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Published: July 30th 2010
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“Welcome to Lord of the Rings Country!!”, yells the guide book and you only have to drive for about 5 minutes on the South Island to realise why Peter Jackson chose to film it here!! Every turn in the road unveils another jaw dropping sight, whether its giant snow capped peaks, lush green hills or mirror lakes. It’s hard to concentrate on reading with all that scenery either side of you so we give up eventually and just gawp out of the window!
We meet our new magic bus drive in Piction for our stint on the South Island. He’s a nice guy, but reminds me of a young version of Murray from Flight of the Conchords! Everything is ‘random’ or ‘awesome’, and it gets tiring after a while. He drives us down to Nelson, where we have our first lie-in for a week.
Nelson is a really nice town and I could well imagine living here. The backpacker we’re staying in is called Tasman Bay and has a nice homely feel. It’s like staying at your Gran’s house and our favorite perk is that they give you free chocolate pudding and ice cream, every night at 8pm. What
a great idea! On our ‘day off’ we go for a hike to the ‘centre of New Zealand’ which give us a brilliant view of the surrounding area.
Feeling recharged we make our way down south and make a stop in Greymouth ,staying in a quirky backpacker called Noah’s Ark. Every room has an animal theme and we end up in the Leopard room, complete with leopard wall paper and a leopard skin blanket. Nice.
We make a visit to the local Montieths brewery for a tour and get to do some beer tasting - they even let us pour our own. The tour includes a meal in a nearby pub and we meet some of the local characters - they’re mental, but very friendly. Everytime Clio introduces herself, they yell ‘Like the magazine!?’ - apparently they have a magazine in NZ called Cleo.
After diner, I take the lead and encourage everyone to play a few rounds of Singstar Karaoke, which impresses the local drinkers!
Another highlight is our stay in Franz Josef and we take on the famous Glacier Hike ,which is a fantastic experience. We get supplied boots, spikes and jackets and make our way
up the glacier, going through ice holes and checking out the stunning scenery…lots of great photo opportunities. After 4 hours on the ice, we head back to the hostel and we have the luxury of a VCR player in our room. We watch ‘Lord of the Rings’ (predictable).
When we finally arrive in Queenstown, all the days are starting to blur together. Scott the driver loves a random stop so every 2 minutes we pull up somewhere random. We see gold mining towns, glade stone shops, hunter cafes (where you can buy possum pie) and Cape Foulwind (where you can see actual seals just hanging out on the rocks).
Queenstown is such a cool place and we decide to set up camp for a few days to check out as much we can. It’s also freezing cold, so we rush into the nearest outdoor shop and by some gloves and thermal socks! I wasn’t expecting it to look like it does, suddenly we feel like we’re on a ski holiday (without the skiing). There’s loads of quirky bars and every shop is either a ski shop or an adventure shop. If you’ve got the money you can do
everything from bungy to jet boating! The original plan was to have a go at Paragliding, as I was a little bit concerned about how my back would cope with anything more strenuous (also, our money can only cover so many adventures!).
However, after hearing the millionth person talk about how amaaaaaaazing their sky dive was, we decide to go for it. So the next morning we’re booked in at 9am to jump out of a plane!
The next day it’s quite cloud so I thought it would be cancelled but it cleared up very quickly and soon we were dressed in our jumping gear and gradually climbing in a little plane to our final altitude of 12,000 feet!!! It was terrifying and amazing at the same time, with your feet dangling over the edge of the plane! The actual freefall (which was the best bit) only lasted about 40 seconds, but it was the highlight. So so glad we did it, although we didn’t get any photos - we would’ve had to pay an extra 180 quid!! We’ve got a good snap of us in our gear before we set off and a certificate as proof!
So now we’ve got 2 more nights in Queenstown and our private room in the hostel has a shared living area which we’re cohabiting with a German family (Mum and 2 teenage children), which is a little strange but they’re very friendly. We’ve met lots of random people here, including a girl who was on ‘New Zealand’s next top model’
Anyway, I’ll wrap this up now as I need to go and make tea. Next stop is Dunedin as we travel back up to Auckland. We’re having an amazing time so far and can’t believe all the stuff we’ve done. There’s a few things we’ve missed out because we just don’t have the money, like Milford Sounds and Abel Tasman…but we’ve seen enough amazing sights to keep us happy and I’m sure there’s a few more adventures to come
Ali and Clio (like the magazine) x
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Lisa Speakman
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Wow! Sounds like you're having so much fun!! I loved New Zealand and it makes me sick with jealously that you're there having so much fun. I can vouch for the fact that it does actually get very very hot, when we were staying near Auckland it was around 46c with a burn time of 5 minutes!! Gutted you had a bad experience of Wellington, we lived there for about 4 months and loved every minute of it. When I was in Asia and said my name was Lisa, everyone said "Oh, like the perfume??" still haven't seen a perfume called Lisa... haha. Keep enjoying the rest of your travels! I'm sure you will.... xxx