Queenstown to Fox Glacier

Hello again!
Right now we are in Arthurs pass but the story continues from Queenstown.

We drove to a place outside of Queenstown to sleep and on Tuesday morning we drove back to town and park on a free parking-street. It was a beautiful day and we hung out by the water most of the day, getting some sun in our faces and checking out the activities down at the harbour. There was jet-boats and hang-gliding amongst other things. We walked around by the lake and just had a very nice day in the sun.
In the afternoon A-M books a horse-trekking in Glenorchy for the following day and we started our drive there. We drove in the dark and finally found the place where the trekking would go from. It’s called HIgh Country Horses and is located a little bit outside of Glenorcy. We parked there for the night.

On Wednesday-morning (and also my dog, Oscar’s, 12th birthday.Congrats! Old but still going strong. 😀 ) we woke up at 7.30 and saw these amazing mountains surrounding the area. A bit of the Rohan-scenes in LOTR has been filmed here.
A-M went to the girl that was taking in the horses, Jen, and talked to her and helped out. Later the two owners came and when I was talking to the female owner (never got her name), she told me that her horse, Harry, was one of the nazgul (black riders) horses in the movie. 🙂

A-M went out on the 2 hour ride and I stayed and read my book.
When she came back she had decided to go for the full day-tour so after some lunch, she, Martin from Czech and Jen went out again.
I drove to a place called Lake Sylvan and had a walk in the forest to the lake. It was a 1,20 h walk and I was all alone in the forest. Very peaceful. 🙂
After that I went back to the horse-place and waited for A-M to get back. The only one there was the owners, quite fat, Jack Russel-mixed dog, named Mr B. He and I sat there waiting for the others to get back from two different trekks.
When Martin,A-M and Jen came back the two first ones walked like John Wayne and his wife. 🙂
It had been worth it at least and they had seen lots of nice views (a lot from LOTR).
We drove back towards Queenstown and stopped by the road to camp for the night.

On Thursday-morning I congratulated A-M with a birthday-candle in a small cake.
We drove in to town, parked the car and checked in to Discovery Lodge (we got a free night since we spent 4 nights in Auckland) and when arriving to the dorm it was a 6 bed-room and it was smelling of old booze. The guys had been out having fun the night before… 😛
There was 4 guys there but two checked out at 11. The two that stayed was from Austria, Bernie and Christoffo. They are both chefs and Bernie had worked on Gyllene Freden in Stockholm for over a year and knew some Swedish. 🙂

After settling in, we went out on the town and had some lunch, bought some cakes and then we walked to the gondola. We bought tickets to it and 5 rides on the Luge ( http://www.skyline.co.nz/queenstown/luge/ ).
The ride in the gondola was great. We got a very nice view over a sunny Queenstown.
When arriving up we had some cake and then we went on the chairlift up to the Luge.
We got helmets and read some instructions and then it was time for our first ride. We had to do the scenic one the first ride, to get some feeling on the steering and stuff. It was hilarious! We went up and this time we could do the Adventure Ride. It went faster than the scenic one and I laughed so much I had tears in my eyes. 🙂
We had 3 more rides and those where as funny as the other ones. If you ever get to try it, do it.

After the rides we went to the restaurant and sat outside in the sun. I wrote some postcards and we watched some twin-paragliders. Bernie and Christoffo came by and they had done 2 rides on the Luge, also loving it.
A-M and I sat up there until 5 and then went down with the gondola again. At the parkinglot we met 6 Irish people in 2 spaceships, Tin man and Buzz. Talked for a bit with them and then we walked down to the center. We went around looking at restaurants for the evening and when coming to Chico’s we talked to the girl in the bar about the menu and stuff and all of a sudden she tells me that she recognize me. She asked if I had ever been in Ireland and I haven’t. I asked her if she had been in Asia and she said yes. Malaysia? I asked. Yeah in Kuala Lumpur. ”Where you at Red Dragon in KL?” she asked and then I remembered. I talked to this girl and her boyfriend at Red Dragon (hostel) in KL and now we are meeting in Q-town. Amazing how small the world is sometimes. 🙂

We bought some beer and some potatoe-wedges in a store and sat by the harbour in the sun. At 18.30 we went back to the hostel and got ready for a night out. We asked the guys if the wanted to go with us and they liked to. 🙂
We went to Chico’s for dinner and it was a very cosy place with an open fire. The food was amazing and we had a great time with the guys. They are both very talkative so we didn’t have a dull moment. A-M got some marshmallows with some candles in it to her Cappuchino and that was on the house. 🙂
After dinner we went back towards the hostel and the guys went home and A-M and I went to a place called Buffalos just around the corner to celebrate some more. I came home at 2 and A-M just a little bit later.

