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Published: August 8th 2007
Hanging Over The Edge
These are smiles of nervousness! Just before the jump.Since we last spoke, Adam and I have travelled from Makarora to Wanaka and Queenstown on the Stray bus, and from there we hired a car and travelled the deep south, as they like to call it. We drove to Te Auau, making a day trip to the Milford Sounds, then passed through Invercargill to reach Dunedin and the Otega Peninsular, then back to Queestown, where we are flying out of tommorrow.
Feeling fresh from the night before (ha ha), we stumbled onto the bus, and shortly arrived in Wanaka, biding a sad farewell to the new friends that we have been travelling with for the past few days. It was a sunny day, which made the ski resort town look especially pretty. The town surrounds a small section of the edge of Lake Wanaka, and is itself surrounded by many mountains and a National Park, a very idylic place to be, and I bet even more so in the winter! We visited the best cinema ever, a converted town hall with a large cinema screen and a range of sofas, arm chairs, lazy boys, traditional cinema seating, aeroplane seating, and even a converted car, to choose between to sit
Rob Roy Glacier
The decent of the tramp, beautiful sights. and enjoy the film. We saw 'The Descent', all I can say about that is I'm glad that I have already been caving, and are not planning on doing it in the near future. At the interval we were served freshly baked cookies and ice cream (freshly baked so you can smell them, of course, and instantly want one, clever!), mmmmm. However, since it was a bank holiday of some description, there was an additional 15% liberty tax put on the cost of the cinema, a common occurrance in hospitality establishments in such a circumstance. Those mountains I was talking about, well, one day we hired a car for the day to drive out to the start of the Mt. Aspiring National Park (a long way down a gravel road), where we hiked the Rob Roy track, taking us towards the Rob Roy Glacier. It was a stunning walk that took us through the rainforest and along a river, untill we were able to see the glacier. I still think it is crazy that there are so many glaciers in the south island, that don't seem to be much higher than sea level. Rob Roy was not as low as
Milford Sounds
From the view of a sandfly. Franz Josef, and we never got to the start of the ice, although we tried to hike up as far as we could, but it was just as spectacular. There were many waterfalls streaming down the mountain to the river at the bottom, from the melting glacier, adding to the beauty of it. We also encountered some Kea parrots on the mountain, scrounging for left over food from the spots that fellow trampers had eaten their lunch. They were not shy around humans, perching on nearby and sometimes the same rocks as the people there. They are ordaned with bright colours, among the dark, beautiful. This was our last mission with Geoff, been travelling with him since the start of the south island, we left him behind and moved onto Queenstown. Although. for one last treat, before skipping town, we checked out Puzzling World, including several rooms of different illusions, hollograms, inverted faces, Ames room and a tilted room. Check out the photo on Adam's page to see Ames room, looks crazy, and really in the same room!
Queenstown is a larger version of Wanaka, although it is a bigger and busier city, it has still managed to keep
Falling Water
A temporary waterfall, a result of the previous down pour at the Milford Sounds. the small town feeling about it. It too is situated at the edge of a lake, and is surrounded by mountains in every direction, hosting some of the largest ranges in NZ. Would definatley love to see this place blanketed with snow, although it does sparkle in the sun. We spent a day walking around the shops, both treating ourselves to some new shoes, as the soles had worn away with all the walking that we've been doing. The shopping here is great! We were walking down the high street one afternoon when we heard a cry of 'Adam Fryatt' from behind. What are the chances, being the other side of the world to most people that either of us know, that we happen to bump into someone that Adam has known since he was alot younger, and hasn't seen for about 6 or 7 years! There he was, Rob, chasing us down the road. Adam was elated, as you can imagine. We met up with him later that evening for drinks, meeting his girlfriend Charlie, and exchanging travel and life stories. We intended on chasing happy hour around town, but made it to just one pub before heading to
Dunedin
The view of Dunedin across from the Otega Peninsular. The beach below was the resting place of the fur seals. the liquor store and then back to our communal area in the hostel. Much fun, and what a small world!
We had hired a car to explore the deep south, as our Stray pass did not carry on that far down. The change was loads of fun, great to be a bit more in control of where and when we stop along the way. On the way to Te Anau, one of these stop offs included a scientific nature reserve lookout, very amussing. There was a short walk out to a viewpoint that was actually just a raised platform over the same flat and bushy landscape that aligned the journey to it! The flatest part of NZ I have seen though, and there was some weird cushion like moss of the ground, which the scientists believe NZ to have looked like in the ice age. The town of Te Anau was not too entertaining, perhaps because the weather was a bit dreary, but it was the stop of to Milford Sounds, where we set off to the following morning.
