Eat my snow

Christchurch, Methven & Mt Hutt, South Island, New Zealand

After taking a truly spectacular drive up to Christchurch from Wanaka, we decided to spend the weekend in the city and head up to Mount Hutt the following week when it was a bit quieter. There are few things more embarrassing than having a four year old child whizzing past you on the slopes, and staying away until a school day would minimise the risk. The tourist info place in Christchurch city centre would only offer overpriced, cramped and shabby hostel rooms, so we found ourselves another snappy motel room with a voucher we had cut out of a newspaper weeks earlier. We booked our flights out of the country and extended the car hire for another few days, then set off around the city to do the usual "New Zealand's World Famous..." spotting. Cara treated herself to a haircut and I treated myself to a slap up lunch at the local kebab shop. If I was going to face the "So, what do you think about my new hair?" question, I wanted something lining my stomach when the time came. The next day was spent driving around Banks Peninsula, east of the city, which is where the locals store their hills. We saw plenty more of the great scenery which kiwis seem to leave lying around all over the place, and almost drove into a lost cow on a hilltop. We offered her a lift home, but she preferred the walk and carried on in the opposite direction, looking for more blind corners to hide behind.

Monday morning we drove up to Methven, which is the nearest town to the Mt Hutt slopes, and organised our lift passes and gear hire for the following morning. Methven seemed to be exclusively populated by skiers and people catering to the needs of skiers, with not much else going on. I can only imagine that in summer, the residents pack the whole town up into a big box and drive it over to the east coast, where it spends the warmer months as a quaint, Edwardian seaside village.

After acquiring ourselves yet another spacious, comfortable, multi-roomed motel cabin for the same price as a trendy hostel broom cupboard, we took a drive down to Ashburton, the nearest town of any size (population : 15,000, large by south island standards), as we wanted to find a supermarket where we could buy a big bag of live green lipped mussels for dinner. We had a big cooking pot in our kitchen and it would have been a shame not to use it. After arriving in town, Cara stuck her head into a few stores to ask the locals where we could buy a big bag of live green lipped mussels. They all just stared at her like she was a loony (of course, she is a loony, but for different reasons). Why on earth would we want a big bag of live green lipped mussels, they asked? Who buys live mussels? Who sells live mussels, for that matter? No, they couldn't help us, and if it was all the same to us, would we mind getting our scruffy backsides out of their town and taking our strange foreign ways with us. Live mussels, indeed. Whoever heard of such nonsense? Two hundred metres further down the road we found the local supermarket, and inside was a big tank brimming with green lipped mussels. I can only assume the locals we encountered ate only straw, and shunned such needless extravagances as supermarkets. We filled a big bag with the tasty molluscs and paid the grand total of two pounds for them. Back at the room l cooked us up a grand dinner of moules mariniere avec frites. Actually, it was mussels and oven chips, but why split hairs? If you ever visit New Zealand, I strongly recommend trying the mussels. Each one is the size of a poodle, and cooked up in a puddle of wine and cream, they taste great. And cheaper than chips, literally.

Bright and breezy the next morning, it was back on with the thermal long johns and off we drove up the mountain to the Mt. Hutt ski slopes. The weather was perfect, with nary a cloud in the sky, and the last thirteen kilometres of the drive took us up a narrow, icy road which clings to the side of the mountain by it's fingertips. It is always an invigorating experience to stare at a sheer, five hundred metre drop as your car loses traction on an icy, hairpin corner.
The two days skiing were fantastic, and if I say so myself, my snowboarding skills are now exceptional. Professional snowboarders would approach me on the lifts and ask me what my secrets are. Of course, being a kung fu snowboard grandmaster, I would just humbly say it was down to plenty of practice and the odd spot of meditation. Unlike the last time I went snowboarding, no bones were broken and I could even get down the mountain without hurting anybody else. I would at this point like to extend a big thank you to the pink-suited skier who so considerately skied across the front of my snowboard one afternoon, whacking me across the thigh with their ski-pole in the process and allowing me to enjoy the curious sensation of skidding fifty metres down the slope on my face. And you were even too modest to look back or acknowledge your generosity in any way. I can only hope that you contract some form of untreatable fungal infection on your genitals, causing you to scratch feverishly in social situations and ostracising you from friends and family. Prick! And just to add insult to injury, as we exited the ski lift for the final time on our last day, Cara turned to me and said "You've done really well. You haven't had any really bad falls this time, have you?". Great, I thought, that was something that could have been said when we had made it down to the bottom. Sure enough, half way down the piste, probably as I was thinking about not falling over, I fell over. A great big, flailing limbs, snow up the nostrils and down the pants kind of fall that makes you look like a ragdoll in a tumble dryer. As I spun through the air for the third time, everything moving in slow motion, I thought to myself at least this will look impressive to anybody watching, but after I finally stopped and managed to extricate my head from the snow and my feet from up my arse and under my left armpit, I looked around and not another soul was in sight. It would seem my luck was taking a turn for the worse. Other than that, a grand time was had by all.

