Dec 2005

Had a walk around the centre of Dunedin first and had a look at St Josephs Cathedral, The Town Hall, Robert Burns Statue and also the Railway Station which is quite an impressive building. Then we picked the car up and drove over to Baldwin Street which has the Steepest Road In The World and upon looking at it there was no way our gutless car was going to make it to the top but I wanted to walk to the top anyway. At first I started to jog up the road but without even making it halfway I was already out of breath so decided to walk the rest. Every year they have a race to the top and the quickest time is around 2 minutes so these guys must be super fit because I would be happy to get up there in double that time. From the bottom of the road it doesn’t actually look that steep but once you stand at the top it looks unreal and I wouldn’t even like to cycle down it its so steep.
After walking back down we then drove out to Signal Hill Lookout which gives you a great view of the whole of Dunedin and then headed back to the hostel to relax for the evening.

St Josephs Cathedral

Robbie Burns Statue

St Pauls Church

Sports Hall of Fame & Railway Station

Sports Hall of Fame & Railway Station

Baldwin Street

Baldwin Street

Baldwin Street

Baldwin Street

Me,Ibon,Simon and Jill at the top of Baldwin Street

Me

Spent the whole day driving and after getting to Dunedin Jill, Ibon and myself went for a short walk around the town although the rain then started to pour down. However then we bumped into Alex a german guy who was on the Milford Sound cruise with us and we all decided to find a pub and have a few beers and here we stayed for the next 4 hours.

I couldn’t believe how well I slept on the boat as I was expecting it to be rocking from side to side all night but it didn’t move at all, however I was hoping to get a lay in but everybody got woke up by someone making an announcement as to what they next few hours lay ahead of us. Luckily though it did mean I would make breakfast on time and it was my first fry up in a long time.
Next we headed back out to the Tasman Sea and the waves made the boat rise up and down a fair bit as well as making my breakfast nearly come up in the process. Before we headed back to the harbour we pulled up really close to a waterfall where a few of us brave people got a good soaking from the freezing but refreshing water, it certainly did wake you up if you weren’t awake already and after that we managed to spot a few more penguins before the cruise was over.
The sun was surprisingly still shining which made it a pleasant drive to Te Anau.

Me at Milford Sound

Milford Sound

Waterfall at Milford Sound

Milford Sound

Sunset at Te Anau

Sunset at Te Anau

Sunset at Te Anau

Ibon at Milford Sound

Seal at Milford Sound

Penguin at Milford Sound

Well where do I start, I think today is nearly if not on a par with the boat trip in
Pahia to the Bay Of Islands.
We were booked on the Friendship boat and were due to sail at 4.45pm and it was costing us $145 and that was a reduced fee to. To my amazement the weather today couldn’t be any more different compared to yesterday. The sun was shining and apart from abit of a breeze it was a perfect day and even better as we would be able to get great views while out on the boat later.
We sat around reading in the hostel till around 2pm and then went off for a drive to look at some waterfalls and then had a short walk around the sea harbour before again we met up with Ibon who had been walking the Milford Track over the past 4 days and he had gotten totally drenched with the pouring rain over the past few days.
We boarded the boat at 4.15pm and as there were only going to be 11 of us on a fairly small boat I was looking forward to it a lot more than the boat that had 60 people crammed on it. I always find small groups tend to get on a lot better than huge ones and people tend to chat more and get to know each other but also its easier to relax and chill out if you want to. The plan was to sail out of the Milford Sound to the Tasman Sea and look at some of the spectacular sights along the way like raging waterfalls and various animals like seals and penguins. Then eventually we would find a place to stop and relax for the night and get up early and go kayaking for abit before heading back to the harbour. Well everything was going great for the first 2 hours or so we thought but then the captain comes up to us with a dilemma. He says hes having problems with the generator so either we could stay on this boat and probably have no power, lights or heat for most of the night or all of us jump on the Milford Mariner for free and join them.
Well the Milford Mariner would of initially cost us over $400 each and you get ensuite rooms, a bar, 3 course meal, huge breakfast and on a totally upmarket and much bigger boat. At first I was disappointed as I quite liked the little boat we were sailing on however everyone else wanted to leave so I joined them along with the 3 free bottles of wine we were given.
So eventually we all boarded the Mariner and found it to be full of mostly fat rich miserable unsociable old gits and here we were a fairly young bunch of troublemakers gatecrashing there party and we had paid a fraction of the price they had.
That night we enjoyed the free wine and a few beers and an awesome 3 course meal but the only problem was we weren’t sure if we would be getting the chance to go kayaking, however after some gentle persuasion they decided to let us go out before it got dark. Ive only ever been in a canoe once and was really looking forward to kayaking and it was just a shame it was only for around 25 minutes, however it was a lot more tiring than I thought it would be although I had just stuffed myself with endless amounts of food and wine. After the kayaking we sat around chatting for a few more hours before retiring to bed about midnight.

