Saga of the South Island, episode 1
Actually, the saga starts in Wellington, where I had a great time. On Friday the 4th Tamsin came into town and we went to Te Papa, the museum, which was fantastic and really interesting, and then we went to The Golden Compass. It had some good scenes, but it was nothing on the book, and they changed the end. I was not impressed. I later went to see Enchanted on my own, and that was much better; very funny, well worth it.
On Saturday the 5th I went and bought a pair of jandals and - with a fair amount of guilt - a rather pretty dress. Someday I will learn how to not spend money. In any case karma rather got me back for my spending when, as I was walking down the hostel stairs in my new shoes, my feet slid out from under me, dumping me ungracefully and very hard on the stone steps. For days I had a very impressive bruise, all purply-maroon, but sadly modesty prevents me from showing it off.
At least the incident proved that chivalry isn’t dead, as a man at the bottom scrambled heroically up to help me. It didn’t make any difference, but I was grateful for the thought.
I didn’t let the pain stop me from doing stuff, either - I went for a very long walk around and up Mt Victoria. Lovely views, but very tiring! Afterwards I had to brave the cold, deep water to have a swim in the sea just to cool down again.
The next morning, Sunday the 6th, was an early start to get to the ferry. The bus left promptly at 7.15, even leaving one late person behind entirely! Still, the rest of us got to the behemoth of a ferry on time - it was terribly impressive, even if the weather was cloudy for the first time since I restarted my journey. We spent most of the journey in the café, where Tamsin managed to catch up on her sleep on the table.
On the way into Nelson we stopped and went for a walk through the bush to a little river - I wish it had been sunny enough to swim! But even without daring to enter the water, that was my worthwhile thing for the day.
The rest of the day in Nelson was very quiet, but on Monday the 7th we had lots of fun! Tamsin and I went kayaking for the morning in Kaiteriteri, on the coast of the Abel Tasman National Park - and through the power of being pushy and deliberately obtuse we each got it for $25 off the original price! It was cloudy, sadly, and quite windy; when we first popped the kayaks’ noses out of the sheltered bay, the waves made one couple quail. This meant that to give them something of a trip we puttered around the bay and the estuary for a bit before abandoning them on the shore and striking forth for open waters. The waves were big - Tamsin, in the front of the double kayak, got very wet - and fighting the wind was very difficult. In the end we didn’t get nearly as far as we’d planned, but it was still a cool trip.
A large part of that coolness was the guides. Their badge - though none were wearing it that day - is a rainbow hat much like my own! Seeing as one of the guys was wearing a dress (yes, seriously) and another one was sporting the self-proclaimed ‘beach-bitch’ chic of flowery shorts and a girl’s tiny, sleeveless, short denim jacket - well, I have my suspicions that they aren’t oblivious to the meaning of the rainbow.
After the kayak, Tamsin and I went for a bit of a walk, but without transport we couldn’t get far into the Abel Tasman park, so we spent most of the time sitting in a café and chatting as we waited for the bus to return us to Nelson. Going back, we met all the people who’d done the two day hike-camp-kayak - it sounded wonderful! The weather (and the price) put me off doing it then, but maybe I’ll take a couple of days to do it on the way back.
In Nelson that evening, the world was very small, for Rachel showed up despite our parted ways in Taupo! She’d just got in that day, but she chose to continue with us rather than taking the extra day in Nelson, so she’ll be with us all down the West coast, which is awesome. She and Tamsin get on really well, too, so we’ve been having lots of fun - even if they do gang up on me now! That night we (and a couple of random Dutch girls) celebrated the reunion with a few games of pool. I forgot my ID, for which crime I nearly got kicked out of the pub even though I wasn’t drinking. Some people!
On the morning of Tuesday the 8th, we left Nelson in the company of Lamb and a bus full of really interesting people - even Vicky and Jen from my previous bus! Lamb had us all do ‘speed dating’ so we could get to know each other - a tricky thing to achieve within a bus, but very amusing! By the end it had dissolved into chaotic clumps of talking people, and I’m still struggling with the names, but it was a fantastic idea.
Lunch that day - accompanied by a leisurely walk - was at the Nelson lakes. Not as long a walk as originally planned, because it was tipping it down, but still good. After that we hurried on to Westport (with one ice-cream stop at Murchison) where I was enticed by the cheap prices to go jet-boating. (I quite liked the look of the horseriding, too, but I’ve already done that once.)
Now, an in-depth description of jet-boating! It started with all of us in the boat, being towed to the river by a tractor - ducking under branches on the way. In the water, we started relatively slowly, buzzing up the river taking photos - all looking particularly photogenic in our lifejackets, yellow beanies, and glasses. Then the driver started to show his true colours. He liked to steer straight at a rocky wall, zooming away at the last second! At one point he put the prow of the boat right under a waterfall, splashing us all as we tried to take photos.
At one point we stopped on the river’s edge to collect extra passengers; this coincided nicely with the engine stuffing up because a teeny little stick had gotten sucked up, so we got to witness some impromptu mechanics, too! As soon as it was fixed we were back on the river - though much more squished in with all the new people. The sun finally broke out at that point, so we even had blue skies overhead as we tucked away our cameras in preparation for the ride down.
That was awesome fun! Lots of tight turns that doused everyone in water and let us see rainbows in the spray. Zooming down the Buller river, mountains and waterfalls on either side, blue sky above, getting soaked as the driver zig-zagged from side to side… Well worth it! The river was quite high - and it rose another foot in the time we were out - and I think that made it even cooler since he had so much more scope to maneuver. Admittedly the maneuvering was too much for one poor lady, who was carried dizzily back onto the shore by two friends, where she promptly fainted into the arms of the shoreside helper - but though I felt bad for her, I still enjoyed the rest of the trip.
