A few photos of China so far. Sorry I can't do much else, but I'm only able to update this via email! Hope it looks ok!
Saturday 12 May 2012
China photo update, 3 of 3, 12 May 2012
A few photos of China so far. Sorry I can't do much else, but I'm only able to update this via email! Hope it looks ok!
China photo update, 3 of 3, 12 May 2012
A few photos of China so far. Sorry I can't do much else, but I'm only able to update this via email! Hope it looks ok!
China photo update, 3 of 3, 12 May 2012
A few photos of China so far. Sorry I can't do much else, but I'm only able to update this via email! Hope it looks ok!
China photo update, 2 of 3, 12 May 2012
A few photos of China so far. Sorry I can't do much else, but I'm only able to update this via email! Hope it looks ok!
China photo update, 2 of 3, 12 May 2012
A few photos of China so far. Sorry I can't do much else, but I'm only able to update this via email! Hope it looks ok!
China photo update, 2 of 3, 12 May 2012
A few photos of China so far. Sorry I can't do much else, but I'm only able to update this via email! Hope it looks ok!
China photo update, 2 of 3, 12 May 2012
A few photos of China so far. Sorry I can't do much else, but I'm only able to update this via email! Hope it looks ok!
China photo update, 2 of 3, 12 May 2012
A few photos of China so far. Sorry I can't do much else, but I'm only able to update this via email! Hope it looks ok!
China photo update, 1 of 3, 12 May 2012
A few photos of China so far. Sorry I can't do much else, but I'm only able to update this via email! Hope it looks ok!
China photo update, 1 of 3, 12 May 2012
A few photos of China so far. Sorry I can't do much else, but I'm only able to update this via email! Hope it looks ok!
China photo update, 1 of 3, 12 May 2012
A few photos of China so far. Sorry I can't do much else, but I'm only able to update this via email! Hope it looks ok!
China photo update, 1 of 3, 12 May 2012
A few photos of China so far. Sorry I can't do much else, but I'm only able to update this via email! Hope it looks ok!
Friday 11 May 2012
Beijing, China, 3 - 7 May 2012
I'll apologise now. These entries will be long, and maybe tedious, but China is not just different geographically and with language, but their culture, traditions, and politics are so different, that there's no end of things to write about. Couple that with a country booming and expanding with me being a construction geek, and you've got a worrying mix.
Landed in Beijing on a hot, sunny, and slightly smoggy Thursday morning. I was immediately enthralled by the size of the airport; the roof seemed to go on into the horizon!
We collected baggage and managed to suss out which bus to catch and where from without too many problems. We also took a photo of the word "toilets" with the chinese script beneath, and set it as the background on the mobile so that we could flash it at people if needed!
The bus took an hour and a half, then we jumped off in Xidan in Beijing, where our instructions were to get a taxi from the bus to the hostel. The language barrier reared it's ugly head, and every cab we flagged (4) just looked at the address (in English not Chinese script) and shook his head. So I got a map out and figured out where we were, got us to the metro station, and got us to Qianmen, which is just below Ti'annamen Sq. We found the hostel just before heat exhaustion set in, got shown round and did what came naturally after NZ: dumped our bags and went straight out wandering. We found a little stall selling big flat buns cooked in a pizza oven with a sweet centre (we think passionfruit and brown sugar) for 30p around the corner, and walked a couple of miles around hutongs (backstreets where all the little local stalls and restaurants are), then went back for a shower and relax with a beer (under 50p for 660ml bottle in hostel bar!), before heading back out to sample the famous Peking Duck (Peking IS Beijing). We found a place that looked good (you can't use the rule that you do in the UK that if there's Chinese people in there it must be good, as that's true of EVERYWHERE), and sat down with more cheap beer. I have to say, I quite liked the real Peking Duck, it was a really nice roasted crown with lots of meat, and not shredded to bits like you often see, but Jo preferred the UK shredded type. The sauce was amazingly strong though, you really didn't need much, but really good. We got to bed stupidly early after a flight of little sleep. (On subject of the flight, we did get seated in the fire escape with more legroom than i could use which was good though!).
Next day we went hunting for cash machines then cheated and just had breakfast at the hostel (French toast for Jo, eggs and bacon on toast for me, both with coffee), then headed for Ti'annemen Sq via the first gate to the city, past Chairman Mao Memorial Museum, to the Forbidden City. It was bloody boiling, about 33 degrees, with no breeze and thick air all around (the smog is always around, it just gets better or worse, but never clear), but we managed to spend about 4 hours wandering around the Forbidden City with it's many grand buildings of funny names (like "the palace of earthly tranquility" which I think was the one where "concubines would await the emporer and his advisors to pay respect" - in other words; get their jollies). Beautiful buildings, with unfathomable amount of attention to detail. Nearly every beam has a painting depicting animals or events on every face, and there's normally 3 beams layered on top of one another, there must be thousands throughout the city walls. The Chinese have obviously tried to keep this all in good condition, but they only seem to repaint or refurbish something once it's well into degradation, and their methods aren't light. Sandstone is touched up crudely with strong mix cement, so that the joint is obvious. The marble steps are let be worn away to smooth and very slippery surfaces, and if chipped or broken, they're fixed with ill-matching blocks if at all. Concrete seems to be the next best thing for everything, including even some of the replicas of the palace buildings where the old was in too poor condition so needed to be totally replaced. Each member is cast and erected to exactly the same style, but probably weighing 20 times as much as the timber original, and then painted. This seems very strange in a country that has in the past lost a lot of buildings, and hence, people to earthquakes.
We moseyed around in the heat and took billions of photos, listened to the strange American lady on our audio tour, which cleverly works out what section to tell you about via GPS, although she got it wrong a couple of times, and finished up in the Imperial Gardens where the Emporer and his concubines frolicked, and left through the North gate. We tried to work out whether it was best to try and suss the bus system out or carry on walking on weary feet. The foray of people, electric trikes, and buses confused us enough to opt for the latter. We stopped for a late lunch in a little place with a menu with pictures AND English translations of the grub. Jo chose some pork dish and I went for a cold dish of beanshoots, spinach wilted in vinegar, pak choi and egg. We decided to avoid tripe, pig intestines and stinky tofu for the time being.
Eventually got back after a couple more miles walking in the increasing hazy heat of late afternoon, did some internet planning of the next couple of days, and went out with Penny, a woman staying and teaching English for a little while in Beijing. She took us to a cheap little place for dinner where we had pork (though from what part I've no idea) with peppers and garlic, tofu with chilli, and rice. Lovely chilled meal with cheap beer too!
Next morning we got our train tickets to Datong (7 hour day on hard-seat), then went to the Summer Palace. This is where the emporer went when he needed to get away from all the hustle and bustle, and is set in acres and acres of grounds with a huge lake in the centre. Was a simple tube trip, and we decided against the weird audio-guide this time, just buying a map which is hand-painted on brown parcel paper, (going on the wall when we get back).
The day was another scorcher, so Jo bought a hat, a big floppy blue thing, which she realised she could barely see under.
The whole summer palace was laid to ruin by the Brits in the second opium war (gives you a warm feeling inside doesn't it), so it's been pretty heavily renovated, but a lot more sympathically than other places. You walk in immediately over a stone bridge over Suzhou street, which is a riverside street, named after the canal town of Suzhou. Then up the hill through palaces to the grand the Tower of Buddhist Incense, which is 4 stories high, and covered in thousands of Buddhas, and was the place of worship. It is from here that the hill slides away down to the lake, and you can see the tourist dragon boats and hundreds of little covered pedalos pootling along.
