For NZ$8 a taxi driver took me from hostel to hostel in Christchurch for a while, but since the English cricket team was in town for a tournament, there were no available beds. I let him drop me off at Denny's, a 24 hour restaurant, where I spent the rest of the night eating ice cream and drinking ice tea. I paid for the first one, but after making friends with the night crew, they let me have as many refills as I liked, in return I just had to sit there and tell them about my trip so far. It was a good deal, and it kept me awake until the buses started running early in the morning.
The first bus westwards, to Greymouth, left at eight in the morning, and after all the ice cream I just barely made it through the doors and into it. It was a beautiful ride on a summer day, going over the inland mountains, which stood tall in their volcanic beauty with snow on top, surrounded by forests of trees covered with all red leaves, as autumn was coming quick up here. Very dramatic, very beautiful.
After an hour of waiting in Greymouth, my bus onwards arrived, and I understood that I was in for something different. The driver's name was just Russ, a maori wearing just shorts and sandals, long hair and lots of tattoos, speaking a language that reminded me about English. He packed me and two other new passengers getting on here in Greymouth into the bus, screamed "Sweeeeeeeeeet! Let's get moving!", turned the stereo to full power, and off we went, with the sounds of Bob Marley filling all otherwise empty space on the bus. The air conditioning wasn't working, and I soon longed for the cold, fresh morning air in Christchurch just a few hours ago.
There were many Scandinavians on the bus, and I could speak my native language for the first time in many weeks. It was very strange. In the beginning I found myself speaking English most of the time, even when I meant to speak Norwegian. It's funny how the brain works (or doesn't work). Anyway, between the language sensations and the reggae, we had some great views of the west coast outside the windows, making short photo/pee stops here and there. Our destination for the day was Mahinapua, where Les, an old man, kept a few huts for the backpackers from Kiwi Experience to stay in. It was a nice, stony beach with lots of wind and an atmosphere much like the one I am used to from my childhood in Northern Norway. They forced me into sharing a room with two Danish blondes, and then the party started.
Kiwi Experience isn't really for those who prefer galleries, arts and quiet walks in the park. It's more for those who like to sing soccer songs along with British hooligan-wannabees or are in the time of their life where much research is being put into finding out how much alcohol you can contain before you pass out. It's not really for me. Still, as an anthropological experiment, it was quite interesting. The group was automatically divided into two subgroups; 1) The British and 2) The Scandinavians. Those few who didn't belong to any of those two either just sat observing them or picked a side. The drinking competitions got started just after the barbeque dinner, and the British won every time. It's just not fair play when one of the teams was born and raised in pubs and the other wasn't, I think. We got a big bonfire going, and after a while it was so large that the Brits thought they were at a soccer match and started singing. And then they passed out, one by one. I went to bed myself, after a 42 hour day that started in metropolitan Brisbane and ended on a remote beach on the South Island, New Zealand. Yay!
The next day continued with new hours in the bus, stopping in Hari Hari at the Bushman Centre. The manager, Ron Trotter, is a pig. Really. Or more precisely; a semi-wild boar. Among other animals on display were possums. They have 17 millions of them in this country, efficiently consuming the forests until there soon will be no trees left. They're doing this almost undisturbed, as nobody wants to wear possum fur, for some reason, in spite of its good quality. We had lunch here as well. Bambi burgers and Possum pies. It was okay, and another animal on my been-there-eaten-that list.
We continued on to the Franz Josef Glacier, where we stayed for the night. In the morning we went glacier-walking, which was excellent. For NZ$64 I had a full day on the glacier, 7 hours of walking from 500 feet up to 2500 feet and back, and I loved every minute of it. Equipped with special shoes, thick socks and ice axes we started at the bottom of the glacier and slowly made our way up. It was the end of summer and a long time since the last snowfall, so the glacier was rather grey and not sparkling enough to make anyone go snowblind, but it still very wintery and beautiful to look at. Some places it was almost all flat and the only challenge was not to fall into any holes or crevices, other places it was a wavy and rounded "icefall", while some places it was just a lot of really steep ice hills with lots and lots of pinnacles standing around.
