Cut the Apron Strings 2010

Birthday Week - Part One

alli_mcclean — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 21:23:00 GMT

Birthday Week: Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday (22/03/10 - 24/03/10)

Queenstown (Southern Laughter)

I decided to give myself a week to celebrate my 23rd birthday this year because it was special in a few ways. Firstly, it was my first birthday in New Zealand (and I don’t know how many more I’ll get to have here), and also because all the way up to now I’d been a student and I felt that this would be my first birthday in the real, grown up world. Yep, I was making a big deal out of nothing, but I was looking for an excuse to treat myself to cool stuff like skydiving!

The Monday of the birthday week was fairly unexciting (if that’s a word), spent mainly on the 9-hour bus journey down to Queenstown from Christchurch. Somehow it took 9 hours down although it only took 8 when we were travelling in the other direction, this wasn’t the best start to the week needless to say.

We decided to do something active on the Tuesday to make up for the sedentary day beforehand; we hiked up the track to where the gondola (cable car to the rest of us) arrives on the top of Queenstown hill. Since this was my first bout of exercise in quite some time, I was breathing fairly heavily from early on (I’m not proud of myself). But the hard work paid off when we got to the top – we broke through the alpine forest and we were greeted with a beautifully clear view of Queenstown, Lake Wakitipu, the Queenstown and Frankton arms which poke inwards into the lake which is so long that you can only see the sides of it, it stretches out over kilometres in both directions.

Needless to say, we took piles of photos and wondered why we never got to see this part of Queenstown (Base Hostel took most of the blame for putting us in a lazy frame of mind, and sapping any energy to do anything with the lack of sleep we got!). This was to add to the photos we took as we were doing the hike (I also used the photo breaks as general catch-my-breath breaks, ingenius), any time we reached a clearing to our right we snapped the lake and mountain views, of which we now have so many pictures!

Since we didn’t really plan the hike, we bought some slightly overpriced sandwiches in the Skyline cafe and sat outside, partly to let the reality sink in – we were really in this beautiful place, it wasn’t a poster we were looking at, the breeze that wrapped around us was real, the sunshine sweeping across the mountains and lake were real, and Queenstown was real! Sounds stupid, but I honestly couldn’t get my head around these facts, that after all of the hard work I was finally looking at the Remarkable Mountain Range in New Zealand, I suppose I never thought I’d follow through with the plans (best decision I’ve ever made).

We were freezing after sitting still in our sweaty clothes (even though girls glow, not sweat), so we decided to jog back down the track for a while to warm up again. Once again, we hadn’t planned for this and I ended up running down with my hands full of stuff because I hadn’t brought a bag and didn’t think I’d need one, and Elaine had brought her handbag (we were quite the sight to be honest!). The downhill run was fun and by the time we got to the bottom, I was roasted and wrecked all over again, feeling great thanks to the endorphins buzzing around inside though.

Strangely enough, when I woke up on Wednesday morning, my legs were aching and not ready for doing much, regardless of the fact that I suggested to Elaine that it’d be good if we do this daily to improve on our fitness! We also had a fairly restless night’s sleep thanks to one of the nice English girls we’d met who had gone out on Tuesday night. She ended up ditching her friend and travelling companion when she had found an eligible young bachelor to accompany her back to the hostel. Elaine was sleeping in the back room part of our eight-bed dorm, where the girl had also set up camp. Things became very uncomfortable for Elaine when she woke to hear a strange man asking where his bed was when the girl said “And this is my bed..”. Things got worse when Elaine got up to go to the bathroom and was met by a lanky young guy in his boxer shorts, asking her to turn off the lights! The downhill spiral continued when, after they had pretended to be asleep for a few minutes, the slobbery kissing began (which I could even hear as Elaine woke me to ask what to do in this situation – my solution was to sleep anywhere but in there). Elaine ended up having a minor showdown with the pair which involved the girl saying nothing and the guy insisting that his intentions were good – “That’s not my style, honestly”!

After all the drama (and a lie-in), Wednesday was spent in and out of the TV room in Southern Laughter, watching DVDs such as Lord of the Rings (I think every backpacker in New Zealand has watched at least one on their travels, judging by the hostels’ DVD lists), and generally chilling to recover from the day (and night) before.

