Up the West Coast

Feb. 16 - We finished our Doubtful Sound trip around lunch time today and immediately went to the opposite end of the spectrum! We needed to sort out some telephone/internet troubles so we drove to the nearest big town which happened to be Queenstown. This is the hub of “ultimate” sports - if you want the adrenalin to flow, this is where you come. Bungy jumping, sky diving, white water rafting, caving - you name it and it’s here - and along with it, all the young people who want to do these things and then drink large amounts of booze in the evenings which makes them VERY LOUD! Remember the “sounds of silence” at Doubtful Sound? Unlikely Queenstown ever gets anywhere close. We couldn’t wait to get out, but we did have to spend a night there. One good thing - it is getting warmer as we go north! There were times when we were really cold on the south coast, but it is noticeably more temperate here.
Feb. 17 - we’re working our way up the west coast and to do that, you have to go inland and then head west again. We went through Arrowtown today - a very cute little town which caters largely to tourists who want to buy gold things. It used to be the centre of gold mining in the area and there is a historic Chinese settlement that we went through where the Chinese lived who came seeking their fortunes in NZ. We had a New Zealand specialty for lunch - pies. Everywhere you go, you can buy little individual pies filled with the most amazing things - chicken satay, chicken and apricots, steak and mushroom. We have become quite addicted. After lunch, we hit Wanaka which is quickly becoming Queenstown’s little sister. However, there was a very good museum there dedicated to the New Zealand Fighter Pilots of both world wars. There were lots of planes and guns and things to keep John happy, and I kept busy reading many of the individual stories that make these places so meaningful. Like the story of the Dutch girl who was riding her bike home when she saw a plane crash in the river near her. She jumped off her bike and into the river to try and save the pilot. She wasn’t able to rescue him and he had died on impact, but she did her very best to get him out of the water. When she at last gave up, she found that someone had stolen her bike. When the New Zealand command heard about her bravery, they shipped her a new bike over from New Zealand! All the original letters and photographs were there - very touching. And the story of the World War I airman whose plane was hit and was going to crash. Of course, there were no parachutes in those early days, so he hopped out onto the wing of his plane to balance it as it came down and just before it crashed, he threw himself off, landed with a somersault, got up and his first words were “That was lucky!”
I had read about a very interesting sounding cinema at Wanaka, so we decided to go and see “Sherlock Holmes” (the new version with Jude Law and Robert Downie Jr.). The Cinema Paradiso is somewhat unconventional and extremely unorganized! It’s partly an internet café, partly a restaurant and partly a movie theatre. The seats are all old sofas and recliners - and 3 seats in an old Morris Minor car! (Something of a pattern here - remember all the old Morrises at the campsite at Manapouri!) It was very nice to be able to get really comfortable while watching the movie, but I had to keep reminding myself that this wasn’t really my Sherlock Holmes and as long as I could distance the S.H. in my head from the Butch Cassidy and Sundance thing going on on the screen, I was OK!
We had met an English couple outside the war museum earlier - they had come to New Zealand for a BSA rally (motor bikes), so when John saw them, of course he went to have a chat! The chat turned into quite a long conversation - and later that day, we found the rest of the BSA crowd at our campsite! Lots of beards and tattoos! And John was in heaven!
Feb. 18 - Another pattern is forming. As we drove along today, we passed (going in the opposite direction) 5 old Austin Healeys! One couple had stopped to put up their soft top so we stopped and chatted and took photographs (when I say “we”, you will all know who I mean!) John also came to the rescue of 2 German girls in distress. They were standing by their car at the side of the road looking very woebegone. Ever the gallant knight, John stopped and it turned out that their rental car was constantly overheating and the company had just told them to keep adding water to the radiator. They thought that having to stop every 2 km was maybe a bit much! So we filled them up with water and followed them to the nearest service station where we left them, still looking woebegone, but at least they were safe. We were on our way to Franz Josef glacier - lots of stops on the way to take photos of water falls and high seas (we’re back on the coast again).
Feb. 19 - We walked to Peter’s Pool which has views of the glacier, but decided not to do a tour as the place is crawling with tourists and buses and noise and hubbub etc. We had a very nice, quiet little hike and got quite a good view of the glacier. It’s very steep and because of all the rainfall, it moves quickly (average 1 meter a year). The rain forest is incredible - our campsite is literally right in the middle of all these amazing trees which are covered with lichens, moss, vines and ferns. “Tree ferns” are not ferns that grow on trees, but actual trees (see picture) - I was quite fascinated with them!
Some of our neighbors are interesting folk - the young couple next door had the back of their van open this morning and they had 3 or 4 pots of some kind of plant growing in there……???!!! Most people in the camp sites fall into one of 3 categories - oldies like us (with bumper stickers like “B4ITS2L8”), young families and young singles who are probably the most diverse group, ranging from dreadlocks and plants in the back of the van to earnest travellers with dog-eared guide books.
My blogs seem to be expanding to cover all kinds of nonsense, but I guess since really it’s to remind us about our holiday, that’s OK! I just want to write a little bit about living in the van. It’s a bit like being on the boat in terms of size, and since we’re very used to working around each other in a very confined space, it hasn’t been too much of a problem for us living in a pretty small van. There’s actually lots of storage room - and we have a sink, 2-burner stove, microwave and tiny fridge. The living area is really like the boat - a bench seat on each side with a table in the middle which we take down at night to make up the bed. (Those of you who have heard John’s rant about our bed in the boat will smile here!) Cooking is quite exciting at times, and not only because of the limited space and utensils. I decided to make chili the other night (it was really cold and we wanted some comfort food). So I got all the makings at the grocery store and cooked up this amazing looking meal. However, I guess the chili powder here is a little stronger than I am used to because even John broke out in a sweat! It was so hot that we could hardly eat it and most of it got thrown out. We were staying in a little tiny camp ground and the office was closed (this was about 7:30 pm) but there was a buzzer you could push to have the office opened. We debated whether our burning mouths constituted enough of an emergency to push the buzzer, and bravely decided that it was. The lady who came to open up for us was very sweet and quite understood our desperate need for ice cream to negate the chili heat! In general, we have breakfast in the van and often have a picnic lunch. Supper depends on where we are, what is in the fridge and how much like cooking I feel. Mostly we eat in the van, but we have had some super meals out, sometimes in the most unlikely places. It will be very strange to go home to a kitchen where everything is easy to get at and I don’t have to unload the entire fridge contents every time I want something.