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Published: October 7th 2008
The bluebirds last day
Greg demonstrating his typical driving behaviour.New Zealand is supposed to be one of those places where you scare yourself silly and have a tonne of new experiences. On October 1st, we had a scary experience that wasn't on our "to do" list. We were in Christchurch, getting ready to head down to Dunedin. We were heading through downtown looking for an electronics store to get an adapter for Greg's MP3 player. All of a sudden, as we were heading through an intersection, we saw a car coming right for us from the other street! An accident was unavoidable and we smashed front corners! Fortunately no one was hurt, we were just a bit shook up. As we sat in the car taking inventory of our health, a bunch of people came up knocking on the windows to see if we were okay - the people here really are amazing. A woman put her arm around me and walked me over to the sidewalk since I was feeling a little "emotional" (how embarrassing - I briefly burst into tears as soon as I got over the shock!). Several people who witnessed the accident came over and offered to be witnesses for us. Turns out, the other driver
had been blinded by the morning sunlight and had run the red light. Our witnesses attested to the fact that the light was green for us, which we were thankful for. We were very lucky with the timing of the accident as it could have been a lot worse. If we had been a second earlier, the other car would have hit the driver's side of our car. Also, one of the witnesses was a cyclist going through the intersection behind us and if he had of been a little earlier, we might have ended up hitting him on impact! We were quite thankful for how it all turned out and that no one was hurt. After we sorted things out with the police, we got a new rental car from our rental company (we were lucky that we were in town and not in the middle of nowhere!), and were back on the road a little over an hour later. Now we just have to figure out how all the insurance is going to work... Here the cars are insured when you rent them, but if you have an accident you have to pay an "excess", which is basically
a bond while they sort out the claim. You can pay extra to reduce the excess, but we hadn't so we had to pay out $1500. We should get it back eventually as it should be a pretty cut and dry case that the other driver was at fault, but we'll have to wait and see.
After our "delay", we drove down to Dunedin. When we got to the city, we instantly wished that we had more time there. The city has a lot of really amazing interesting architecture. Lots of really cool stone work. I would have loved to have had the time to explore it in full, but unfortunately we didn't too much time.
The next morning, we toured the Cadbury factory in town. The highlight of the tour was this chocolate-fall in a silo, where they dropped a tonne of liquid milk chocolate several stories past us. We now have more than enough chocolate to last us during the rest of our stay here. We couldn't resist buying a bunch of the chocolate bars here as they have all kinds of different styles compared to back home. Plus, the price of the chocolate at the
shop after the tour was only a quarter of what you would pay in a regular store.
After the tour, we did a quick walk around Dunedin and visited the rail station there. It is apparently the second most photographed building in the Southern Hemisphere (behind the Sydney Opera House).
Then we headed out to Te Anau. On the way, we passed beautiful rolling green hills with lots and lots of sheep. They are so fun to watch as we drive by because right now it is the lambing season so there are almost as many lambs as adult sheep! The lambs are really cute. We often see them tagging along after their mothers, no doubt waiting for a little meal, or playing with each other. Watching the sheep has definitely entertained me during the hours of driving that we are doing. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get many pictures because there aren't a lot of shoulders on the roads here so it is difficult to pull over and get photos.
The next day, we drove out to Milford Sound and took a cruise there. It was both a blessing and a curse that it was
raining the whole time. It was good because the rain created hundreds of temporary waterfalls that cascaded down the sides of the mountains and were really incredible. But it was too bad because the clouds were low and prevented us from getting a really good grasp of the size of the mountains around the fjord. In any case, we made the most of the experience even though it meant standing out on the deck of the boat in the wind and rain. The captain of the boat was able to do some really incredible things because the mountain walls go straight down making it very deep even at the water's edge. During two instances, he drove the front of the boat right under a rushing waterfall! For the first one, they told us that the best view would be at the front, but be prepared to get wet by the spray. Then we watched him inch closer and closer to the waterfall, and then finally the water was rushing all over the deck! Two guys were not so quick about moving back and got totally soaked! For the next waterfall, everyone knew better then to stand right up front!
The drive to Milford Sound and back was very scenic. There were lots of temporary waterfalls like in the sound. You also have to travel through the narrow Homer tunnel, which was over a kilometer long. It was quite difficult to really determine how wide the tunnel was as it was poorly lit and there were no lines on the road. Every once in awhile, there would be a sign to indicate a passing bay, but the tunnel didn't seem any wider at those spots. We were lucky that there wasn't much oncoming traffic so we didn't have to worry about passing too many vehicles. We stopped at a couple of spots on the way back to Te Anau and saw many Kea, which are the only mountain parrot in the world. They weren't very scared of people because I guess they have gotten used to being fed by them. We didn't get a really good picture of them to show their colours, but they are mostly green with bright orange under their wings and on their backs.
