A few days before departing for Fiji we got a message from Siem, asking if we felt like hanging out. We had been doing nothing for too many days already, so the prospect of hanging out with Siem appealed to me. Just as we were preparing to go out, a guy from our hostel asked if we were going out, and if so if he could join. We told him we weren’t sure what exactly we were going to do, but he was welcome to join if he wanted to.
Turns out Siem was keen on going to the internet café to play some games first and so we headed out. At first our new friend didn’t feel like playing with us, but when we changed to playing Counter Strike he became very eager to join indeed. Turns out he used to play this game a lot back home and proceeded to kick our ass for a while before we headed out to drink.
We weren’t going to let the fact that it was Wednesday spoil our fun and followed Siem as he lead us to a nice bar he’d found the other day. The bar was pretty empty and emptier still by the time we finished our first beer, so off we went in search of another bar. When we entered the next bar Sebastian (the new guy) was called over by some girls, and the rest of the group moved over there while I went to order our next round. When I’d paid and collected the beers I returned to their table and found that of the 6 girls there were only 2 left, and one of them was leaving to play pool. I’m still not sure what happened but Jasper took the blame for chasing all the girls away. Eventually we all moved to a table close to the pool tables and it didn’t take us long to scare away the last girl (Jasper took the blame for this one as well). She was going to “sit with some friends”, not mentioning that these friends were imaginary and occupied a small table outside in the cold. Ouch.
We then moved to a really tiny karaoke bar where a bunch of preppy kids was busy raping “material girl” by Madonna, and ordered our next round. We joined the group in shouting incoherently to the tune of Madonna before a couple took the microphone and rocked a couple of songs. After a while most of the people left and so we decided it was a good time to call it a night. Because Siem knew the way we only walked in a circle once, all the while 3 out of 4 were complaining about having to go to the bathroom. We decided we’d stop by the McDonalds for a quick toilet break and a burger. To our horror we suddenly remembered that the toilet in the McDonalds close after 10, so we just went in some dark alley.
We went to the McDonalds nevertheless for a quick burger and an ice-cream, during which we had a nice conversation with a bunch of random people.
The following day we went on a little sightseeing tour with Siem, he said he knew a nice place with some old defensive cannons. On the way there we ended up on a nice little cliff at the edge of the ocean, but nice though it was it, was decidedly not the place with the canons nor even remotely in the right direction. Prepared as we were we didn’t have a very detailed map of the area and decided to just backtrack until we reached something recognisable.
We soon found a point which we recognised on the map, took a wrong turn and found an excellent spot to pull over and make a u-turn. Only we didn’t notice the giant pothole in the side of the road so Siem drove straight over it, or well. . . straight in it is more exact I guess. We then backed up, through the pothole, surprisingly the only damage was to the exhaust and it wasn’t even real damage, just something that popped out of it’s rubber clamp.
After this slight mishap we headed in the right direction and after one of the scariest rides of my life, past endless drops without guardrails and sheep on the road, we arrived at the gun placement site. We parked the car and headed towards the cannons, apparently this used to be the NZ defence against a Japanese invasion. After about 20 minutes we arrived at the guns, or rather at where the guns used to be. Of course the government wasn’t stupid enough to let the actual guns in place. . . unfortunately.
Still, we had a great time exploring the bunkers that accompanied the guns and me and Siem did a great rendition of the Egyptian we learned from Alex at the Milford Sounds, Jasper recorded it with his camera but unfortunately the video got lost along with his camera.
That evening Outi and Netta were also arriving in Christchurch and were planning to go to the same hostel as us, they asked Siem if he wouldn’t mind picking them up from the bus stop.
Siem didn’t mind, and we said we’d come as well, but considering his past successes with parking inside Christchurch Siem decided it was probably a good idea to pick them up on foot. When the girls arrived the first thing they asked was “Where is your car?”, they didn’t look too happy when we told ‘em we were on foot. But we helped them carry their stuff and soon we arrived at our hostel. Siem had to go back to the house of the family he was staying at, not in the least place to fix that exhaust. We hung out at the hostel the rest of the night. We had to leave at 5 in the morning to catch our flight and as it progressively got later and later we decided we’d just stay up all night. Though eventually/ the girls got really sleepy and we all sort of dozed off. At 5 the alarm went and we quietly packed the remainder of our stuff, said goodbye to the very sleepy Fins and hopped into the shuttle. We picked up a few more people before he dropped us off at Christchurch airport, from where we’d fly to Auckland to catch our flight to Fiji. We checked in our luggage and headed through the security gate without problems. Well, almost without problems. Jasper was called over to the side and one of the security personnel reached inside his backpack (his small one) and pulled out his pocket knife. The look on Jasper’s face was priceless. Apparently he remembered to take his knife out of his pocket but instead of putting it in his main backpack he put it in the one he was going to use for hand luggage. Fortunately the lady was really nice and said he could just check his bag in as main luggage and wouldn’t have to hand over his knife. So while he did this I waited. . . and waited. . . And they called out that our seat numbers were asked to board the plane. . . and I waited. . . And they called out that the other seat numbers could board the plane. . . and then finally Jasper showed up and we raced to the boarding gate and went to our seats. We made it!
After falling asleep a dozen times we arrived in Auckland where we couldn’t check-in for another 2 hours. We called home with our BBH phone cards, and Jasper managed to use up all his credit in 10 minutes. Not so surprising because he was calling to a Dutch cell phone.
After a while we could finally check in and headed to one of the bars to have a drink. We barely managed to stay awake until boarding time. This time we managed to safely get through all the security checks and when we boarder the plane we were greeted by the Fijian flight staff in their colourful shirts. That and the tropical music they were playing made us feel as if we were in Fiji already.
A sleepy plane ride later and we touched down on Fijian soil. The exit walkway was outdoors and as we exited the plane a wall of hot humid air smacked us straight across the face. The sky didn’t look too promising though, it was grey and cloudy with vague promises of rain.
After we managed to get through customs and all the other safety checks with only marginal problems (we only stood in the wrong line once or twice, and Jasper couldn’t find one of the declaration cards he filled in earlier) we found that it was now night. In about 30 minutes the sky had changed from light to pitch black. We asked a man where we could find the pick-up for our resort and after he’d lead us to the appropriate spot we started to talk. After he found out we didn’t have a set plan for our trip he immediately tried to get us to go to a resort which probably belonged to family of his. About 10 minutes later our ride arrived and we headed out, along with two other girls. We suddenly came to a stop because there was a truck blocking the way, after waiting for a minutes for the truck to go away the driver decided to just go around it. Then his headlights suddenly moved over the reason for the truck; a car had missed a bridge by about 2 meters and had driven straight into the ditch, little did we know then, but this wouldn’t be the last time we’d find evidence of bad driving in Fiji.
A short ride later we arrived at our resort where we’d booked 2 nights in a 2 bed dorm (so basically a twin room), but upon arriving found that something went wrong in the booking and they’d put us in a normal dorm room. It wasn’t a great start of our trip but I figured it was only for two nights so I didn’t mind that much. It was a lot better than what happened to the girls that came with us, their booking didn’t even arrive there and they already paid as well.
We moved our stuff into the room and picked our beds, the room wasn’t especially luxurious and the bathroom was pretty crummy but I guess you can’t really expect the same quality as in NZ. We had dinner in the restaurant, which was pretty good and pretty cheap, before retiring to bed quite early to catch up on some sleep. The next day was quite warm, but not too warm, despite the grey clouds. We chose to spend it by hanging in the hammocks and swimming in the pool while we contemplated on where to go to next. The original plan was to go to the island group to the west of Fiji, which is apparently where everyone goes, but after talking to a Finnish guy named Tuomo we decided against this. Instead we headed south and east to Pacific Harbour. We had to take a taxi to another hotel to catch the bus to Uprising Beach Resort in Pacific Harbour. As we walked up the driveway to the resort we passed a security checkpoint where the “guards” were very friendly and all shouted “Bula” at us as we passed them. The staff behind the counter was equally friendly though it took them a while to check us in, and when we asked about the shark dive more than a few minutes passed before she’d called the company and told us they were booked full for at least a week. This was a bit of a setback because we had grand plans of touring the country and were on a tight schedule.
After some discussion we decided to wait there for a week, since the shark dive is one of the more memorable things to do in Fiji, and cross a few other locations off the list.
To keep ourselves busy during the week we booked another dive for during the week.
