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Published: October 21st 2012
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The next day we spent doing pretty much bugger all. The weather was crap and I'm glad of it because after drinking the night before I wasn't in the mood to do a great deal of anything. We did however book ourselves onto a bus for the next morning to take us up to Cardrona for a days snowboarding. We were very lucky with the weather as the rain the previous day down in Queenstown equaled snow up on the mountains and it was a blue bird day all day for snowboarding. I've done 2 boarding holidays before but only ever with 1 or 2 friends so it was awesome to have a group of us up there over 10 strong. Although keeping in a group of that size proved to be impossible due to us all being of varrying standards. Awesome day though and although the snow wasn't anything like I've experienced in the European Alps it was great to be back on a mountain shredding some snow. Shame we only did one day though and I didn't have my own trusty gear.
That evening drinks were once again in order.
The next day was another corker so we chilled
out in the sun, went luging again and then went for a nice meal as some of our kiwi experience crew would be leaving the next day to move on to other places.
The following day I arranged to meet up again with Mark and his camper to go on a little road trip. He'd just got to queenstown and some of his friends were goin skiing so I suggested a road trip to Glenarchy and further up the road a spot called Paradise which sounded more than apealing.
I hopped in his camper outside our hostel. He was with Alistair and 2 girls Danni and Inga who they've been travelling with and we dove to Treble Cone ski fields where we dropped off Alistair and Sanni. We then hit the road bound for Glenorchy. After leaving Queenstown we pulled over and Mark let me have a drive. I've not driven a car since I sold mine a few months before leaving home so it was nice to be behind the wheel again, even if it was like driving an old nackered bus that had no power. Going from a Renaultsport this took a bit of getting used
to, but the roads along the lake were amazing with beautiful views to back it up. We followed the road along the lake for about 45 minutes, passed Glenorchy and then the road turned into a potholed gravel track. By this time the van was running very low on fuel and with no sight of a petrol station for miles, or kilometers rather, we had no choice but to pull over and empty the jerry can into the fuel tank. This bought us some more time so we carried on in search of Paradise. We drove for a while longer and decided to give in as the road was terrible and the nearst fuel station was back in Glenorchy, whether it was open or not we didn't know as it's only a little village. We chilled for a while by the lake before heading back to find fuel. Luckily the fuel station at Glenorchy was open even though the place appeared to be a ghost town. All fueled up we decided to try out a local pub for a few games of pool before heading back to our hostel in queenstown where we watched a film and went to bed.
The next day I was booked onto the bottom bus with some of the kiwi experience crew which takes you around the far south of the south island to Dunedin, Invercargill and then a day trip on a boat around Milford Sound. We hopped onto the bottom bus the next morning and headed to Dunedin. When we arrived there we stopped off breifly at Baldwin Street. This is officially the steepest street in the world, so we all hopped off the bus and ran/walked to the top like a bunch of over excited kids. It wasn't easy. I don't understand how people can live on a road this steep, it's verging on ridiculous. We got to our hostel which had a huge pool table room downstairs, we went out to the Speights brewery for a couple of beers and headed back for a few games of pool before watching a film and hitting the sack for the night. The next day was a bit of a piss take. We got back onto the bus and slowly made our way to Invercargill. It's something like 2-3 hours away but our driver decided to stop off at so many places
to show us so many irrelivent little pointless things that the journey took over 9 bloody hours. We stopped off for about 3 walks. A waterfall which was tiny and very unimpressive but because it was named Niagra Falls our driver thought we'd enjoy a look. There were 3 stops within literally 500 meters of each. 1st to check out a view point, then to use a toilet and then we stopped again to grab an ice cream. It would've been quicker if we hadn't of got back on the bus inbetween each of these. However we did manage to see some sea lions on a beach and then a penguin on a very rocky beach so all was not lost.
Then after we finally arrived at our destinstion, Invercargill, it was something more of a disapointment. We got some food etc at our hostel and fancied going for a few drinks to relax after our endurance piss take day but there was literally nowhere good to go. The place was like a ghost town with a drag strip running through it. All we saw was boy racers bombing it up and down through town shouting stuff out the windows
at us as if we'd stepped beyond a line. Then we were refused entry from the only busyish bar in town due to us wearing trainers. We did find one nice bar, but it was empty, and when we all went out for a cigarette the bar staff cleared up one of our drinks. Bitch. We gave up and went back to the hostel. Luckily we were only here for one night.
Milford Sound the next day.
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