bloody great fishes
kaikoura is a little village with a big location, sandwiched between the blue green pacific and the brooding mountains of the southern alps. it is however a less obvious geographical feature that draws herds of tourists here: just a few miles offshore is the huge kaikoura canyon, creating an area of water that is deep enough for whales to paddle around in. as such, hordes of tourists jump on little catamarans and are driven the relatively short distance to see these aqueous leviathans.
this spectacle is highly weather dependent, and my first attempt yesterday afternoon was cancelled due to rough seas. undeterred, i dragged myself out of bed in the morning and got a seat on the 10am boat. we came across one after about half an hour, and it was a genuinely impressive sight. sperm whales are huge, although they don't really do much apart from rest and spout water from their blowholes... that is until the moneyshot, when they arch their backs, show you their massive bodies, and dive under leaving you the scintillating view of an arced tailfin slipping under the water. i was lucky enough to see three whales, and each time the sight of that jagged fin disappearing into the murky depths made me gasp with astonishment.
we also saw some albatrosses, which are huge and would definitely be a nuisance if you had one round your neck, and a school of playful, photogenic, dolphins. the trip was really good, although the fee was, as always, totally unjustifiable: i suppose you have to anaesthetise yourself from the feeling of total impotence you get when faced with the numerous extortionate, unconscionable, fees thrust at you here, but i really haven't managed it yet.
kaikoura is also really good for walking and cycling around, which has been a pleasure after a week of relative inactivity. i hiked up a cliff yesterday for views and hayfever (damn!), and am off to one of the back bays now to check out some sea lions. apparently they are fat and lazy, so we should get on pretty well!
bus-ted
not much on today apart from a seven hour journey to christchurch on an empty bus, where i managed to sleep for six and a half hours. feeling much better for it too, queenstown was absolute carnage... i'm getting too old for the jolly japes!
beauty and the beers
it's been a pretty good couple of days. as charlie and paddy were leaving at 8am today, ruling out silliness on monday night, we thought we'd have a big night out when we arrived in queenstown. over the course of the last few days it's transpired that the myriad germans are actually pretty safe, and there was a fair amount of stray bus love growing, so we were joined by jasmine, katherine, marco (i love you), laura, her cute (charlie)/ minging (everyone else) mate, thomas, and a few other teutons. we tucked into the beers, and after a few hours the inevitable bad dancing started: it all got a bit out of hand when we arrived in a bar where you can buy a teapot full of shooters that you just pass around, using the neon shot glasses they hand you. by this stage only charlie, marco, jasmine and katherine and i were still standing, and a few teapots later we were having trouble doing that too. pausing only to let charlie be a dirty old man (8 years!) i collapsed into bed at about 4am.
i'd been a bit worried about who we might be sharing our dorm with, but they turned out to be three really reasonable english guys: they party hard, but are as considerate as can be hoped for. the kiwi experience gang don't mess about though... they've been in queenstown drinking hard for just under two weeks and have spent nearly two thousand pounds each! insanity. they stayed in bed, but at 11am the three of us, plus jasmine and katherine, struggled into our hire car, furiously regretting the night before, to drive to wanaka.
the drive itself was an absolute pleasure: i really appreciated the beauty of our surroundings much more than from the bus, especially in the unfettered sunshine. maybe it was being able to open my window, maybe it was the fact that we weren't being herded on and off like cattle, but by the time we arrived at wanaka we were all feeling much better about nz as a whole. the three hour walk up to the top of a mountain was easy enough, and the view, the whole ambience, was just so peaceful: there was no one up there but the five of us, and we just sat at the peak looking over lake wanaka one way and, when the clouds shifted, mount aspiring the other.
we got back amazed at how good, and cheap, a day in nz could be. i'm quite gutted that i hadn't met even one of the boys earlier, i might be enjoying nz a bit more with the independence of a car. there still is no off the beaten track in the sense that i understand it, but you just feel slightly freer. but then i suppose i wouldn't have met any of the people i did if i hadn't been on the bus, so...
the bus going south left at 8am, but the three of us were getting a bit emotional, so we thought we'd just have a few beers in our room. i'm not quite sure how it happened, but at 3am we were back drinking teapots. bad news, especially at 7.30am when i dragged myself out of bed to say goodbye to the gang. sad times, they've actually been a really cool collection of people, and i will definitely be having a few beers around europe with them when i return.
feel a bit like death today, i really, really need some sleep, so i'm just chilling out and doing very little, getting ready for my bus journey to christchurch tomorrow.
franz josef
imagine ice. lots of ice. then multiply what you've imagined by about a thousand and you have an approximation of the franz josef glacier on the west coast of nz. it's like a really, really, big freezer cabinet, but a lot more impressive. never willing to let hazardous nature alone, the kiwis have got into the habit of hiking up this frozen monolith, which changes daily, and now dragging unsuspecting backpackers along too.
the drive to franz josef was beautiful enough, meandering through the southern alps, flanked by large snow capped peaks and vast clear lakes. even though it feels a bit too much like a package tour sometimes i'm well settled into my stray bus, and have acquired some safe people to loiter with: alongside myriad germans, charlie and paddy (english and irish) hae been keeping me well entertained. we all booked onto a glacier hike, blanched at the 7.30am start time, and got on with it.
it probably wasn't a good idea to get on the beers that night, but these things happen. stumbling into our dorm at past 1am, 7am did not seem remotely far away enough. when the alarm went and i fell out my bunk, red eyed and cursing, it was clear that we had been right to be worried. still, whilst the first hour was painful, the view at the foot of the glacier provided more than enough adrenaline to see me through. all you can see is a sheer wall of ice, with people hacking steps out of it for us to climb up. i'd been raving about the $100 price tag for one guide for 12 people, but for once in nz it was justified: all the companies have dozens of staff up on the ice all day refreshing the paths and steps that are constantly degraded by the shifting ice. we had a particlary safe guide, a chap from chesire called lee, who led the way, and we set off in our boots and spikes up the terminal face. this is the steepest it's been for eight years, so it was a tough clamber, but lee had to keep stopping to carve out steps with his ice axe (which is cracking fun to play with, although paddy was enjoying crashing through the ice a bit too much for comfort) so your heart rate never really got going. walking on ice is really daunting at first, but once you start to trust the grip of the spikes on your feet it gets a lot easier... it was a good thing i got off when i did as i was starting to get over confident, and would probably have pirouetted into a crevasse.
the trek was really worth the money, a complete rarity for nz. once you get over a lip you can see the entire glacier, not visible from the ground, in its awe inspiring entirety... a jagged wall of white and blue ice, reaching up into the sky, guarded by two huge white mountains. we even found a little blue ice cave that we could wander through, completely enclosing ourselves within the glacier. on the way down, we saw the hordes waiting to go up, and suddenly the early start seemed like a a fantatsic idea. i was a happy man once we'd finished, although the effects of the night before caught back up pretty quickly.
after a transit stop in a sleepy little place called haast, i'm now in the horrifically touristy queenstown... curry houses and fish and chip shops everywhere. nz once again disappoints as soon as it amazes as a travelling experience. one of the bus companies, the kiwi experience, is famed for being the party bus: full of 18-20 years old being very young, all the time. all well and good for a few beers and from a distance, but generally to be avoided, which is why we all chose stray. booking into our (extortionate) dorm, arranged by stray, we went in to find debris all over the floor. this lucky hostel takes both stray and kiwi experience, so we have to share a room with the little shits,and all the crap that comes with them. will be moving out tomorrow: tonight should be ok, as it's my last night with the boys before i head north, so it may end up them complaining about us.
