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Published: April 2nd 2007
Yip, Another year older and still the travels continue!!
I finished work on Friday the 30th of March...which was very sad. I have really enjoyed woking at Ecan and may even return one day!! The next morning I got up at 5.30am to catch the bus to Lake Tekapo to meet Rhiannon and Alison who had already started the great big road trip...blooming public transport!
From Tekapo, we headed to the Tasman Glacier. I have already visited the glacier as part of my training for work but the other two hadn't. Even though I had seen it before, the views are still spectacular!
From Tasman we headed to Wanaka to spend the night in a camp site. They had some street art displays on by "that famous guy who takes aerial photos" (sorry I forgot his name). The pictures are very interesting and really make you think! The display was centered around sustainability...something which New Zealand is very keen on, I have been finding out!
The next day was my birthday and we celebrated it in the most unusual fashion.....first of all we woke up freezing cold! I tell you, it may be blooming hot in the day but it is utterly freezing during the night! We spent the morning walking around Wanaka and went to a crazy puzzel world. It was full of optical tricks to confuse the brain including water running uphill and faces with eyes that follow you all around the world. We also saw how they managed to make the hobbits look so small in the Lord of the Rings films. It was all very funny! They also had some totally amazing holograms, one that took me by amazement was a hologram of a microscope, as you walk towards it, you can then look down the eye piece and see the object that was being magnified! Very cool!
That afternoon, we had lunch by the lakes and did a bit if planning with the help of our trusty Lonely Planet. We then headed to the cinema to see "Miss Potter". I was somewhat reluctant to see it, but the other 2 convinced me that it would be good. It was actually a lot better than I thought it was going to be. We had a really cheeky monkey of a 4 year old sitting in front of us...he made us laugh a lot! The cinema in Wanaka was fantastic, instead of rows of seats, there are rows of couches and in one corner there was an old car that you could sit in to watch the film. We opted for a couch near the front as rumor had it that at they always have an interval and serve fresh baked warm cookies. Rumor was right! Half way through the film stopped and we got giant warm cookies and a glass of milk! It was awesome!!
That night we left Wanaka (After buying some petrol, the man came running out, accusing me of not paying! Pa Chaa.....Luckily I had the receipt to prove that I had indeed purchased it legally!) and headed through the mountain pass to Arrowtown. It was a lovely sleepy town where we decided to have a bithday tea of fish and chips. The other two surprised me with a cheese scone birthday cake. Yum!
From Wanaka we headed to Queenstown and stayed the night at another DOC campsite. It was equally as cold as the night before! Then we found out that the car we had left outside Louise's house had been stolen! It had all Alisons stuff in the boot (as she was moving into a new house when we got back). We were really mad! Alison went back to Christchurch that day to start contacting the insurance people. Rhiannon and I stayed in Queenstown and did the three day Routeburn track up into the mountains. It was beautiful. We were so lucky with the weather it was unreal!! We also met lots of people as once you have trecked all day long, all you want to so is sit around with a cup of tea and chat!
After the Routeburn track a bus picked us up and took us to Milford Sounds, (wrongly named as they are not sounds but fjords!!) We did a two hour boat trip throught the bay looking at waterfalls and seals. It was very nice but the gentle rocking of the boat did make me just want to fall asleep. We then got the bus to Te Anu. On the bus I sat next to an American chap who was doing a proper tour of the world. He showed me some of his pictures of diving in the Galapagos Islands (with sharks and sting-rays!) I was very jealous indeed!
At Te Anu, we took a boat across the lake to a network of caves that have hundreds of glow worms in them. It was really exciting. After walking through part of the caves, we got on boat and travelled through the rest of the caves in the pitch dark, looking at all the glow worms. We learned some interesting facts...they are very territorial, if they catch a spider, it will keep them fed for three weeks, and they have three life stages, the final of which is a fly. The fly only lives for 36 hours as it has no mouth or stomach!
From Te Anu, we went back to Queenstown to pick up the car and then headed round the very south of the island. We went to Slope Point, the most southern part of New Zealand, Invercargill, home of the worlds fastest Indian, through the Catlins national park and to Dunedin. Dunedin was modelled on Edinburgh and ever since we have arrived, people have told me that I must go! I have to say though, I wasn't that impressed. It was however home to the worlds steepest street (I have now been to the worlds longest and steepest streets!) and an amazing walk down the coast. The walk leads to a hand dug tunnel that you walk through to get to a lovely beach. Very pretty!
From there we went to Omaru, to see the worlds rarest yellow eyed penguins. I was quite sad when we arrived and found out that you had to pay $17 to see the penguins...we were too poor to do that! But we drove round to the local DOC site and found 2 just nesting on the coast! They were so cute!
From there it was a long drive back to Christchurch where we are now. We leave here tonight to travel North to Picton which is where we get the ferry to North Island tomorrow night.
PS: Dear dear, the computer doesn't have a USB port so I will upload the photos at a later date... they are worth waiting for!!
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Pick up a penguin
I feel so sorry for the $17 penguins - the two round the corner were free in more ways than one eh! Watch out for those petrol attendants - remember My Cousin Vinny?!