Paul tries swinging!

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Days 101 to 114 of 165



Boo hoo - 2/3rds of the way through already.



We left Dunedin with nothing in particular planned for the next two days other than to drive the Southern Scenic Route all the way around the southern end of South Island and turning back northwards to Te Anau as the gateway to Milford beyond.

Basically this was a lovely drive, dipping down towards then back from mile after mile of deserted, wind blown beaches. Just the odd hardy soul braving the elements including a pair of particularly skillful kite surfers whom we watched for 20 minutes or so. This eventually bought us to Invercargill, NZ's southernmost city. And a big place with probably the least redeeming features we have encountered. Not quite 'a dump' but very workaday. A claim to fame though is that it was the home to Burt Munro, motor cycle speed freak. If you've seen the delightful film 'The World's Fastest Indian' you'll know the essence of the story.

For those who haven't, Burt owned an Indian motorcycle which he tinkered about with, bored out and turned into a speed machine complete with streamline bodywork. On a whim he took himself and bike off to the the annual Bonneville Flats Speed Trials, USA - after some kerffuffle about being admitted to the trials without preregistration he was allowed to race. His machine was 47 years old when he rode it at Bonneville in 1967. And Burt was 68 then!!

The record he set, for a particular type of under 1000cc motor cycle category, still stands today, 50 years later!!

The original bike (but not the streamlining) is privately owned by a hardware store owner and on display there along with many other motorcycles. And yes, we went for a look.

We also caught La La Land at the cinema there. Nice film, but maybe a tad over-rated in some of the reviews, but will probably do well in the Oscars.

On leaving Invercargill we swung south for 20km to go, almost, to NZ mainland's southern tip at Bluff, famous for its oysters and signposted as being 4810km from the South Pole. Hopefully, some time, we will get much closer than that to the Antarctic, but for now North beckoned. And later that afternoon we reached Te Anau and picked up our Milford Track tickets.

Next day, day 103, we drove the road to Milford Sound, possibly one of the nicest drives you will take anywhere. Swapping between jaw dropping distant vistas and high cliff walls, there is a new, splendid view around every turn. Especially when approaching the Homer Tunnel. As you drive further up the valley you see ahead of you a seemingly impassable shear cliff wall towering for hundreds of metres above the road. However in 1935 start was made on tunnelling 1.2km through to join the Te Anau and Milford Sound sides. What with interruption for WW2, avalanches and other mishaps it took until 1953 until it was opened. And some years later before it was tarmac-ed (rather than gravel), and widened. Even now it is traffic light controlled, for one way traffic, and as rough as what inside - both the road surface, and the granite walls which are unlined.

What the tunnel has done though is make Milford Sound accessible and a mecca for tourists.

Having spent the night, Saturday, at Milford Sound Lodge we awoke on the Sunday with the intention of starting the Milford Track on our booked slot later that day. The Milford Track is one of the NZ Great Walks, and the most difficult to get tickets for for the 3 overnight huts and associated to/from transport. We bought our slots within 5 minutes of them going on sale last Spring. Just a few hours later they were sold out from October through to March.

However, and those of you who also see our Facebook page will know this, in the end we didn't go. On the Sunday morning it was raining cats & dogs, thunder & lightning, stair rods...... And the weather forecast for the Tuesday when we would be at the highpoint of the walk, Mackinnon Pass, it was due to be 120kph winds and 4 inches of rain in 6 hours. We decided, therefore, that the sensible and safe decision was to not go. A total, bitter disappointment but one of the consequences of having just a one day shot at the track given the weather conditions in the area.

Having taken that decision though we then had to contend with what to do with the following 4 days, complicated by having a Milford Sound Cruise booking for the Thursday. After some toing and froing, including finding out that going much earlier to Queenstown was not possible because it was 'full', we were able to move the cruise booking to that, Sunday, afternoon, and book a further night at the Lodge.

The cruise was beautiful, especially because of the rain. Everywhere we looked the fjord walls were running with temporary waterfalls, waterfalls which had mostly stopped 2 hours later by the end of the cruise.

Monday we went back to Te Anau, slowly, stopping off to walk one end of the Routeburn Track, another of the 9 Great Walks. We only did about 3km of one end but then went to one of the route's detours, Key Summit, to over 3000 feet, and a total return tramp of around 12km. The alpine meadow scenery and long distance views were gorgeous. On the way down we spoke to a park ranger who was baiting stoat & possum traps. On talking about our Milford Track cancellation he told us he had just received a weather warning for the track that forecast up to 8 inches of rain there on the Tuesday. The cancellation decision was looking even more solid.

Before moving on from Te Anau on the Tuesday morning we visited the local Park Offices to get some walk info. There we found that the Milford Track had been closed that day, and those on the track were being forced to spend an extra day/night in the Hut they had reached. Actual 120kph winds and 237mm of rain. We'll save you the calculation. That's 9.3 inches!! Track pull out was definitely the correct decision - though we have not been able to persuade the park authorities of that to get a fees refund.

