We got the hire car off hostel-owner Chris - it turned out to be a giant-seeming 4X4 - it took a little bit of nervy reversing and some interesting manouvres in the petrol station before I got comfortable with it, and don't even get me started on those one-lane bridges they seem to love in NZ!

We drove first to the Farewell Spit, going up to viewpoint (you can't go on the actual spit without a tour), then drove to Wharakiki Beach (sp?) which is a gorgeous, paradise-style beach (with some distinctly un-paradise like rip-tides), with golden sands, massive rocky outcrops in the ocean, a seal colony, and caves to explore on the beach. We spent a perfect few others there, just chilling out on the sand, then drove to the legendary Mussel Inn, normally a lively den of live music (and poetry readings?), but at 5pm, just a nice pub with local beers (homemade lemonade for the designated driver of course),good food, situated in a woody area with a large, colourful garden.

Back at the hostel the Antarctica guys, a dutch girl and I head to check out the town's nightlife - a bar which is closing at 10pm as we enter! So we head down to the beach instead, to watch shooting stars and talk. There's also the mini-adventure of trying to bash our way through the dune undergrowth to find our way back to the road after clouds obscure the bright moon!

written by  LizIsHere on February 23, 2010 from Collingwood, New Zealand
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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The Pancake Rocks themselves are weird, alien-looking ancient rock formations on the coast - much, much bigger and widespread that I'd expected! When the tide is high and rough (i think it's always rough...), some of the rocks act as blowholes, shooting spray high into the air, drawing 'oohs' from the assembled tourists (including moi). There is also a raging surge pool which you can gaze down into, carved out by the sea, and the water rages and boils inside it, eroding bit by bit with every tide.

written by  LizIsHere on February 25, 2010 from Punakaiki, New Zealand
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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I've treated myself to a horse trek today, and another English lady from my hostel is joining me. At the stables I, being the only experienced rider in the group, get put on the 'grumpy' horse , Jazz, who is irritable with other horses but thankfully ok with people! The ride goes through the Punakaiki river valley, and I get to break off from the main group with a french guide, Marie, so we can have some trots and canters along the riverside! We meet the others at a tramping hut for tea and biscuits, then head off on our own again, criss-crossing the river, before meeting the others at the beach. Here me and Marie get a canter down the beach, which is brilliant - though Jazz starts 'pacing' at first, a weird Icelandic horse gait, which is really uncomfortable before she settles into a proper canter!

The evening is pretty low-key, but me and June, an English lady living in France, who was also on the ride and at my hostel, crack open a bottle of wine or two, and then get talking to a couple of Dutch guys who are camping in the hostel garden, and two German girls. We also get to catch a pretty sweet West coast sunset over the sea from the hostel balcony... a pretty great day all-in-all :).

written by  LizIsHere on February 26, 2010 from Punakaiki, New Zealand
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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We had caught a glimpse of the glacier as we rounded one of the bends in the road, after crossing (those one-lane briges again!) an icy-blue river flowing from the glacier, and that glimpse alone, out the large front window of the bus, took our breath away. But when we do the actual glacier walk across the valley to it's foot (or as close to the foot as those not on hiking tours are allowed to go), it's astounding. It's so huge it's impossible to take in - sublime, a huge river of ice snaking down the mountains, it's snowy top lit by the sunlight. The glacier valley itself (carved out by the glacier, which is now receding and growing in almost equal amounts, thousands of years ago) is a flat moonscape of grey-white rocks, the bush-covered sides of the hills cut at irregular intervals by small waterfalls falling from hundreds of feet up.

Up close the glacier seems less huge - the snowy top obscured by the bend in the valley walls. Where the river flows out there is a dark cavern in the ice - after a few minutes standing there we see a large chunk of ice detach itself from the cave roof and land with a splash in the river. It kind of reinforces the slightly comically dramatic, bright yellow signs on the other side of the fence, warning of all types of dangers from crushing with ice to drowing, if we cross the ropes. A few people have been killed in the past trying to get photos right up on the ice, or trying to touch it, when pieces the size of campervans came crashing loose at just the wrong moment.