Milford Sound

Milford Sound

A rainbow from the waterfall

A rainbow from the waterfall

Milford Sound

Me kayaking at Milford Sound

Me kayaking at Milford Sound

Another day which was spent all day driving although there was plenty of nice scenery and mountains to look at along the way although the closer we got to Milford Sound the worse the weather got. This place is on record for getting over 7 metres of rain a year, which is insane. What else was insane was the tunnel you have to drive through before you actually get to Milford Sound. People started to dig this tunnel with pick axes in 1935 and it wasn’t actually finished until 1953 and looking at it you wonder how on earth its actually still standing in one piece.
We arrived at the hostel around 4pm and got our first taste of middle of nowhere life when we were told the power in the hostel is turned off between 11pm and 6am so there was a frantic rush to get cameras charged up and ready for the overnight boat cruise the following day.

After 2 fairly late nights it was starting to catch up on me so we didn’t get out till around 12pm. We drove back to Wanaka and past the scene of my driving offence and onto Puzzleworld. What they have here is a mix of things from a huge maze to get lost in and I did plenty of that, then inside theres a large mixture of puzzles for you to solve and finally some seriously bizarre rooms that are really hard to explain unless you see them for yourselves like you walk upwards into a room but this pool table looks like its flat but when you put a pool ball on the table it actually rolls. Then theres a room where you look into it and it looks normal but when you get into it and one person stands in 1 corner and another person in the other corner 1 person looks like a giant and the other looks like a midget. Just check the photos if it doesn’t make sense.
After that we had a quick walk around Wanaka which is another very picturesque place before heading back but not before stopping off at what can only be called ‘The Bra Fence’. Apparently a few years ago some womens bras mysteriously turned up hanging on this fence and over the years several more have been found and its got so bad that the fence has actually been raised for more to be hung on it.

The Bra Fence

Puzzleworld

Puzzleworld

Puzzleworld

Wanaka

Not a very eventful day today as I just spent the day walking around the town.
That night Jill and I went out for a few drinks and met up again with Simon and Rachel and I turned into a very long and drunken night out for me. Most of the night was a blur and all I can really remember is ordering a kebab then walking to a shop to get some chips and then somehow walking up the hill to the hostel and falling asleep in the lounge while watching a film before getting to my bed about 3am.

Queenstown is very much like Taupo or in other words its another place that is into extreme sports or as I like to call them things that scare the shit out of you. The only difference being that in Queenstown the prices are bumped up astonishingly high although seeings as I don’t want to give myself an early heart attack I wont be doing any bungy jumping, sky diving or paragliding and besides I came here to see the scenery and not to throw money down the drain in a matter of seconds.
So today the nearest I got to an adrenaline rush was first going up in the cable car and then 5 runs down the luge.
Once back at the hostel I sat in the lounge minding my own business when I get one hell of a shock. I realized some guy was standing near me and talking on the phone but I didn’t really have a proper look at who it was. Well after 15 minutes the guy gets up and says ‘Hello Reece’ and I turn round and its Ibon the mad Spanish guy from Franz Josef. I couldn’t believe it, there was me thinking he would be miles away by now and here he is standing next to me. I was a hell of a surprise but I have to say it was great to see him again, so we all made plans that night to go down the pub together and have a few beers.
Well what a crazy night it turned out to be as we also bumped into Simon and Rachel again (funny how we always meet those 2 in pubs). Then there was Ibon who after a few pints and a few cocktails that for some reason come in teapots proceeded first to tell us how shy he was and then before you knew it he was grabbing random women and either dancing with them or getting his photo taken with them. As Simon was at the casino and Jill then left us around 11.30pm, Ibon and I hung around for a few more beers before stumbling back to the hostel around 12.30am.

Queenstown