We left Kaikoura Sunday morning and dropped a bunch of
people off at the tip of the South Island to take a ferry to the North. We
picked up a bunch who had just come from the North and then we continued our
trip around the west coast of the South Island. We made a couple more stops
which were pretty nice despite the continuous rain. We arrived in a town called
Nelson which was another quaint and residential town with not much going on. After
the rain, Taryn, Dani and I climbed up to the top of a hill known as “The
Center of New Zealand” which, according to the name is right in the middle of
New Zealand. There really wasn’t much else to do in Nelson especially since
everything is closed on Sundays so the anticipation for something exciting to
happen would have to continue.
We then departed Monday morning to Westport which also didn’t
have much going on but the drive on the way there was extremely beautiful. We
were headed towards a place near the town that was offering a choice of ATV
riding or Horse-back riding when of course, it started to pour. They had to
cancel the horse-back riding but the ATV riding, which was my choice, was on
thankfully because I had no desire to sit in another hostel room and wait for
another day. I had never ridden an ATV on my own and despite the manual
transmission, I fell in love with it as soon as we hit the muddy track in the
pouring rain. When we started, there was a lady in the group in front of me who
wasn’t going as fast as I would like so when one of the guides came by to see
how I was doing, I was bouncing in my seat telling him that I wanted to go
faster. He knew what I was talking about so one guide took the lady on her own
and me and a bunch of other guys got to speed up, the fun was on. We were going
up and down steep hills and through narrow paths where I had to avoid branches
smacking me. There was muddy water spraying in my face and I couldn’t get
enough. I decided then and there that if I were to ever try and live in an area
like this, I would become an ATV guide. Unfortunately, my excitement and a
little bit of recklessness got the better of me. I was riding in 3rd
or 4th gear most of the time so I could keep up with the speed and
wasn’t changing much but we reached a steep uphill climb that I had trouble getting
over. I kept giving it gas and it finally shot up over the top of the hill (The
gas pedal is just a small lever off of the right handle that you push with your
thumb). I don’t remember exactly what happened but I think my hand slipped on
the wet handle and my thumb kind of got stuck between the gas and the handle.
There was a quick turn right at the top of the hill and instead of slowing down
to turn, I headed straight into a tree. The guides had warned us before we
headed out not to stay too close to the rider in front of us so that we don’t
have any fender benders and because the front bumpers are an expensive piece
that we would have to pay for if we damaged them. Ironically, they didn’t
mention anything about driving into trees. I tried not to let the impending
extra expense damper my mood and when we finally finished, we were soaked all
the way through our clothes and our boots were overflowing with rain water. I
enjoyed myself immensely and I was hungry when it was over so I grabbed a
cookie on the way to the cash register to pay for the damages and said, “I’ll
have a cookie and a bumper please”. At least I got everyone laughing. We got
back to the hostel and I decided to keep the damage to a minimum for the rest
of the day by not going out.
We went on some really nice walks the following morning
along the coast. The scenes were amazing and the beauty of all of it reached
the high expectations that I had of the country before I arrived. Our next
destination was a hostel that was basically in the middle of nowhere. It was
near a lake called Lake Mahinapua so the name of the hostel and bar was “The
Poo Pub”. Kiwi Experience are the only groups that go there so they close the
bar for us every night. The owner is this old man who was lively and exciting
despite his age and for a small extra fee, he cooked a huge steak dinner for
everybody. We took the vegetarian option and we had our pasta salad, potatoes,
and veggie pie that was all delicious. The highlight of the night though was
the costume party that they have in the bar every night for the Kiwi groups.
The theme was to dress up as something starting with the letter P. I came up
with the idea of being a polygamist with the girls being my pregnant wives, but
the girls managed to get me to buy leopard print boxers and they quickly turned
me into their pimp. The night was great, everybody loved our costumes. A lot of
the guys were dressed up in Pink Pajamas and the two French guys were just
wearing plastic garbage bags. Some girls dressed up as Plants and one managed
to pull off a great Peter Pan. Everyone was enjoying themselves but for some
reason, no one seemed to be able to get drunk enough for the night to really
take off, oh well.
The following morning, we stopped at this small museum
called The Bushman’s Center. They showed us this great video of how the people
in the area have had to control the deer population in the mountains. The men
would fly around the mountains in a helicopter looking for deer. One guy would
be hanging out the door and would shoot a net from the moving helicopter and
then would have to jump out of the chopper and tackle the deer before it could
free itself. They would then transfer to the deer to a controlled farm which
gives everyone a happy ending but some of these things were pretty amazing to
see. We made our way to a small tourist town called Franz Josef. The town is
based near this huge glacier which is basically a huge mountain of ice right in
the middle of an ordinary mountain range. I can’t explain it scientifically
because it really doesn’t make sense how there’s just a huge mountain of ice.
Anyways, we started out early Thursday morning to hike on the glacier. It was
of course pouring (we were told that the town had 264 days of rain last year)
and we were told to wear a few layers of clothing under our rain gear to handle
the cool temperature on the mountain. We had to walk for an hour to the base of
the mountain though and we were sweating by the time we got there. The hike was
tough with everything that we were wearing and the pouring rain and a ton of
uphill climbing but we were enjoying it. We had a great guide named Matt and
sometime in the afternoon, the sun finally came out which was really nice
because it made the whole mountain shine a little bit. It started pouring again
on the way back down and at one point, we were crawling through small tunnel
made by some of the running water and my hand slipped into the small water flow
beneath me. Despite the thick wool gloves I had on, my hand went instantly
numb. The whole hike was pretty hilarious and we all really enjoyed it
especially after it was over. That night, the bar at our hostel threw a “No
Clothes” party for Valentine’s Day. Unfortunately, not too many people dressed
up or dressed down but the ones that did happened to be a group of the glacier
guides including Matt. The night didn’t last too long because we were all
pretty exhausted from the hike.