We made our way down past and through more palaces and intricate bronze statues of dragons, lions, turtles and cranes, some of which are literally caged to stop tourists touching them, but in doing so they can't be cleaned, so they're filthy apart from the odd area where a tourists prying finger can reach and has rubbed it clean.
We got to the lakeside along the imposing and covered Long Corridor which was just to shelter the emporer when walking around, and wandered up to the 17 arch bridge, via a little photo stop, where Jo and I got dressed up as Emporer and Empress! The guys working there all laughed at me though, as I am so tall in comparison that the robes ended around my ankles, so when I sat down they were up to my shins, showing off my bare feet!
We moseyed around, a bit longer enjoying the scenery, until the crowds got a bit much and we left to get on the tube to a hutong which has been renovated and famed for being a bit cooler. It's very similar to the lanes in Brighton, with fashionable little cafes and food stalls and shops crammed in with market stalls in front. Very nice little place, with all kinds of different foods available (tapas was quite popular). We got back to the hostel late that night and found a little place just down the road where we had chicken with peanuts and chilli (kung pao), pork with peppers and onion, and egg fried rice. Loving all that pork!
Following day was our last day, so we went to see the Great Wall. There are places everywhere offering tours which take you mostly to a place called Badaling, which is the most heavily rebuilt, and touristy, and the tours normally herd you to lots of shops and restaurants for half the day. We got up early and got a bus to a section of the wall called Mutianyu. This is a steep section which zig-zags up and down the mountains. There was a cablecar, but we walked up, and trekked through 5 watchtowers. After 2 hours and hundreds of photos, we started to make our way back to the first watchtower for the route back down, and we saw a lady on her knees who looked like she was taking a photo. I asked if she was ok, and it turned out she couldn't get up, her legs had given up. Her name was Cynthia, quite an elderly lady, who had got the cablecar up, wandered too far along the wall downhill, and couldn't get back up to the cablecar in time for her group, so was going to try and walk down. I knew that I couldn't walk her far, as some of the steps are huge, and the way down is hundreds and hundreds of stone stairs, so we got her to a watchtower, sat her in the shade with a drink, offered her some grub and ran down the mountain to find her tour-group. It wasn't hard to find a big group of elderly aussies, and the tour-guide thanked us and headed back up with a few local blokes to get the lady to the cablecar. As we stood awaiting the bus in a huge queue (with a weird middle-eastern european lady patrolling to make sure no-one pushed in otherwise she wouldn't have got a seat), we saw her again walking to her tourbus. She thanked us and lauded us her heroes! Good deed for the day done! We dozed the whole way back, popped into McDonalds (please don't judge) for a coffee and soft drink as it's the cheapest place to get a coffee, then showered and changed to go out with Penny again as she was going to take us to a great dumpling place on the other side of town. It was a walk along lots of hutongs in the dark, until we happened on the busy little place. We had some boiled dumplings (pork and tomato), and some fried (carrot and cabbage), and some little pumpkin cakes, plus of course; cheap beer.
Got back late, and passed out pretty fast, as next day we had to get a 7.30 train to Datong!
Landed in Beijing on a hot, sunny, and slightly smoggy Thursday morning. I was immediately enthralled by the size of the airport; the roof seemed to go on into the horizon!
We collected baggage and managed to suss out which bus to catch and where from without too many problems. We also took a photo of the word "toilets" with the chinese script beneath, and set it as the background on the mobile so that we could flash it at people if needed!
The bus took an hour and a half, then we jumped off in Xidan in Beijing, where our instructions were to get a taxi from the bus to the hostel. The language barrier reared it's ugly head, and every cab we flagged (4) just looked at the address (in English not Chinese script) and shook his head. So I got a map out and figured out where we were, got us to the metro station, and got us to Qianmen, which is just below Ti'annamen Sq. We found the hostel just before heat exhaustion set in, got shown round and did what came naturally after NZ: dumped our bags and went straight out wandering. We found a little stall selling big flat buns cooked in a pizza oven with a sweet centre (we think passionfruit and brown sugar) for 30p around the corner, and walked a couple of miles around hutongs (backstreets where all the little local stalls and restaurants are), then went back for a shower and relax with a beer (under 50p for 660ml bottle in hostel bar!), before heading back out to sample the famous Peking Duck (Peking IS Beijing). We found a place that looked good (you can't use the rule that you do in the UK that if there's Chinese people in there it must be good, as that's true of EVERYWHERE), and sat down with more cheap beer. I have to say, I quite liked the real Peking Duck, it was a really nice roasted crown with lots of meat, and not shredded to bits like you often see, but Jo preferred the UK shredded type. The sauce was amazingly strong though, you really didn't need much, but really good. We got to bed stupidly early after a flight of little sleep. (On subject of the flight, we did get seated in the fire escape with more legroom than i could use which was good though!).
Next day we went hunting for cash machines then cheated and just had breakfast at the hostel (French toast for Jo, eggs and bacon on toast for me, both with coffee), then headed for Ti'annemen Sq via the first gate to the city, past Chairman Mao Memorial Museum, to the Forbidden City. It was bloody boiling, about 33 degrees, with no breeze and thick air all around (the smog is always around, it just gets better or worse, but never clear), but we managed to spend about 4 hours wandering around the Forbidden City with it's many grand buildings of funny names (like "the palace of earthly tranquility" which I think was the one where "concubines would await the emporer and his advisors to pay respect" - in other words; get their jollies). Beautiful buildings, with unfathomable amount of attention to detail. Nearly every beam has a painting depicting animals or events on every face, and there's normally 3 beams layered on top of one another, there must be thousands throughout the city walls. The Chinese have obviously tried to keep this all in good condition, but they only seem to repaint or refurbish something once it's well into degradation, and their methods aren't light. Sandstone is touched up crudely with strong mix cement, so that the joint is obvious. The marble steps are let be worn away to smooth and very slippery surfaces, and if chipped or broken, they're fixed with ill-matching blocks if at all. Concrete seems to be the next best thing for everything, including even some of the replicas of the palace buildings where the old was in too poor condition so needed to be totally replaced. Each member is cast and erected to exactly the same style, but probably weighing 20 times as much as the timber original, and then painted. This seems very strange in a country that has in the past lost a lot of buildings, and hence, people to earthquakes.
We moseyed around in the heat and took billions of photos, listened to the strange American lady on our audio tour, which cleverly works out what section to tell you about via GPS, although she got it wrong a couple of times, and finished up in the Imperial Gardens where the Emporer and his concubines frolicked, and left through the North gate. We tried to work out whether it was best to try and suss the bus system out or carry on walking on weary feet. The foray of people, electric trikes, and buses confused us enough to opt for the latter. We stopped for a late lunch in a little place with a menu with pictures AND English translations of the grub. Jo chose some pork dish and I went for a cold dish of beanshoots, spinach wilted in vinegar, pak choi and egg. We decided to avoid tripe, pig intestines and stinky tofu for the time being.
