That Time We ALMOST Hiked a Glacier - Fox Glacier, NZ

The part of the trip I was arguably the most excited for was Fox Glacier. The plan was to take a helicopter to the top of the glacier and go for one hell of a hike! Unfortunately, weather was not in our favor. It was terribly disappointing (we had flown to the southern island and road tripped out there specifically for this glacier!!) but sometimes that's life. I had no desire to die in a helicopter crash, so I believed them when they said the clouds were too low. While I can't recommend the actual hike, I will say I was happy that we did get a full refund. What can you do.

We did however make the most of it. The town was really cute and we managed to drive out and get a (very distant) glimpse of the glacier.

No, really. That's it. That little bit of white between the mountains. I'm sure it's much cooler up close.

We actually decided to try to make the most of our cancelled trip and took off a day early. The hotel was able to rebook our room so they gave us a refund (which was great!) and we headed down the road to Haast. We tried to enjoy the sights near there, but alas the dumb weather got in the way again. Rain, wind and even a massive power outage pretty much made us just chill out for the night (though we did get a discount because the power was out).

The next morning we got up and headed to Queenstown, which was nice! I'll share some pics of that fun in my next post, so stay tuned! I know this is a bit of a brief post, but hey. My time in Fox Glacier was brief as well. I just thought it was worth sharing that not every travel adventure goes to plan. Sometimes weather gets in the way (like the time I tried to shark cage dive in South Africa!).

If you want help planning your next adventure, check out my website MilesIntoMemoriesTravel.com.

New Zealand's Southern Island: The Ultimate Road Trip

After almost a week and a half of an epic vacation throughout Australia and the northern island of New Zealand, we set out for the southern island. Our destination? Fox Glacier. We flew from Rotorua to Queenstown. Just a quick side note - Rotorua's airport is TINY! It was such a relaxing airport experience! There was no security or anything. Craziness.

Anyway, upon landing in Queenstown, we immediately hopped in the car for a 5-ish hour road trip to Fox Glacier. This sounds boring, but it was actually quite epic. Along the way, we stopped to admire the views, gazed upon beautiful mountains and waterfalls and also stopped to see the blue pools.

The blue pools are exactly that - these amazingly-clear pools. The little hike to go see them was very nice and enjoyable, but as you get closer to the pools the bugs came out to play. My goodness were there a lot of bugs! That and there was a bridge with far too many people on it. This wasn't a crowded attraction per se, but it was quite busy considering the road to get to it had almost no one on it. Either way, it's definitely worth a pit stop.

We eventually made our way to Fox Glacier, stopping at a yarn store in Haast along the way. It was an epic road trip for sure. I highly recommend it if you ever get the chance. Just be sure to leave yourself plenty of time so you can enjoy the scenery and stop wherever you would like to!

Fun in Rotorua, New Zealand

One of my favorite stops on our trip has to be Rotorua. This town is beautiful and full of adventure! While Waitomo is kind of out by itself, Rotorua is a nice town full of activities. It isn't really a city like with sky scrapers, but there are tons of things to do. We went on some truly spectacular nature walk, zip lined through a forest and even rolled down a huge hill inside of a giant hamster ball - yes really. 

Let's start with the nature. The forests are gorgeous! There are some gorgeous lakes and walking paths where you can really take in the beautiful scenery. I highly recommend taking a look at the blue and green lakes and/or the Redwoods – Whakarewarewa Forest. It was truly breathtaking. 

Now if you're in the mood for something a bit more adventurous, I recommend OGO Rotorua and/or zip lining. In fact, they even have bundled packages called "Zip and Roll" where you can book both activities at once. 

So OGO is one of the funniest activities I've come across in my search for travel activities. You literally roll down a huge hill (they have several different tracks!) inside of an inflatable ball. You can have multiple people inside (up to 3), you can also fill it with water. Note: I would highly recommend going the water route as it helps you slide around. It was so silly and so much fun. Though you definitely fall all over each other so make sure you are comfortable with your ball-rolling partner!

Next up, was our zip lining adventure! It was pretty epic. It lasted for several hours and even included rope bridges. I had been zip lining before, but not like this! I also really liked that they incorporated some educational bits about preserving the forest. It was an amazing experience!

All in all, Rotorua was an amazing stop on our trip. Though I will say, you should be ready for a sulfur smell in parts of town. That comes from all the natural springs in the area - our hotel even had private hot tubs with each room! 

