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New Zealand Some of the shown pictures are quite big in size. Remember that this is just to improve the quality of them... Patience is golden... |
| Three weeks of touring around...
It is Sunday 27 June. After a perfect flight from Sydney we arrive in Auckland. It doesn't take long
until we meet up with Jesper and Eva again. They're the Danish/Swedish couple we met before at different
places in Australia. Of course, great to see eachother again! What we will do in New Zealand? Well, that is
something we actually don't know yet when we arrive there. Something we really want to do is go to the
south and do some snowboarding. And how will we get there? Well... hitching is ana option! But, after some
enquiring we find out that it is only 23 dollars a day to rent a car! For that price you don't want to stand along
the road!
At the hostel in Rotorua we met a certain Claire James, a 19-year old girl form England. She wouldn't mind it if we gave her a lift to Taupo... Well, no problem of course! So, the next day we arrive in Taupo with the three of us. We stayed at a very nice hostel and in the evening Claire would meet up with some people she got to know through skydiving. If we would like to come as well? Suuuure! We got to meet her friends and together we had an awesome drinking-evening in this place called The Holy Cow. While tanking ourselves up we got to know Clare (look at the spelling; different!). Again, an english girl, 24 years old this time, also travelling through New Zealand. She travelled by Magical Bus or something...
We all planned on going to Queenstown to do some snowboarding. Bright idea: What if you Clares come with us; we'll have a GREAT time! A bit of thinking but then it was arranged. From then on we would travel with the four of us!
The next day on the road... South of Lake Taupo we take a tourist drive and about an hour later we are all standing in the snow throwing snowballs at eachother! So we were in our first snow!
All this to taste the coming snowboarding-experience! It's so bizar to stand in the snow while at the same time you hear about temperatures in Europa that reach up to 30 degrees!
After we tasted a bit of the apres-ski feeling we drove on to Wellington. We spend a day there, not doing anything more than shopping with the girls. In the evening we meet up with Martin and Irene (Rotterdam, Netherlands).
They just came back from the south island. We'll only be with them for about six hours because OUR ferry leaves at 1.30am! So we get into that restaurant and that pub and are having a very good night.
On our way to the ferry!
A great ferry with very comfy couches makes a lot of people think of sleeping on them. But hey, not us of course; we're still very fit and keep on putting money in the jukebox... Amazing how popular that makes you with your fella-passengers....NOT. On the ferry we also meet a couple of other guys from England and with this group we got through the travel-time very quickly!
When we leave the ferry we want to try to get to Nelson (150 km) to look for a hostel there. As being the fortunate sober one, it's me who has to get us there. When i suddenly wake up because of the snoring sound i'm making i see we arrived in Nelson safely. Finding a hostel in the middle of the night is NOT easy... At eight o'clock in the morning we finally find ourselves a very nice hostel. It's actually too nice to be called a hostel! Swimmingpool, spa and sauna... Whoo! But first thing to do: get some sleep! Somewhere in the afternoon we wake up and do all kinds of things but actually nothing at all. The evening-program is the movies and after that we get back to bad rapidly. The next day...
We keep on driving with our sporty drive-style and we make it to Franz Joseph Glacier just before dusk. A YHA hostel is our place for the night. YHA stands for Youth Hostel Assosiation, but I think it stands for Sleep Here Boring, but then in an other language! Anyways, the next day we have a great day of climbing on the glacier! Armed with hubnail boots and an ice-pick we climb over huge amounts of ice, we struggle to get through caverties and caves and to finish it off we slide down a naturally formed slide!
A great and long day of walking DOES make you tired and our initial plan to drive to Wanaka after the walk simply changes. Like a lot of plans do while travelling! So, we'll stay for another night in Franz Joseph. Not Sleep Boring Here again, so we look for another hostel. We find it, but there are no vacancies. They do have two houses down the road as well though... if we want we can stay there.... WOW! Our own house; TV, kitchen, bathroom and the view... snowcapped mountains!
It's the 4th of July and on the television it's time for a great movie: Independance Day. So, we just hang around the television that night and are having a great relaxybexy night!
Goodmorning, the next day!
In our rental car we drive to Wanaka (very southly). A beautiful route and when we get close to Wanaka we drive in the snow! A few days before they had heaps of snow here; on the mountains even more than a metre!
Now we've got to back in time for a bit... Darah and Queeva from Ireland... Christmas and NewYearsEve at their place in Perth... we stayed with them for a week...
Well, those same people have a house in Wanaka now so we pay them a visit. When we arrive there is nobody home, there is a beautiful snowman in the garden though and everything is covered by a thick layer of snow. We decide to leave some clear signes of our arrival and get into a nice restaurant afterwards. It does not take long before my mobile rings; Queeves... Yep, she's home and 'did we interfere with her snowman???' Euhhh...
When she shows us around their place we all agree that they've got a great house; a living with a high ceiling, lots of glass and a log-fire! They live here together with Marcus, an ozzie bloke who's working at Mt Cardrona in the ski-resort. We can all stay there for as long as we want; even the clares!! They've got two free beds and some space on the floor... no worries.
Queeves is making us completely wild to come with them the next day to do some snowboarding.
The snow is the best in the last 25 years!! They have been doing the boarding thing for four days now and it is really great she tells us! Actually we had planned to do the boarding in Queenstown, 100 km more south... But, indeed, it would be even a lot nicer to go together with them and stay at their place as well!! So that's what we do.
The next day.
