Tuesday 16th July
Finally after all this time I'm actually writing about the day on the day! I'm writing this as Liam is driving, and feel likely to sink into a food coma any moment.
Lets start from the beginning of the day though. Had a slight "lie in" today and didnt get out of bed until 7.40 which really wasn't late enough, we're both beginning to feel very tired a lot of the time probably from being on the move and driving a lot. I made eggy bread for breakfast as a way to use some of our special Manuka honey I mentioned a while back. We only have about 5 days left in the van I think and we have half the little pot left to get eaten. We left the campervan park at 9.30am, it was rather cold and icy. It probably doesn't help that we are located on a hill and there's a fairly big stream running through the middle of the camp,but it made quite nice to stay.
We parked up in town, which is kind of average size really for a town but its surrounded by all the mountains and right next to the lake so there's all sorts of activities to do. It was soooo cold this morning, so although we had it in our minds since lastnight to try a canyon swing we were very undecided whether we really wanted to be doing stuff like that when it was so cold. We went into a coffee shop/chocolate cafe to have a hot drink and use the wifi for a short while. I caught nanna and heard briefly about an old family friends funeral which I'm sad I didn't get to go to but glad it went as well as funerals do.
We walked around a little bit and got a feel for the place, lots of bars and restaurants and cafes, lots of activity booking centres and ski shops. The first place we went into to try and book for a canyon swing was fully booked so we thought we would be forced out of it anyway, or have to stay an extra day in order to go the next day. However we found another one that had a space for the afternoon so we booked onto that instead.
At 12.40 we were loaded onto a bus with perhaps 10 other people and drove to the gorge where the swing was set up. We drove past the bungee place where it was very first set up and picked a couple more people up before turning off onto more of a dirt track than a road. The drive up was scary in itself, it was like being back in Nepal, the big bus on the narrow, very high and rocky cliff edge. But like Liam pointed out, this bus had a 10th of the people in it and was half the weight plus there was a road barrier so perhaps it wasn't so bad. On the way there was more classic New Zealand scenery, and all the ponds and things were frozen over. We also saw a hawk fly right past the bus carrying a very large animal that was perhaps a big rat or stoat which was pretty cool!
We arrived at the canyon and signed ourselves in before making our way across to the swing. A few people on the bus were doing the bungee so we were more or less halved at that point. To get over to the swing you have to walk out to it via the suspended bridge. The jumping platform is suspended around 150m above the ground in the middle of the canyon, I'm not sure on the exact height that's just an estimate. So you walk over the rickety bridge which is a bit daunting enough when it's creaking and rocking as you go over it. Once you get there you're greeted by a fairly warm platform with a few others waiting around and people taking their turns, with music playing over the speakers and a "menu" of what kind of jump you can do. There are starters (what I took to be the least scary), mains and desserts. We were doing it together so decided we would face towards the platform and go upside down, you only live once and to be quite honest the idea of just sitting like a normal swing wasn't getting the blood pumping an awful lot so it must have meant it wasn't challenging enough! After about 15 minutes our time was up, we were harnessed up and attached to various cords and clips. By that time I was feeling quite nervous, Liam seemed fine and only a bit nervous. We sat down in the harnesses then we were suspended over the edge, once over the edge we got ourselves upside down wide b side then waited to be dropped.
I screamed like a big girl the whole way down and loved every second. Liam also had a blast and absolutely loved the whole thing. You drop more or less straight down for a while before you swing through and up, before the momentum gives you a couple more big swings at the bottom. After a couple of swings we switched so we were back upright and enjoyed the swinging sensation whilst being hoisted back to the top. Thoroughly enjoyable experience which Im glad we did and Im glad we did together!
After looking through photos and video it was time to get back on the bus to queenstown. On the way back we again saw some kind of hawk but it was actually just stood in a small paddock which turkeys in it, just ripping apart and eating what looked like a rabbit. It just didnt really care and watched the bus go past, it was great! When we got back we had a short time on the free computers at the booking centre to upload some stuff and to send a few emails that needed to be sent before heading off to have a go on the gondola.
That also didnt come cheap but hey, it has to be done.
