Travelling Second Week

Monday: I got up early to be ready at eight o'clock at the alpine recreation, but unfortunately the reception opened only at eight, so I had to wait until then to check out. I arrived about five minutes late, but that didn't really matter. Waiting for me was Gottlieb Braun-Elwert, the guide, as well as Andre, who worked for Gottlieb and a couple who lives in Perth, Australia. Theodora originally was from Ireland and Jon from Chicago, but they now lived in Australia. We checked all the equipment and got the stuff we didn't have from Gottliebs stock. Fortunately his biggest hiking-shoes were just the right size for me. Then we drove over to Mount Cook Village and Gottlieb checked in, that means he told the information centre we were going into the park. We finally started walking at about quarter to twelve, and the weather was cloudy and dreary. First we climbed up a pretty steep, rocky section and then we put on our snow-shoes to hike to Caroline Hut. The snow was pretty deep and it was hard work for our leader Gottlieb to stamp the track. It was about half past four when we finally finished the 800 meter altitude difference and arrived at the hut. We spent the evening in the cosy warm hut next to a fire in the stove and Gottlieb talked about his former trips and his experiences in the mountains.
Tuesday: We got up at about seven o'clock and after eating breakfast we got ready for today's hike. We climbed up near Ball Pass to a little peak called quadruple two, because it's height was exactly 2222 meters above sea level. In the beginning it was pretty cloudy but now it opened for a while and we had a fantastic panorama and sunshine for our lunch-break. But suddenly there were dark clowds appearing over Mount Cook and Gottlieb was anxious about an upcoming storm he heard about in the weather forecasts. It would only come by Wednesday, but perhaps it was too late to go down on Wednesday and he thought about going down and back to Lake Tekapo already today. But after half an hour a new front was coming up and pushed the dark clouds away, so Gottlieb decided to go down early on Wednesday morning. The evening ran about the same way as the day before: tea and biscuits, dinner, talking. Now we had to go to bed especially early, who knew how early we would have to get up the next morning.
Wednesday: We got up at quarter to five and prepared everything for the descent. We left the hut at half past six, still in the darkness. The others had head-lamps, but I had to manage to see something with my hand-torch, what worked as well. We finally arrived down in the valley on the glacier moraine at nine o'clock. We went back to Mount Cook Village, gave Gottlieb all his equipment back and then went for a tea in a nearby hut of the New Zealand Alpine Club. Now I said goodbye to my new friends from Australia, because they stayed in Mount Cook Village. Back in Lake Tekapo I helped to put away all the gear and then had a cup of tea with Gottlieb, his wife and Andre. Looking at the weather forecast and because I was back so early I decided to cancel the second night in Lake Tekapo and go to Christchurch already on Thursday. Because I had booked and payed the accommodation in Nelson, it wasn't quite easy to do that, but I eventually got it changed. After that I went to the hot pool in Lake Tekapo and it was a great way to relax after these three days to have a hot bath. (One of the outside pools was about 38° C). The place even provided free wireless internet access for customers and I used that to update my blog.
