Entries in "Queenstown"
My car is powered by hydrogen fusion., Tue Aug 1, 2006
So we must have put a thousand km on the car since we left Christchurch. We left on Sunday around noon and drove for 6 hours. We arrived in Queenstown about an hour and a half faster than is typical. It's probably the fastest the car has ever been driven.
Ever.
But we made it around to Milford Sound and back already. It's been a good time so far, and I am officially the poorest I have ever been in my life. But hey, that's money for you: As soon as its in your pocket, a woman tricks you into buying her things, or you lose your wallet, or you get hungry and buy a lot of muffins. We ate 12 yesterday. Muffins, I mean.
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Cross-country blitz starts now!, Wed Jul 26, 2006
A lot has happened. I flew to Wellington in a hurricane in a 15 seat prop plane to meet Ben at the airport. I thought we would go to the All Blacks match, but he wasn't interested, so we did a little sight seeing and flew back to the South Island. We raced up to Nelson and camped out on the beach in Golden Bay, north of Takaka. I'm glad Ben agrees that the night sky here is astoundingly clear. There wasn't a cloud in the sky all night and the moon didn't come up.
We've been moving a lot the last few days. After camping out and freezing our butts off, we retreated back to Blenheim for a night to warm ourselves and watch a few episodes of The Office. We got off to a slow start the next day and had resigned ourselves to driving to the west coast at night. But we stopped halfway there at Nelson Lakes and I couldn't resist the nice clear weather. So we hiked three hours in the dark with just a torch between us to a hut at the southern end of Lake Rotoiti. We were expecting to find the place empty since it is the middle of winter...
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Wanaka and Franz Josef Glacier, Mon Apr 24, 2006
So all you people need to invest in CHEESE. Apparently, its a very hot commodity down here in hostels, because to date, I have had almost a kilogram of the stuff stolen out of hostel fridges. The thiefs leave the perfectly good butter, though. And because all you people are so loyally following this blog, now you know the next greatest investment secret in cultured dairy products is CHEESE, but only in New Zealand.
I spent a few nights relaxing in Wanaka after the Kepler track. It's about an hour and a half north of Queenstown. Primarily a ski town, its fairly quiet compared to Queenstown: there were only a few drunken fisticuffs and one cat fight on Saturday night. Pretty good for a bunch of drunk Kiwis, actually.
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Warbirds over Wanaka Airshow, Sat Apr 15, 2006
Happy Easter!
I forgot about Easter until someone on the Caples track reminded me, and I discovered that everyone and their dog travels to the Wanaka/Queenstown area for the biannual airshow at Wanaka. They have old WWII planes like spitfires, hurricanes, mustangs, Me-109s, etc. and some WWI biplanes that sound like flying Harley Davidsons. I also got a good pic of an F-111 doing a dump and burn move. But the spitfire sounds great as it flys by; Wes would be jealous, I think.
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Tramping Adventures, Thu Apr 13, 2006
So I've made it back yesterday from my 7 day wilderness adventures on the Routeburn and Caples track in Mt. Aspiring and Fiordland National Parks on the South Island of NZ. It costs ALOT to buy and develop film here; I should have bought a digital camera. I still haven't uploaded all of them. And I'm not that good and taking pictures. I wish Tony was here. He's better at that, and would have been a good tramping partner. Tony, you suck for not dropping out of school.
Photos here. Sorry, no time for a fancy preview.