New Zealand Adventures – Picton and travelling south

As I said in the previous blog, our accommodation at Picton was interesting to say the least. We arrived at the hostel, having booked a private room and proceeded to check in. After 15 minutes or so, and still checking in, we realised that something was wrong, and were then finally told that our room had been given up, but that we had been given a free “upgrade” to a flat. Off we went to the flat, and as we arrived at the door, she mentioned that we didn’t actually have the flat to ourselves, but we sharing with a couple. She showed us around the flat, we got the bedroom, and quickly found out that we had been given a double bed – this wasn’t really a big deal, but sharing a bed with your co-supervisor may be frowned upon – we certainly found it extremely amusing whilst trying to get to sleep later that night with both of us perched on the ends of the bed. I think I scared Laura as, and I quote, “every time you moved I thought there was an earthquake”! CHEERS!

To add more amusement to the already hilarious situation, the manageress of the hostel was abso-bloody-lutely crazy...and I mean CRAZY! She looked like some hippy woman, and was clearly on drugs of some kind (or a few at once!). She wouldn’t stop yabbering, and even gave us a little dance show/magic performance which ended with her pulling $20 out of her pocket. She was describing a road in NZ to us, and said that it made her want to commit suicide due to the overhanging rocks...I mean that’s not normal! I really don’t know how to explain what she was like, but just know that she was definitely an interesting character.

The following morning, after leaving our lovely (NOT!) hostel behind, and the crazy lady with it, we picked up our car, a tiny automatic Hyundai Getz that I squeeze myself into, and after a quick lesson from Laura regarding how to drive an automatic, our 550km drive south to Franz Josef began – into the unknown – and both of us hoping that we don’t piss eachother off too much. The journey began discussing our car crash experiences, which was rather amusing I thought. The weather was pretty good which made for some fantastic views of NZ, over farmland (we obviously saw some sheep), rivers, mountains and such like – it is a very beautiful country and brings out my inner geography geek! A clear example of this is me explaining to Laura what terracettes are – many of you had also had the pleasure of this mini-lecture! At one point, when nearing Franz Josef, we were driving past some mountains with many little valleys cut into it, and you could see the clouds/fog flowing down the valleys which was pretty amazing – I described this as a glacier of cloud!

After 7 hours of driving, we reached Franz Josef, checked into our hotel (not a hostel this time - no problems!) and slept!