Thursday: When I looked out the window in the morning I saw a lot of snow. Possibly twenty or thirty centimetres. The magic bus didn’t leave because the road was closed, as Ms Braun-Elwert had predicted it yesterday. So I watched a movie until noon, but then decided to see whether it’s possible to drive or not. The other guests in the hostel were surprised, that I was leaving and told me I was crazy. Though a Californian girl from my room asked me, if I could give her a ride as she had to be in Christchurch today. The hardest part of the drive was to get out of the car park because of all the snow. But then it was quite easy to drive, only a little bit wet snow on the road, no ice and I made several break-tests and the car never slipped away. I didn’t even have snow-chains which were essential due to a sign on the road. Although it was no problem to drive it was still quite an adventure, but I didn’t regret my decision a second. The good thing was that I had good company from this Californian girl. We stopped somewhere on the way for lunch and a second time for a hot chocolate. Then there was a little pile-up and I asked myself why, but after a little while we could go on and I found out the reason: a guy in a orange jacket told me, they had just opened the road but I still had to drive very carefully because there were many flooded parts. In Christchurch I dropped the girl of at the YHA and then went to the museum. I took me a while to find a car park and then I realised that I had no coin to feed the tax meter. So I had to find a free parking. The one in the nearby park was for free and it was only five minutes to walk from there to the museum. Unfortunately it was already half past four and the museum closed at five o’clock. I just had enough time to get a good survey of the things to see there and decided to come back the next morning. Although I had a pretty good description from Amanda how to get to her house it took me ages to find it. I already spent more than half an hour until I realised that her place was about seventeen kilometres out of town in a little village called West Melton. There I had to turn right at the BP-Station and then take the second road on the left. Sounds very easy, but because it was dark and this second road that she meant was about two kilometres away from the petrol station it took me a long time again. Eventually I arrived in front of a black gate as Amanda had described it. But when I heard a dog barking pretty aggressively I was unsure if it really was the right place. I pressed the button to call and her voice said she’s going to open the gate for me. Finally there, I talked to Amanda for hours and she cooked a Thai-meal for me. Her parents were in holiday, so she had the whole villa for herself and seemed to be quite happy to have some company.
Friday: Amanda had to work today but she could take me to town where I visited the museum and read a lot about the Antarctic expeditions in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Tired from reading I decided to visit the Christchurch cathedral and on my way back I went to the art gallery. After visiting an exhibition I was asked to participate in a poll and I decided to do it. It was about twenty minutes on a computer, but I got a free hot chocolate for it, so it was worth it, as it was raining pretty cold outside. Then I met Amanda and we went to the airport to pick up to Portuguese guys who stayed at Amanda’s home as well tonight. Back in town, Amanda had to go to work again for about one hour. For this short time I went with her and then we went shopping together. Now we went to the Willowbank Wildlife Reserve. We had a guided tour there and I saw living Kiwi-Birds for the first time. Our guide gave good background information and made funny comments like: “Now the Kiwi is doing what he’s meant to do: Sticking his nose into the ground.” Back home it was the same as the day before, except that we were four to talk today, but Amanda cooked again.
Saturday: In the morning we first dropped of the Portuguese guys at the train station and then picked up Amanda’s friend Nick and went on our way to Mt Hutt to go skiing. The weather was very good and the snow conditions fabulous. They had 0.9 m, 1 m and again 1 m snowfall the last week, so there was about 2.5m snow on the slopes. A Kiwi told me the snow conditions were the best he ever had in ten years. Amanda and I did a foto-session, where we took pictures from each other skiing. It was good fun to take these action-pictures and Amanda quite liked my camera and to play with it. Then we went down some very steep hills in the deep snow, for experts only due to a sign. The weather turned bad and it was almost four o’clock already but I decided to take the lift one last time before going back to Christchurch. Amanda invited some friends to her house. She cooked a couscous-based salad and somebody brought pizzas. In the mean time we watched the Rugby-Match New Zealand versus Australia. I had never seen a whole match and especially the Haka before. Fortunately the All Blacks won, so the mood was pretty good. I had asked Amanda if I can do my laundry here and she agreed. After putting all my clothes in to the washing machine I tried to watch a comedy-DVD. But I fell asleep and went to bed.
Sunday: Amanda hung up all my clothes last night, but they were still not dry yet, so she put them into the dryer. What a nice girl, what she all did for me, I really had a good time with her. At ten o’clock I left her to go to Kaikourra for whale-watching in the afternoon. I was quite late and had to hurry. After a stop on the coast I finally arrived about one minute early at the whale watch office. But the journey started only half an hour later, so a delay would have been no problem. Whale watching was quite exciting and I got a lot of interesting information around whales and wild life in New Zealand. And we didn’t only see whales but also albatrosses, seals and penguins. After that I went to Kaikourra peninsula for a little walk to the view point and to see the seal-colony. On the way back I gave a Malaysian guy a lift who underestimated the long way out there. At the hostel I watched the most successful Kiwi-Movie called The World’s Fastest Indian, which was indeed very captivating. My room mate was a French guy and it was a real challenge for me to talk French to him. I really liked that and he would always start to speak English and then say oh no, I can talk French to you!