New Zealand - Week 2

Kiwi Experience Day 5 - We left Taupo and headed to a place called River Valley. On the way we had a walk to the Taranaki waterfall which is where a scene from Lord of the Rings was filmed. For those of you who know the film, it was in the 2nd film where Gollem was fishing next to the waterfall. It was beautiful and the water was so clear you could see the stones on the bottom. Not like the rivers in the UK which are usually a mucky brown colour! We then headed through the Tongariro National Park and through a village called Whakapapa Village... the Maori language pronounce 'wh' as an 'f' so, phoenetically, Whakapapa sounds like Fakapapa which gave us a bit of a giggle if you say it quick! The sun was shining so it was a really nice walk, with a great view of Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings looking pretty in the distance. We stopped at another beautiful waterfall where we had lunch. About another hour's drive and we arrived in River Valley and at the River Valley Adventure Lodge where we were staying. The place was set at the bottom of a beautiful valley with a stream running almost right past the front door. It was totally secluded with only 1 road leading up to it so it was lovely and peaceful. We stayed in a 6 bed dorm which wasnt too bad as it was with mostly people we knew although the beds were so close together that one person's feet was right next to another person's head! The showers and toilets were all outside, some in a tin hut on their own, which was interesting! In the 32 bed dorm(!) the beds were so close together that you could roll over and be on the next person's bed! It was actually just a set of really wide bunk beds with mattresses on the top and bottom which ran the whole length of the beds, big enough for 16 people up top and 16 on the bottom...Glad we didn't stay in there! That evening we paid to have an amazing roast dinner meal and ended up playing card games with about 14 other people. They also lit a log fire in the middle of the dining room which was well received as it was getting a bit chilly towards the end of the evening. Although the beds were very close together we had a pretty good sleep.

Kiwi Experience Day 6 - River Valley to Wellington. The next morning after breakfast, Ruth went horseriding while I stayed at the lodge either reading, chatting to the others or sitting outside in the gorgeous sunshine next to the river, watching people take rides on a wooden swing thing that went over it. Ruth enjoyed the horseriding which was only ruined in parts by a couple of the younger kids on the trip claiming that they were experienced riders when actually they hadnt ridden at all! The lady who took them out on the hack was a bit peed off when she found out as one of the girls was whinging that she was scared and wouldnt go faster than a walk, which held everyone else back. Still, Ruth and the other girl on the ride were able to race off from the group whenever they had chance which was a good job as the flighty horses they were riding wouldnt have hung around for anyone! It was such lovely surroundings at River Valley, Ruth saw loads of wild deer in the fields on her ride, and the weather was great, it was a shame to leave.

On the way to Wellington we stopped at a little village called Bulls. The shops all had funny plaques over their doors with bulls-related versions of their names, e.g. the Police station had one saying "Consta-Bull", a cafe with a sign outside saying "Eat-a-bull"! They love being called Bulls (maybe a bit too much - check this out www.unforgetabull.co.nz ) We were told by our driver that if we showed our Kiwi Experience passes in Subway we get a free drink. So we all headed there and Ruth and I ended up getting a free bottle from the fridge, however, they soon stopped that and offered everyone else only a free drink from the drinks on tap. I think the ones we had were the drinks that were supposed to be free WITH a purchase of food! So the first few people that got a free drink from the fridge were very lucky. We had a very big portion of icecream at one of the cafes there for our dinner. We arrived into New Zealand's capital, Wellington, around 7pm that evening and pretty much got changed straight away and went for goodbye drinks with the people we were leaving behind there - we were only there 1 night whereas a few people were there longer. We stayed at the Base hostel there but as we were one of the last off our bus to check in, we ended up in a room for 4 with someone we didnt know, who wasnt from our bus. It turned out that he was a nice enough guy as he was in bed when we got back and allowed us to switch the light on to get our stuff. He was also up at the same time in the morning as he was playing in a hand-ball match while we were heading to the south island on the ferry.