Eventually got back after a couple more miles walking in the increasing hazy heat of late afternoon, did some internet planning of the next couple of days, and went out with Penny, a woman staying and teaching English for a little while in Beijing. She took us to a cheap little place for dinner where we had pork (though from what part I've no idea) with peppers and garlic, tofu with chilli, and rice. Lovely chilled meal with cheap beer too!
Next morning we got our train tickets to Datong (7 hour day on hard-seat), then went to the Summer Palace. This is where the emporer went when he needed to get away from all the hustle and bustle, and is set in acres and acres of grounds with a huge lake in the centre. Was a simple tube trip, and we decided against the weird audio-guide this time, just buying a map which is hand-painted on brown parcel paper, (going on the wall when we get back).
The day was another scorcher, so Jo bought a hat, a big floppy blue thing, which she realised she could barely see under.
The whole summer palace was laid to ruin by the Brits in the second opium war (gives you a warm feeling inside doesn't it), so it's been pretty heavily renovated, but a lot more sympathically than other places. You walk in immediately over a stone bridge over Suzhou street, which is a riverside street, named after the canal town of Suzhou. Then up the hill through palaces to the grand the Tower of Buddhist Incense, which is 4 stories high, and covered in thousands of Buddhas, and was the place of worship. It is from here that the hill slides away down to the lake, and you can see the tourist dragon boats and hundreds of little covered pedalos pootling along.
We made our way down past and through more palaces and intricate bronze statues of dragons, lions, turtles and cranes, some of which are literally caged to stop tourists touching them, but in doing so they can't be cleaned, so they're filthy apart from the odd area where a tourists prying finger can reach and has rubbed it clean.
We got to the lakeside along the imposing and covered Long Corridor which was just to shelter the emporer when walking around, and wandered up to the 17 arch bridge, via a little photo stop, where Jo and I got dressed up as Emporer and Empress! The guys working there all laughed at me though, as I am so tall in comparison that the robes ended around my ankles, so when I sat down they were up to my shins, showing off my bare feet!
We moseyed around, a bit longer enjoying the scenery, until the crowds got a bit much and we left to get on the tube to a hutong which has been renovated and famed for being a bit cooler. It's very similar to the lanes in Brighton, with fashionable little cafes and food stalls and shops crammed in with market stalls in front. Very nice little place, with all kinds of different foods available (tapas was quite popular). We got back to the hostel late that night and found a little place just down the road where we had chicken with peanuts and chilli (kung pao), pork with peppers and onion, and egg fried rice. Loving all that pork!
Following day was our last day, so we went to see the Great Wall. There are places everywhere offering tours which take you mostly to a place called Badaling, which is the most heavily rebuilt, and touristy, and the tours normally herd you to lots of shops and restaurants for half the day. We got up early and got a bus to a section of the wall called Mutianyu. This is a steep section which zig-zags up and down the mountains. There was a cablecar, but we walked up, and trekked through 5 watchtowers. After 2 hours and hundreds of photos, we started to make our way back to the first watchtower for the route back down, and we saw a lady on her knees who looked like she was taking a photo. I asked if she was ok, and it turned out she couldn't get up, her legs had given up. Her name was Cynthia, quite an elderly lady, who had got the cablecar up, wandered too far along the wall downhill, and couldn't get back up to the cablecar in time for her group, so was going to try and walk down. I knew that I couldn't walk her far, as some of the steps are huge, and the way down is hundreds and hundreds of stone stairs, so we got her to a watchtower, sat her in the shade with a drink, offered her some grub and ran down the mountain to find her tour-group. It wasn't hard to find a big group of elderly aussies, and the tour-guide thanked us and headed back up with a few local blokes to get the lady to the cablecar. As we stood awaiting the bus in a huge queue (with a weird middle-eastern european lady patrolling to make sure no-one pushed in otherwise she wouldn't have got a seat), we saw her again walking to her tourbus. She thanked us and lauded us her heroes! Good deed for the day done! We dozed the whole way back, popped into McDonalds (please don't judge) for a coffee and soft drink as it's the cheapest place to get a coffee, then showered and changed to go out with Penny again as she was going to take us to a great dumpling place on the other side of town. It was a walk along lots of hutongs in the dark, until we happened on the busy little place. We had some boiled dumplings (pork and tomato), and some fried (carrot and cabbage), and some little pumpkin cakes, plus of course; cheap beer.
Got back late, and passed out pretty fast, as next day we had to get a 7.30 train to Datong!
Saturday 5 May 2012
Kaikora, Wellington, Auckland, NZ, 28 April - 2 May 2012
Awoke in Lake Tekapo and got straight on the bus bound for Kaikora, but en route, we were going to drop a load of people off in Christchurch. After the quake last year, Magic bus doesn't stop overnight there anymore, but instead has 2 nights stopover in Kaikora. Christchurch was said to have been a beautiful city, and from what we saw, I believe that. Some of the university buildings and many churches have the classic British look of them, it was just so sad to see so much damage to them. One big uni building was shored up with fabricated steelwork that looked like scaffolding, all of it's gargoyles and other stone decorations had either been removed or fallen, and a lot of ply and sheet steel was fixed covering apertures at high level. We didn't see the cathedral, but I don't know how much is left now that it has been decided that it's too expensive to bring back up to standard so are dismantling.
You can see that construction (or rather, demolition and refurbishment) is booming, and now that the scale of destruction earthquakes can have on Christchurch is apparent, a lot of people are leaving, which is sad, but we've been told that the Irish are picking up the slack! Due to the Irish economy being up the swanny, and the number of skilled trades needed to rebuild the city, NZ have been actively seeking Irish people to go over, and they're going over in droves. Not quite enough to balance the people leaving, but very good all the same.
Enough of that. We dropped off people, stopped at a cafe which is also a centre dedicated to Antarctic projects (as it's a last base to stop at before heading there for civilian and military groups) for our lunch stop for the last stop. We arrived in Kaikora around 3, and didn't do much really. Jo and I plus a saffer were the only ones in our hostel, which was an eco-friendly place seemingly staffed entirely by European stoners. We wandered into the town, wandered back, made dinner and sat chatting with people in the hostel for the rest of the night.
The next morning, Jo and I were to spend the longest away from each other in 5 months. She was going to watch dolphins on a boat, and I was going sea-fishing. The total time apart was 4 hours.
I don't know how exactly th dolphin watching was; you'll have to read Jos blog for that; but the sea-fishing was great. There was only 7 of us on the boat, and we stopped and saw a couple of dolphins playing around us, then a bit further out we saw a little blue penguin swimming in front of the boat! We got out to 80m depth, got some big juicy bait on and went for it. I was amazed; the second the reel was about 70m out, they were biting, and no sooner than you got to 80m, you had 2 on the line. Just a shame they were so bloody far down - the longest part was reeling them the whole way up! Albatross' were bloody everywhere too, and I accidentally caught one when it went for my bait as I was just putting it over the boat, so was a bit fruity having this bird with about 2.5m wingspan flapping away at me! Luckily the old dude (Jerry) whose boat it was sorted it and I got back to catching fish instead of birds. We carried on, and a little japanese girl who kept letting out hundreds of metres of reel got her line tangled with mine, but the biggest knot was around her own line, mine just unhooked from hers, so the old dude decided to cut out the tangled section, and retie it and let the other bit drop. I was holding the middle bit, and it felt like it had a bit of weight on it, but he was sure it was ok to drop... he was wrong, as he didn't realise that Tash's line (who was on the other side of the boat) was also tangled in the japanese girls, and he'd just cut the end off of both their lines letting drop to the seabed, and tied the lines together, so that they were now in a perpetual tug-of-war! Didn't hinder Tash though, as after a fresh set of hooks and weights, she then fought her way to victory over a barracuda! You can't eat them, but still a blooming cool catch! Her boyfriend Jamie wasn't to be outdone though, and immediately after caught a blue cod! I hoped to finish up with a winner too, but just got a decent sized brace of sea perch.
