Day 42 – Written by Aus at Christchurch Airport, New Zealand (en route to Sydney) – October 27, 2010
So first off, its been a while since last post-----but I won’t apologize, because we’re on holiday, and we do what we want! Haha! That said, we have wanted to write about our experiences, but have just been so busy having fun. There is a LOT to cover in this entry, pretty much our entire South Island of New Zealand experience. So please feel free to ignore all the details of our ramblings that are uninteresting to you, and just look at photos or the bits you want......totally understandable. Now on to the stories, chronologically as usual.
When we last left off we were due to head out on a hike in Able Tasman National Park on the northern corner of the south island. We had originally planned to kayak into the park, but we found out that was expensive, and would not cover terrain all that different from what we had done up in Cathedral Cove, so we got excited about a multi-day hike. We planned a two-night three-day hike in the park, knowing that weather could go either way. We planned our trip and did all of our preparations from our place in Nelson at the Top 10 Holiday park. We took a day to sort ourselves out and pack etc, and hired all of our camping gear from Rollo’s outdoor store. We ended up with much more gear and food than we first anticipated we would need. I thought I would be carrying Kim’s smaller pack and Kim would carry my even smaller day bag. However, when we assembled everything, it turned out we had enough stuff to fill both of our big backpacks. So we stuffed it all in and accepted the fact that we were carrying more than we wanted to be. We got a good early night the day before departure and set out early the following morning for Marahau, where the hike began.
Setting out from Marahau, things was all good. We parked the car at Abel Tasman AquaTaxi who we had arranged to pick us up further north in a few days, and we set out on our 4 hour walk to the huts at Anchorage where we would stay. The hiking started out great, we stayed dry and were tough enough to handle the size and weight of our packs. We knew we had a long walk ahead so we stayed tough and didn’t really mind the packs. After a while though, about 3 hours, we were both getting a bit tired and Kim was getting a bit sore in her knee from her pack. We stopped for some lunch and a rest before finishing the rest of our hike. The scenery was pretty cool, lots of nice beaches and lush forest around us to look at. I really enjoyed the hiking, but was glad to be getting closer to being done for the day. Kim started to let me know in the last 30 minutes of hiking that her knee was really bothering her, so we slowed down slightly for the last bit of the walk, which was all downhill. All downhill sounds good, but unfortunately with Kim’s knee, it was not so good, as that was the hard bit for her. We eventually made it to the beach, which was gorgeous, and the hut where we would stop for the night, but by the time we arrived Kim was quite sore.
We enjoyed a bit of sun and rest on the beach before dinner, and Kim tried to stay off her knee as much as possible to help it get better for our long hike the next day up to Bark’s Bay and on to Awaroa. It was nice there, a combination of camping crowd and boaters who were moored overnight at Torrent Bay. Our hut was basic, but more than comfortable when we were so tired from the hike. We met a nice English couple there named Andy & Becca who we also ended up seeing later in the trip at Franz Josef Glacier. They were from London and were also on honeymoon. We enjoyed talking with them and had a fairly early night hoping that Kim would wake up feeling better. We caught a forecast before bed and had a chat with the hobbit-like DOC (Department of Conservation) staff member who was at the hut station, and he said the weather was going to be quite bad the next day. So at that point I told Kim that if she woke up and was not up to hiking, I would not be all that upset.
The next morning we awoke to torrential rains, cold, wind, and Kim having a very sore knee. So, we struggled only slightly really with our decision, and ended up arranging the water taxi to pick us up early and take us back to Marahau. It was a bit hard to sacrifice the rest of our trip, but the awful weather certainly made it easier. Our friends Andy & Becca did their hike though back to Marahau, and later told us they got completely cold and soaking wet—good on them! We however took the easy way out and watched hiker after hiker set out in the cold hard rain while we chilled out in the hut waiting for the water taxi. We weren’t the only ones with that idea, as it was a full taxi by the time it left that hut. Boy were we happy to see that taxi when it arrived! Kim asked me to get aggressive in assuring we got on that boat, so I made sure I was first on to secure our spot. Everyone made it on and we set back for Marahau. The boat ride was pretty crazy actually, some huge waves about 8 metres high I’d say, that the driver would surf on top of. It was a fun ride, but we were happy to see land when we got back to Marahau. The process of landing on the beach was interesting.....we were met in the water by a tractor, which towed us to shore in the boat and then proceeded to drive us through town back to the taxi depot. Good fun! So even though Kim hurt her knee and we ended up checking out a couple days of early, we still had a good time. Here’s some photos.....
