As there was still no new snow, I thought I'd do some other things around and about Queenstown. In the morning I was going to experience the fly by wire. You can check out the website for a little video of how it works, but basically you are strapped on to a board with a big propeller engine on the back. This board is suspended from a system of wires which stretch across a large valley. You can then fly around the valley at speed of over 100 mph, attached all the time to the wire.
It was pretty amazing as I was strapped in, then winched up the side of the valley until I was pointing straight downwards. I then pulled on the release mechanism and simultaneously opened the throttle on the engine and zoomed down towards the bottom of the valley, missing the building by a matter of feet, before shooting up the other side to do a turn. When you get the turn right, you are weightless for a few seconds and can really zoom down again.
It only lasted for around seven minutes, but that was enough! It was not as exciting as the bi-plane flight, or as scary as the bungee jump, but it was a really good experience. I suspect that you would not be allowed to set one of those up in the UK!
In the afternoon I'd booked in for the famous Shotover Jet. The river Shotover is a river just outside Queenstown where early prospectors found lots of gold. These days you just get lots of Jetboats and inflatables zooming around. The Jetboats are amazing as they can operate in only a few centimetres of water. The trip is up and down the river, through deep rock gorges and the boat drivers take you almost to touching distance of the rocks! The boats can also do 360 degree spins, virtually on the spot, which is really good fun.
In the evening was the Winter Festival Mardi Gras which was a large street party, with beer tents and live bands. The best band I saw were called Garageland, I must find out whether they have any CDs out, believe it or not, I have bought no new music since I've been out here, that must be a record! (no pun intended!).
I also picked up a snowboard and some boots to do some boarding. The board is a Burton Charger and I have to say, looks pretty cool!
Today was my first boarding day. I'd already been once this year when I went to Switzerland in January, this was my first time "down under" though! There are two main ski areas near Queenstown, the Remarkables and Coronet Peak. I decided on the former for my first day and took my car up instead of catching a courtesy bus. The road was gravel with lots of hairpins, all the way up. Not a pleasant experience, especially as the buses had rutted the road and made it very bumpy.
I usually get a bit worried when I start boarding, but fortunately it all came back to me again and I was soon whizzing down the slopes at great speed. The area, although large for NZ standards is quite small and there really wasn't very much snow. I had to avoid lots of boulders and rocks which was pretty tricky at times!
I did ok without falling over, until quite late on in the day when I lost it completely. I remember flying through the air and landing right on my... well, you can probably imagine what I landed on! I looked back and saw a crater, roughly the size of my bum. Considering the snow was quite well packed this was some achievement and unless they've filled it in there will be another man made object visible from space along with the Great Wall of China and Congleton Town Hall!
As part of the Winter festival there was a "Big Air" competition on at Coronet Peak, so I decided to go up there for the evening. The road up there was much nicer, it even had tarmac and as I made my way up, I could see the jump floodlight against the night.
I tootled up the steep hill to get a good view and then was amazed as Snowboarders and Skiers did these amazing jumps and tricks. The only scary point was when one of the boarders had a nightmare and jumped off target, smashing a camera and injuring a spectator, fortunately the chap only cut his nose, but it looked really bad from where I was standing! The jumpers had lots of nerve and I was well impressed.
Then back to the hostel. I've given up getting worked up about staying in the dorm, I just know that I will be woken at 3 or 4am every morning now anyway, so I go back to sleep!
Not a lot to report today, I went up to Coronet Peak to try boarding there and there is a lot more variety and better snow. Whilst I was up there it did start snowing, although it later turned to rain. Hopefully though, tonight it will be all snow up there!
I did some confidence building runs on the easier slopes before lunch and then after a very tasty baked potato went up the top for some trickier runs. The problem I then had was that it was quite windy and the icy rain just stung my eyes. I couldn't wear my sunglasses either as they just steamed up or got very wet! In the end, I put my sunglasses away and put up with the stinging. The weird thing was, every now and then I would see stars... hmmm, maybe that is what Snow-blindness is all about! Sometimes there was a complete white out as well and I didn't know whether I was even moving, never mind what direction I was going in!
All in all, a good day on the slopes and I'm looking forward for another day tomorrow!
