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Published: January 23rd 2007
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The Hills are alive...
Julie Andrews eat your heart out sayd Hel on the way to Milford Sound Onto the adventure capital of the world - Queenstown! Having arrived late in the evening we crashed in our dorm room of the immaculate Pinewood Hostel, shared by other females and a new breed of backpackers we like to call the Hitlerites. Heading this gang is a Swiss lady called Ruth who deplores people that make any disturbance when sleeping whatsoever. According to the book of Ruth, people who get up early (as most people tend to do in NZ) and are packing their belongings or getting ready must be "SSSSHED" loudly and told that they "SHOULD'VE PREPARED EARLIER." Yes sir! Sleep naked as to avoid putting pjs back into rucksack and making zippy up noise. Yes sir! Brush teeth and wash face before going to bed. Yes sir! Remove bedding before sleeping. Yes sir, YES SIR! And if you dare close the window and draw the curtins after Ruth has gone to bed - "UCH, DON'T YOU KNOW WE NEED SOME AIR IN HERE!" Yes Ruth, and don't you know when you yell in the middle of the night we all wake up!!!
Anyway, moving on...
Queenstown was an absolute jaw dropping sight, nestled inbetween the shores of Lake
Mirror Lakes
Spectacular reflection of the mountains in Mirror Lakes Wakitipu and the aptly called Remarkables Mountain range, Queenstown has earned its name as a place fit for royalty. A young, happening spot with 43 bars in a 2km squared area and seemingly half as many touro-adventure centres the place was begging for our presence for a joyous three nights.
Day one and we were off for some first class sight seeing, travelling by bus to Te Anau and arriving at Milford Sound to enjoy a leisurely boat cruise around this majestic fiord land. We saw seals basking on rocks and the impressive Mitre Peak and not once during this whole 10 hour long day did we get bored or feel the day dragging. The scenery is that stunning, I can't even do it justice by describing it, you will just have to some out here and see for yourselves!
After such a long day you might be fooled into thinking that we would be ready to hit the sack but no, we needed dutch courage to deal with Ruth and it being Saturday there was some bar-hopping to be done! So we met up with some Magic people (don't think we mentioned that we are travelling around
Stunning Milford Sound
Cruisin in natures beauty NZ via the hop on, hop off Magic bus service), that included Rich, our bus driver, Irish Paul & Lisa, Ben, Marco & Per, and a few others. We went tea-potting in the World bar, thats drinking cocktails ever so lady-like out of a fine china teapot and boogied on down into the night.
The next day we SLEPT IN! Glorious and a much needed once off. Thankfully Ruth practices what she preaches and she slipped off without so much as her rucksack zipper saying toodleloo. (Ooh im bold!) Then excitement was in the air as I decided I was going to go paragliding. And the weather conditions happened to be just perfect, so $175 later I was strapped to a blonde frenchman and a chute and running off a cliff soaring high over trees and mountains, getting a fabulous view of Lake Wakitipu and the Remarkables. Paragliding was lovely and so relaxing! I just laid back and floated. In fact I was finding it such a breeze my guy decided I could try some driving and that was the way we entered some thermal currents and started to do some mad spinning to the earth. Lots of fun.
Big Bird
She likes her birds big, she does Our time in Queenstown was topped off by an infamous Fergerburger - gourmet burgers the size of your two hands and a ferocious snorer in our room. Once again I would like to publicly thank Boots for their ownbrand foam earplugs.
And onto...Dunedin! Famous for? Three words - Cadbury, Chocolate & Heaven! The tour of the factory there was brilliant if only because they gave us a bag full of free chocolate but also 'cos we got to see how easter eggs are made and the whole cocoa bean to choccie bar process. Yum. After the calorie overload we took on the challenge to negociate this scottish settlement to find the world's steepest street. And, eventually, after an hour and a half plod, we found it. Right where the map said it was. Bloomin' miles away! So after one photo which didn't even protray how steep the street was we were done and faced with the long track back. Hmm, this took a bit of thinking. My tum started to rumble as the light popped on in our heads. NZ is the safest and easiest place to hitchhike in the world! So bouyed up by the fact that
Cuppa Anyone?
nice fruity surprise in that teapot! we had both just finished reading about the man who hitched round Ireland with a fridge and the fact that we had no fridge we stuck our thumbs out and prepared for battle. We missed the first two potentials by just laughing at ourselves. The next was an old man who just waved. Great. Very helpful. The next two cars were women. They pure ignored my existence and my thumb wasn't dealing very well with the rejection so it was Helen's turn. A white truck type thing was coming. It looked promising. Helen's double jointed arms were doing their best to stay straight, the tumb, despite being under enormous pressure stood rigid upright in fear. And lo and behold we had a winner. We had hitched ourselves a ride!! We were giddy bumping along and all we wanted to do was pat our thumbs on the back and cheer and laugh at the success of it all but we were in the presence of a lift giver and had to return his generousness with meaningless stranger to stranger conversation. Mr the Handyman had never left the South Island, never mind New Zealand and thought we were doing very well for
Ferger Burger
Just for you colm power ourselves. That done and the few kms hitched back into town we polished off this tasty day with a feast for the eyes watching 'Marie Antoinette' in the cinema.
Goodo.
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Colm
non-member comment
Fergburgers, fucking amazing, bring us back one