Monday 19 March 2007

Fun on the Water

We headed through a few more towns, over the next couple of days enjoying small adventure and Hi-jinks as we went. Reaching Queenstown, it was time to get the wallet out as we had reached the adventure capital of NZ. This is where everyone comes to bungee and sky dive and everything else.

A fortnight or so on the road in the car, cooking by camp stove is just about as long as you want to do without a little break, and as we were less than half way round our South Island journey, we decided to treat ourselves for the night, staying in a fairly posh hotel on the waterfront. In the end, thanks to a half price offer and a little bargaining we managed to pick up a suite for the night which had a big bedroom, big bathroom, lounge and patio doors out onto the rooftop for about the same cost as a single person staying in a Travel Inn back home.

Next morning its up and off for a ride on the Shotover Jet which is a Jet boat, maxed to the gunnels and that rockets up and down a white water river, spinning donuts on the water and sraping past the canyon walls. Not quite wet enough, we book to go Kayaking next in the Milford Sound, which is a beautiful fjord, fed from the melting glaciers still visible on the mountain tops around it.

Its a long drive to Milford Sound, through some unbelievable mountain scenery, including the Homer Tunnel. The tunnel has been blasted out of the mountain and the inside is left just as you imagine the dynamite left it. Its a long tunnel taking about 5 minutes to pass through and its one way at a time. Unhelpfully though, at 8 o'clock at night, and it was a little later than that, the authorities switch off the lights inside the tunnel and the traffic lights outside it controlling the direction of traffic. As there is no way to see the other side, you have to head on in hoping not to meet anyone the other way, though truth be told, two cars could probably squeeze by. Its further made eerie by the lack of road surface, causing our car, which is not best equipped for rugged terrain to bound all over the place, thumping and groaning regularly - it was like driving into the center of the Earth.

We reach the other side trouble free and it's about another hour till we reach our destination. Milford Sound is little more than a pub, a hostel and an air strip and a whole lot more NO CAMPING! signs. It is also the end of the road, so short of any reasonable place to park up and make dinner and then sleep without a pubful of people staring across at us, we retraced our steps about 10 minutes back out of town till we found a nice little spot off the road just into the woodlands.

No comments: