You Fucking Rock, New Zealand

I decided to spend a month in New Zealand. Best decision ever! It was one of the most exciting, exhilarating and momentous months of my life so far. I experienced the beginning of friendships that I'm sure will last a lifetime, checked off things from my bucket list, and even did a few things that I thought I would never do! There are also a few (make that a lot!) of things that aren't even suitable for this blog!

This is New Zealand

So I decided to go on the Stray Bus because of its reputation for going off the beaten path and not being as crazy for hookups and partying as the competition... I am getting old, you know! But it didn't exactly turn out that way, and I think our bus could have rivaled even the craziest of party busses at times!

Our Stray Bus!

The first morning I met two of my favourites, Steph and Emily, right on the steps of our hostel, and we pretty much became instant besties right then. The bus was pretty full so I ended up grabbing a free seat beside a cute looking guy, but he obviously didn't want to talk to me as he promptly closed his eyes and went, or more likely, pretended to go straight to sleep. Haha thanks a lot for the warm welcome Evan!  Little did I know then that soon he would become one of my besties too.

Me, Steph and Emily, first day friends!

Raglan beach was our first stop. This was where one of my favourite 90's movies, the Endless Summer, was filmed *swoon* That movie is totally responsible for spawning my life long crush on blond, goofy, shaggy haired surfer dudes! Anyway, walking along the beach we met Jasmine, Linnea and Julie - the only one of us who was actually badass enough to go surfing! That day our original group of six girls was formed and we pretty much became inseparable after that. The rest is history...

Linnea can't wait to run into the ocean



Jazzy and Steph on a romantic stroll along the beach

Just look at that reflection!

My bitches

One of my first bucket list checkmarks I got in New Zealand was waterfall rappelling, and even better, I got to do it in a cave with glow worms! Me, Tommy and Emil went together, and we rappelled down 3 underground waterfalls and trekked through tiny caves to come out in huge chambers where the ceiling was lit with the dazzling bluish twinkling glow worm larvae. It looked like the most beautiful night sky you've ever seen.  I loved it, although there was one point where I reached the bottom of the waterfall and kinda fell a little and ended up with my whole face in the crashing water, then my light turned off and I was left wet and dark all alone at the bottom. Not the best moment lol!

I'm rappelling in a cave!

It was awesome to hang out with Tommy and Emil, who would later become two of my favourites on the bus. Tommy let me listen to his Swedish hip hop and Emil kept on taking off his shirt. I played a prank on Tommy n his last day - I hid all of his underwear in the blanket of the top bunk in his room, thinking he would definitely find it there eventually. But turns out he didn't check there before he left, and had to travel all the way to Thailand with no undies. Sorry Tommy, I owe you some boxers! Also, the next person who sleeps in that bunk is in for quite a surprise!

Me, Jazzy, Tommy and Emil

Here's another good Tommy story... It was kind of a rainy windy day when we reached Abel Tasman National Park. The epic day of kayaking and hang gliding we had planned was cancelled because of weather, but we ended up doing a fantastic 10k coastal hike instead. Tommy decided to go for a swim in the inviting blue water, but jumped out after about 5 minutes... holding his man parts! We wondered what was wrong, and were horrified when he touched himself and came out with totally bloody fingers! Turns out he was attacked by the killer sea lice on his penis. The blood seriously soaked through about a million Kleenexes. Poor Tommy! I hope he has recovered nicely.

Abel Tasman National Park

Tommy, mere moments before the attack!

One of the most interesting days was learning about the Maori culture by visiting a traditional Morae village. We had a sleepover with everyone on the bus (about 40 of us in the same room) where Jasmine, Emily and I all got spots on the mattresses around Thor, because his name is awesome, obvi, and we wanted to get to know him. We even took a picture of us all together. But we did just end up having lots of girl talk and listening to the bedtime stories the Maori lady told us, and Thor seemed a little shy. He hopped off the bus there, but we met up with him about a week later. We went up to say hi, but then it became painfully obvious that he had absolutely no recollection of meeting us before! He didn't remember us at all lol! I guess we were just not that memorable that night.

