Straight from the mountain that fell on our heads, we headed on to Queenstown, the adventure capital of New Zealand, if not the world. But rather than throwing ourselves off bungy bridges we were really here to catch up with my family, Winks my Aunt (freshly returned from attending the wedding) and cousins Sam and Emma whom I haven’t seen for probably nearly ten years.
Queenstown itself is a busy little town full of bars, sports shops and tour operators set in a magnificent setting on the shore of Lake Wakatipu, surrounded by beautiful jagged mountains. It reminded us very much of Vancouver although we were told the climate is a lot drier!
Unfortunately, the timing of our arrival was not good as Sam along with husband Jeremaia and their two highly energetic beautiful little girls (Gwinnie and Ali) were in the middle of moving house so we played our small part in bringing over their dog basket before enjoying a curry take-out and some beers to celebrate the move. It was a real joy to see them all again although sadly we missed Emma’s new wife Amelia by a day as she had to head back to Dunedin.
The next day we headed into Queenstown and did the short 40min hike to the peak of Queenstown where they have a hilarious family-orientated concrete luge track with plastic carts served by a small chair lift. Suffice to say Jo and I signed up and spent a good half hour banging wheels and bumpers as we raced each other side by side down the short twisty track- Jo even showed that despite our recent nuptials her competitive spirit was not dampened and she duly put me into the wall on one corner!
Now, being in the mountains I was keen to get some mountain biking in so we rented some dual suspension XC bikes and headed out on the Moonlight track in the blistering heat – to do a 25km loop through some incredible scenery, following streams and goat tracks, at times even carrying our bikes over boggy wetland sections before eventually leading up to a mountain pass with epic views and some hairy looking drop-offs into the gorge below. What started out as easy double-track ended up being not quite the riding trail I was hoping for as the so-called single track was virtually unrideable and turned into hike-a-bike in places and clearly hadn’t been built or maintained for biking. This dampened our spirits a little but overall being out in the New Zealand backcountry and with the stunning vistas it was worth getting out of town for and putting in the effort. We will be back to get some proper biking in!
Of course, we still had the rugby going on and we piled round to Sam and Jeremaia’s
for the NZ v Austrailia 1/4 final match. I should mention at this point that Jeremaia is a typical kiwi bloke – he loves sheep, shandy and rugby but not as much as he loves sledging the English and we had some good banter going although given the shocking performance of our team there was only so much I was prepared to stand up for them. The mood turned immediately serious once the game kicked off and we settled in to watch what was probably one of the matches of the tournament, the tension was palpable not just in the house, but across the whole nation as this was what was likely to be the last big test for the All Blacks before supposedly cruising to an easy win against the French in the final (how wrong that turned out to be!) It was an epic match, but the ABs won it convincingly and dominated the loose and defended with a desperate but assured vigour to play themselves into the final and a shot at their first world cup for 24 years. Jeremiah was emotional but then he is a sensitive soul.
I have to say a big thanks to Winks for putting us up and feeding us some delicious home cooked meals for 4 days and also being so welcoming when after dropping us at the airport we called her 2 hours later to ask if we could stay another night after all flights were cancelled due to the high winds that day. She apologized on the way home as she’d already put our bedsheets through the wash and would we mind fresh ones! That’s efficiency that would put some Swedes I know to shame…..
Post Script:
Now for a little shameless plug – Jeremaia runs South Island Guides and as such plays around in the mountains quite a bit as a mountain guide pretending to work while putting together bespoke luxury holidays for the likes of Larry Page (founder of Oracle and one of the richest men in the world) and Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings fame. Most of these involve helicoptors, very remote mountain lodges, glacier treks, kite-surfing in deserted fjords, back country ski-touring, heli-skiing etc. If you can even dream of an adventure in the mountains Jeremiah can make it happen for you (for the right price!) so if you ever find yourself in New Zealand and want an unforgettable mountain experience check out :
http://www.southislandguides.com and his partner company http://www.exclusivelynz.com.
The Si Phan Don area in Southern Laos is where the Mekong is at it’s widest and home to an archipelago of sandbars and rocky islets – the four thousand islands. The guidebook waxed lyrical about this area describing how the islands were set amongst the turquoise expanse of the Mekong where at night the river is dotted with the lights of fishing boats, while during the wet season, the lush palm studded islands are alight with fireflies and there’s a steady flow of long tail boats gliding past bathing water buffalo. Sounds pretty great n’est ce pas? Well I should have trusted my instincts as I did wonder how the Mekong that we knew, brown and turgid, could turn into the turquoise expanse that the Lonely Planet was harping on about. Turns out it can’t. Actually, that’s a lie, it can, but only for a short time in February. Huh.
