Our tour takes us from town to town with activities in each, so we get to see a lot of the local scenery, differences in towns and most obviously we are in the car for sometimes hours at a time. We’ve got an ipod hooked up and have now heard the delights of “the salmon dance” which totally sounds like the humpty dance but about fish. Apparently it’s by a pretty famous band but I don’t really care, they are singing bout dancing fish!?!
We encountered our first New Zealand roadblock today, sheep on the road! They are famous for sheep farming here (note the end of Flight of the Conchords) and often move the sheep from one plot to another…since main roads are just that – Main, singular) adjacent to the farms you will often see herds moving down the street. Sheep are funny because they look HUGE, totally chubby and squishy then you realize after you see one sheared, that they are really all dirty hair. Seriously so dirty that when we went to another town, I though they were an entirely different animal – I called them land hippos (yes I know there are no hippos here in NZ, and on land) but that’s what they looked like and only later on did I realize they were sheep, merely incredibly dirty ones.
WHITE WATER RAFTING, Wait – we know you! – This was our first rafting experience in grade 5 rapids! We went to the Rangitata River (www.rafts.co.nz/). The sun was hardly out and though I love rafting, I hate to get wet. Since the water in some parts is glacier cold they have us wearing lots of clothing (not waterproof, just thermal). Overall wetsuits, TWO thermals a windbreaker and your life vest. We are bundled up for sure.
Being briefed on rafting the speaking Kiwi introduces all of the guides, begins with the Aussie, Cam, and advises us if we are in his boat to please speak slowly because he is Australian. Hilarious, poor Aussies. Dallas recognizes Cam as the guide that rafted us during our honeymoon in Australia! Small world! So I approach him just to be sure and yes, he was a raft guide on the Tully back in Nov-04. Wild… So we try to get on his boat, which ended up not happening thankfully because Cam is hardcore. We ended up with a different Cam (Kiwi Cam vs Aussie Cam). Kiwi Cam was super laid back and just let us go for the ride, really offering just basic maneuvers on steering etc. Looking over at Aussie Cam’s boat, he made his crew (full of rowdy Brazilian men) push their boat into the water! We were hardly getting our toes wet getting into our boat. Later on Aussie Cam intentionally tipped their boat over to show everyone how to tip and get back into the boat. It was cold and rainy out there so I was grateful that Kiwi Cam just allowed us to enjoy the (grade 5) ride. We did work, but weren’t tortured as the Brazilians were.
LAKE TEKAPO - Our next town that we stayed at was lake Tekapo (www.laketekapountouched.co.nz/). Wow! Driving up to this town you see crisp blue water and a backdrop of green and yellows. So stunning. We took an air safari around the lakes (www.airsafaris.co.nz) which was thrilling because not only are you in a little airplane, the scenery could not be any more beautiful. We were flying over 2 lakes (Lake Tekapo and Lake Pukaki, but had an amazing view of the Goldley river, which is a gorgeous braided river system – glacier blue scars over land. We flew over Mount Cook and many glaciers. It is impossible to put this beauty into words, you have to experience it as the photos aren’t able to cover the scale of spotless nature you see here. You can also take a helicopter and land on a glacier to walk around, or even camp.
We stayed at the Lake Tekapo Scenic Resort (www.laketekapo.com). There is a surprisingly good Japanese restaurant in town with amazing tempura and great views of the lake. We saw our 2nd rainbow of the trip our morning here. New Zealand is the land of rainbows.
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