The start of the South Island
Thursday - Wellington to Nelson
After an early start from Wellington, we left the North Island behind and got on the Interislander Ferry back to the South Island. Pretty much as soon as we left there was nice weather, a welcome change to the unpredictable weather of late. On arrival in Picton, we boarded a new bus and headed towards Nelson. Our stop on the way was Pelorus bridge, where there was a nice little river for swimming in and jumping off rocks. The bridge itself had a sign attached saying "Jumping from this bridge HAS caused death or serious injury". To be honest, as it was easily 30m up, I wasn't even tempted! It was enough jumping off the rocks. In Nelson we stayed at the Prince Albert hotel (converted for backpackers), where we had a roast dinner before heading out for some drinks, as a few more people were jumping off the bus that day.
Friday - Nelson to Westport
One of the main attractions of Nelson is its proximity to Abel Tasman national park, making it a suitable base for activities such as walking, kayaking and boat cruises. These were the options available to us at our first stop, Kaiteriteri. As I didn't fancy half a day's kayaking yet, I opted for a boat cruise. We were taken into Abel Tasman, which has stunning beaches, lots of wildlife and nice scenery. We saw quite a few seals basking in the sun on the rocks.
Back onto the bus, we headed for Westport. The road to Westport was extremely windy and narrow, especially running along the Buller gorge. In places, some of the cliff had actually been chiselled out by hand to make room for the road. The river running along this road would be the setting for my next activity - Jet Boating! We got into a jet boat powered by two 5.6l Chevrolet engines, putting out a total of 820hp! This boat could accelerate and turn incredibly quickly, and needed only a few cm of water in which to travel. On the way up the river, we were chasing Shags (the bird!) - they would be startled by the noise of the boat and start flying away down the river, and Doc, our pilot, would chase them. They were a bit too stupid just to fly up, and we were able to chase one for easily over 1km. On the way back down the river, we were put through a load of 360 degree spins and sharp turns, getting us all quite wet. It was a bit strange riding in a boat behind a tractor though, at the start and end of the journey!
Saturday - Westport to Lake Mahinipua
After a reasonably timed start (first for a few days!) we stopped off at Cape Foulwind to do a coastal walk. The scenery on the walk was impressive enough, but the point of the walk was to get to the fur seal colony at the other end. Although I've seen a few seals on my trip so far, I'd never seen anywhere near this many in one place. Plenty of seal pups with their parents, and some in the "learn to swim" rockpool!
The final destination for this day, Lake Mahinipua, has almost nothing there. It is a small pub (known as the poo pub) between a lake and the coast. So to provide some entertainment, it is always the scene on the Kiwi Experience trips for a fancy dress party. We'd decided the theme by a vote yesterday - Pimps & Whores (cross-dressing). However, we'd secretly arranged another theme, dressing as Little John (our driver). Everyone on board knew about this, apart from LJ. So at our next stop, Greymouth, we all went into a big shop to find our outfits. These consisted of boardies and tank tops, with either a sun hat or something to make us bald. When LJ went in to purchase his whore outfit, he was a little worried when he questioned whether the cashier had seen any foreigners buying cross dressing outfits and she looked blank! Still, he didn't catch on.
On arrival at Lake Mahinipua, I went down to the lake to do the compulsory photography, before heading back for dinner. After dinner was the fancy dress party, and we all had to get dressed up and into the bar without LJ catching on. This was especially difficult as he was getting some of the girls to help with his makeup! Finally we were all assembled in the bar, the majority of us dressed up in some way like our driver, before he walked in wearing a tight top stuffed with balloons, tights and a pink cowboy hat. He was apparently quite confused why we were all dressed as rather strange pimps, and it took him a while to catch on what our theme really was. Still, it was a very good night!
