Who needs a jet boat when you can lay your hands on a helicopter?

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Thursday 19 February

Leaving Kaikoura and the whales behind I set off for Hanmer Springs, a little detour inland on my journey down to Christchurch. Here, there are natural thermal pools which the Maori people had been using therapeutically for generations, then along came the Europeans and "discovered" them and their uses! There are nice forests and rivers in the area too, so it makes a natural getaway place for locals and tourists alike. The thermal resort has been set up into different pools of temperatures ranging from 29C to 40C. The 40C sulphur pool looks like it has bits of ash floating in it - I suppose that could be what it is, given that it comes from a volcanic source - it also stinks. They don't like you to stay too long in that pool for fear of dehydration, but between the heat and the smell you wouldn't want to! A lot of the pools were just like sitting in the bath, but without the bubbles. It was nice and relaxing and then a group of about 20 six year olds came in with their teacher, so by then I'd had enough and headed off as I still had a couple of hours drive ahead of me to reach Christchurch.

Friday 20 February

A day of wandering around Christchurch and getting booked onto the high country tour (see below). It was rainy and grey here today - not a nice day at all. There is an old tram here that does a brief circuit of the city, which once you have your ticket, you can hop on and off for 2 days. The tram was decommissioned, but was later restored and brought back into use for us tourists - it just goes in a loop, I can't imagine it would be of any use to local people, when there is a very good free bus shuttle. I did a full circuit on the tram, then started to get off at different stops. I saw Cathedral Square, which you can probably guess has the Christchurch Cathedral in it. I saw the Avon River where people go punting along the river - how very quant and English! - it was too wet, and I couldn't see where they would do it from anyway - maybe further along the river. Christchurch is known as the garden city. All of it's water comes from within the city limits from underground springs, and none of it is treated because it is already so pure. I went to the Arts Centre where there are lots of arts and crafts stalls and you can talk to the artists. I spoke to a lady who was doing some weaving, and she was quite interesting. I met a lady on the tram who asked me 'is there any Scottish in your accent?', only all of it, I said! She was from Helensburgh, so would have thought she would recognise it. There is a Gondola here, which takes you up into the port hills and gives you great views over the city, but, with a day like today it wasn't worth the trek on the bus to get there - perhaps another day. It did stop raining while I was on the bus back from town, and I managed to sit out and have my tea. Not a particularly exciting day, and nothing much else to report - earlyish to bed for an early start tomorrow.

Saturday 21 February

Another very early alarm this morning, although I think the hammering of the rain on the roof maybe had me awake just before the alarm started it's racket. All in a good cause though.

My early start was to make sure I got on the first bus from South New Brighton (a suburb of Christchurch where I am staying) into the centre of town to meet my Tranz Alpine High Country Explorer Tour. I was very excited I've been looking forward to this for a while and was delighted yesterday when they had space left for today (I couldn't book before as I didn't know exactly what dates I'd be in Christchurch).

My bus nearly didn't make it into town - it was the first bus of the morning, and was just out of the depot and out to its starting point when it developed some kind of electrical fault so he had to keep stopping and resetting something, and then could only go about 5km per hour. Another bus came out and after some tinkering they decided just to switch us over - I was glad, I was starting to think I wouldn't have enough time to get from the bus station to my collection point, but I was worrying over nothing as the collection point loked further away on the map than it really was, and even with the delay, I was still there with plenty time to spare.

The first leg of our trip was on the Tranz Alpine Scenic Railway which runs from Christchurch on the East coast of the South Island all the way across to Greymouth on the West Coast. We only took it as far as Arthur's Pass, a little over half way. It runs out from Christchurch across the Canterbury Plains and heads for the Southern Alps - lovely - great views, but the clouds and mist sometimes got in the way. I took some photo's from the open air viewing car, some came out OK, others not so, but that's the beauty of the digital camera - I've only put up a very small selection of the hundreds I took, I haven't had time to go through them all and see what are just duplicates and which are just rubbish, so rather than dump them all on you, have just picked out a few random ones, hopefully they will give you a feel for the different landscapes and views they are lucky enough to have on their station.