Non- memorable moment with Thor at the Maori house (check out the wall carvings behind us!)

When we got to the National Park, most of us were really stoked to do the Tongararo crossing, one of New Zealand's most epic hikes to a volcano mountain. But the weather forecast was calling for gale force winds so it was cancelled. Bummer! But being the resourceful  young people we are, we made up a backup plan within minutes. (But was actually a few people's plan all along *cough cough* Evan) Luckily our hostel was equipped with multiple outdoor hot tubs. Plan B, done. We hit up the liquor store next door, hopped into our bikinis and soaked in the hot tubs for hours! It turned out to be one of the best days ever.

Not too shabby for a Plan B.

One night we stayed in a bunch of little cabins in the woods at a place that came to be known as Tiny Cow. First we had an awesome potluck, and then the fun began. Way too much fun. We made special deals for Matty's ciders (Emily's bucket list, check!) and then I successfully carried out a top secret mission, never to be spoken of again. That is all.

Hey Matty, what do we have to do to get one of your ciders?!

One of the best days of my life happened at Franz Josef. The day started off with a helicopter ride up through a glacially carved mountain valley where we landed directly on the middle of the snowy surface of the Franz Josef glacier. There we began a 3 hour trek up the ice, squeezing through crevasses and even exploring a newly discovered ice cave. When we were done, we took the helicopter back to town, and grabbed a quick lunch before being rushed off to our next adventure - SKYDIVING!!

Glacier hike = happy Jeanette

The view from inside the ice cave

Me, Julie, Linnea and Steph were the quietest we've ever been on the drive there. Not a word was said the entire 30 minute car ride I think! When we arrived, we suited up and Steph and I were put into a teeny tiny plane with no seats or anything inside. We climbed to 12000 ft, and then Steph and her instructor moved towards the open plane door. In an instant, they were gone. They dropped completely out of sight just like that. At that moment, I was on the verge of tears and was totally rethinking my decision... but then all of a sudden I found myself hanging out the side of the plane and not a moment later I was out too! It was a totally incredible experience and I tried to remember my friend Harvey's advice to just pretend I was flying like a bird. I had the view of the glacier on one side and the ocean on the other with some farm fields down below. It was awesome. I'm so glad I didn't die!



Flying like a bird!

You tend to make a lot of funny faces while skydiving (unless you're Julie!)

We didn't die! Lovin life!

The day after Franz Josef was a totally crazy day on the bus, best bus day ever! It all started with Ivet drinking a beer at about 8 am, and coercing Evan to do the same, although I don't think it took too much convincing. We stopped at Lake Matheson, the most photographed beautiful mountain scene in New Zealand, and started the walk to the lookout with a bottle of wine in tow and music playing from Evan's phone. We had a dance party on the trail and I perfected my "cougar pose" by the lookout. Then at the Fox Glacier lookout, Matty tickled a horses chin, giving it a massively huge boner! We got back on the bus and the drinking continued. I think we also ended up playing the question game. But that kind of turned into a strip show by the boys, since we chanted "TAKE OFF YOR SHIRT" to everyone who went up there to answer some questions! The star performer was Matty, who ripped off his shirt and hopped on the pole twirling round and round, on a moving bus like a total pro and gave the sexy eyes to the camera simultaneously. Major life talent right there! A little while later we stopped to go to a beach and skip rocks, but the super high bridge was what caught everyone's attention. Pinky, Matty, Evan, Tommy, Jacob and Linnea stripped off most of their clothes and climbed over the railing to jump off into the glacier river flowing below!

Dance party on the hiking trail!

Beautiful Lake Matheson, too bad all those good looking people are blocking the view!

How can you not love these faces?

And especially these ones too!?