Sunday - Lake Mahinpua to Franz Josef
Again, we managed a reasonably timed departure today, although many people on the bus were feeling rather the worse for wear. We weren't on the road for very long before we reached a Bushman museum, our first stop. This was mainly focussed on how Kiwis used to make their living before tourism became such a big industry - catching deer. Originally, NZ had no mammals. When it was settled by foreigners, they introduced many mammals, including deer and possums. Both of these came to be quite a pest, destroying the natural vegetation. The deer population was out of control as they had so much lush countryside to graze on. Then, a market for Venison was found in Germany. Hunting deer became big business, and helicopters were the tool of choice for this, making recovery of the corpse easy. Initially the deer would be shot out in the wild, and carried somewhere to be sold. However, as a significant dent was finally made in the deer population, some Kiwis decided to start farming them. This required catching them in the first place, for which they had some interesting methods. The best one was for a helicopter to fly in and chase the deer, then another person would leap from the heli skids and jump onto the deer's back, wrestling it to the ground! Eventually they started developing net guns things were a bit easier.
The museum also had quite a humourous take on their food - they had many amusing slogans up, with quite a few criticising vegetarians (vegetarians are just piss-poor hunters!). Their food was amusingly labelled - pig & unborn chicken sandwich (bacon & egg!).
The next stop was Okarito, where we could climb up loads of steps for impressive views onto the mountains and a lagoon. Walking down was significantly easier! After this we headed into Franz Josef to book our glacier walking activities for tomorrow. I did consider changing my walk to a heli-hike, as I wanted to go up in a helicopter, but the group was full. However, my luck was in. After checking into my hostel, I was just chatting to our driver when we were approached by a guy from a scenic flights company who wanted to fill his last trip of the day at $50 a seat! Considering these flights cost upwards of $250, I jumped at the chance. We were flown up for a 30 min flight around the glaciers, getting nice views of Mt Cook and Mt Tasman. We landed on the snow at the top of one of the mountains for a short walk around before returning home!
Tonight I'll have an early night, as I've signed up for a full day's glacier walk tomorrow (8 hours!). I suspect I will be tired and sore by this time tomorrow!
After an early start from Wellington, we left the North Island behind and got on the Interislander Ferry back to the South Island. Pretty much as soon as we left there was nice weather, a welcome change to the unpredictable weather of late. On arrival in Picton, we boarded a new bus and headed towards Nelson. Our stop on the way was Pelorus bridge, where there was a nice little river for swimming in and jumping off rocks. The bridge itself had a sign attached saying "Jumping from this bridge HAS caused death or serious injury". To be honest, as it was easily 30m up, I wasn't even tempted! It was enough jumping off the rocks. In Nelson we stayed at the Prince Albert hotel (converted for backpackers), where we had a roast dinner before heading out for some drinks, as a few more people were jumping off the bus that day.
Friday - Nelson to Westport
One of the main attractions of Nelson is its proximity to Abel Tasman national park, making it a suitable base for activities such as walking, kayaking and boat cruises. These were the options available to us at our first stop, Kaiteriteri. As I didn't fancy half a day's kayaking yet, I opted for a boat cruise. We were taken into Abel Tasman, which has stunning beaches, lots of wildlife and nice scenery. We saw quite a few seals basking in the sun on the rocks.
Back onto the bus, we headed for Westport. The road to Westport was extremely windy and narrow, especially running along the Buller gorge. In places, some of the cliff had actually been chiselled out by hand to make room for the road. The river running along this road would be the setting for my next activity - Jet Boating! We got into a jet boat powered by two 5.6l Chevrolet engines, putting out a total of 820hp! This boat could accelerate and turn incredibly quickly, and needed only a few cm of water in which to travel. On the way up the river, we were chasing Shags (the bird!) - they would be startled by the noise of the boat and start flying away down the river, and Doc, our pilot, would chase them. They were a bit too stupid just to fly up, and we were able to chase one for easily over 1km. On the way back down the river, we were put through a load of 360 degree spins and sharp turns, getting us all quite wet. It was a bit strange riding in a boat behind a tractor though, at the start and end of the journey!
