New Zealand….north to south
Friday, July 28th, 2006Friday 28 July 2006
We arrived in Queenstown this evening so tonight we are planning to PARTY!!! This is the town fit for a Queen….it is very cool here. I have booked my Nevis bungy….just have to decide when I want to do it now….ooh my knees are shaking just thinking about it! We are also planning on trying a bit of skiing – since we are surrounded by mountains full of snow – seems logical.
Since I last wrote I feel like we have been on a whirlwind tour of New Zealand down the west coast of the south island. Janine and I nearly missed our ferry from Wellington to Picton (north to south island) as we slept through our alarm…..not good – we just about made it frantically dressing and jumping into a cab.
Wellington is the capital of New Zealand. It is a fairly big city and good to go out and drink coffee in – it is pretty trendy to be seen drinking a flat white (that is a latte) or a bowl (yes a bowl!!!) of hot chocolate whilst soaking up the culture by day….then at night you can soak up more of the culture in the various bars, pubs and clubs. Janine and I even managed to find a place that gave ladies free champagne for a couple of hours – well we couldn’t refuse that could we.
Whilst we were in Wellington we did walk past all the parliamentary buildings, take a ride on the cable car and then walk down through the botanical gardens. We also went to Te Papa – this is a museum – a touchy feely one which i liked as you could push buttons.
It’s safe to say i liked Wellington. The International Film festival is on there at the moment so we went to see two films – ‘Brick’ and ‘Shortbus’. Both were excellent – I had my ‘film and drama’ hat on when i viewed them though looking at all the continuity and editing features – so interesting and great to see unpolished films for a change.
We also watched New Zealand play South Africa in the rugby – obviously the All Blacks won (I think my teaching skills are pretty good as Janine has grasped the game now). We even managed to squeeze in a Mac’s beer (pronounced Max) at their brewary on the harbour front – so relaxing!
The ferry over to the south island took us to Picton where we then caught a bus to Nelson. We visited Abel Tasman National Park here. We got a coach to the edge of the park, then a boat which took us through the park and then we walked for 4 and a half hours (13kms) from Torrent Bay to Marahau. We saw some pretty beautiful scenery and stopped for lunch on a beach. Amazing.
The next day we headed to Greymouth (this is pronounced like two words – ‘grey’ and ‘mouth’ like the feature on your face). As we travelled here we stopped off at a place called Cape Foulwind. This is named as such because when Captain Cook found the place there was such a strong and gusty breeze he found it hard to get into the bay. Pretty funny. We also stopped at the pancake rocks. The rocks really do look like layers and layers of pancakes.
In Greymouth there is not that much to do. We stayed one night and busied ourselves by going on a Monteith’s brewary tour. What better way to spend the evening than tasting the local delights. They have lots of different flavours of beer and showed us around the brewary.
From Greymouth we headed to Franz Josef. Here there is a big big glacier which I climbed up. I thought it would be much more exhaustive than it was. The sun was shining though – it was beautiful. I never really understood how people could climb up ice – now i do! I also tried possum pie – New Zealanders find them a pest so they are quite happy to sell it. Tasted a bit like a turkey pie.
georgiebees