In the morning there was no electricity, although it had come on during the night long enough to bake me on the top bunk bed I had in the dorm. At least in Asia and South Africa they have a back-up generator or solar power for when the electricity goes down. To shower, I had to tiptoe my way through bits of shrapnel on the floor where workmen seemed to be hacking the entire surface up. After showering we couldn't even make food easily or get comfortable in the lounge because, apart from the fact it was freezing in there, workmen were sanding down a newly set concrete floor. This was another YHA place, which we had booked before swearing against them in Nelson. Now we were certain!

When the power finally came on, I hung about blogging and Joanne just watched films. The weather was awful outside and, although we were only in Franz Josef for the Glacier, there was no point in going on a trek in its direction because, even if we braved the conditions, the cloud was so low we didn't think we would see any scenery even when we were in it. It was a waste of time really. Briefly it improved and we went outside to take a photo and go to the shops to buy blank DVDs for backing up photos to. The weather quickly deteriorated and when we returned I discovered that the PC in the hostel did not have a DVD writer.

Where the Glacier is apparently

Then at 4:30pm we had to catch our bus to Fox Glacier where we would hopefully see more than we had of this one.

written by  The Happy Couple on August 26, 2009 from Franz Josef Glacier, New Zealand
from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
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Next morning it was still raining heavily. Then it hailed. We made a dash to the supermarket for a couple of beers since we couldn't afford the bar and there was nothing to do but drink, blog, and read. At the supermarket boredom made me buy a tomarillo, which I had never before heard of, probably out of some hope it was related to the tomacco from The Simpsons. It looked a bit like a tomato, but inside it looked a bit like a granadilla. Guess what! It tasted like a cross between a tomato and a granadilla, which isn't all that pleasant a combination. After the pear crossed with aubergine in China, I should have learned that things that look like A crossed with B, usually taste like A crossed with B. Probably because they are A crossed with B.

Tomarillo

Another glacier, another waste of time. The next morning we were woken early by really heavy rain and soon after there was a huge rumbling noise which didn't quite sound like thunder to me. Was it giant chunks of ice crumbling off the invisible glacier? Later, the manager said no, it was thunder. Before the bus arrived, we called BA to re-route our ticket: Joanne would fly home from Quito on the 19th November and I would fly from from Bogotá on the 9th December, the very last day of the ticket. They were not able to confirm anything and would have to phone us back. We weren't sure if we could get all the way to Glasgow or if we only had enough stages to get us to London; we weren't sure if there was a flight on the days we had requested; we weren't sure if I was allowed to land on the 10th or if I had to land before the ticket expired; but they couldn't tell us any of this, and more importantly they couldn't tell us how much it would cost. Changes of schedule are (usually) free, but re-routing costs something. In fact they were so useless that they didn't seem to have heard of Quito or Bogotá.

When the bus picked us up at 11am I was regretting not having gone for the camper van option after all; just up the road, there were better views, although the weather was still awful there. The point is, we would have been able to move around at will, looking for the nicer weather and spots. Instead we were doomed to waiting around in one place, hoping that the weather would clear enough to justify spending money on a trek or tour.

written by  The Happy Couple on August 27, 2009 from Fox Glacier, New Zealand
from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
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On the bus journey from Fox Glacier to Queenstown we saw little glimpses of scenery, which all looked like they would be fantastic if the cloud base was higher than 200 metres. We passed through huge flat-bottomed glacial valleys, much bigger than the glacial valleys in Scotland. And there were trees everywhere, unlike Scotland, but so much rain. At the time I thought that there must be more rain than Scotland and, later I did a wee bit of research online that confirmed this is the case. The average rainfall on the West coast of New Zealand is more than double the average at the heaviest points in Scotland.

Queenstown looked a bit like Aviemore at first sight. It was much smaller than I had expected, but it was clearly another artificial town mostly constructed just for tourism. People had told us, though, that Queenstown was a touristy place and some people, mostly kiwis, had implied that we shouldn't really bother with it at all. I thought it looked OK, but it was the best scenery we had seen yet, mostly I suspect, because the cloud was a little thinner here and we could actually see a bit of scenery for the first time. After checking in we found a curry place that wasn't too dear by Queenstown standards which, we had been warned and we were finding, are expensive. It was nothing special but at least it was much hotter and less greasy than you can usually find in India. Oh for a curry from Glasgow – curry capitol of the world!

New Zealand Curry

Real India curry. Greasy as anything.

