Thursday, January 17, 2008
Monday, March 19, 2007
Home sweet home?
I may never be able to thank Kelley and Jacob enough for showing me around and having the patience to put up with me for so long. And I was a little sad saying goodbye to them at the terminal - okay I was really sad. I'm going to miss hanging out with them.
The final good-bye at the airport.
It would be a voice over that the trip made me realize what was important in life. And after looking into the eye of one of nature's greatest predator, plummeting to the earth with a towel and dog leash on my ankles and being sloshed around in a giant rubber ball I've learned to have the courage to go after anything in life.
But I'm not Carrie Bradshaw, Anne Heche or skanky Meredith so I'll just tell you I'm tired and nauseous and a bit cranky to be at work.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Embrace the Fear
I'm still alive.
Seriously, I wasn't worried about dying. I went to the original bungy site and in over 18 years AJ Hackett has had over 500,000 people at that site alone and 100% safety record in all locations worldwide.
When I booked it this morning I was starting to feel queasy but I distracted myself. And I was fine until I was there for the video introduction that is supposed to motivate you to jump. However, they made a comparison against skydiving and said because skydiving is so high when you jump you don't get the rush of plummeting to the ground. At the point you're near the ground you're actually sailing in your parachute. Whereas with bungy you get the full rush because you are so close.
Now adrenaline junkies would see this as a positive but it actually frightened me.
But I'm stubborn and determined to do it so I sign up and head out to the bridge and I'm starting to think wow this is high. They strap me into my leg harness and I'm really thinking it looks high. I tell the guys I'm terrified and they are trying to work me up to do it. I inch out to the ledge with one of the guys and I'm doubting whether I can do it.
So this is the moment. The guide says 3-2-1 and I... well I bend my knees but I don't jump. In fact I don't think I can jump because they are shaking so badly. I hear the crowd gasp.
Then he tells me to just jump because staying up there just makes it harder. So 3-2-1 and I... kind of jump but really just a bigger knee bend and the crowd gasps louder and I really think I can't do it. But I have to do it. There's no way out of this. So I tell him that this time I'm doing it.
3-2-1 and I go. I scream the entire time. There were people on my tour in the parking lot that can hear me. It wasn't just a scream on the way down but the way down, the way back up, the way back down, the way back up. Finally I run out of scream and the guys in the raft below want me to scream once more - but I can't.
So what can I say. I'm glad I did it. The free fall was so terrifying. It's like when you're in bed almost asleep and all of a sudden you think you're falling and you try to stop yourself. Except this time you are falling for two seconds. You would not believe you long two seconds lasts.
But I conquered it and I may never do it again, time to move onto something else that is scary. But not today. And not tomorrow either.
Below are some pics that one of the girls took for me. I also got the DVD which I'll burn and send to you and I'll scan the pictures they gave me which are much better.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Helihike on Franz Josef
I was going to stay here another day to go kayaking but there is supposed to be heavy rain tomorrow so it'll be a good day to take a bus ride to Queenstown and I may try to catch the fjords in Milford Sound.
Oh it was wild...
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Sometimes a hole in the wall can be fun
I was quite surprised how much I liked Magic Bus. All the girls from the wine tour were riding it. It's a pretty good group of people and very diverse in age. The nice thing about it is that they stop several times on your way from one location to the next so that you can take a look at some of the tourist things you would have missed. The driver is also very good pointing out things and telling you what to do/where to stay.
We arrived at Greymouth and I was prepared for the worst. In all travellers accounts I've heard that Greymouth is the pit stain of the South Island. All the shuttles use it as an overnight stop on the coast but it's a very ugly town with nothing to do.
The hostel, Noah's Ark is quite nice, there is a huge kitchen and all the rooms have animal themes. I stayed in a dorm room with 4 other people and met a girl from France, Marie, who has been here 5 months working on a holiday visa. She was trying to get a ride to Nelson because she was so broke she couldn't afford a shuttle.
Not much was going on. It was a typical tavern with old men drinking and watching sports. The beer was really cheap, about $2.50 CDN for a drink, so I bought Marie and I draught remembering what it's like to be broke and hoping that I'm never as poor as she is right now.
