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Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what a flight! That was possibly one of the scariest moments of my life. Everything had on the flight to Queenstown was going so well until we came in over the mountain ranges getting ready to land and hit the most severe turbulence I experienced to date. It started suddenly when the Captain just announced for all passengers and Cabin Crew to take their seats immediately, after that things got very suspect.
I think most people were taken aback by the announcement anyway but then the plane started to dip up and down quite a bit, and then just dropped in the air by what felt like a couple of metres (probably nowhere near it!) and I was actually lifted out of my seat, restrained by the belt, but I did put my hand forward and feet flat on the floor to ground myself. It carried on being a bumpy ride but then there were a few more large dips and after the third or fourth one someone screamed and that then of course set off a few more people with ooh's and ahhh's and squeals.
At one point the woman in the window seat in my row grabbed her husband's hand and I jokingly said to him, "I might be grabbing the other one in a minute!" to which he replied "no problem, grab whatever you like" (I could have taken that the wrong way but it was totally innocent!) Straight after that, the plane lurched forwards and I went to brace my hand on the seat in front of me again, when, following another dip, instead of my hand on the back of the chair I palmed the back of the guy's head sitting in front of me.
Oops. My bad. I swiftly apologised but I think he was distracted by the fact that the Emergency lights and the emergency strip lighting all came on. This is when I officially felt petrified. There was noise there was wobbling side to side up and down and it was horrible. Fortunately we were on the ground shortly after and it was one of those strange moments when everybody looks around at each other with a bit of a 'Shiiiiiitttttt' look on their faces. To be fair, the Captain was straight on the radio explaining that it was some bad turbulence and that all the noise and lights were precautionary and that it can be quite normal coming over mountain ranges.
Chris did mention to me that the flight down to Queenstown could be a bit of a ride - quite glad he didn't elaborate as I may not have gotten on the flight!
I landed around 12.30 and after calming down a bit contacted the guys and heard they were going to be a couple of hours late as they had had a bit of car trouble, so I hung around the airport for a bit just relaxing and catching up on some blog entries before they arrived.
The guys made it to me at about 3pm and we headed straight off in the car to Wanaka, travelling through the Crown Range, which I believe is the highest road in New Zealand, and has a famous hotel along it called the Cardrona Hotel which is popular with Ski/Snowboarding people. It was a lovely looking place so we stopped in for a drink along the way and talked to a guy about the rugby for a bit before getting back on the road to Wanaka.
Chris already knew where we would be staying that night, so we got a bit of food in, arrived at the place, got to the cabin and went across to the kitchen area to cook dinner - stir fry! It was a holiday park with shared facilities, so our cabin just had 4 bunks in it and a table pretty much, but it certainly did the job.
A few rounds of cards at the table with a cup of tea and some Hokey Pokey later (individual pieces of Crunchie to you and me!) and we were all ready for bed as we had all decided to get up at 5am and walk up to the top of a mountain for sunrise…
…yup, that's right…5am, walk, mountain, sunrise….me…..
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