That night we make the healthiest meal I've had this trip, an epic salad... I wish I'd taken a picture as evidence that I am actually eating vegetables, but unfortunately we ate it too fast :).

The next day we had planned to do a five hour hike around the glacier valley, while others from our bus went off to do glacier ice-hikes. But it's raining in the morning, and when we check with the DOC at the I-Site office, the woman behind the desk gives us an horrified look and exclaims that the route is far too dangerous, and has been since flooding a month or two ago which washed away a lot of the stream-sides leaving deep gullies to cross, with slippery ascents and descent.. "And anyway," she adds, frowning, "It was always a really, really nasty route!". Good job we checked then I guess!

Instead we do a short hike away from the township, to a tunnel through the mountain. We take headtorches like the map says, but when we get the tunnel it's over ankle-deep in water. Still, the promise of some amateur caving definitely outweighs having soaking wet shoes and freezing feet for the walk back. And it's pretty cool: entering the pitch-dark tunnel, our torchbeams hardly seeming to fight against the gloom, we splash into the water, flinching again the cold, following rough tunnel walls with our hands as we gingerly step forward, wary of deeper pools ahead. On the way back out we cover our torchlights and catch sight of glowworms on the cave-roof.

We squelch back to the hostel just as the rain starts. It starts at 1pm - moonsoon-style, battering the hostel roof - and doesn't stop until late that night. The rest of the day is lost to books, films and one risky sprint to the fish'n'chip shop down the road.

written by  LizIsHere on March 1, 2010 from Franz Josef Glacier, New Zealand
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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My first view of Wanaka is of a town nestled round the edges of a deep Blue Lake, with brown -grassed mountains to one side and blue, snow-covered ones to the far end of the lake (Mount Aspriing, in Mount Aspiring National Park). Even the drive in is fantastic, round the main body of Lake Wanaka, with craggy mountains stretching round it's edge... magic.

I'm at the YHA, which has amazing views across the lake to the mountains, but which just isn't my thing as a hostel - no soul!!! (It does, however, have an awesome cat - another of the many hostel pets I've met along the way who have a don't-care attitude combined with a high level of discernment over which backpackers they'll let pet them! This cat has taken begging from diners to a whole new level - actually clawing an entire steak off a girl's plate when her gaze is turned!) So I decide to just have two nights at the YHA, and book into the Wanaka Bakpaka, a little further round the lake, 5 mins out of town, for the other three. And I book my rockclimbing trip for tomorrow!!!

written by  LizIsHere on March 2, 2010 from Wanaka, New Zealand
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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Dave takes me through a refresher of tie-in, belaying, general rock safety, and lead belaying, then sets up a toprope on the sports route (there's very little trad. climbing here, since the rock, schist, isn't suited to it - where there's a crack that looks good for gear placement, it's probably the kind of crack that will shatter if you take a fall on that gear... so, it's better and safer for sport climbing). It's great to be climbing again - I get the feel of it pretty quick on the first few goes up the short route, then the rest of the group turn up, a couple from London, and we move on with another instructor, Bronwyn, to try some higher stuff. When the routes get higher i'm not quite so confident, but it's just great to climbing outside after so long after from even indoor stuff (the 'climbing gym' as they call it here)! We all have a go at placing quickdraws, and cleaning the gear on the way down, and a go at leading, and I actually climb better that way, with more things to think about, than when I'm simply top-roping, which is pretty cool. After lunch there's a longer walk-in (well, it's more of scramble-in) up a slope, bush-bashing our way along a path below the crag, with the cliff dropping away to our right, to reach the crags we're aiming for. The views even from the bottom of the climb are fantastic, and when you pause at the top of the crag after finihing a climb, the silence is all-encompassing.

It was a great day; a real challenge. Part of me is really keen to get back to the UK and get some serious climbing in (though maybe in...six months time or so :) )!

written by  LizIsHere on March 3, 2010 from Wanaka, New Zealand
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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That could be a succinct and apt blog entry, but anyway...

