The South Island part II

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An overview....we blasted the Glaciers, drove down to Milford Sounds (getting the van stuck on a beach....), beautiful trip through the fjords, donning the snow chains to get through the snow, then on to Queenstown for some much needed skiing and boarding, thena final treat - blow some more money on heading way down near the south pole to Stewart Island, then a final bezz up to Christchurch.....but did Vinny hold out for the duration????? erm no......read on for the full and funny details!!

June 18th

Next on the hitlist after Fox Glacier was the hike up Franz Josef Glacier, first we had to get there in time....which was a test in itself...late as usual and roads with lots of ice....poor Vinny was skidding round the corners teetering on the brink of being on his side!! A pretty impressive glacier at only a couple of hundred metres above sea level, and here we actually devlved into the glacier itself! We donned our crampones and ice picks and hoyked ourselves up with the ropes and on to the stairs cut out of the actual glacier (I struggled with the idea of this, that we were probably not really helping to conserve the thing..) anyway onwards and upwards we went - awesome day - brill sunshine and no rain which is pretty rare they say!! It was a great experience, squeezing through very tight crevasses (I reckon that if you were a size 18 or more you would probably get wedged!)... The blue of the ice was amazing and the depth of the ice too!

We had a well deserved beer and settled in for the night to find no water for shower, so went and filled up, then went driving to heat it (yep great technology..), we were happily driving along and in amazement having not seen a possom before, Darren pointed at a cute little one that ha just nicely crossed the road and was going into the grass 'oh look there is a possom, aah', upon this the possom promptly turned around at the beauty of our lights and 'duff'......oops dead possom!! Darren felt so bad, all I could do was laugh because of the way it happened (sick I know) then we had to turn around to see if the thing was dead...nope....so we had to then reverse over it - HORRIBLE!! The worst part was having to drive past it the next morning in the hope it was gone, but no, it was laid there with its arm frozen in the help position that we had left it in last night....What was even worse, was that I ended up killing a pretty bird the next day in penance...feathers everywhere!!

Then we bezzed down to cover some ground to Milford Sounds via Queenstown, we decided to make a quick pit stop for a cup of tea on the beach and proceeded to get abit carried away trying to find a nice spot and got stuck on the beach!!! looking back it was pretty funny but at the time it was pretty damn stuck in the sand!! Luckily no shouting took place and we managed to use my idea of digging the sand from behind the wheels together with Darrens idea of putting sticks and rocks to create traction......many many revs and clutch burns later and the beast was out!!! Pretty lucky since the tide was about to rise.....we both thought there was no way out - luck was definitely on our side...but the next problem was to get the stench out of the van - everything stunk of clutch - clothes, cushions - EVERYTHING!! A big oops there.....

Praying that our clutch didnt give up, we headed on to Milford Sound with snow chains, fully equipped for the predicted snow onslaught! we spent a day driving along Milford Road, which was a beautiful stretch of road, passing valleys of green, amazing mountain ranges and we stopped for a hike at 'The Divide', it was a pretty determined upward hike at that!!! But it was so worth it for the amazing views that we encountered - three valleys, Darran Mountains and Christina peak - how ironic!! we got to Milford Sound and got to view Mitre Peak on such a cear day, it was gorgeous!!

We missed our Milford Sound trip on the boat...oops again...luckily they put us on the next boat out!! we are soo dizzy, got teh time wrong!! It was an amazing tour through the fjords (not actually Sounds as they are made from glaciers - therefore Fjords), it was the sheer cliffs created when the glaciers cut through that wowed everyone - near 90 degree cliffs, with waterfalls splashing over the dges! Free tea and coffee to keep you warm as the snow had set in overnight...saw seals, albatross cousins and amazing waves!! The snow was coming in hard so we decided to head straight out and were delighted to have to use the snow chains!! It was so cool, everyone were stopped and if they had no snow chains they couldnt go any further, there were even guys out there to fit teh chains, was cool!! So off we stomped, not being allowe dto go anymore than 20kph!!! slow ride back but lovely!!

we were warned not to go to Queenstwon so we drove as far as could and headed out the next morning, I think we were really lucky again cos we were some of only a few people that managed to get in to Queenstown- the whole place seemed to have come to a standstill from the snow!!