If you'd like some help booking your next adventure, visit MilesIntoMemoriesTravel.com. 

Visiting Hobbiton

If you're going to make the hike all the way to New Zealand you HAVE to visit Hobbiton. You might recognize that word from the Lord of The Rings (LOTR) series. It's the town where the hobbits live. I've read the books and seen the movies, but I'm not the biggest LOTR fan in the world, but I have to admit it was SO COOL. Admittedly, the whole thing is a bit touristy, but that's to be expected.

A Brief Backstory:
The farm where Hobbiton is built was found by a location scout flying a helicopter over New Zealand. He was looking for a hilly place near a tree and a lake when he stumbled across the perfect farm. They then negotiated with the owners to come and build a temporary set for the movies. After the movies were filmed, they tore down the set. However, when it came time to film the hobbit, they re-negotiated with the land owners for another filming stint. This time, it was agreed to build Hobbiton using permanent materials. This way, when filming concluded, the land owners could keep Hobbiton alive as a tourist attraction. I believe the guide mentioned it is the second-most visited tourist attraction in New Zealand, so clearly this was clearly a good business move. Today, thousands of tourists come through and get to experience the magic of Hobbiton!

How the Tour Works:
We decided to take the bus option to get to Hobbiton. It was about an hour drive I think from Rotorua. We arrived at a little gift shop at a certain time, boarded the bus and off we went! They played a cool behind the scenes video of filming the movie on the way there and back, so that was neat. The bus was pretty small and cramped, but it's a bus, so what can you expect?

When we arrived, they gave us the chance to use the restroom at a little check in area. I think if you drive out here, you can check in here. Next we got back on the bus and drove on to the property. It was a pretty long drive! We then followed our guide (named Luke) on a tour through Hobbiton, ending with a drink at the Green Dragon.

After the tour, you get like 5 minutes in the gift shop ( no joke!) and then it's back on the bus and back to Rotorua.

The Highlights:
Of course, seeing the Hobbit holes was amazing! Many don't really open, but this one we were allowed to take a picture inside of. It's really just a few feet deep and is very much unfinished inside - wood beams, etc.

The Green Dragon was really neat as well. You get the choice of 4 drinks at the pub, which was so fun!

We even got to see Bilbo's house! Bag End was pretty epic. 

And of course, the whole place had props everywhere. We got to see the party tree and the May pole and much more. It was honestly a really cool feeling and I'm so glad we went!

Exploring Waitomo Caves

After our glorious hike at Rangitoto, we made our way down to Waitomo. Waitomo is a small town with not much to do besides explore these AMAZING glow worm caves. We stayed at the Waitomo Caves hotel (which may or may not be haunted?) for just one night so we could have our caving adventure before driving on to our next adventure.

There are several different packages you can choose when it comes to exploring the caves. We went for the Black Abyss package, which included swimming, zip lining, tubing, climbing waterfalls, enjoying the glow worms and even abseiling down into the cave itself. I have to say, it was pretty awesome!

We started by getting suited up in a wet suit and booties and hopping on a bus. We made our way to the entrance of the cave and got a quick lesson on how to abseil. I think entering the cave may have been my favorite part! It was pretty scary to just lower yourself down into a cave through a not-very-big hole.

Once we made it in, it was time to zip line! The zip line wasn't very long, but it was kind of a crazy experience to zip line in the pitch black with a full cave of glowing worms (they are actually larvae, but glow worms sounds way less gross). They even told us to shout as we went down so we could wake them up for even more of a show!

Along the way, we got to swim up a legit river pulling our inner tubes behind us, only to be pulled back the way we came by our guide. We got to lay on our tubes, look up at the worms and just take it in. It was pretty spectacular.

We got to crawl through tiny cave areas, there was even a slide! It all culminated in climbing up 2 waterfalls to make our way out of the cave.

Some funny parts included: Enjoying a snack that included hot tang of all things. Why hot tang? We actually had two snack breaks. The other hot beverage was hot chocolate, so that was good. Maybe hot tang is a New Zealand thing?

Another part I feel like I should mention the bathroom situation. You're down in the cave for several hours and in a wet suit even longer. Spoiler alert: there are no bathrooms down in the cave. That means, yup you guessed it! nature peeing. It was so weird. They separate the boys and the girls, then have everyone turn off their headlamp and just go in the rushing water. Weirdest experience ever. I almost didn't include this bit, but if I'm being honest, it was one of the most memorable aspects, ha!