Our tour group consisted of myself, Akimi from Japan (she makes ice cream for a living - what a great job!) and 4 Americans who are taking a break from their round the world cruise and will 'catch up with it later!' So it was a good sized group, and everyone got along well. Our tour guide Graham picked us up at the Arthur's Pass train station in the High Country Explorer 4WD, which was a 3 door truck to which they had attached the cabin of a ski vehicle, and modified in lots of other ways. The Arthur's Pass railway station is the 3rd highest station in NZ at 790m above sea level - the town itself is a little higher and has all of 50 permanent residents, although this swells in the summer and winter as it is a popular weekend hiking and skiing destination for Christchurchers. We stopped off for some views at the Otira Gorge and saw a red blooming Pohutukawa tree (this is the NZ Christmas tree) - since it is a lot cooler in the south and in the hills, it blooms a lot later than it does in the North Island - the ones in the North generally bloom around Christmas time, hence the name, and were all finished before I got there. This one was a bit difficult to photgraph in the rain though - I don't think my photo came out, and it was quite a way away anyway.

We toured through the pass and onto Flock Hill Station, which is a High Country Sheep and Cattle Station - around 35 acres and including new lambs, around 25,000 sheep, mainly Merino's. I had treated myself to some nice new 100% Merino tops - lovely and soft and very cosy in the cold and nice and cool in the heat - so now I saw where it came from. Although they have 35 acres on the station, they can't actually farm on a lot of it due to the terrain, so it has been allowed to go back to a conservation area.

We had a lovely lunch at the station homestead which has been converted into a restaurant/conference venue/motel units and campground, then were able to wander around the gardens for a while. Graham had already told us that we wouldn't be able to go on the jetboat part of our trip as the river wasn't boatable - that's his word, not mine, but he was trying to sort out an alternative. One of the owners of the Flock Hill station has a helicopter and pilot on standby - they offer scenic rides around the area to visitors, but he didn't have enough fuel after trying to impress a potential US investor; there was another helicopter available with plenty fuel but no pilot, so they were trying to work out what to do.

In the meantime, we set off on a 4WD journey across the Flock Hill Station, taking in some fantastic views. by this time the weather had cleared, and it was lovely and warm and blue skys over head - looking back towards Arthurs Pass and Christchurch we could see that they weren't being so lucky as we were, and were still getting a down pour.

Some of the scenes from the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe were filmed around this area, although I wasn't clear whether he meant over the hills on the next station, or, on this one, but somewhere near here. Anyway, it was very impressive, lots of nice views of hills and rivers, and a couple with me in the middle too. Akimi didn't like having her picture taken on her own, so any pictures that were taken of her also have me in them, doing that V sign Japanese people always do in photo's.

We made it down to the Waimakerere river to the point where normally the trip would pick up the jetboat, but, we could see why they weren't taking us out on it today - there has been a lot of rain up here over the last few days and the river was flowing so fast and full.

A decision had been made that they would bring up a pilot from Christchurch to pick up the helicopter ar Flock Hill and meet us at the river, so he came up while we were haing our 4WD trip; it was a little belljet ranger, so could only take 4 at a time. The 4 Americans set off first, whilst Graham, Akimi, a girl who came with the helicopter and myself waited. It was only to be a 15km river ride, so the helicopter wasn't long in coming back for us, although when he took off the first time he did go in the wrong direction at first, so we were a little concerned! While we were waiting it was nice and warm to sit out and have a chat. When he came back, I was allowed to sit in the front, so I had a great view. Akimi wasn't so keen, so she was sandwiched between Graham and the helicopter girl on the back seat - I'm not sure she opened her eyes the whole way along!

It was a great ride, and I got some noce photos of the river - you'll see how dirty it is with all the new water in it and pulling mud off the hills. I took a little bit of video - now that I've worked out how to do it, I think it's great - I think there will be many more video clips to come! Having watched it back though, it was much more exciting on the helicopter than it looks on the clip.

We landed at Woodstock station for tea and a biscuit and then got on a minibus for the trip back to Christchurch with some more views of the Canterbury Plains. All in all, a great day, despite the wet and early start.

Tomorrow is another early start, although not as early as today, to get into town to join a tour to Akaroa and the Banks Peninsula, which is a very French town and also has some Hectors dolphins which are both the smallest and the rarest dolphins in the world.

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