The resort looked nice, despite the grey skies, it consisted of a ton of small wooden huts called “Bures” and there was one big one which served as a dorm. This thing housed about 26 beds so it was a large dorm, but somehow it didn’t feel like it at all. The weather wasn’t good enough to swim, so instead we explored the small town of Pacific Harbour. It had a small tourist attraction called “arts village” but really, it was just a tourist attraction. The people were very friendly though, and every single person there yelled out Bula as you passed them. We pulled some money out of the wall and went back to the resort. It rained for the next two days, the grass slowly turned into swamp and the road was littered with deep pools. Mercifully the rain stopped on the day of our first dive. We had to wake up early to get ready in time for our pick-up. Our ride arrived 15 minutes late, Fiji time, and we and a few other people got in. As we started to talk to the others we found out that they were going for a shark dive, but this confused us as we were told that there was no shark dive with that company on that particular day. But we paid no further attention to it until we arrived and they were told that they were in the place. Two of them got back in the van to be driven back, and a third asked if they could wait while he made sure he had to be in the other place. After he was sure he was in the wrong place he went to get back in the car, but this had by that time disappeared. Unfortunately for him he had to wait for the car to come back. In the meantime we headed over to the shed to sort out our gear. We also had to sign a release form stating that if we were to be eaten by shark we would in no way be able to sue the company, after all we were the ones stupid enough to dive in waters where sharks are frequently spotted.
After we had our gear sorted out we sat waiting for the others to get ready and were soon joined by two Chinese and one Japanese men. One of them carried a huge camera, jokingly stating that with that thing he didn’t need any extra weights. After we got on the boat it was a short ride along the river past another resort, where we would pick up some more people, before heading out to our dive site. As I got talking to one of the Chinese men he mentioned these people and said that they were from “Lussia”. I tried to guess what he meant (Austria? Latvia?) but I had to wait for the newcomers to speak before I realised he meant Russia. Anyways, he was wrong because they were from Czech Republic. Evidently it pays to be rich in the Czech Republic because besides what appeared to be a family there were two fat old guys with two beautiful young girlfriends. After a short briefing it was determined that me and Jasper would get a guide for ourselves, which was nice because it meant we weren’t all going to swim in each others way. The Czechs and the Asians got their own guide as well.
Before we went to our own dive-site we dropped a guy off at an island where he would do his scuba discovery dive. When we arrived at our first dive site we all geared up and jumped in the water. The guides had told us beforehand that the water was quite cold, but it felt nice and warm to me and the viz appeared to be great. I spent a few minutes looking around trying to find Jasper and our guide, when one of the others directed my attention to some people under the water; they were waiting for me. Because my gauges were in imperial units I had no idea how deep we were going, and only an approximate idea of how much air I had left, so I was slightly nervous going into this dive. On top of this my gauge leaked a little bit of air, it didn’t seem serious but I wasn’t sure if this would affect the accuracy of its readings. It didn’t fortunately and after a few minutes I could relax and enjoy our first coral dive. The visibility was phenomenal compared to our previous dives and even in our shorty wetsuits the water was very agreeable!
We spent about 40 minutes enjoying the beautiful corals and colourful fish before heading back to the boat. Jasper had some trouble getting up because his BCD leaked, but we managed to get back on the boat safely. It was quite a wait before the other divers came up, especially the Asian bunch they must have stayed down for almost 70 minutes. After everyone was back on the boat we went back to the island where we dropped the guy off earlier and were told we could go for a quick snorkel if we wanted to. I wanted to see more so I jumped in the water and swam to the nearby reef. Unfortunately they didn’t have any actual snorkels with them so I had to contend with just my mask, needless to say I ran out of breath a lot and scared away all the fish because I kept popping up for air. Still, it was a nice way to spend my surface interval.
We mentioned our gear malfunctions to our guide and they managed to fix them for us and our second dive went perfectly.
The scenery was pretty much the same as on our first dive, but it was still very enjoyable.
After we came back to our resort we had a nice lunch in the restaurant and hung out by the pool. We then had 2 days to kill before our shark dive and as we started talking to some of the people there one guy told us he was going to take a bus to Suva the next day. After we did nothing that next day he came back and told us about it, and it all sounded quite nice to us. Because I wanted to see if they had any disposable underwater cameras I wanted to go as well and Jasper agreed with me, so the next day we got up reasonably early (10 am) to catch the bus. At the little shelter which functioned as a bus stop there were 2 people waiting, locals, and they told us all about the busses there. Apparently there were 3 different companies running busses to and from Suva all stopping at different places and charging different prices. We had no idea which was which but were kind enough to stop, what they told us, was the right bus. It looked pretty good for Fiji standards and they even had a Television in it! As I sat down I was curious to see what movie they were watching, but it seemed like the bus driver forgot to press the play button because the image wasn’t moving at all. It took me 10 minutes to realise that it was in fact still playing, but that the many bumps in the road were causing the DVD to freeze all the time. In the 30 minutes it took us to get to Suva the movie didn’t progress for more than 5 minutes. The bus drove us past dilapidated looking villages, across unpaved muddy roads. When we arrived in Suva it dropped us off at a busy bus station with people trying to sell their wares wherever you looked. It was a little bit intimidating but we decided to just start walking and see where we’d end up. After a while some guy came up to us and asked if we needed any help, I asked him where I could find an underwater camera and he immediately offered to take us to the best place in town. I knew he just wanted money from us, but I figured it would save us a lot of wandering through town and was probably worth the couple of dollars. The first store only sold non-disposable film cameras for a price I wasn’t willing to pay. The second one didn’t have any cameras at all, only shirts, but it was a “good store where the profit goes to the local villages”. Right. The one after that did sell the underwater cameras and despite them being slightly pricey I decided to buy one. As we were walking to a store where they sold scuba supplies, Jasper wanted to check for a mask and snorkel, I popped into the store that sold shirts to see if they had any that would serve as a nice souvenir. Most of them were garbage and so cheesy you could use them for fondue, but they had one which said BulaBong (Referring to the brand BillaBong) and this struck me as being surprisingly witty. I bought it immediately.
After some fruitless searching for a mask for Jasper we gave our guide a few dollars and decided to make a stop at the theatre. Compared to the rest of the city, which was crowded and dirty, the theatre looked amazing. But in retrospect it looked just like any other theatre.
We watched a movie called Centurion, which was pretty good, and all the while I was debating whether or not to go to a pharmacy. I had managed once again to get a cold at the worst possible time, the day before a dive we’d been waiting all week for. My ears were hurting and my nose was clogged, but the pharmacy was a long walk away and by the end of the movie I was feeling sorta better already. I decided to just take it easy, go to sleep really early and bring a handkerchief on the boat. On the way back our bus stopped at every little town we passed and even though the bus was already full every second stop an entire class of children would enter, and then leave 3 stops further. This whole thing seemed a bit bizarre to me, and it took us more than twice as long to get back than it took to get there. Eventually our bus stopped in pacific harbour and I was glad to get off.
After dinner I went straight to bed, but the big light in the dorm was still on and I just couldn’t find the switch to turn it off. There must have been at least 12 different light switches there, and I tried all of them but none of them were the right one! After a while a girl came to drop her stuff in the dorm and she asked me if I was looking for something. When I answered that I was looking for the light switch she offered to help me, but even with the two of us we just couldn’t find it! Eventually a guy walked in and when we asked him he said “Oh yeah, it’s this one.” *click* It was in the least logical place imaginable, hidden behind one of the bunk beds at waist height. Anyways, I could finally go to sleep. I could try anyways, because the sounds of the party down at the restaurant were coming in so clearly that I could hear every word that was said. The next day we had to get up early again to catch our ride. There was a big group of people from our resort going, including the girl who helped me search for the light earlier. She was called Amanda, and this was going to be her 2nd dive after her Open water course. After we got to talking to the other people we found out that most of them had only done a few dives. This was a mile pole in our diving career! For the first time ever we weren’t the ones with the least amount of experience! On the boat ride over we received our briefing and it appeared that our dive would consist of 3 stages, each at a different depth and with different types of sharks feeding on the bait. Once we got the feeding grounds we all geared up and jumped in the water. We were told to follow the guides to the first feeding site where there was a small wall of coral behind which we could sit. There were about 11 of us so it took a while for everyone to get comfortable, but once we were the feeding started. They opened a container with pieces of fish that they’d placed there earlier and immediately fish started to appear from everywhere and it wasn’t long before the first sharks showed up as well. They varied in sizes from small to freaking huge and they weren’t shy at all, at times they would come so close you could touch them. But because of the risk of losing a hand or two no-one actually did this. The feeders would drag the bait towards us just as the sharks were about to chomp down and as they chased the bait they showed us their gaping mouths filled with razor sharp teeth. When the food was gone we moved up to the next feeding place where slightly smaller sharks were attracted by the food. There were grey sharks, white tips, black tips and nurse sharks. After this we moved up to the last place of the dive and then back to the surface. During the surface interval we discussed our dive excitedly over a cup of Milo and some cookies. When we were about to jump in the water for the second dive someone noticed some bubble like things in the water. They turned out to be organisms (they aren’t jellyfish apparently) of the same family as the Portuguese Man o' War, which can deliver very painful stings which can be fatal in rare cases. So in the end nobody was very eager to jump in the water and we waited a bit for the group to float past us. When they all seemed to be gone we were told to jump in the water and head straight for the bottom. Funnily enough we were about to jump in the water with a dozen hungry bull sharks and all of us were afraid of a small bubble like creature. We all managed to get to the bottom without getting stung though, in fact we didn’t see any of them again. This time we were told to lie on our bellies behind a tiny coral wall and to keep our down as much as possible because these sharks were the real deal.
