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Published: November 15th 2007
Country number ten has snook up on us. We are in New Zealand. This is Rings country.
A nice little flight saw us arrive in Christchurch on Monday afternoon. Just before getting on the plane at Sydney I was a little startled to see the brand new Singapore Airlines Airbus A380 sat on the tarmac just outside the window. It really is a massive aircraft. It then waddled off to the runway taking about 500 passengers with it.
Christchurch is a lovely little place. It is also quite chilly. When we touched down the temperature registered 12C. That was enough to send us scurrying for jumpers, hats, coats etc. It may not sound that cold, but we have barely had a temperture below 25C for the last 6 months. Scenery wise it is very similar to back home, very reminiscent of all those holidays in North Wales. Lots of grass, lots of sheep, lots of wind.
The main attraction is a gondola up to the hills overlooking Christchurch and Lyttleton. We went up, lingered for a few minutes then came back down.
Next day we got on a bus up the coast to Kaikoura, famous for marine mammals.
A deep ocean trench just off the coast is home to Sperm Whales, dusky dolphins and fur seals. This also attracts orca, and occasionally Blue Whales. We went there to swim with dolphins. The day itself was crisp and clear. We got suited up in 6mm full wetsuit with gloves and a hood (yes the water was that cold), got on a boat, then dived into the water in the middle of a pod of about 500 dusky dolphins. For the next hour we swam, frolicked and generally arsed around with these mammals. They swam within touching distace, swam underneath, jumped over us, head butted us. It was exhillerating. We then followed them while they did their tricks. Full breachs, half rolls, back flips. I even managed to get a couple of good photos by just holding down the button and seeing what happened. This experience coasted into the top 3 of the trip so far.
Next it was onto Queenstown, extreme party capital of the world. The place that gave us bungy jumping and jet boating. Yes, I threw myself off a platform 400m above Queenstown. What a rush. This was the type of bungy where you are
in a full body harness, then you take a running jump off the platform into thin air. I have never been so scare in my life. A definite 2 pairs of underwear job.
Jetboating was also pretty cool. Hard to explain, but it is essentially a boat going about 80km/h skimming over water, with the manouverability to perform a full 360 turn within the length of the boat. Anothe fantastic experience.
There was so much more to do, but both time and money are running out. We have a bus to catch to the glaciers on the West coast.
Queenstown is also as far South as we get. This is as close to the South Pole as I will be getting for the forseeable future. The only bit of land closer to Antarctica than the South of New Zealand is the bottom bit of South America. However, you guys in England are a damm site closer to the North Pole than I am to the South Pole. This Southern Hemisphere really is underpopulated.
No sign of any hobbits yet.
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