For $225 I got the pleasure of a thirty-minute drive in a rickety van along an unsealed road (complete with flocks of suicidal sheep), with three other travellers (two Aussie guys and a French-Canadian girl) and our guide, an English guy orignally from Cornwall; a wet-suit; and the chance to jump down waterfalls, abseil down canyon walls, and slide, jump and dive off cliffs, down stream channels and into deep waterfall-gouged pools.

We had a twenty-minute uphill walk-in to about 2/3 of the way up the Niger stream (it's a small river really), with fantastic views of Mount Aspiring, topped with snow, to our right, and the sound of river rushing by on our left. At the top we donned wet-suits (bouncy and very strange to move in for a while!), gloves, hoods (it's a good look, really), hats, and harnesses, and after a run-through of abseiling techniques and safety stuff, clipped ourselves onto a rope and edged out along the canyon-edge. The first task was to abseil down the rock-face and then star-jump backwards into a deep pool. It was kind of nervy, but great when you got to the almost bottom and jumped out, coming off the end of the abseil rope and landing in the freezing cold water!

Next was a slide/jump/fall down an 11 metre waterfall. From the bend in the stream
you couldn't see the bottom of the falls or the pool, so we had no idea how far down it was. One by one we shuffled into the stream channel, the water rushing away and falling away below us; lay back, arms in, knees together, waiting for the count, and then pushed forward, sliding along the rock on the layer of water... When suddenly the rock-bed dropped away and you were falling, falling, falling (...and possibly screaming, ahem), landing with a splash and a shock, water up you nose and in your ears, in the pool below. It was brilliant! Everyone emerged from the water punching the air and screaming, whooping, demanding to go again. Our guide of course had to do one better by somersaulting from a high rock-shelf into the pool!

The rest of the two and a half hour trip included slipping down natural 'slides' formed by the river - sometimes feet first, and a few times (the best times!), head first!; jumping off cliffs into the water, and swimming in cold waterfall pools, one with a rainbow dancing across the water as it flowed over the rocks. There was also some scrambling, up steep banks, gripping onto roots and branches, to take a second shot at the headfirst slip (a second, and a third). The Canadian girl and I decided to bow out with dignity on the last challenge, a leap off a massive-seeming cliff, which you had to time properly or risk landing on the shelf of rock sticking out below!
...Or at least we thought that was the last challenge! But, no, we had to get back across the canyon somehow - and what better way to make the journey than on slightly shoddy-looking zipline, metres above the water?

We were buzzing by the end of trip - a high which didn't wear off until I arrived back at the backpackers, when it was suddenly all I could do to make a cup of tea and crawl onto the sofa for the evening. An awesome day!

written by  LizIsHere on March 6, 2010 from Wanaka, New Zealand
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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The hostel is a fun place, although the girl who manages it is so miserable and petty I only feel I can relax when she's left; she takes a 3-and-a-half-hour lunchbreak, and shuts reception at 7.30pm - and woe-betide you if you turn up at 7.31pm, no matter if she's still behind the counter - "reception is closed!". Still the people staying at the hostel are very cool, we spend a lot of time together watching movies and playing cards.

I'm not that taken with Queenstown straight away, the lakeside is really developed and it's really busy (and dirty) compared to Wanaka, but it's a buzzing place, a place it's probably hard to get bored in, and the stunning backpdrop of the craggy Remarkables mountains across the lake is a pretty a great view for a lakeside picnic, which I did almost every day.

I also visited Arrowtown, a slightly twee, preserved gold-rush town about thirty minutes outside Queenstown. It's cute and nice for a stroll around in the sun, but the old Chinese reonstructed settlement on the outskirts is much more interesting - the Chinese goldrush migrants had a tough time out in NZ, often made unwelcome and forced to scrape by the on meagre returns from gold-mining. The houses are tiny; it's fascinating to be able to go inside and imagine people living there in the tiny space, often with two or three people sharing.

written by  LizIsHere on March 8, 2010 from Queenstown, New Zealand
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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