....and now I'm way too tired to keep writing so will be finishing it up tomorrow!
....where was I,
We went up in the skyline gondola and it went up very high, right up over the top of queenstown so you could see across the mountain ranges and the lake. It was absolutely stunning, and we even saw a paraglider coming past which was so good. We went into the bar and sat looking out over the landscape as it was going a bit darker, Liam had a beer and I had a baileys hot chocolate which was so yummy and warm. After a while we went back out to look across again before heading back down the line. On the way past we saw a couple of Maori outside the show room where they do the show, they looked so good. However although we would like to see something like that we're sure queenstown isn't the place, it's way to commercialised and the fact it's called queenstown doesn't really set your imagination wild!
Once back down we walked down to fergburger which is a famous burger place that we've heard a few people mention. We had walked past it a few times and there was a line of people whatever time of day so we were prepared to have to wait. There were loads of choices to chose from, Liam went for a double fergburger and I went for a "sweet bambi" which was made of fiord land deer. After a 10 minute wait we made our order then had to wait half an hour after that to get it, it was so busy! In the mean time we went next door to fergbaker and Liam bought a donut to eat another time.
The burgers were so heavy! We carried them back to the van and scoffed them with the heating on full blast in the front seats. They really were the best burgers but they were so so massive. Liam didn't finish his, I finished mine even though I felt sick for the last 5 minutes! We were soooo full after, then it was time to drive. Liam decided he wanted to get away from the town and drive for an hour before settling somewhere, which was slightly odd considering it was cold and dark but we were both happy to do it. It turned out a mistake because we couldn't find anywhere, we couldn't find wifi to look and places were closed. We drove down a lot of lanes trying to figure out if we could camp up anywhere but we were too unsure. We also came across what seemed like an abandoned camping site apart from one set of people in a van. Liam approached them and was told there was an honesty box, he spent ages looking before he found how much and where to put the cash. Luckily we went to hook up first, and all the power was locked up one every site! To just park there was 20 dollars, so we ended up driving more until about 10pm then we found a picnic ground and thought stuff it we're parking here. It had a cemetery next to it so was slightly creepy late at night. We both showered and liam was faffing about whether we would be told off in the night or something, but we both went to sleep as soon as we lay down because we were both so tired!
Wednesday July 17th
No alarm set today but I was awake at 7.20 anyway and got up around 8.15 to make us some breakfast and get sorted. It was quite mild so although we hadn't had the heating on much it wasn't too cold, and when we looked outside in the light the scenery had completely changed. We had driven for a couple of hours in the dark so didnt see what the landscape was doing. We had gone from cold snow areas and mountains to flat land and lots of fields.
We drove down to invacargill which is the southern most town in the Southern Hemisphere but that's about all it's got to its name. We went to the information centre and nothing caught our attention, so we spent about 20 minutes wandering around some of the exhibitions in the museum which was pretty interesting. It had some things about disability and individual stories, also some stuff about "the fastest Indian" which was made into a film in 2005 about a local guy who raced a bike- I forget his name. And there was also some stuff about Maori culture and history with some very interesting things a out how they hunted for food and made their tools/jewellery. They made fish hooks out of bone, wood and shell which looked so good, and made makeshift bird catchers with rope and wood. They made necklaces and things out of fish vertebrae and other bones, and also were able to drill through bone and stone by making a spin top drill with wooden sticks and ropes. It was all very clever and interesting. After that we just went to Starbucks and had a drink, Liam also booked our hotel to Christchurch, before moving on again.
We stopped off at a few little things in the afternoon, including a waterfall which had a nice track to it but we mostly just drove until we got to Dunedin. By the time we got there it was dark so we decided to just pay for a site, so after a brief drive around to get a feel for the place we pulled up at a camp site with power, laundry facilities which we used, and supposedly free wifi. We had real problems connecting to it though, and although managed at one point it cut off in the middle of me talking to people which I was a bit upset about!
Liam made us a lovely big meat and vegetable stew, he finished off his fergbaker donut, I finished off my curly wurly, and we snacked on liquorice all sorts whilst watching the tooth fairy on DVD. We were asleep by 11 and the alarm set for 8am because we were both so tired.