Friday-morning came and after a nice shower we said goodbye to the guys and checked out. We took the car to a viewpoint at the lake and had our brunch there. We met Elroy (spaceship-car) and the couple from UK that drives it. Talked a bit to them before driving to a place to check the second battery. It’s had been acting up, not charging like it should so we got permission from Spaceships to check it out.
The guy at A1 told us it seemed to be charging like it should and he could take it out and charge it for us during the day, so we did that.
We drove back to town, which wasn’t that bad since I really like it. 🙂

After spending the day in Q-town we drove back at 5.30 to A1 and then the guy told us that the battery was faulty. There had been fluids coming out from one of the cells when he was charging it. Lucky us nothing like that happened to it when it was in the car. Could have been a big bang, he said. After talking to the guy at Spaceships we got a totally new battery put in. 🙂
We said thanks and then leaving Q-town (sob), heading towards Arrowtown. There was some beautiful scenerys on the way there and we did a few stops.
When arriving in Arrowtown it was like driving in to a old town in the Western-movies. It was filled with old buildings and all the signs had been done in old style. Arrowtown is a old gold-mining town and that showed.
We parked the car and walked to the old Chinese Settlers area. There is still some of the houses there and that was quite cool to see.
We made some dinner and then it was movie and then sleep.

On Saturday-morning we had breakfast and sat a bit in the sun. Have to maintain some of the tan I worked so hard for in Asia. :p
We took a walk in the little town (it’s one street with shops) but after wandering around for an hour or so we thought we knew the town so we drove towards Wanaka.

We stopped at a viewpoint high over Arrowtown and this is where I noticed it. My camera wasn’t feeling well. 🙁
When I pressed the on-button the lense went out and then it started to sound funny. It didn’t give me a picture in the display, only an error-code in the lower-left corner. Well I guess I can’t blame it for giving up. 7 months of active use and some sand and dust to that can make anything stop working. When arriving to Wanaka I went to some camera-shops to ask if they could fix it for me but I have to send it to Canon and that might be several weeks of waiting, and since I don’t have an address here on NZ that might also be a problem. I had to face the fact that I had to look for a new camera, so the search begun. They didn’t really have what I looked for in Wanaka, so I decided to wait.
We had dinner at the lake and then we drove about 30 minutes outside of town and parked for the night at Lake Hawea, which is parallell with Lake Wanaka.

Sunday-morning we woke up and the sun was shining. After breakfast at the lake we drove past Makarora and then to Haast through beautiful nature. Before Haast we saw some amazing waterfalls and we walked to something called Blue Pools. It’s water from the mountains that makes these pools all green-blue. Really beautiful.
( http://www.usus.org/timo/355days/2004/09/the_blue_pools_of_blue_river_photo.php )

When arriving to Haast, which is out by the sea, we had some lunch and then we drove towards Fox Glacier. We saw the top of the mountains covered by snow and saw some of the amazing Mt Cook.
We parked as close to the glacier as we could and then walked the rest of it. It was a 30 minute walk and then we got rather close to it. You can only walk up on it with guided tours. It seemed a bit unstable.
We drove in to town and then asked around for prices to do a glacier-walk. We found out that you can only see the ice-tunnels if you go with helicopter there (heli-hike) and not on the half- and full day tours…That was the part I was interested in so I wasn’t sure I would do it.

We drove to Lake Matheson and there we met the couple in Elroy again. 🙂
After talking to them a bit we walked the 20 minute to the lake and got a nice view of it before the sunset. We decided to camp out there to get a early view of it as well.

Monday-morning at 6.30 I woke up by some knocks on the window. I got out and there was two Kea-birds jumping off the roof. When they saw me they started to scream and it was an awful sound, waking me up quite a bit. :p
They are very interested in the rubber on cars and can eat anything they can get their beeks on… Nasty birds indeed.
http://www.doc.govt.nz/Conservation/001~Plants-and-Animals/001~Native-Animals/Kea.asp

A few more cars showed up and that scared away the Kea-birds. We walked to the lake and got some nice views of Mt Cook and saw the mirror of it in the lake.
After some breakfast we took it easy and then drove in to town at lunch-time. A-M booked herself on the heli-hike and went out on that at 3 in the afternoon. When she came back we drove to Franz Joseph, which is another glacier (and town) just 35 minutes north of Fox.
More to come!

Big hugs to you all.