Kiwi Experience Day 7 - Wellington to Picton, South Island, on the ferry then onto Nelson. We had a 3 hour ferry ride from the north island to the south island on which we mainly sat in the cafe chatting and playing card games with some people from our bus. We sailed through the Queen Sharlotte Sound which was so beautiful because we could see land on both sides of the boat which wasn't that far from the sides of the ferry, it was like a little valley that we were sailing through. The ferry terminated in Picton where we picked up our luggage and headed to Nelson, with a stop in a place called Pelorus Reserve for lunch. In Nelson we stayed at a place called Fern Lodge, which was a pub hotel with dorms at the back. It was a really nice pub and offered a meal for around $13 which included a chocolate dessert. We did go to the supermarket and priced up a tuna pasta dinner but it came to more or less the same price as a cooked meal and dessert, so we went for that option! Just before the meal we were invited to a beer tasting session which was tasting around 6 or 7 different types of Macs beer. There were around 10 of us around a table each with a shot glass passing around beer from a jug. Some of us would just have 1 shot but others (including us two) were having 2 or 3 shots... well they wouldn't bring out the next type of beer until that one was finished, so what were we to do? :O) There was also a test at the end of the session where the host asked a question and the one to get it right first won a prize. The prize was a voucher for Queenstown which included a bar-crawl of 6 bars, 6 free drinks and free pizza along with discounts off more drinks. The winner could also select 10 mates to take along who would only pay $20 each... so a pretty good prize! The question was guessing the percentage of alcohol of one of the beers we had tasted... guess who got it correct.... Ruth!! So Ruth won the competition and got the voucher. Well done Ruth! The beer tasting session ended with me feeling a little light-headed from the amount of shots I had so we decided to stay and have our dinner there and then. It was nice but not the best meal we had had in NZ but did prefer having that to having to make our own dinner. After dinner we stayed on our table and had more drinks and a couple of other people we knew from the bus joined us for some card games. We had a really fun night getting to know the people a bit more, playing card games, occasionally getting a bit rowdy and ended up going to bed around 11pm.

Kiwi Experience Day 8 - Nelson to Westport. We left the Fern Lodge pub and headed towars the west coast of the South Island. On the way we passed through the Nelson Lakes National Park and stopped off at a place called Richmond to get picnic supplies. The park is a picturesque wilderness area of glacier lakes, beech forests and mountains. We opted out of the walk that morning because it was raining quite heavily so Kane drove some of us to Lake Rotoiti in the Nelson Lakes National Park which was at the end of the trail. Although it was raining and rather misty, the lake was still beautiful with the mountains surrounding it. Whilst we waited for those who went for the walk to return, Ruth and I took a walk along the small wooden pier and took a few 'action' photos where we'd try and jump at the same time while the camera was on to take a timed photo! After a few failed attempts we managed to get a few (on Facebook!), all the while being attacked by silly sand flies! Ruth took some time to feed the ducks while I spotted some mean looking eels in the water. They were really evil looking because half their body would be under a rock or something while the front half would be stretched towards the surface looking at me!! They would open their mouths occasionally to reveal white teeth or white saliva or something! It was really wierd! Anyway, once the walkers got to the lake, Kane decided to get one of the boys in the water to feed these eels with cat food! A brave guy called Andy volunteered and in he waded up to his thighs and emptied the food into the water. The eels slowly started to swim toward him, which we all found really amusing, though Andy kept moving back for fear they would bite off his toes. Little did he know that all the ducks and swans were making a bee-line for him from behind! He was flapping around trying to get the ducks and swans away while also trying not to get too close the the eels... was a very funny sight! A couple of people also jumped in the freezing lake for a bit of a swim... very brave! After drying off we all had something to eat on the coach and headed to Westport.

Westport was a rather small town and again, was raining when we arrived. The hostel was called Bazil's and at first we thought we were going to have to share with people we didn't know again, however, after speaking to the owner and explaining that there were 7 of us wanting to share, managed to bag the best room in the place which slept 8. But it wasn't just a room, it was more like an apartment. It was one big room with 8 beds in, a kitchen area complete with oven, hobs, a microwave and cutlery and bowls etc. It also had a lounge area complete with TV and log fire surrounded by a couch and a few chairs. It also had a toilet (not in the room of course but in its own little room within the main room!). So we were very happy with this considering all the other rooms were simply just a room with a bed in - we were quite the envy of everyone else hehe. That evening was the planned 3-legged bar crawl. Kane had come up with this idea as kind of an icebreaker as we had a lot of new people on our bus who had joined us in Nelson. I was pulled out of the boys hat first, as was Sara from the girls, so we were tasked with tying people together. We all were hoping to be tied to someone we already knew, although it really defeated the object of the game! Ruth was tied to a guy who we'd been on the trip with from the beginning and people from our room were tied to others from our room. So it all worked out quite well! Off we hopped to the first bar and after a few drinks and laughs at those not coping so well being tied together, some of us headed to the second bar. I started drinking jugs of beer with Paul, a guy from our room, and as Ruth arrived, we were just leaving to head to the third pub. Once there, we managed to get a good seat and waited for the others to catch up. Once they did we relaxed into it and had a few games of pool and some good chit chat. One thing I haven't mentioned, which you may be wondering is the matter of going to the loo tied to someone of the opposite sex! Well, some of us just held it in, some of us wriggled out of the tie and hoped they weren't caught, but some of us actually went into the toilet with their partner! It was a funny sight and an obvious source for points and rumours when girls came out of the boys toilets and vice versa! Nobody wanted to be the first couple to untie and be given a forfeit! In the end though it was a very good night and the point of it was accomplished - to speak to people you didn't know. We got to bed around 1am after coming home to our appartment and watching the film The Exorcist, knowing the following night was also going to be a boozy one!