We had intended to take a day trip from Queenstown to Milford Sound, which was reputedly one of the wonders of the world, according to Rudyard Kipling, however considering the lack of success at the glaciers we were reluctant to fork out the large amount of money required for the tour. Instead we discovered that the weather was forecast to be good in Queenstown the next day and booked skiing instead. Joanne had never skied before and was keen to do so; I realised that it was twenty-one years since I had last skied and I was keen to see if I still could. The forecast for Milford Sound was poor the whole time we were scheduled to be in Queenstown so we were thinking of cutting our stay there short and heading somewhere else.

What we had booked as a twin room wasn't in the main part of the hostel like we had expected, but one of two rooms in a little self-contained cottage, which we were sharing with a couple of young kiwis. It would make an excellent destination with friends, but the couple seemed nice and we got on well with them. They were planning to go snowboarding for the first time the next day, so we all went to bed reasonably early.

We were picked up early by the bus going to the Cardrona ski resort, which was further from Queenstown than I expected since the town was surrounded by snow-covered mountains. It turns out that the package we had booked, almost at random, was not really in Queenstown but 90 minutes away, near Wanaka. There was hardly a cloud in the sky and on the way we were told that there had been twenty centimetres of snow during the night. It would going to be amazing conditions they said, the best weather they'd had all week.

Joanne was signed up for the beginners group and two lessons, whereas I had signed up for the Achievement package, which meant one lesson in the morning then free time in the afternoon. There were loads of different levels for me to choose from and I wasn't sure where to go, but they told me to speak to an instructor if I wasn't sure what level to go in at. There were various signs for me to choose which to stand next to, and I reckoned level one, “stoppers”, and level two, “beginner turners”, were beneath me, so I thought level three, “wedge turners” would be fine. I explained to the instructor at level three that I was probably a level five last time I skied over two decades ago, but I wasn't sure where I should go. She suggested I try to see what I could remember then choose: if you can stop and turn come here, if you can't turn go to level two, and if you can't stop go to level one.

Level three it was! The group was a mix of people who had recently come from level two and people like me, who hadn't skied for a while. At twenty-one years my length was the greatest. One of the women in my group said “So you were three last time you skied”, which I liked. Later Joanne told me that this only meant I am now old enough for middle-aged women to make passes at me, but I'm sure she really thought I was twenty-four. It was great fun, and I was in the correct group, but I was definitely near, though not quite at, the bottom of the group.

The slopes

One of the guys in my group was an American and on the way up the chair lift together we got chatting. When I said I was from Scotland his first response was “Scotland's in a lot of trouble now isn't it?” referring to the release of al-Megrahi. My news consumption has been quite limited while travelling and the only US sentiment on the issue I had picked up was on internet forums. I responded that I didn't really think anyone apart from Americans cared, and he stopped talking to me! I re-engaged him by asking him whether it was really that big a story in the US and he told me that it was the story; it was the full hour on CNN. He told me that they were genuinely discussing freedom whisky and freedom tape just like the freedom fries debacle in the build up to the Iraq War. How childish! Anyway, he told me, most people had decided to boycott instead of just changing the name, so I just told him that this would be great since it might cause the prices at home to fall.

The beginner slopes - Joanne may be in this shot

I had a lot of fun, but it wasn't quite working for me, and I was always one of the group that the instructor gave advice to when we stopped. None of the advice seemed to be helping though, until finally she asked me “Do you know the difference between defecation and fornication?”. Apparently I had been crouching instead of sticking my pelvis forwards, but this was only because I was trying to follow other advice she had given me. After this last bit, it all came together and, for the last two runs I think I went from being one of the worst in the group to being one of the best.

View at the bottom of the chairlift

At lunch time I met up with Joanne, after fighting through the reporters who were there for the final of the Winter Games. Apparently loads of top snowboarders and skiers had been at this resort for the last month or so, and many of the competitions were finishing that day. I met Joanne just after they announced the female freestyle halfpipe champion (or something). Joanne was still unsure whether she was enjoying it. I fell over once she told me, ashamed, it seemed. I told that falling over once on your first ski lesson is nothing. After lunch we both went to the nursery slope where I went on one little run with Joanne, but I didn't think I would help very much so I decided to go off one my own then remembered that I had forgotten to take a picture of her, so went back but couldn't see her.

View from the top of the chairlift

I spent all afternoon practising what I had learned in the morning and introducing some stuff I used to know that I probably wasn't “supposed” to be doing yet. The weather was amazing all day and every trip up on the ski lift I met new single-serving friends. Loads of the people there were with children, some as young as three. Apparently that is the correct age to start skiing, although one guy told me he'd left it too late to start his daughter at three: you should start them skiing before they can walk he said, at least half-serious, I think. I kept popping in at the beginners' slope to take photos but I could never see Joanne.