Fortunately for us, at the airport in Pakse we bumped into a German couple who had been on our boat from Nong Khiaw. This time we all introduced ourselves and it turned out that Doro and Mathias were also heading for Si Phan Don. We grabbed a taxi with them to the bus terminal in Pakse where we were loaded into an open sided lorry along with bags of rice, suitcases, boxes, far more people than safe, oh yes, and a moped, for the 3 hour trip further south.
Our new friends were equally as disillusioned as we were with Don Khong where we ended up, so after checking in to a guest house we resolved to book the one day tour of the area for the following day and then got merrily drunk at a riverside bar. 17 large beers later at the ungodly hour of 11pm (yes, 11pm!!) we were politely asked to leave as lights were turned out around us. I blame the German influence for this behaviour (hi Doro and Mops!).
The tour the next day was a little mixed – it was interesting to be out on the boat in amongst the islands, put-put-putting along in our wooden boat and slowing down even further into the island rhythm. We went to see a couple of waterfalls, the second of which is apparently the largest one in SE Asia by volume but was a bit of a disappointment. We did however manage to tick yet another endangered species off our list as we went to see the very rare fresh water Irrawaddy dolphin right on the border with Cambodia. There are only 5 pods of these dolphins in the world and about 70 adults where we were. The locals revere the dolphins because they believe that they save them from crocodiles. This is good for the dolphins as it means that the otherwise omnivorous locals won’t eat them.
We finished the day with dinner back where we were staying and found ourselves at 9.20pm having to beg for kitchens to be reopened so that we could have a final beer and dessert. I’m pretty sure that the island was happy to see us leave!
Clive will update on our jungle experience swinging through the trees, but in the meantime…
We had originally planned to head to Luang Nam Tha after the Gibbon experience to do some trekking in the national park up there but after our days of Tarzan and Jane which had involved a fair amount of walking we didn’t really feel like heading back out into the jungle for more of the same. Our clothes could also pretty much get up and walk themselves at this point so we didn’t think it would be fair to inflict that on our fellow travelers.
We still headed to Luang Nam Tha for one night which meant that the Gibbon folks dropped us and our bags in a small grocers at the side of the road about 90 minutes outside Huay Xai. We were told that there “should” be a bus at 1pm or 2pm that we could flag down. Now, I like trains because you know where you are with a train. When you pull into a station the train will stop each time whether anyone gets on or not, there will be signs that inform you of the station name and there is usually an announcement. Buses don’t have the same reliable nature. They’ll only stop if you request it, they didn’t until recently tell you where you were and weren’t as predictable. Now, imagine how I felt as our new Gibbon experience friends disappeared towards Huay Xai in our jeeps and left us at the side of the road where nobody speaks English for a bus that “should” be along soon.
We had given up on the bus arriving by 3.30pm and had decided to flag down anything going in the right direction whether it was an oil tanker, a lorry or a personal vehicle. Just then out of the distance appeared a minibus. Saved! Clive ran into the road to flag it down but the smiling driver informed us that he was full and there “should” be another along in a while. Maybe at 2pm – but isn’t it already 3.30pm? That was just met with more grinning. Marvelous.
We weren’t having much luck flagging things down when another larger bus appeared that this time stopped and actually let us on (only 3 hours later than scheduled) and put our bags in the hold on top of what looked like a piece of engine. That is exactly what it was as it turns out. We got talking to the only other foreigners on the bus after we stopped and they told us that the piece was from the original bus which had broken down. I guess we were lucky to get to Luang Nam Tha at all.
After deciding not to stop there our destination was now Nong Khiaw, a small village on the Mekong river. The scenery around the village is unbelievable with soaring limestone karsts exploding from the river valley. While here we spent a good deal of time just soaking up the atmosphere and catching up on some blogging, emails etc on a surprisingly good Internet connection. We also walked out of town to visit the Tham Pha Tok caves in the limestone cliffs where then locals had hidden out during the second Indochina War. They had been in the caves for so long that there are areas set out specifically for the officials, police etc so that they could keep their society running.