Kiwi Experience Day 9 - Westport to Lake Mahinapua and the Poo Pub! We left Westport and headed to a place on the west coast called Cape Foulwind. It got this name from a colony of seals that had made this area their home. There was a little pool within the rocks they were on where all the baby seals were taken by their mothers to learn how to swim. They were really cute to watch. After that we headed to another little walk on the coast where we got to see rocks that looked like stacks of pancakes on top of each other, so aptly named the "Pancake Rocks". These rocks are a series of stratified rocks which, over many thousands of years, have been eroded to resemble giant piles of neatly stacked pancakes. On the journey Kane gave out a forfeit from the night before to the couple who were the first to untie themselves. They had to stand at the front of the bus and mime along to a love song which was really funny, especially when we were stopped at a red light near some roadworks and all the workers were watching them wondering what was going on!

We then headed to a town called Greymouth, where we were tasked with getting a costume for that evening's fancy dress party at the Poo Pub (given that name as it was near Lake Mahinapua!). The theme was 'What you want to be when you grow up' - which pretty much covered anything and everything! Several prizes were to be dished out for good costumes and the best costume would win a prize worth around $180 (about 70 GBP). Kane pointed out a few charity shops and then stopped and let us off for a couple of hours of frantic shopping in the horrible, torrential rain! At this point we didn't even have an idea of what we were going to be. An initial idea was for a group of us to dress up as sheep or smurfs but then we were informed that no cotton wool was allowed on the costumes and we couldnt use face or body paint. After visiting a couple of shops, Ruth found some pink tights and decided to go as a flamingo. In the children's section of a supermarket I found a pair of angel wings and decided to go as the Angel of Death. After buying a few more supplies we headed to the Poo Pub in the middle of nowhere called, owned by an eldery guy called Lez. Lez was funny in that he lived for these parties (only the Kiwi Experience went to his pub, no other company) but he would act like he hated us 'kids' coming and messing the place up. On the phone to Kane just before our arrival, he called us little c***s! The truth was that if the Kiwi Experience stopped going to his pub, he wouldn't have anything to carry on living for. Despite being warned that he was the most miserable man we'd meet in New Zealand, he was actually a lovely man who thoroughly enjoyed our company. He also managed to cook an amazing steak dinner for us all (around 50 of us!) and when I say amazing, it was the best steak I had tasted so far on our trip - it even beat the one I had in Argentina! Ruth had something vegetarian and equally as tasty and we were all very full and satisfied and went back to our rooms to get costumed-up for the party. I fitted my wings into a black bag and strung a bit of red ribbon around my arm and halo to represent blood, and put black lipstick on my lips and around my eyes. Ruth fashioned a flamingo's beak from pink cardboard and after putting on black and pink clothes repectively, we joined our coach-mates in the pub. There were some amazing costumes, including Mad Scientist, Bumble Bees, Giraffes, Tree Huggers and even dolphins. Kane, however, funnily enough was dressed as an angel, with the same wings and halo as mine!!! So oddly we were the complete opposite of each other! There are some good photos of us together on Facebook. We both were quite tired from the night before and so had a few jagerbombs to try and wake us up, along with a few games of irish snap. We got some amazing photos throughout the night and had a really good time. We weren't going to find out who won until the next evening in Franz Josef.