The Remarkables

At the end of the day, Joanne said that she'd really enjoyed it too, as had our skiboarding neighbours. Immediately I started thinking about how we could go skiing cheaply in the future. It had been quite dear but, in fact, compared to skydiving or bungy-jumping it was very good value: they are both over in no time and cost about the same or more than a whole day skiing.

Queenstown

written by  The Happy Couple on August 29, 2009 from Queenstown, New Zealand
from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
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The following day the weather was better again so we headed into town to organise the bungy jump I had decided on. There was an expensive “highest” option but, when I realised it was only the highest in New Zealand, not the world, I decided instead to opt for the “first bungy in the world”, which I had found out while researching the activity's safety record, is actually just the first commercial bungy site. When we turned I up at the bungy shop, they said we could go immediately or wait for another two hours. I was tempted by suddenly rising nervousness opt for the later one, but realised that was silly and in less than five minutes we had paid and were on a minibus. Joanne did not intend to jump, but they had a spectators go free promotion on so she was along for the ride. The only other people on the minibus was a group of Muslim girls from Kuala Lumpur, all wearing hijabs, not exactly the surfer-dude stereotype I had expected to be on the bus with us but clearly the appeal is very broad. The girls told us that only one of them was actually jumping, the other three just coming along to watch.

The Remarkables

How much!?

I have to do what?

Perched

Ready

So I jumped. I think I went just in time: it's really hard to overcome the instinct not to jump from a high bridge, no matter how many positive safety reports you have read or how secure the equipment all feels. It's a very odd sensation, dropping like that when the water is so close, but it was all over very quickly. I did think that I was going to hit the water just before the elastic snapped me back in the other direction and bounced me quite high up again. I bounced and dangled upside down for much longer than I expected, before I realised that I hadn't been told anything about how to get off it. Then I noticed that the dinghy I had assumed was just there in case of an emergency rescue was paddling towards me with a big pole in the air for me to hold onto. After a couple of misses I grabbed onto it and they pulled me down into the inflatable boat. I told them that I had jumped just in time because I was getting nervous as it was my first time. One of them replied “Was that really your first time? You jumped like a pro.”

Boing!

On the way back up the steps to the viewing platform, I stopped to watch the girl who had been on the bus with me, as I thought I would miss it if I continued to the top. I actually would have had plenty of time because she was having trouble going. The bungy engineer kept peeling her fingers off the pole she was holding onto and saying some, presumably encouraging, words to her before she grabbed back onto the pole and looked sceptically over the edge. This happened many time but then, eventually, it seemed like he pushed her, and she went feet first, which is inadvisable since it increases the chances of whiplash or getting caught up in the bungy. When she reached the maximum she was whipped around which looked very uncomfortable but at least she remained intact. Later I told her it had looked like the guy had pushed her off and she said that he had, because she had asked him to; I just couldn't go on my own, but I really wanted to. The price had included a t-shirt but the DVD and photos package was nothing like as much of a rip-off as the Skydiving would have been at full price, so I shelled out and got my souvenirs. It really is an efficient factory: by the time the jumpers have climbed the steps back to the office, they have your video and photos ready to view, and by the time you have paid for them, the disk has been finalised and you can take it. They must make loads of money.

The next day the weather had deteriorated again and the snow-line was only just above where the hostel was. It was freezing! I spent most of the day trying to back-up photos to DVD so we could post a copy home, but finally realised that it wasn't possible anywhere in town: the girl are reception in the hostel had assured me that it was possible but, after waiting ages while it appeared to be copying, there was nothing on the disk. At one place in town I was told it wasn't possible to write DVDs and at another the USB port was so slow the computer was reporting 100 minutes to copy everything first to the hard drive, and at New Zealand internet prices I wasn't going to wait that long. I couldn't understand it: in no matter where we were in Asia we had no problem writing DVDs. So much for New Zealand being civilised!

The other task for the day was to contact BA again about getting a quote for out requested change of route. This was now the eighth time we'd had to contact them because they kept leaving messages or sending emails to say that they needed more information then, when we phoned them back, they always asked the same questions all over again. And BA in Thaland had been so efficient! This time we managed to get a quotation from them but it was far more than we had been expecting so we even after all that we still had to ask them to leave it while we considered it.

written by  The Happy Couple on September 1, 2009 from Queenstown, New Zealand
from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
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And I also forgot to include this quite nice photo of Queenstown taken when we got back from the bungy jump.

