Climbing a Giant Mint

Due to this shittily organised blogging platform, and the fact I wrote this after the ones below, this is here. This in fact happened before Greymouth. You wouldn't know the difference but I thought I'd be honest with you. For once.


One of the single best things that we have done in the ten and a bit months that we have been away so far was climb Fox Glacier.

The drive there was equally picturesque, going through Haast and staying at a series of lookout points, adding to the piles of rocks as we went.






The trip we went on was organised through a company that essentially monopolises the whole place, but we didn't really care. We went up in a group of about twenty people. One girl climbed up in a mini skirt. She was ill prepared. To balance that out though, rather like Samuel Louise Jackson does to Bruce Willis in the confused film Unbreakable, there was this man.


He looks funny, but he was actually a bit of a dick. He refused to walk where we were meant to walk, and our guide had to constantly tell him to be sensible, bearing in mind that two brothers had died on the glacier only two weeks previous because they went beyond the cordoned off area.




This day was pretty hard work but really rewarding and interesting, plus we made good friends with our guide. When we told him we had to get back in our cars and drive on, he invited us all back to his flat to shower, and even tried to get us to come to a barbecue at his mate's house.

After all that walking and falling over, we pushed on up towards Greymouth.

But obviously not before stopping off to see the world famous post box in a tree with a welly nailed to it. Wouldn't have missed that for the world.

Quite incredible, eh?

Feeling Small

We arrived at Greymouth after a massive slog of a journey. Jimbo was staying in what looked to be an absolutely awesome hostel. He desperately wanted to go to a town where you could make knives. I think he actually planned on making a sword to take back to Manchester.


We visited the Pancake Rocks, which were interesting but not as interesting as our little piles of rocks that we had made along the road. They did look like pancakes though. Ours looked more like burgers. This one looked like a penguin.


There was also this mental thing that looked a bit like the Predator.


The drive after Greymouth was absolutely awe inspiring. That evening we met two American guys, both farm boys that were doing the same trip as us but sleeping outside. Fucking mental.


We looked up at the beautiful stars and soon the conversation got onto the universe, its origins and what we believed our place to be in it.


The next day I followed through in the car trying to fart in Helen´s face.

Queenstown Revisited

We were forced by the New Zealand road system to trundle back to Queenstown again. We went up in the cable car to the lookout point, where we laughed at fat people getting stuck in the tunnel on the go-karts, and miserably lamented the fact that we couldn't afford to go on the go-karts.

Later that afternoon we met Jimbo again when we broke into his hostel and snuck a shower.

Before long we were off again, heading up to Greymouth. For some unrecorded reason I had lots of sudocream on my face.

Here, through the miracle of fucking up information in a blog, we met Jimbo again.

Tea. Now.

On the way to Te Anau, we stopped off on the side of the road where we had seen signs for Mirror Lakes. Simon White had told me about this place and I was keen to try and get some really good photos. By now we had almost, but not quite, become immune to the incessant buzzing and biting of the sandflies, and braved it for a while as the scenery was intensely stunning, not quite reflected below.




We hopped back in the car and drove on, narrowly missing a flock of sheep that were being diverted down the road to get shot in the head. Probably.


Te Anau is a strange place. 

We found somewhere to park up, which we were reasonably sure was some random farmer's land. After eating, constantly hiding from this make-believe farmer that was about to evict us at any minute, Dan and I tried to calm Helen's nerves and she went to sleep, safe in the knowledge that I surely wouldn't lie to her about whose land we were on.

At two in the morning a jeep with massive spotlights on the top of it screamed past our vans. It stopped, reversed back just long enough to allow us to see that there were three men with guns in it. It then bezzed it off again. This was pretty eerie Indiana.

We had another great meal here for lunch, and then decided it was time to move on. On the road further up, I got to live a dream. A Salisbury piss along the length of a steam train.

Milford Sound Kinda Makes Me Wanna Party

Rain. Sandflies. Cheesy Chips. Boats. More rain. Our first shower in five days. In a waterfall. It was so cold that it burned. 


Did get a free soup and a couple of beers out of it. Helen, for the second time of the trip, got mistaken for a twelve-year-old girl that had braved it outside too. Not in her pants though.

Plus some Japanese tourists got some fantastic shots. Including the obligatory Titanic shot below.

In reality, this was one of the most interesting and beautiful places that we have yet been. At first we were highly disappointed that the weather had come in so much, but I actually think that it added to the mystique of the place.

There were also these crazy parrot like birds called 'Kea'. 

They were absolutely fearless and had a proper go at Dan's car.


After two days here, it was time to move onwards and upwards, to Te Anau.

Queenstown, The First Time Around

The very next day we were back on the road and hitting it hard, like it was some kind of big wasp holding a nursery to ransom.

Our next port of call was Queenstown ('Well, they're all the Queen's towns mate', as I tried to say multiple times, not once appropriately or amusingly). Queenstown was pretty pleasant, if slightly stringent on where you can park.

We found a nice spot a good fifteen minutes drive outside of town. It was a government-maintained camping spot, or DOC site, which we should have put money inside an envelope for as a 'donation' but there weren´t any envelopes, so they lost out. Simple admin. In 1929 it was exactly this kind of lacklustre envelope distribution that led to the Wall Street Crash.

Here we got more adventurous with our culinary exploits. Dan and I, and notably not Helen, got rather chilly when we swam and washed in the glacial lake that was next to our camp spot, and the next day I went on an explore and got a bit wanky with my camera. (Wanky in a ´trying to be arty´ way, rather than using my camera as a masturbatory aid. What would have been more impressive is up to you to decide.)




