Richard's Travels

Tales from the Southern hemisphere

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Queenstown, Bottom Bus and more Queenstown

Thursday - Free day in Queenstown

With a day free in Queenstown, I couldn't think of anything better to do than to jump off something high. So I signed up for the Canyon Swing, run by the amusingly named "Not your average backyard variety swing". After waiting around for half of the day to think about what I'd signed up for, I was picked up and driven to a remote carpark next to a large canyon. After walking up a track which didn't really appear to lead anywhere obvious, we reached the canyon swing. Basically this is a very large swing which you have to jump off a ledge to start. The jump point is 109m above the ground, and you fall for 60m of that before starting to swing round. You can jump in many different styles. I opted to try and jump off forwards, although ended up nervously stepping off the edge! It was such a rush that after being winched up at the end, I opted for the much cheaper second jump. I wanted to do something backwards, which I'd been told was much more fun. However, the staff interpretted this (and managed to persuade me) as doing the "Elvis cutaway", being hung over the drop horizontally with legs wrapped around the cable, then being released at random upside down and backwards. Again, lots of fun. After buying the obligatory T-shirt, I headed back to town to catch up with everyone else.



In the evening, we headed out to a couple of bars again to catch up with the people off the bus behind us.

Friday - Queenstown to Dunedin

Today was the first day on the Bottom bus, a shorter tour round some of the places in the south of the south island. This was on a much smaller bus, similar to the East As trip I went on earlier. Most of my original bus were being left behind here, with only two girls, Linde & Julia, coming on this trip. The first destination was Dunedin, which we reached pretty early on. We immediately headed out to a couple of local points of interest, the first being tunnel beach, a secluded beach reached only through (yes, you guessed it!) a tunnel carved through a rock. Apparently it was cut out by a wealthy local who used to own the land, as a private beach for his children. The beach itself was nice, but it was at the bottom of a very steep hill. After the very hard climb back up, we were all quite tired. This meant that the next stop, the world's steepest street, was just looked at from the bottom!

Dunedin is the largest university town in NZ, with 20,000 students (in a town of 120,000 people). When we got there, it was the end of freshers week, so there were many signs of parties in the houses that were more obviously student houses than the ones in Portswood! In the afternoon I went to the Cadbury chocolate factory, which I thought I would do since I hadn't ever visited the one in my home town! Originally the factory was owned by someone else and made biscuits, but was bought by Cadbury and now makes the same chocolate as we get at home. Still gives free chocolate on the tours anyway!

In the evening, Julia was too tired to coming out, leaving Linde & I to try and find some lively bars. Didn't really fancy walking all the way to the University, and fortunately found a bar not too far with a live band that was packed very obviously with students.

Saturday - Queenstown to Curio Bay

The next leg of the trip was to Curio Bay, a very remote part of the South coast. We stopped off for a couple of walks on the way, including a trip to a lighthouse at some rocks covered with more seals (I've seen so many seals this trip!). We also stopped at another beach where we saw Sea Lions, close enough that you could walk right up to them (if you wanted to be chased off!), and some more nice waterfalls. Curio bay is a beach where we stayed in a small lodge. After a trip out to see some penguins and take many pictures (not even pete-style spot the penguin ones), we headed back inside for a big group meal.



Sunday - Curio Bay to Te Anau

For the final day of Bottom bus, we headed off to Te Anau, the closest town to Milford Sound, which we would be doing the next day. After a brief stop in Invacargill, the most southern city in NZ and also the setting for the current film "The World's fastest Indian", we made our way through, stopping again at a few beauty spots, and for some people to take the stereotypical photography of the sign at McCracken's Rest with their arses hanging out! In Te Anau just went walking along the beach and looked around, before watching the second Kiwi film we'd been told about, Once Were Warriors.



Monday - Milford Sound

Today was our day trip to Milford Sound, which I was expecting to be the scenic highlight of my NZ trip. With a new KX driver that actually used the slow vehicle bays on the windy roads to overtake slow cars (!), we got into Milford Sound quite quickly. Where it started raining. A lot. We were assured that this made Milford Sound much better, making it come alive. Indeed it meant that the number of waterfalls we could see was increased many many times - I saw literally hundreds running down the rockfaces. We made a few stops on the way, including one to a big waterfall (The Chasm). However, it was raining too much to get my camera out.

Eventually we made it to Milford Sound where we boarded a boat for a cruise along the water. Milford sound isn't actually a sound, it's a Fiord. A sound is where a sunken riverbed has filled with seawater; a fiord is where a glacial valley has done the same. Which our boat captain, amusingly named Fjord, pointed out. Milford Sound was incorrectly named by a Welsh bloke from Milford Haven. Anyway, with it still raining, we got to see many many waterfalls. Apparently there are only 2 permanent waterfalls in Milford Sound - most of the rest dry up an hour after it stops raining. Fortunately this boat had a large covered outside bit, so I was able to take many photographs. Apart from the bit where I went to the front of the boat while he drove into the waterfall as far as possible, making us all very wet.

Milford Sound has got to be the first experience I've had in New Zealand that has actually benefitted from the nasty weather. While it would have been nice to see it on a dry clear day, I think seeing all of the waterfalls was much better.




When we finally got back to Queenstown after a long ride in the bus (which was leaking quite badly and falling apart), we checked into a new hostel, Southern Laughter (as the previous Discovery Lodge was a bit too busy for our liking!). Food tonight was provided by Fergburger, a must-try burger place in Queenstown. Although Julia & Linde said that they had previously shared a burger (they are quite large!) we managed one each, before going back to the bars to meet up with even more people who we'd met earlier in NZ, but had jumped off our bus to stay somewhere a bit longer.

Tuesday - Queenstown

Having a small 3 bed dorm between us meant the first lie-in for ages, but when we did get up we realised that it was possibly the best weather that we'd had in the whole trip so far. Queenstown is set against a mountain range called the Remarkables (so called because they run exactly North-South), that you may have seen in Lord of the Rings. Most of the time I'd been here so far, we could see them but the tops might be covered with cloud, or it would be a bit hazy. Not so today, it was incredibly clear, and not a cloud in sight.

After managing to convince Julia to get over her fears of heights and confined spaces, we went up in the Gondola to the top of the hill overlooking Queenstown, for some spectacular views. This was also the location of the luge, a downhill track ridden on 3-wheeled sledge-type things. Lots of fun also! During the time spent luging I came up with a plan to hire a car and drive up to Lake Matheson, a mirror lake which we'd previously missed due to bad weather. The next hour was thus spent trying to find a hire car - unfortunately most of them didn't have any available at short notice, and the one that did had quite a nasty mileage surcharge. After abandoning the plan, we sat in the sun for a while before watching Lord of the Rings (had to be done really!) and having some dinner.



Now it's the day after, and it's another rainy day where I'm not doing very much. However, have booked today to do the Nevis bungy tomorrow, so will probably start getting nervous at some point tomorrow!

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