Saturday - Westport to Lake Mahinipua
After a reasonably timed start (first for a few days!) we stopped off at Cape Foulwind to do a coastal walk. The scenery on the walk was impressive enough, but the point of the walk was to get to the fur seal colony at the other end. Although I've seen a few seals on my trip so far, I'd never seen anywhere near this many in one place. Plenty of seal pups with their parents, and some in the "learn to swim" rockpool!
The final destination for this day, Lake Mahinipua, has almost nothing there. It is a small pub (known as the poo pub) between a lake and the coast. So to provide some entertainment, it is always the scene on the Kiwi Experience trips for a fancy dress party. We'd decided the theme by a vote yesterday - Pimps & Whores (cross-dressing). However, we'd secretly arranged another theme, dressing as Little John (our driver). Everyone on board knew about this, apart from LJ. So at our next stop, Greymouth, we all went into a big shop to find our outfits. These consisted of boardies and tank tops, with either a sun hat or something to make us bald. When LJ went in to purchase his whore outfit, he was a little worried when he questioned whether the cashier had seen any foreigners buying cross dressing outfits and she looked blank! Still, he didn't catch on.
On arrival at Lake Mahinipua, I went down to the lake to do the compulsory photography, before heading back for dinner. After dinner was the fancy dress party, and we all had to get dressed up and into the bar without LJ catching on. This was especially difficult as he was getting some of the girls to help with his makeup! Finally we were all assembled in the bar, the majority of us dressed up in some way like our driver, before he walked in wearing a tight top stuffed with balloons, tights and a pink cowboy hat. He was apparently quite confused why we were all dressed as rather strange pimps, and it took him a while to catch on what our theme really was. Still, it was a very good night!
Sunday - Lake Mahinpua to Franz Josef
Again, we managed a reasonably timed departure today, although many people on the bus were feeling rather the worse for wear. We weren't on the road for very long before we reached a Bushman museum, our first stop. This was mainly focussed on how Kiwis used to make their living before tourism became such a big industry - catching deer. Originally, NZ had no mammals. When it was settled by foreigners, they introduced many mammals, including deer and possums. Both of these came to be quite a pest, destroying the natural vegetation. The deer population was out of control as they had so much lush countryside to graze on. Then, a market for Venison was found in Germany. Hunting deer became big business, and helicopters were the tool of choice for this, making recovery of the corpse easy. Initially the deer would be shot out in the wild, and carried somewhere to be sold. However, as a significant dent was finally made in the deer population, some Kiwis decided to start farming them. This required catching them in the first place, for which they had some interesting methods. The best one was for a helicopter to fly in and chase the deer, then another person would leap from the heli skids and jump onto the deer's back, wrestling it to the ground! Eventually they started developing net guns things were a bit easier.
The museum also had quite a humourous take on their food - they had many amusing slogans up, with quite a few criticising vegetarians (vegetarians are just piss-poor hunters!). Their food was amusingly labelled - pig & unborn chicken sandwich (bacon & egg!).
The next stop was Okarito, where we could climb up loads of steps for impressive views onto the mountains and a lagoon. Walking down was significantly easier! After this we headed into Franz Josef to book our glacier walking activities for tomorrow. I did consider changing my walk to a heli-hike, as I wanted to go up in a helicopter, but the group was full. However, my luck was in. After checking into my hostel, I was just chatting to our driver when we were approached by a guy from a scenic flights company who wanted to fill his last trip of the day at $50 a seat! Considering these flights cost upwards of $250, I jumped at the chance. We were flown up for a 30 min flight around the glaciers, getting nice views of Mt Cook and Mt Tasman. We landed on the snow at the top of one of the mountains for a short walk around before returning home!
Tonight I'll have an early night, as I've signed up for a full day's glacier walk tomorrow (8 hours!). I suspect I will be tired and sore by this time tomorrow!
1 Comments:
At 3:26 AM, Julia (KiwiBus) said…
Hey Richard!
Really like reading you web site! yeah.. we did have a great time! :D well.. we'll keep in touch!
xJulia
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