What a beautiful drive to Queenstown. The sun was shining, everywhere is so green, and it is great to see so many happy healthy animals enjoying the spring grass - lots of lambs, calves, deer (deer farming seems to be big here), alpacas and horses. Queenstown is the home of adrenalin and the town where bungy jumping was first done. I was expecting Queenstown to be big and very commercialised. In actual fact, it is in a beautiful setting and really not a big place at all. There are so many activities to choose from here. If I had unlimited time and cash, I could literally not be bored for several weeks - 3 bungy jumps, sky diving, paragliding, mountain biking, handgliding, bridge swings, jet boating, zip lines, quad bikes, canyoning, climbing, abseiling, horse riding - the list of possible activities is endless. There are also lots of great walks so the first afternoon, a few of us climbed up Queenstown hill which gave brilliant views over the whole area. Despite all the adrenalin activities on offer, I ended up doing the zip trek whereby you take the gondola up the mountain, then follow a series of tree top to tree top zip wires down through the forests to the bottom. This is fun but it's not really that scary. However, a few people fancied doing it so it was good fun to all go together. The bungy jumps here are a bit lame in comparison to the one I did in South Africa - the largest is only 134m compared to 216m in SA. I probably should have sky dived as that is still on my list of things to do, however I have at least two more opportunities to do that in NZ so I was saving it for another day. It was a beautiful sunny day in Queenstown though so may be I should have done it whilst the weather permitted.
We also had a big night out in Queenstown. Hilarious times at Cowboys bar where they have a mechanical rodeo bull you can ride. What I found particularly entertaining was that they make you sign a disclaimer before you get on! We also paid a brief visit to Altitude Bar which is now more commonly known as "The Mike Tindall Bar". Suffice to say, we didn't even stay for a drink as it is quite sleazy. Hardly surprising that the England rugby team did so poorly in the World Cup if this is the sort of venue they frequent!
Also bumped into Cherie and Jason (from my Africa trip) in Queenstown. They too are travelling around NZ and they were staying at the same camp site. Lovely to have drinks with them and catch up. May well see them again as we seem to be heading up the west coast in the same direction.
From Queenstown, we headed towards Wanaka. Once again the proposed bush camping option had to be abandoned due to the weather - just the one day of sunshine in Queenstown then back to rain. I think I mentioned in a recent blog post that I was looking forward to camping again? I take that back. I hate camping and I am upgrading to a dorm room / cabin / chalet / whatever bed option is available at every given opportunity. Why suffer if you don't need to?!
Saturday morning, I went jet boating on the Wilkin and Makora rivers. Good way to start the day. Then we drove up the west coast, stopping off here and there for short walks, photos, etc and an awesome and very steep downhill bike ride over the Haast Pass. The day finished with a 30km cycle ride into our camp near Fox Glacier. Our guides said it was 20km but they lied as we saw road signs that clearly stated otherwise- exhausted and aching by the time I got to camp that night!
So today the plan was to go heli hiking on the Fox Glacier. That is, a helicopter ride up to the top of the glacier, a couple of hours hiking and then helicopter back. Sounds very cool, doesn't it? But for the second time this trip, my attempt to get a helicopter ride failed due to the weather. I shall console myself with the fact that I have saved $400. Been walking instead, but it has been quite miserable, foggy and wet all day. Let's hope it improves soon...
No comments:
Post a Comment