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Day 9: Queenstown
Action day!
This morning I jumped off a mountain. Fortunately, I was attached to Shayne, who was in turn attached to a parachute of sorts. The takeoff was from a point above the snow line, so that I had to do a kind of careful duck-waddle for take-off to avoid slipping. We paraglided for about ten minutes, did a few probably tame but to me thrilling aerobatics, then landed in the field distantly adjacent to the one in which my acrophobic personal photographer was standing, poised to capture the graceful landing. She missed it, but this worked out OK on two counts: first, my landing was decidedly ungraceful, and second, my paragliding host had a camera on the end of a boom that captured wonderfully the essence of our flight. The whole thing was a lot of fun.
In the afternoon, we took a jet-boat ride driven by a quintessentially casual and understated NZer up and down the Shotover River, through several gorges, getting ourselves thoroughly cold, wet and exhilarated. The boats are really just oversized jet-skis, but a lot of fun is to be had without incommoding any passers-by.
On nearby Coronet Peak
Andrew aloft
(Helen below)the snow was being manufactured for the opening of the ski season on the following weekend. Plenty of natural snow had fallen, too - the flurries we encountered last evening were indicative of more significant falls on the nearby mountains. That much was visible this morning when we rose - there was plenty of snow across the lake where none had been before, and even a little surviving in sheltered spots outside the motel window,
We spent our third night in Queenstown and ate out at an Indian restaurant, Freiya’s, distinguished by excellent food and unsmiling, can’t-wait-until-you-get-out-so-we-can-close-up service.
Day 10: Queenstown-Fox Glacier
The drive from Queenstown to Fox Glacier was the best of our trip so far. It has everything - snow-capped mountains, serene lakes, verdant farmland, temperate rainforest, ocean views - in a four-hour journey. Stretches of straight road started to become less infrequent. We are intrigued by the NZ penchant for numbering every bridge. As I type this in the car, we just went over No. 6024. Yet they don’t have mileposts on the roads. Another feature of the roads is that most bridges - and there are plenty of them - are one-way,
Shotover Gorge
Where we took the jetboat ride with a give-way sign at one end and right of way at the other. A curious way of economising.
On the road approaching the glacier country we saw an ad for ‘Franz Josef: the Glacier Movie’. Cinematically, it’s visually tunning, apparently, but a bit slow-moving.
Fox Glacier was a revelation. We arrived late in the afternoon, and the colours intrigued us - blue-green, pure white, charcoal, topped with ochre rock faces above. You’re warned not to approach nearer than about fifty metres without a guide, and we were lucky enough to experience one reason for that as we gazed from the barriers - a major ice-fall. It began with a low growl from the cavern at the foot of the glacier. A few fragments dropped, and I raised the camera to catch them in fall. After a moment, the growl became a kind of thunderous crunching sound, and a mass of ice just detached from above the cavern and dropped perhaps ten metres to the ice and rocks below. The camera captured the moment, but sadly it was a long moment because the standard ISO 64 setting was in action, so the falling ice is a white blur.
Jetboat in action
Not us... took this of the next group But we were there.
Back at the car park, a kea - NZ’s big, clunky parrot - was taking an inquisitive interest in the backpack of a fellow-walker. We suspect that the kea makes a good living out of the glacier car park - it certainly looked well fed.
Andrew
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Alison Davis
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Jealous!
Hi Helen My first blog expereince! And very impressive indeed. The photos are amazing and make me long to be with you in Queenstown. I hope that you are feeling more relaxed and , in between these death defying acts, you are taking time to relax, drink, enjoy each other and apprecaite how wonderful life is. Have a di=rink for me!