Te Anau & Queenstown. You snooze, you luge.

On our first night in Te Anau we went out for some dinner at a local pub because we had a voucher that got us a free pint with a main meal. But when we paid the bill they told us that we had drunk the wrong kind of beer. So we just paid for a meal and 2 beers that we shouldn’t really have had.

The next day we woke up nice and early in Te Anau and watched the sun rise… this is a lie. We woke up at the dawn of time and watched a grey Te Anau get rained on. This was not too pleasing at 6:30am but as we were getting picked up at 7:20am we had little choice in the matter. As we mentioned in the previous post, we had heard that the sandflies at Milford Sound were the size of sparrows and could kill a man at 50 paces so we slathered ourselves in our 80% deet cream (taking care to let it dry before getting dressed so it didn’t melt our clothes) and went to get on our coach.

After we picked up a load of oldies, our bus driver Alex informed us that his official title was coach driver and nature guide, but that he was in no way qualified to be a nature guide and that actually he was a retired telecoms engineer. This didn’t really fill us with hope as we had specifically booked a “Nature Tour”. Alex then proceeded to narrate the entire drive to Milford with the level of enthusiasm you would expect from a retired telecoms engineer so Jen had a little sleep and Chris watched Terminator Salvation on his iPod. When we started paying attention again Alex was saying something about beech trees (or was it birch trees?) but luckily from then on the drive got a lot more interesting. The Milford highway was very scenic with lots of cool mountains and rainforests and waterfalls to look at on the way.

When we arrived at Milford Sound Alex told us our boat was boarding in 2 minutes time so we were pleased that we wouldn’t have to spend much time on the dock with the sandflies of doom. But Jen wasn’t taking any chances…

Once we had boarded the boat we quickly went below decks and waited for us to reach a safe distance from the docks before emerging onto the viewing deck. Milford Sound was very beautiful and by this time the sun had decided to put in an appearance so the views were lovely. We had a different nature guide for the boat trip (Alex stayed behind on the coach) and he was much more interesting and told us lots of stuff about nature and that. The only animals that we saw were some seals and as we’ve seen like a million of these by now it meant that whilst the other people were pushing to try and get photos of them we were a bit like “Seals? SEEN IT” and enjoyed the sunshine and clear views on the other side of the boat.

They were handing out the free picnic lunches from the moment we got on the boat and despite Chris’s best efforts we waited until after midday to go and collect ours - and as free lunches go it was pretty good.

Chris: It was bloody delicious.

Jen: You love lunch.

We realised as we were heading back towards the docks that the tour we had booked included a trip to the Milford Sound Underwater Observatory, but we appeared to be heading straight back to the docks, and we knew Alex would be waiting for us - so we went to ask a man when we would be able to do this. He then helpfully told us that this boat was too big to go to the underwater observatory and that the boat that does go there was not running today. He said we should talk to the people back at the office at the docks as we might be able to get some money back. When we went to the office a really unhelpful woman said that the observatory was “an OPTIONAL element not an INCLUDED element” and despite the fact that no-one ever gave us the option to do it there was nothing we could do so we had to go and get back on the coach with Alex feeling a bit cross. So even though we paid for a “Nature Tour” which was more money than the standard “Scenic Tour” what we actually got was a few seals, no underwater observatory and a retired telecoms engineer. We don’t like “Real Journeys” tours.

However we had still had a beautiful day at Milford Sound (which is actually a fiord and not a sound - see? We learnt something!) and on the drive home Alex narrated a lot less which meant that Jen could do more napping whilst Chris played games on his phone. Occasionally Alex stopped at picturesque spots so we could take some photos - at which point we would all pile off the coach for a bit of a look. We quickly realised that one of the pitfalls of being on a coach full of oldies is that when it’s time to go home, they want to go home. And they don’t really like it when a man tells them to get off the coach. So most of them stayed put in their seats with arms crossed. And those that did get off the coach with us were back on it before we could take more than 2 photos.

When we got back to Te Anau we said thanks to Alex, who we’d grown bizarrely fond of, and headed off to buy fish and chips for dinner. There was a caravan set up on the street outside the campsite and their fish and chips were both a bargain - $8.50 for cod and chips (£4!) - and delicious. We ate them in the camp kitchen so all the people cooking their rubbish dinners felt dead jealous of us. We then spent the rest of the night in the camp kitchen watching the nice big telly and drinking obscene amounts of Coke Zero. We love caffeine but caffeine does not love us.

The following day we packed up the tent and set of for Queenstown which was only two and a half hours away which is like a quick trip down the road in comparison with other mammoth journeys we’ve done in NZ. Jen decided it was such a short journey that Chris didn’t really need a navigator so slept pretty much the entire way there.

Queenstown has a reputation as a bit of a party town and when we arrived there it was a Saturday so we decided that night we would head out “on the town”. Queenstown also has a reputation for being a bit “YEAH WOO EXTREME SPORTS!” so we begun to feel the pressure to do something a bit bonkers - despite the fact that Chris is scared of heights and Jen doesn’t really like getting her face wet.

We went to the Gondola (it’s a cable car) not really for the views but because they had a luge track at the top and we thought this would be a fun, but also cheap, way to ease ourselves into Queenstown. But when we got to the Gondola station the man told us that the luge track was closed because of the wind. So instead we decided to play mini golf. Indoors. Yeah woo extreme sports…

Chris: Don't forget to tell them I won!

Jen: And Chris won. By one point. And he didn't even want to play. Grrr.

That night we cooked ourselves some dinner and had a few beers to get our planned night of partying in Queenstown underway. But then some people came into the kitchen and put a film on the telly and we felt sleepy after a few beers so we abandoned all plans for a night on the town in favour of 3 bottles of beer and The Skeleton Key. It was not good. We should have gone out.

The following morning we had booked onto a jet boat trip on Lake Wakatipu and the Kawarau river. It promised speeds of up to 85kmph and 360 degree spins so we thought this was suitably extreme. It was wicked. Chris loved it and now wants to be a jet boat driver when he grows up.

That afternoon we had booked to do some hangliding. Extreme enough for you Queenstown? YEAH. Except no. We had to call them half an hour before to confirm and they told us it was too windy. We thought that wind was a crucial part of hangliding but apparently too much wind can lead to death. And this is not good. So they asked if we could come the following day instead. We felt a bit deflated, Chris especially as he had paid for us to have a hearty lunch in preparation. So we headed back to the Gondola station to console ourselves and luckily the luge was open again so we had a few rides on there and felt a bit better.

Then we went back to the campsite feeling slightly lost with nothing to do for a whole afternoon. Mainly we just lay about in the tent and went on the internet. Jen really liked it. That evening we headed out into Queenstown, slightly nervous as it was now Sunday and we have a tendency to go out in towns when nobody else is there, but Queenstown did not let us down. We went to a bar called Winnie’s (we had a voucher) and it was ace - there were loads of people there, a live band, cheap drinks and Jen wore eye-liner. Everyone was pleased.

Unfortunately we could not stay out until dawn and get shanted on jagerbombs as we were aware that our hangliding had been moved to the following morning at 10 so we would have to get up dead early to pack the tent away before we went.

In the morning we called the hangliding company and they confirmed that the wind was good and they would come to fetch us. We suddenly felt a bit terrified and not very woo extreme sports. When we arrived at the spot where the gliders take off from, it was basically just a flat section near the top of Coronet Peak. We were introduced to the people we would be jumping with - Chris’s guy told him that he was near to the weight limit and there was a good chance they might die. Or something like that. Jen’s guy was old and Spanish and smelt of roll-up fags. They gave us our briefing that went something like this “so basically you hold on and run. Never stop running. If you stop running we might die. Ok? Good.”. Then they strapped us into all manner of gear and attached us to the gliders and the next thing we know we are standing on the edge of a very steep hill watching a wind sock and waiting. Jen went first - she did very good running but had slightly shorter legs than the instructor so stopped running actually on the ground before he did and mainly just did running in the air. Chris went second and managed to run so well that he didn’t die. Which was pleasing to everyone involved.

We loved the hangliding and once all the running was over it actually stopped being terrifying and started being awesome. It was a really clear day and the views were amazing and they let us steer the gliders for a bit which was really cool. We both managed to land without breaking anything (arms or gliders) and the café at the bottom served milkshakes. We love milkshakes. They filmed the flights on a little camcorder attached to the glider which also took photos so naturally we shelled out $60 each for copies. But our tiny laptop doesn’t have a disc drive so we can’t show you any of the photos yet. So here are some slightly less thrilling ones instead.

 This is the where we took off from. 

This is the view down. The landing field is somewhere on the left.

This is how Chris really felt about hangliding.

Jen wondering why they were dressing her as a butcher.

 

Chris and his helmet.

Chris points to where we took off from (kinda).