We finished our time up North by traveling back to Luang Prabang by boat down the Mekong. Not the most comfortable journey I’ve ever undertaken, but the scenery is something else.
My jaw literally hit the floor when we turned up to “Elephant Village” about 15km outside Luang Prabang in Laos. There they were, right there, totally accessible, not behind bars or to be viewed from afar using binoculars – right there! We were both giggling like school girls as we approached (Clive especially).
The site of the Elephant Village was astounding in itself. Set high on an hill above the Mekong, ringed with what seemed to be layer after layer of mountains in the distance, almost like stage props that had been wheeled in and overlapped to give an impression of depth.
We started off with a simple elephant ride which was basically designed to get us on the beast and encouraging it to move the way that we wanted it to move. At all times you’re accompanied by a Mahout, an experienced elephant handler, but it’s still a long way up as demonstrated when I tried to get on. The elephant bends its front leg on a certain command which is supposed to give you the step up to swing your leg over its back – not so when you’re only 5’3″ and your elephant is a little half arsed in how much they want to help you out. In the end I was unceremoniously shoved up there from below by two hands on my butt from our guide – so elegant.
Being up on the elephants neck was just amazing. They have incredibly coarse hair on their heads which could honestly use some conditioner and while their hides are tough, the skin behind their ears is really quite soft. When they move they are obviously incredibly deliberate and surprisingly sure footed considering they can’t actually see the ground directly in front of them. This little fact made me all the more anxious when we had to access the river by a very narrow steep path that had a number of us with our eyes closed as we anticipated the tumble down the slope. Thankfully the elephants seem to know what they’re doing and even managed to turn at 90 degrees to the narrow path when a particular tree caught their fancy and they decided to stop for a bite, reaching in with their trunks and wrenching out enormous amounts of foliage. At these points no matter what the Mahout did the elephant would finish its snack before continuing and to be honest I got the impression that the elephants were indulging the Mahouts rather than taking orders from them.
As part of the trip we went on an hour’s ride down the river where we sat on wooden seats that were attached to their backs, rather like the old colonial explorers, though we really were missing our all white explorers outfit and domed helmet. The pace of the trip was very sedate and we had plenty of time to take turns on the neck of the elephant and have about a million pictures so beware of the picture show when we get back!
The highlight of the day was definitely getting to bathe them in the river. This involved another trip down the vertigo inducing path, except this time on the neck of the elephant – I may have closed my eyes at one point, before we head straight into the river and the Mahout gets the elephant to sit down so that we can splash water over their heads and give them a good scrub. I absolutely loved this part particularly because I had a feisty specimen who seemed to take umbrage at whatever the Mahout wanted her to do once we were in the water, so she proceeded to lift her head and trunk and smash them down into the river multiple times as well as sink lower down on her haunches so that he got wet as well. Good on her I thought.
The whole experience was a fantastic one but I do struggle with the idea of using such magnificent animals as a tourist attraction. I was somewhat reassured though because these elephants were rescued from logging operations where they’d previously been pumped full of steroids to make them stronger and forced to carry huge loads for many hours at at time. Now they get medical attention, they do a couple of circuits of the river each day and sit in the river while they get scrubbed, which I’ve got to assume is a much better life for them.
Interesting elephant factoids:
– The gestation period of an elephant can be up to 24 months!
– Elephants communicate using a series of grumbles and growls as well as the infamous trumpeting. Humans can only hear some of their sounds, but I can assure you when they growl while you’re on top, you certainly feel it!
– Their teeth alone weight 5kg
– They can sense water up to 50km away
– Elephants can get sunburned – I know the feeling 😦
We finished the day with a trip up the river to a local waterfall similar to the Kwang Si fall we had visited in Luang Prabang but this time we hiked up stream a bit and managed to grab a swim in a totally deserted pool. Just heaven.
The vast expanse of the Mekong surges past, brown and impressively wide – the workhorse river- lush vegetation surrounds our guesthouse, vivid greens that seem to be unique to tropical climes. The heat is tangible, pressing on your skin as you step outdoors and yet this isn’t even the hot season. Cars, bikes, mopeds and the omnipresent tuktuks swarm the dusty streets with no obvious organization, going as slow or as fast as pleases the driver and turning with no warning and at the last moment. On the pavements locals and tourists mix among travel agents, restaurants and a multitude of eateries, next to market stalls selling vibrantly coloured textiles, millions of styles of hammer pants (I could make a killing in the UK on the way home if that trend sticks around), local foods, woven baskets and random snakes and scorpions in jars of rice whiskey. This is Luang Prabang and we’ve fallen in love with the place.