The only reasonably priced accommodation we had been able to get for the next two nights was a glamping yurt about 40km out from Queenstown, and very nice it was too. Must splash out on this as a Glastonbury accomodation option some day!

Over those days we were able to do some 3-4 hour walks, one around a lake, another through old gold mining areas.

Queenstown - a town built on the use of gravity as a means to extract as much cash from your wallet as possible!

Gravity drives bungee jumping, canyon swinging, canyoning, skydiving, mountain biking, luge, skiing, the water that jet boats travel along, ..... and you'll not find any of these activities taking less than 3 digit $'s from said wallet. And Paul had something of an adrenaline rush for a couple of the 4 days we were there for.

Early morning, Friday, saw Paul taking the Shotover Jet - basically a streamlined metal box powered by 850hp of water jet through 8cm of water within inches of solid canyon walls, with a few 360°turns thrown in for good measure. Though given the tremendous rattle they had at one stage the driver told them they had done 7cm that morning!! A bit more gentle for the rest of that day with a guided town walk and an evening cruise on the steam powered TSS Earnslaw, a steamer launched in 1912, the same year as The Titanic.

After a more gentle next day, just a walk, a watch of peeps throwing themselves off a bridge at the site of the original bungy jump, and a rest, on Sunday Paul's head rush continued. Semi gentle at first, by lugeing several times down the hill above the Q't upper cable car station. And then a big one - Paul threw, or rather slid, off a cliff into the Shotover Canyon. In actuality he did a canyon swing that was a 60 metre free fall drop from 110m above the river, into a 200m arc across the canyon, before being machine hoisted back up again. This was classed as a '3 underpants' version on a 5 pants scale, but Paul was OK, though he admitted to a few seconds of blind, OH SHIT panic when all the safety leads were detached immediately before he slid..... into the abyss.

As we spent time by the lake that evening the Earnslaw departed for one of its cruises and the wafting smoke reminded us of the railway smoke drifting up into our garden back home. (But at least that was better than another reminder we had had back up in Milford at The Chasm, a tight river gorge with thundering waterfall which Pip had declared the smell of as reminding her of 'the time we had that leak in the airing cupboard' !!)

The drive to Wanaka went via Arrowtown, a quaint 'heritage' village which sprang up in the 1860s in the rush for Arrow River's gold. Today the town has over 70 historic sites and buildings from that era, as well as significant remnants of the neighbouring Chinese village, and hasn't lost its air of the wild west. It was also, down at the river, a location for some LoTR filming, though there are an awful lot of 'locations' around these parts.

Wanaka is sometimes described as Queenstown's smaller brother, but if so it's still a babe in arms. Much much smaller than Qt, but still beautifully situated lakeside. They have a Millenium Walk along the lake where they have edged the path with dated tiles in sequence from Year 0 to Year 2000, and printed events from that year on the tile. The tiles were quite full over the last 3-4 centuries, much less so back in the 'dark ages'. The spelling was wonderful - it had surely been proofread by a primary school class. Our favourite was '25 Pontius Pilate Procreator of Judea' ! Also amusing were several of the event/tile sponsor links eg rubber invented/sponsored by xx pharmacy ?.

Just outside Wanaka is Puzzling World, a house of illusions plus the world's first 3D maze. We had to work through the maze to each of the 4 corner towers. Paul was convinced he would be quickest, but in fact Pip completed it about 10 min faster. One indoor room, The Tilted House, actually came close to making both of us feel ill!

On the Wednesday we hired a 4WD car for the day to access the walk to the Rob Roy glacier. The walk starts about 60km out of Wanaka with 2/3rds of that being rough gravel road and about 20 ford crossings. Not a road for our Nissan Note! We helped out a couple of hitchers with their journey to and from the walk too.

The 10km walk, through the Matukituki valley, across a 'swing' bridge (as they call pedestrian suspension bridges around here), up through a beautiful wooded, steady climb to above the tree line rewarded us with across valley view of the Rob Roy glacier and the snow capped feeder peaks above. We were even rewarded with a small avalanche. A great walk, one of the best.

So yesterday we left Wanaka, taking the most beautiful drive along Lake Hawea and upper Lake Wanaka, skirting the mountain ranges, through fields and shrubbery steaming in the first rays of the rising sun, across to Haast where we hoped to find a quaint stopping point for an en route coffee. What Haast turned out to be was an overinflated layby, with 2 rough cafes, and a few lodgings.

It turns out that around the coast here a delicacy is Whitebait Patties. We saw a lot of roadside adverts for these. Apparently they are listed by the AA as one of the Top 101 Things to do in NZ. We haven't checked but we suspect it is at number 101 ?.

So we are now in Glacier Country, staying for 4 nights at Franz Josef. Tomorrow we are booked to do a heli-hike. That is a helicopter flight to the upper reaches of the FJ glacier, a disembark there, 3 hours guided trekking on the glacier, with full gear including crampons, then a helicopter back.

That really should be fun

Written, lazing on a comfortable bed, watching the sun setting behind nearby mountains.

Eating a Tunnocks Caramel Wafer, courtesy of the 'international' section of a supermarket.

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