Boxing Day

Dec. 26

Waking after a restful night, undisturbed by ghosts, John set about trying to use his phone card. It worked really well and John enjoyed his conversation because it was still Christmas Day in Canada but was already Boxing Day in NZ.

It was a bright day and John got his stuff together and went out to take some more video of the lovely surroundings. Peter saw him and asked if he'd like a continental breakfast. John never turns down an opportunity like that, of course. So, Peter laid out cereal, milk, fruit, yogurt and asked John if he would like some tea and toast. John said yes, of course. When it was time to settle up, Peter would take nothing for his kindness and would even have allowed John to keep the $10 in $2 coins he had lent him to try to use the Internet vending machine the night before. But since John had not used the coins he gave them back. John would never take liberties with somebody else's kindness.

Then he was off. First to Wanaka. He had not seen it the evening before because the resort was out of town on the side closest to Cardrona. So, he was awestruck by the beauty of the lake as the road snaked down towards the town. If anything, Wanaka is prettier than Queenstown. John needed gas and also had heard about Puzzling World - a unique attraction. He ponied up his $12.50 to go into the two storey maze and be lost.

The maze runs more than 1.5 km with bridges and crossovers but people walk on average 3 to 5 km in finding the goals. John was lost for a long time and kept bumping into the same people over and over. A friendly Aussie couple gave him some hints and he found the first goal - a tower to climb and look over the maze. Eventually he did find all four and then his way out. It took about 90 minutes. Long enough for it to be fun but not so long as to be frustrating.

Then it was off to see the hall of illusions and he went in rooms on angles where the water appears to flow uphill, rooms that look normal but are very short at one side and tall at the other. He saw 3-D faces that appear to follow you and a lot of holograms.

It was almost 11:30 when we set out. But John got his directions messed up and took me into some spectacular country in Mount Aspiring National Park. In fact, we ended up at Treble Cone ski resort about 30 minutes outside Wanaka before he realized he was going the wrong way. The hint: The road turned to dirt and had a warning that you needed a four wheel drive vehicle to proceed. So we had to turn back and go the way that Cath had told us.

Once again, the scenery of the day eclipsed that of the day before. How can people live in such a beautiful country and work at all? You could spend your entire life just being enraptured by Nature. John thinks the videos will be the best ever!

Slowly they climbed into the Southern Alps and as they crossed the Haast Pass, the weather changed. It got overcast, cooler and then started to rain... buckets. During this part of the trip from Haast to Fox Glacier, John knew that there were wild west coast beaches to his left and huge rugged mountains to his right but he could see neither in the low clouds and heavy mist. One time the road came very close to the ocean and the sign said to beware of detritus on the road after the seas have been rough. We also had to drive past a rock slide on the road - carefully.

And the traffic was thin. At one point, he came across a large Chinese family - maybe 9 people - who had lost control and slid their van into the ditch. He stopped to see if everyone was ok but they waved him on, saying all were fine. I think the Dad was embarrased. The other bad thing was that John hit a big bird, something like a pheasant on the road. Normally, birds fly sideways when a car approaches but this bird flew right in front of the car and before John had time to react, he heard a bump, looked in his rear view mirror and saw a cloud of feathers and a body tumbling end over end on the road. He was very sad.

It was a l-o-n-g way in the rain to Fox Glacier and when he got there he was tired and hungry. The motel he will be staying in is great though and he may be able to upload posts though not video! Darn! he paid $10 for 100Mb. That is the size of some of his videos. If he goes over they charge $25 more. Yikes!

Then he went to book a walk on the glacier for the next day. It was $95 for a fully guided four hour walking tour. Yikes squared! But he booked it in hopes that they would get to go into a crevasse. He must like being in tight situations! hahaha

After that he looked all over town and found that most of the restaurants were still closed for Xmas or weren't open for dinner yet. He found one, The Mountain Goat, I think he called it. He had an open face sandwich of lamb, salad and other stuff and washed it down with a Speight's beer (Pride of the South etc etc). As he finished his meal he noticed that the sky had opened up and it was raining large cats and dogs so he had walk back to the motel in his T-Shirt and jeans and was soaked to the skin. He felt that perhaps this paid him back for killing such a beautiful bird.

TRB