It was finally our last night in New Zealand, and I was going to treat myself to an enormous bag of fish 'n' chips from town. Cara, being the kind of weirdo that can say no to fried food, was having some pasta, which is apparently little curly things that you boil in a pan. Very exotic! I put on my woolly hat and my goofy grin and grabbed the car keys. The car was parked in the driveway, and as I was reversing onto the road there was a very loud crashing noise, which came at the exact same instant as the car stopped dead in its tracks. I looked in both wing mirrors, but couldn't see anything. I moved the car forward a bit, opened the door and had a look at what might have caused my little problem. There was nothing to be seen. Oh, hang on a minute, that was not quite true. There did seem to be something poking out of the top of my car. How curious. I should, at this point, fill you in on a few details about our car. The vehicle we had been renting for the previous seven weeks was a Toyota Rav4 four wheel drive, or "puddle jumper" as the locals liked to call it. Another thing that New Zealand is "World Famous" for is car crime, specifically things being stolen from parked vehicles at some of the more remote tourist attractions. With this in mind, we had chosen a Rav4 with blacked out rear windows, so nobody could see what we had in the back of the car when we were off doing the sights. The down side of this choice, other than making me look like a pimp in a hippo's bladder jacket, was that we couldn't see a damn thing out of the rear window at night. And the damned thing I couldn't see out of the rear window on this particular night, was a very large, very solid, concrete lamppost, which, thanks to the rear door of my Rav4, was now leaning out over the road at what some might call a jaunty angle. I walked to the back of the car to assess the damage, and it did not look good. The spare wheel was bolted onto the rear door, and the lamppost had used this to completely stove in the rear door, which now wouldn't open. I threw my hands up in the air and shouted all my favourite obscenities at the clouds. The clouds let me know what they thought of the whole sorry episode by starting to rain on me. There was nothing else to do except call into Liquorland on the way home from the chip shop. Seven weeks of driving through blizzards and hanging off the edges of cliffs, and I finally get scuppered when a lamppost jumps in front of the car.

The next morning we drove back to Christchurch to drop off the car. At the rental place, I hand over the keys and tell the chap in charge what happened.
"Oh well, never mind eh?" he said after giving the car a quick inspection.
"Is that it?" I asked
"These things happen" he said, grinning. "We'll soon get that hammered out, anyway"
To say I was relieved would be an understatement. Fortunately, when we first hired the car, we took out the insurance excess waiver, which dropped our financial liability in case of an accident from $2500 to $100. I just wasn't sure it would cover us in the event of reversing into a concrete lamppost. After going through the usual formalities, he even gave us a lift to the airport. What a thoroughly pleasant chap. In fact, pretty much everybody we met in New Zealand was friendly and chatty. I can honestly say that I only met four unfriendly people during our entire visit here, and they were all on the ski slopes. I guess some stuck up tossers just resent sharing their pistes with hairy goatboys like me. So, a big thumbs up to the people of New Zealand. Great scenery, great people, a million different things to do (even if some of them do require an unhealthy degree of exertion) and great food and wine. All they need to do is sort out that frozen chip debacle and I think they'll have it sorted.

Mik

What a difference a day makes

Cardrona ski-field, nr. Wanaka, New Zealand

The school holidays were over so we headed back to Wanaka a less touristy town than Queenstown and just that bit closer to the ski-field we wanted to try out. We found a room. It was a good deal considering the time of year, as it was a large one bed unit, but this meant it was very cold. We sat for a while in many layers whilst the heater tried to take the edge off!

