Blogs from Mount Cook National Park, South Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 14

December 17, 2007 As I write this, I am sitting here alone in someone’s car that I met only three hours ago, and I will remain here alone for roughly twenty-four hours. If this is confusing to you then let me tell you the story of today. Today’s events actually started yesterday night at the hostel, where I saw a post on the bulletin board about a guy heading towards Queenstown the next morning with room in his car. The post mentioned sharing fuel costs so we said forget it-- we’d hitchhike instead. So we took the city bus out to the edge of Christchurch the next morning and began to hitchhike. Nothing happened for quite awhile besides a few conversations with strange people walking down the road until a car with two girls and a ... read more

Well, let's start with the small annoyances part and get that out of the way shall we: I lost my camera. ! digital camera and about 150 pictures (1 months worth) gone. Not entirely sure how it happened either. Fallen out of my pocket at some point in time I guess. I checked with the 2 places I was since I knew I had it last and neither had heard anything nor have they still so I'm counting it as in someone else's possession. Bleh - oh well, on to the other. So since the last writing we headed over to the West coast of New Zealand for the first time since being in Auckland and it is very different. The landscapes are just incredible...absolutely incredible! We started our West Coast trip in Fiordland national park. ... read more

Laura and I left Rita and Alan in Dunedin and headed to Mt Cook to have a look at the mountain from the other side. The drive there was spectacular with the mountains reflecting in the amazing blue of the lakes. We met back up with them in Lake Tekapo, where we had an ice cream then headed off to a town called Fairlie for a great pub dinner! We then drove to Christchurch where we explored the botanical gardens and art centre before having a few beers in a Begium pub by the river Avon. We had our last supper in Rita and Alan's hotel before saying our goodbyes. They flew back to England and we had one day before we flew off to Australia.... read more

We are woken by the sun. Huh? That's weird!! But yes it's true. Brilliant sunshine coming over the mountains to our east. Not only that but the skies are almost clear of clouds. It is very gusty but it's such a huge contrast to yesterday when we arrived. Breakfast is included in our room rate as is a free shuttle to the main building which we take to save us some time. It'd be a 15 min uphill walk otherwise! It's a typical buffet breakfast, not much to write home about! So I won't. :-) We're booked in to do a tour at 2pm with Glacier Explorers. That means we have a couple of hours to fill in. We head off to the Hooker Valley Road and walk the "Kea Point" track; it's about 30 mins ... read more

After an overnight stop at Jollies Pass, we were off early to complete the trip back to Queenstown. Well actually, we bypassed QT completely and went straight to our favourite Arrowtown campsite for a shower, to wash some clothes and some R & R. Keen to give the Queenstown Winter Festival a second chance we drove to Coronet Peak ski field where the ‘Big Air’ jump event was being held that afternoon....oh no it wasn’t, cancelled due to LACK of snow, only just a little ironic a week after too much had caused complete chaos. With a quick change of plan we headed over to the nearby Kawarau Gorge, famous for another LOTR site, the ‘Pillars of the Kings’ and as where A.J.Hackett set up the first ever bungee jump. The next morning we woke feeling ... read more