Some lush rainforest and a small waterfall off the path….
Stopping for some lunch on the beach…..
Pre-injury happy Kim
The Silver Fern, another symbol of New Zealanad
A view of the bays and islands
Kim heading down some of the last bit of trail going down on the way to the hut….
We made it!
The hut at anchorage…
Waiting to be picked up on the beach by our aquataxi, it was WET!
The tractor pull at the end of the journey….
After drying out a little after getting back to Marahau, we set out back for Nelson to return our gear and recharge for the next bit of our trip. As it was raining cats and dogs, we decided to grab a room at a little motel in Richmond. That reminds me, the names of many places in southern New Zealand are exactly the same as many places in British Columbia...we saw a Nelson, Richmond, Queen Charlotte Sound, Hope, and even found a Kimberley and a Courtenay. Anyhow, we took the night in Richmond to do some laundry and dry out a bit. We set out the next day bound for Franz Josef Glacier. It was a nice drive for the most part, except for the bits of rain we had. The terrain changes so much all over the south island, its quite impressive. Our drive took us through mountains, farmland, desert, and ended in rainforest and glaciers. We stopped at the Pancake Rocks and the Blowholes at Punakaiki for a walk halfway through the drive, which was a really neat spot. Here’s some quick photos…
We missed high tide, so we missed the blowholes blowing, but we did see a lot of pancake rocks (they call them that because they look like stacks of pancakes, being layered disc-like rocks.)
And a fun game of what do you see?
And some lilies that Kim was quite impressed with, apparently they are expensive back in Canada, but grow abundantly in the wild here….
Franz Josef Glacier, which is the name of the townsite we stayed at while visiting the glacier itself, was really neat. It felt like Banff or Whistler a bit, but much smaller and more remote. Very chilled vibe though that we both really liked. We arrived about 7:30 PM there and checked into the rainforest Holiday Park. It was really cool place and we had a nice little evening there. We headed over to the Monsoon Bar and we ran into our friends Andy & Becca again, who filled us in on the details of their hike back to Marahau. We played in a Killer Pool tournament and Kim narrowly missed winning a free excursion out in Queenstown.
The next day the weather was totally crappy, and too bad to drive really, so we decided to try to wait it out and stay another night, which suited us fine, since we like the place and it was the cheapest place we had found yet at only $20 per night. We intended to blog but we ended up just chilling out in the common room and watching a DVD, as well as doing some research on Australia in preparation for our trip there. We had another night out at the Monsoon Bar but ended it pretty early, opting not to stay out late and participate in the Rocks Paper Scissors competition, as tempting as it was.
The weather the following morning was decent luckily, and we decided to proceed with our travel, heading out of town towards the glacier for a short hike before hitting the road. We stopped there and had a little hike out to the glacier, which was neat, but not awe-inspiring as we have been spoiled by Nunavut. Here’s some photos.
Our holiday park in Franz Josef Glacier, the Rainforest Retreat…
Dexter on the mean streets of Franz Josef…
Some rainforest on our way out to the glacier trail…..
The walk out…..
And the glacier itself…you can see people in both photos if you look hard….
Following the hike we started our drive bound for Queenstown. We weren’t sure if we would make it all the way, or stop short in Wanaka. The drive was really neat, probably the best bit of driving on the trip, and it took us again through a range of surroundings and climates. We did end up making it all the way to Queenstown, and stopped only briefly in Wanaka, which was also really nice. We opted to take the mountain road down to Queenstown from Wanaka, through the Crown Range, instead of the highway. It turned out to be quite a decent road and had some neat views, so we were pleased with our choice. We got to Queenstown just before dark, and found a place to stay at the Queenstown Top 10 Creeksyde, which we were surprised to learn was a whopping $47 a night, just to park our van....but it was a nice spot, and we were after all in the tourist capital of New Zealand.
For those unfamiliar with Queenstown, it is a beautiful city in the central South Island that is a Mecca for tourists, and is generally known as one of the best places in the world for ‘adventure travellers and adrenaline junkies’. It is the birthplace of bungy jumping, and it is a place where you can do pretty much any ‘extreme’ activity you could think of. Of course being the thrill seeking personalities that we are, we couldn’t leave Queenstown without getting our fill of adventure and adrenaline. But first we just kind of settled into the place and enjoyed the fantastic scenery, and we also met some new friends from the UK at our holiday park. Our first day in Queenstown was pretty low key, we pretty much just scoped everything out and discovered all of the possibilities (which are of course endless). We also decided at that point to delay our flights until the 27th, which we did with luckily only minimal cost, so great decision on easing up the pressure on making those.