So far, the Birthday Weekof 2010 had started slowly but got more exciting with each day! I didn’t know if I could handle much more with my impending old age looming on the horizon...

Birthday Week - Part Two

alli_mcclean — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 21:22:00 GMT

Birthday Week 2010 : Thursday (25/03/2010)

Queenstown (of course)

Since this was our second chance to see Queenstown, we felt we knew what we wanted to do in the way of activities, and on the top of that list was a skydive. We tried to book ourselves in for the Wednesday (so there’d be less time to think about the potential dangers), but it had been postponed until the following day. Unlike with our bungy jump, we managed not to build it up too much and so I was pretty excited on my way down to the Nzone centre that morning. It turned out to be cancelled again, and again when we were rescheduled for the afternoon. Feeling fairly frustrated because we had been shooting the breeze all day to make space for the skydive, we decided to jump into a harness for a different reason, and signed up for a Ziptrek on the Queenstown Hill.

Since it had been another lazy day, we threw on the runners again and walked up to the top of the Queenstown Hill, where the Ziptrek started. We were booked in as “the two who walked up”, as if it were as unusual as flying in on James Bond jet packs, so that was a reward in itself! We got into our harnesses with the help of the lovely Costa Rican, Justin, and waited for our fellow trekkers - an American family, complete with a birthday boy of about 10 (stealing my “Birthday Week” attention!).

The Ziptrek was great craic – we got to swing through the fir trees (Douglas Firs, we learned) upside down, spinning in circles and the normal chair way – it was fantastic to see the forest and Queenstown in another, special way. Elaine and I tended to be at the very back or the very front, since the family all stuck together, meaning that we were either talking to Toby, the “I’m pretty cool in case you hadn’t noticed” English guy, or Justin, who seemed to be interested in any sports that involved adrenaline, and had no bones showing that he loved doing this all day! This resulted in us getting slightly distracted in conversation and almost forgetting to pop off the platform into the forest, with the ground a fair aul drop away!

At each platform we were educated by Justin and Toby about conservation (not conversation, I’m fairly sure I know what that is by now), the environment and how the company is out to do its bit to make the planet all shiny and green again; this was a nice break in between getting up close and personal to the trees they talked about. The platforms were built around the giants of fir trees (which swayed a lot in the wind), making me wish all over again for a tree house, although now I don’t know where I’d put it. The more we zipped across the “flying foxes”, the more we were told how to do different things – to go off backwards and upside down, to go upside down and spinning around, and the “zombie” which involved just walking off the platform and not holding on to the harness (a bit tame for my developing adrenaline habit).

On one of the last flying foxes, we had a long journey through the forest and were given spectacular views of the lake and the mountains which keep Queenstown in its little bowl – including the famous mountains which were used in the Lord of the Rings to play the part of Mordor – cool. We found out that the Remarkables are named because they’re one of few mountain ranges which run directly north to south, and were told the Maori legend of the Lake Wakatipu involving a giant stealing a maiden from Invercargill because he loved her (the writers of King Kong may have heard this?). I think the end involved the giant falling asleep every time a warm Australian north-westerly breeze hit him, the Invercargill locals setting him on fire when he was asleep and then the lake filling up to hide him, although I’d like to check that again because I may have changed it slightly!

We saw the scars left by the glacier on the mountains across from us, as the glacier slowly tore its path through. I really find it difficult to imagine the size of the glacier when I saw how high up the mountains it went. The mountains have scratchmarks along their waists (if mountains have waists), and are then untouched above, for some reason I imagine the glacier like someone being pulled through a doorframe and clinging on to it rather than going where it inevitably will end up – my mind is an odd place!

The Ziptrek ended lower down in the forest (naturally enough) and so once we had taken all of our harnesses and helmets back off, we “trekked” back to the top of the hill, where we’d left all of our valuables (and to chat some more to the instructors, we literally don’t know when to stop talking). Once again, we were a bit chilly so we ran back down to the bottom again, really turning a potentially lazy day of nothing into another day of activity, fun, and brilliant scenery. Queenstown and New Zealand really has so much to offer, I’m amazed at how it seems more people don’t know about it and seem to flock to Oz instead (I’m not complaining, that adds to its charm, amongst other things!).

