Advertisement
Published: April 22nd 2008
Happy birthday to my sister-in-law Nicola this week, I hope she got the birthday card I sent and had a great time? :o)
Tuesday 15th April - Leaving The Purple Cow - incidentially the only place where I've had anything stolen so far (fingers crossed). My first stay here I had a small pot of nescafe stolen from the kitchen, that's not bad in 9 weeks of travelling. I made my way to the i-site centre in Wanaka to pick up the intercity bus to Frans Josef at 9.30am and found out the bus driver was Peter again. He remembered me and remarked that I was early this time! A couple of stop-offs, a taste of smoked salmon at the salmon farm and a change of driver later and we arrived at Frans Josef at around 4.15pm. I met a friendly Irish girl called Aine on the bus to Frans Josef, who asked if I wanted to go out for dinner later with her and two Canadian girls from Montana, sounded good to me. I checked into Montrose Backpackers and befriended an Israeli girl called Norit in my dorm, so there was a little crowd of us eating Empanadas and
It's blue
Apparently the ice is a blue colour because when white light hits it and refracts, only the 'short wave' colours show in the ice, because the ice is dense. chips that night in the Blue Ice Bar.
Wednesday 16th April - I arrived at the Alpine centre in town to check in for a half day of walking on the Frans Josef Glacier. I nearly dropped out when one of the guides took me through the photos, showing what I would be letting myself in for. Walking up ice steps, down ladders with quite a steep drop, it looked really difficult and I suddenly felt nervous, would my fitness levels be good enough? I took about a 1 minute break to think about it and then realised that I'd been meaning to come here for years and I might never get another chance to walk on a glacier so would just have to do it; if it was horrific it was only 6 hours out of my life (approx 3 hours walking on the glacier). So, a big crowd of us (including a lot of people on Magic Bus, similar to KiwiExperience) got sized and kitted up for waterproof trousers and jacket, boots and crampons (you can't walk on the ice without them). As I was feeling a bit anxious I clung onto a girl from London called
Sabrina and sat next to her on the bus and we got chatting on the way to the glacier. We arrived, did a 15 walk and then got into groups of level of confidence/ability. I put myself into group 3 (thinking it might be a little bit like skiing?!), hoping that I would be fairly comfortably towards the top of that group, which would boost my confidence, instead of being dragged along in groups 1 or 2 with people who wanted to go really quickly. Sabrina put herself into group 4 and only walked a short way in the end before turning back as she had an old ankle injury. When we got to the foot of the glacier, our guide Carlos, showed us how to put the crampons onto our boots and said we should try to walk as normally as possible. Invented in the 1930s and only slightly moderated since then, the crampons were a very effective way of walking across the ice. I gingerly walked up the ice steps grabbing onto ropes to start with, but we were pretty soon all doing well and I felt relaxed and very happy as I thoroughly enjoyed one of my
Glacier walking
Frans Josef Glacier favourite experiences in NZ so far. On the way back down, I pushed myself a bit and paid heavily for it the next day when my thighs felt like concrete for a good 24 hours, I was Alpha Female though for a while ;o) ! In the cold, I started fantasising about pizza and managed to get a take-away that night from Guzzi's - it was the best pizza experience of my life - oozing with salty cheese, salami, juicy big olives, and mushrooms.
Thursday 17th April - Norit and the other two ladies in the dorm, a girl from Northern England and a retired lady from America all woke up at 6.30am and the alarm clocks went crazy and it was hilarious when they couldn't find one of them! I got up at the same time, feeling really wide awake. I took it easy as the ability to walk normally was seriously impaired. I shopped for some presents for the family in town and had them posted back to the UK. Then I got on the phone to the air companies to try to change my ticket to San Francisco for the following week as Angela wanted me
to arrive before the weekend so that we could go down the coast. After about half an hour of two air companies passing the buck, David from Air New Zealand and Karen from Singapore Airlines sorted it out between them and rearranged my flight so I could arrive in San Francisco on Thursday 24th April. That eve a small crowd of us watched 'The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King' on the tv at the Backpackers, which I'd been looking forward to seeing again since I arrived in NZ. Some of the scenery did look familiar! Some German girls baked bread and it looked and smelt gorgeous! Made a mental note to bake bread.