That evening when we got back to our hostel, we ran into one of the Canadian girls that we had met
on our Abel Tasman tour! How strange to run into each other again at the same hostel after a week of travelling in opposite directions.
Next we headed to Queenstown - the thrills capital of New Zealand! We took a ride on the Shotover Jet Boats, which claim to have the most thrilling jet boat ride in the world! We enjoyed the ride and were amazed by the boats. They drove them at great speeds through the Shotover canyon, seemingly almost coming within inches of the rocks! They also did amazing 360 degree spins, which were a lot of fun. Our only complaint was that it was really expensive for the experience - probably not quite worth the price.
After the jet boat, Greg got psyched up for bungee jumping at the highest bungee jump in New Zealand - 134 metres! I opted to just watch and save myself for skydiving. We were shuttled out to the Nevis jump and I was shaking just looking at it!!! The jump takes place from this pod that is suspended by cables between two mountains. In order to get out to the pod, you ride in a little cage that takes
you along a cable out to the pod. Even that was scary because you could see the ground through the bottom of the cage. By the time we reached the pod, I was shaking like crazy - just nervous being there. Greg did a much better job of hiding his fears. When it came time for his jump, he didn't even hesitate before throwing himself off the platform! He said that it was only scary for the first second, but then he enjoyed the ride. He didn't find that there was much of a jolt when he reached the bottom of the cord - just a smooth ride. When he was hauled back up, he was keen to go again, but declined after finding out it would be $100 for the second jump (you don't want to know what the first one cost!).
Later in the afternoon, we relaxed by taking a hike up to the top of the Gondola in Queenstown. We saw some great views of the city and surrounding mountains from the top.
The next day we headed out to Wanaka, where we had booked tandem skydiving. We were in luck that we had better
weather than when we tried to go in Taupo. When we arrived, we watched a one minute video about positioning and then we were delared ready to go. We were in the third group of people to go up, so we had a chance to watch a few people come down before going. I thought that waiting would make me really nervous, but incredibly I didn't get too worked up. When it came our time, we were geared up in our suits and harnesses and introduced to our tandem masters. Then we were loaded into the plane - packed in like sardines! We had a scenic flight up to our diving altitude of 12,000 feet. We could see snow covered mountain ranges and beautiful lakes. The flight alone was pretty cool. Then it was time to jump. Greg was the first one out of the plane and I was fourth. We didn't have much time to be scared or hesitate as basically the tandem master moved us out to the open doorway. We got in our diving position - hips out, legs back under the plane, hands on our harnesses at our chest, and head back on the tandem master's
shoulder - then we were out and flying through the air!!!! It was absolutely incredible!!!!! We had 45 seconds of freefall, which was utterly surreal. We were so high up that it didn't even seem like we were getting closer to the ground. Then, the chute was pulled and it all became real quiet as the wind stopped rushing past my ears. From there we floated down. We did a few spins, which were pretty exciting. The landing was nice and easy. We were instructed to lift our legs up and then we were instructed to either sit or stand depending on our tandem master's instructions. I completed mine standing up and Greg got the pleasure of grass stains on his suit. The whole experience was fantastic! I was very surprised that I didn't get scared. Greg was also fearless as usual. What a great experience!
After the skydiving, we went to Puzzling World, which is an attraction here that offers all kinds of optical illusions as well as a 2 story maze. The object of the maze was to reach each of the towers in the four corners and then to get out of the maze. Greg managed
to get to the four towers first, but I beat him out of the maze, so we declared ourselves both winners. The illusions were also a lot of fun. We had good time trying to get some interesting photos.
In the evening, we met up with an Israeli couple that we had originally met in Queenstown and went to the Paradiso movie theatre here. The theatre is set up with old couches so its as if you're watching the movie from someone's living room. The movie playing was "Married Life" which was pretty good although not a typical pick for us.
Now, we're still in Wanaka. We've adjusted our plans once again after a big storm came through NZ last night and this morning and brought snow to some of the mountainous areas that we had been planning to go to and we didn't want to risk getting stuck since we fly to Singapore in a few days.
Hope all is going well back home. We're both missing fall, our favourite season. Enjoy the leaves for us!
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Lynne
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I love the blog!
Finally caught up on the entries(I'm procrastinating)--awesome info! So glad you guys were ok after the accident--did your airbags deploy? I can't believe the dolphins weren't out to play in NZ--maybe they were cold. I remember those half car/truck vehicles in Australia--I think they call them utes (for utility vehicle). I also remember kangaroos on the road--how can something so cute be such a road hazard? Happy Thanksgiving--is turkey on the menu for the weekend?