Santa Costume Wearing, Knife Making and Glacier Climbing

After my soggy accent to the top of Mt Doom, I stuck around the hostel for a while, playing board games, watching (aka, falling asleep in front of) films, and massaging my aching calf muscles before my bus departed from Turangi at 1.45AM. I got to the bus stop early so that I could look at the stars in the cloudless sky. They were just so beautiful because the level of light pollution was so low, and the air is so clear over here. A five hour bus journey then ensued which took me to Wellington, the capital of New Zealand.

When I got there at 6.30AM, there was very little to do, so I resorted to having a McDonald's breakfast and falling asleep in the corner for an hour, after which, I went over to the Houses of Parliament. Oddly enough, there was a troop of people wearing Santa costumes. Confused as to what they were doing at this time, dressed in this way, I went over to ask what was going on. It turns out they were promoting a fun run (where you had to dress as Santa to take part. Much less exciting that I thought - I thought there would be some sort of protest) that was going to occur later in the day, and that the news team from Channel One was going to be there shortly. I was bored, and it was still two hours before anything in Wellington opened up, so I decided to ask if I could join in, and sure enough, there was a spare Santa outfit lying around. I put it on and tried my hardest to make myself look presentable for television after two weeks of living out of a backpack (although the only parts of me that were visible were my eyes and nose anyway). It's a good job smellavision hasn't been invented yet. Just saying.

When the news team arrived, we did a very cheesy Rocky-style running up and down the set of stairs outside parliament building, occasionally throwing a few punches into mid air while trying to hide our laughter with our fake beards. At the end of the clip, we all ran into the distance and for some reason we were told to stop and wiggle our bottoms every so often. And this is the start of my career as an international superstar, but I'm sure that will be a story for another day.

After this I headed over to New Zealand's biggest museum - Te papa (Mauri for 'our place'). It was actually a really good museum, with lots of interactive installments so that children (and child-like people like me) don't get bored, and they did a good job of explaining Mauri culture and the science behind the earthquake in Christchurch. Shortly after this I went to catch a ferry over to the South Island. Strangely enough, I ran into a man called Kevin. I met Kevin the day before on the shuttle bus to the start of the Alpine crossing, so we spent most of the ferry journey contemplating travel plans for the south, and exchanging stories of travels so far. We decided that we'd part ways when we the boat landed in Picton, but exchanged details because it looked like we'd have pretty similar plans after a few days. A nearby girl called Julia overheard our conversation and decided to come and talk to us, she said she was going to try and hitch hike around for a while but she was nervous because she'd never done it before. Since we were heading the same way, I said I'd go with her - and so, I had a new travel companion, Julia from Wellington.

Julia and I with a hippy lady that gave us a lift

Even though we didn't start until 5pm, it was still surprisingly easy to get a lift! We got picked up three times and were in Nelson that night. There wasn't a lot there. I think it's just a place to stop off on the way to the west coast or to the Abel-Tasman reserve (which I was gutted that I didn't have time to visit). Julia had a friend in Nelson, who was supposed to hook us both up with free accommodation for the night, but the parents are super strict Christians and were opposed to a boy sleeping in the house, so Julia and I parted ways, after a shot but sweet four hours of companionship.

I reluctantly stayed in a hostel that night after the offer of a free place to stay was cruelly snatched from right in front of my face, but its a good job I did, because one of the guys I got chatting to said that he'd hired a car and was heading over to the west coast, so kindly offered to take me to Westport - the top of the west coast of New Zealand's South Island. On all of the maps, Westport looks like a major city with heaps of things to see in do. In reality there is one road with shops on it, and a beach which takes 45 minutes to get to where the water is too cold to swim.

It didn't take long to get bored of Westport, and so the next day, I hitched a lift out of there, and began my journey down the coast. I'd heard that the drive between Westport and Greymouth was meant to be amazing, with beautiful scenery and winding roads. This was enhanced by the guy who picked me up. A retired English man who has fallen in love with New Zealand and just can't stop coming back, called John. I had a great time in John's car - mainly because he seemed fascinated by everything I said. We talked about science, and he was keen to ask me lots of questions about the chemistry and geology of the world. I did my best to answer his questions accurately, but remembering those geology lessons from five years ago was a bit of a struggle, so I must admit that some of my answers were slightly on the fictional side. I think I got away with it though. Since he was a tourist as well, we stopped off at the pancake rocks (rocks that look like stacks of thick pancakes) and he even bought me a pot of tea and some chips. When we got to my next destination of Barrytown, I discovered that the hostel there had been closed down, so John even offered to take me to the nearest hostel, which involved going back on ourselves. It was a shame to part company with John, since he was such a kind, generous and interesting man, but I suppose that is the way of a hitch hiker!

That night I stayed in the Punakaiki Beach hostel. Obviously I'm not going to bore you all with the details of every hostel I stay in, but this one was just great. It sits right on a a quiet beach where you can just walk up and down collecting jade stone and with a backdrop of the southern Alpine mountain range. That evening, I sat and watched the sun set over the sea, and it was the most vibrantly red sunset I'd ever seen. Everything about this place was beautiful, and I kind of didn't want to leave, but the next day I set off, back to Barrytown, where I spent the day making a knife. From scratch. And by coincidence, Kevin was there too!

We started with a piece of steel, a plank of wood, some brass and a length of metal. Steven, the man who took the course, showed us some of the finished products, and we all thought the same thing: how on earth are we going to turn these things into one of those?! It was a long day of hammering, grinding, sanding and and sawing, but sure enough, at the end of the day, we all ended up with beautiful knives! We finished the day with a glass of Barrypagne (boxed wine from Barry passed through a soda stream), and Kevin and I continued down the west coast towards the Franz-Joseph glacier. The west coast is very sparsely populated, so there was very little traffic. We managed to get 20km away from the glacier that night, but ended up having to sleep in Kevin's tent on the side of the road because the sun had set and we were both exhausted from walking 10km from our last drop off point. Luckily, when we woke up the next morning at about 6.30, I managed to hitch us a lift in the first car that passed us! We went to drop off our bags in a hostel, and spent the rest of the day hiking up the Franz-Joseph glacier, apparently the world's steepest and fastest flowing commercially guided glacier.

It was a sunny day for the most part, which really made the blue ice on the glacier stand out. I'm aware that I overuse these words a lot in these blogs, but it looked amazing and beautiful. The pictures don't really capture it, but they never do... Sadly, the ice is melting at such a fast rate that they think that pretty soon the glacier won't be there, so if you want to have a look for yourself, then I'd do it in the next few years! After the eight hour glacier walk, Kevin and I went to the local hot pools (included in the price of the glacier walk - result!) and stayed long enough to sooth our aching muscles and wrinkle our skin.

The next morning, we got up early to try and hitch a ride to the infamous adventure capital of New Zealand - Queenstown. We stood on the side of the road for about half an hour, but only two or three cars even drove past... It was a hopeless cause, so we just got on the Intercity bus and paid our way there. Finally I was here. This is the place I'd been most looking forward to for my entire trip. Adventure ensued.