We came here at the suggestion of our good friends Rob and Hannah because Rob’s sister has been living here for the last eleven years and has set up a business built around the local weaving traditions, employing local weavers and making beautiful textiles by hand. From nothing, she and her business partner have grown an enterprise that boasts three shops, a living craft centre, a guest house and cafe and still they’re looking into new areas all the time. Their setup is just beautiful, just 2km from the centre of LP and we had the pleasure of staying there for a few days and getting to know both Jo, Rob’s elder sister and Heather, his younger sister while we were there. They were such gracious hosts and gave us their time and insight into the town. I’d recommend anyone thinking of coming to LP to look up ock pop tok either to stay or learn more about weaving traditions. Beware of the shops though, they’re dangerous places for your budget as you’ll just want to buy everything!
We were very much taken by the Lao pace of life and slowed everything down to fit right in. We spent a lot of time in Luang Prabang enjoying the multitude of cafes and restaurants, people watching from various perches around the city – my Grandmas would have been proud of how long I can ensconce myself in a cafe to observe the tide of humanity flowing past.
We did manage to see some of the sights in amongst our cafe breaks and there’s plenty to be seen. The Kwang Si waterfalls are about 30km outside Luang Prabang and are beautiful stepped waterfalls and pool that are formed from Limestone deposits. The water is a beautiful milky blue and we though it would just be rude to not have a swim. There was also a rope swing into one of the pools which Clive of course had to have a go at. I made it about half way up the branch before being put off by the very slippy and wobbly struts that you had to walk on. Clive wanted to take a picture of me part way up so that we could pretend I’d done it – not a chance, we do not take pictures of FAILURE!
In town we made the hike up Pho Si hill to the temple at the top which is a favourite for sunset, although of course we chose the one night when the sun went down behind a cloud to make the slog up but still the view is fabulous and serves to remind you of the amazing surroundings in which Luang Prabang lies nestled.
Wat Xieng Thong was another stop on our itinerary, which can be found at the tip of the peninsula that Luang Prabang occupies. The word “Wat” means temple in Lao and Wat Xieng Thong is one of the most important temples in the country and translates as the Temple of the Golden City. Wat Xieng Thong was built around 1560 by King Setthathirat, a patron of Buddhism, who ruled Laos from 1548 to 1571. Mental. It’s a place of incredible peace even despite the throngs of tourists, with amazing mosaics and intricate carving. Makes me wish I was better with a camera. Actually, everything about this trip makes me wish I was better with a camera.
Massage is obviously a big thing in Laos so we gave a traditional Lao massage a try. Clive opted for the full body massage whereas I went for a head and foot massage. I have to confess my head massage felt like a large ape was pawing me and then the for the foot massage she actually started pummeling me with her fists and pinching me so at one point I finally had to let out a strangled “soft, soft, soft!” Apparently we had “enjoyed” a traditional Khmu massage which is known for the somewhat aggressive approach to relaxation. Noted.
We owe a post on our time in Queenstown with Clive’s family but that’s another Mr B one and he’s fatigued from the last couple of days of posting (poor lamb) so I’ll forge ahead with Sydney.
Our time in Sydney was sadly cut short due to terrible weather in Queenstown the day we tried to leave so everything had to get rebooked for the next day when the more typical sunshine and blue skies made an appearance.
When we arrived it was early evening so we wandered down from our hostel near the central station to Circular Quay, which is actually where my company has an office, not a bad location I have to say. The Circular Quay area is all about wide patios and cafes where you can watch the hustle and bustle of the harbour as you quaf your oysters and guiness if you’re me – oh yes, traveling this time is very different to traveling aged 18 😉
Unfortunately a lot of our time in Sydney was spent trying to find out more information about the flooding in Thailand as our next stop was Bangkok where we were due to be spending 4 days. As it turns out we would have been ok right in the centre of Bangkok but we didn’t want to chance it and instead booked to go straight on to Laos.