After they opened the container with food it took a minute or two before the first shark turned up, but once it did there were a whole bunch more that followed. These sharks were big, bigger than any we’d seen so far, ranging up to somewhere between 3 and 4 meters and extremely fat. As they grabbed the huge chunks of fish they stretched their mouths open wide enough to swallow your average man without chewing. As I looked up to see them circling above me, I noticed a huge ball of fish slowly coming our way. When I looked closer I saw that there was a diver inside the ball and that he appeared to be carrying a wheelie bin. When I got over the surrealness of the situation I realized that this must be the next load of fish food.
For this dive I also took the underwater camera I bought earlier. It couldn’t go any deeper than 15 meters, so the first dive was too deep, and this dive was right on that limit so I hoped it would hold out long enough (it did and I got some nice pictures with it). The marine biologist that was with us to capture some footage swam over to us at some point and held up a shark tooth. He looked like he was going to give it to me but at the last moment he changed his mind and gave it to Amanda who was lying next to me, girls have all the luck.
When the dive was over we headed back to the resort on what felt like the longest boat ride ever. Me and Jasper both had to go to the toilet really bad (diving does that to you) and as we stopped on the river to catch a volleyball they accidentally threw in the water I nearly lost it.
Before the boat was well and truly tied to the shore we jumped out and raced to the bathroom.
There was an option to buy a DVD from the dive, but it was a bit too expensive for our liking. Fortunately for us Amanda bought it and promised to send it to us later.
The rest of the day we spent hanging out with Amanda and eventually with Leon, a German guy we drafted for our volleyball game. By the end of the day we looked at the list of activities they had available and noticed something called “Horse-boarding”, it was free too!
Apparently it was a bit like wake boarding, only then you would get pulled along by a horse.
Unfortunately we noticed this too late and we couldn’t do it anymore as we would leave the next day. We still had fun playing pool though, despite Leon totally kicking our asses.
The following morning we said farewell to Amanda and Leon and headed for the bus-stop to catch a bus to Suva and from there to Rakiraki.
Monday, 14 June 2010
Wednesday, 7 April 2010
There she blows!
Easter weekend is obviously very popular in New Zealand. Fortunately, besides following murphy's law wherever we go, we seem to have the luck of the Irish. We managed to score 2 of the last 3 seats on the bus and one of the last spots on the campsite. Unfortunately our neighbours had pretty big tents and pretty big cars to boot! As a result we had to squeeze our tent in an area about the size of a grape. The fact that our tent was about just as small did nothing to reduce our aggrovation.
In order to quickly escape the flock of children we headed into town soon after setting up our tent. The town wasn't much to look at, but the landscape off in the distance was amazing! About the only thing in town we were interested in was the helicopter whale watching and wouldn't you know it, that was about the only thing in town that was closed! But, we weren't in a hurry so we just shrugged our shoulders and went to the supermarket for dinner. The next day brought clouds and rain, though it reminded us a lot of home we found it hard to appreciate. Obviously this wasn't the best weather for a helicopter ride so we booked it for the next day which was supposed to be better.
We did our best to pass the rest of the day without being bored out of our minds, this involved a lot of watching TV and restlessly surfing the internet. Where would we be without technology, eh? In a small tent not even large enough to sit in, while a virtually limitless amount of water pours down on it, that's where!
As we were attending to these very important matters we received a text from Netta saying that they would be arriving Kaikoura that very afternoon. We were expecting to see them again, but not this soon so this was a nice surprise. We met up with them after dinner (and after they had a sauna, the lucky sods). They came with a friend of theirs called Chris who seemed like a nice guy. After thoroughly investigating the Kaikoura nightlife we dived into the first pub we could find. For some strange Kiwi reason they couldn't serve alchohol to people who weren't eating anything (some weird easter law), so we had to order chips for 5 people even though everyone was still full from their dinner. Even though the girls had made fun of our love for computer games on numerous occasions they were the first ones who noticed the Nintendo Wii in the back of the pub. We decided to play a game of bowling, because you can only play that with 4 people, me and Outi had to team up. But it was good that we did because we totally smashed the others! Well, except for Jasper. And maybe Netta. But we totally beat Chris by 5 points! Of course the sponsors for a professional bowling team started to pour in immediately, but me and Outi decided to stop while we were on top of our game.
The bar closed at 12 so the barkeeper kicked us out at 11:30. Apparently there weren't enough people buying drinks and we were obviously not good enough for him to stay open for us. Kiwis. . .
The following morning promised to be a beautiful day, but we soon found that days can't be trusted to keep their word because when we opened our tent the grey skies were already waiting for us. We checked back at the helicopter place to see if there were any extra people for our flight (this would save us $100 each) but there weren't. We decided to wait about an hour or two in hopes of more people and better weather. But after about 40 minutes we decided to just go ahead with it while it was still dry. When we came back to the office we paid for the trip and were then told to hurry to the helicopter. Apparently the whale had just come up to the surface so if we hurried over there we would be able to spot him. We quickly climbed into the helicopter and were buzzing with excitement while the pilot started to warm up the engine. Determined to catch the take-off on video we had our cameras ready and rolling, but after 5 minutes we were still on the ground. Even though the videos of us sitting in a vibrating helicopter were extremely interesting *cough* we decided to delete them. The pilot told us the whale had gone down again and that we could exit the helicopter while we waited a while. He gave us some quick information on the whales in the area and why they were there. Because there was a large underwater mountain chain just south of Kaikoura the current coming from the north is forced land inwards, this brings a lot of plankton and other small sea life with, which in turn triggers a chain reaction all the way up to the whales. They mainly get sperm whales in the area, though they have the occasional orcas and blue whales as well.
After about 20 minutes we boarded the helicopter again, this time it only took our pilot a minute or two to fire up the helicopter and take off. This was such a big change from last time that I almost didn't get it on camera. The take-off was smooth but there was still something uncomfortable about it at first. It sort of felt like sitting in a cardboard box that's slowly rising higher and higher, tilting forward as it does. Soon this feeling passed however and I could turn to the scenery that was slowly expanding before my eyes. Off in the distance we could already see two of the whale watch boats waiting on the spot where the whale was expected to pop up. When we got there there was still no whale to be seen though, so we sort of circled around to see if we could spot it. As we were doing this jasper asked the pilot if he was steering with his feet. The pilot replied by saying it was a combination of things. "If I use the feet pedals I turn using the rear rotor, see?" he said as the helicopter made a few very strange maneuvers through the sky. "Then, if I want to speed up I just point the nose forward and do this." And the nose of helicopter tilted forward to a nauseating angle as it accelerated to a gut-wrenching speed. "Then if I want to quickly make a turn I just do this." And then the whole world turn upside down. The helicopter tilted so far sideways that what was once the side of the helicopter was now the bottom and what was the bottom was now the side. I hung on to my chair for dear life even though I knew this was a perfectly safe action. Probably. When he was done stunting er... I mean explaining he started to circle around again, by now a plane had joined our little whale watching show. We paid for 30 minutes of airtime and when we still didn't see any sign of a whale after 15 minutes we started to get seriously worried. The company had a 98% success rate of seeing whales, we should have known that those were horrible odds for us. Even if they had had a 99.99% success rate we'd manage to be that one 0.01%.
