Ethan Dylan Siegel's Website

April 28. We have left New Zealand and have arrived in Melbourne. Our 5 weeks in New Zealand were fantastic. We last updated the site after leaving the Wilderness Lodge in Lake Moeraki. From there, we traveled to Wanaka, which is a small lakeside town. On the way, we left glaciers and rainforests behind and entered the dry part of the South Island. The scenery reminded us quite a bit of the hills of southern California. We spent one night in Wanaka, and ran into a few people we had met earlier in the trip. The next day, we went to Queenstown, which is called the "Aspen" of New Zealand. Like Wanaka, iIt is also on a lake, and surrounded by mountains. It is a year round tourist destination for folks from all over the world. We spent five nights in Queenstown, and we had a great time. We spent a few days touring around town, a day on an old steamship up the lake to a farm, and some time in Arrowtown, a nearby gold rush town. Queenstown is the birthplace of bungee jumping and a ton of other extreme sports. As our friend Kathleen said, they'll run you over with a tractor if you pay them enough. We decided not to jump off of anything or get run over. We did go on a river jet boat safari, which was cool. Apparently, the jet boat is a Kiwi invention, and it is a really neat method of transportation, needing only about three inches of water to travel since it basically just skims on the top of the water. We also spent a day flying over the mountains to Milford Sound. Milford Sound is a giant glacial fjord in the Tasman Sea, and the scenery between Queenstown and the Sound is famous for its spectacular beauty. We weren't disappointed. The flights on the *tiny* 4 passenger Cessna were smooth, with magnificent views that soothed the soul and made you forget that planes like THIS slam into mountains like THAT all the time. At Milford Sound, we ran into a very nice couple from Melbourne that we had met earlier on our trip, on our hike at Fox Glacier. We have plans to go out to dinner with them in Melbourne tomorrow. After we left Queenstown, we drove back to Christchurch, which completed our giant circle around the South Island. We returned to the arts fair for Lane to get another massage, and we met our travel agent again for a few more lagers in the sun. We used the two days in Christchurch to relax and catch up on some sleep, and to avoid miniscule planes and helicopters and other machines of death. I entered the New Zealand Poker Championship at Christchurch Casino and held my own. The good news was that I came in 8th place, making it to the final table. The bad news is only the top 6 finishers received cash. Nevertheless, it was a totally cool experience and I played cards with some freaky lookin' professional poker players. Overall, we have to say that New Zealand was totally awesome. The scenery was out of this world, we did some crazy things, met quite a few people and everything went as smoothly as we could ever have hoped. We were sad to leave, but we're excited about Australia, and especially excited about hitting the beaches in a few weeks for a vacation from our vacation.