Advertisement
Published: September 1st 2007
Edit Blog Post
The trip across the Cook Strait was pretty much flat calm and there was some great scenery once we reached the Marlborough Sounds on the far side. We stopped at a winery on the way to Nelson for some free wine tasting, which was a nice start. We got to Nelson in the late afternoon but didn’t do much - nice dinner at the hostel, a few games of foosball and an early night.
In the morning we packed up early with about 15 new people on the bus and by the end of the day we had a total of about 35, much different to the North Island but a good change. We took a 30 minute walk through Nelson Lakes National Park. Dan the driver dropped us off at one end of the lake and when we caught up with him at the far end, he was busy throwing bread to some eels and luring a few ducks over at the same time, hoping the eels would bite the ducks’ feet. The ducks were safe enough really and it was pretty funny to watch both an eel and a duck going for the same piece of bread!
That afternoon we stopped at an adventure centre and went jetboating on the river. The scenery was really a bit disappointing, because the standards are pretty high in NZ. The jetboat ride was good, but not as good as Bay of Islands on a rough day. There was the novelty of us all in the boat being towed 10 minutes across a farm by tractor before launching off the back of the trailer into the river! That night we stayed in Westport, grabbed some pizza and pool and watched Lord of the Rings back at the hostel (there must be a copy in every hostel in the country).
The following day it lashed rain and made the visit to the pancake rocks a bit of a washout. That night we had a fancy dress party in a pub / hostel in the middle of nowhere, the legendary “Poo Pub” that’s run by an 84 year old man who doesn’t want to retire. He was a character and even cooked up the barbeque dinner for us. There was nobody there only the 35 or so of us and we took over the place. We had to make costumes out of
binliners which kept things simple. Making the costumes felt like being in primary school again but the party was great craic.
The next day we visited “Bushman Pete” at the Bushman’s Centre. The hilight was a video about the old days in the bush, “where men were men and sheep were nervous”! There was some great footage from the 70s of fellas diving out of helicopters trying to catch wild deer for deer farms! Later on we arrived in Franz Josef and about 8 of us went paintballing for the afternoon. First time I'd done it and it was great fun. The next day we hiked the Franz Josef glacier. We did the full day hike and went in the first group. It was cool to be on a glacier and we got some great photos but I was a bit bored by lunchtime to be honest. We’d signed up to be in the first of four groups and were supposed to be going at a faster pace than the others and hopefully see a bit more but the way it turned out, we only got a longer lunchbreak. Our guide was just choosing the path for the groups
following us. From talking to people who did the more expensive heli hike, I think it’s probably more interesting and of course you get to ride in a helicopter!
The next day we were off to Wanaka. On the way we passed Lake Matheson where we took in the mirror reflections of Mount Cook. This is one of the most photographed sights in New Zealand and it is pretty spectacular but my paintball gun would've been handy for sorting out the ducks on the lake who were messing up the photos! We stopped off another good few times that day because there are so many photo opportunities along this stretch. Wanaka is a really laidback ski town located on another beautiful lake surrounded by snowcapped mountains. It’s one of the places I really wanted to spend more time, but we had just one night there too.
On Tuesday we arrived in Queenstown, New Zealand’s adventure capital. Four or five people from our bus, including Gordon, did the Kawarau Bridge Bungy on the way into town, fair play to them, but I didn’t feel the need! Everyone from the bus went on the town the first night as driver
took the 35 of us on a tour of the bars. On Wednesday one of the English lads, James and myself took a walk to the top of the mountain behind Queenstown. It was only supposed to be a walk but ended up more of a trek. The views made it worthwhile though.
On Thursday we did the obligatory day trip to Milford Sound and were really lucky with the weather. We had a perfect day for it and I thought it lived up to expectations. On Friday Gordon and myself went skiing at Cardrona and the weather was perfect yet again. I think we were getting off lightly because the previous week it had been 6 degrees below zero and on Tuesday it had poured rain all day at Milford Sound. On Saturday we did the final leg of the trip and finished up in Christchurch. We didn’t do much sightseeing there because there’s nothing much to see. We went to a rugby game Canterbury against Manawatu on Sunday, wandered around town during the day and met up with a friend of Gordon’s who was living in Canterbury for about a year.
On Monday afternoon, Gordon and
myself went our separate ways at the airport in Christchurch. He has some more travels but I'm off home via Singapore now! I don't feel like I'm finished yet so hopefully I'll get away somewhere again soon...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.038s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 7; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0194s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb