Melbourne Airport

It's BORING.

We're stuck in transit (think 'The Terminal' - Tom Hanks film) Qantas couldn't fly out of Queenstown last night, so we were overnighted in a swanky hotel, but missed our flights from Auckland to Sydney and Hong Kong. So this morning we were put on 2 Air New Zealand flights to get us to Auckland. We had a few hours to meet up with Rach's brother (whom we were supposed to stay with last night) before getting a flight here to Melbourne, where we've got a 6 hour wait for a 9 hour flight...

Some stats

Number of times we've been around the shops - 3
Number of hours left before the flight (as I blog) - 3

Shotover Canyon, on a swing

Ready, steady...



Oops, is that supposed to happen? (and why does the canyon look like the ones While-E-Coyote always falls into?)


I'm down there, honestly (click the picture for a bigger version)

This isn't a picture of me - but it's a damn good picture to show how scary it is!

Some Stats

Name - Shotover Canyon Swing - World's Highest Swing

Height - 109 metres (357 feet) from drop point to bottom of swing arc

Height of freefall - 60 metres (200 feet) before the cables start moving you into the parabola

Speed - 150kph at the bottom of the freefall (that's about 94 mph)

A paraglider harness

Somewhere over Queenstown...

Queenstown

The title 'adventure capital of the world' is pretty much dead on to be honest. Whilst sat on the deck of our hostel yesterday we could watch Bungee jumpers on the hill behind us, paragliders above us and jetboats behind us.

So, obviously, we've had to try a few of these things out...

1. Jetboating - Shotover Jet

Awesome fun, but not that scary.



2. Paragliding.

This was pretty special. I wasn't really sure if I would do it, as it was more expensive than Christchurch, but it was a nice day, so what the heck!



What made it special - well the Pilot said he probably won't top that flight for the rest of the summer. We started at 2,500 feet and due to favourable conditions, the paragliding company had applied for an Air Traffic Control exemption to 7,000 feet. As it was we made 5,300 feet, which is not bad going to be honest! The views were incredible and it wasn't at all scary to see Queenstown a very long way below my shoes. However, on the way down, Brendan the pilot decided to show me some 'manoevures' - which seems to be paragliding for going upside down. I didn't even know paragliders could go upside down. We did get some amazing photos, but they'll have to wait as I'm currently blogging from Melbourne Airport.

Some Stats

Number of 360's in the Shotover jet - 6
G force pulled in wingovers and spins paragliding - about 2g
Height at which Rach could hear me from the ground - 500 feet!

Milford Sound

From the glaciers, we headed south, via Wanaka (which is really really nice) to Te Anau and then onto Milford Sound (which is actually a fiord). It's a stunning place, with different weather at each end of it's 15 km length! The drive from Te Anau is also stunning, with incredible mountains, valleys, the Homer tunnel (hand carved over 20+ years) and Keas. Keas are rare alpine parrots which like hanging out at the end of the Homer tunnel and generally causing mayhem. They tried to bite the aerial off the car and managed to rip off the rubber seals around the doors. Luckily we got no excess on the insurance!



Milford Sound with Mitre Peak on the left - it's a mile from the water to the peak!



Kea - (with a feather stuck on it) Car parts it took not shown...

Fox Glacier Snow Fields

At about 6,000 feet. After an aborted attempt to get up (the helicopter got up, we headed towards the valley and then couldn't see the top so came back in to Fox township) we managed to beat another weather front to the snow fields above the main body of the glacier and throw some snowballs at each other.

The trip back was interesting to say the least, the pilot had to spiral down into the advancing rain front to just above the glacier before heading back down the valley, about 50 feet above the glacier.


The neve area of Fox


Proof! It wasn't that cold actually


Taken as we took off over the equivilant cliff on this side of the glacier. The drop off was quite something as one second there was solid ground, the next it dropped away to the ice and with the nose down take off attitude of a helicopter it made for an incredible view.

Some stats

Number of helicopter flights - 2 (only paid for 1 - result!)

A crevasse, on the Franz Josef glacier

See. I remembered quite alot of my glaciation work, spotting the moraine, terminal face, cravasses etc. Mr O'Neill and Miss Gaskell would be so proud!! (A-level Geog teachers).

An absolutely amazing experience, and surprisingly not that hard. Well the walking wasn't. The crawling through some of the ice caves was a little tight. We went up on a 3/4 day trip, which was then split into 2 groups. Adventurous and boring. We chose the former and promptly were led through the tiny ice caves!



The last sign we passed before getting to the ice. Doesn't exactly fill you with confidence!



Our guide decending into one of the caves on the glacier. The colours were amazing, with the blue ice becoming even more intense as we went further up the glacier. even though it was overcast and started to rain towards the end of the time on the ice. (Blue ice is ice that has been under pressure in the centre of the glacier and all the air has been pushed out of it, which means it works as a prism)

Some stats

Number of hours on the ice - 4
Number of ice caves crawled through - 5
Number of crevasses passed through - lost count!
Length of the glacier - 11 km (we only went about 1.5 km up from the terminal face)

Kaikoura (Episode II)

Well actually we're in Franz Josef Glacier Village (where the world's oldest & slowest computers seem to end up) but after some coaxing I've managed to extract some photos from the dolphin encounter in Kaikoura.


Leaping dusky dolphin. Luckily they like doing this as the first load of photos are just of splashes due to not pressing the shutter at the right time...


Dolphin and calf swimming under the bow of our boat


A small section of the pod - complete with more leaping dolphins.

Tomorrow we're climbing up the glacier, complete with crampons and wooly hats and gloves!

Kaikoura (with Dolphins)

It's currently 10.17 am. We've been up since 4.15 am. Why the madness you may ask? Well we went out in a boat at 5.30 this morning to go swimming with wild dolphins. It's incredibily popular, so much so that we couldn't get the date we wanted and had to go down to Christchurch first (Not much to say about Christchurch - didn't get to go Paragliding. But did buy Mariokart for my DS, so that sort of made up for it)

Anyway, back to today. The dolphins are totally wild, and the company has a 90% success rate of finding some some to go swimming with. Luckily, the early trip apparently has the best chance and they're the most active in the morning. After about 30 mins (and various Albatross sightings) we found a pod of 300 dusky dolphins. Fully wetsuited up, we waddled into position to get into the water and given instructions to make noises to attact the dolphins to us. Basically we paid to be dolphin entertainers for a few hours. I just swam round singing 'here dolphin, dolphin, dolphin' which had a good success rate to be honest.

It was pretty incredible, everywhere you looked under the water was filled with dolphins. Swimming around in circles, I managed to get 4 or 5 to come up and swim around me, playing with me. The pod kept swimming around and we had to jump back onto the boat to reposition ourselves back into the main section of the pod. After a few more swims, we then stayed on the boat and took lots of photos of the dolphins jumping and playing. The dusky dolphin is one of the most acrobatic and we saw loads doing backflips and front flips right beside the boat.

Definately worth changing our plans and getting up at 4.15 for!

Some stats

Temperature of the water - 16 degrees. There's a reason it was a thick wetsuit.
Number of times felt a bit stupid making noises - too many to mention (but everyone else was doing it)
Number of dolphins that think we're all a bit stupid - 300
Number of times we've heard Crowded House in 'In Zed' - once every 10 minutes

Renwick

After departing from Picton, we headed south to Renwick, deep in the heart of the Malborough wine country. Our hostel suggested a bike tour of the 25 wineries within a 5km radius (and proceeded to tell us which ones had free tastings...) So never one to say no to many free drinks, off we went.

The countryside around there is stunning and it was a beautiful day with barely any clouds in the sky, perfect weather for ambling from free alcohol to free alcohol!!!! We managed to get to cycle 12 km to 5 wineries, purchasing too many bottles of wine along the way!!! I must admit we were both rather slow and wobbly by the end of it, and I went to bed for a kip. It must have been all the fresh air, as I'm sure the 20+ different wines had nothing to do with my lethargy/headache...

All in all though, a rather pleasant day.

Some stats

Favourite type of wine - Resling
Number of reslings drunk - I can't remember!

Auckland/Wellington

Auckland's a pretty nice place. We didn't actually venture too far as we took the time to rest up a bit (as there was telly and lots of cups of tea on hand thanks to Rach's bro) We wandered around the city for a few days, taking in lots of sights around the vast harbour, going up the tower (couldn't afford the 'interesting' way of coming back down the tower - jumping off with a rope attached to your back) and also made it out to Piha. It's on the coastline where 'The Piano' was filmed, so the sand is black and warm which is very very strange to say the least.

But as ever, we have to keep moving and flew down to Wellington for a few days. Wellington's a really nice place, if incredibly hilly and with the most changable weather imaginable on earth. I slapped on vast amounts of sunscreen as there wasn't a cloud in the sky only to be deluged about an hour later...

It's got loads of really nice bars along the waterfront and a really amazing museum, Te Papa, which is free. We also met up with Greg and Naomi, who I used to work with in London, which was really great. They've just moved out there and seem to be loving it and I can't really blame them!

We've just got off the ferry from Wellington, having sailed to the south Island. We're now in Picton, a tiny tiny town right at the north, where we're staying for one night before heading into wine country...

Some Stats

Number of Kiwi's seen - 0
(can't think of any more at the mo, sorry!)

Taupo

Before I start, a nerdy point. Hobbits are lazy - to get from here...


(Hobbiton, where book 1 starts)

to here...


(Mt. Doom, where the main part of the story finishes in book 3)

takes about 3 hours. Why oh why there are 3 books/films and the films are 12 hours long, I'll never know. But I digress...

We're now in New Zealand. After spotting Paris in Sydney airport, we boarded a 'plane to Auckland where we crashed for a night before heading down to Lake Taupo, which is in the middle of the North Island, where Rachel has some family friends.

Taupo is a beautiful place and like the rest of New Zealand seems to have a million and one outdoor adventure activities to do. So for my first adrenaline rush I went and did an aerobatic flight in a glider

Being towed up to altitude. And yes, I got to sit in the front.

Being in the front of the glider means an incredible view, as the canopy is completely clear.

Taupo, Lake Taupo, Mt. Ruapehu (with the snow), Mt. Tongariro and Mt. Ngauruhoe (Mt. Doom)

After some loops and other assorted aerobatics, I flew the glider for a while before we couldn't find any more uplift areas and had to land. Rach and I then went for a drive up Mt. Ruapehu to a mile altitude, which is an active volcano which is threatening to release a lahar down its sides any day now, but most kiwis don't seem that bothered by it!

The following day we went to Rotorua, which is the centre of the thermal activity in NZ and as a consequence everything bubbles, steams and smells of bad eggs! We wandered around a thermal reserve which was interesting and then proceeded to hurtle down a mountainside sitting on little more than tea-trays with wheels (adrenaline activity number 2). The kiwis were trying to tell us they were luges, but I still think they're tea trays. I did manage to get it onto two wheels a number of times...

We're now in Auckland at Rach's bro's place and we're going to explore the area for a few days before flying down to Wellington.

Some stats

Number of races on the tea trays against Rach - 5
Number of races on the tea trays that I won - 5
Number of loops in the glider - 2
Number of 'Lord of the Rings' related things seen - far far too many to count!

Sydney. Episode V

Not much to report in this one, only to say that Paris Hilton looks far far far better in real life than I would have imagined. And no, I didn't get any photos :( I also couldn't think of a witty title either. Sorry.

The next post will have lots of pictures of New Zealand, hopefully.

Sydney. Episode IV - A New Year

Our vantage point - taken at about 4pm


Sometime soon after midnight, Jan 1st 2007 - Rach took this - mine are even worse!