It wasn't just sand and rocks that destroyed the whiteness of the glacier. There was also some wreckage from an airplane here and there. The manager of the Hella corporation took his wife and three kids here in a private plane to see the glacier, and apparently they just flew straight into it for a close look. When they brought the bodies and plane down to the bottom, some pieces fell off and are still laying around.
Getting stuck on this glacier isn't a problem, really. If it happens, you can just sit back and relax, and you'll be down in good time for dinner. Almost. The Franz Josef glacier is flowing a couple of meters every day, much faster than most other glaciers in the world. This means new ice caves and routes through the glacier are being formed and destroyed all the time. On our trek we walked through quite a few narrow passages and holes in the ice, and it was very, very cold, since icy water was flowing everywhere, and we kept falling and sliding into it. We didn't walk more than a couple of kilometres into the glacier, but that took us high enough to give us a great place for a quick snack with great views and cold butts. I couldn't help but wonder why this Franz Josef, an Austrian emperor long gone, had this cold glacier AND the very cold, Russian island of Franz Josef Land named after himself. A coincidence? I think not.
The bus ride up to the glacier was a bumpy one because Russ had filled
it with diesel instead of the required fuel. The jeep ride back to the
camp was a bumpy one because it was in a jeep. While the Danes and
Brits started partying, I was all done for the day and just did a
little bit of reading before I went to bed, happy.
Morning came early, the Brits walked straight from their party onto the bus. When they settled in the back of the bus where I was sitting, I migrated towards the front and claimed a seat for myself next to an intriguing Israeli female who shared my views on chocolate. Hence we had something to talk about for the rest of the day. We had a short break in the journey to do a walk around the Lake Matheson, a typical postcard view, and we did lunch below the Fox glacier, the other big one in New Zealand. We arrived in Makarora in the afternoon, and I was pleasantly surprised. Our accommodation was a couple of big, wooden, teepee-shaped cottages, and the scenery was just beautiful. Behind the houses there was a majestic mountain, and I soon found two volunteers to join me in going up to the top of it, Melbourne-Del and Peter Anti-terror-Policeman from Denmark. We walked up at a fast pace, climbing a vertical kilometre in less than an hour and a half, and found a manificent view over many mountains further inland. Feeling great, I made up the new sport "mountain running", which consists of getting down from a mountain as fast as you can, using your hands to swing yourself around trees to make as narrow and quick bends on your way down as possible. Del gave up, but Peter kept trying to keep up with me, until he suddenly missed one of the tree swings and just disappeared out of the path down a really steep hill. He came bleeding out of a bush a little bit further down, proudly beaming with joy. It was a good run.
We all made it back alive, and I celebrated the succesful expedition
by going to the camp site restaurant and drink a litre and a half of
Coca Cola all in one go, before I went outside and burped for an
extended period, in the general direction of the faces of two retired
Germans who were on their way in. That was fun, too.
A couple of Japanese had joined our group now, and that was a good thing. When we were driving up a steep hill, suddenly a red lamp lit up on the dashboard, accompanied by an insistent beeping sound. Now, as you may have figured out already, The Kiwi Experience is a low budget bus company, and one of the ways they save money is by having old, cheap buses. Most of them come from Japan, where the buses have been found of too low quality to be used anymore, hence they sell them to other countries. Much like how the Western world sell their airplanes to African countries, really. Anyway, the result is that many of the buses used by the Kiwi Experience have dashboards and user manuals in Japanese. Russ did not know any Japanese, so he just pulled up his microphone and said "I think we have an emergency here, but I'm not sure. Anybody on board speak Japanese?" And then our two friends came up and wasn't of much help really, since even though they spoke Japanese, that was really all they spoke, so they couldn't explain exactly what was going on in the engine, resulting in the red light and the beeping. They didn't seem too stressed by it, though, so we continued, and we were fine. After having reached the top of the hill and gone downhill again for a few minutes the light and beep went off, never to be seen or heard again.
Russ got a disco going in one of the cottages, and it lasted until the old man I had burped towards earlier in the day came and announced that now he would like to sleep, or else. Somehow it worked. We went to bed to get ready to arrive in the Action Capital of New Zealand the next day.