Kiwi Experience Day 10 - Lake Mahinapua to Franz Josef. That morning, feeling slightly worse for wear after the fancy dress party, we headed south along the west coast to a place called Pukekura where we stopped for breakfast at a place called The Bushman's Centre. The centre offers an insight into how people make a living on the coast through timber-milling, possum trapping and helicopter deer recovery. The self-explanatory tour is interactive and very interesting in that we watched a short video about the owner who used to catch deer by jumping out of a helicopter onto their backs, wrestling them to the ground! It had a couple of live possums to view but also had possum pies, should you want to find out what one tasted like! "Roadkill possum pies" were also a feature there, which was just dead possum that people had killed with their cars, who'd brought them into the place to serve as food! The place had booby traps all over where you would get squirted with water (supposedly possum pee!) if you lifted up a flap to look at one of them. The people there were also a bit strange in that they were quite sarcastic but in a serious way. For example, we had breakfast there and when someone asked how much beans on toast was, they replied "it all depends on how many beans you want". And they didn't do anything but filter coffee, but enforced it with a sign next to the till saying things like "Cafe Latte - a gay Frenchman's drink that we dont serve here" and "Mocha - just coffee and chocolate so decide which one you want and have it, we dont mix it". The sandwiches were all oddly labelled too, e.g. a ham and egg one was labelled "pig and unborn chicken"! After having a normal cooked breakfast and a normal coffee, we were on the road again to Franz Josef Glacier Village, where we were planning on having a full day hike the following day on the famous Franz Joseph Glacier situated there.

We arrived just as the town was suffering from a power cut, something we learned later on that happens quite regularly. We were meant to pay for our hikes but couldn't due to the power cut. So instead we were told what time to arrive the next day and to make payment then. So Kane dropped us off at our hostel, the Rainforest Retreat, where we managed to get a room with friends we'd made, Paul and his girlfriend Sara. That evening we checked out Franz Josef and bought something for tea. The town was really small and consisted of one high street with a couple of bars on, a cafe and a small supermarket. After having a drink at the cafe and buying some food, we went back and did some clothes washing and went on the internet, killing time until 8pm when we had to go to the hostel's bar to find out who won the fancy dress competition from the previous night.

We got to the bar and after a few minutes Kane gathered us all up around the pool table to reveal the results. He did a menion before naming the top three in which both Ruth and I were mentioned, which was great. A guy called Andy (the one who fed the eels) claimed third prize, who was dressed as a superhero. Two guys, Tom and Rich, claimed second for dressing up as Pinocchio and Gepetto. When it came to claiming first prize, no one, least of all me, would have guessed it was ME!! I WON!! I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that I was dressed as Kane's nemesis and complete opposite and he was the judge! But everyone clapped and congratulated me, whilst I was quite speechless and couldn't actually believe it. In my opinion there were much better costumes, but hey, I wasn't the judge :O) The prize which was worth around $180 turned out to be a free canyon swing in Queenstown. Something Ruth and I really wanted to do, but couldn't afford both the Canyon Swing and the Nevis Bungy Jump. So I was absolutely ecstatic! Ruth was really jealous as she really wanted to do a canyon swing as well, so decided she would check her finances again as she couldnt have me doing one and her not! After the prize giving ceremony, we went back to our rooms to get ready for bed and our long exhausing day of glacier hiking the following morning.

Kiwi Experience Day 11 - Second day in Franz Josef. We awoke to the sound of torrential rain, which did not bode well for the glacier hike. Despite this, we got ready and headed to the office to find out if it was still going ahead and if so, pay for it. The rain was so heavy that before we even got to the office (a 3 minute walk from the hostel), we were absolutely drenched to the bone - despite having waterproof jackets on. It was also freezing cold, as you can imagine in a part of the country holding a massive glacier just nearby. Being wet and cold was not a good combination that early in the morning. We waited around for about 10 minutes in the reception of the hiking company, deciding whether or not we really wanted to do the hike in that weather. A couple of our friends decided they definitely wouldn't and so went back to the hostel. About 2 minutes later one of the people working there told us that the full day hike was cancelled but that a half day hike would still go ahead. We had heard that the half day hike was not worth the money so that as well as the weather pretty much made our decision for us - we headed back to the hostel and had nice hot showers to warm up after being soaked in the freezing rain. We just stayed at the hostel that day catching up with our emails and chatting to the others who decided not to hike. In the afternoon we had a game of Monopoly and there were so many of us that we decided to pair up, only there was an odd number of people so I ended up on my own against everyone else. However, guess who won.... ME!!! i have never won Monopoly before and I must have been on a winning streak by winning the fancy dress competition the night before, then winning Monopoly! New Zealand seemed to be bringing me some very good luck! That evening we decided to go for a meal at the hostel's pub because it was quite cheap and our friend Chiqui, who'd arrived a day behind us after staying an extra night in Wellington, arrived that day. So there were about 6 of us who had a meal together that evening, then a couple more people joined us later on for a drink, including a couple who we hadn't seen for a good few days as they had left the Kiwi Experience to explore New Zealand on their own terms by hiring a car. It was really good to see them and lovely to have a meal with everyone. So after a few drinks and a catch up chat, we went to bed, ready to head to our next destination, Wanaka, the next morning.

....to be continued.......