Planes, planes and, well, planes

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I hung around the town, picking up some cheap jade on the beach, before sitting there are reading in the late morning. Was sunny, but very cold 😞 I also went to the iSite (Tourist Information) to tell them about Gordon Wells, the lecherous Just Jade Experience guy. I had been chatting at the B&B and they said they'd had girls come in from him who were scared, and the iSite said the same, and that they had even had to go in and rescue bags for people. Good to know they know about it. The iSite was great and I'll use them a bit more in the future.

I love Hokitika. I will definitely be coming back here, and the West Coast in general, again. It's lush and gorgeous. I can imagine it being even better when it's warmer and less breezy. It's a lovely small town with no McDonald's, no Burger King, KFC, Starbucks.... lovely! Aparently Subway are wanting to open up there (they have one in Greymouth), which would be a huge pity. You can walk from one end of the town to the other in about ten minutes. There are bars, gas stations, swimming pool, massage centre, spine therapist, cafes, computer shop... gorgeous beach, ovely river to fish in... everything you could want. I'm sold! 😉

I popped back to the B&B for a coffee before heading up to Hokitika airport, one of the smallest I've ever seen. I get on a little 18 seater plane for Christchurch. Flying over the alps and the mountains I've been looking at for the last few days was magnificent. My plane in Christchurch was cancelled, so I was put on the next one. A much bigger jet this time. I ended up sitting next to two IT support people, Sonia and Chris I think they're names were. They were great fun and we chatted most of the trip. They were frequnt fliers in NZ and were telling me about the different air strips (Wellington is very short and surrounded by water, so a bit scary - aparently a 747 just about landed htere one day, but didn'thave enough runway to take off loaded. That must have been expensive). They had some horror stories too, about sharp landings, about cross winds and coming in sideways. They pointed out their green office building as we flew in. Makes Tolworth Tower look like a work of art - but they have better views across a bay rather than the A3! After all their stories I was a bit disapointed at the great landing! I really enjoyed the flight with them, which went in no time, and, as I gave them my blog addy, I guess I should say that Chris was really cute.

I was hardly on the ground ten minutes before I was up in an even smaller plane than the first one. They had held the plane half an hour for me as my connecting flight was delayed. This plane had one seat either side of the plane! Like the first one from Hokitika you could see into the cockpit. It was so cool to see all the buttons. I kept having terrible fantasies about having to land the plane and someone talking me through it... I sat next to a nice kid who was studying music tech down on the south island. He was videoing the engines and we kept pointing cool engineering things out to each other. I promise I'm not that sad really...

Stayed at Rainbow Lodge backpackers that night in Taupo, which was a great place and one definitely to go back to.

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Comments

[Chris]

Hi there, Glad you enjoyed our company on the plane from Christchurch. Hope we didn't bore you with our stories. Look forward to reading more about your travels. Chris

[midnightbunny]

Planes, planes and, well, planes
Hi Chris, definitely not bored, otherwise you guys wouldn't have got a mention ;) - Angela

[Chris]

By the way here's a link to my blog... www.tock.co.nz. Spot ya.