Camper van park is really good. So I book up a whole host of activities for the next 3 days.
DAY 1 - WHITE WATER RAFTING
in the morning I am picked up early to go with the white water rafting group down the carona river. No one has told me that I will be riding with a school party.
Clyde the guy who picks me up on the bus tells me that it's actualy 57 15 year boys on a rugby tour of new zealand with their parents/teachers. Oh shit it really is going to be an adrenline ride.
Well the boys eventually arrive. We have to get changed into our wet suits, socks and boots then dash up in the cold to get jackets. life jackets and gloves. Oh and helmet and paddle.
We then get ona really damp smelling bus to the karona river and then have to walk down a steep sloap to the boats. The boys are not badly behaved I just get a shove onece and that's it.
You should have seen it when they were int the water. The guides let them do anything. They were splashing, tipping, jumping out the boat and throwing their mates plus the guides in. It was chaos but brilliant to watch. I was in the teachers boat whith a guide that managed to steer us away from the mahem. Don't get me wrong we still got picked on and soaked but not to their extent!
They were probably letting off steam as they hadn't done very well against the kwiwi's in their matches. In fact there were a lot of injuries including one boy with a broken vertibrate.
well I said goodbye to the teachers and wished them luck. The boys before hand had done a helicopter flight over the region. I decided to forget that as doing franz joseph.
DAY 1 - SHOOTOVER JET BOAT (DOES 360 DEGREES)
I have a walk around queenstown on a really prietty but cold day. It's a beautiful town with a steam boat restaurant that goes out daily. i get the bus around two and go to teh same place they do the white water rafting.
We are given rain coats and lifejackets and have our pictures taken. The guide said to me sit at the back and at one side you get the best of the ride. I do that as I am first in the boat but this woman shouts for me to move as she is with a group of 4 and they all want to sit together. There's no please or thank you but i move anyway. Ended up sitting in the wet seat anyhow. The bars they get you to hold on to are heated. Not much but enough not to make your hands feel like frost bite.
Well we take off going one side of the river. It's a fsat flashy red boat that has to fiull up with petrol every trip and there's abouy 15 people on the boat. it was great we gop off one way down the gorge. The boat company own the rights to the river and have just got it for another 25 years. They go for about 25 mins and go up and down the canyon right by the rocks. So much so you think they are going to hit them. Then they do 360 degrees turn. It was great fun and well worth it.
After that I go back and do laundry and have dinner trying to get out for the rugby. A very nice person takes all my laundry out while wet and dumps it on the side when I have put it in the dryer. I then figure its goignt o take me ages to wait for a dryer so go hunting for one thoroughly pissed of. Can't find another dryer so when their load stops I do it to them. Well it was done to me so sod it.
Eventually i am ready to go to the rugby after every little thing seeming to go wrong, does. I go to the red rocks pub as I have been told that's good and to get their early so I order a platter of potato wedges and stuff and a pitcher of beer and start doing my written journal till the match starts. I didn't realise that wasn't for antoher 2 hours. So I am quietly getting drunk while watching another rugby game.
Eventually the match starts. A guy who was originally from greymouth but moved to perth starts talking to me. Seems friendly enough so we watch the match together and get more beer. I should say its the wallaby's v allblacks. Anyway the kiwi now aussie guy is called john, shaven head and a miner working for 6th months of the year and up for the snowboarding. I tell him that I am doing the llord of the rings tomorrow and he says if teh weather is bad he may do that or if not catch up with me later. We swap mobiles and off i go.
DAY 2 - LORD OF THE RINGS TOUR (GLENORCHY)
Next day i get picked up early in a 4whell driver nomads safari of teh rings range rover. In the back is a couple with a two year old girl from england. They are quite nice to talk to and the kid is cute. Then they pick up john the guiy i met in the pub before and off we go. They explain that teh film locations are dotted around all of NZ and we are going to glenorchy where they filmed the king going across the river. I can't remeber the hero's name, the one who is true air to the kingdom of condaw...maybe getting mixed up with mac beth here, will correct later.
Anyhow the little girl then starts screaming and i mean the pitch that just screws with your head and she won't stop. Well they have got nothing to keep her occupied and she's strapped in a seat where she can't see out the window - what do you expect. Anyhow a box of raiusins cures that...thank you raisins, food wonder of the world. The couple are really embarrasssed about their kids tantrum, hey its not her fault she just wanted to be envolved.
The tour guide is a pilot who does trips to teh milford sound. We had 4 stops, one for the toilet, one for tea and one to actually see a film location. The guide spent more time asking about us and talking about his experiences travlling than actually any lord of the rings stuff.