We headed back to land via a quick stop at a crayfish pot. We only pulled one up and it had ten crayfish in it, of which we were allowed (after measuring and making sure no eggs on them) to take back 6! These crayfish aren't like th UK or even American ones; they're huge. The size of a decent lobster minus the big claw.
We were given a little bag filled with the fruits of our fishing, which was about 10 fillets each, and invited back to Jerry's place later in the afternoon for some of his wine and he would barbie up our crayfish. I headed back to the hostel via the shop to make Jo a nice lunch of pan-fried fish, mediterranean tomatoes, pasta and broccoli. She got back from her dolphin spotting on a high, and we enjoyed a very un-traveller-on-a-budget lunch! Before heading to Jerry's we had some time, so we borrowed some tennis rackets and balls, and I set about teaching Jo how to play as she's been banging on that she wants to learn. We eventually got a few rallies going, but mostly just messed about, bt was good fun (plenty of legging it outside the courts to get the balls back, but no huge dogs to avoid like when we were kids in Challow!).
We wandered up to Jerry's, and Cam the bus driver and his girlfriend were also there as well as a few others besides Tash, Jamie, Jo and I. We were given plenty of good white wine, and Jerry barbied the crayfish, then cracked one open and put it on the table for us all to try. To my relief, Jo didn't like it, so mine was all to myself! We had another glass of wine, then wandered home in the dwindling daylight to relax by the woodburner and eat my crayfish.
Next morning we forewent breakfast and just got straight on the bus bound for Nelson, and then the Interislander onto Welly again. We stopped after only 45 mins for some brekkie, then again 10 mins up the road to see some seals in a little waterfall. We weren't expecting much, and Cam didn't talk it up much, but we were shocked; there were over a hundred at least playing around in the pool at the bottom of some falls right in front of us, and some curious little ones came right up to us! Very cute as there were a few little pups around already too.
We got back on the bus, dropped off at Nelson, and wandered onto the ferry, where Tash, Jamie, Kay, Jo and I sat chatting in the cafe the whole 3 hours. I then hunted down a minibus to take us to our hostels, said our goodbyes to Tash and Jamie, wandered to the shops, and finished the day by making a huge bowl of nachos with a can of Stagg chilli to go with it!
Next morning in Welly was miserable, and we got on an Intercity bus at 7.30am to take us to Auckland. There is very little to report; we sat and listened to music, read, dozed and played games for the next 10 1/2 hours, only stopping when the bus let us off! We checked in at YHA again, and had been put back in the first room we stayed in there, so we dumped our stuff, and stretched our legs around town for a bit, got some dinner, then back to the hostel - amazing how tiring it is doing nothing sometimes!
Next morning we had the day before our flight to Beijing in the evening. We sorted bits out on the internet, did washing, and went up the Skytower that overlooks the city and harbour as a final furore to NZ, and got a cab to the airport!
You can see that construction (or rather, demolition and refurbishment) is booming, and now that the scale of destruction earthquakes can have on Christchurch is apparent, a lot of people are leaving, which is sad, but we've been told that the Irish are picking up the slack! Due to the Irish economy being up the swanny, and the number of skilled trades needed to rebuild the city, NZ have been actively seeking Irish people to go over, and they're going over in droves. Not quite enough to balance the people leaving, but very good all the same.
Enough of that. We dropped off people, stopped at a cafe which is also a centre dedicated to Antarctic projects (as it's a last base to stop at before heading there for civilian and military groups) for our lunch stop for the last stop. We arrived in Kaikora around 3, and didn't do much really. Jo and I plus a saffer were the only ones in our hostel, which was an eco-friendly place seemingly staffed entirely by European stoners. We wandered into the town, wandered back, made dinner and sat chatting with people in the hostel for the rest of the night.
The next morning, Jo and I were to spend the longest away from each other in 5 months. She was going to watch dolphins on a boat, and I was going sea-fishing. The total time apart was 4 hours.
I don't know how exactly th dolphin watching was; you'll have to read Jos blog for that; but the sea-fishing was great. There was only 7 of us on the boat, and we stopped and saw a couple of dolphins playing around us, then a bit further out we saw a little blue penguin swimming in front of the boat! We got out to 80m depth, got some big juicy bait on and went for it. I was amazed; the second the reel was about 70m out, they were biting, and no sooner than you got to 80m, you had 2 on the line. Just a shame they were so bloody far down - the longest part was reeling them the whole way up! Albatross' were bloody everywhere too, and I accidentally caught one when it went for my bait as I was just putting it over the boat, so was a bit fruity having this bird with about 2.5m wingspan flapping away at me! Luckily the old dude (Jerry) whose boat it was sorted it and I got back to catching fish instead of birds. We carried on, and a little japanese girl who kept letting out hundreds of metres of reel got her line tangled with mine, but the biggest knot was around her own line, mine just unhooked from hers, so the old dude decided to cut out the tangled section, and retie it and let the other bit drop. I was holding the middle bit, and it felt like it had a bit of weight on it, but he was sure it was ok to drop... he was wrong, as he didn't realise that Tash's line (who was on the other side of the boat) was also tangled in the japanese girls, and he'd just cut the end off of both their lines letting drop to the seabed, and tied the lines together, so that they were now in a perpetual tug-of-war! Didn't hinder Tash though, as after a fresh set of hooks and weights, she then fought her way to victory over a barracuda! You can't eat them, but still a blooming cool catch! Her boyfriend Jamie wasn't to be outdone though, and immediately after caught a blue cod! I hoped to finish up with a winner too, but just got a decent sized brace of sea perch.
We headed back to land via a quick stop at a crayfish pot. We only pulled one up and it had ten crayfish in it, of which we were allowed (after measuring and making sure no eggs on them) to take back 6! These crayfish aren't like th UK or even American ones; they're huge. The size of a decent lobster minus the big claw.
We were given a little bag filled with the fruits of our fishing, which was about 10 fillets each, and invited back to Jerry's place later in the afternoon for some of his wine and he would barbie up our crayfish. I headed back to the hostel via the shop to make Jo a nice lunch of pan-fried fish, mediterranean tomatoes, pasta and broccoli. She got back from her dolphin spotting on a high, and we enjoyed a very un-traveller-on-a-budget lunch! Before heading to Jerry's we had some time, so we borrowed some tennis rackets and balls, and I set about teaching Jo how to play as she's been banging on that she wants to learn. We eventually got a few rallies going, but mostly just messed about, bt was good fun (plenty of legging it outside the courts to get the balls back, but no huge dogs to avoid like when we were kids in Challow!).
We wandered up to Jerry's, and Cam the bus driver and his girlfriend were also there as well as a few others besides Tash, Jamie, Jo and I. We were given plenty of good white wine, and Jerry barbied the crayfish, then cracked one open and put it on the table for us all to try. To my relief, Jo didn't like it, so mine was all to myself! We had another glass of wine, then wandered home in the dwindling daylight to relax by the woodburner and eat my crayfish.