A cool long exposure picture taken down in the caves. 

jumping into the river with our tubes from about 8 feet up!

Anyway, after we made our way out of the cave, we rode the bus back to home base for a hot shower and a meal of soup and bagels. The whole experience was an absolute blast! if you are anywhere near Waitamo, you should absolutely stop by! If my caving adventure sounded a bit too involved, there are a whole host of other ways you can explore the caves.

If you'd like help planning your next adventure, visit my website at MilesIntoMemoriesTravel.com! 

Hiking Up A Volcano - Rangitoto Island

After we finished up at Kangaroo Island, it was time to make our way down to New Zealand. We decided to start our adventure in Auckland. Our main task? Hike a volcano! How cool is that? Rangitoto is a volcanic island off the coast of Auckland. To get there, we first had to clean our shoes (they had giant shoe-cleaning brushes) and board the ferry. The island has no pests or foreign animals/plants so they work hard to keep it that way with these shoe cleaning stations. They even had us double check our packs for animals! Weird! 

After a gorgeous, 30-ish minute ferry ride, we arrived. I gotta say, the island is gorgeous! We decided to do the summit trail and just make our way to the top. I thought it was funny how it was indicated as a paved, easy path and it certainly was not! It was anything crazy, but it was definitely steep and rocky in some places. Maybe Americans are wimps when it comes to hikes so I've come to expect ultra-easy paths if they are marked easy. Who knows.

Regardless the views from the top were breathtaking!

Along the way, we could see some piles of volcanic ash which was really, really cool. 

I've never had the chance to actually hike on a volcano, so I was really excited about this! You can kind of see the dip of the center of the volcano from the top, but it doesn't look like what you'd see in a movie. It just looked like the trees were lower than where we were on the rim - I couldn't get a good picture of it to give you some perspective, but trust me it was cool. 

Anyway, if you have a free day (we took something like 4 or 5 hours to ride over, hike and ride back) I highly recommend this hike! I loved spending time outside and in nature. It was a ton of fun.

If you'd like help planning your next adventurous hike, visit my website at MilesIntoMemoriesTravel.com. 

Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park

On our recent two-week jaunt through Australia and New Zealand we saw and experienced some amazing things, but I think the Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park was one of my favorite stops. I actually initially found Kangaroo Island because I was googling where I can hold a koala. I know, I know, cliche, but I've always wanted to hold one! I should add in a note here that I am quite passionate about ethical eco/animal tourism. I didn't want to give my business to a place that would mistreat animals in any way. Fortunately, I found Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park!

You can't book your koala holding ahead of time, so we headed to the park bright and early! It's a first-come, first-served system and is completely dependent on the koala's health and happiness. That means if a koala is sick or it's too hot out for the koala, they would cancel your holding and refund your money. I LOVE that mentality. At no point did I want to force a poor, tired koala to be held when it was far too hot out for them. Fortunately, we booked the first koala holding which meant the heat of the day had not yet hit! More on that later.

When we pulled up to the park there were very few cars in the parking lot - likely because of the early hour. We made our way into the park and were greeted with a cheerful g'day! As we were buying our tickets, the clerk gave us a little bag and said "Here's some food for the kangaroos and wallabees. You can just let yourselves on it when your ready." I knew there was a chance to feed koalas and wallabees, but I just assumed that was a paid experience. NOPE. It was included in our ticket! This was seriously awesome! You literally could just open the gate and let yourself in to pet, feed and hang out with these amazing animals. No supervision or anything! It was a crazy experience and so so so so fun!!

They also had periodic talks featuring different animals - koalas, dingoes, birds etc.  These talks were awesome, informative and sometimes interactive. The koala talk let you come into their pen and pet them while they relaxed on their trees. There were rules on how to pet them and certain ones that didn't enjoy being touched. I liked that they respected the animals while engaging the tourists.

Alright, back to the big event - Alfie!! AKA my new koala best friend. The caretaker gave me a few tips, handed me some tasty leaves and then it was time. I held Alfie like you would a baby and it was the best few minutes ever! He was so snuggly and chill and just adorable. As long as he had some tasty leaves to munch on, he really didn't seem to mind hanging out with me.

All in all, my experience at Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park was incredible. 10/10 would recommend and visit again. If you'd like some unique and exciting adventures in your life, check out my website at MilesIntoMemoriesTravel.com.