The dinner was surprisingly good, I guess charcoal can make anything tasty and we stayed for the band. It reminded me a bit of the Edge, a band playing Bryan Adams and Joan Jett and no one dancing except the crazy guy. It started to heat up once a drunk lady brought her rhythmically-challenged but eager to please husband out to dance. She also decided that our table should dance so I actually got up for I love rock and roll.
The best part was some drunk Kiwi guy decides he's going to tell the two Scottish girls what's wrong with Scotland and how to fix it, except he kept getting them mixed up with the Irish but he knew what was wrong with them too - or so he thought. His equally inebriated friend was bright enough to interpret that the girls' rolled eyes and looks of disdain and carried him away to go to another bar.
All in all I think it was the best night you could possibly have in Greymouth.
Friday, March 9, 2007
New Zealand has great wines
The flight was only an hour but they didn't take us through the metal detector or x-ray our carry-on luggage. Apparently they don't think that anyone will bomb the plane while in it, atleast going to Nelson I guess.
My first impression of the South Island is that it is absolutely stunning, if you could cram all the wonderful landscapes of Canada into a tiny country it would look very similar. While in Fiji I had asked several people what they recommended in New Zealand and universally they said it didn't matter where you went because it was all beautiful and I would agree.
Nelson is a very small. I find some of the New Zealand towns very odd in that their sole purpose is to support the tourism industry. Without transient backpackers coming through the towns likely wouldn't exist. It's just an eerie feeling when they look at you in the grocery store like they're happy to have you but you're also a pain in their ass. There must be a good analogy there of something that you need to have but it's a pain. I'll keep thinking.
The shuttle bus driver told me that I had picked the best hostel and he was right. It was extremely clean and the people were very nice. It is relatively low-key because most people are getting ready to leave the next morning or go to Abel Tasman to kayak or hike. I had a really quiet night, I didn't have the energy to be friendly and meet lots of people so once I settled in I went to bed. However, I came to learn that most people at this hostel are often in bed at 10 or 11pm. Nelson isn't exactly a party city.
The main tourist street in Nelson, very nice but the service is terrible. The first night I had a pint and waited over half an hour for the waitress to come back and ask if I wanted another. Finally I went to the bar and paid. The second night I was at a pub and waited over an hour for dinner, after everyone at the table had already eaten, they forgot to put my order through even though they kept saying it would be there shortly. Maybe they should work for tips.
I hadn't been to any vineyards and Kelley was quite disappointed so I thought I would do a tour. It was cheaper than Abel Tasman and I knew I could kayak elsewhere. Also, it was a lovely afternoon to consume a bottle of wine.
Before we get to the drinking I should try to recall the things I learned:
1) 90% of New Zealand's plants/trees are not native. You see a lot of oak and pine from North America.
2) 95% of New Zealand's trees are evergreen so they don't experience fall like we would.
3) New Zealand also introduced a lot of animals to the country which wreaked havoc. The most notorious is the oppossum which they brought over for the fur trade which subsequently went belly up. Unfortunately there is no natural predator so they eat all the kiwi bird eggs, destroy the forests and New Zealand declared war (well they did 50 years ago) and are trying to kill them off - I should actually credit that factoid to Jacob who told me on the way back from Gisborne.
Okay back to the wine:
The tour was mostly couples but there were several solo women and one man from Chile. It's funny how women seem to come together when traveling alone, you become friends immediately and you're always asked out to dinner or to events because people know you have no one else to go out with. In fact, in some ways I think it's better than travelling with someone because you meet so many people. Whereas if you see a couple you just assume they want to do things on their own.
So I spent most of the day drinking wine, eating bread and antipasto with a girl from England, another from Scotland and two women from Ontario and Ireland. They had quite a few wines that I knew I liked. They also had the German 'box o wine' that we have at Christmas.
After a tour to 5 vineyards in the summer heat we headed back home. I had a nap and then met the women from the tour for dinner at a local pub.