Just as I was wondering whether the helicopter ride alone was worth the exuberant amount of money we'd forked over for this little escapade there was some chatter over the radio. The pilot immediately cut short his search circle and raced the plane to the whale (apparently only 3 vessels are allowed close to a whale at a time). We were there first (tough luck mr. plane!) and started to circle the whale closely. I must have taken about 40 pictures before I figured I should probably look at the whale with my own eyes as well, and not just through my camera. The whale sort of looked like a sausage that occasionally had water rising up from it, but in a good way! All in all we must have taken at least a hundred pictures (and a couple of videos for good measure) before we headed back to solid ground.
We were supposed to go surfing with the girls (Chris had left to catch a plane) but the weather was so horrible that we decided not to. Instead, the girls wanted to take a coastal walk to the seal colonies. When we came across a playground none of us could resist the tempting call of the majestic sea-saw. When we got to the seal colony we found a vast number of tourists harassing the seals, blatantly ignoring the "keep your distance" sign and coming well within touching distance of the animals. Since we wished to have nothing to do with this we decided to carry on along the coast in search of some more seals. It wasn't long before we found them, in fact we nearly stepped on some that were dozing in the grass. One of them seemed to be enjoying himself thoroughly as he was stretching and rubbing himself on the grass in exaggerated movements. We then climbed the hill back to the path where the girls wanted to hitch-hike back to town *cough*lazy!!*cough*. We didn't though, partly because me and jasper didn't want to, mainly because there was no-one to hitch-hike with. After a walk that seemed much longer on the way back than on the way there we arrived back in town. None of us had eaten anything besides breakfast and it was now past 4 PM so we were starving. We decided to stop and eat in the very first restaurant we saw, so after passing up on a ton of them we settled down in the burger shop at the other end of town. We then split up to freshen up. Later the girls came over to our campsite to watch the movie channel, unfortunately for them all the good movies were gone. We watched 10,000 BC and a movie directed by Ben Affleck (personal request for Ben: Stop directing movies at once!). The next day we didn't do much seeing as it was pissing rain, we tried to watch some more movies but they were all so horrible that we gave up. Then the girls received a message from Siem that he was coming to Kaikoura as well. We met up after dinner for some good old card gaming fun. They also had a fireplace with an ominous message next to it "Don't overfeed the fire, if you set off the fire-alarm you will be fined $1500." I could already see the fire-alarm going off as soon as I would light even one match so I tried not to interfere with the firemaking too much. Us guys couldn't really get a good fire going, but luckily everyone in Finland still lives in a cave where they have to make fire out of snow and frozen poo so Outi managed to get the fire going in no time. We already started our card game while the girls had to take care of some stuff on the internet, and a Danish girl wanted to join us. Now I won't bore you with the details, but I'll say this: Danish girls are weird. Of course we ended up being the very last people awake in the hostel, and by 2 AM we were hungry again. Luckily the girls had kept some rice in Tupperware containers, so we ended up eating rice with sweet chili sauce and Muesli bars in the middle of the night. Weird, but tasty.
The following day me and Jasper hopped on the bus and said farewell to our friends once again. Hopefully not for the last time though.
When we got to Christchurch we booked into our old hostel only to be told that we were lucky indeed because there were only 2 beds left. Luck of the Irish indeed! I'm beginning to wonder if Scheffe isn't an Irish name after all.
With 9 days until our flight to Fiji we'll probably be wandering around town a lot.
Photos
In order to quickly escape the flock of children we headed into town soon after setting up our tent. The town wasn't much to look at, but the landscape off in the distance was amazing! About the only thing in town we were interested in was the helicopter whale watching and wouldn't you know it, that was about the only thing in town that was closed! But, we weren't in a hurry so we just shrugged our shoulders and went to the supermarket for dinner. The next day brought clouds and rain, though it reminded us a lot of home we found it hard to appreciate. Obviously this wasn't the best weather for a helicopter ride so we booked it for the next day which was supposed to be better.
We did our best to pass the rest of the day without being bored out of our minds, this involved a lot of watching TV and restlessly surfing the internet. Where would we be without technology, eh? In a small tent not even large enough to sit in, while a virtually limitless amount of water pours down on it, that's where!
As we were attending to these very important matters we received a text from Netta saying that they would be arriving Kaikoura that very afternoon. We were expecting to see them again, but not this soon so this was a nice surprise. We met up with them after dinner (and after they had a sauna, the lucky sods). They came with a friend of theirs called Chris who seemed like a nice guy. After thoroughly investigating the Kaikoura nightlife we dived into the first pub we could find. For some strange Kiwi reason they couldn't serve alchohol to people who weren't eating anything (some weird easter law), so we had to order chips for 5 people even though everyone was still full from their dinner. Even though the girls had made fun of our love for computer games on numerous occasions they were the first ones who noticed the Nintendo Wii in the back of the pub. We decided to play a game of bowling, because you can only play that with 4 people, me and Outi had to team up. But it was good that we did because we totally smashed the others! Well, except for Jasper. And maybe Netta. But we totally beat Chris by 5 points! Of course the sponsors for a professional bowling team started to pour in immediately, but me and Outi decided to stop while we were on top of our game.
The bar closed at 12 so the barkeeper kicked us out at 11:30. Apparently there weren't enough people buying drinks and we were obviously not good enough for him to stay open for us. Kiwis. . .
The following morning promised to be a beautiful day, but we soon found that days can't be trusted to keep their word because when we opened our tent the grey skies were already waiting for us. We checked back at the helicopter place to see if there were any extra people for our flight (this would save us $100 each) but there weren't. We decided to wait about an hour or two in hopes of more people and better weather. But after about 40 minutes we decided to just go ahead with it while it was still dry. When we came back to the office we paid for the trip and were then told to hurry to the helicopter. Apparently the whale had just come up to the surface so if we hurried over there we would be able to spot him. We quickly climbed into the helicopter and were buzzing with excitement while the pilot started to warm up the engine. Determined to catch the take-off on video we had our cameras ready and rolling, but after 5 minutes we were still on the ground. Even though the videos of us sitting in a vibrating helicopter were extremely interesting *cough* we decided to delete them. The pilot told us the whale had gone down again and that we could exit the helicopter while we waited a while. He gave us some quick information on the whales in the area and why they were there. Because there was a large underwater mountain chain just south of Kaikoura the current coming from the north is forced land inwards, this brings a lot of plankton and other small sea life with, which in turn triggers a chain reaction all the way up to the whales. They mainly get sperm whales in the area, though they have the occasional orcas and blue whales as well.
After about 20 minutes we boarded the helicopter again, this time it only took our pilot a minute or two to fire up the helicopter and take off. This was such a big change from last time that I almost didn't get it on camera. The take-off was smooth but there was still something uncomfortable about it at first. It sort of felt like sitting in a cardboard box that's slowly rising higher and higher, tilting forward as it does. Soon this feeling passed however and I could turn to the scenery that was slowly expanding before my eyes. Off in the distance we could already see two of the whale watch boats waiting on the spot where the whale was expected to pop up. When we got there there was still no whale to be seen though, so we sort of circled around to see if we could spot it. As we were doing this jasper asked the pilot if he was steering with his feet. The pilot replied by saying it was a combination of things. "If I use the feet pedals I turn using the rear rotor, see?" he said as the helicopter made a few very strange maneuvers through the sky. "Then, if I want to speed up I just point the nose forward and do this." And the nose of helicopter tilted forward to a nauseating angle as it accelerated to a gut-wrenching speed. "Then if I want to quickly make a turn I just do this." And then the whole world turn upside down. The helicopter tilted so far sideways that what was once the side of the helicopter was now the bottom and what was the bottom was now the side. I hung on to my chair for dear life even though I knew this was a perfectly safe action. Probably. When he was done stunting er... I mean explaining he started to circle around again, by now a plane had joined our little whale watching show. We paid for 30 minutes of airtime and when we still didn't see any sign of a whale after 15 minutes we started to get seriously worried. The company had a 98% success rate of seeing whales, we should have known that those were horrible odds for us. Even if they had had a 99.99% success rate we'd manage to be that one 0.01%.
Just as I was wondering whether the helicopter ride alone was worth the exuberant amount of money we'd forked over for this little escapade there was some chatter over the radio. The pilot immediately cut short his search circle and raced the plane to the whale (apparently only 3 vessels are allowed close to a whale at a time). We were there first (tough luck mr. plane!) and started to circle the whale closely. I must have taken about 40 pictures before I figured I should probably look at the whale with my own eyes as well, and not just through my camera. The whale sort of looked like a sausage that occasionally had water rising up from it, but in a good way! All in all we must have taken at least a hundred pictures (and a couple of videos for good measure) before we headed back to solid ground.
