So Friday night was slightly random.. My friend Susan who was here a couple of months ago – when she was up in Wellington gave my phone number to an American – Benjamin, to look up when he got to ChCh (she said he hadn’t met too many people over here). So at 4:30pm I got a call from Benjamin (who I’d quite forgotten might call – it has been 2 months..) and anyway, was wondering about hanging out.. There was a table quiz on in work – and so brought him along to it. Nice enough guy, though agrees with Bush’s decision to get out of Kyoto ‘cos it’s not fair that the Chinese aren’t bound in the same way. I said a few things along the lines of ‘well %age wise there are quite a few more of them..’ and ‘at least it’s a start’ and other things.. but it did all seem to come back to ‘Them and Us’ a lot. I did try to say something about ‘actually we all have to live on this planet…’ hmmm, anyway, what can you do.

The weekend itself was fun, the otehake hot pools. A trip I heard about when I first got to ChCh, and have wanted to do for a long time. A pretty cruisey 4 1/2 hour (leisurely – twas a biggish group) walk in. Quite a few river crossings etc.. and then soaking in hot pools..

having wine + cheese etc. Excellent place though, could smell them from a mile away (though Jonathan said it was just Daves’ caving wellies he’d walked in with!) There’s a lovely campsite on an island in the middle of the river. There’s cold river water running down one side, and thermal water on the other, so it’s easy to regulate the temperature of the pools.

My new flatmate (Till – German – climbs 8a+) came along, good fun guy.. and then when I got back to ChCh – two college friends (Anna McHugh + Jackie Foster) arrived.. hardly seen them since I left college.. they’re staying for a couple of days :)

The world really has gone mental.. or perhaps I spend too much time reading about global warming and other things.

My cousin Thomas (who I can’t wait to see in 2 weeks time) sent me a link to The Presidential Prayer Team I honestly thought it was just a clever skit site – until I found this site Honestly.. it’s a mad place. Then again, from reading the Irish Times online, as I do, it seems our dear leaders could do with some prayer. They’re putting a motorway through one of the most ancient Celtic landscapes our country has (one of my favourite places which I always try to take visitors when they come to Ireland). Madness.

Sigh.

Still, it’s good to see New Zealand still has it’s head firmly screwed on. They fined an Oscar winning actress (who tried to say she was just tired) for bringing one apple and one orange into the country. Let that be a warning to anyone planning on coming to NZ… don’t mess with the quarantine laws!

Anyway – enough ramblings.. see I don’t just think about what the next trip is going to be ;)

However, the next trip is going to be one I’ve wanted to do for a long time. And it’s going to be nice and lazy too. On Sat morning we’ll head to the Otahake hot pools. In our rucksacks will be many bottles of wine, candles, and good food to eat (it’s a short – 4 hour – easy walk in). Then we’ll make our pools in the river, and generally just laze about. It’s going to be magic.

This lake (Kaurapataka) is on the way.. photo by Jonathan Carr

And then all too soon the week was over and it was time to head back to ChCh (Mick heads on to Oz for 2 weeks now). It’s a long drive – 9 hours ish – from Te Anau back to ChCh. We broke it nicely along the way with lunch at a vineyard (and then a couple of tastings).

I’ve found that I’m a heathen. While I do like Pinot Noir (the more expensive and difficult grape to grow), I’m still quite partial to a nice Merlot. Good times though.

I was sorry to see Mick go (esp at 04:30) it was an absolutely excellent trip with Glynn and him. There’s a slideshow here with quite a few more pics on it.

So we had a rest day on the Saturday (well – the rest of the trip) and headed to Milford Sound.

Now here’s an interesting thing. Ish. Milford Sound isn’t a sound at all. By rights it should be called Milford Fjord (which just doesn’t run off the tongue so well), as it’s a glaciated feature covered by the sea – not an alluvial one (happy Thomas?).

Either way it’s damn purty. So had a cruise through there. We met one of the girls from the Kepler – Rachel – and she came along too.

So twas quite the party. So much so that a pod of dolphins came out and played on the bow-wave of our boat. It’s the second time I’ve been close – last time was swimming with them on the coast of Ireland about 5 years ago with my friend Katie (between Doolin and Fanore).

(picture by Glynn)

They’re just the best creatures ever! I’d forgotten how happy they make you feel! If there’s such a thing as reincarnation – then I wanna be a dolphin. For sure.

We also went to the underwater observatory there. It’s quite a unique place (as is pretty much everything in NZ). There’s so much rain in this part of the S.Island – that the Fjord has a freshwater layer on top of the salty sea water. This has the effect of darkening the water. Which in turn means that it’s one of the shallowest (if not the shallowest) places that Black Coral can grow.

(picture by Glynn)

Yes, I know it looks white – but the stem is black. And when it dies all the pollips (the white living bits!) die off – and it all turns black.

Anyway – all in all it was a great day out. Totally majestic scenery. I knew it was one of the places that I had to get to. But now I really know it!

Then on Tuesday it was off down to Fiordland to do the Kepler Track After finding a backpackers (lakefront BBH) we started off on our 2 day 75km hike. It was perhaps not the smartest plan to try to break in new boots.. but still.

We started at about 2pm on the Tuesday, and got to the first hut (luxmoore) at about 6pm. The track has a really steep section to get up there. You climb about 1000m to get up onto the ridge. I must admit – I felt slightly out of shape – about 5 months ago I’d have felt a lot better after doing the hike. But I’m putting it down to the shoes for now!

Heh… it was sooo satisfactory! I carried a nice bottle of Merlot up with me. There were about 40 ppl staying in the hut – and all cooking in the communal kitchen. The pop of the cork fell into a lull in conversation. Most of the comments we got were positive (mostly about how crazy/impressive it was to carry a bottle up). But there was definitely some naked jealousy too. Excellent. Really makes it worthwhile ;)

Ehem. Anyway – onto the next morning. Which was a beautiful dawn.

This whole day we had sort of sunshine and were above the clouds for most of it. Which was actually super lucky – as the day before and most of the later days – the weather was particularly inclement.

Not too long a day this one – it would have been possible to combine the previous day and this one – into one long day – but I’m glad we didn’t – I’d have been 3/4 dead! Here’s a pic of Mick heading down the track overlooking the South Fiord of Te Anau.

We were the first to make it to the Iris Burn hut that day – so managed to find a nice quiet bunk for the night (the previous nights sleep had been just terrible – the worst snoring I’ve ever heard). Our warden that night was quite eccentric – but besides telling us about the glow worm caves nearby – and offering to play Cd’s of Kiwi calls – told us that the fastest time to run the track is 4:41:32. Course it’d be much easier if you didn’t have to carry a pack ;)

The 40km walk out the next day was pretty gruelling, and we were all happy to get back to a few cold beers in Te Anau. I was glad anyway, I’m pretty sure 1/2 way through the walk out that Glynn and Mick wanted to murder me for suggesting the walk in the first place :)