January 21st..... Best Monday InYears

21st January 2013 We awoke to a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky and crisp mountain air nipping at our ears. We had a half hour to kill before heading out to the quad bike ride so we grabbed some breaky and walked along the bay.

It’s official, I’m allowed to buy us all quad bikes now, Jodi had a ball. They spent the first half an hour seeing how to split the groups up, so I didn’t see Jodi much while we were out there, she was in the “not so fast group” on a little automatic CanAm while I was on a little Suzuki.

Being a bike rider I kept stuffing up the brake, throttle and gears. A bike is 1 down 5 up, the quad is 5 up with neutral at the bottom. The left lever is the rear brake, not the clutch, there is a thumb throttle not a twist grip.....

After a quick “do’s and don’ts” we were off into the hills, creeks, gullies, cow paddocks and whatever else we could find on this 11,000acre property.

We were back in town on the bay for a drink by 1.30pm.

Mmmmm.... what to do next..... how about paragliding, you bet.

That’s me, I have video footage to put up later. Let me tell you that paragliding is a hoot, after a slight anxiety attack when I looked down and realised we were 2000’ above Queenstown I calmed down and just enjoyed the flight. We were back at the harbour about 4.00pm too early to head back to the motel .... what to do....how about a Jetboat ride across the lake and up the Shotover River, sounds fair to me.

Well, tomorrow we fly back home, Jodi doesn’t want too, I keep telling her I’m going to print a heap of photo’s and make a collage with the caption under it saying “this is why we work”. It’s been a huge 12 days looking back, we’ve ticked a number of things off the list but we’ll be back, guaranteed, this place is awesome.

back to Queenstown

January 20th There’s only one kind of day to have over here....huge... We left Te Anau about 8am, it was a bit cold, windy and overcast, not much of a day really but the scenery soon puts you in a better mood, Jodi reckons she is suffering scenery fatigue again, too much to look at so she reads a book while we drive along, she’s left it up to me to take photo’s now.

The sunrise and sunsets are both drawn out down here at south of Tasmania, it gets dark about 10pm and it’s not really sunny until about 8.30 – 9.00am, hence you can get some good light pictures without getting up too early. On the way back to Queenstown I snapped these ones of the hills.

I also managed a crop inspection, so guess this is a work trip after all hey.

Even saw a few of the more intelligent local up close again.

Also found my next business already setup and ready to buy... seriously doubt it would pay as good as boring old grain brokerage but I’m thinking the life style might help compensate the lack of income.

This is a great pic of the southern reaches of the lake out the front of Queenstown.

We had an hour or so to kill before the bus left for the jet boats so we cruised around the main streets, Jodi checked out the opposition over a cup of coffee.

We also found this gallery promoting this animation, it’s based around these dog / human things that live in the area, apparently Disney has bought the rights so it might be on a screen soon.

Around illivin fifti we jumped on the bus to take us to Skippers Canyon to go jet boating. The ride through this goat track to the Shotover river was better than the jet boats. This is the view from the top before we head down into the canyon.

Some of the road had 100mtr cliff to the left and 100mtr rise the right and the road was about 12’ wide.

We strapped on the life vests and jumped on the boats and done a 9k run up the river, it was fun but I thought he was sparing the ponies a bit myself, I had the GoPro filming it so I’ll post up some vids later.

Back off the boat we headed to a area to have a good look at the canyon we just boated down before heading back to town.

After a slight run in with the motel about room allocation I got over my case of the shits and settled on what they gave us, it’s better than the last one they gave us a couple of nights ago but still nothing like what I thought the travel agent had booked, I think next time I’ll just book it all myself so I don’t get the disappointments with the rooms I’ve had this trip. The motel dude let it slip and said "these are the rooms we allocate travel agent booking", implying they get the shit rooms !!!. This is the view we have tonight, better than the compost heap and chook shed the other day but still not what I was expecting.

We’ll we are off quad biking through the mountains tomorrow morning and if the wind dies down I might have a crack at tandem paragliding or get a chopper ride to the glaziers, we’ll see.

