Tuesday 20 March 2007

High In The Sky


We reach Christchurch where we are staying with Nic's Aunt Catherine, Uncle Brad and cousin Luke. We take the time to relax and recharge our adventurer batteries taking full advantage of the city nearby and Brad and Catherine's swimming pool. We're also invite round one evening for a Barbecue with Uncle Peter, Aunt Judy and cousins Ben and Livia. Kiwi Barbies are good!

At Luke's suggestion we phone up the wigram air field flying school because apparently a flying lesson there is only $100, which is about £36. True enough and the next morning Captain Nicki and Captain Ross take to the skies in our Piper Cherokee twin seat planes. We get a plane each and after performing our own pre-flight inspections jump in the pilots seat with an instructor each in the co-pilots seat.

Nicki is off first, taxiing towards the runway and I follow on behind. We reach the runway and stop and I'm still waiting for the instructor to take the controls back off me. He then re-caps the procedure and sits back arms folded leaving me to take off myself. Terrified, I launch us down the runway, becoming increasingly alarmed as the plane isn't quite going in a straight line but is heading slowly towards the side of the tarmac. Given the speed I'm now going though, I do not want to force the steering too much, images of tumbling fire balls going through my mind, but before i could do much more about it anyway we're off the ground and I'm flying a plane! We get about 40 minutes in the air flying side by side, along the coast and over a couple of hills before heading back in again. This time it was landing and I'm still unsure at what time I'll have to hand over the controls but again, it's left to me to bring the plane down. Landing is even scarier than take off because you have to force the plane down at much faster and harder rate than you think you ought to, with a couple of last second pull backs and forwards before touching down. We land, and this time I have to relinquish control as both planes then do a simultaneous take off again and the instructors go for a quick spin round the block showing us a co-ordinated landing between the two planes, only they were mince and i think we could have co-ordinated a landing about as good ourselves.

After that the car just didn't quite seem the same but that was what was showing us New Zealand and after about 5 days or so in Christchurch we continued up the coast towards the ferry which would return us to the North island. Passing through Blenheim, another wine producing region, we stopped in for another couple of sips but nothing impressed this time and we stopped into Nelson for an evening where we stood at the geographical center of New Zealand, which by sheer coincidence is on top of a big hill so you can stand there and look all around you. Coincidence?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

D'oh. To think that if only I had been there I could have finally seen the flying Scotsman...

Sarah said...

*cough**ahem**cough*
Hang onto those skills incase I need to make a *cough*quick getaway*cough* one day.

Cheers!