The bus
left Westport at 9am but as some people went surfing and some others went on a
boat ride we had a bit of time to kill before we could pick them up, so Gary
dropped us off at Cape Foulwind. We walked from there to the lighthouse, along
the coastline to Seal Colony where guess what, we saw some seals! The whole
walk was pretty cool and the views were rather nice, just a shame the sun
wasn’t really out to make it that much nicer.
At the end
of the walk the surfers had arrived and we just had enough time to grab an ice
cream before getting back on the bus. The ice cream company over here are
called Tip Top and we all went for the classic kiwi flavour Hockey Pockey. Its
just vanilla with butterscotch balls but it was very tasty!
We drove
straight from here to the Pancake Blow Holes in Punakaiki. The stop wasn’t very
long and by the time we had eaten our lunch we only had 10mins left to do a
20min walk… we asked Gary if we had enough time and he said yes if we ran it…
so challenge accepted! We looked a bit crazy but the views were cool and we got
to see as much of it as we could and even managed to make it back to the bus
and not be the last people, which to be honest isn’t really hard.
We stopped
for a supermarket shop before arriving in Franz Josef as it was cheaper and
easier to do it outside. It was a town Gary had never really stopped in before
so he went around the roundabout and shouted ‘Shall we go around again?!’ so we
did about 3 times just for fun. That’s what we need, a driver with a good sense
of humour. Back on the bus and we had just less than 2 hours until we arrived
at our final destination. To pass the time Gary decided to create a little
competition where you can win a prize to spend in Queenstown, this competition
was Karaoke or as he was calling it Buseoke, he said you just need to come up
the front, choose a song on his iPod and take over the microphone. We had
‘Jessie’s Girl’, ‘My Heart Will Go On’, ‘Cups’ and some others. Half way
through Kirsty decided she quite wanted to do it but didn’t want to go, after a
bit of a discussion with the whole of the back the pair of us decided to sing
the glee version of ‘Don’t Stop Believing’, lets just say I’ll never do it
again but hey we know how to have fun without involving alcohol.
We dropped
a couple of people off and then arrived at our accommodation called Rainforest
Retreat. It was quite a nice place and the welcoming from the staff was the
best we’ve had. As always checking in was a nightmare and we were last but
luckily got a room together.
Kirsty,
Francesca and I cooked stir-fry for dinner in a semi decent kitchen; well at least
it was bigger than any other one we’ve been in. We wondered over to the bar as
they have evening games on and tonight’s prize was a Queenstown Bungy! The game
was fetch and the last person to return was out, unfortunately none of us won,
not that I played or wanted the prize anyway… I suppose I could have sold it to
someone else. I didn’t stay out that late as I have to get up tomorrow for a
hike quite earlier.
No comments:
Post a Comment