Next morning we forewent breakfast and just got straight on the bus bound for Nelson, and then the Interislander onto Welly again. We stopped after only 45 mins for some brekkie, then again 10 mins up the road to see some seals in a little waterfall. We weren't expecting much, and Cam didn't talk it up much, but we were shocked; there were over a hundred at least playing around in the pool at the bottom of some falls right in front of us, and some curious little ones came right up to us! Very cute as there were a few little pups around already too.
We got back on the bus, dropped off at Nelson, and wandered onto the ferry, where Tash, Jamie, Kay, Jo and I sat chatting in the cafe the whole 3 hours. I then hunted down a minibus to take us to our hostels, said our goodbyes to Tash and Jamie, wandered to the shops, and finished the day by making a huge bowl of nachos with a can of Stagg chilli to go with it!
Next morning in Welly was miserable, and we got on an Intercity bus at 7.30am to take us to Auckland. There is very little to report; we sat and listened to music, read, dozed and played games for the next 10 1/2 hours, only stopping when the bus let us off! We checked in at YHA again, and had been put back in the first room we stayed in there, so we dumped our stuff, and stretched our legs around town for a bit, got some dinner, then back to the hostel - amazing how tiring it is doing nothing sometimes!
Next morning we had the day before our flight to Beijing in the evening. We sorted bits out on the internet, did washing, and went up the Skytower that overlooks the city and harbour as a final furore to NZ, and got a cab to the airport!
Queenstown, Dunedin, Lake Tekapo, NZ, 24 - 28 April 2012
We travelled down to Queenstown via the bridge used for AJ Hackett's first permanent bungy, which, was a lovely suspension bridge which had been brought back up to standard by the conservation of NZ with AJ Hackett, but at the cost that Hackett obviously said that they'd pay for it if they were allowed to build a bloody great concrete abomination for themselves, which they duly did! I still got some great photos of the bridge and valley though, with all of the trees golden with their autumn colours.
From there we headed onto Arrowtown, an old goldrush town with still fairly affluent residents, so it has lots of nice shops, cafes and bars. Jo and I managed to eat 3 pies between us for lunch, then ran around taking pretty pictures and looking around the town before getting back on the bus to Queenstown!
The hostel was right in the heart of the town, so we did as normal; dumped the bags and went straight out wandering. We got our bearings, then Jo had to go get on a mini-bus to do her hang-glide. In the meantime, I looked at the mountain bike porn in the shops, then walked around the shoreline and up to Queenstown Park taking lots of pictures. I am really getting into photography as the trip goes along, and purposefully got my camera as it has a fully manual mode, so I got some cool pics of flowers and what-not. I must have walked 5 miles in the 2 1/2 hours Jo was gone!
I met Jo when she was done, and we headed back to the hostel for some grub, then went to Hertz to pick up our car for the next day. We chose the smallest, cheapest they had, but got upgraded to a Toyota Corolla which was really nice, and it was manual, so I was well happy. We then parked up the car for the night and wandered to the cinema to watch American Reunion as it was cheap night and we were tired from our early start, and were going to be getting up at 4am the next morning to drive to Milford Sound.
We got up on time, and were in the car and away by 4 for the (expected) 5 hour drive. The drive in the dark was quite eerie with windy roads, and as the ambient light began to fill the sky we could make out dark surroundings all around us in almost every direction, going hundreds or thousands of metres above us. The drive actually only took shy of 3 hours, and we arrived to an almost abandoned car park. I wandered over to the visitors centre to see what was going on as I could see plant working seemingly in the middle of the harbour. They were building a new harbour wall to fit more/bigger boats in, but I couldn't get anywhere near it to have a proper nosey, so went back to the car for a kip for an hour. We woke up and went to the visitors centre and chose the boat trip which was the earliest, cheapest, and included free breakfast! Was simple but well worth it, a buffet of toast, cereals and fruit. The boat could hold 240 people, but because we were on such an early boat and Milford is so bloody far from anywhere, there was only about 25 of us on, so there was plenty of room, and the skipper, Vaugn, had plenty of time to chat, so I spent a while chatting to him. Milford Sound isn't actually a sound but a fjord as it was carved out by glacier ice, not water, and is around 400m deep at it's deepest, but you can be within touching distance of one of the mountainous walls around and the water can be 200m deep below you in places.
It was an overcast morning, with some mist high above some mountains, but no mist, so we had some good clear shots. The scale of it was just incredible. At one point we were directed towards a waterfall that came out of the rocks and looked like a piddly little thing: it was 3 times the height of Niagara Falls, but the mountains towering above and around just dwarfed it. I thought we were 120m from the shoreline at one point only to be told we were over a quarter of a mile away! Very strange!
We drank as much tea and coffee as we could, nicked a bit of fruit, and got off the boat after almost 2 hours, then got back into the car to head back. It took a while to get to Te Anau, which is almost halfway, as we stopped loads. We stopped as almost every green and yellow sign (conservation/tourist point) including the chasm (some falls in a chasm), a couple of mirror lakes, a load of lookout spots over the mountains and valley, homer tunnel (tunnel right through the base of a mountain), some plains at the bottom of more mountains, and eventually, Te Anau, for a coffee and look at the lake. We then sped off towards Queenstown. The word "sped" being literal, as, as I came round a corner a bit quicker than the 100km/h limit, a big intimidating police car was only 100m in front of me, flashed his lights, and I pulled over. He turned around and pulled up behind, and a little friendly guy got out and said he'd clocked me doing 122, which should be a 170 dollar fine. I confessed all and said sorry, I wasn't used to 6 gears and it just pulled the car along quicker than I realised (not a lie). He went back to his car and came back with a ticket for 120 dollars, saying we didn't seem like bad people and gave us some wristbands with the anti-drink-drive campaign slogan "Ghost Chips" on. No point being pissed off, I did wrong, I was caught, and the bloke was reasonable and didn't treat me like a criminal. Later I discovered that just being caught without a seatbelt is 150 dollar fine, so I got off quite lightly.
Jo and I discussed the etiquette of who pays, and she honourably offered to pay half. I said it's ok, just buy me my Fergburger that night. We played "would you rather" games the whole way home, got back and dropped off the car (after a refuel), then went for our Fergburger. Jo vied for the classic with cheese, and I had Mr Big Stuff. This place is packed all the time, and very famous, so expectations were high, especially as Oxford has it's own cult burger place, Atomic Burger, which has a place in my heart. Now Fergburger was good, nice big roll, nice salad etc, and a big meal, but I just can't see the fuss. It was still only skinny beef patties just like a posh McDonalds. I'm sorry but simultaneously proud to say that Atomic Burger is a lot better.
We planned to go for a kip and then go out that night, but we had some internet stuff to sort out, and by the time we got back to the hostel, I was a tired out after 17 hours on the go, so we wimped out and relaxed in the hostel and sorted out our bags ready for the bus to Dunedin the next morning.
