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Published: October 10th 2006
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SORRY TO KEEP REMINDING, BUT THERE ARE TWO ENTRIES FOR QUEENSTOWN PRIOR TO THIS BLOG IF YOU HAVENT ALREADY SEEN THEM...Just dont want you all to miss out!
Oh my lord, what an experience we have had these past few days. I dont even think words can even describe it and we hope the pictures do it justice. We had a very early start on Thursday, and it was so cold in Queenstown..cant wait for the hot sun in Sydney. We had the most informative and interesting coach journey. 8 hours but seemed like only a few. The Newmans coach service offer a first class service by talking and showing you the sights with many stops for photo opportunities. This week we have seen Lake Wanaka, please see the great photo with the jetty and the reflection of the mountains, we have decided to have that one framed. Also at the lunch stop on the journey Amanda managed to find some day old lambs which she had to cuddle. It was sad as it was also surrounded by many dead baby lambs, but hey thats life! Survival of the fittest and all, but see the photo it made her day!
Never known such an animal lover!! We also stopped to see some lovely waterfalls, see pics. We arrived at Fox Glacier about 4.30 and god was it a little remote town, no ATM machine for half an hour down the road!! And yes internet access was also remote. The Motel however, was fantastic, best so far! King Size bed, Kitchen, Sky tv, the whole lot for about 14 pound per night, thats what we like! We have been cooking for ourselves each night (well shall we say Amanda cooks and Steve washes up) to save some pennies, we have done nearly 2000 pounds each already, but god its worth it. The next day in Fox we decided to book the Glacier Hike, we decided it would be too much money to do the HeliHike, which means getting a Helicopter to the top of the glacier and hiking, very extreme but one would see parts of the glacier not possible by foot...and very high! arrgghh, after looking at the brochure we ummed and arrggged over it and although money was tight, we had to sign up for it, its a once in a lifetime opportunity and hey thats why we are
here. We pictured our family saying just do it so thats what we did. And we have to say its the best thing we have ever done. On par with the sky dive and Steve plummenting from a bridge. We have to say what we did was extreme and we didnt realise exactly how dangerous it was. The helicopter ride was nothing like a plane, smooth and we saw views like only from our dreams. As for landing on the glacier..wow. Not a soul insight! We got out crouched to the floor and waited for the helicopter to fly off. Thats when we got our crampons on (spikes for our walking boots), poles and with the guide in front we followed him, under strict instructions to mirror his every step. What you see in the pictures is not snow, its nothing like it, just solid ice and with one false move can cut your hand open. There were crevets and drops so deep also one false move the guide said you could fall down and it would crush you to death. Althouh scary thoughts, what we saw and experienced was just breath taking. It was a lovely day, pure blue
skies and the water in the glaciers is a piercing turqoise blue due to the light reflections. There was one very should we say scary part....crawling through a glacier, each guide comes accross something new everyday and Graham (our guide) decided he would make us crawl through a very large glacier. It was very narrow (approx two foot) but the ice was slanted. We basically crawled through horrizontally, and got very wet on one side. One had to be agile and fit for this trek....yes we were knackered after! lol! It seemed never ending, scary, and would be for a clostraphobic! But the end result was immense. views and scenery out of this world. We also were able to fit down some of the crevets, see Amanda down one in the picture. She also took a photo from down there, see photo looking out of the glacier to see the people on our tour an Steve on the right, with the mountains and sky behind. It got better and better, like we said words cant describe...then the battery on the camera went. But there were two great couples on the tour who took photos for us and they are sending
them to us. So more pics to come, but hope you like the ones we have. There are also some taken from the helicopter. The next day we planned to walk a one and a half hour walk to Lake Mattheson, but we couldnt, it rained all day and with no umbrella we were motal bound. And guys you thought it rained in England...you have seen nothing, we have seen no rain in NZ until this time. All day and it came down hard. Very disappointed but we were thankful we saw the glaciers the day before as we were actually going to book for Sat but the Glacier company explained that there were free spaces on the day we enquired so we did it that day. We have fantastic pics of Lake Wanaka so we are not too disapointed. We are now back in Queenstown for two days then back to Auckland where we loved. We have found out there is Wagamamas there (our fav restaurant) so we are now in search for it. Then on the 12th its off to the sunny land of Oz. Will be weird going from a ski town to a hot place, but
good that no more need for fleeces and jumpers. Today we woke and there had been snow fall in the night. The mountain are covered, see the picture that we took today, looks gorge! There are few more things we want to do in Queenstown and also we want to see Auckland Harbour bridge. So we will try and update again in a few days. Lots Love Steve and Amanda
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mitchell
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beauty!!!!!
The place looks amazing!!!! Everytime i see your blogs i just want to get up and leave. I even think about taking Kate with me.... but not for long!! You seem to have blown alot of money. I always thought that Steve was allergic to the stuff. Or was that just the bar??? Glad your both still doing well and i shall speak to you both soon.