When we finally got out into Sydney proper we went down for a wander around the Rocks area and then met Clive’s good friend and old housemate Jen who lives in Bondi. We enjoyed a beer with her at the Opera House Bar and then she very kindly drove us around some of the other sights including taking us round the harbour to Doyles in Watsons Bay for another beer and great harbour views before a quick walk up to “Suicide Point” for a view of rugged cliffs and open ocean.
We then headed to her place in Bondi, which is only 6 minutes walk from the famous beach where surfers seem to bob around in the water a lot rather than actually do any surfing. The beach itself is beautiful though, with fine white sand and we were obviously lucky to see it slightly out of season so it wasn’t rammed with sun worshipers. Then it was back to Jen’s to meet her lovely boyfriend Justin and drink copious amounts of beer and cider and be fed a delicious BBQ – your average Thursday 🙂
We eventually arrived in Franz Josef village, well more a tourist village designed to serve the many hikers and backpackers that pass through here, full of motels, campsites, touring outfits and a few bars and restaurants. With Jo already having done a hike on the glacier when she was here 10 years ago, we were keen to do something different and new to both of us, so we settled on a full day of Ice-climbing up on the glacier. This would involve hiking up into the heart of the ice field before setting up ropes and attacking slippery routes with full-on crampons and ice axes. (I just wanted to do it because I actually got to use an ice axe properly rather than just longingly test swing them in our local Mountain Equipment store in Vancouver….)
So the next day we were in for an early start and met the guides at 7:30am for kit-out before beginning the Trek up the glacier, passing over the moraine deposits left as the glacier retreated. as we crossed over the river before getting on to the glacier proper. Before long we were tooled up with crampons on and followed our guides into the depths, with them expertly cutting steps with their pick axes (yes they looked like they were heading off to the mines when we first met them!).
I have to say that getting right down into the crevasses surrounded by walls of translucent blue ice and narrow passages was amazing, before popping up over brittle little ice ridges. We really felt like we were in the glacier not just on it. After about 30mins clawing our way through and over our guides found a good spot to set up in a small crevasse maybe 40ft deep. Ropes were set, and our first foray into ice-climbing began. I have to say that despite the fact that you are only ever attached by tiny little spikes on your feet or ice axes, I actually felt more secure than I have done rock climbing in the past (this may just be because I’m a rubbish rock climber as I’ve only done it a handful of times).
Towards the end of our day and having tried a few different routes including a very challenging overhang, we heard the rumble of thunder overhead. This wasn’t unexpected as the forecast was for rain in the afternoon and we’d already had a few spits. We carried on packing up and were just on the verge of leaving when we heard another giant thunder roll. Our guides quickly advised us this was no thunder but was actually a rockfall. We couldn’t see it from the bottom of our crevasse but the earlier “thunder” had been small rockfalls. Now we had the big one and the deep raucous noise reverberated menacingly around the valley. We were told to keep our heads down and eyes closed – my first thought being that by acting like a child hiding behind their hands and pretending that it wasn’t there didn’t actually protect us from it was actually false – we were soon engulfed by a dark black cloud of billowing rock dust.
This was serious, a huge slab on the north side of the valley had come crashing down probably less than 200ft from where we were. There was a scurry of activity on the radios as our guides radio’d in our position and safety condition and listened in on reports from other tour groups elsewhere on the glacier. We were given the all clear to move and to get on down the glacier as quickly as was safely possible. We got cracking but even on the way down there were smaller chunks of mountain still crashing down and I managed to get a few shots of one of the small ones and it’s after effects. We were climbing almost directly in the line of the rockfall but thankfully towards the right hand side of the valley as you look at the picture so the rocks would have had to crash through a multitude of large crevasses to get to us. We descended safely off the glacier but for some of the “lucky?” groups that were higher up and above the rockfall it was deemed too unsafe for them to cross below it so there was a flurry of helicopters shuttling them off the ice – I have to say I was a bit gutted to not be getting a free jellywopper ride but glad to be safe and lived to tell the tale.
Upon return to the office our guides told us that that was the biggest slide that the valley had seen in over 3 decades.
