Travels along a beautiful, unntouched country

New Zealand. What a gorgeous country. First off, I'd just like to recommend anyone of any age to visit here. I highly advise it, honestly. I've never seen so much endless green nature before in my life. I learned today that the leaves on every New Zealand tree never die, that's why it's constantly green here. Interesting. Okay okay, so my adventure started in Christchurch. We stayed at a hotel right near the airport for the night, it was getting late and we were draggin. We woke up, got screwed out of breakfast and had our Magic Bus waiting on us outside to begin our travels to Greymouth. Not too much going on there, but I've came to the conclusion that their really isn't anything going on anywhere here. So much land, little amount of people. I love it.  It's so quiet and peaceful everywhere we go. In Greymouth, we  found a hotel called Kingsgate. We checked in late afternoon and kicked our feet up for a bit. Went to this unique coffee cafe in town for a nibbles and lattes. Obviously the coffee was to die for. We poked around a little store where I picked up a neon NZ hat that has done wonders for my frigid little ears. Around 6 we went to Cafe Frank's where we indulged in yummy Thai food. Superb! We finished early and went back to our hotel to call it quits around 9. We were dying for some much needed sleep at this point. I turned my bed heater on high and fell asleep to The Devil Wears Prada.
10 hours later the most obnoxious ringtone Karen could possibly find went off around 7a.m. We both woke up still craving another couple hours of sleep. This is an exhausting trip, but I don't care one bit. Every day is a new adventure, a new place I've never been or seen before! I'm not about to take anything for granted over here. We hopped on the bus again from Kingsgate hotel, Greymouth, traveling across the mountainous South Island to Franz Joseph. We stopped a few times along the way, as it was about a 4-5 hour bus ride with exquisite views. It's hard for me to fathom the natural beauty of this country. I've just never seen anything like it before, only in Lord of The Rings? Nerd. As we arrived to Franz, we got all checked in to our hostel as well as a famous glacier hike. Google it. It honestly looked fake hiking towards it. We both loved the experience. It was about a ten minute bus ride from Franz into the woods and through the rainforest. We started our hike right away, climbing up a huge rock to get to the glacier. We put our spikes on and we were off! About a mile away from where we hopped off the van. Our journey all through the ice tunnels began. What an experience. The glacier upon the massive, green mountains and waterfalls was worth a million words. I stood and just looked all around me. Never have I been to a place so speechless, so naturally beautiful. Everything just looks completely untouched. Waterfalls spilling over the mountains, appearing miles long from top to bottom. They were everywhere! I love waterfalls. Such a peaceful trip. It was quite the workout for us all, but so worth every second.
We made it back to the shop and handed in our spikes from our shoes and headed back to the hostel to grab our bathingsuits to warm up in the hot pools. We had a wonderful little dinner at Priya... We were literally the only people in there. Like I said, there's no one around! Great Indian food and naan. We chatted about life for a bit over our chicken tikki marsala and prawn marsala. Perfect meal to wind down the night! We love our Indian and Thai foods. I ordered Earl Grey tea to go and enjoyed it on the walk across the street to the hot pools. We had 3 pools to choose based on temperature, which were all nestled inside of the rainforest with the nature all around us. Quite big pools, we choose the hottest one, being 110 degrees. We'd been freezing all day! Karen and I chatted with an older Irish couple whom we found quite interesting. We left the pool soon after and here I am updating everyone on my life overseas. I'm enjoying every second. I miss everyone, but wow... I really need some sleep. We'll be up at 6:45a.m tomorrow... I swear, I feel like every morning is just getting earlier and earlier. Womp.
Until tomorrow.