Friday 18th April - Whilst waiting for the 9.15am bus to Punakaki to go see the Pancake Rocks (hold the maple syrup - huhu huhu), I popped into the public toilet that announced in a large booming voice that I had a maximum of 10 minutes, I wonder what it does if you're over the time limit, push you out onto the pavement?! Since I'd left my Lonely Planet Guide in Auckland, I'd travelled largely to where people had recommended places. It
was more exciting that way and a genuine travel experience, not being so pre-planned. A backpacker and the lady in the visitor centre at Wanaka mentioned Pancake Rocks so that's why I was off to Punakaki. Steve the bus driver asked me to take my cooking oil out of my on-board bag and put it in my big rucksack as it was a fire-risk to have it onboard and they'd had a couple of fires fairly recently. Steve's commentary as the bus was going along turned out to be a bit 'Essex FM'. He seemed to be hyperactive and put a heavy emphasis on certain words.
Steveisms:
'If you are a bad traveller, please sit at the front, makes it easier for you, me and EVERYBODY ELSE. We try to get to you before you get it ON THE FLOOR.'
'We are going to be following the spine of the South Island known as the SOUTHERN ALPS.'
'Let's keep our heads down as we MOVE PAST the opposition known as KiwiExperience'.
This was actually a good idea as we got to the Bushman's cafe before them and so didn't have to wait in the queue
for 20 minutes, with only possum pie left after that!
It was the only bus I'd been on that didn't have seat belts. As it was quite full I was stuck at the back and felt every twist and turn as Steve pulled the bus about, starting and stopping abruptly and zooming round corners. After an hour of this I thought I might be becoming one of the bad travellers (one girl did move down the front), but luckily we had a few stopoffs so I felt ok after a break.
We saw lots of rainbows on this journey, but unfortunately there wasn't a safe place for Steve to stop the bus for us to take photos. Lots of pots of gold all over NZ though.
'Hopefully somewhere, SOMEHOW, you'll make it back for the ski season'.
'There you go, EH'
'Here we are at Greymouth. If you're heading further north towards Nelson, two words: STAY PUT, makes it easier on me.'
I stayed put on the bus and went further north another hour to Punakaiki. The lady at Te Nikau Retreat backpackers was there to pick me up and drive us 10 minutes
up the road to the lodge which is in the middle of a rainforest and only 5 minutes walk to the sea. I'd already been warned by the owner that there were no supermarkets in Punakaiki, so I'd stocked up on supplies from New World in one of the stop-offs. I met Carly and Kirsty from the UK in the lodge and we shared a bottle of wine that eve. It was an amazingly different experience and I really loved the area.
Saturday 19th April - The owner dropped me off in Punakaiki town around 10.30am. After leaving my big rucksack at the visitor centre, I set off around Pancake Rocks. The walk was surrounded by flax and Nikau palms and I thought the rocks were amazingly interesting, very, very worthwhile to visit. I took loads and loads of photos. The ones you can see on here are those photos I managed to find after my memory card picked up a Trojan Virus (suspected from my time in Frans Josef) and if it wasn't corrupted it was re-arranged, eek! I sat and chatted to some German backpackers and then we got the 12.30 bus to Greymouth. When I got
off the owner of Global Village backpackers (one of the most highly rated in the BBH guide) picked me up in the 4x4. I walked into town and booked my ticket to go on the Tranzalpine train to Christchurch on Monday. There was an a bike ride on that day called 'Around Banner' (Banner is a lake) and on the way back to the backpackers I stopped off at the prize-giving. It was really heartening to see sighted and blind cyclists riding had been riding in tandem and an elderly man over 70 years old who completed the 130kms in only 4 hours. What a great atmosphere, I'm tempted to come back and do it next year! I'll be back in the UK in 2 weeks!
Sunday 20th April - In the morning I went for a walk to the beach with a Finnish girl in my dorm called Miia. Then she headed off on the Tranzalpine and I cooked Sunday lunch for a change - Spaghetti Bolognaise. It was really nice to have the kitchen to myself and do something ordinary. I watched The Deer Hunter in the afternoon in the tv room, classic film. I'm catching the
Tranzalpine train tomorrow east to Christchurch, only 4 days left in New Zealand.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.121s; Tpl: 0.02s; cc: 8; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0839s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Katherine
non-member comment
Pancake Rocks!
I really enjoyed seeing Pancake Rocks. So much, that there's a photo of them in my kitchen! Loving all the blog posts and photos.