We each had an idea of things we wanted to do in Queenstown, and we tried to get ourselves ready to do them, both in terms of all the booking and info etc, as well as working up the nerve. As I mentioned, Queenstown is the birthplace of bungy, with a man named AJ Hackett throwing himself off of the Kawarau bridge attached to a giant elastic band back in 1987. His name is still around, and he’s actually a brand name in bungy, having numerous jump sites around New Zealand and the world. In addition to bungy, you could do any number of things including skydive, jetboat, cliff jump, paraglide, parasail, canyon swing, luge, white water raft, rock climb, canyon, kayak, sledge (one-person white water surfing), helicopter ride, ski, and so on, and of course any combination you could think of. Keeping in mind that we would have probably love to do all of them if budget and time allowed, we had to choose a few each that we were most excited about. We both chose a bungy jump, a luge (which is not as extreme as it sounds), and a swing (which is more extreme than it sounds). Swinging is not the schoolyard swing set type you know of, it is of course ‘extreme’ and from great height. We each chose a different setting for our bungy and swing, and we did the luge together.
The first person up was me, and the first activity was a canyon swing, over the Nevis canyon, known as the Nevis Arc. It is the world’s highest swing. I was nervous, but not too much to spoil the fun. We set out from Queenstown in a bus full of other thrill seekers and head out for AJ Hackett’s facilities at Nevis, home of Australasia’s highest bungy at 134 metres. Not sure where the highest in the world is, but 134 metres is high enough, believe me! I don’t think I would like to have done the bungy, those guys had it harder than me I think. The swing was I think about 150 metres above the ground, and had a 70 metre freefall before arcing for a complete 300 metre swing distance. It was high, and it was good fun. I was trying to stay excited and not get scared as we drove out and scoped out the site. The drive itself was actually quite extreme, as it involved climbing up very narrow unpaved mountain roads with hundreds of metres to fall. Anticipation is all part of the experience I think. When we arrived I had a chance to go out to the bungy platform and watch a few guys jump. It was crazy, just a long way down in the middle of this canyon. But they all did it, and soon it was my turn. I got to go from a different platform slightly higher up, but I had the advantage of not having to actually be the one to throw myself off the platform. To add to the excitement, I decided to go backwards. I got all harnessed up and they leaned me out backwards over the canyon. It was eerie. They asked me to smile for some photos and they did a fake countdown and dropped me at 2. All of a sudden I was falling fast and I was watching the platform disappear. It was great. A bit of a scare for sure, but not as much as I had expected, more good fun really, but not something you could afford to do all the time, as they sure do charge a lot of money for those few seconds of a ride. Hard to describe really, so here are some photos and a quick video to help illustrate my swing experience.
Heading out to the bungy platform….
Looking down from the bungy platform….
Heading out to the platform for my swing….
And the video from when I got dropped….
Best 10 seconds ever!
Trying to put on a brave face on the gondola ride up..
One last look at the platform before the jump…
Pre-jump photo from the ledge…
She made it off the platform….
Getting set for the swing now….
She’s off….
You could see the terror on her face in the last photo, but a video illustrates it better…
Turn your sound up!!!!!!
Proud of herself after the fact though, this other girl is a stuntwoman in some movies as sidejob to throwing people off of ledges!
After she had successfully accomplished her bungy/swing challenge, we were joined by our English friends from the holiday park and we all took in some of the beautiful views from the top of the gondola. We watched another one of them do the same jump/swing combo as Kim, but it was no where near as entertaining as Kim. We were supposed to do a luge ride as well but they had closed by the time we were ready to do it, so we asked at the information desk and they were kind enough to give us free tickets up the gondola again so we could do it again another day before leaving Queenstown. So we all set back down and were planning to go for a big night out but ended up just hanging round the holiday park due to our mutual exhaustion from all our adventure activities. One of the girls had done a skydive and that looked pretty awesome, but we decided to save that experience for another time.