So from the wine tastings in Blenheim we cruised on down the east coast through Kaikoura and on towards Christchurch constantly surprised by the raw beauty of the rugged coastline. After a last minute overnight stay in the outskirts of Christchurch where we saw only brief pockets of the devastation caused by the huge Earthquake that leveled virtually the whole city centre, we pushed on towards our next destination – the Franz Josef glacier over on the West Coast. To get there we had to cross over the Southern Alps, taking the renowned Arthurs Pass route, a twisting, winding, majestic road that wiggles through the heart of the Southern Alps following a route discovered by Arthur Dobson in 1864. Apparently when he first encountered the precipitous Otira Gorge, the pass was almost impassable – he had to leave his horse at the top and lower his dog on a rope! This is one of the truly great roads to drive in New Zealand and we hit it with gusto in our little Toyota hire car, it was just a shame the car didn’t have the same guts in return as it struggled up the hills.
In the middle we stopped at Arthurs Pass Village for a quick hike up to the Devils Punch Bowl waterfall, and had lunch in the Wobbly Kea, first founded by German immigrant Oscar Coberger in 1929 who was a successful mountain guide and ski instructor as well selling imported European climbing equipment – apparently Sir Edmund Hillary bought his first ice axe from him.
We would have loved to stay and do some more hikes but our hurried schedule meant we had to push on as we had some miles to cover to get to Franz Josef before end of day. The Arthurs Pass road is also an impressive feat of engineering with many bridges, viaducts, rockfall shelters and diverted waterfalls all testament to man’s achievements in bringing civilization to remote inaccessible areas. Just outside of AP village we came across “Death’s Corner” lookout. This was where the original road had crossed right through the middle of a giant scree slope as at the time the road was first built it was the only logical way through but entirely bonkers given the ever-present danger of rockslides. Thankfully a new viaduct has been built safely out of the line of rock fire but a quick stop to walk on the old road brought home what an imposing pass it was.
After another hour or so of driving and we had crossed the country from coast to coast and turned South toward Franz Josef. The coastline here was still impressive but for me at least didn’t quite have the same untamed rawness and drama of the east coast. Still a sea view is a sea view and I’ll take it any day 🙂 !
“Probably the best one day hike in New Zealand” – proclaimed the guide book so we duly booked ourselves in for a guided trek. With NZ just coming into spring there was still snow at the top and we were told the route might not be clear and that we probably would need crampons and ice axes so we erred on the side of caution and went for a guided option with equipment supplied.
This promised to be a hike of ardour, 19km across a volcanic range, with a climb of over 1600 vertical meters over Mt Tongariro, a multi-cratered volcano last active in 1975. We were told that we could expect an eruption at any time as it usually erupted every nine years since records began and was now long overdue for the next one. In this event our only advice was to head away from the lava and gain ground as quickly as possible whilst protecting our heads from falling rocks the size of camper vans. This I thought sounded a little futile but I was on board with the running away to higher ground bit!
As we approached the start of the trek we passed by Mt Doom, a free standing volcano that appeared exactly as any child would draw a mountain, complete with a snow covered cap and ominously swirling clouds around it’s peak. No matter, we started out along our trek on level ground, passing amongst proverbial babbling brooks bouncing energetically through the ancient lava flows. Surrounding us were traditional kiwi mountain flora of heath and sway grasses, and impressive jagged ridge lines.
After a few hours of slogging punctuated by short little snack breaks we’d made it up on onto one of Mt Tongariro’s ridges and were rewarded with fierce blustering winds coupled with stunning mountain vistas. Another hour or so and we were up on the peak and stopped for lunch on a thermal ridge. This was a bizaar natural phenomenon where the steam vents from the volcano seep up through the rock and melt the snow from underneath. So here we were, buffeted by frigid mountain winds whilst munching through our home made sandwiches with our bums being gently steamed by the warm ground! Of course we had brought our England flag and had the obligatory photo on the top to remind the locals that NZ is still just one of the colonies…..
From there it was technically all down hill, but it still took another 3.5hrs, crabbing across ice crusted off camber slopes desperately trying to avoid a slip and tumble down the slope below. I nearly went whilst trying to chisel steps with my ice axe for the benefit of the unsteady looking Ozzy couple behind me. Thats what you get for helping the Aussies! Another little highlight was bum-sliding down these little narrow gullies just before the hut towards the end of the pass. The chutes created looked like a mini bobsled run and was well worth the wet soggy trousers for the rest of the trek.
Eventually, we descended from the snow line and back down through the open grass-studded slopes before dropping into the final stretch through a forested gully following a stream to the end. We arrived at our pick-up point tired but fulfilled and having conquered the crossing in the much the same way that Hannibal crossed the Alps (except without the elephants and 4000 soldiers in accompaniment).
