Here I Go Again

“What a day!” Is what we were all saying Monday night. We’ve got some new buddy’s by way of Rich (cheers rich), Steffan, who’s from Machen and his mate Ben, they both work at this camp and conference centre called Living Springs. We got in contact with them and they asked if we wanted to go out on a tramp, this was a no brainer because the alternative was probably staying on the settee all day.

So they came to pick us up at 8am, getting up for that was a shock to the system I tell you! We set off in the wrong direction but didn’t know this until Jon noticed it on the GPS by which time we had gone to far to turn around so kept going and took the next right so we ended up doing a triangle before even getting back on the right heading to where we were going. Lesson learned.

It wasn’t long after that we got to a police checkpoint checking for drink drivers (It was the day after the world cup final). Steffan wasn’t drunk but he’d been using his UK licence for 6 months more than he should have and the nice policeman kindly told him that he could give him a $400 fine and take his car from him. Thankfully he didn’t and let him off with a warning, saying if he was to drive it any more, that’s what would happen, then told him to drive off (logic?). Thinking it might have been some kind of test, we pulled over and I drove. They failed to notice there was no tax disc in the window either (Steffan has paid for that and its in the post) :-).

Thanking God we carried on determined to get to Arthur’s Pass and finally got there about 12:30, checked what routes there were and told the guys at the information desk our plan. I had to change into a pair of Steffan’s trousers and borrow Ben’s boots coz Jeans and trainers weren’t gonna cut it apparently and that turned out to be very true.

It only took 5 minutes after starting the climb that I found out how unfit I am and we had to keep stopping every other 5 minutes to take a 10 minute breather, but it gave us time to look at the waterfalls. Despite the constant stopping we did get up there in good time and getting to the snow was cool. The trick is to step in the footprints of the man before you, but this didn’t always work as you’d step in that footprint but your foot would go another two foot down and you’d be stuck in snow up to your hip.

It wasn’t far now to the top and the views were awesome! Check the pictures. We found another of those cheeky Kea’s perched on a ledge and it’s amazing how close they let you get, their just not bothered by anyone and we fed it out of our hands when we reached the top.

Coming down was a lot more fun, because the snow was about 6 foot deep in places, you could run down and not worry about falling over and literally slide down some parts (but trying not to slide over the edge). Great fun :-D.

When we reached the bottom, it was straight into the nearest café for a much needed cup of tea.

The next stop was a place called Castle Hill which is close to where some of The Lord Of The Rings and Narnia scenes were filmed. Its a range of limestone boulders that make for some good bouldering and picture taking. There are a few well known challenges such as being able to straight up of one that was a test of becoming a man in an Maori tradition (something along those lines any, I will check up on it) I got to the top of it but I cheated… and another which is called the chimney, a small (small) gap that you can climb through which I’m chuffed at doing :-).

I can see us going there again and spending more time there though because we were all quite tired after climbing a mountain but still had a awesome time. (Better than sitting on the settee all day).

What better way to finish off a day than with a nice meal? Steffan and Ben introduced us to a Chinese restaurant called Yummies that make meals with their own ‘yummy’ sauce which is actually yummy believe it or not. Anyway, after coming out of the Chinese we found the car with the lights on ha ha, and guess who had been driving… Buffy (The car) didn’t want to start so we had to bump start it, on legs that just couldn’t take any more lol.

So that was our Monday. What a day!

Out.

Avalanche Peak

Castle Hill

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 at 4:41 am and is filed under New Zealand, The Big Trip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.