The tea and cake were good though and he was a nice guy but if i had the same guide book he was reading to us from and a 4 wheel drive car I could have done as good a job.
After that i arrange to meet john for some dinner. He picks me up in his car at the camper site and takes me to the loaded hog. We have a bottle of wine but are too late for food. So I say lets go get a kebab so we do that and sit and eat it in his car. Then I get asked want to come back for a coffee.
Okay this is my rant. I am so used to being just chatty with people in the hostels I forgot the rule of the single travelling female, especialy if you are older or the guys are older (john is 40 nearly), they just want to get into your pants. Being friendly means that you have this word tatooed on your forehead that your not aware of but 36 - 50 year olds thinks it means (and pardon my language) but basically "fuck me now" haven't they herad of the male female platonic friendship thing or do they just know getting into your trousers. Then i realise I had forgotton i was on my own at the bar and yes I did get picked up. doing the dorm shares and chatting to some genuinely nice blokes you forget what some are like.
I make my exscuses and it clear that I am not interested and we agree to travel parts of teh west coast as friends. We can discuss routes tomorrow. To be honest I don't really want to travel with him any part as don't want the restrictions of having to compromise or work to someone elses schedule.
DAY 3 - PARAGLIDING
Next morning i get picked up for paragliding off coronet peak. I don't actually know what parragliding is except it's tandem and involves a parachute. Well hey I can do that done it before sort of.
We are on a bus trip from the camp site up to coronet peak. There's an austrailian guy doing it as well. We pick up teh other instructor and head off to the peak.
Next we have to go up in the ski lift while carlos (another instructor who is from spain and his english is appaulign but has learnt while he has been over here), gets the shoot ready and follows us up. Funny I found it harder to get off a ski lift without skiis then with but I manage it. Then we have to climb up some steps one of the instructors have carved in the snow then walk across what i would call teh summit. I can't describe the views I felt like a real explorer. Like the guy in the film I watched in sydney who did the mountain in peru (without breaking a leg).
Well we walk across the summit and two shoots are layed quite a way apart. I am going with carlos. He tells me what ever happens to keep running no matter watch if i fall, or if we take off i keep running. Then i look. I now know what paragliding is...i have to run off the edge of a mountain with a guy strapped to my back. Shit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well we harness up and I do it. I am so busy runnign in snow that goes up to my kness as my legs dissapear that I nearly stumble so does carlos but nope I am still running even when the shoot has caught the wind and we are off over the mountains. It was absolutely freezing but such a wonderful sight. Clear blue sky, mountains with snow that we are over trying to catch thermasl. I hear the other instructor on the radio say that carlos nearly stumbled but i was running so fast he didn't have a choice i took him with me. The flight was only 15mins but well worth it,. Best thing i had done in NZ.
DAY 3 - HACKET BUNJY JUMP
Later that afternoon i met the bus to do the bunjy. There was an english couple, an architect and his grilfrined. They were doing the big 3 package. I was just doing teh hacket bunjy. He's already done one before but it was her turn. There was aguy from south america as well and his friend had been winding him up.
Well we get there and get weighed. Yep 67 with loads of clothes on and walkign boots. I have to go on the light bunjy so I am the first to go. Following this oither girl from another tour. She does it and then they put the ropes round me. They edge me out and I look down. Come on you can do it, after 5. I look down and say I don't think i can. There are two guys ina life raft at the bottom who catch you and unrope you and you walk back up. they look like dots. They can't down from 5. 5...4..3..2...1... yep and i am still standing there. Saying i don't think i can do it...they are of course you can... i am like i know i cant do it. They try to make me go again..... 5...4...3...2..1... thios time my hands are outsreatched and one guy gently pulls my finger tips, as soon as i feel him doing this I am ohhh shit and pull back!
I can't do it so they unharness me and I go off feeling like shit for being the only one who didn't. The other couple went, and the south american guy! Whats wrong I could do a paraanes from 5,000m and a tandem sky dive from 14,000 but a bunjy at 47m i can't do! Bugger!
Anyhow after that they took me for beers and a girl from melbourne was in the bar who started talking to us. She was great and a REAL adrenline junky. Ice walking, flying fox the lot. I felt worse but the beer helped. Then I realised I was meeting john and didn't fancy that on my own so I went and got him and we all had a few beers and finally some food together. The english coupel were a great laugh.
After that john walked me back to the camp site which it didn't dawn on me why. Then realisation came and i had to make it clear again its a no go. Next morning was up early and ghot the hell out of there to go to wanaka.
Posted by alexd at August 8, 2004 12:36 AM