Global Gauthier's: Cuz I'm free! Free fallin!!!

Once again, we decided that Sunday mornings are the best time to get up early and drive hours to get to a church! So in the early hours we made the 2 hour drive to Queenstown along some gorgeous lakes and mountain sides. It felt very much like the Okanagan and Kelowna. We tried to find a little baptist church that met in a school, which turned out to be very non-existent. While we were realizing that this church wasn't going to work, a car pulled up and some Aussie's got out looking for it as well! They too were Church of Christers. After collectively deciding to attempt another denomination, we pulled up to the next church only to find out that they were meeting at a

different location that day. By that time all the morning services on the list of churches that we got from the info center were a good half hour or hour into their service already so we gave up on morning services & planned to go to an evening service that night.

Now, the last few days I had been considering bungee jumping without mention of if to Milessa. Once i mentioned it to her then i had to do it so we

made the decision to go book a bungee. Of course, our 3 options were either tomorrow in the rain, in 10 minutes, or in 2 hours. The 450 ft one was booked, and way more expensive. So I made

myself content with jumping off the Kawarau Bridge 2 hours after booking! Kawarau Bridge was the worlds first commercial bungy site in 1988. It is a 43 m jump from an old historic truss bridge that was built in 1880.

The next couple hours were spent with my stomach in knots, imagining my graceful swan dive. Once we were there, it was even more terrifying. The bridge seemed endlessly high, and I couldn't help but pace. At least I wasn't in tears of panic like the poor girl before me. Milessa was also surprisingly excited and slightly calm. Once I

was strapped in, Feel Good Inc by The Gorillaz began playing and is now forever etched in my head as my bungee song, still giving me goosebumps when I hear it. After a few deep breaths and a quick "so I just jump, and I won't die, right?" I dove head first towards the river 43m below. Honestly, it was such a graceful swan dive head first, looking especially good after the last girl accidentally flipped over. It was such a rush of adrenaline and man I loved it! Milessa even enjoyed watching! I can see how addicting it could become to the avid jumper, as I was already craving the next jump and searching online for other AJ Hackett bungee sites, which are all around the world. At completely random moments, and sometimes while I dreamt for the next week, I would remember standing on the edge and get chills all over. Such an awesome experience.

Killing time in Queenstown

From there, we killed time back at the AJ Hackett headquarters in Queenstown until 6 when we left for the evening church service that actually was where it said it would be!

At some point in Queenstown, a flyer got put on our windshield advertising a $30 a night for a campervan allowing use of hot showers, kitchen, tv, laundry, etc and was in town. I hate to say that any sort of advertising scheme worked on me, but it did. It saved us gas money and only cost us a bit more to have hot showers, I justified to myself, and we stayed at the Qlot.

The next morning we did so much laundry! Good thing, we probably stunk. This lead to another sweet laundry doing fashion statement by both of us, except even colder than last time. I then

crafted a series of ropes all around the back of the van for just about all our clothes and bedsheets. I was so proud of my drying technique- you can see why in the picture :)

We then took a Gondola up the mountainside and had great views of Queenstown, realizing for the first time that the mountains had been covered in snow overnight. Up the gondola, we realized how cold it was, and only spent a bit

of time up there. It was so cold that the employees outside were supplied with those Canada Goose down jackets! Not that they needed them nearly as bad as we do in Canada, but it was cold enough.

Queenstown was a really cool little backpacker/tourist town I wish we could have spent more time in. There were many little shops, hostels, adrenaline type activities, and it had a very cool backpacker/tourist culture vibe all around.

We then headed east towards Cromwell where we planned to spend the night. With Milessa's knees still not feeling right, we went to another chiropractor the next morning in Cromwell. We then went and had coffee at "the best coffee in town" (I know, embarrassing, another ad that totally sucked me in) and used internet to map out our last few days. Instead of choosing to see Mount Cook or Penguins & Moeraki Bolders on the coast, we chose both!

So we headed north. We were lucky enough to see some Merino sheep! I'm pretty sure the ones I saw were the ones whose underwear, shirt & socks I'd been wearing so much! I'm sure Milessa is thankful they are capable of making clothes that are so good at making a person not stink.

We stayed next to a stream that night just over an hour from Mount Cook. As we cooked dinner, a hitch hiker began setting up his tent so I offered him a ride to Mount Cook with us if he was up by 7

am.

Up early to catch Cook at sunrise, our car was frosted over! That explained our exceptionally chilly sleep in our little van! We then headed off towards Twizel- that's an actual town- without the hitch hiker who decided to sleep in. We were rewarded with some great views of Mount Cook over lakes and alongside many glaciers and snow-capped peaks. It stands at about 3750m, much higher than any other mountain in NZ. That, and the surrounding mountains were such an incredible sight. We were also able to read about the great history of the Mount Cooke region and ice climbing through the years at the Mt Cook info center. Many people had died climbing it, including Maori people who traveresed it's slopes long before Europeans arrived in NZ.

From there we headed back to Twizel- seeing the hitch hiker who missed our ride still trying to make it to Mount Cooke (that'll teach him to sleep in)- and skyped our families a little bit before continuing to the east coast and Oamaru to see the penguins.