What a fun week so far! So on Friday headed up to Nelson with Michelle, just handy that she was heading up to visit friends. Stayed at her friends place on Friday night – and what a place it was… They live in a Yurt! which is a Mongolian Tent.. I will put a pic up when I get my camera charged again (made the stupid mistake of leaving it on playback all night and it totally drained the battery!) You can have a look at a how they’re structured here. Very clever things really, they fold up completely (which is good, for nomadic lifestyles ;)
So yeah, that was Friday – On Sat, chilled out until the evening until it was time to meet up with – Keith & Aisling, Ben, Barry, Ronan, Grattan and Conor. Keith, Ben, Barry and Ronan were all friends back from primary school in St. Annes. Kinda funny to then go touring in the South Island with them! But all good. Keith and Aisling are on their way back to Ireland after spending a year in oz, the others flew out for a 2 week trip. Never long enough! but they’re making the most of it.
So stayed in a hostel for Sat night, very little was done, well unless lazing in a hot tub drinking cool beers counts! Sunday – we went to go sky-diving, unfortunately the weather was awful, so we headed off to check out the Able Tasman walk, but it really was too wet to do anything.
Monday however, it was lovely and sunny.. so off we went to go skydiving, again pics to follow. I think the scariest thing really was the build up to it. Funny really to resign yourself to jumping out of a plane. From 13,000 feet Quite a long way. Total adrenalin junkies these guys.. really.. my instructor, Bob, totally sound, had done 11,000 jumps. I felt safe.
So we split into 3 groups, I was in the second one, so we’d seen Conor and Grattan get safely down first! So up we went, takes 15mins to climb the 4000m. Air gets noticeably thinner, but it’s all good! Bob, (who had a classic flying-ace moustache) gave me lots of tips, the most important one I guess was just to take lots of deep breaths before you jump out of the plane, so that your brain is able to take it in. The other thing, was to fix your eyes on one part of the horizon, instead of looking all around the place immediately.
At altitude, Ronan went out first.. disappeared so quickly. Then it was my turn… you shuffle towards the now open door! The ground is impossibly small below.. and you basically hang out of the door (while your instructor makes a few last checks!) cross your arms, and basically arch your body into a boomerang around the instructor.
And then you roll out.
Head first.
It’s quite strange! But great, it’s – wow – Freefall rocks. It was so beautiful, looking up the coast to the top of Golden Bay, then Bob would turn us around and we’d look down the coast towards Kaikoura and Christchurch. On a clearer day we’d see all the way to Rhupeau and Taranaki on the North Island.. Takes about 56 seconds to fall from 13,000 down to 6000 I think it was where we opened our chute. Very cool. Must check out Paragliding sometime too I suppose! :) Hehehe, lots of fun.
Oh, and the other confidence-inspiring thing they do, is that you don’t pay until afterwards! Good move.
Then off to a vineyard. Grattans family own and run O Briens fine wines back home in Dublin, so we checked out one of the places they buy from. And it was pretty interesting seeing the whole process. Very much automated for the White chardonnay they make, and then the Pinot Noir was a very traditional process.
Stayed the night in a place called St. Arnaud. Or something like that. In Nelson Lakes national park. Very quiet sleepy place in winter. We had the hostel opened up specially for us! And it was a great night, off we went to feast ourselves in the restaurant down the road.
Only to find it was shut. So back to the hostel, and a feast (we were so hungry) of spaghetti, noodles, meatballs was had. It was yum. We did get the fire going though, and soon we were happily playing scrabble and drinking beer (the theme of the week – well the beer part anyway).
Then on Tuesday we headed south to Franz Josef via Punakaki (the pancake rocks) Franz Josef is a lovely place. Really small, but very friendly and compact. With huge mountains for the backdrop. Great. The internet cafe I am sitting in, is in a old converted red bus. Far too many bottles of wine were consumed for me to have any chance on the pool table, though Conor and Barry are pretty damn good. Misspent youth I say.
Finally today – Wednesday, the others all went off to do Heli-Hiking (you jump in a helicopter and they put you way up on the glacier, where you get guided around for a few hours). I decided not to, as I will be getting in some mountaineering soon anyway, so I opted for a nice 5 hour hike. To Roberts Point. I would highly recommend it actually. Lots of fun swing bridges, and a classic view of massive waterfalls and the glacier at the end of it all. And I saw just one other person on the trip! Excellent. Tomorrow on down to Queenstown. Right into the winter festival there, should be manic.
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