So onwards from the putrid stench of Rotorua (even the sewage treatment plant in Twickenham that I worked at for 3 years didn’t smell as bad as Stinky Town) to Taupo. A laid back town situated on the shores of the massive volcanic Lake Taupo surrounded by beautiful rolling hills. We were here for a few nights again staying at another fantastically equipped campsite where we bumped into a couple of South Africans who we had met at our Orewa campsite – NZ is a small country with a well worn tourist route!
En route into Taupo we stopped for a picnic lunch at Huka Falls, a picturesque little stop where the natural change in rock funnels the river through a narrow channel about 200m long and 10m wide before it charges over the falls into the wider river amid a ranging torrent of foaming white water. After that we stopped at the Huka Honey Hive for some delectable and varied tastings of the local nectar in both sticky and liquid forms – honey beer and mead (wine) was also on the menu. Here we also learned that newly married couples were traditionally given enough honey mead for a month to ensure happiness and fertility in the future lives – hence the term honeymoon. Since we drank about a month’s worth of wine in France over the 2 day wedding extravaganza we felt that we were happy and fertile enough to carry on without purchasing any more….
The next day I had booked in to do my first skydive. This was to be a tandem jump from 15,000ft -high enough to see both east and west coast apparently – with about 30 seconds of freefall. I have to say in the build-up, watching the safety video, getting into my jumpsuit and harness etc I was remarkably calm and not filled with the kind of nervous trepidation that one should have before throwing themselves out of a perfectly good aeroplane. It was of a bizaar coincidence that I was sharing this jump with Cyrille a French guy only days before the England-France QF encounter who was working for Bouygues (the company I had just quit in Vancouver) in one of their Paris offices . I am proud to say that I was representing Queen and Country well by wearing my England shirt and feeling quietly confident that we would beat the French (how painfully wrong that turned out to be) so we had a bit of friendly banter about the upcoming contest. We were blessed with a glorious day and up in the plane the views over the lake and countryside were stunning.
Now for those of you who don’t know, tandem skydiving is not jumping out of a plane holding hands, it is a far more intimate affair than that. Effectively, you have another man (in my case the rather too unconcerned “I’ve done this a million times before” kiwi Cole) strapped to your back and waist. As we sat in the plane straddling the bench they had replaced the seats with, my time came. Still no nerves. The door went up and Cyrille was out first along with his camera man. Next up was me. At this point, I got a little nudge from behind. This is not a feeling I’m familiar with. It appeared that my skydive escort was hip-thrusting me towards the door with all the gusto of those desperate sheep molesters that we all like to joke about. Once a Kiwi, always a Kiwi I guess.
As I swung my legs out dangling into the turbulent air I looked out and saw the ground 15,000ft below. Still no nerves. We rocked back once, then a second time, then HOLY FUUUUUUUCK!!! My stomach shot to my mouth, the sheer speed of acceleration and wind buffeting took my breath away, literally, I couldn’t breathe, it was like being winded and I had this strange conflicting sensation of falling to my death whilst feeling like I was suffocating. After what seemed like a minute, but in reality was probably only a few seconds, I managed to suck in some air and regain some composure. The camera man who was jumping with us to record my terrifying moments for posterity was gesticulating at me to do something for the camera. I grinned as best I could and gave him my trade mark two thumbs salute, then reverted back to panic – I was out of breath and suffocating again. Another huge effort to suck in air and I was back on track. After that the adrenaline kicked in and I experienced this amazing buzz, an almost unfathomable overload of sensory feedback, cold temperature, rushing air buffeting me, loud white noise booming in my ears, wide-eyed dancing as I tried to take in everything below and around me at break-neck speed. I was free falling over this incredible vista on a glorious sunny day and after the initial shock I was loving it!
At 5000ft Cole deployed the chute and we arrested enough to properly take in the surroundings. At this point, Cole said to me “I’m just going to make you feel more comfortable, OK?”. Little did I know that this was his euphemism for “I’m going to make it feel like I’m unclipping you from my harness and you will feel like you’re about to be released to drop to your death”. Two pops and I dropped two inches. My heart stopped a moment, then we were all good as Cole maneuvered us in tightly swirling arcs down to the landing zone. When we hit terra firma I kissed the ground. Then I kissed my wife. Another experience ticked off the bucket list.
boltsintotheblue 