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Published: April 12th 2010
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Grrr ready for our boat tripRoad kill, potential buyers,360 spins and a lot of driving
The scenic drive from Wanaka to Queenstown was a lot like the intestine shaped roads in Marlborough, but Elton navigated them excellently. Unfortunately I have noticed during our time on the roads that our road kill quota is increasing. To date we have killed (not meaning to of course!!!) 2 little suicidal birds - the dam things just fly at the car as you pass - one with a big and satisfying “tong” as it hit the car, at least 140 white cabbage leaf butterflies (whole families of them I tell ya!!) and about 10% of the general bug population. Oh and one near miss of a giant eagle who refused to move from his road kill meal until the very last second. At first Nath and I would apologise each time we hit something, but it is happening so often now that we have turned the carnage into a kind of travelling art studio as Elton is covered in splats (inside and out due to the sand flies that have got inside since leaving Franz Josef). Luckily having not really driven at night we haven’t hit any possums (which
I know the kiwis wish we had) and we have also left the indigenous Pukeko and other native wild birds free from reduction.
Anyway we got to Queenstown and the rain started to pour and didn’t stop for hours. We stopped briefly at the library in the hope that it had free internet, we had only been parked up a second or two waiting for the rain to die down before we dashed for the door when some local woman, knocked on the window and literally yelled “you cant park here it says no campervans, see there on the notice” ok love keep your knickers on!! So we moved and then had to get the umbrella out to walk to the library without drowning first!! After finding it wasn’t free but needing the net anyway to find a campsite we paid the stupid $3 for microseconds and found what we needed to know.
We decided to stay at a camp in town as there weren’t many other options for camp sites (all the others were way out of town), paid up the extortionate $36 dollars and went to find our spot (still raining). The cheeky buggars had double
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Start of the jet boat ride - not too fast yet booked all the sites, so the tarmac drive and grass you would normally get together for your chairs or awning to sit on, was actually used as another parking space. So I demanded we have our money back and that we weren’t going to stay on a small piece of grass for that money especially as we had to then pay to use the showers on top. So off we went to stay out of town as in the end it worked out cheaper.
The campsite was in Frankton so a little way out but had great views over the water and an excellent internet rate, so not to totally waste the day we set about internetting and doing our washing etc. After a couple of hours, we had someone text who lived near by to ask if they could view Elton. So we rushed about giving him a quick clean (did you know sand fly guts are incredibly difficult to remove once dried!) and they came over for a look. A couple slightly older than us from the UK who were now getting residency over here and basically wanted a van to go away in at weekends. I
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Speeding up now stayed behind with Julie and chatted about pets and stuff, whilst Nath went off with Dave to do the van stuff. Turns out Julie has a dog and a kitten and looks after strays for the cats charity until they have homes, so a visit to their house regardless of the outcome was a definite!! We thought the viewing had gone well and that they liked Elton so Nath and I were very pleased and had a celebratory drink that evening (well ok ok we had a drink anyway).
The next morning we headed off to Julie and Daves house and met their animals- A Samoyed, a cheeky black and white kitten and 3 wild kittens she was fostering that hissed at you if you came near them. We stayed for a cuppa and I got attacked by the cheeky black and white kitten (I forget all their names now sorry) who at one point jumped on me whilst I was holding my tea, and so I didn’t burn him I ended up spilling the boiling tea on me instead!! He was funny to watch chasing the dog around, very different form the relationship that gets depicted on TV.
We said our good byes and exchanged emails etc and hoped that when the bidding ended in a few weeks time that they would be the winners (and offer us the money we wanted as well of course!!).
As it wasn’t raining for once we headed back through town and towards Arrow town which we’d heard was a cute little cowboy type town that was worth a viewing. I had booked us onto some speed jet ride, which is one of the main things you do in Queenstown, along with all the other over priced adrenaline trips, but on closer inspection we found that I had booked the wrong thing. This was only apparent to us as on driving to Arrow town we stopped at the shoot over jet car park for lunch and realised that they had a slightly dearer but better deal. In all my planning I’m always trying to find the option that’s the cheapest or that I have a voucher for, but I guess I need to be looking at what we actually get or our money. Luckily we were bale to cancel our original booking easily and instead booked on the shoot over jet.
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Bloody hell thats close This high speed boat basically speeds through the local canyons, so close to the rocks you think your gonna crash, and also does full 360 degree turns at high speed - classic!!!
We had some lunch and hoped it wouldn’t be returning on us as we literally only had about half hour before our ride. We got dressed in some weird huge macks, that reminded me of the “I know what you did last summer “ movie, all I needed was a hook for a hand!!! We waited for what seemed like ages, sweating in these rubber ponchos but finally got on board. Nath sat right by the edge but I wasn’t that keen so made my way to the middle and within seconds we were off. We did indeed get so close to the rocks at one point that before I could stop myself id shouted “fuck” out loud, luckily there were no kids on board and a few people giggled at my outburst but I just couldn’t help it. The photos show just how close we got to the rocks!! Nath also managed to take a load of video as we went round, which was a bit
dangerous as when he did the 360 degree turns you really needed to hold on with both hands.
The time on the boat went really quickly so with some of the afternoon still to go we headed off to Arrow town. It was indeed a cute town but not much there other than a few tourist shops and cafes. I did however find it funny that it was also a Chinese colony town called Arrow town (Harrow town???). The only thing we did here was buy some fudge, because I stupidly went into an old fashioned sweet shop and got suckered in.
After a quick look round we headed off to our DOC site to stay for the night in Glenorchy. Now Glenorchy was used to film some of Lord of the rings, thus the only reasons I suggested staying there, and on the map it didn’t look too far (its only the length of my finger away on the map!). However I should have learnt by now that the distances in NZ are always longer than they look (and maps are never 1:1 scale!). We took a very nice coastal road up along the huge river
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start of a 360 spin (see the jetty in the distance?) and drove round some very mountainous roads at times, with the wind battering poor Elton nearly off the side. We finally got to Glenorchy about and hour or so after we set off and found nothing there, and only with a great imagination could I see some of the LOTR scenery. After driving around the edge of the village towards the river looking to find somewhere to freedom camp, we saw a huge sigh warning us off - dam it! So in the end we had to drive to the DOC site now we’d come all this way. This was another half hours drive down a very very bumpy gravel road, so neither Nath nor Elton were very pleased with me when we got there. Oh well at least it was quiet and we had a good nights sleep even if we didn’t really do anything. - My bad
Next morning there really wasn’t any reason to hang around, so we headed back towards Queenstown (along the same bumpy road, sorry again Nath/Elton) stopping for some lunch and a few photos of Queenstown in the sun. Then we were off on the long drive to Milford Sound - basically
if you don’t pay for the adrenaline stuff in Queenstown there really isn’t anything else to do here! So off we went to Manapouri….
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