We signed up for three days of ski-ing and hired the chains we thought we might need. We set off early and drove the long winding track to the ski fields. We were both very glad we had a 4WD as the road was fairly scary. I was just glad that Mik was happy to drive as I really wouldn't have fancied it. We could barely see 5 metres in front of us and there were fair size drop-offs at the side of the road -agh! The bad weather was certainly going to make for an interesting first day's ski-ing!

We got ourselves kitted out, Mik with his snowboard and me with my skis, and hit the easy slope for a practice run. It was freezing cold, the low cloud meant everything was white and actually finding the piste was difficult, and it was snowing. Being a fair weather skier I really wasn't sure about all this.

We had both signed up for lessons so headed off to see if the professionals were finding these conditions any easier. There were only 3 in my group which was just as well as it would have been very easy to lose the people at the back. As the weather conditions meant we couldn't really ski very fast the instructor had us doing lots of weird tricks like ski-ing on one ski. To practice our balance apparently, although I think he just wanted a laugh. He also decided to try and teach us to stand on the tips of our ski's (whilst still in them), again just for the amusement factor. I mean I'd only need to know how to do stuff like that if I want to be an instructor and show off to my class!

Mik and I then spent the afternoon ski-ing down what we assumed were runs. The snow kept falling and the wind picked up and it got very cold indeed. So cold that the part of my hair which had been exposed was covered in frost and I looked like I had icicles hanging from my head. Still we braved it out til the end. It was our first day afterall.

As we were about to set off down the mountain road a couple asked if they could have a lift as they hadn't wanted to bring their car up. They chucked their boards in the back and off we set. I spent the journey trying to distract them and myself from the fact that the road was a little slippy after the snowfall. Again, god bless 4WD's!

That evening, once showered and fed I don't think we moved. We were exhausted.

We awoke the next day, aching slightly, but to a beautifully clear sky. The perfect weather made such a difference, for a start we could see where we were going. We managed to get a couple of runs in before lessons and it was excellent. Fresh snow and blue skies - now that's my kind of ski-ing. Mik was coming on in leaps and bounds. I was very impressed and after lessons we hit the intermediate slopes and there were very few falls - for either of us! We spent most of the day taking photos of the mountains we hadn't even been able to see the day before and LOADS of video of us trying to do our best ski-ing/boarding - we'll bore you with those when we get home!

We were there til the last lift as it was such a perfect day. Again we headed home and sat in a state of vegetation all evening.

The next morning we had to move rooms. This actually proved to be a good thing as when I went to collect the new key kitted out in my ski gear the lady asked if we were planning to head up to the ski fields at Cardrona. I nodded to the affirmative and she then informed me that the mountain was closed and would be all day! Apparently they had had so much snow overnight that the road was blocked. The weather in this country is just mad! We were really disappointed but decided not to hang around. Our bags were packed, we got a refund on our lift pass and decided to set off for Christchurch and hopefully get some more ski-ing in somewhere else.

Not a bad Plan B, however......when I went to settle up for the the lady said the roads towards Christchurch may also be locked - bloody brilliant! We drove to the information centre to check it out. Hooray they were open. It wasn't exactly what we had had planned for the day but it was an interesting drive. The roads were open but we saw at least one car which had come off the road due to the conditions. They should have paid attention to the radio warnings 'Drive to the conditions, if they change reduce your speed' - sung to a jingle of course!!

Cara

It wasn't all bad

Otago Peninsula, New Zealand

Dunedin, yes give it a miss, but the Otago Peninsula nearby is beautiful. And if you can dodge huge bull seals on the beach you can view the rare yellow eyed penguin from a hide. There are only 3,000 of them. We saw 2!

Cara

I'd rather drill a hole in my forehead than waste time thinking of a title for this entry

Dunedin, South Island, New Zealand

Potentially the dullest, most uninspiring geographical location on the face of this green earth. Should be twinned with Burnley.

