Hello. It is bright and early on a brilliant Queenstown morning. Maybe a little too bright and early after last night's pub crawl...but time is a-wasting and I have a giant hill I want to climb after my laundry is done. Let's do a bit of catch up so far:
1. The day before my last day working for my temporary Uni job and my last day commuting with my bike, some idiot decided to cut my cable lock and steal both of my wheels, my seat, and cut all of my brake and shifting cables. Luckily, since I had my U-lock running through the frame of my bike, they were unable to make off with the most important bits, including my racks and fenders. Needless to say, I was gutted to get off of the train in Swanson in the dark rainy air of 7:15 pm to find that my mode of transport was well munted. Excuse the language, but what right bastards. Anyway, I hope that at least they used the money to buy a nice loaf of bread or a sparkly necklace for their Mom and not to buy drugs.
2. Right at the end of my last work day, I met up with my friend Angie and hit the city in search of some soul mending Mexican food on the way to my Kiwi friend Helen's 21st birthday party at this flash private bar The Gin Room that was the best party ever due to the fact that their was a giant platter of home-made meat balls AND an open bar! The meat balls and drinks (like the purple smurf) were accented nicely by the wealth of sparkles that covered everyone in line with the theme. I have no idea how, but even yesterday, after 2 weeks of camping and traveling, I am still finding some of my stuff covered in renegade sparkles.
3. The next day, Angie and I hopped on a plane to sunny Nelson, on the top of the South Island. We were hosted by her relatives and enjoyed great hospitality (plucking your own freshly harvested green lipped muscles from the bay 20 metres away from the house and cooking them up for lunch), some great kayaking around the bays, and undertook the coastal 54 km Abel Tasman track for 3 days. Sandflies, wading through slightly mistimed tidal crossings and finding brief footing on a muscle laden sand bar in the middle of an estuary, and being covered in a healthy amount of dew each morning made for adventures, especially when combined with the amazing beach views and a chance encounter with a gang of wild black goats.
4. After resting up from our multi-day tramp (hike, not the other kind) and letting the massive "6th toe" blister I developed go down a bit, we were off again. This time we snagged a car deal one way from Nelson to Queenstown. Fortunately, NZ is sane about most of the car rental ages for companies, so I was sweet to rent it as a 21 yr old. Unfortunately, the company we had to go with only rented to 21 yr old +, so I had to do all of the driving. We drove out of Nelson, through Murchison, stopped at a giant suspension bridge (my fave!), then camped. Little did we know that as luck would have it, almost every single night we camped NZ would decide to rain during at least the night. Oh NZ. I guess you have to stay all beautiful and lush some how. After packing up the tent in a haze of vicious sandflies, we drove to our first stop on the west coast of the South Island- the aptly named Westport, which Angie was convinced was a big town (its name WAS written larger than others on the map, but as we soon found out, that means nothing in NZ. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the cartographers intentionally mess with anyone brave enough to try to navigate around NZ). Westport was larger than a block, but not by much. To be fair, we did happen to roll into town right as torrential rain pour started, so it wasn't like we were greeted with singing unicorns basking in the glowing golden sun. Damn. Finding not too many reasons to stay around Westport, we pressed on to Greymouth (at least four blocks!), shot through Punakaki after taking in the "pancake rocks," stopped off in the three person town/ Bushman's Museum where you can normally eat possum pies (thank god I did last time, as this stop proved to be extremely disappointing in my possum pie eating quest) in Pukekura, picked up a nice French hitch hiker who we taught important English words like raccoon to, and holed up for the night in a hostel in Franz Josef. I was looking forward to conquering the glacier the next day, so even though we were faced with antisocial hostel goers and the deadest night life ever, I remained positive. After all, I love gearing up with crampons and kicking some ice packs.