Well, made it up the slopes again, but now we had some really dodgy weather. Only one of the chair lifts was open and that only gave access to the easy slopes. This meant that I just was able to zoom up and down without too much excitement.
The main excitement of the day was attempting to fit the snow chains on the way up to the resort! It took me a couple of attempts to attach them securely, but once they were on I felt that we could have driven on piste! Well, slight exaggeration there, but there was a bit more grip.
When I got back to the YHA, I had a really good chat with a French chap called Daniel. He lives on one of the New Caledonia islands, which are a few hours North of New Zealand by plane. He is a good snowboarder and is really into Kite Surfing which is a combination of surfing, in the sea and using a kite as a power source. What he would like to try in New Zealand, is using the power kite and his snowboard, to get him up the mountain! Sounds really cool, but I can imagine a lot of confused faces as they would watch him zoom up the hill.
Not a lot else to report really, it's raining in Queenstown now, so I'm wondering where to go next. I'm moving on Sunday and the choice is either to head for the Fiordland region, or down to Dunedin. If the weather is great, the former, pants, then the latter....
Weather was still dodgy so sat in the cafe and read my book (currently Man and Boy by Tony Parsons, finished Harry Potter yesterday!). Then at 13:45 they decided that the main chairlift had defrosted enough for them to open it, so I dashed out and joined the queue. It was so cold, I froze to the chair, ouch!
I was able to spend all afternoon doing the main runs and making my own tracks off-piste which was really great. Most of the time it was white out conditions which I've realised can be useful because you have to judge what is going on through the board only. My confidence rose and because the snow was in good condition, I was really able to whizz.
By the end of the day, I'd decided that I was going to board the next day too, so I trooped down to the hire shop for an extension! This means a night time drive after a day of boarding tomorrow, but I really want to make the most of the snow. Hopefully, it should be clearer tomorrow too.
It is amazing to think that I've been out here for forty days now and that I have just over two weeks left. Every now and then it sinks in that I'm at the other end of the world to the U.K. and it seems really strange!
My last night in the Queenstown YHA tonight, will I miss all the hustle and bustle.... errrr, no.
Ended up having a really late last night and was unable to get to sleep until after 2am, which meant that I was rather tired in the morning! I had to check out at 10, so I made sure I'd got everything together and headed up to Coronet Peak.
When I arrived, I bumped into Daniel and so we decided we would do some runs together. It was a beautiful sunny day today and you could see for miles. There was quite a bit of wind chill though as well, so it did get rather cold waiting in the queue for the chairlift.
Crumbs, Daniel is a bit speedy on the old snowboard, like a blur down the slopes he went, stopping to wait for me to catch up every now and then. When we got to the bottom he told me about the time he broke his neck snowboarding - I didn't try to keep up with him after that! It was great to have someone to ride with, even though we only did a couple of runs together, because he was able to give me some top tips to help my turns.
After Daniel went for lunch, I went for a couple more runs, my confidence was high and I really zoomed along. Then a bit of a bump...
You know when you are driving along at night time in your car, and you see something in the middle of the road, a mouse or a rabbit or something. My instinct is always to swerve to miss it whereas I have friends that say it's much safer just to hit the thing and not try and miss it. It's easy to lose control and crash when swerving to avoid a bunny.
Well, today I had the same situation, except it was a snow bunny, well a skier actually in difficulty right where I was heading! If I'd listened to some of my driving friends, then I would have just ploughed over him and probably carried on without any scratches (he might have come off a bit worse!), but instead I took evasive action, caught an edge on an icy patch and landed, once again on my... derrier. This time though, it really winded me and hurt like chuff. I waddled down to the cafe place and decided to have some lunch to recover.
After lunch I only managed a couple of runs as my confidence had drained at great speed. My bum hurt too and it wasn't as easy zooming down the slopes. I decided to call it a day and got my stuff together, said goodbye to Daniel and headed down to Queenstown.
I sadly dropped my snowboard off and had a wee chat in snowboarder speak with the guy in the shop. I do find it quite cool that I can speak snowboarderese when required. You don't feel as much of a dunderhead when you know some of the lingo!
Next stop was Te Anau, over two hours drive away! A pleasant drive too as I watched the sun go down over the mountains. I pulled up at the YHA and was relieved to find it a lot quieter than Queenstown, hooray!