Mik

Now that's what I call remote

Te Anau, nr Milford Sound, New Zealand

Upon arrival in Te Anau we did the usual and stopped by the visitors centre to get any recomendations on accomodation. Whilst there we also found out that the road to Milford Sound was closed due to avalanche risk. Oh well it's not like that was the only reason we had come to this remote part of the country! Actually it was, which meant we had no choice but to sit it out. That afternoon didn't turn not bad as they were showing March of the Penguins at the local cinema. As an avid lover of penguins I thought it was a brilliant film and I now want to visit Antarctica. The whole experience was made even better by the fact that the cinema seats were like arm chairs and if we had wanted they would have served us cheese and biscuits!

There were a couple of guys in the room next to us who provided some entertainment. One night they tried to come into our room by mistake. Mik politely advised them of their error and off they stumbled in a drunken haze. The next day the motel owner told us they were hunters and as if to prove the point they came back the following day with a dead wild pig on the back of a truck! Nice, although even nicer were the blood stains from where it had been slaughtered on the back of another truck. Where the hell were we!?!

The next 2 days the road remained closed as they were blasting the snow to get rid of the avalanche risk and then having to clear the road. The second day of waiting we decided to drive the road and see how far we could get. It was a beautiful drive but the barrier was down and we could not get through. To make up for it Mik took us for an offroad experience. Finally he got to see what the car would do. Needless to say I wasn't quite so enthusiastic as we lost sight of town and wheelspan through the mud!

The following morning we got up early, again, in the hope that the road would be clear. Horray, they were going to be opening it at 11am so off we set complete with a set of chains for the car. We arrived at the gate to a queue of traffic. They finally opened the gates at 11.30 and everyone drove very cautiously through the mountain, past the huge piles of dynamite blasted snow. It made for quite a vista.

We then caught a boat and set off into Milford Sound, which we found out is in fact a fjord. The difference, well a sound is the result of rising sea levels flooding valleys, whereas a fjord is the result of glacial erosion. I did a geography degree don't you know. But still had to learn that from the skipper! The boat took us slowly through the stunning scenery and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. This in itself is unusual as Milford is known for it's low mists, even in summer, so we were really lucky in the end! The cruise lasted an hour and a half and we took a million photos, none of which do the place justice. We were then dropped at an underwater observatory where we could view the local fish life.

After the lovely 2 hour drive back to Te Anau we treated ourselves to a night out and went for burgers and beers at the local pub. The next morning we headed out and for the first hour of the journey barely saw another car on the road, talk about isolated.

Cara

Back to earth with a bump, a shudder and an icy slap around the face

Queenstown, South Island, New Zealand

I have always found it fascinating how your environment can affect your perception and mood. For example, during our last month in New Zealand I have been feeling extremely lucky to be here. To be able to wander to and fro as I please without the merest hint of stress, pressure or discontent. Feeling young at heart and eager to enjoy the many and varied experiences this country has to offer. I was viewing the world through the eyes of youthful exuberance and I had even been asked for I.D. when buying booze, for the first time in twenty years (although the legal drinking age is eighteen, most shops ask for I.D. from anybody under thirty. I still enjoyed it). However, on my first morning in Queenstown I awoke to realise that I am actually a scruffy, unemployed, overweight, unhealthy, middle-aged grouch with a girl's haircut and limited prospects. It came as quite a shock to the system, let me tell you. You see, Queenstown claims to be the party capital of New Zealand. It also claims to be the ski capital and the adventure capital of New Zealand. And we arrived at the height of ski season. In the middle of the school winter holidays. And on a Friday night. Shit!

Because we are apparently at the height of NZ's harshest winter for decades, most of the towns we have visited are empty of tourists and the briefest search usually turns up a great room for not a lot of money. Not so in Queenstown. The place was packed to the rafters and what it was packed with was lots of very healthy, wealthy, young people sat outside the many bars and restaurants after finishing a hard day on the piste, flashing everybody with their pearly white teeth and designer sunglasses. Then you have me, wearing the same clothes I have been wearing for the last fourteen months, badly in need of a haircut and feeling old enough to have fathered most of the people around me. And that was just the start.