5. Climbing Franz Josef glacier was awesome! Although it was less challenging as far as the hiking goes compared to Fox Glacier, this one has an ice hole you can climb through, and since I was the first person behind our glacier guide, I got the honor of helping her tighten the ice screws as we picked our way along some of the steeper areas. AWESOME! Also, the crampons you got to wear at Franz were way more boss than at Fox as they fit over your whole foot and not just the instep. EPIC! After our languid morning stroll on the glacier, we headed south to swing by Fox Glacier, stopping to pick up a set of hitching German girls along the way. We found out quickly that two backpackers carried as much luggage as we could cram into our car, but they were very nice and nodded their head politely as Angie played Tegan and Sara Tiesto remixes. (Funnily enough, we actually just bumped into these girls last night while on the pub crawl in Queenstown. Yes, NZ really is that small.) We camped in a cold and dark lake side/ creek side/ we could not for the life of us actually figure out where to put our tent campsite. Turned out that the morning offered beautiful lake views and a clear sunny day. Awww. Sweet as. Still somewhat happy with the caffeine buzz provided by the cold instant coffee we chugged, I put my foot to the pedal and we made dust. We were somewhat excited to stay in a hostel in Wanaka, a lake side town not too far from Queenstown. There were lights. Streets. Soap. People. Everything we craved and missed. The hostel we stayed in had its own bar attached, which seemed awesome until it quickly became apparent that no one cool was staying there and the novelty of hearing the bar staff singing karaoke to entice contests soon wore off as it droned on through our packed dorm floor.
6. I did not sleep at all. This fact made driving all of the way to the Catlins less fun. In the end it paid off though, because we camped in an amazingly tucked away beach side $3 campsite. I happily scampered off along the beach, jumping from rock to rock and marvelling over the size of the seaweed washed ashore. I set my course for a nice rock outcrop, and when my path narrowed, I was forced to choose between stable looking grass with GIGANTIC THREATENING LOOKING SPIDER WEBS or possible mud grass. Flashing to the scenario of getting slowly drained of life after being bitten by some mysterious NZ spider, I went with the second option, bounding merrily until my last step saw me land in above ankle covering mud/cow poo sludge. Don't worry though- I finally got to wash my pants after 4 days. Smelling a little bit like mud/ cow poo, we drove through the nature of the preserved Catlins, rolling through the southern most point on the South Island Slope Point, to Bluff ( the fake southern most point that has a nice sign where tourists take photos), to Invercargil, the largest town in the area. It has over 12,000 people. But tonight, it had 12,002. We scored a laid back hostel AND bottom bunks (YESSSSSS), only to have my brief triumph quashed by a super cool 70 traveling English woman rolling in to our room. Obviously I gave her my bottom bunk, especially since there were no ladders and she started talking about her hip. She was a wicked cool traveller who had been sleeping in her rental car when she could and climbing up muddy hill sides. Bad ass. Excited by another shot at NZ nightlife in a larger after camping again, Angie and I copied down addresses for the bars that the guide book recommended. Turns out that a Wednesday night in Invercargil at 9:00 pm is not at all cracking, and we were led to abandoned buildings and dark alley ways for two of the supposed three bars anyway. Luckily, the Irish bar Waxy O'Shea's was open and warm.
7. This blog post is the longest ever. But this is what you get. From Invercargil, we drove north to Te Anu, stopped to gander at the lake, book a boat ride on Milford Sound, and carried on to a cold Fiordland campsite off of the small highway from Te Anu to Milford. The next morning was actually promising to show us some blue sky for our boat ride, but in true Fiordland fashion, clouds and rain soon reared their heads. This, and the free coffee I took advantage of, filled me with enough energy and motivation to drive back through Te Anu and press on all the way to Queenstown, rolling in a night earlier than we had planned for. While we had made a booking for the rest of Easter weekend, we barely got a space in a dorm that Friday night, which also turned out to be Good Friday, when all of the liquor stores are closed and you can't buy a drink unless you get a full meal. Now I am not saying that I am dependant on alcohol, but I have found out through the course of my travel experiences that I have a better shot at sleeping in a room of 7 other people, 2 of which are going to snore, after having a beer. Unlike the hostel keeper who closed up the front desk for the night with keys in one hand and a half drained bottle of whiskey in the other, Angie and I were forced out to the streets, where we were soon convinced by an Irish guy to dine at a restaurant that was hosting a meal deal with a free drink. Finally, a sign of civilization. While we did get a beer, the rest of the night was filled with the thrilling experiences of me finally washing my smelly hiking boots and dousing them with some kind of tropical body spray Angie handed me (mmmmm, that was a good combo!) and then not sleeping at all again because the other two girls who we were sharing the room with some how turned on the heater and we slowly cooked.
8. We are still in Queenstown for another day or so, and our new hostel is big, but clean and damn well run. We returned the rental car after I had to master the art of parallel parking from the other side of a car on the busiest street in town, so taking a brake from driving is helping me relax. We blended in with the Queenstown crowd by joining in in the aforementioned Pub Crawl, and while Angie did some extreme adventuring stuff today, I did laundry and hiked up a mountain. And now we are caught up. Tomorrow I will add a bunch of photos.
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