We're getting out of bed early because we want to enjoy our day as long as possible, then the telephone rings... the winds are too strong.... shitshitshit... We decide to go to Cardrona anyway and after a two hours delay the resort opens it's invisible doors... A snowboard-lesson is arranged quickly. Before the lesson starts we first try around a bit. Jeez, that's NOT easy! First, try to WALK with such a thing on you foot! Very, very interesting i can tell you!
But then, the lesson. It's going quite all right altough Clare has some problems of getting her grip on the towrope... The main thing is to keep on looking in the direction you want to go to. After that two hour lesson it's time for the real thing: with the ski-lift we go to the top of the mountain and take a beginners piste... wow this is cool!!! Then i try another slope, also green, i thought... fuck shit bullocks!! Very blue is the colour of this one and after three hours of boarding i'm not exactly ready for that! Slowly, and with a lot of falling i finally manage to get to the bottom of the slope. Apparently Claire took the same route as well and she wasn't too happy about it either!
Too bad, the passes quickly and we go back to the house. The next day everybody is ready for it again, although the getting out of bed gives some problems for some people regarding to muscles that don't feel as they're supposed to. Personally i'm unstoppable and the adrenaline literally rushes through my veins! The conditions of the slopes are a lot better today and the day is perfect. Peter and the Claires use the free second lesson but i am stubborn, what else is new, and go up the mountain with Darah and Queeves right away. Truly amazing how quick you can pick up this snowboarding! It's going very well and soon we're doing competitions about speed and jumps and soon we're all soaked with sweat. I actually don't have the time to go for lunch, but ok, a quick one! After luch all of us get a few good runs in, AND some severe bruces as well! You sould have seen Clares legs! Time goes so quickly and it doesn't take long when they stop the lifts again at four o'clock. A third day? Yeees! But first a day of rest.
So the next day we do some serious sleeping in and then it's hard to get out of bed. We all find out that we've got muscles we even didn't know of! Around noon we go with all of us to Puzzling World in Wanaka. An huge maze that takes about an hour of your time is the main attraction. After solving this problem we shelter in the cafe for cookie-time and try to solve some serious puzzling-problems! A bit of help is definitely necessary! We finish the day with paying a visit to the local brewery, Wanaka Beerworks. A few tastings later we find our way back to that homey log-fire...
Considering the cost, the sourness and other activities Peter and both the Clares decide not to go for a third day of boarding. Me, on the other had, am already sweating pure adrenaline by the though of getting on that board again. So I get to Cardrona with Darah and Queeves that day and we simply have a top-day! No more green slopes! The whole morning we have the best possible time on the blue intermediate slopes and it's amazing how all our techniques are improving so quickly! After lunch we take all kinds of alternative routes and it does not take long to find the steepest descends with heaps of powdersnow in wich it is not hard falling IF that has to happen that is. It's such a beautiful day with a purple sky, no winds and great sunshine. This day is over too soon as well...
In the evening when we are back at the house. It's our last evening in Wanaka; tomorrow we will go on to Queenstown. So we go for a great night out and with a whole bunch of people we enter the local pub. Not being able to walk straight is how we get back to the house somewhere that morning and when someone lights the fire... the party goes on!
Heavily aching we wake up the next morning. We actually still wanted to do this beautiful walk... OK, we call the hostel in Queenstown to tell them we will be delayed a bit... Later on that afternoon we walk on Rocky Hill and indeed, it IS a beautiful walk. Also a bit, or actually, quite a bit a tricky-one. Lots of black ice at dangerous places, but we get to summit without losing any lives...
A quick goodbye to Darah and Queeva is unavoidable; they're too late for their work... result of the trickyness...
We drive to Queenstown that night and find the place were we will stay. It's Queenstown Winter Festival and so it's busy. Busy as! All the hostels were already booked out so we had te get ourselves a hotelroom! For that 95 dollars with the four of us we got an en-suite room for ourselves with television, tea and coffee (claires job), a fridge and done beds! Live can be good!
The first day of the winter festival... a good reason to go out isn't it? Yes, it was! Apparently The World was the place to be, so The World was the place we went to. Truly great dancing evening!! After hours of exercise a shower and in that huge bed...
The morning after pill..., oh no, not that one... is one of light headaches and it is going to be a day of doing nothing! In the evening we watch From dusk till dawn and get some pizza's in.
After a day like that and two great nights in this hotel our journey continues.
We're heading for Milford Sound and take New Zealands most scenic route... Euhh, it's so cloudy that we hardly see a thing! Bad luck. That night we sleep in a 'cosy' hostel and the next day we bring the Clares back to Queenstown... We have to get back to Auckland, to catch our plane to Sydney, but they stay for another while in Queenstown, maybe to work, maybe not.
Peter and me, we drive that same day to Christchurch. We stay there for two days and are basically doing nothing.
When we leave Christchurch and continue going north we get to challenge a lot of rain. Actually it keeps on raining till we are
back in Auckland. That's when we are back in the northern part of the northern island... Another night of serious going out with
Jesper and the three guys we met already a few times in New Zealand; pure coincidence that we met them again here in Auckland!!
Now we are back in Sydney; it's brightly blue and sunny outside and our arrival here felt a bit like coming home again. We just had
here a very good time and for quite a period as well! So, now we stay at the same hostel again, sleep even in the same beds (!)
and are getting ourselves ready for the laste three weeks we'll spend in Asia...
C 'ya Later! |
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