I popped out for a takeaway as I'd been cooking for myself all week and there are only so many tins of baked beans one can manage in seven days! There was a Chinese takeaway round the corner, so I ordered a sweet and sour chicken with fried rice. When I took it back to the hostel I noticed that the portions were huge! I had to share some with a fellow traveller just to make a dent in the mountain.
Te Anau is the main place to stay in the area known as the Fiordlands of New Zealand, lots of Fiords with big mountains and rivers, this sounded like my cup of tea! After my mammoth eating session I booked my excursions for the next couple of days. Tomorrow, Sea Kayaking on Milford Sound, Tuesday, a cruise on Doubtful Sound.
An early start for me this morning, I was picked up at 8am by a transit van and we set off on the drive to Milford Sound. It was just getting light when we left and there was lots of clouds, please may the sun come out!
As we drove along, the clouds started to clear as the sun rose and we caught tantalising glimpses of mountains through the breaks. The drive from Te Anau to Milford is supposed to be one of the most beautiful in the world and as we went along we saw some spectacular scenery. The journey went quite quickly and soon it was time to drive through the Homer Tunnel. This tunnel took us under a mountain range to the head of the valley above Milford. It took nearly twenty years to build out of solid rock and was really impressive.
As we drove down the hill on the other side of the tunnel, an amazing view unfolded! The sun was now shining brightly and the sky was blue and there it was. The sound.
A sound is actually a flooded river valley, whereas Milford Sound is strictly a Fiord. Sheer cliffs rise either side of the water and continue to the bottom of the sea. Snow capped mountains seem to surround the place with a relatively narrow gap for the sea.
The pictures should do more justice, it is too beautiful to put into words really. We kitted up for our kayaking, making sure we were wearing no cotton and instead lots of fleeces in case we got wet. There were ten of us plus our guide, Ben and his assistant who was on work experience.
Rachel was to be my kayak partner and she chose to sit in the front, leaving me to sit at the back and control the steering. We set off onto the Fiord and initially the only sounds we could hear were the cries of the birds and the splashes of water made by our oars. Later though, planes and helicopters buzzed around and fishing boats overtook us on the way out to the ocean.
We kayaked up one side of the Fiord, probably only about a third of the way along, then headed straight across. I tried not to think how deep the water was below... it was very deep! One of the big tourist boats came past and we were able to surf on it's wake, which was fun, but even so it took us ages to go from one side to the other, this fiord was huge!
We saw some seals lazing on rocks when we were heading out, but on the way back, we saw some swimming around. As we moved towards the cliffs, we could see shoals of little fish swimming around beneath us as if they all were of the same mind. The seals zoomed in and out and around, catching the fish and one of them came right alongside our Kayak and waggled his flippers at us! We saw a little shark too which was prowling around looking for scraps. Amazing...
Our trip was over too soon though and it was time to head back to the van for the drive back. I have to say that it was one of the best days of my life. Beautiful scenery which I felt very close to as I was in the fiord itself. The wildlife was fascinating and I'd like to go back again tomorrow... but another fiord awaits and some say it is even more beautiful.
Our guide told us a couple of cool stories and I'll just put them in below.
A group of fishermen of the coast saw a whale come right alongside their boat, five days running, so on the fifth day, two of the fisherman, climbed down the ladder on the side of the boat and stood on the whale's back for a few minutes as it swam alongside them!
Ben has seen some Dolphins in the sound and the other day, he saw one with some seaweed stuck to it's flipper. This was a bit weird as it couldn't really have got caught, the flipper is too smooth. He tried to play with the dolphins, throwing seaweed for them and getting their attention, they were not interested. He then saw that the other dolphins had seaweed on their flippers too, but in different places, he realised it was a game they were playing. The amazing thing is, one of the dolphins, flipped a bit of seaweed on to his kayak so he could join in!
End of stories, think of them as you will, I enjoyed them anyway. When I got back I was gutted to find out that the remnants of my meal from last night had been chucked on the floor, by accident during the day. Grrrr, I was looking forward to that rice again! So, I wondered into town but was distracted by a nearby restaurant that did Vegetable Burritos. I sucumbed and very tasty they were too! Then back to the hostel to chill out before tomorrows trip.
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