We were supposed to go surfing with the girls (Chris had left to catch a plane) but the weather was so horrible that we decided not to. Instead, the girls wanted to take a coastal walk to the seal colonies. When we came across a playground none of us could resist the tempting call of the majestic sea-saw. When we got to the seal colony we found a vast number of tourists harassing the seals, blatantly ignoring the "keep your distance" sign and coming well within touching distance of the animals. Since we wished to have nothing to do with this we decided to carry on along the coast in search of some more seals. It wasn't long before we found them, in fact we nearly stepped on some that were dozing in the grass. One of them seemed to be enjoying himself thoroughly as he was stretching and rubbing himself on the grass in exaggerated movements. We then climbed the hill back to the path where the girls wanted to hitch-hike back to town *cough*lazy!!*cough*. We didn't though, partly because me and jasper didn't want to, mainly because there was no-one to hitch-hike with. After a walk that seemed much longer on the way back than on the way there we arrived back in town. None of us had eaten anything besides breakfast and it was now past 4 PM so we were starving. We decided to stop and eat in the very first restaurant we saw, so after passing up on a ton of them we settled down in the burger shop at the other end of town. We then split up to freshen up. Later the girls came over to our campsite to watch the movie channel, unfortunately for them all the good movies were gone. We watched 10,000 BC and a movie directed by Ben Affleck (personal request for Ben: Stop directing movies at once!). The next day we didn't do much seeing as it was pissing rain, we tried to watch some more movies but they were all so horrible that we gave up. Then the girls received a message from Siem that he was coming to Kaikoura as well. We met up after dinner for some good old card gaming fun. They also had a fireplace with an ominous message next to it "Don't overfeed the fire, if you set off the fire-alarm you will be fined $1500." I could already see the fire-alarm going off as soon as I would light even one match so I tried not to interfere with the firemaking too much. Us guys couldn't really get a good fire going, but luckily everyone in Finland still lives in a cave where they have to make fire out of snow and frozen poo so Outi managed to get the fire going in no time. We already started our card game while the girls had to take care of some stuff on the internet, and a Danish girl wanted to join us. Now I won't bore you with the details, but I'll say this: Danish girls are weird. Of course we ended up being the very last people awake in the hostel, and by 2 AM we were hungry again. Luckily the girls had kept some rice in Tupperware containers, so we ended up eating rice with sweet chili sauce and Muesli bars in the middle of the night. Weird, but tasty.
The following day me and Jasper hopped on the bus and said farewell to our friends once again. Hopefully not for the last time though.
When we got to Christchurch we booked into our old hostel only to be told that we were lucky indeed because there were only 2 beds left. Luck of the Irish indeed! I'm beginning to wonder if Scheffe isn't an Irish name after all.
With 9 days until our flight to Fiji we'll probably be wandering around town a lot.
Photos
Thursday, 1 April 2010
Let the good times roll
Christchurch was going to be a short stop for us before we headed to kaikoura. Just a day or two and then we'd continue. The first day (well, actually the second but we arrived in the evening of the first day) we headed into town to see if we could find any travel agencies and after checking the internet we came across a backpacker travel agency. After about an hour we had picked a flight on the 15th of april and we'd return 3 weeks later. We decided to let her hold the flight and that we'd come back the next day to pay and book a hostel. We spent the rest of the day in an internet cafe. The next day we headed back to the agency pay for our flight and accomodation with a huge stack of 20$ bills in our wallet (900$ worth). When the girl that helped us the day before tried to book the flights she'd reserved for us she found that they were gone, even though the machine had told her that we had 48 hours to pay for them. After a lot of calling back and forth it turned out that the seats were gone and that there was nothing we could do about it. Luckily we could find 2 tickets for 2 days later, we then booked a hostel for the first 2 days and a shuttle to the airport (it's going to pick us up at 5:15 AM!). However they couldn't get hold of the hostel so they'd have to send them and e-mail and we'd have to come back later to see if they had space for us. Unfortunately the next day was saturday and they were closed in the weekends so we'd have to come back on monday. The whole ordeal took about 2.5 hours and afterwards we spent some more time in an internet cafe (don't ask).
That evening we made pancakes and while we were doing this we started talking with a Dutch guy who had just checked in with two Finnish girls he travelled with, turns out they were in the same dorm as us. After dinner we played cards and just had a lot of fun with the occasional outburst of singing and dancing (without even a drop of alcohol as well!). We both shared a bit of our language and we now know haw to say "I need a hug" (Mula on halipula) and "Cheers!" (Holokyn kolokyn) and we taught them to say "Hey cutey" (hey lekker ding) and "Want to kiss?" (Zoenen?). We ended up playing and talking until 2 O' clock in the morning and the asian girl that shared the room with us probably wasn't very happy with us! She got us back in the morning though when she got up really early (at 8 or 9!) and started walking in and out of the room a lot and opening and closing every single zipper on her bag. We walked to the city centre together in hopes of seeing "the wizard" (a strange fellow who dresses up as a wizard and holds speeches on the square). Unfortunately we didn't see the wizard so we just went our seperate ways; Siem and the girls (Netta and Outi) went to the library to look for jobs while me and Jasper had important bussiness to attend to in the internet cafe *cough*computergames*cough*.
That evening was filled with a lot more cards, dancing and language lessons, the girls even baked a delicious chocolate cake and before we knew it it was around 2 again. The asian girl must really hate us by now. The following morning however she woke up really early again and packed her bag to leave. We were all really wondering who'd replace her and were hoping for someone nice!
This time we took the car to town in hopes of catching a glimpse of the wizard but we were disappointed once more. However there was a funny Scottish guy swalling swords and electric breadknives, he even walked over glass! We went our seperate ways once more as the girls went to the library again to look for jobs, Siem went to park his car and would join Jasper and me in the internet cafe later. The three of us ended up spending the entire day playing video games, the girls were very disappointed in us for wasting our time so badly and called us to ask when we were coming back. We then headed back to the garage where Siem had parked his car only to find that the garage had closed 15 minutes earlier. Siem decided to let his car in there until the next morning. That is, until he remembered that all his stuff (including his sleeping bag) was still in the car and that he'd need it to sleep. As we were thinking of what we were going to do next a girl said that she'd already called the security agency to come and pick up her car and that they'd arrive in a few minutes. 1 minute later they showed up and opened the gate; they had to pay but because there was two of them they could split the cost. We hung out with an American girl called Evelyn for a while and me, Jasper and Siem made pancakes for our group. After the pancakes the girls thought it might be fun to go to to an arcade hall. We had to hurry a bit because the hall closed at 11 and we didn't finish eating until 8:30 but we ended up having a lot of fun there playing dance dance revolution and guitar hero and the likes. The girls also wanted to use one of those asian photo booths so we had something to remember eachother by. the photo's ended up being extremely tiny but it was still worth it.
This time it wasn't a chinese girl we were waking up, but two german guys (who according to Netta and Outti weren't very nice). They retalliated by rustling plastic bags all morning. Siem was going to check out and continue today (he was actually planning on doing that the day before but decided against it). Before he went he agreed to come into town with us to use up our last arcade hall credit and have some last minute fun with us. He had found a wwoofin adress and was going there that day, but since he never said what time he'd be coming he figured he could arrive whenever he wanted to. After we played some DDR and Guitar hero (I even beat some guy who wanted to play against me!) the girls went job hunting again and us guys went for a last round of computer gaming. By the time we snapped out of our computer game state it was 7 and started to walk back to the hostel (Siem decided to leave his car there after what happened last time). However as we approached the hostel Siem's car was nowhere to be seen. We were afraid it was stolen, since it had all Siem's stuff in there as well, it turned out to be towed away. We waited with the girls while he went to the police station to get his car back. When he finally returned after two hours it turned out that he couldn't get it back that evening; his car had been towed away because it was within 1.5 meters of a drive-way though it wasn't blocking it at all. We had some carrot cake that the girls made, which was peculiar but very nice. After another fun night of cards and music we each headed to our own rooms (we were too late to get the same dorm again so we were split up all over the hostel). The following morning we all said goodbye to Siem and me and jasper headed into town with the girls to book our busticket to kaikoura. The girls wanted to do something fun on our last day (they were going on the next day as well) so we went to the gondola just outside of town. After a 20 minute busride we arrived at a barren landscape with a couple of hills scattered around. The gondola and the hill itself weren't impressive at all, even the most interesting attraction (the time tunnel) was closed. Still, we all had fun hanging out. When we got back in town we all had an ince-cream before the girls went off job-hunting again (this time they found a job that they really liked, I hope they get it).
The following morning we had to say goodbye to them, unfortunately, as they got picked up by a friend of theirs.