We hit the slopes up to Coronet Peak on Saturday morning, really happy that it had dumped overnight again and I had had chance to buy my own boarding clothes - yey!! Had a brill day boarding but totally forgot how hard it is and spent most of the day on my arse on abusing my arms trying to get off my arse and upright on the board again, took a lesson and played around on the green and blue slopes!! next day was a whiteout day, darren had his performance skis so he was happy gliding down and pushing me to go faster and down the harder runs...he even took me on a big blue and I was soo scared cos couldnt see more than 2 metres ahead of me! Next day was a gorge day - the sun even came out for us!! we tried out Remarkables ski resort which was cool, we had decide dto indulge and go for another 3 day pass and Darren to try out boarding - yey - i was so excited that he might understand how hard it was and also get some sympathy on the fact that I had been aching all over for the last three days, whiplash was on the books am sure too!!

It was hilarious to see Darren on a board, getting up then sitting back down, falling and getting stranded on the slightly flat bits - hee!! And all with a smile on his face, it wasnt until the next day that the pain really hit - he struggled to get out of bed due to the all over aches ha ha!! next day we bumped in to Keely n her mate so was good to have some mates on the slopes!! The final day, we werent sure whether to make it the final day or not, we were going to consider having a day off then having an extra day on the slopes until the fall............Darren hada bad fall so was being very cautious so I was trying to caoch him down the hill...he didnt want my help so I left him to it and went down the slope, back up and down again to find him not so far from the last place...so I tried coaching him to get him to slide the board down instead of on his arse...he wasnt listening so I got a bit frustrated and lost concentration and ended up sliding down the hill backwards and upside down....with pain from my arse down my legs!! Once I had established that I could move my toes I managed to get down the slope, checked out with doc and back to town to rest!!! Pain oh pain!!!!!!!!!!!!!So that made our mind up - no more boarding!

Since we were not going boarding we decided to bite the bullet (not look at our bank accounts) and head down to Stewart Island for something different! Yep - it was pretty different!! And we spent much of the time drinking....

We got the ferry over the Strait - beautiful and the island was gorgeous - green green green!! went to Ulva Island on the water taxi to see the island full of birds, it was lovely especially Sydney Cove and Boulder Beach- deserted! Went to the local watering hole...had a few beers and then carried on drinking back at the hostel - rather a drunken night! Next day went for a big walk in the pouring rain to Ryans creek. Funny day was when we went to the only other real alternative to the locals hotel, Church Cafe, and spent the eating and drinking!! From there we went to the locals joint and drank more, mixed with the locals, darren played piano and we were just generally the drunks for teh night! We went back to the hostel to cook dinner, I dropped mine all over the sofa, turned the cushion over and was a bit rude to some French guys.... We luckily retired to bed at 8!! ha ha!!

We checked out some more of the beautiful island before getting the ferry back to main land...passed one of the locals who asked darren how is head was....oops must have been quite drunk last night hee!!and oh how we regretted getting hammered the night before crossing probably one of the roughest crossings I have ever done...I had to focus on the horizon most of the way to stop myself from projectile vomiting and we both sat there with our undrunk coffee in hand!!!

Was so relieved to hit land again and we set off against the clock to make it to Christchurch in time to catch our flight the next day, had plenty of time but no time for any issues...unluckily we had some...

We made it all the way up past Dunedin...just ....and then it was pay back time for burning Vinnys clutch on the beach!! The clutch died...so we were left stranded somewhere near Dunedin in the pitch black of night....the phone battery died....we walked in the night and flagged down a postal service guy, called the hire company who were no help, suggesting that we get to the nearest town (13 km away!!!) with all our stuff and catch a bus to make sure we could get our flight on time...yeh right - I could still hardly pick anything up due to my boarding injury to my cocksix!! So we retired to Vinny and decided to flag a car down in the orning and find out how far the nearest town was and hope we were rescued, there wasnt a lot else we could do!!

Next day...it just got worse, the toilet overflowed, I had to empty it using the pyrex jug and a milk bottle mmmmmmm!! Then my bag broke and we found the bird in the bonnet that i hit the week before. Then we set off to hitch hike to the local town, no one would stop for us (and who said that everyone hitchhikes in NZ?!?!) a framer stopped on his quad and said he would be going to town if we wanted a lift in 2 hours whilst his wife squeezed past us in her 4 x 4!! so off we plodded towards town, we were relieved when we were picked up by our recovery truck!! But then gutted when we realised we didnt have enough time to get to the airport and then...that we could not get a refund!!!

The most painful part of the saga was getting a lift in a recovery van that was overweight, with a man who was either full of crap or had had a very colourful past...many many stories - hilarious to say the least!!

We spent a couple of days in Christchurch, chilling before heading out to Sydney finally!!

NZ - brilliant place, so may beautiful points, so many places to explore. would love to see the place in summer too, lots of hikes to do!!

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Comments

[ben]

NZ
sounds well decent shane.. apart from the sore a55! x