'Twas in Queenstown that we met Dan's previous travelling buddy Jimbo. At this point he was also bouncing around with a mate called Rick. That evening we had our most adventurous dinner yet - it even had meat in it - and a German lady made an all-too-literal direct translation and wished us a 'Good appetite'. Which was nice.

After dindins we went to a bar and had a few 2for1 beers and a boogie to a band that did reasonable covers of really good bands' songs. I got started on by a Goth that wore a leather collar and sunglasses at night, we spotted an absolutely hooned thirty-year-old woman walking around mine-sweeping, and I nearly bought a burger for the equivalent of about £11. Fun times.

The next day we went to see the little cove which sort of serves as a beach, I nicked some Brazilians's ball (they had three, which is just greedy) and tried unsuccessfully to show off in front of them, at which point I went back and shaved my head the closest that it's been since I had crabs.

Nits.

Lake Tekapoo

After a quick panic that we would never be able to find our way out of Christchurch, we found ourselves on the long and winding road to Lake Tekapo.


We had seen pictures on the internet and in guidebooks of the lake and its surroundings, but nothing that small could adequately sum up the breathtaking tranquillity of the place as you tipped over the hill down into the valley. At that point, it was the most beautiful landscape that I had ever seen. And I´ve been to Ironbridge.


We pulled up by the church that was perched at the top of a small hill, Dan had said that he had stayed there the previous night. We couldn´t see him, but took the time to soak up the view and the serenity of the lake.







We got back in the van and went up into the 'town' area, which consisted of a petrol station, a post office and a public loo. We grabbed some quick-cook noodles from the garage and as we were returning to the church area we noticed a horrifically garish van was parked down by the lake. As we approached we read the message on the back of it, 'POLICE... PLEASE STOP FOLLOWING ME. I´M EVER SO NERVOUS...'

If our van was a bit bigoted, Dan's was at best ill-conceived. Apart from the fact that it obviously attracted the wrong sort of attention, it was written as though they thought they had a much bigger van to draw on. The last sentence was crammed into about a square foot whilst the 'PLEASE' and 'STOP' were huge. This was the first time of at least a thousand that we read it and winced.

Sneaking up behind Dan's car, the best we could in a nine foot monstrosity of an Espace vehicle, we jumped out and bashed on his window. Cue much hugging and rejoicing at finally making it. The next thought on our minds was, of course, where on earth are we going to poo?

We jumped into our travel-wagons and cruised down right next to the lake. This was slightly naughty, but Dan insisted that he had slept there the night before and no one had forcibly evicted him, like the gypsy scum that he pretends not to be. We can all see through that moustache Daniel. The upper lip is not the window to your blackened soul, and the hair band makes you look rather silly. Where was I? Erm...

We set up camp (or parked, as it´s known) under a big tree and surveyed the area once more. It truly was inconceivably stunning. The lake was a blue that you see on adverts for big TVs that talk about outstanding colour (which, incidentally, I've never understood, as if I can see that the colour is good on that tele from my own tele, why would I need the other tele?), the snow tipped mountains in the distance shimmered under the heat of the sun and the clouds were beginning to form in the crevice between the hills like a giant cotton finger scratching a magnificent green arse.




We got our camping stoves out and made our first of very many batches of the Kiwi equivalent of Super Noodles. Then it dawned on me, I´m going to shit myself in the most beautiful place I've ever been.


The public toilets were too far away and there was no way that I could lengthen my stride to a jog without a disaster. Then I spotted a small hostel off up the small hill. This was it, all of the practice doing McPoo's was going to have to come to fruition here.

Scrambling like a three legged giraffe with its head stuck in the passenger window of a mini metro up the small but seemingly ever increasing hill, I reached the front door of the hostel. Fuck. Fucking receptionist bastard. Right, think Chris, think. Use the McPoo with Lies technique. I couldn´t think clearly though, as the massive sign on the door saying 'This hostel and all of its amenities are for paying guests only' was clouding my brain.

'Hi, I'm looking for John, has he checked in yet?' I murmured with all the confidence of a eunuch at a porn shoot.

'Erm, let me just have a look... We've got three Johns here at the moment actually, which one are you looking for?' Said the hostel man, he could smell the fear on my breath. Fear and Mega Noodles.

'I don't actually know his surname, we only met in Auckland a couple of days ago. He's quite a big guy, with hair.' With hair? Jesus Crispies.

'Ah, that John! He's just gone to the post office, do you want to wait for him?'

'If that's all right, yeah. Cheers.'

I went to walk into the common room where I could see someone playing pool, but the bloke pulled me back with an 'Erm...' Fuck. He gestured to the chair behind me. There was no way I could poo on that. Not with him there looking right at me anyway.

I had no choice. I made a quick dash to the bog and locked the toilet behind me. Luckily, as I'm not great under pressure, I didn't have much choice in the matter of whether I would be able to go to the toilet or not. I was expecting a bang on the door any minute. Or for the whole toilet to collapse and a T-Rex to pick me up in its gnashers and swing me round breaking every bone in my body. But nothing came.

'Do you want to leave a message for John?' the Receptionist asked, almost as though I hadn't just broken rule 1a of the hostel code.

'Yes please. Can you tell him that I haven't forgotten about what he did for me.'
'Sorry?'
'No, I´m not sorry.'

Sprinting full pelt back to the van I realised that I no longer knew how to lie.