Photos: Bungy

alli_mcclean — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 15:14:00 GMT

Nevis Bungy Jump 143 metres high

Queenstown Bungy Day 13th March

alli_mcclean — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 15:12:00 GMT

Queenstown, 13th March 2010

After our day conquering the Franz Josef Glacier, we booked ourselves back onto the Naked Bus (no nudity required thankfully), to take us to Queenstown, the expensive adrenaline-junkie capital of New Zealand. We left Glow Worm hostel, and our temporary travelling companion Dafna behind. We weren’t too sorry to be leaving either one – Glow Worm was a lot more quiet than Chateau Franz where we’d spent the night before (all the changing was due to our lack of pre-booking anywhere), and the hot tub was broken! As for Dafna, she was quite..blunt. She happily told us that, except for Elaine and myself, all Irish people were fat (she was bigger than both of us but we kept that to ourselves)!

We hopped on the bus only to find Dafna already in place in the bus, talking of changing her plans (again) to join in with us. We encouraged that she see what she wanted to see and made our way to the back of the bus, where we collected another straggler, Vince. Vince had just finished a 6-month stint as a glacier guide, something which Elaine and I enquired about but were told you had to sign up for a minimum of two years (we may have been lied to!). Needless to say, we were still on our high from the glacier and quizzed poor Vince for the first hour (ish) on the ins and outs of possibly the coolest job I’ve ever come across! Thankfully, Vince was also quite chatty as we found out for the other 5 hours of the trip, which flew by.

We got to Queenstown hoping to organise accommodation at the last minute again..not a good idea in Queenstown as all the places we wanted to go to were full, so we ended up going to Base Backpackers Hostel. Oh God. It seemed lovely when we got in there, in the late afternoon, the rooms were cheap and there was a bar next door with cheap food and drinks offers. Warning sign number one. We threw our bags onto the nearest available-looking bunk bed in our 8-bed dorms and grabbed dinner and then went to the cinema – a genius idea after sitting on a bus all day! (We laughed solidly through “From Paris With Love”, which turned out to be not only slightly racist, but not a comedy.)

When we got back to Base, the party was just getting started –warning sign number two. We bought some pricey internet cards and faffed around there since there was only one TV room for the entire monster-sized hostel which was, of course, packed to the rafters. When we eventually decided to go to try and sleep (I’m still amazed at how I’m tired after a day-long bus journey, what have I done other than sit around and eat carrot sticks and hummus?), we discovered that Base was just a summer camp for 18-19 year old English gap year students masquerading as a hostel. Blindfolds and iPods/earplugs were sorely needed to stay here. Elaine and I envied Vince, who was leaving the following morning, as we’d already booked in for five nights. When I’m sleep deprived, it’s not pretty, it’s closer to the Exorcist (especially if combined with an empty stomach)!

We said goodbye to Vince and got to know Queenstown, which didn’t take long but was still breathtaking. The lake stretched into the horizon and was surrounded by the hulking Remarkables, like huge bodyguards. We then decided that if we gave ourselves more time to think about things, we’d never do the bungy jump that we’d been talking about since we arrived in Christchurch – we wanted those free T-shirts! We booked in for the following morning, after a minor barrage of questions regarding safety and likelihood of injuries (or death). We spent the rest of the day and night talking about our imminent jump, not sure if it was helping our nerves or making the whole thing worse. We went for a quiet two drinks in Monty’s to reduce the time spent in bed in Base as we didn’t think much sleep would come to us for a number of reasons this time!

On the 13th, we had a very light breakfast and headed to AJ Hackett to sign in, with my heart starting to kick up a fuss already.. Here we were introduced to a Brazilian girl, who seemed to be sick with nerves, by one of the staff who was trying to show us how to go faster when we jump – I politely nodded but ignored anything that involved more speed whilst flying through the air on an elastic band. The poor Brazilian girl was on the verge of tears the entire time we were talking to her – she kept asking incredulously “Are you guys not nervous?” because we kept laughing, she clearly couldn’t differentiate between laughing and laughing hysterically.

