Global Gossip, Queenstown
The following day we did a boat/walk/boat trip up the shoreline of and through Abel Tasman National Park, seeing penguins and seals along the way. It rained the entire time.
Later that day we met a representative of Backpacker Campervans Ltd who brought us a replacement van after the tap on our original vehicle had once again malfunctioned. Mercifully the tap on this one works a little better. Less good is that the water tank has the capacity of one bucket, the shower/toilet cubicle floods frequently and the kettle takes 12 minutes to boil enough for two cups of tea. Oh, and unblocking a chemical waste disposal unit on a cold morning in the rain does not feel much like being on holiday. I don't know what we were thinking.
Regardless, we moved on from Kaiteriteri where we had exchanged vans to the West coast and the metropolis of Westport, or more precisely to a one-horse town just south of it called Charleston. We spent an evening in a pub in which we were the second and third visitors of the day (I'm not convinced one couldn't substitute "month" for "day" and be equally accurate), and the following day headed out to the glowworm caves armed with a wetsuit, a mining helmet complete with head lamp and a tractor tyre inner tube. We explored some 30-million year-old caves, listened to a lot of stuff about limestone which reminded me why I hated geography so much at school, and eventually rafted through underwater lakes craning our necks to the hordes of glowworms on the ceiling before emerging from the underworld and rafting back down the river and its few mini-rapids. This was a fun day, made all the better for the fact that it was just us and our guide, Howie. Just occasionally there are benefits to being here in winter.
From there we drove to Greymouth where we were greeted by an English campsite attendant telling us that the only thing to do in Greymouth is the brewery tour and tasting. We obligingly signed up and were ferried to the brewhouse only to discover that we were part of a group of 29 of which 23 were irritating gap yearers and four were irritating middle-aged couples pretending to be gap yearers. Some of the beer was nice though - I recommend Monteiths Original Ale.
The next day we drove to the glacier at Franz Josef, walked across the dusty crevasse leading up to it in something little short of a hurricane and arrived at the ropes 50 ft short of the ice with a pound of sand in each eye and a severe chafing on every exposed piece of skin. In Blenheim we had been advised not to bother with a tour of glacier for the reason that "a glacier is basically just a big block of ice". Upon inspection I can confirm this to be largely true.
We returned to our holiday park and took advantage of the hot spa facilities available onsite, although sadly I am still washing twice-daily in an attempt to remove the stench of chlorine from myself, and in the evening I entered and came not-at-all close to winning a Killer Pool tournament in the attached pub. I have two excuses: 1) the balls didn't run for me; and 2) it wasn't real pool anyway.
We started early the following morning (yesterday) and drove seven hours from Franz Josef to Queenstown, the so-called adventure capital of the world. It has been raining really rather hard and been extremely cold ever since we got here, and consequently we haven't done a great deal of adventuring, unless the afore-mentioned encounter with chemical toilet waste counts. Instead we've been to Starbucks, McDonalds and have just seen Robin Hood at the pictures (ridiculous movie) in an attempt to reconnect with the 21st century ahead of our not-too-distant return to London.
Having spent the last three months trying to persuade Tweedie to do a skydive with me (believe it or not I was keen) I had just about talked her into it, so about an hour ago we marched into the office where one books such things armed with 600 NZD (c. 300 GBP) and a vague air of foreboding only to discover that I am 11kg too heavy (at 111) to "safely" jump out of a plane. I thought the girl at the scales was rather rubbing it in when she looked at the scales, shook her head and let me know "sometimes we make exceptions if it's close, but...". I feel a combination of disappointment, humiliation and vague amusement. Tweedie feels relieved.
Over.
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