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Well sorry everyone, Brett is on holidays and you are stuck with me writing this blog!ha ha ha ha!
Holidays? Whats that? This is life, hard work!!!! Poor us, hey?
I will plan to make this blog a little shorter than the other one.(you know short and sweet thats me)! Actually its that I don't have the attention span to sit and write and tincker on the computer when I could be enjoying the cool hostel we are at with a good book and coffee . It is so hard when you don't know what you have in store from day to day as far as the town and accomadations. Sometimes you wished you would have pushed on and others you wished you didn't have to go.
Just after finishing the blog and before heading out on the next leg of our trip we decided on a half day of fun in the river sledging with frogz! this is the same company that I had went with last time I was here and really wanted brett to experience it. Our pictures of it are stuck in the ipod and we can't get them out so you will all have to wait
to see us. Basically they fitted us up in helmets and wet suits with a plactic heavy duty tabogan with handles and took us down different grades of rapids. It was fun. I remembered it being a bit more fun than it was but I guess the river can change from day to day and you never know just how ruff and fun it will be ahead of time. All and all it was a good fresh crisp fall morning of misty dew and fun in the sun.
So we finally left Queenstown and headed back out on our bikes, somewhat excited somewhat not. Taking some days off the bike can help the muscles but as well make you forget how to use the muscles. So we kept it a short day to Arrowtown. It was a cute little town where we had a great late afternoon meal and stayed in cute little cabin wich we thought we had lucked out and payed 20$ for, to later find out the middle aged lady on her first day and possibly her fist job, had quoted us wrong and it was 40$ rather than the 20$. Which still isn't bad seeing as
it looked like rain and we were freezing from being on the bike,so we still took it. Needless to say we didn't luck out on a good deal on the cabin nor with brett trying his hand at panning for gold!!!! Bugger!
We have enter the promising coast of gold and brett is certain he will strike it rich!!! So now our mid noon snack brakes have turned into gold panning brakes.(nothing yet)!
We left Arrowtown knowing we had a big day ahead of us. Although warned to add a couple hours of travel to our day and skip the highest paved road in NZ we chose to tackel it. A bad habit of brett and I. Tell us not to do something and you know what is going to happen.... thats right . Bring it on.!!!!! We cycled for no more than 4km, to be presented with our challange. We cycled straight into 6 swithch backs that much to our surprise weren't as bad as we thought they would be. This lead us into about 3km of more flat cycling where Brett learned that he was in need of a new chain. It hadn't broke yet so we carried
on crossing our fingers. Well he had his fingers crossed but I had to cross my eyes as I need all the man power I could get to finished the last 6+ swithch backs that we had to tackel to get to the top of the highest paved road in NZ. By the end of the climb we had climbed over 1000m. the view promised to be amazing. We would have to say that it was good but after our hike on the kepler track it will be hard to beat, other than from a plane. So we stoped for a snack and started out on the second half of our day. We were so high up and the air was cold enough that by the time we had decended for about 10 mins. And stopped for a minute I was in tears from my hands being so cold. (these poor massage hands aren't cut out for that). Of course brett offered me one of the two pairs of gloves he had been wearing and all was good. ha ha ha!(dumb and dumber).
Anyway we made our way into Wanaka which is known to be the smaller version of Queenstown
or what Queenstown was 10 yrs ago. Before becoming the tourist capital of NZ. I think some towns may just be jealous they aren't. Anyway! Wanaka is a very nice quaint town where we decided to stay a little ways away from down town where the camping was a bit more than usual but amazing facilities. (hot tub, heated bathrooms, really nice t.v room ect.).
We booked for 2 nights as we knew the next day would be spent gettign our bikes tuned. We weren't sure what the weather would be but we thought we could ride to town drop the bikes off and walk home if needed. As it turned out it was an amazing day filled with bacon and eggs for breakfast and reading by the lake while the sun shone on us. It was so realaxing. We picked up our bikes and got a good nights rest for the next day of riding.
The following day found us at a nice motor camp just to get on the bike the next morning and complete what ended up probably our longest day we will have. 125km.!!!!
This found us at Fox Glacier one of the only three Glaciers
that is along side a rainforest. The other is Franz Josheph NZ and the other is in South America (Patagonia). We carried on to Franz joseph to do an actual glacier hike and get some laundry done. Yes. even on holidays you must make time for this. Considering the fact that Brett started treating me like one of his hockey buddies due to the fact that I smelt like hokey gloves. ha ha ha ha!!!!!
The hike was o.k. We would have always wondered what we missed if we hadn't done it but it was just o.k. I'm actually over being cold and ready to cycle toward warmer temps. Don't get me wrong in the heart of the day if the sun is shining it is still really nice here. Like a tipical spring day in Canada but its fall/winter instead.
So from Franz josheph we carried on our way to Hokatika with one night inbetween at a little town of about population 20. We were able to get a room in Hokatika for 30$ and ended up staying 2 nights due to rain. How can you tell its time to start budgetting a bit closer, when you base things
around the price and the weather. We pretty much had the place to ourselves so it was a nice restpite from the rain.
We left Hokatika to find ourselves in Greymouth, wich at first sight seemed like Estevan. The hostel we picked has made up for it and stayed an extra day. The guy that owns it didn't forget a thing. Its like every thing we have like in every hostel rolled into one!!!!
So we just may be sleeping and riding in the rain. But it was a nice day!
We are winding down on the South Island soon. With over 2000 km under our belt and not much else under our belt!!!!! The rest of the West coast should be spent riding, avoiding the rain and trying not to spend much money. We are looking into flights to Thailand as we speak and hoping for a deal as it looks like they have jumped in price since the last time we looked. Wish us luck.
Happy Mothers day and enjoy spring!!!
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Fro
non-member comment
hmmmmm, panning for GOLD
Sounds like desperate measures for internet fees and beer? Maybe its a good thing the Vickster can't keep up!