The bus met us early on a cloudy morning the following day, and we boarded bound for Dunedin. We made it about 10 miles out of Queenstown before I smelt a familiar burning smell and sure enough, we pulled over a minute later and the bus could move no more. Luckily another coach pulled over and had just enough room to take us and our hand luggage to the next town of Cromwell, which was small with nothing really there. We waited here for 4 hours playing cards and drinking coffee in the cafe until a replacement bus rolled up. Our bus had shot breaks which had got stuck on (hence the burning smell). Our replacement bus and impromptu stop had meant that we didn't get to Dunedin in time to go to the Cadbury factory, so we checked into Hogwartz, a victorian era manor house turned backpackers, and headed out to look around the city. Dunedin is modelled closely on Edinburgh, and is very pretty with lots of old Georgian and Victorian style buildings with high ceilings, elaborate stone facades, and big sash windows. The train station is supposed to be very close to Edinburgh station, but I can't vouch for that as I've never seen it, but it was very nice, and had an old steam locomotive in a glass case outside. We wandered around the Octagon that forms the main centre, and headed back to freshen up, then back out to meet Olivia who we did Fox Glacier with. We had a few drinks (Speights ale and cider which is brewed 100m from the bar we were in), then another couple from the bus came in and joined us, so we chatted and listened to the live music. On the note of Speights, it's nice stuff, but like Tui, doesn't really seem to taste of much, I don't know what the craic is with the kiwi beers, but they all say 4 - 5%, but you can't taste any strength at all!
Anyway, we bid our farewells to Olivia as she was staying in Dunedin for a few days, which we were a little jealous of as it seemed to be a really nice city, with lots of character, a few things to do (brewery tour, cadburys tour etc), and lots of cool cafes and bars, but never mind; the following day we were up early (again) and off to Lake Tekapo! Not before stopping at Baldwin Street, the steepest street in the world. An average incline of over 1:5, which we obviously walked up. Was pretty cool, and would have been the best fun to have had a bike or skateboard to hand.
We stopped again at the Moreaki Boulders, which are big boulders about 1.2m diameter of stone, but perfectly round, some of which are broke open to reveal yellowish crystalised insides, so they look like alien eggs washed up on the shore. They're actually old crap from the seabed, gathered together and surrounded in mud which has formed into a rudimentary concrete over 60m years, then been pushed up out of the ground by tectonic movement and excavated by the shoreline erosion. Sorry, this is probably really boring, but this geology jazz is becoming quite interesting to me.
Anyway, I had a paddle in the surf, then we went onto Oamaru to go to the supermarket. Oamaru used to be where they mined a white type of soapstone, so all of the buildings are incredibly grand, with large pillars and Corinthian (very complicated) mantles. They even have an old opera house. They also have a steampunk museum/exhibition which looked really cool from the adapted old steam train in the front, but we didn't have time to go in. If you don't know what steampunk is, look it up, it's a way of making modern contraptions and machines look or work with use of old machinery and often clockwork mechanisms. One I've seen is a grand old brass typewriter which has been altered so that it is actually a keyboard for a computer. Just look it up; one of my favourite sites www.darkroastedblend.com normally has a lot of stuff on it.
Back to the shopping. Cam, our driver had set up a barbie for that night in Tekapo as we were almost all in the same hostel, so we gave him 10 dollars each and left him to it while we bought booze. Then we got into Tekapo, took some photos of a really pretty old church right on the shore of the lake overlooking the mountains, and headed to the hostel. As Tekapo is in the middle of nowhere with so little light pollution and one little mountain called Mt John next to the lake, it has got a load of observatories built on it as the views are great. Jo and I wandered up to the top to have a look about, and I couldn't help but lead us off the beaten track up a sheer slope. We took some photos of the beautiful scenery as the sun set, then walked back (down the sheer slope again with only a few slips and no broken bones thankfully) for our barbie dinner, which was loads. Steak, sausages, potato salad, salad, garlic bread, coleslaw, and fruit salad and ice cream to finish - bargain for a fiver! We spent the rest of the evening drinking, chatting and watching family guy and the simpsons, so a really good end to the day!
Next morning we were bound for Kaikora via Christchurch!
From there we headed onto Arrowtown, an old goldrush town with still fairly affluent residents, so it has lots of nice shops, cafes and bars. Jo and I managed to eat 3 pies between us for lunch, then ran around taking pretty pictures and looking around the town before getting back on the bus to Queenstown!
The hostel was right in the heart of the town, so we did as normal; dumped the bags and went straight out wandering. We got our bearings, then Jo had to go get on a mini-bus to do her hang-glide. In the meantime, I looked at the mountain bike porn in the shops, then walked around the shoreline and up to Queenstown Park taking lots of pictures. I am really getting into photography as the trip goes along, and purposefully got my camera as it has a fully manual mode, so I got some cool pics of flowers and what-not. I must have walked 5 miles in the 2 1/2 hours Jo was gone!
I met Jo when she was done, and we headed back to the hostel for some grub, then went to Hertz to pick up our car for the next day. We chose the smallest, cheapest they had, but got upgraded to a Toyota Corolla which was really nice, and it was manual, so I was well happy. We then parked up the car for the night and wandered to the cinema to watch American Reunion as it was cheap night and we were tired from our early start, and were going to be getting up at 4am the next morning to drive to Milford Sound.
We got up on time, and were in the car and away by 4 for the (expected) 5 hour drive. The drive in the dark was quite eerie with windy roads, and as the ambient light began to fill the sky we could make out dark surroundings all around us in almost every direction, going hundreds or thousands of metres above us. The drive actually only took shy of 3 hours, and we arrived to an almost abandoned car park. I wandered over to the visitors centre to see what was going on as I could see plant working seemingly in the middle of the harbour. They were building a new harbour wall to fit more/bigger boats in, but I couldn't get anywhere near it to have a proper nosey, so went back to the car for a kip for an hour. We woke up and went to the visitors centre and chose the boat trip which was the earliest, cheapest, and included free breakfast! Was simple but well worth it, a buffet of toast, cereals and fruit. The boat could hold 240 people, but because we were on such an early boat and Milford is so bloody far from anywhere, there was only about 25 of us on, so there was plenty of room, and the skipper, Vaugn, had plenty of time to chat, so I spent a while chatting to him. Milford Sound isn't actually a sound but a fjord as it was carved out by glacier ice, not water, and is around 400m deep at it's deepest, but you can be within touching distance of one of the mountainous walls around and the water can be 200m deep below you in places.
It was an overcast morning, with some mist high above some mountains, but no mist, so we had some good clear shots. The scale of it was just incredible. At one point we were directed towards a waterfall that came out of the rocks and looked like a piddly little thing: it was 3 times the height of Niagara Falls, but the mountains towering above and around just dwarfed it. I thought we were 120m from the shoreline at one point only to be told we were over a quarter of a mile away! Very strange!