Now we're waiting for our bus to Kaikoura.
What was supposed to be just a day or two turned out to be well over a week, but it was time well spent!
http://s713.photobucket.com/albums/ww138/lingonlas/NZ%20April%202/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QorGHvqpP8E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-0XEaipuP0
That evening we made pancakes and while we were doing this we started talking with a Dutch guy who had just checked in with two Finnish girls he travelled with, turns out they were in the same dorm as us. After dinner we played cards and just had a lot of fun with the occasional outburst of singing and dancing (without even a drop of alcohol as well!). We both shared a bit of our language and we now know haw to say "I need a hug" (Mula on halipula) and "Cheers!" (Holokyn kolokyn) and we taught them to say "Hey cutey" (hey lekker ding) and "Want to kiss?" (Zoenen?). We ended up playing and talking until 2 O' clock in the morning and the asian girl that shared the room with us probably wasn't very happy with us! She got us back in the morning though when she got up really early (at 8 or 9!) and started walking in and out of the room a lot and opening and closing every single zipper on her bag. We walked to the city centre together in hopes of seeing "the wizard" (a strange fellow who dresses up as a wizard and holds speeches on the square). Unfortunately we didn't see the wizard so we just went our seperate ways; Siem and the girls (Netta and Outi) went to the library to look for jobs while me and Jasper had important bussiness to attend to in the internet cafe *cough*computergames*cough*.
That evening was filled with a lot more cards, dancing and language lessons, the girls even baked a delicious chocolate cake and before we knew it it was around 2 again. The asian girl must really hate us by now. The following morning however she woke up really early again and packed her bag to leave. We were all really wondering who'd replace her and were hoping for someone nice!
This time we took the car to town in hopes of catching a glimpse of the wizard but we were disappointed once more. However there was a funny Scottish guy swalling swords and electric breadknives, he even walked over glass! We went our seperate ways once more as the girls went to the library again to look for jobs, Siem went to park his car and would join Jasper and me in the internet cafe later. The three of us ended up spending the entire day playing video games, the girls were very disappointed in us for wasting our time so badly and called us to ask when we were coming back. We then headed back to the garage where Siem had parked his car only to find that the garage had closed 15 minutes earlier. Siem decided to let his car in there until the next morning. That is, until he remembered that all his stuff (including his sleeping bag) was still in the car and that he'd need it to sleep. As we were thinking of what we were going to do next a girl said that she'd already called the security agency to come and pick up her car and that they'd arrive in a few minutes. 1 minute later they showed up and opened the gate; they had to pay but because there was two of them they could split the cost. We hung out with an American girl called Evelyn for a while and me, Jasper and Siem made pancakes for our group. After the pancakes the girls thought it might be fun to go to to an arcade hall. We had to hurry a bit because the hall closed at 11 and we didn't finish eating until 8:30 but we ended up having a lot of fun there playing dance dance revolution and guitar hero and the likes. The girls also wanted to use one of those asian photo booths so we had something to remember eachother by. the photo's ended up being extremely tiny but it was still worth it.
This time it wasn't a chinese girl we were waking up, but two german guys (who according to Netta and Outti weren't very nice). They retalliated by rustling plastic bags all morning. Siem was going to check out and continue today (he was actually planning on doing that the day before but decided against it). Before he went he agreed to come into town with us to use up our last arcade hall credit and have some last minute fun with us. He had found a wwoofin adress and was going there that day, but since he never said what time he'd be coming he figured he could arrive whenever he wanted to. After we played some DDR and Guitar hero (I even beat some guy who wanted to play against me!) the girls went job hunting again and us guys went for a last round of computer gaming. By the time we snapped out of our computer game state it was 7 and started to walk back to the hostel (Siem decided to leave his car there after what happened last time). However as we approached the hostel Siem's car was nowhere to be seen. We were afraid it was stolen, since it had all Siem's stuff in there as well, it turned out to be towed away. We waited with the girls while he went to the police station to get his car back. When he finally returned after two hours it turned out that he couldn't get it back that evening; his car had been towed away because it was within 1.5 meters of a drive-way though it wasn't blocking it at all. We had some carrot cake that the girls made, which was peculiar but very nice. After another fun night of cards and music we each headed to our own rooms (we were too late to get the same dorm again so we were split up all over the hostel). The following morning we all said goodbye to Siem and me and jasper headed into town with the girls to book our busticket to kaikoura. The girls wanted to do something fun on our last day (they were going on the next day as well) so we went to the gondola just outside of town. After a 20 minute busride we arrived at a barren landscape with a couple of hills scattered around. The gondola and the hill itself weren't impressive at all, even the most interesting attraction (the time tunnel) was closed. Still, we all had fun hanging out. When we got back in town we all had an ince-cream before the girls went off job-hunting again (this time they found a job that they really liked, I hope they get it).
The following morning we had to say goodbye to them, unfortunately, as they got picked up by a friend of theirs.
Now we're waiting for our bus to Kaikoura.
What was supposed to be just a day or two turned out to be well over a week, but it was time well spent!
http://s713.photobucket.com/albums/ww138/lingonlas/NZ%20April%202/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QorGHvqpP8E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-0XEaipuP0
Friday, 26 March 2010
On the road again
We managed to get to Invercargill in one piece, and booked into a nice quiet hostel. Our tent decided to break again (only about a week after we got it replaced) so we headed to Kathmandu once more. After trying to fix the zipper for a while the guy behind the counter gave up and announced that he would just replace the whole tent for us (last time they only replaced the outer tent). However we'd have to come back the next day because we didn't bring our tent poles. Because we had nothing to do we decided to go to the cinema to try and watch a 3D movie, but just like the other 3 times we tried to watch a 3D movie here they weren't playing one, Doh! So we just watched Greenzone instead, which wasn't too bad. The next morning we picked up our brand new tent, which was actually a newer version than the one we had (and was about 500 dollars more expensive!). We wasted some time on the internet and headed back to our Hostel.
The following day we walked for an hour before arriving at the edge of town so we could start hitching a ride, but before we got our bags off our backs a car stopped. The guy obviously saw that we were planning to hitch-hike and offered to take us to Gore, which was about an hour further up the road. He dropped us off at the edge of town where it took us just over two and a half hours (!) to get our next ride. We finally ended up in Dunedin where we checked into another hostel (no campsites in town here), which was actually really nice and cozy. We spent a day exploring town and decided to go to Oamaru the next day to check out the penguins. After a long hour of walking we reached the start of the motorway and started to hitch-hike. After about 20 minutes a guy stopped and took us a short while up the road to the next town. From here another guy took us halfway to Oamaru. Rain then proceeded to piss down and after 5 seconds we were drenched, luckily we managed to get a ride after about 15 minutes, all the way to Oamaru this time. Oamaru actually looked very nice, it had a Victorian theme to it and the buildings all looked very clean. The campsite wasn't too flash, but it gave us a chance to test out our brand new tent. Turns out it was the exact same tent as the one we had, only with different colours, totally worth $500! That night we checked out the penguins, it was an hour walking to the first colony. Here Yellow-eyed penguins (one of the rarest penguins in the world) came ashore just before sundown. When we arrived there there was already a penguin ashore, he was standing in the bushes in plain view. After about half an hour of staring at the same penguin we decided to head to the other colony. This one was occupied by blue penguins, also called little penguins. We sat down on the huge podium they made on the edge of the sea to watch them come ashore. After about half an hour, just as it was starting to turn dark we saw the first wave of penguins swim towards shore. You first saw them as a swarm of little black spots, usually about 7 at a time. They were hard to spot at first because it was so dark, but once you saw them they were quite easy to follow. Even though it seemed like they got a brutal pounding as the waves crashed them onto the shore they were quite alright. We were told we couldn't take any pictures because they didn't want any flashes to accidentally go off, but when we were walking back to the campsite we found a few penguins that were coming ashore at a different spot so we took a few pictures of them here (making very sure that we'd turned off our flash). The next day we explored town, especially the old part of town was nice, it had a cool dutch bakery and a very nice 2nd hand book store. Of course I couldn't control myself and bought 3 more books, my bag is getting heavier and heavier. . .
When we started to hitch-hike to Christchurch I wasn't really feeling it as much as usual and because of the long distance (3 and a half hours) between Oamaru and Christchurch we were fairly pessimistic.
