Advertisement
Published: June 25th 2006
Edit Blog Post
WOW - the South Island is even more beautiful than the North Island if you can believe that. Took a flight over from Welly to Picton - a little 12 seater and had amazing views of Picton Sound and Marlborough Sound. Also papped Jonah Lomu's house which sits on top of a cliff on the edge of Wellington.
First stop on the tour was to a vineyard in Marlborough - hooray! Wine tastings at 11am are very effective - put everyone in a very jolly mood for the rest of the day. First real stop was at Abel Tasman national park. We stayed at a dive of a place called Old MacDonald's Farm, although I don't ever recall in the nursery rhyme that Old MacDonald had some alpacas? The main event here was sailing but when the guy came to talk us about it he mentioned that the catamaran needed to be moved on the high tide at midnight so that we would be able to get to it in the morning. He needed a couple of volunteers as he was operating single-handed so after drinking all of the wine we'd bought at the vineyard off we trooped down the
They look like rocks...
but they are seals - honestly! road to his house, where he was very hospitable and gave us all a shot of tequila to keep us warm before heading out to bring in the boat - seemed rude to refuse.
The sailing trip the next day was great - beautiful weather, calm seas, gorgeous views and we even spotted some seals - to be honest they looked like brown rocks to me, though admittedly one of them did move so I took the guides word for it that it was actually a seal. The boat dropped us off a few kilometers up the coast and we walked back.
Baz Vegas was the next stop - real name Barrytown, though this is an exaggeration of the worst kind as I'm not sure that one pub and about a dozen houses constitutes a town. We stayed at the pub, which was great for football - the landlady was English and happy to get up at 4 am and light a fire for us so that we could watch the match on Sky in comfort. She even made us toast and tea!! The locals came in in their droves (well, about 6 of them) in the evening
and they mostly put me in mind of the cast of Deliverance (I kept hearing the Duelling Banjo's in my head - it wasn't good..).
The drive down the West Coast was beautiful - we stopped at Pancake Rocks, though the blowholes weren't up to much - story of my life (apparently the tide was not high enough). The whole west coast is really rugged and empty and in parts the roads wound round mountains in quite a hairy fashion - Dazza the drive decided to test his skills as a potential F1 driver which made a few people on the bus a bit green. I think that the town councils in NZ must be even tighter with their budgets than in the UK because in some places where the road crossed a river it doubled as a railway track too - though only single carriage so you had to check then put your foot down and hope you made it over before a train came along.
Franz Josef was a nice little place and from there I did a glacier walk on the Franz Josef glacier. It was quite hard work - mostly because the boots they
Does my bum look big in this?
Rear view of me crawling through an ice tunnel on the Franz Josef glacier. gave me felt like the old-fashioned weighted diver's boots - I swear they had concrete soles. I also managed to get a blister before we even reached the glacier. Once actually on the glacier we had to crawl through ice caves, hoist ourselves up through very narrow crevices and walk along narrow ledges but it was worth it. I just followed the generously sized Australian woman as that gave me confidence that if she could get through any narrow gaps then I wouldn't have any problems. Had a funny evening that night with some of the guys from the bus and Daz the drive. Daz tried to make everyone do a trick with sambuca which involved lighting the sambuca in the glass and applying it to your bare backside to create a vacuum. I'm happy to report that I declined, but I did get them all setting fire to sambuca in their mouths. We're doing good work - the joy of flaming sambucas is spreading throughout the world.
Best ever day so far this trip was when I threw myself out of a plane at 12,000 feet over Wanaka!! It was amazing - I had views of snow covered
Front view
some would say it's not much of an improvement... mountains, lakes and rivers - truly awesome (or 'sweet as' as the Kiwi's say). Having a guy called Eugene strapped behind me was an experience in itself. I managed to keep my quite calm as we went up and as soon as we left the plane I was screaming with delight. The freefall was a huge buzz and when he pulled the chute and we were floating around it was so peaceful I wanted to be a bird. Then he started spinning around which was fun. I had a handy-cam done where Eugene was filming me from a camera on his wrist. I think I may have had a runny nose at one point, but hopefully this wouldn't have been caught on camera. One of the guys from the bus, Ben, also did it and when we were in the plane I noticed that he had a huge bogey hanging from his nose, but I didn't really know how to tell him - hopefully the freefall might have dislodged it, otherwise it'll be there on his film!!
I'm getting used to backpacking again now (it's been a few years) and all the joys are coming back to me -
Perils of walking on the glacier
???? is it in danger of instant melt-down? the scramble in the dorm to get a bottom bunk (I don't know anyone who prefers to be on top in these instances); the shared kitchen and bathroom facilities (quite impressed with the cleanliness of NZ hostels in the main, but that's compared to South America so not saying much) and the dawn chorus of people talking in mock whispers and plastic bags and ruck-sacks rustling - there's always one person leaving at some hideous hour.
Queenstown is billed as the adrenalin capital of NZ with the world's second highest bungy here. I confess that I decided not to bother, having used my adrenalin quota for the week on the sky-dive. I did a day's ski-ing though, which was brilliant (not my ski-ing, just the enjoyment of it if you get what I mean), and then went jet-boating on the Shotover River which involves a very fast boat doing loads of 360 degree turns in a narrow canyon next to some very steep and jagged rock faces. Brilliant fun, although the woman in front who was throwing up over the side probably wouldn't agree with me. I followed this with a helicopter ride up to the top of the
Before the sky-dive
this year the checkered jump suit is all the rage in Wanaka... gondola in Queenstown to get some pix of the surrounding mountains - Coronet Peak where I skied and The Remarkables - what a great name for a mountain range.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.097s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 8; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0433s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Rosie
non-member comment
Carole Ann
you obviously have to go to great lengths to get a man on your back these days, love Rosie