We hopped on the bus to the Nevis Bungy Jump, each of us having our private moments with our iPods to keep our minds off the task at hand. A vision of what was to come passed by on our left as we drove past the bridge over the turquoise Kawarau River where the Kawarau Bungy of a measly 43m was located, it seemed huge when we passed by. I started to get positively edgy when we turned onto a dirt track (referred to by the driver as a goat track, maybe because it was so steep?), which was such a challenge for the bus to get up that we needed to stop halfway up, change into first gear and attack it a second time. Once we reached the top of the hill, we came face to face with the Nevis Swing – a giant pendulum with a person (or two) attached to the bottom of the rope instead of the little steel balls in an office (and without the other four little steel balls to clack up against, thankfully). My stomach dropped back to the bottom of the goat track as we drove further on to the bungy area, where there was a cable car with people jumping out of it at regular intervals. At this stage I was a mixture of excitement and nerves, because deep down I knew I’d be too stubborn to back out (there were no refunds if you changed your mind), and even deeper down I knew I’d survive.

We got harnessed up and took photos of each other (at this stage the Brazilian girl had sprinted from the bus to the bathrooms, her fight or flight had decided it wanted her to flee) before we got the cable car over. This was almost definitely the worst part, it was really windy and the cable car was like the baskets in a hot air ballon, but steel and with a bar to clip your harness onto. As a result, we were swinging around inside and by the time we crashed against the receiver for the cable car in the middle of the valley/canyon, my heart was pounding so loudly I thought it’d drown out the metal that was playing in the bungy centre.

We got there in time to see the Brazilian girl pass out as she was on the platform, she had to be dragged to the seating area as we all looked on, wondering was it really that scary from the platform?

Since we went according to weight, I went before Elaine, who stood by to take photos of the momentous occasion. I gave up trying to pretend I wasn’t nervous and instead tried to smile for the cameras that were all over the shop – I don’t think I convinced anyone, especially the hot guy who was in charge of the bungy cord (in a way, I’m glad he wasn’t distracted).

When I got up to the platform, shuffling like a penguin since my feet were tied together in a warped three-legged race, I asked the instructor if I could hold onto his arm to help edge to the edge – he politely said “Not really, no”, makes sense now! By the time I was spreading my arms out wide and listening to the famous countdown, I was taking deep breaths because I didn’t want to pass out either. Then suddenly, I had just launched myself 143 metres in the air with no safety net below me, just a valley with a river below it which still looked like a thin strip even as I sped toward it. The screaming started about halfway down – the first half was predominantly shock and realisation at what I had done, my curious nature had forced me to jump out of a perfectly lovely building – but the screams of fear changed to excitement and joy as I felt myself being pulled gently back upwards, realising that the giant rubber band was a success and I was going to survive the ordeal.

On the second upwards bounce I was enjoying myself nearly too much to remember to pull the foot release, which meant I tumbled free like a ragdoll so that I could be pulled back up right way up, instead of upside down like Elaine (at that stage all the blood was well and truly in her head and red face). The return journey was spectacular, I was delighted to have survived my first (and possibly last) bungy jump, and it was also a perfect moment to calm down a bit after the flood of adrenaline the burst through the synapses shortly beforehand. The cursing started when I got back up but I got my words back by the time Elaine completed her jump.

Like the easy marks that we were, we of course bought the photos and video footage of the jumps, encouraging each other with the mantra of the trip – “When will you ever do this again?” or the other rational argument – “When will we ever be back here?”. With that logic, we may have to skip the country due to a string of bad debts in a few weeks’ time! We got free T-shirts though..bargain.

We buzzed back to Queenstown, still applauding each other on our extreme bravery, in time to book in for a pole dancing party with some of the girls in the hostel, we were just going for the free champagne and a girls night.

Turns out pole dancing is really hard, and it could be a sport if it didn’t have to take place in darkened rooms filled with mirrors, in the equivalent of a bikini (we got to wear shorts and T-shirts though). Our group of 5 was actually quite good, and the glass of champagne at the start helped us to feel less stupid about the whole thing. By the end of the 2-hour session, we were aching from pulling our weight on our arms the whole time, laughing our heads off, and I had a new found respect for pole dancers, their core strength is amazing. That said though, i wouldn’t be encouraging young girls to take it up if they don’t enjoy your “average” sports!

