Denny's and Dunedin

First, I shall introduce the cast of characters who came to New Zealand. Many you already know, some you do not:

Me: Apartment 2, Macquarie, "trip mom"
Becky: Apartment 10, Macquarie, Welsh, 19 (20 in about 3 weeks)
Allen: Apartment 6, MQ, American, gymnast who worked for the circus, 24
Derek: Apt. 6, MQ, American, my best friend here, 21
Ralph: Apt. 6, MQ, Lebanese, 20, vaguely metrosexual
Ben: Sydney Uni, American, 20, the planner of the trip
Jamie: Sydney Uni, American, 20, frat boy
Alex: Sydney Uni, American, 20, chill guy who's really into extreme sports

Ben had been acting as trip planner for about a month and had it planned to basically the minute. The plan was to travel around the South Island of New Zealand, doing all sorts of outdoorsy activities all week long. We rented two campervans, one 4-person and one 2-person, from a place that will only rent to 21+ people, so the vans were under Derek and Allen's names (we planned to drive with one of them in each vehicle at all times in case anything happens...then we could pretend that they’d been driving at all times).

The Sydney Uni guys got there the night before, so they rented a hotel room (Ben had some rewards points which made them cost the same as a hostel would have for each person). Sunday night, the rest of us joined them. We had two hotel rooms joined together, so each person had a bed. We attempted to do something fun that night, but as it was Easter Sunday, nothing was open. We ended up just hanging out and sleeping in the hotel room.

The next morning Ben, Derek, and Allen left to get the campervans. The rest of us slept in our hotel rooms until, at 11:30, I awoke to the phone ringing. I picked it up and groggily said, "Hello?"

"Hello, this is the front desk. Are you planning on spending another night here?"

"Um, no..."

"Well, checkout was at 10 AM. Please come down and check out now. We need to clean the room for our next guests."

"We'll be down as soon as possible, but some of us are getting camper vans right now. The rest of us need to shower. Thank you." I hung up and woke up everyone else to let them know that we needed to get our butts out of bed. We dragged everything into the hotel lobby by 12:30 and waited for the campervans to get back.

Since we were all starving and we were already off schedule (we were supposed to be out of Christchurch before noon) we decided to get some food. We discovered a Denny's, so we stopped in. I had the worst Denny's experience ever. I asked for chocolate milk, and the waiter filled the glass with 25% chocolate syrup and the rest with milk. You'd think a chocoholic like me would enjoy it, but it was horrible! I made everyone else try it as well. It was so bad that I asked him to give me another glass of milk so that I could mix the two.

We also attempted to go grocery shopping for “snacky things.” Shopping with eight twenty-somethings is a horrible idea. It was the most scattered, random trip I’ve ever had. We bought everything from peanut butter and chips to granola bars and tomatoes.

After that, we headed to Dunedin, a 5 and a half hour drive grazing the eastern shore of the island. The whole way we saw huge fields, sometimes empty, sometimes filled with sheep or cows. There were mountains in the distance the whole way. We quickly discovered that New Zealand is filled with mountains (and drove through them quite a few times).

We got into Dunedin pretty late and found a site where we could plug in the vans. The 4-person van was placed in the “emergency site” because the place didn’t have enough room for all of us. The night was extremely expensive—$180—so we decided to skip the real camping sites for the rest of the trip. However, it was fortunate that we decided to stay, because in the morning, the battery had died! We thought we were running the radio off of the battery plugged into the power, but it turns out we were running the engine’s battery.

The guy at the front desk took care of it while we went off and got breakfast in Dunedin. We split up, most of us going to a coffee shop playing Radiohead’s OK Computer. The meal was delicious, especially because it was the first non-peanut-butter-and-jelly meal we’d eaten in 24 hours. The others went to a bagel shop claiming to have New York bagels. Since Jamie is from Brooklyn, he had a Metro card in his wallet. He gave it to the bagel shop, hoping that they’d give him free coffee for contributing to their wall of NY memorabilia, but no such luck.

We then headed back to the camping site, picked up the other van, and headed back into the city. We attempted to do a tour of Speight’s brewery, but the only tour we could fit in was already booked full. We stopped at the bar, each got a beer, then moved onto Cadbury World. It was nowhere near as fun as Hershey Park, especially because we could only do a reduced tour (it was Easter Tuesday, apparently…). However, it was cool, and I got to buy a bunch of Cadbury Crème Eggs. Next, we climbed the steepest road in the world, then dropped an American football down the hill to see how far it would go (it fell almost the whole way before getting caught in a bush).

After that, we headed to the shore, and I was the only one who went in the water (I’m crazy). It was freezing, but I stuck it out and played in the waves and went rock- and seashell-collecting. I found some sea glass and some pretty rocks and shells.

After we played around on the beach and at the playground nearby (where a bunch of punk teenagers laughed at me because, when I put my pants on over my wet swimsuit, I looked like I had wet myself…haha, I can call them punk teenagers and not refer to myself now!!), we headed out to Milford Sound for sea kayaking the next day! But that’s another entry…