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Published: August 4th 2008
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Hi!
Hope the Summer's going OK back home. We've recently experienced a lot of snowy and icy conditions if it makes you feel any better, although I heard the weather was pretty good back home at one point. We flew into Christchurch and spent a couple of days in the city known as the 'most English town outside of England'. Its quite sleepy compared to most cities but its quite picturesque and has a nice old feel to it. New Zealand is generally qutie sparsely populated and quiet, boasting a lot of nice scenery, but then again what do you expect from a country that has only 4 million people and a staggering 47 million sheep? Our hostel was located on Cathedral Square, which was pretty much all we saw of the place becuase we slept in until midday having arrived at our hostel at about one in the morning after our flight in from Melbourne. We made use of the afternoon by booking some of our activities and accommodation for the first 10 days of our stay in New Zealand. On our second day in Christchurch we took a day trip to Hanmer Springs, a really nice little town
about two hours away. As with most jouneys in NZ, it was incredibly scenic and green. Another thing I've really enjoyed about our coach journeys in New Zealand is the commentary you get, ranging from extremely interesting facts about the area to stuff like, "to your left is a dairy farm" or the explanation as to why there's so many Japanese cars around. Its nice to see how proud the Kiwis are of their country. We arrived, had lunch and then went to the thermal pools, for which Hanmer Springs is famous. With the air being a bit chilly the pools created a steamy mist which added to their appeal and the snow capped mountains all around really made it quite a relaxing spot. The pools themselves ranged from 27 degrees to 42 degrees and they had different types such as sulphur, thermal and fresh water. Amy read somewhere why they are so good and enhance you well being but I cant quite remember the scientific reasons behind it. I do remember feeling a bit flushed and light headed when we came out of the really hot ones and on the way back we slept like babies.
From Christchurch
we headed to Franz Josef to hike up the famous glacier. To get there we caught the TranzAlpine Express to Greymouth which has been voted as one of the top five train journeys in the world as it goes through the Southern Alps of New Zealand, providing some pretty stunning views. They gave a bit of commentary on the train too, telling us about a guy who's name they dont know (but he's known as 'Rambo' apparently) who lives up there in a little house on his own and survives. You've gotta love stuff like that. From Greymouth we caught our coach connection the rest of the way to Franz Josef, the second wettest place in the world. Guess what, it rained a lot. It is a rainforest though, so we let it off. The hike itself was an amazing experience. The glacier was one of those things that makes you feel really insignificant because its so vast and impressive. We saw plenty of blue ice and had to go through a couple of tight ice tunnels. The weather got gradually worse as we climbed the glacier and we became well and truly soaked through. Lucky for us, our hostel
did free hot soup every night and had a free hot spa to rest your aching muscles which we were sure to take advantage of.
Our next destination was the popular ski resort, Queenstown. Skiing was something we'd never imagined being able to afford on our budget but we were surprised to find it was really cheap to do so signed up for three days of it with Ski Express, which included unlimited lessons, equipment, accommodation, bus transfers to the slopes, everything. With it being Amy's first experience of skiing and with my skiing experience being limited to one week eight years ago so we decided to attend the lessons so as to not pick up bad habits. The instructors were really good and really technical too and we found ourselves progressing nicely. By the afternoonof our first day at 'The Remarkables', we were up on the chair lift to have a go at some steeper terrain. On our second day we went to the other ski slope called 'Coronet Peak' to see what it had to offer, a much shorter 20 minute journey, which unlike the 50-minute journey to 'The Remarkables' didnt go along the riskiest looking road
on the edge of a cliff. Once again we enjoyed the skiing and were constantly gaining confidence. We spent our third and final day at 'The Remarkables' because we preferred it slightly. We had progressed so well that we got taken up to intermediate slopes and given some really technical lessons and came away pretty pleased with ourselves and extremely tired having been up as early as half six before a full day of skiing. Were getting old you see.
That night we went to Buffalo Club and met up with some Scottish girls who we'd met in our lessons. The Kiwi beers went down very well that night. They had a really good live band on who's bass player was a dead ringer for my Uncle John back in the beard days which was quite amusing. Never had you down as a rock star JT!
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