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!
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