and part salt water, then ate a peanut butter and nutella (my favorite) sandwich.
While eating, we saw a crab just below our feet and took a few pictures of him.
Our last view of Doubtful Sound:
Our bus came to pick us up and bring us to the west end of Manapouri...and I don't remember the bus beginning to start driving and by that time, I had already passed out and woke up 20km later as we carried our stuff to the ferry to take us across Lake Manapouri. This trip was much more picturesque than the route to Doubtful Sound. The sun was out, the sky was blue, and the scenery was incredible.
We arrived in Manapouri and had about 45 minutes to kill prior to our bus to Queenstown. I bought a few post cards, wrote and sent them off (Dec 31 in NZ, Dec 30 in the USA,) and they didn't arrive until January 25th!! The one I sent to my apartment...as of today, Feb 8, still has not arrived. I have given up hope on it ever showing up. I hope it was placed in a bottle and is floating over the pacific somewhere to be found hundreds of years from now! Our bus arrived, with our tourists coming from Milford Sound, the bus was slanted to that every seat could see out the front of the bus, the bus roof had tinted windows, and the sides were gigantic windows as well. Talk about the ultimate sight seeing tour bus!!
Two hours later, we arrived back in Queenstown, grabbed our stuff from our previous hostels storage room, back on the bus and he dropped us off at our hotel for the night, as EVERYTHING in Queenstown was booked for New Years Eve. We didn't have any choices other than this place, which was nice, and provided a scenic view of Lake Wakatipu
We got settled in, cleaned up from our days at sea, and walked back down the hill, 15 minutes to downtown Queenstown, which was definitely happening. There was a concert in the park, we saw nomads living / partying out of their camper van on the side of the street, the area was all blocked off, and everyone was having a great time. We met up with our friend from the hostel, Colin, grabbed a beer with him at one of the local pubs taking in the atmosphere and swapping stories before eventually making our way back to Adventure Queenstown Hostel:
to reunite with all our friends we made earlier in the week. I was excited to see everyone and everyone seemed excited to see us and genuinely welcomed us with open arms. The New Years Eve festivities began with loads of dancing, drinking, ...doing the limbo in the kitchen, as midnight approached.
We went out onto the balcony and the fireworks began, hugs, high fives, kisses, "USA" chants (mockingly from the Scots haha) and pure happiness overtook the air.
New Zealand is the very first country in the world to enter the new year, so as I rang in the New Year in Queenstown, New Zealand, my friends at home were (theoretically) just getting home from a late night bar at 5am, Dec 31st morning (Saturday night, the 30th) and I had entered 2012.
We all entered the common room and the Scots taught us a traditional Scottish dance, which was quite a good time, filled with do-si-dos, spins, singing, and more dancing.
A handful of us went out to the bars at about 2:30am, returned shortly after and most people had crashed. We jumped a cab back to our hotel, and successfully had rung in 2012!
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