By the time we got back to Base, a pub crawl (Big Night Out) had just started, and so we decided we’d just tag along with that. We had adopted a “sure we might as well just join in with them” approach to staying in Base, plus we were still on a high from our busy day’s activities. We did a quick costume change (and reapplied the ole make up), and off we went. What we learned was that all of the people on the pub crawl were on the Kiwi Experience bus (which had been given another name due to the promiscuous nature of its passengers), and they were all very cliquey and stayed within their own groups. We carried on regardless (troopers that we are), and ended up chatting to random drips and drabs of people in the various pubs we stopped in. I ended up being given a Jagerbomb from the pub crawl leader, and Elaine and I were given free pizza slices from a Cork fella purely because we were Irish! This all kept us fizzing along until we fell into the beds, and strangely sleep wasn’t a problem that night (but I can’t speak for our roommates).

Tranzalpine train - Franz Josef

alli_mcclean — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 14:05:00 GMT

We left Christchurch early enough on Tuesday morning to get the Tranzalpine train across to Greymouth and then hop on our bus over to Franz Josef to the glacier (we were told not to do the Fox glacier because it wasn't as good as Franz).

We met an Israeli girl, Dafna, outside the hostel who was doing almost the exact same journey as us, so she decided to change and come with us since it was the same price. The train journey was spectacular - there was a huge drop on one side of the train where the Waimakorouri river twisted around the canyon. Our train driver also gave us info all the way along - we found out that an iron man competition took place from the Waimakorouri river to Sumner (in Christchurch) every year, covering a total of 237km.. We were also told some handy NZ facts - the sheep population in NZ has dropped from 100 million to 32 million, still 8 times that of the human population.

The more we travelled, the more my imagination got the better of me and the mountains started to look like the spines of sleeping giants who looked like they'd wait until we were close enough to move and flick us off the tracks (I was fairly exhausted so I needed to keep my brain going somehow so I wouldn't miss the huge amount of scenery we had to take in!)..

We passed through some seriously small towns as well - Otira was a town where people were paid to move there years ago, but it's now almost completely empty and it looked like a ghost town when we stopped there for a few minutes, the hotel was just a big house and was fairly dilapidated from lack of use.

By the time we got into Greymouth, we were a lot later than planned and Elaine and I had to run off the train to catch our bus to Franz Josef which was leaving within the next 5minutes. Turns out the bus was waiting at the end of the platform and we had plenty of time, including to catch up with Dafna again. The bus driver was without a doubt the grumpiest Kiwi we have come across and mumbled an awful lot, so we just curled up and tried to get some sleep. Greymouth was fairly grim with very little of interest in there so we were glad to be getting out of there, and the scenery for the start of the journey was pretty similar also so it was safe to sleep!

I woke up for the last hour or so of the journey, passing by some beautiful beaches and then we saw the glacier emerge from the middle of a group of mountains covered in pine trees - it was like looking for someone in an airport, you glance somewhere and you can pick them out a mile away.

We booked into Chateau Franz Josef just in time for the free soup at 6pm and then hit the Blue Ice Bar for a fantastic pizza and "just one" glass of wine (it was free with the food so it would have been rude if we didn't). We ended up chatting to a lovely Fijian couple, Louisa and Jamie, who live in Sydney, having a few (too many) drinks with them and they left us with half a bottle of wine as well as their contact details if we were ever in Sydney, their daughter was the same age as us and she could take us out (or vice versa).

We got changed out of our tracksuit pants (also known as our travellin pants) in the hostel and headed back, for just one more. At the bar, some Kiwi Experience guys started singing "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" to us, which was beyond random. We then got chatting to a small group of English guys (and a Czech) who worked in the local supermarket, feeding us a line that they could have worked as guides on the glacier but the pay was better in the supermarket, and that all the guides did was get drunk every night. We nodded but couldn't really believe them!

We rolled out of the beds the next morning to go to the shop to get breakfast and some supplies for our packed lunch. The shopping trip was tough because there was a mystery smell in the supermarket that turned our stomachs, which were a small bit delicate after our first accidental session in NZ.