When at 2:30 pm we still didn't find a ride we decided to change our goal a bit so we wouldn't arrive at the hostels too late to find a bed. But just as I was writing our new destination on our sign a car stopped and the lady that got out offered to take us all the way to Christchurch.
http://s713.photobucket.com/albums/ww138/lingonlas/NZ%20Maart%2020/
The following day we walked for an hour before arriving at the edge of town so we could start hitching a ride, but before we got our bags off our backs a car stopped. The guy obviously saw that we were planning to hitch-hike and offered to take us to Gore, which was about an hour further up the road. He dropped us off at the edge of town where it took us just over two and a half hours (!) to get our next ride. We finally ended up in Dunedin where we checked into another hostel (no campsites in town here), which was actually really nice and cozy. We spent a day exploring town and decided to go to Oamaru the next day to check out the penguins. After a long hour of walking we reached the start of the motorway and started to hitch-hike. After about 20 minutes a guy stopped and took us a short while up the road to the next town. From here another guy took us halfway to Oamaru. Rain then proceeded to piss down and after 5 seconds we were drenched, luckily we managed to get a ride after about 15 minutes, all the way to Oamaru this time. Oamaru actually looked very nice, it had a Victorian theme to it and the buildings all looked very clean. The campsite wasn't too flash, but it gave us a chance to test out our brand new tent. Turns out it was the exact same tent as the one we had, only with different colours, totally worth $500! That night we checked out the penguins, it was an hour walking to the first colony. Here Yellow-eyed penguins (one of the rarest penguins in the world) came ashore just before sundown. When we arrived there there was already a penguin ashore, he was standing in the bushes in plain view. After about half an hour of staring at the same penguin we decided to head to the other colony. This one was occupied by blue penguins, also called little penguins. We sat down on the huge podium they made on the edge of the sea to watch them come ashore. After about half an hour, just as it was starting to turn dark we saw the first wave of penguins swim towards shore. You first saw them as a swarm of little black spots, usually about 7 at a time. They were hard to spot at first because it was so dark, but once you saw them they were quite easy to follow. Even though it seemed like they got a brutal pounding as the waves crashed them onto the shore they were quite alright. We were told we couldn't take any pictures because they didn't want any flashes to accidentally go off, but when we were walking back to the campsite we found a few penguins that were coming ashore at a different spot so we took a few pictures of them here (making very sure that we'd turned off our flash). The next day we explored town, especially the old part of town was nice, it had a cool dutch bakery and a very nice 2nd hand book store. Of course I couldn't control myself and bought 3 more books, my bag is getting heavier and heavier. . .
When we started to hitch-hike to Christchurch I wasn't really feeling it as much as usual and because of the long distance (3 and a half hours) between Oamaru and Christchurch we were fairly pessimistic.
When at 2:30 pm we still didn't find a ride we decided to change our goal a bit so we wouldn't arrive at the hostels too late to find a bed. But just as I was writing our new destination on our sign a car stopped and the lady that got out offered to take us all the way to Christchurch.
http://s713.photobucket.com/albums/ww138/lingonlas/NZ%20Maart%2020/
Thursday, 18 March 2010
Yally!
Getting from Queenstown to Te Anau was surprisingly easy, though we had to squeeze all our bags with us on the back seat again. The weather was slowly turning bad with grey skies and fierce winds, so for the first time in ages I had to put on my sweater. After booking our accomodation we decided to go for the dive trip into Milford sounds despite the fact that the two dives were only 25 minutes long (this was because we had to get over a mountain on the way back and a longer dive would make us risk decompression sickness). We had to get up at 5:30 the following morning and drowsily got in the van that would take us to the sounds. It was to be a 2 hour journey and it was still too dark to see anything outside so we just tried to catch some sleep. When we got to the dock in Milford Sounds our dive guide introduced himself as Alex (his real name was masouf or something), he was an egyptian guy somewhere in his 60s who said he'd been a diver all his life and used to train navy seal divers. He was an interesting character to say the least.
After a quick toilet break he had us (me, Jasper and the American Guy who was with us) carry a small pontoon boat into the water, the skipper then rammed his boat into the pebbles next to the small boat (he wasn't allowed to use the docks). We would then step from the small boat onto the bigger one (a very interesting system for getting on the boat if you ask me. . .). As we sailed out to the first dive-site we spotted some dolphins jumping out of the water in the wake of the boat.
We geared up and jumped into the water and it was freezing! We weren't exactly used to warm waters, but this water was only 12 degrees and that was a bit difference compared to the 16-18 degrees we were used to. After a quick weight check we descended into the very mirky looking water and reached the clearer salt water layer. Because of all the rain there is a fresh water layer on top of the salt water which causes a lot of light to be filtered out and thus creates a dark cold environment which is very similar to conditions at 60-70 meters. This makes the sounds a very unique place to dive in and you can see rare sea life that you wouldn't normally find at such shallow depths, such as black coral (which is actually white). We quickly spotted a nudi-branch and black coral. The black coral rose up like small white trees and there were fish hanging all around it like fruit. It seemed the American was having some problems with his buoyancy and was swimming hand in hand with Alex. Too soon the dive was over and we headed back to the boat. On the way to our next dive-site we passed by a bunch of seals and Ox our skipper said he was going to clean the boat. We were wondering what he meant by this, but he said we'd soon find out. While we were taking pictures of the spectacular scenery ox sailed the boat towards one of the many waterfalls in the area. Before we knew it water was pounding down on the roof and deck of the boat. After this refreshing shower we went to our next dive site, though the water here was even colder than ta the first site it didn't bother us as much as the first time. This time we swam along a 160m deep wall (though only at about 16m deep) taking our time to search the wall for all sorts of sea life. After we got back to the boat we sailed to a small island where we were to clean our wetsuits in one of the waterfalls. As Alex rowed the small boat ashore he sang an egyptian song and has us sing "Yally!" after every sentence, it was a very amusing situation. Once we reached the island we stepped into the waterfall and jumped into a pool to clean the wetsuits. After we arrived back in the port we hung around a bit and had some lunch to get the nitrogen out of our blood before we headed over the mountain.
The American guy went to the toilet while me and Jasper jumped into the van, when the American came back we drove off and stopped at a place to take some pictures. After I had gotten out and was about to walk towards the river to take some pictures Alex called and asked me where my friend was. I looked around to see where Jasper was, but I couldn't see him. I was sure he didn't walk past me yet but I was also sure I'd seen him get in the car but he wasn't in the car either. . . In the end we concluded we must have left him back in Milford Sounds somehow and Alex and Ox went back to get him while me and the American checked out the river. When we came back Alex and Ox had picked up Jasper, who apparently went to the toilet after he had dropped his bag in the van and without anyone noticing. We then drove back to Te Anau and I slept most of the way, I was dead tired.
After a few more days of resting we headed towards Invercargill.
After a quick toilet break he had us (me, Jasper and the American Guy who was with us) carry a small pontoon boat into the water, the skipper then rammed his boat into the pebbles next to the small boat (he wasn't allowed to use the docks). We would then step from the small boat onto the bigger one (a very interesting system for getting on the boat if you ask me. . .). As we sailed out to the first dive-site we spotted some dolphins jumping out of the water in the wake of the boat.
We geared up and jumped into the water and it was freezing! We weren't exactly used to warm waters, but this water was only 12 degrees and that was a bit difference compared to the 16-18 degrees we were used to. After a quick weight check we descended into the very mirky looking water and reached the clearer salt water layer. Because of all the rain there is a fresh water layer on top of the salt water which causes a lot of light to be filtered out and thus creates a dark cold environment which is very similar to conditions at 60-70 meters. This makes the sounds a very unique place to dive in and you can see rare sea life that you wouldn't normally find at such shallow depths, such as black coral (which is actually white). We quickly spotted a nudi-branch and black coral. The black coral rose up like small white trees and there were fish hanging all around it like fruit. It seemed the American was having some problems with his buoyancy and was swimming hand in hand with Alex. Too soon the dive was over and we headed back to the boat. On the way to our next dive-site we passed by a bunch of seals and Ox our skipper said he was going to clean the boat. We were wondering what he meant by this, but he said we'd soon find out. While we were taking pictures of the spectacular scenery ox sailed the boat towards one of the many waterfalls in the area. Before we knew it water was pounding down on the roof and deck of the boat. After this refreshing shower we went to our next dive site, though the water here was even colder than ta the first site it didn't bother us as much as the first time. This time we swam along a 160m deep wall (though only at about 16m deep) taking our time to search the wall for all sorts of sea life. After we got back to the boat we sailed to a small island where we were to clean our wetsuits in one of the waterfalls. As Alex rowed the small boat ashore he sang an egyptian song and has us sing "Yally!" after every sentence, it was a very amusing situation. Once we reached the island we stepped into the waterfall and jumped into a pool to clean the wetsuits. After we arrived back in the port we hung around a bit and had some lunch to get the nitrogen out of our blood before we headed over the mountain.