Queenstown

For the first time, really, we were able to see New Zealand's fantastic scenery. For three weeks nearly all we had seen was cloud, but now, on a bus journey on our last day, we passed beautiful mountains that we could actually see. As soon as we moved a bit further East than Queenstown it cleared up. When we were planning New Zealand we had asked lots of people their opinion regarding the North versus the South Islands. In retrospect we should have asked about the West versus the East: presumably then everyone would have said “Oh yeah, the West is the most dramatic, but if you're going in winter you won't see any of, so you might as well skip it”.

The bus travelled through a region which had, in the past, been designated the hunting region, and huge areas of forest had been cleared. Now the scenery went from looking quite like Scotland to looking exactly like Scotland: I was almost expecting to come round the next bend and see a sign for Braemar. So just as in most of Scotland, there were some parts of New Zealand where the English had cut down the trees. The difference is that in New Zealand they have since exterminated the forest-destroying wild deer and have now replanted large parts of the country. In New Zealand you still see quite a lot of deer but the fences keep the deer in, not like in Scotland where the fences are to keep the deer out. So in Scotland there is almost no native forest and there can be no serious programme of reforestation until something is done to curb deer numbers. Somehow legislating on the price of venison seems like the way forward to me; how the meat of vermin can be sold at such high prices seems outrageous to me. In Scotland we should refuse to eat an beef at all and switch to venison so hopefully we can eat enough of the beasts to allow trees to grow again. Or we could just reintroduce wolves. And bears.

Lake Tekapo

Further on, we passed right next to two large lakes with Mount Cook in the background, New Zealand's highest mountain. The bus driver / tour guide told us that the reason the lakes are so turquoise-blue, particularly the first one, Lake Pukaki, is that they are full of glacial flour; the particles of rock ground off the mountains by the glaciers are so fine that when they eventually wash into the lakes they are suspended in the water, affecting the way they reflect and diffract light. We stopped at Lake Tekapo for lunch and had a proper chance to admire the scenery. What a waste that we had spent three weeks missing all of this!

Lake Tekapo

Lake Tekapo

Eventually we arrived in Christchurch and found our hostel. They seemed very friendly, but we declined the included pasta dinner and instead went out for a steak special we had seen advertised on the way to the hostel. The next day we were going to South America, where we would be able to get even better steak, but I just couldn't resist a NZ$10 steak.

Christchurch

We had to get up early the next day, but it turned out that the Wednesday included dinner deal they run at the hostel turns into a drunken party after the food is eaten. Our room was right next to the kitchen and it was about 4am when the manager, who seemed to be the ring-leader, and the partying guests finally went to bed. We had to get up at 6am for our flight to Auckland.

We dragged ourselves to the airport minibus in time and on the way the driver entertained us with stories of gap-year kids in New Zealand going wild on daddy's credit card or getting themselves pregnant and, either way, being too scared to go home. Certainly there had been a lot of young travellers in New Zealand and, as we had endured that night, plenty of partying. In Auckland it was lovely and sunny and we finally got to see what Auckland looks like. Quite nice. I wished again we had asked about West-East instead of North-South.

Goodbye New Zealand

The flight from Auckland to Santiago was another nightmare flight. When we checked in the woman asked if we wanted emergency exit seats, which we thought was very kind, what with all the extra leg-room. What we did not reckon with was the fact that they were right next to the toilets. Perhaps because of the accelerated night when flying East, nobody seemed to feel like sleeping on the flight and, instead, they spent the whole night going to the toilet and slamming the door behind them. I hate night flights. We took off at 4pm and landed at 11:30am in Chile, although the flight was only twelve hours long, so people were only really ready to go to sleep about the time they were preparing to serve us breakfast. Another oddity is, because we crossed the dateline just after taking off from New Zealand, we arrived the same day we took off, only earlier in the day, even though we had gone though another night. We get to live the same day all over again! Maybe this time we'll ask to sit somewhere away from the toilets... we might have been one day younger but we didn't feel it after that flight.

So that was New Zealand. We had some fun, it cost a lot of money, but really we missed most of it, especially the bits I wanted to see, just because the weather was too bad. I had originally only planned to stay a few days in Auckland as we had to stop there on the way to South America, because I wasn't that interested in New Zealand culturally as I expected it to be quite like home; it was, only very empty. However when Joanne expressed more interest in seeing the place, we extended the time there. We couldn't really choose the time of year to arrive and, given when we were arriving, we probably should just have stuck to the three days. Or stayed away from the West. I can't complain, though; if someone went to the West of Scotland in winter then moaned about it raining, I'd have to quote Billy Connolly: Well of course it bloody rained! It's f-ing Scotland isn't it?. It seems New Zealand is much the same.

written by  The Happy Couple on September 3, 2009 from Christchurch, New Zealand
from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
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