Wellington to Queenstown
Trip Start
Sep 14, 2008
1
6
15
Trip End
Dec 20, 2008
Where I stayed
Queenstown, South Island, New Zealand
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
On our last day in Wellington we took the famous cable car ride up to the botanical gardens, which were really beautiful, we could have spent all day there but it got a bit rainy so we spent the rest of the day checking out the rest of the city which for a capital, really isn't that big!
The next day we managed to catch out ferry which came up through Marlborough sounds and was really beautiful, and got to our marine themed hostel in Picton. We spent the rest of the day exploring Picton town, which took all of five minutes! As many of you may know the Marlborough region of NZ is famous for it's vineyards, especially white wine making, so it would have been rude to not visit some of the vineyards! So we did a tour around them, and we were the only two people on it so we had a personal guide, who was a bit strange and found it really odd when we didn't like absolutely all of the wines we tried. We went to some of the famous ones that stock to the supermarkets back home like grove mill and cloudy bay and some smaller family ones that only supply in NZ. We learnt lots about wine so will be fully clued up when we go home!
The next day we were back on the Stray bus and went to the Abel Tasman national park, stopping along the way in places like Nelson and Motueka. In Abel Tasman we stayed at Old MacDonalds' Farm (!) and had fun toasting marshmallows over a fire. Whilst there we were so lucky to have some beautiful weather (apparently it's pretty rare!) so we did a 3 hour coastal walk, which was so beautiful, saw some stunning scenery- Abel Tasman park is famous for these really golden sand beaches. To get back to where we were staying we went on a sailing catameran where we stopped off at an island that has a seal colony on it.
We continued down the "wild west" coast, and passed through many desolate townships which had sprung up due to the goldrush. Again, there are some amazing geological features down there due to the faultline, such as "pancake rocks", which are some of the wierdest things we've seen. The high waves we saw crashing against them were really spectacular too! That evening was spent in Barrytown, or "Baz Vegas" as it is sometimes known. Another town where there was nothing better to do than have a dress up party and dance all night!! (We're not putting the pictures up though!)
We looked for greenstone (jade) on Barrytown beach, but we didn't find any unfortunately. We saw lots of it though in a greenstone factory- it is a very sacred stone for the Maori people and it's on sale everywhere here! We had a fairly long drive then down to Franz Josef, where the main attraction is the glacier. We already had our first glimpses of it then. The next day however, we were climbing up it! After being kitted out in some very attractive waterproof trousers, jackets, crampons and woollen mittens! It was a bit of a visual illusion, as it didn't look that big or far away, but we were very wrong. The guides had to cut us out "ice steps" in order to climb up the steep bits and it was a long hard climb to get to the parts of the glacier that weren't covered in rocks. We got to see some really cool things up there though, such as walking through ice caves and sqeezing through walls of really blue ice. Some bits were a bit hairy though where it got very steep- but we had to trust our crampons and we were all ok.
The next day we headed to Makarora. We had lots of interesting stops along the way. One of these was Lake Matheson which is famously known as the "mirror lake" and I think we got some pretty good photos, although it was a bit windy creating ripples and there were some idiots from another tour bus throwing stones in (tut tut!). We also stopped at thundercreek falls, the highest waterfall I think we've seen yet. Whilst there, Matt tried some bush pepper, which is just a small innocent looking leaf and immediately regretted it!! We also went to see the gates of Haast, which were these huge granite rocks. Unfortunately Annabel doesn't think the sight of them was worth the pain that was caused which coming back down the track she fell very hard on a rock and now has some pretty impressive brusing on her bottom (not cool!). Makarora itself was even less happening than Barrytown so we were all subjected to taking part in karaoke.
Yesterday we arrived in Queenstown- known for it's extreme sporting activities. On the way we took a trip to "puzzle word", which was far more up Annabel's street and were amazed by lots of visual illusions, such as balls rolling uphill, Annabel looking taller than Matt(!) and then we completely lost ourselves in the maze- we had to use an emergency exit to get out as the bus was leaving! We stopped at Kawarau bridge- the site of the first bungy and watched some of our fellow Stray passengers fling themselves off the top of it. Queenstown itself is a nice little town, with a pretty lake and some cool shops. As I write this Matt is doing a bungy jump- "the nevis" which is like 150m or something crazy like that. I chose to go for an extreme massage to help relieve some of the aches I've been accumulating over the past month!!
Well that's all for now, hope everyone is well.
Matt and Annabel xxx
PS- sorry no photos just yet, we tried, but we failed. Watch this space.