Joined by our friends for a picture…..(Me, Kim, Sam, Ben, Becky, Darren)
The following day I did my bungy at the Kawarau bridge, with our friend Darren who shared a two-for-one coupon with me. This is the shortest jump in Queenstown at only 43 metres, but it still looks high from the platform, believe me! I chose to do this one as it is somewhat historic, being the birthplace of bungy, and of course you get the water dip which is cool. I think my mom did the same jump when we were all here back in 1990. So it was neat to go and do, and it was plenty scary enough. I was determined to slow down and try to enjoy the experience and take it all in, and I did fine right up until I got on the platform where I tensed right up. They did their countdown and I had to go for it, so I did. However, in all my anticipation and nervousness I got so tense and focused on trying to achieve a diving position to not injure myself when I hit the water, I ended up dislocating my shoulder when I first left the platform. I was OK of course, and its on the mend now, just a bit fragile. Too bad though, cause once that happened I had a hard time focusing on enjoying the fall down into the water. I eventually tuned back in to the jump experience when I hit the water and enjoyed the swinging around at the bottom, taking pride in my accomplishment. I got a great dunking right up to my waste and it was fun despite my mild injury. A photo….
After our jumps we enjoyed taking in the great views from the platform, and Kim ended up winning a ‘Big Night Out’ package for correctly answering when bungy first started. So following all of our adrenaline activities were over, we all decided to celebrate our accomplishments with some drinks and a big night out. The big night out is an organized pub crawl through Queenstown, and features touring six different bars getting free drinks at each one. We had a good night, lots of fun and laughs and dancing etc. We grabbed a few photos for our own amusement....
Fun with friends….
Kim of course had to do the worm in a dance-off with Ben, here’s the after shot…
Showing off our best Haka for the camera…
We also got some other good photos from our time around Queenstown. Here are the best…
We saw some sheep & mountain goats up near the gondola. A sheep…
The Knotty Travellers overlooking Queenstown……
Not to be left out, an Asian man was impressed by my size (probably because he saw me standing next to Kim), and asked for a picture with me…whatever….
Dexter in Queenstown near the beach…..
Us again……
The next day was of course very mellow, as we all had been feeling the night before. We took in some more beautiful Queenstown scenery and enjoyed some of the popular local eateries. We especially enjoyed Habibs and their yummy kebabs as well as the famous Hell’s Pizza, who were kind enough to give us free dessert pizza because we held a certain credit card, sweet deal! The next day we got all organized to hit the road again and we did our gondola and luge stuff that we missed the first time. The luge was also good fun, but not made for big guys like me. It was fun, and made for some funny photos. Check it out.....
The track high above Queenstown….
The Knotty Travellers…..
Cart was a good size for Kim…..
But a bit small for me……
After Queenstown we set out for Christchurch to grab our flight. We had a fantastic time in Queenstown, and would have loved more time to explore the southern bit of the south island, including fiordland and the sounds, but we just ran out of time and we felt we were sufficiently satisfied with what we had accomplished, so we left a few things undone. We are lucky too of course to have experienced sounds and fiords before (having lived in one for three years!), so we didn’t feel too bad about leaving them out of our trip. It was a long drive and I ended up getting a speeding ticket while driving through a desert portion near Omarama, but apart from that it was a nice drive. Some shots of another beautiful drive…
The desert, where speeding just a little is VERY tempting after being on those tight mountain roads…..
And Lake Tekapo near Mount Cook, amazing that all this terrain is in such close proximity to each other….
We arrived late and pulled into the first holiday park we could find. Turns out though that we should have done our research, because the place was totally sketchy. When we first arrived we saw some men leaving some trailers ‘escorted’ out by some ladies, and we got the distinct impression that campers were not the only customers at this park. We had a bowl of soup in the kitchen and spent just enough time at he place to realize it was full of crackheads and prostitutes, so we of course decided to find another place to sleep. We drove over to the Top 10 holiday park, where we knew we were in for at least safe place to sleep, even if it was a bit more expensive.
We got up early the next day and grabbed a hotel in Christchurch last night just to be able to spread ourselves out and sort though all our stuff and pack it all back into our little backpacks again for our flight. That was good decision as we used every spare inch of that room. We took a quick venture out to explore Christchurch and were glad we didn’t spend much of our time there. To be fair, everything is a bit of a mess due to the earthquake, but we didn’t find the city all that impressive. Anyhow, we are now actually in the air on the way to Sydney and I am taking the time to finish up this blog, which was long overdue. When we land we are off to some hotel just out of the city. Sydney is incredibly expensive, with dorm beds in hostels costing about 50 euros per night, so for the same price between two of us we opted for an out of the city budget hotel. We’ve got lots to do in terms getting organized for our time in Oz, but we’re figuring it will all come together.
So, that brings you up to date. Hope you enjoyed. We will try to not let so much stuff accumulate before our next entry. Lots of love back to all family and friends back home.
Cheers,
The Knotty Travellers
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