A Kiwi Experience

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The South Island of New Zealand, dear reader, is one of the world's most beautiful travel destinations. While most of the population and industry are concentrated on the North Island, mother nature has blessed the South Island with an abundance of natural beauty. In fact the stunning surroundings are enough to take your breath away. The journal continues from where we left off in Wellington, in company with the Kiwi Experience bus team that started our adventures out of Auckland. Our driver loaded the bus and his passengers on to the Interislander ferry, and we settled down for the three hour crossing of the Cook Strait before arriving in Picton. We'd landed in the south, and were ready to explore and experience new Kiwi adventures!

Our itinerary took us down the west coast, where we enjoyed the beautiful views from the bus. We stayed overnight in Lake Mahinapua where we linked up with another Kiwi X bus team heading up the coast for the legendary fancy dress party. At the hotel the guys sifted through piles of dresses and heels in order to find a stunning little number for the evening, while the girls got to work with scissors for some haute couture designs of equally fetching numbers ... designed from garbage bags! It was a riotous party, and everyone had loads of fun.

From there the bus headed further south, and most of us signed up for a day trip climbing the Franz Josef glacier. Our guides got us sorted with the right gear for the climb, including crampons and poles to help us take on the ice. We spent a magical but very wet day exploring the maze of crevasses and ice caves on the glacier. The views were stunning, but a few of the Latino lads were struggling badly at day's end as they unwisely chose to wear jeans on the glacier. They were sodden, frozen and miserable mountaineers; but perked up remarkably as soon as we made it back to the heated bus for the ride home. Those lads really did know how to party after dark though, and on at least one occasion got me a little out of shape on tequila slammers.

On the South Island the hits just keep on coming, and the next stop was a day on Milford Sound, which is another spectacular travel destination. It's actually a fjord that was incorrectly named in the first instance, but what a majestic place it is! We took a bus up and into the Sound and then wound down to the jetty with absolutely stunning views. From the jetty we climbed aboard for a boat trip around the Sound on a day of heavy rain. Milford Sound gets the heaviest rainfall in the country and we were treated to streams of water cascading down from over 1000 metres into the water in a glorious show of nature.

There's no rest for the wicked in NZ, and the bus pushed on to Queenstown which is one of the most beautiful towns I've visited and a mecca for adventure sports. The cable car to the mountain summit affords incredible views of the city in summer, and doubles as a famous ski resort in winter. We also enjoyed a frantic jetboat ride on the Shotover river, with our driver thundering down the river while skimming the coast and lurching into increasingly radical manoeuvres. I was having a superb time of it in NZ, but had quickly come to the conclusion that the Kiwis are crazy! Other people on the bus were excited by the chance to jump off a perfectly sound bridge in the country that invented bungy jumping. For myself, I was happy just to watch the madcap adventurers, and also managed to restrain myself from jumping out of a mechanically sound aeroplane from 20,000 feet. I must be a killjoy to pass on these activities in the world capital of adventure sports!

The next stop on our itinerary was Wanaka, which is another beautiful town on a lake. My jaw was permanently on the floor thanks to the postcard perfect views on offer throughout NZ. The only destination I've visited to rival the beauty of the South Island is Tasmania, but I wouldn't tell the Kiwis that! This particularly applied to my driver, as I was the only Aussie on the bus and he had a microphone! While driving he relentlessly took the mickey out of me over the mike, causing many laughs at my expense as he told bad joke after bad joke about Aussies, and our alleged relationship with sheep. He was a great guy though and we got on famously. In fact I told him I love NZ and that I thought Kiwis were just like us, only not as intelligent! I think that smart alec remark cost me another 50 sheep jokes while riding on the bus. We had a great laugh together during the trip, and the constant banter was always in good fun.

From Wanaka we headed to the East Coast and the largest city of Christchurch. We saw in the New Year in another riotous party which included far too many tequila slammers while running with the Latinos, but it's all good! The final destination was Kaikoura, a two hour bus trip up the East Coast, which is a famous destination for whale watching and swimming with dolphins. This turned out to be one of the most memorable experiences of my life, as the dolphins we were searching for were truly wild. We raced around on the speedboat with a chopper overhead to assist with sightings, and were warned that even if we found the dolphins they would not necessarily stay around for long. Finally the boat stopped near a school of dolphins and I dived like a shot into the freezing water and swam towards them. The dolphins were still there and they were curious, one guy swam around in circles directly underneath me with his beady eye fixed on my mask, probably wondering how it's possible for any creature to be such a bad swimmer! I circled with him on the surface and returned his steady gaze in wonder, and then he suddenly shot off into the deep along with his mates. This was a truly amazing experience to conclude an incredible visit to New Zealand where, basically all of you should be here now!

Great men are rarely isolated mountain peaks; they are the summits of ranges." Thomas W. Higginson

It's home time so until next time, I'm signing off for now

Tom

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Photos

Fancy dress party, Lake Mahinapua
The guys had to wear dresses, and the girls also ... made from garbage bags!

Ice cavern on the glacier
Franz Josef is a beautiful glacier to climb and explore.

Milford Sound, South Island
This extraordinary fjord gets staggering amounts of rainfall every year, which cascades down the cliffs to the water.

Milford sound
As usual, it's raining.