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Published: March 19th 2007
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Ian... The next stop for us was Kaikoura where they specialise in whale watching, dolphin swimming and fish and chips. We only partook of the latter of these options as the thought of being stuck on a boat for hours on end, staring at the sea to, hopefully, see the tail of a whale didn’t really appeal to us - especially as we have some grand plans later in out holiday to see whale sharks - kind of a two for the price of one viewing. Instead, we opted to go for a short stroll along the peninsular to see what could be seen. As with all things physical that involve Rach, we ended up travelling much much further than originally intended (well, at least as I originally intended!). In fact, we walked the entire circumference of the peninsular - and that without any water or food. Fortunately, we came across a lovely open air stall selling lobsters, fried fish sandwiches and other assorted oddities from the sea. I plumped for the fried fish while Rachy went straight for the oddities - all washed down with a bottle of organic lemonade - it was absolutely delicious! To top it
all off, just as we finished the walk, somewhat exhausted and footsore, we stumbled across a little pub with a lovely beer garden. Feeling obliged to support the local economy; I insisted that we made use of the facility. The garden was lovely, only marred slightly by the 70 year old lady at the pool table who was farking this and farking that all over the place and many other words that you just don’t expect to hear from little old ladies; Rach wondered whether she was a product of the Swiss finishing school system, but I tended more towards the Saaf London school myself.
We decided that, as we weren’t going to do any wildlife watching, we should press on to somewhere that offered a little more in the way of walking opportunities for us, besides which, it was forecast rain over pretty much all of the South Island the next day anyway so it would be better to travel than to have arrived. With that in mind, we chose to go to Arthur’s pass village located slap bang in the middle of the Southern Alps. Naturally, the weather was glorious the next day and we spent the
Wetness at Arthur's Pass
... and it really was very very wet! day sweltering in the cab en route. The weather only started to take a turn for the worse as we neared our destination and started looking for a place to park the van. By the time we had chosen to stay at the DOC campsite (the only option available it seemed), there were rivers running down the main road. Once we had stationed the van, Rach started to do some exercising, so in order to escape this, I donned my full waterproofs and went for a wade through town. It was on my way out that I noticed a sign that said something like “Warning, this campsite is suffering from a PLAGUE of mice, please be sure to put all rubbish in bins and campervanners, make sure you close your doors at night!”. Not much danger of us leaving the door open overnight I thought as the water was now ankle high and rising and thought no more of it other than to mention it to Rach on my return. That evening, after a nice meal in the van to the sound of a flood washing over the roof, and after having consumed more wine that we probably should have,
Rachy climbing on boulders
Can you make out the snowy peaks in the background? Rach suddenly sat bolt upright and exclaimed that she had just seen a mouse in the cab! I quickly looked over but didn’t see anything and so thought that perhaps she had imagined it. I mean, how could a mouse get into the van - we were parked in the middle of a lake and at least a foot off the ground? Soon enough however, I caught a glimpse of one and that was the end of the relaxing evening. We couldn’t move on as we were not really in a good condition to drive, and anyway, it was late and there was nowhere else to go, so we came up with the idea of trying to make an impassable chemical lake of Jiff fluid between the living area and the cab that no mouse in it’s right mind would try to wade across. I think we used the entire bottle and then settled in for a nice night of insomnia where every time we heard a scratch or shuffle, we sat up and turned the flashlight on it to see if our chemical warfare effort was still having the desired effect. Fortunately for us, either the barricade worked or
the mouse decided that there were better pickings to be had elsewhere, but whatever the reason, the mouse did not enter the living area. The next morning it was still schlepping it down outside, so, after moving the van into what we hoped was a non-mouse infested car park, we donned our rain gear and went out for a tramp. What a lovely walk it was, we had all weather conditions from rain, hailstones, rainbows to blazing hot sunshine. We waded across rivers and clambered over rockslides and ducked through sodden wet forests all the while climbing up a valley until we could go no further. At which point, of course, sandwiches were produced and eaten (the whole purpose of the walk to some in our party) and then we set off back down again. Once back at the van, we decided that we would go in search of better weather rather than stay another night in the steaming metropolis of Arthur’s peak village…
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