Te Anau 19-1-13

Saturday January 19th 2013 We drove about 170ks SW of Queenstown to Te Anau today.

There is some very good grazing country around here, lots of sheep, cattle and dear.

Yet another beautiful town on another beautiful lake. This place is much more laid back than Queenstown, the scenery is not quite as spectacular but pretty impressive all the same.

Te Anau is basically the gate way to Milford Sound, initially I had full intentions of driving to Milford Sound and spending the night at Te Anau on the way back but as it turned out we were both sick of driving and getting stuck behind camper vans and the day was less than ideal. Rain early cleared but only due to the fact a roaring southerly pushed it out. We drove around the town for a while and fell in love with the laid back nature of the place. We ended up in the burbs where all the new houses were getting build. There was an open house so we called in and had a look, it was a nice little holiday house about 20sq on a small 800mtr block worth about $350k,so comparable to Gunnedah, with the currency converted to AUD it would work out around $280k............anyone interested.

I called the local water plane and he said it was too choppy to take off at Te Anau and way to choppy and pouring rain at Milford Sound to land so we just bailed on the idea today and headed back to the room for a lazy afternoon, well when you get the spa suite you may as well use it. After a nice meal we walked along the edge of the lake as long as we could in the cold wind and grabbed a few pics. I’m glad I bought a good jumper this afternoon or I would have froze.

While shopping this afternoon I found these two guns, the first one is set up for night hunting while the damage on the second one was done when the riffle was fired when it had frozen.

January 18th

Friday January 18th Queenstown. It was another brilliant day to wake up to, NZ still amazes me, at every corner there is a postcard picture for the taking.

I wasn’t looking forward to today as it was the day we had the canyon swing booked it. I had failed to read the voucher correctly the night before and assumed we had between 9 – 12 to get the jump done. We were supposed to be at the jump pickup at 9.00am The phone with the navman failed again, it’s going in the bin when I get home, so we took a while to find the office for the canyon swing, we’d missed the bus, now those that understand vertigo may think I done this intentionally but I can assure you I didn’t. Anyway, after a bit of talking we managed to get the next bus out and we were on our way to the swing...... yay..... -___-

Before we go any further I have to tell you straight up I failed, it just simply terrified me, so I bailed, no if buts or maybe I just straight up said, no way, don’t even try to convince me otherwise, this ain’t happening. I’ll hand my man card in at customs next week, whatever just get me off this platform.

Now Jodi on the other hand just strapped up, clipped on and jumped off ....... twice... once forward and once backward, all this is on video and I will get it uploaded once we get some decent line speed. She screamed, swore and cursed so I’m not sure if Youtube will give the video an R rating or not but she seemed to really enjoy it...... She’s a legend ok, I’m not, I simply don’t give a f$%k ok. We cruised back into Queenstown around lunchtime and headed up to the gondola and luge and wasted a couple of hours luging up and down the mountain, this is way more up my alley than jumping off stuff, Jodi got sun burnt and had a continually bored look on her face but managed to find fear in the chair lift, it doesn’t figure to me, jump off a cliff Jodi, hell yeah, but ooo, arrrr the chair lift is so frightening it gives me pins and needles in the feet, seriously I find this women hard to figure out some days.

Jodi is looking to do a fair dinkum bungy the day before we head back, it will be this one

or Nevis. Apparently Nevis is the highest in the southern hemisphere. ( she just looked Nevis up on the net as I was typing, she’s not so sure now, we’ll see, she does appear to be a little deranged.. lol..). The harbour here at Queenstown is awesome, like everything else. We watched a bunch of 15lb rainbow trout getting fed and then jumped on a boat for a quick tout of the inner harbour, I’m pretty sure the local real estate agent sponsored this guy.

I saw the golf course you talked about Don, but I ran out of time to do a round today, maybe on Sunday or Monday after the jet boat ride. We are off to Te Anau tomorrow, we will book a heli tour for the morning and look at the Sounds and Glaziers and then take it easy tomorrow afternoon. Our lodgings.