Although called Milford Sounds, it is not actually a sound, but a fiord, which has something to do with
the landscape continuing down into the sea just as it is above sea level. After a night in a dorm with a horrific snorer, actually sounding more like a gremlin that has been locked underneath the stairs and is trying to get out, we began the drive down the one road leading through the Milford National Park. It was really cloudy, but thankfully not raining, as it had been continuously for the few days preceeding, and is like most of the time here, with a drought being just 9 days. We went on a boat cruise to see the scenery and hear the history and geography of the area. At one point the boat steered underneath one of the many cascading waterfalls that litered the sides of the mountains, with glasses in a wire rack at the tip of the bow. The aim was to collect natural mineral water for everyone to try, but it succeeded in drenching many of those that were not sensible enough to move out of the way. The road back to Te Anau had many places of interest to stop off at and admire, including a chasm and some more mirror lakes (although were spoilt
by the fidgety ducks).
The following day we headed along the southern scenic route to Invercargill. Along the way we encountered a farm that allowed you to act like a farmer and try your hand at sheep shearing! How great!! I got to feed a little black lamb, a little white lamb, and a calf from a milk bottle with a large teet, they were so cute, even let the calf suck my fingers after, which felt really funny! The sheep dogs performed their magic for us, which was really incredible to see, herding them into the pen for shearing, and then it was time to have a go. Really enjoyed it, fairly simple to do, if you don't include keeping the sheep still. I even got to drive the quad bike! So much fun in a short space of time! Invercargill was a bit uneventful, although there was a great little cafe with a bike, and other random things dangling from the ceiling. But it was just a rest stop.
The next morning was the journey to Dunedin, a large university city, passing through the beautiful Catlins along the way, to try and spot the wildlife. Try was the opperative word, although we managed to see a few sea lions from a distance, there were no penguins or dolphins to be seen, but the scenery was pretty, which made up for it. Dunedin is a much larger, and more British styled city, than I have previously seen in NZ, and the road network in the main town was complicated to fathem. We found the steepest road in the world, Baldwin street, which has it's own little souviener shop on the corner, and then discovered Fryatt Street!!! Mantal!! We also ventured to the Otago Peninsula whilst we were there. This the home of much wildlife, we saw some albatross flying over the ocean, but the penguins were still not be seen. We saw a seal in the distance, so headed towards the beach to investigate, when we suddenly saw several of the fur seals asleep, blending into the rocks. We managed to get quite close to them without them realising, which was great. Made the whole trip worthwhille!! We also stopped at the Cadbury's Chocolate Factory. It wasn't quite like it is in the film, however, they do play some freaky music at the start of the tour. The smell of chocolate throughout the whole building was imense, how hard it would be to work around all that chocolate and not pick at it the whole time. I do know how Easter eggs are made now too!! They certainly made it all worthwhille by giving us many free samples, and we also got to see a tonne of chocolate drop about 100ft into a vat of cholcolate, just like a waterfall, although they call it a fountain. Mmmmm, chocolate. Later, we got a call from Rob, who had just turned up in Dunedin, and since it is his birthday in a few days, we went out to celebrate, finding a pokey hip hop bar with $2 handles. Party on down!!
Back in Queenstown now. I really like the atmosphere of this city, has a really homely feeling to it. This morning we finally did the canyon swing! It was a freefall of 62 meters into 109 meter canyon, with a 200 meter swing. I did two jumps, the first was backwards, and the second was called Gimp boy goes to Hollywood. The backwards jump was scarey, apparently meant to be one of the scarriest ones, as you see the jump platform getiing smaller and smaller as you fall. It was also quite hard to actually jump, as the operators are trying their hardest to shit you up as much as possible (well you would, wouldn't you). When I finally jumped, it was brilliant, and over too quickly. For the Gimp Boy goes to Hollywood jump I was suspended upside down over the canyon, the guyes at the top counted down, five, four, then released the rope and I went head first down. It was amazing, fooking brilliant! Got some ground rush, for a few seconds, before the swing began. I had more of a sense of achievement by doing the first jump and jumping off myself. Money well spent. Got the DVDs of that too, great!
We moved our flight forward a week, as we decided not to go to Christchurch, where our Stray pass ended up after Queenstown. It would be another city, and we would have to travel back to Queenstown to get our flight, so figured we would just go to Oz a little early. Sad to leave though, I love New Zealand. It has been an amazing experience here, I would recommend it to everybody. The weather has started to get cooler now to, so looking forward to the eternal sunshine of the Eastern coast of Oz, bring it on!!
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CHRISTINE (mum )
non-member comment
ahhhhhh
The Canyon swing sounds awsome... and you did it twice!!!!!!! feeding baby lambs and a calf ahhhhhh then to shear a sheep ... is there no end to your talents? ofcourse not. Did you let OZ know you were arriving a week early? was it prepared for you? Love you..... mum xxxxx