We got all set up for the glacier hike on the Main St in Franz Josef, which was too easy to find considering there are only 2 short enough streets in the whole place; we both ignored the suggestions for the waterproof overtrousers and stuck to the shorts plan..Hardcore hikers/total glacier rookies.

Possibly still drunk, we were in fits of laughter on the bus on the way over, especially since we saw Jesse for the second time that morning (the first was topless in our hostel), this time in shorts and hiking boots beside a van on the dried up river bed - typical!

We all walked to the foot of the glacier in the searing heat (great way to lose a hangover = sweat it out), and then split into 5 groups - Elaine and I jumped into the bunch for groups 1 and 2 and refused to budge when it was too big, even hungover we were ambitious! We ended up in group 2 with Simon (a young tanned Kiwi, pretty easy on the eye too), who said "sweet team" for the whole day.

we went up the stony part of the glacier first, then put on our crampons (as Elaine said, they made us feel like "intrepid travellers") and hit the ice. The clouds came down then and it got a fair bit colder (thankfully, it would have been fairly uncomfortable in the heat all day). We all got to introduce ourselves, and it turned out there was one other Irish girl and the rest seemed to be all Kiwi Experience people, i.e. English gap year students, one in particular thought she was fantastic and knew everything there was to know, she spent the day on Simon's shoulder plaguing him with questions!

The day on the glacier was simply spectacular - we got into some fairly tight cracks in the blue ice though, which meant that the Brazilian girl behind me needed myself and the woman behind her to talk her through it since there was nowhere else for her to go but forwards, not for claustrophobics!

When we stopped moving for lunch, I was suddenly freezing and couldn't wait to get going again, especially because the world and his wife kept asking us if we were cold or not! We felt like spelling out the obvious for them: 1) we're on a glacier; 2) we're not moving around; 3)we're in feckin shorts!

The funniest part of the day was when the inquisitive English teen fell into a small hole in the glacier when we were going through a crack, she was perfectly fine but it was purely because she had been talking instead of looking where she was going! She didn't learn from it and kept talking almost straight away afterward - she may have thought she'd had a near death experience of some sort (although she was clearly really embarrassed because she desperately wanted to impress Simon).

We finished off by climbing into a hole in the glacier for photos and then "cruising" to a natural archway/cave in the ice before heading back to the bus. It was at this stage, when the crampons were off and there was no more glacier to look at, that we began to feel the blisters from the hiking boots.

After a full day on the ice, Elaine and I decided it was possibly the best job you could have and enquired the next morning. We clearly didn't look like potential guides because the guy kind of tried to talk us out of it! It was definitely the best part of the trip so far, even though it's just the start and we've done some cool stuff already, it will be very tough to beat!

Photos: Christchurch - Tranzalpine - Franz Josef - Queenstown

alli_mcclean — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:36:00 GMT

Christchurch - Step One

alli_mcclean — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:28:00 GMT

Christchurch, New Zealand 6th March 2010

New Zealand finally became a reality on the morning of Wednesday the 3rd of Marh 2010. When I peered over the shoulders of the German couple to see out the window of the plane, I saw what I now know were the Canterbury plains, flat green and brown fields quilted together. The closer we came, the more I had to check for the subtle differences that assured me we hadn’t accidentally caught a return flight back from Singapore to Dublin – things like the pine trees grouped together helped to give the game away.

Once we’d spent at least another hour getting through passport control, unpacking and repacking our bags as we went, to get shorts, documents and pack our unneccessary ski jackets away, we ventured through customs. We had a nice chat with the customs guy who seemed preoccupied with the prospect of us bringing fruit or a “tint” (tent) in with us. Eventually we fell onto the shuttle which took us to Cokers, via some houses that looked similar to those on Neighbours or what I imagine American houses look like – white clapboard with a deck (“dick”) wrapped around the outside.

Cokers has been fantastic, Elaine and I treated ourselves to a twin room instead of a dorm for the first few days to recover from the jetlag in peace (we’re not proper backpackers at all really). This has suited us beautifully, as I seem to keep making a mess when I go to take something out of my rucksack, I tend to take a number of other things out “just in case”, I’ve discovered my messy habits squeezed into my luggage across the world unfortunately.