Rachel had gone horseriding, which she said was great, and we headed in to the hostel together, teaming up with Tams and Danaea for dinner and wine. I feel so efficient - $5 each for a great meal, and we still had enough to let Eric eat for free! Anyway, the fun dried up at 10 pm, when we were told we had to put the wine away - an early end, but not early enough to prevent some of the most shocking stories I’ve ever heard from being aired. My god, the dirty minds on my fellow travelers makes me feel angelic in comparison!
So, Wednesday the 9th. It dawned beautifully sunny and bright, which was great since that morning we were dropped on the coast to go for a walk. Lovely! I took quite a few photos, and had mine taken, and got burrs in my hoodie from a search for the perfect pose (though not as many as poor Tamsin did.) And at the end of the walk was a seal colony! We couldn’t get close, but we looked from the path and cooed over the little cubs playing in the rockpools and lolloping around over the stones.
Next stop - after a scenic drive along the coast - was at the Pancake Rocks! They’re really weird, and very cool. I took loads of pictures, and videos of the spray surging up - the spray bad enough that I feared for my camera! There was a blowhole, too, which was very fun to watch. Like the nostril of a dragon, throwing up gouts of steam.
We stayed there for lunch, and then continued bound for Greymouth and Lake Mahinapua. On the way we went over the ‘can-opener’ - a bridge that eats unwary buses for breakfast. It’s only Lamb’s second tour for Kiwi, and he confessed that the bridge still terrifies him! We all gave him a round of applause after making it safely over.
In Greymouth we stopped to buy costumes, because we were planning that night to have a party! The twist: costumes, as I’ve said, but no real clothes were allowed! This resulted in me buying three rolls of wrapping paper to make a superhero costume, Rachel constructing a fairy-dress out of napkins and a pillow case, and Tamsin appearing, most bizarrely, kitted out with two bamboo table runners as a barrel of Tui!
My costume took a long, complicated time to make - but we did still have time to walk on the beach, and when I was all finished - with help from Rachel, my own private fashion designer - I looked awesome. There were some other great ones, too - Claire won a prize for her futuristic cling film (other winners being the amazing, tin foil and green face paint ‘pea on a fork’ and Sorrel the out of season Christmas tree) Greta arrived as a Greek goddess, Daniel came in a poncho made of a world map (promptly signed by many of the part goers), Nile came as the resurrection of Jesus… My personal favourite was Vicky, who made herself a little bikini out of dusting cloths and wielded a bright yellow feather duster, dusting her fellows as provocatively as possible.
Lots of photos, where Nile insisted we all shout “Jesus!” instead of ‘cheese’, and loads of jokes about his new status as spiritual leader. We were introduced to a game called ‘Pegs’, too - someone has an ordinary laundry peg, and at some point they stick it discreetly to someone’s clothes and start loudly counting down from ten. If the peg is undiscovered at zero, the victim downs their drink; if found before, the bully who planted it in the first place downs his. I only got pegged twice - the second time I just had to knock back half a pint of water. I pegged Greta, who didn’t have a drink and as a result bought us both Yegabombs. A truly excellent game.
Tams, Rachel and I went to bed sometime after 1 am, but got up again half an hour later and walked to the lake - in our pyjamas and jandals, to add class - in order to look for glow worms. We didn’t see any, but the stars were amazing! There were so many of them… The rest of the night was undisturbed save for Danaea initiating a desperate search for scissors to free Claire from her cling film prison. Just as well, since the next morning came early enough anyway.
Thursday the 10th (today!) we climbed aboard at 9.30, and a short while later pulled up at the Bushman’s Centre - a homage to the real, Southern, hunting man. The owner used to make his living jumping out of helicopters and tackling deer to take to the deer farms. (Yes, seriously, this was a viable career option.) There were loads of funny notices - “Unattended children will be sold as slaves” - and as well as a live white possum (so cute) there was a wild pig who one poor ‘volunteer’ had to feed. It tried to bite him until he scratched its shoulder, and then it lay down lazily to sleep. The café there was famed for its possum pies, too - I tried a bit of Tamsin’s, it was really nice, though I didn’t like the casual name of ‘headlight delight’!
After the Bushman’s Centre (and a short drive) we hit the beach. There was a walk up to a lookout that I opted for - very steep hills, but I actually managed to get ahead of everyone except Lamb on the way up! When I told him sadly that I’d wanted to be first, he even stopped just outside the lookout and waited for me to overtake him. Such a nice man.
The view was amazing! We could see Mt Cook, which is apparently a rare privilege, and we even caught our first tiny glimpse of the Franz Josef glacier. The beach, too, looked lovely - and at least we had that thought to sustain us on the hike down.
We had our lunch there, and then me and Rachel walked and ran (she beat me when we raced, curse her) up to the point. We got very wet when the waves started coming in, and were the last people back onto the bus at the end - though fortunately Lamb hasn’t got his forfeits organized yet. As a result we were quite tired when we drove closer to Franz Josef, barely managing to drag ourselves up to the look out point where we examined it properly for the first time. Hopefully I’ll recover before tomorrow, because I’m doing a full day hike up there, and it’s likely to be exhausting. At least there’s a hot tub here at the hostel (where I spent a fair portion of the evening) where I’ll be able to recover from the strain of it.
That’s about it for news from me; I don’t have time to put photos up now, because there’s a cheap wine night in the bar and I am missing it as we speak. So for a few more days I shall bid thee adieu. Think of me hiking up a glacier and trying very hard not to slip!