For the lion's share of our travelling so far, Cara and I have enjoyed a fairly comfortable lifestyle. Of course, we're backpackers eking out our day to day existence on a modest budget and living out of a bag, but for most of the countries we have visited, those few pounds went a long way and we have rarely had to go without. Plush rooms, fancy restaurants and exotic excursions all fell easily within our financial grasp, and enjoy them we did. Our budget was as strong as an ox and could handle everything we threw at it. Then we arrived in New Zealand. We had to cut back on many of our usual luxuries and watch the pennies a little more closely. The budget started to look a little pale around the edges and it was losing stamina rapidly. Then we arrived in Queenstown. Almost immediately the budget suffered a full blown coronary and began hemorrhaging cash in all directions. We tried everything to staunch the flow of money, but it continued to spurt out of every pocket. Nothing could be done and we were both reduced to eating packet noodles in front of the TV whilst the train of inebriated party-goers passed beneath our window.
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Our original plan was to stay in Wanaka, about a hundred kilometres north of Queenstown, and spend a week or so skiing and snowboarding on the nearby slopes. Unfortunately, the only way we could afford any of the accommodation was for both of us to turn tricks on the lakefront, and even then we'd be struggling (whilst Cara could have earned a mint, it turns out it would have cost me a fortune and on the balance of things we would still lose money). Even after moving down to Queenstown, we quickly discovered our plans might prove to be more than our terminally sick budget could take. Couple that with the fact that we had arrived during possibly the busiest skiing period of the entire year and it was clear we needed to rethink our agenda. We decided to stick around for a few days to do the various activities we wanted to get done in town, then move south toward Milford Sound, before heading back to Wanaka after the school holidays were over.

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We booked ourselves onto New Zealand's world-famous Shotover Jet, which involves sitting in a jetboat and driving up and down the canyons of the Shotover river. It was actually great fun, despite the arctic winds and large ice patches on the riverbanks, and quite a novel experience. The boats are extremely quick and agile and can take you places that a boat has no right going. The driver fires the boat full tilt at the rock walls of the canyon, only to whip the steering wheel away at the last second, bringing you so close to the rocks you fear your earlobes might remain behind, dangling from a piece of protruding granite. He also spins the boat in rapid 360 degree turns and skips across riverbeds barely deep enough to wash a sparrow, while his passengers squeal and yelp in mock terror. It is much more enjoyable than it sounds, although that's probably because I'm not describing it very well. The closest analogy I can think of is this; it is like having a pneumatic drill vibrating the length of your spine whilst a grinning maniac drives you straight at a brick wall at top speed, and all the while somebody else is firing crushed ice at your face from a shotgun and tipping water into your lap. You try to smile but a frigid wind freezes your features into a fixed, rictus grin and your left eardrum implodes when the petrified Korean lady sitting next to you screams her surprisingly capacious lungs into the side of your head. There, now that sounds like fun doesn't it? Give it a go, you'll never look at a pedalo the same again.

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That afternoon we took a ride up Queenstown's world-famous gondola cable car, to see the world-famous views over the world-famous lake where world-famous people take world-famous paragliding rides off the world-famous hill and the world-famous blah blah blah. We also enjoyed the world-famous Skyline Luge ride, which is actually more like a toboggan than a luge, as you sit on it rather than riding supine (something to do with soup?). Actually, it's more like a dinner tray with handlebars than a toboggan, but now I'm just being pernickety. Either way it is excellent fun, only costs a couple of dollars, and is probably the most fun you can have wearing a helmet. That night we treated ourselves to Guinness and draught cider in a local pub and the next morning, tired and hungover, we set off for Te Anau from where we would go to see the world-famous Milford Sound.

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Mik

Franz Josef & Fox Glaciers

Franz Josef, New Zealand

The drive from Motueka to Franz Josef was our longest journey yet. It took us about 6 and a half hours and we saw about 3 cars! The drive took us down the west coast of the south island and there aren't many people living there. The biggest town is Greymouth with a population of 13,500!

We arrived in the small town of Franz Josef in the middle of a downpour and unfortunately for me it was my turn to scout out a room. We found a cheap one but this meant no kitchen and only a small heater. We spent the evening in bed with the electric blanket on eating pot noodle. We hadn't warmed to Franz Josef! Litterally.

The reason for coming here was because of the glaciers, one in Franz Josef and one in Fox about 20 miles away. I had wanted to climb on one but as the weather hadn't cleared up I didn't get to do it. We walked up to the terminal/face of each glacier took some piccies, had a drive around, wandered on a grey beach on a grey day, and left in search of better weather.

Cara