Our first few days have been fairly quiet, we went for a lie down at 4pm on our first day, only to awaken like the sleeping beauties we were at 5.30 am the next day. We got up and ended up chatting to some othere nocturnal hostellers, all eager to advise on what to do, how to do it and where to do it. We walked around Christchurch city centre, which seems fairly small (a mini version to the real Christchurch cathedral), decided we’d try to make a plan of action involving an escape of Christchurch and then spent our second day recovering from our super-sleep by watching DVD’s in the too-comfortable TV room, greedily claiming more furniture than two short girls actually need.

We met a guy, Jesse, from Achill Island and who we now agree is the sort of chap who loves to tell you how well travelled and knowledgeable he is. With each encounter he manages to further annoy us, initially he seemed very helpful, and then crossed to condescending and patronizing :- “ah girls, how do you not know what WOF’ing is?”, or “is this your first time away from home?”, although it’s at the stage where we just nod along and laugh about his ridiculous comments later on. In general though, everyone in the hostel seems to be hugely helpful and looking to make your stay relaxed and hassle-free, which we’re aiming for as well!

We met Mark (John’s brother) and his girlfriend Kate for a drink and a chat about New Zealand/the HSE situation etc, and then we met Kate the following day for a scenic drive to the Bank’s peninsula and Akoroa to swim with some Hector’s dolphins for the afternoon. The two of them seem unnervingly fit, both have taken up mountain running since they migrated and recently ran 60km in the mountains in Kepler – I feel obese in their company!

The drive to Akoroa was as much an activity as the swimming with dolphins, we left the Canterbury plains behind us and got stuck into the twisting switchback mountain roads, each corner triggering a tandem gasp or “wow” from Elaine and me at shock that the beauty is real and not just a postcard that was photoshopped. Akoroa seems to be a fairly French town, still with French flags and influences all over the small summer-house town, we ate in “L’escargot Rouge” for reasonably priced gourmet baguettes..mmm (mine was like a roast dinner in a roll!).

We were taken out in a boat in the bay, which was so big and so completely surrounded by the hulking mountains that I thought the water was a lake and not the Pacific Ocean! We spotted a few pods of the pocket-sized (well, not really but almost) dolphins early on but couldn’t swim with them immediately as there was a calf in the pod or they were rushing off to do “dolphin stuff” – once we learned some dolphin facts we developed our theories of what the stuff was (dolphins mate about 30 times a day, and are the only other mammal who have sex for reasons other than reproduction). Fascinating! The further out we got, the bigger the swells were and the boat ride itself was another fun aspect, it was like a rollercoaster as we were pitched and rolled around in what felt like a giant cereal bowl or bucket with the mountains on all sides around us with a layer of clouds floating along the top, it was special. We eventually got into the icy ocean and bobbed around in our almost too bouyant wetsuits and booties waiting for the dolphins to come back to us, but they didn’t get too close, perhaps because of the German guy splashing around loudly in the ocean (he may have given them the dolphin equivalent of a headache).

We had another great car journey back to Mark and Kate’s house, having the craic the whole way (we were convinced Kate must think we never stop talking by the end of the journey), all the time comparing thoughts on the day’s achievements and highlights. We ate with Mark and Kate (and wished her luck in her 25km mountain run at 6.30am the next day) and grabbed a bus home, with a rake of locked and loud Kiwis.

Since we’d missed the free pig on a spit that evening, we popped into the bar to have a quiet one and wish Jesse (the big man, as he likes to think of himself) a happy 30th. The quiet one went to pieces altogether when Jesse bent my ear for a good portion of the night, and also introduced us to two Kiwi lads who seemed lovely (but a bit keen). Once Jesse realised we were more interested in listening to the new guys, he proceeded to try to control the conversation and tell us that the two lads were farmers (with a bit more of an upcurled lip than I’d like), even though he previously told me that himself and his brother (who also works in the hostel) are from a farming background! He’s amusing in the sense he has an answer for everything, but he’s quite wearing as he keeps insisting on checking how Irish Elaine and I are by measuring the amount of time we spend in the bar – so far we might as well be Chinese by his standards! We managed to escape and run up to our room when Jesse took a break for intermission/cigarettes, although we remembered that he offered to drive us to the west coast on Monday if he’s going – it could be interesting/entertaining/disastrous!