My crew and I spent a lot of time in Queenstown which is a super cool little town with lots of extreme sports to do and lots of bars great for partying. And partying we did. The Australian bachelor party night stands out as one of the best parties of all time... I'm not gonna name names but here's a taste of what happened... someone ended up dancing on all fours on the pool table, one of us broke their all time record for most people made out with in one night, girls made out with girls, many body shots were taken off the chest of a particularly buff Australian boy, ice cubes were passed from person to person using only their mouths, someone may have taken one Australian man home only to be disappointed in what he had to offer lol. Another standout night was Halloween, when everyone dressed up in awesome costumes and pretty much got plastered. I had a lot of fun poking people with my devil stick! Another awesome night was when we went to the Cowboys bar, we all had our turn riding the mechanical bull, and Matty and Jazzy got up to some naughty activities at the pub table! The pictures will never be released to the public.

Queenstown

Party time!

Halloween!

Most of us took a little side trip down to Milford Sound. It was an incredibly beautiful fjord with tons of waterfalls. But something was up with our group... the weather was rainy, we were not feeling our new bus driver, and we were all coming down with a cold. So I don't think we appreciated the beauty as much as we might have if that was say the first thing we'd done in New Zealand. But it was awesome because I saw my 5th penguin species of the year there!  We went to Invercargill, where the #1 tourist attraction was the hardware store and #2 was the tourist information booth. Haha, sounds awesome doesn't it? But we did check out the rose gardens and the museum which were both cool.

Milford Sound cruise, don't we look happy, especially Matt?

We spent one day at a little getaway at the base of Mount Cook. There, we did an hour hike up to the base of the glacier where there is a glacier lake filled with little icebergs. It was a beautiful hot sunshiny day and the scenery was incredible! Badass Burt even went for a swim in the freezing cold lake!

Mount Cook hike

The glacier river

When we got back to Queenstown again, it was back to being sunny and beautiful. Yay! So we went for breakfast and then ended up hanging out in the park all day. We braided each other's hair, drank 4 bottles of champagne, took lots of selfies, and me and Matty got engaged!, we met Alan from the hangover, and then we met hot Jessica with the mustache, and then I decided to get a new tattoo, it's a bird on my foot, and then me and Matty broke up, but we're still best friends.

Park hangs

The last adventure activity we all got to do together was rafting at Rangitata. We seriously almost refused to go when they tried to split our group up in different rafts. That's how much we love each other! So the 7 of us piled into Dan's raft for an awesome day. We started off practicing while floating down the calm sections, but soon we hit the first class 5 rapid. No flip! We had an awesome team, did I mention? Shortly after that we hit another series of class fives again with no problem. We were even able to save some of the other rafters who did flip and looked like they were going to pass out! Thanks to Dan who was one of the best raft guides I've ever seen, definitely better than some I know who think it's fun to flip people in class 5 water. We finished off with a 9 m cliff jump and a great bbq before settling in for the night.

Killing it in the Class 5

Anyway, I've come to realize that it's not so much the experiences you're having, but it's the people you're doing them with that really count. I have to give a special shoutout to everyone on the Stray bus who made the trip what it was. You are all awesome in my books and I fucking love you guys! First off, we had the best bus driver around, Pinky! I gotta admit, if he was the only one to ever drive all of the busses I ever take for the rest of my life, I think I'd be cool with that ;). Steph, you were my first friend and partner in crime, Emily you are the funniest American ever, Linnea linguini brought us the infamous phrase 'snailed it' (I will never forget you acting it out on the railing and your purse!), Jazzy Juggs with your beautiful bosoms in your purple shirt, Julie our crazy Quebecois chick with the tongue ring, a wild side and a secret mansion, Ivet who can make a green hoodie look so damn sexy, Evan "I get free stuff wherever I go" "'Murica",  Matty our pole dancing underwear model / bedtime story aficionado / cuddle raper / Stray strangler, Burt the badass, Pieter with a constant perma-smile, Larkin who has no fear, been bungy jumping since she was 10 NBD, Thor, well, his name is Thor what more do you want?! I could go on... but  this is already WAY too long. Thanks for the best time ever guys.

The whole group