We drank as much tea and coffee as we could, nicked a bit of fruit, and got off the boat after almost 2 hours, then got back into the car to head back. It took a while to get to Te Anau, which is almost halfway, as we stopped loads. We stopped as almost every green and yellow sign (conservation/tourist point) including the chasm (some falls in a chasm), a couple of mirror lakes, a load of lookout spots over the mountains and valley, homer tunnel (tunnel right through the base of a mountain), some plains at the bottom of more mountains, and eventually, Te Anau, for a coffee and look at the lake. We then sped off towards Queenstown. The word "sped" being literal, as, as I came round a corner a bit quicker than the 100km/h limit, a big intimidating police car was only 100m in front of me, flashed his lights, and I pulled over. He turned around and pulled up behind, and a little friendly guy got out and said he'd clocked me doing 122, which should be a 170 dollar fine. I confessed all and said sorry, I wasn't used to 6 gears and it just pulled the car along quicker than I realised (not a lie). He went back to his car and came back with a ticket for 120 dollars, saying we didn't seem like bad people and gave us some wristbands with the anti-drink-drive campaign slogan "Ghost Chips" on. No point being pissed off, I did wrong, I was caught, and the bloke was reasonable and didn't treat me like a criminal. Later I discovered that just being caught without a seatbelt is 150 dollar fine, so I got off quite lightly.
Jo and I discussed the etiquette of who pays, and she honourably offered to pay half. I said it's ok, just buy me my Fergburger that night. We played "would you rather" games the whole way home, got back and dropped off the car (after a refuel), then went for our Fergburger. Jo vied for the classic with cheese, and I had Mr Big Stuff. This place is packed all the time, and very famous, so expectations were high, especially as Oxford has it's own cult burger place, Atomic Burger, which has a place in my heart. Now Fergburger was good, nice big roll, nice salad etc, and a big meal, but I just can't see the fuss. It was still only skinny beef patties just like a posh McDonalds. I'm sorry but simultaneously proud to say that Atomic Burger is a lot better.
We planned to go for a kip and then go out that night, but we had some internet stuff to sort out, and by the time we got back to the hostel, I was a tired out after 17 hours on the go, so we wimped out and relaxed in the hostel and sorted out our bags ready for the bus to Dunedin the next morning.
The bus met us early on a cloudy morning the following day, and we boarded bound for Dunedin. We made it about 10 miles out of Queenstown before I smelt a familiar burning smell and sure enough, we pulled over a minute later and the bus could move no more. Luckily another coach pulled over and had just enough room to take us and our hand luggage to the next town of Cromwell, which was small with nothing really there. We waited here for 4 hours playing cards and drinking coffee in the cafe until a replacement bus rolled up. Our bus had shot breaks which had got stuck on (hence the burning smell). Our replacement bus and impromptu stop had meant that we didn't get to Dunedin in time to go to the Cadbury factory, so we checked into Hogwartz, a victorian era manor house turned backpackers, and headed out to look around the city. Dunedin is modelled closely on Edinburgh, and is very pretty with lots of old Georgian and Victorian style buildings with high ceilings, elaborate stone facades, and big sash windows. The train station is supposed to be very close to Edinburgh station, but I can't vouch for that as I've never seen it, but it was very nice, and had an old steam locomotive in a glass case outside. We wandered around the Octagon that forms the main centre, and headed back to freshen up, then back out to meet Olivia who we did Fox Glacier with. We had a few drinks (Speights ale and cider which is brewed 100m from the bar we were in), then another couple from the bus came in and joined us, so we chatted and listened to the live music. On the note of Speights, it's nice stuff, but like Tui, doesn't really seem to taste of much, I don't know what the craic is with the kiwi beers, but they all say 4 - 5%, but you can't taste any strength at all!
Anyway, we bid our farewells to Olivia as she was staying in Dunedin for a few days, which we were a little jealous of as it seemed to be a really nice city, with lots of character, a few things to do (brewery tour, cadburys tour etc), and lots of cool cafes and bars, but never mind; the following day we were up early (again) and off to Lake Tekapo! Not before stopping at Baldwin Street, the steepest street in the world. An average incline of over 1:5, which we obviously walked up. Was pretty cool, and would have been the best fun to have had a bike or skateboard to hand.
We stopped again at the Moreaki Boulders, which are big boulders about 1.2m diameter of stone, but perfectly round, some of which are broke open to reveal yellowish crystalised insides, so they look like alien eggs washed up on the shore. They're actually old crap from the seabed, gathered together and surrounded in mud which has formed into a rudimentary concrete over 60m years, then been pushed up out of the ground by tectonic movement and excavated by the shoreline erosion. Sorry, this is probably really boring, but this geology jazz is becoming quite interesting to me.
Anyway, I had a paddle in the surf, then we went onto Oamaru to go to the supermarket. Oamaru used to be where they mined a white type of soapstone, so all of the buildings are incredibly grand, with large pillars and Corinthian (very complicated) mantles. They even have an old opera house. They also have a steampunk museum/exhibition which looked really cool from the adapted old steam train in the front, but we didn't have time to go in. If you don't know what steampunk is, look it up, it's a way of making modern contraptions and machines look or work with use of old machinery and often clockwork mechanisms. One I've seen is a grand old brass typewriter which has been altered so that it is actually a keyboard for a computer. Just look it up; one of my favourite sites www.darkroastedblend.com normally has a lot of stuff on it.
Back to the shopping. Cam, our driver had set up a barbie for that night in Tekapo as we were almost all in the same hostel, so we gave him 10 dollars each and left him to it while we bought booze. Then we got into Tekapo, took some photos of a really pretty old church right on the shore of the lake overlooking the mountains, and headed to the hostel. As Tekapo is in the middle of nowhere with so little light pollution and one little mountain called Mt John next to the lake, it has got a load of observatories built on it as the views are great. Jo and I wandered up to the top to have a look about, and I couldn't help but lead us off the beaten track up a sheer slope. We took some photos of the beautiful scenery as the sun set, then walked back (down the sheer slope again with only a few slips and no broken bones thankfully) for our barbie dinner, which was loads. Steak, sausages, potato salad, salad, garlic bread, coleslaw, and fruit salad and ice cream to finish - bargain for a fiver! We spent the rest of the evening drinking, chatting and watching family guy and the simpsons, so a really good end to the day!
Next morning we were bound for Kaikora via Christchurch!
Nelson, Greymouth, Franz Josef, Fox Glacier, Wanaka, NZ, 18 - 24 April 2012
We arrived in Greymouth on Weds 18th after a few scenic stops on the bus, and a record breaking time in eating some pancakes when we stopped for some lunch/breakfast as they weren't served until we were supposed to be on the bus.
Greymouth doesn't really have much, and despite being the biggest town on the west coast South island, it's still a small place. There is nothing to do either, so Jo and I did some food shopping and watched Chicago (on VHS!). This little account is boring because Greymouth is.
Next day we took a nice scenic route to Franz Josef where the famous glacier hike is, but no longer as a long section is melting, meaning that only heli-hikes are now available. These aren't really hikes, as you're using a helicopter to get to the top, which obviously costs a lot more, but with the advantage of great views. We just wanted to do a full day hike, so we gave it a miss here and went to some spa pools for the afternoon instead. The following day we got the bus 30 mins down the road to Fox Glacier. We spent the day doing some little hikes, and arranged our big glacier hike for the next day. These little hikes mostly went around the rainforest which is all around the glacier. There were plenty of lookouts looking over the mountains or the glacier or the rivers running down the valley, and some really cool old bridges which I naturally took loads of photos of.
Sunday morning we wandered over to the centre and got given boots, socks, crampons and jackets, then piled into some buses to make our way to the foot of the glacier. I got a little worried as there were a lot of us, but it soon worked out as we were all on different hikes, and those on the full day were then broken up so we had at most a dozen in a group with a guide. Our guide was Magret, an Icelandic girl who spends all her time in the summer as she comes to NZ to guide for 6 months then back to Iceland to guide for 6 months.