We spent this afternoon in the i-Site collecting a tree’s worth of brochures and fliers for activities we might be interested in. We used them to plan a wish-list and rough itinerary; with the help of the horribly hungover Scottish Karen (engaged to Jesse’s brother, it’s all relative in Cokers!) who helped us to decide modes of transport that don’t involve Jesse..just in case.

This evening we went to our first Super 14 game – Mark had already told us that the rugby wasn’t that great (to my shocked face) because the atmosphere wasn’t great. I had been excited about the match since the week before Emigration 2010 and ignored Mark’s views because I always thought southern hemisphere rugby was the best in the world, and New Zealand would of course provide a good atmosphere regardless of the type of game because it’s the home of the All Blacks and die hard rugby fans. To my disbelief, I have to agree with Mark that the atmosphere was quite poor and there were extended periods of crowd silence during the game, which wasn’t fantastic until the last 20-30 mins. Saying that, we were lucky enough to be sandwiched between some entertaining fans in front and behind us – in front sat a guy and his girlfriend (who looked like his sister) whose whooping, sqealing and acrobatics during phases was more than enough to keep us entertained; that was, when the old guys behind us weren’t complaining about the referee or the big screen throughout the match!

Elaine and I left the AMI stadium a bit disappointed, beginning to get tired and Elaine feeling a tad ill. We decided against going out to meet any of the people we agreed to meet (Mark and Kate, the Kiwis from last night, and hopefully not Jesse either!), opting for another early rest easy night instead.

8th March 2010

On the Sunday, we were invited to spend the afternoon surfing in Sumner with Mark (who had already had a leisurely morning of a few hours of cycling and running). We spent the morning discovering another corner of Christchurch – we came upon the Sunday morning brunchers sitting outside by the banks of the River Avon, near the bridge where the tram (which seems to have been restored to its original state) clacked its way across. We strolled to the bus exchange and even that showed how poorly organised Ireland’s system is – there was a separate door for passengers to get off as the we all got on and paid our fares (which didn’t demand the exact change, such a nice change!). Sometimes it’s the little things that make you realise that Ireland has a lot of ground to make up if we want to compare ourselves to other, more well-organised and well-planned countries. The bus contained a guy and his surfboard which Elaine and I discussed the potential stares that you’d get at home for attempting that (but in fairness, why would you need to bring a surfboard or skis onto a Dublin Bus?).

We spent an hour or two out in the sea, generally splashing around in the white water and succeeding in not drowning, but not in standing up on the board – not a bad effort for my first time though (I think I got some verbal pats on the head from Elaine and Mark throughout though).

We ended up staying in Mark and Kate’s for a Thai takeaway so that Elaine could Skype John with Mark as well – a kind of job lot, bulk Skyping. The evening was lovely to just chill out with other people because Elaine and I talk so much during the day, I’m starting to get concerned we might run out of random bits and bobs to talk about (it could take a while though!). Also, they seem like really well-connected people as they have a pilot friend who needs to build up hours of commercial flying so may be able to take us on a very cheap scenic flight of Christchurch, amazing! After our leisurely evening, we got back to the hostel late and so didn’t come across Jesse so couldn’t discuss the roadtrip to Franz Josef so we decided to book the Tranzalpine train instead, involving another night’s stay in Cokers (they probably think we’ll never leave; although I doubt they care much).

We took today fairly handy (again), just settling into a comfortable routine between the two of us – Elaine has already suggested an hour or so of “quiet time” each day, which is a fairly genius idea (maybe she’s worried we’ll run out of conversations too? Or maybe my occasional talking to myself is a bit offputting!). We bought both YHA and BBH cards, one for the hostel discounts and one for the discounts it affords for activities. We booked our Naked Passports to travel around the South Island and ended up chatting to Karen for ages in the reception, typical of us already.

So the plan is to start the adventurous stuff tomorrow, beginning at the cracking time of 8.15am with our scenic train journey!