We took a pathway up through the rainforest in the sides of the canyon that the glacier flows. Would've been nice to get straight to the ice, but we got some good views which you can't really get anywhere else. We all then went down to the start of the ice, strapped on our crampons and an extra layer of clothing and got walking. I'd never used crampons before, but they're brilliant, make walking really easy, and are pretty comfortable.
We walked on the lower ice for a while which has been worn down and is a lot flatter, with quite a few "moulins" where water flow has formed holes or tunnels in the ice. We got some cool photos playing around in these, then stopped for some lunch on a load of rocks, before heading to the upper ice. This ice is a lot higher up, and hasn't been worn down as it passes through the valley yet, so it is cleaner, and a lot bigger, with crevasses, gulleys, and peaks around 6m high, which makes hiking progress a lot slower, but also a lot of fun, trying to climb or navigate between the huge pieces of ice. We got some more cool photos, then started heading back. We got back to the township at 4.30ish and headed straight back to the hostel for a cup of tea and hopefully watch Toy Story 3, but a bunch of German lads had just put on Lord of the Rings, so we sat and watched that with them.
Next morning we were up early (as always) to travel to Wanaka. We stopped in a few places including Lake Matheson, which is a mirror lake looking towards Mt Cook, which was very serene and pretty (bloody cold still though).
Wanaka is a town surrounded by mountains by the side of a lake. We stayed at YHA which had an amazing view over the water and mountains which we weren't expecting.
As a small town, there isn't an awful lot to do in Wanaka, though I think that'll soon change and the tourism vampires will soon invade with scores of extreme sports as available everywhere else. There are already a few sky-dives available, but in the way of different and personal to Wanaka, there is the Cinema Paradiso and Puzzleworld. You may argue that both of these could be built anywhere else also, but it feels more special in that they're run and frequented by locals, and not some big company with arms everywhere, just churning out the same branded thing everywhere.
Anyway, we only had one afternoon, and we had a brief look over Puzzleworld, so we thought we'd traipse the town before heading to the cinema to watch The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Great British cast, so thought it was a sure thing. I wasn't disappointed, but this is my travel blog to read over one day, not a film review, so we'll leave it at that. The cinema was really cool and kitsch, with movie posters adorning every square inch of wall, theatre itself that felt like a big living room with instead of normal cinema chairs, lots of big comfy sofas, some airline seats, and a converted Morris Oxford! They also have proper coffee served in the cinema in china instead of paper, and an intermission when they bring out fresh, homemade cookies. Was a really cool experience, and afterwards Jo and I went to the lake-front and played around in the kids playground for a while (I thought my camera broke, but fixed it), then back to the hostel where they were showing ANOTHER film. This one was called Boy, a kiwi film based in the 80s. Very funny, with a brilliant Maori take on Thriller at the end! Sat around chatting with tea after, then I hacked my face to pieces with a chinese old-style razor I bought in Fiji for 30p on a weeks growth (lesson learned there).
Following morning we boarded the bus bound for Queenstown!
Greymouth doesn't really have much, and despite being the biggest town on the west coast South island, it's still a small place. There is nothing to do either, so Jo and I did some food shopping and watched Chicago (on VHS!). This little account is boring because Greymouth is.
Next day we took a nice scenic route to Franz Josef where the famous glacier hike is, but no longer as a long section is melting, meaning that only heli-hikes are now available. These aren't really hikes, as you're using a helicopter to get to the top, which obviously costs a lot more, but with the advantage of great views. We just wanted to do a full day hike, so we gave it a miss here and went to some spa pools for the afternoon instead. The following day we got the bus 30 mins down the road to Fox Glacier. We spent the day doing some little hikes, and arranged our big glacier hike for the next day. These little hikes mostly went around the rainforest which is all around the glacier. There were plenty of lookouts looking over the mountains or the glacier or the rivers running down the valley, and some really cool old bridges which I naturally took loads of photos of.
Sunday morning we wandered over to the centre and got given boots, socks, crampons and jackets, then piled into some buses to make our way to the foot of the glacier. I got a little worried as there were a lot of us, but it soon worked out as we were all on different hikes, and those on the full day were then broken up so we had at most a dozen in a group with a guide. Our guide was Magret, an Icelandic girl who spends all her time in the summer as she comes to NZ to guide for 6 months then back to Iceland to guide for 6 months.
We took a pathway up through the rainforest in the sides of the canyon that the glacier flows. Would've been nice to get straight to the ice, but we got some good views which you can't really get anywhere else. We all then went down to the start of the ice, strapped on our crampons and an extra layer of clothing and got walking. I'd never used crampons before, but they're brilliant, make walking really easy, and are pretty comfortable.
We walked on the lower ice for a while which has been worn down and is a lot flatter, with quite a few "moulins" where water flow has formed holes or tunnels in the ice. We got some cool photos playing around in these, then stopped for some lunch on a load of rocks, before heading to the upper ice. This ice is a lot higher up, and hasn't been worn down as it passes through the valley yet, so it is cleaner, and a lot bigger, with crevasses, gulleys, and peaks around 6m high, which makes hiking progress a lot slower, but also a lot of fun, trying to climb or navigate between the huge pieces of ice. We got some more cool photos, then started heading back. We got back to the township at 4.30ish and headed straight back to the hostel for a cup of tea and hopefully watch Toy Story 3, but a bunch of German lads had just put on Lord of the Rings, so we sat and watched that with them.
Next morning we were up early (as always) to travel to Wanaka. We stopped in a few places including Lake Matheson, which is a mirror lake looking towards Mt Cook, which was very serene and pretty (bloody cold still though).
Wanaka is a town surrounded by mountains by the side of a lake. We stayed at YHA which had an amazing view over the water and mountains which we weren't expecting.
As a small town, there isn't an awful lot to do in Wanaka, though I think that'll soon change and the tourism vampires will soon invade with scores of extreme sports as available everywhere else. There are already a few sky-dives available, but in the way of different and personal to Wanaka, there is the Cinema Paradiso and Puzzleworld. You may argue that both of these could be built anywhere else also, but it feels more special in that they're run and frequented by locals, and not some big company with arms everywhere, just churning out the same branded thing everywhere.
Anyway, we only had one afternoon, and we had a brief look over Puzzleworld, so we thought we'd traipse the town before heading to the cinema to watch The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Great British cast, so thought it was a sure thing. I wasn't disappointed, but this is my travel blog to read over one day, not a film review, so we'll leave it at that. The cinema was really cool and kitsch, with movie posters adorning every square inch of wall, theatre itself that felt like a big living room with instead of normal cinema chairs, lots of big comfy sofas, some airline seats, and a converted Morris Oxford! They also have proper coffee served in the cinema in china instead of paper, and an intermission when they bring out fresh, homemade cookies. Was a really cool experience, and afterwards Jo and I went to the lake-front and played around in the kids playground for a while (I thought my camera broke, but fixed it), then back to the hostel where they were showing ANOTHER film. This one was called Boy, a kiwi film based in the 80s. Very funny, with a brilliant Maori take on Thriller at the end! Sat around chatting with tea after, then I hacked my face to pieces with a chinese old-style razor I bought in Fiji for 30p on a weeks growth (lesson learned there).
Following morning we boarded the bus bound for Queenstown!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)