The American guy went to the toilet while me and Jasper jumped into the van, when the American came back we drove off and stopped at a place to take some pictures. After I had gotten out and was about to walk towards the river to take some pictures Alex called and asked me where my friend was. I looked around to see where Jasper was, but I couldn't see him. I was sure he didn't walk past me yet but I was also sure I'd seen him get in the car but he wasn't in the car either. . . In the end we concluded we must have left him back in Milford Sounds somehow and Alex and Ox went back to get him while me and the American checked out the river. When we came back Alex and Ox had picked up Jasper, who apparently went to the toilet after he had dropped his bag in the van and without anyone noticing. We then drove back to Te Anau and I slept most of the way, I was dead tired.
After a few more days of resting we headed towards Invercargill.
Friday, 12 March 2010
Hold your breath
We woke up to a cold wet morning, rain was coming down in streams and we didn't feel like getting up. We had to however because today was going to be a busy day, we had two dives planned and they promised to be exhausting. After some quick breakfast we headed up to the dive-shop and after all the gear was loaded into the van we went to pick up the third guy. After he was on-board it was about 40 minutes to the first dive-site; a bridge that got flooded as the lake rose in water level. The water was cold, but fortunately Lance and Simone had extremely good gear and as soon as the water in my suit had warmed up you didn't notice it at all.
After we had descended to the bridge, which was at about 10m deep, we swam in between the steel fencing across what would have been the deck of the bridge. The light shining through the steel structure gave it a very eerie glow. After we swam the entire lenght of the bridge we descended along one of it's stone pillars before swimming underneath the bridge and finally ascending through the steel structure. After surfacing and walking back to the car (which was very tiring with all our gear still on) we drove to the next dive site, which would take us about another hour.
This time we would dive into a fast flowing river and let the current take us downstream while we tried to avoid the numerous rocks scattered all over the bottom. We jumped in the water in a small inlet where there was virtually no current before swimming to the center of the river to let the current take us. The first few seconds, as the current grabbed hold and you knew you had no choice but to go along with it, were quite scary. We started to pick up speed fast now and as Lance led us to the center of the river it felt like all our furious finning wasn't helping at all. The rocks we encountered ranged from small to the size of a car and sometimes it took a lot of effort to go around them. At first Mattieux (the third guy) was behind Lance, followed by me and then jasper, but as we progressed along the river I found myself floating faster than Matt and there was no way I could stop or slow myself down. After a few desperate attempts at changing course and slowing down I collided with Matt, the current pushing me straight into him and then slowly over him. After seeing that he made no effort to speed up I decided to just go past him and to follow Lance directly. Lance was taking a lot of pictures and didn't notice two large rocks that were approaching fast, they were too big and too shallow to swim over comfortably so we were forced to bunny hop over them, pushing ourselves out of the water just slightly. Eventually we reached a whirlpool in the river where the water was deeper and we swiftly descended as the ground fell to about 8 meters, trying to stay out of the circling water as much as possible. Once we got to the bottom the water was relatively calm and we sat there for a few minutes looking at the trout that was swimming around us before continueing. After we got through the wildest part of the river where there were some very shallow white water rapids we ascended to the surface to catch our breath. When we descended again we passed through a relatively calm part of the river and we all had fun floating upside down and on our backs. A few minutes later we arrived at the exit point of the river and walked back to the car. When we arrived back in Queenstown we had a beer with Lance and Simone. We were dead tired.
http://s713.photobucket.com/albums/ww138/lingonlas/Nz%20maart%2013/
After we had descended to the bridge, which was at about 10m deep, we swam in between the steel fencing across what would have been the deck of the bridge. The light shining through the steel structure gave it a very eerie glow. After we swam the entire lenght of the bridge we descended along one of it's stone pillars before swimming underneath the bridge and finally ascending through the steel structure. After surfacing and walking back to the car (which was very tiring with all our gear still on) we drove to the next dive site, which would take us about another hour.
This time we would dive into a fast flowing river and let the current take us downstream while we tried to avoid the numerous rocks scattered all over the bottom. We jumped in the water in a small inlet where there was virtually no current before swimming to the center of the river to let the current take us. The first few seconds, as the current grabbed hold and you knew you had no choice but to go along with it, were quite scary. We started to pick up speed fast now and as Lance led us to the center of the river it felt like all our furious finning wasn't helping at all. The rocks we encountered ranged from small to the size of a car and sometimes it took a lot of effort to go around them. At first Mattieux (the third guy) was behind Lance, followed by me and then jasper, but as we progressed along the river I found myself floating faster than Matt and there was no way I could stop or slow myself down. After a few desperate attempts at changing course and slowing down I collided with Matt, the current pushing me straight into him and then slowly over him. After seeing that he made no effort to speed up I decided to just go past him and to follow Lance directly. Lance was taking a lot of pictures and didn't notice two large rocks that were approaching fast, they were too big and too shallow to swim over comfortably so we were forced to bunny hop over them, pushing ourselves out of the water just slightly. Eventually we reached a whirlpool in the river where the water was deeper and we swiftly descended as the ground fell to about 8 meters, trying to stay out of the circling water as much as possible. Once we got to the bottom the water was relatively calm and we sat there for a few minutes looking at the trout that was swimming around us before continueing. After we got through the wildest part of the river where there were some very shallow white water rapids we ascended to the surface to catch our breath. When we descended again we passed through a relatively calm part of the river and we all had fun floating upside down and on our backs. A few minutes later we arrived at the exit point of the river and walked back to the car. When we arrived back in Queenstown we had a beer with Lance and Simone. We were dead tired.
http://s713.photobucket.com/albums/ww138/lingonlas/Nz%20maart%2013/
Wednesday, 10 March 2010
Queenstown. City of extreme sports and insane stunts. Initially there was no mention of doing anything like bungy jumping but after hearing so many stories about the canyon swing Jasper managed to persuade me into booking a jump with them. We also decided to switch campsites the next day, seeing as the one we were in now was horribly overpriced, charged you for showers and everything closed at 11pm. After booking the canyon swing we stopped by an i-site to check out some more brochures and happened to run into one for a dive-shop in Queenstown. The dives were quite expensive so we were initially not planning to go, but I remembered nine mentioning them when we dived the Lermontov so we checked it out. Nine told us where to find them, just behind the supermarket, so rather than giving them a call we decided to just pay them a visit. Behind the supermarket were a bunch of modern office buildings with appartments on the 2nd floor, but nothing to indicate that there was a dive-shop there. Then we spotted a van with 'Dive Queenstown' written on the side and decided to see if there was anyone there. Eventually someone showed up, a bit surprised he asked us what we wanted. After verifying that this was the dive-shop we asked some questions about his dives. After he explained a few things he apologised for the fact that there was nobody there to meet us initially, but that he wasn't really a dive-shop and so wasn't used to people turning up at his place. We explained that Nine told us where to find him and this seemed to please him, he told us Nine was a good friend of him. After talking some more and after he showed us his gear and the dive scooters he used he offered to take us on 3 dives for the price of 2 because we were sent by Nine. We said we'd think about it and would give him a call later. After we walked out the door we talked about it "Do you want to do this?" "Yes." "Then let's just tell him right away, haha." So we turned back and booked the dives. He asked if we could do the scooter dive the day after, and even though we already planned to move campsites and do our canyon swing later on the day we figured we could probably squeeze the dive in the middle somewhere.
The next day we woke up early and packed up our tent, before heading to the other campsite we went to an outdoor shop to have our tent fixed. One of the zippers wasn't closing properly half of the time and it was really starting to annoy us, so we figured this was a good time to have it fixed. Rather than try to fix the zipper they just replaced the entire outer tent, which was nice.
We quickly moved our tent to the new campsite, had a shower and headed over to the dive shop (that wasn't actually a dive-shop). We (when I say we I mean Lance and his girlfriend Simone who run the place) loaded in the gear and headed off to the lake. Because he only had two scooters (and it would be too dangerous to escort two people on scooters) only one of us would dive at a time and after a game of rock-paper-scissors it was decided that jasper would go first.
About 40 minutes later Jasper and Lance resurfaced; Jasper seemed pretty excited and told me of the tricks he'd done and that they shot all the way down to 40 meters, the deepest we had ever gone. Then it was my turn. First we did a few excersises to get used to the system lance used, which was a little different from what we were used to, and after that Lance went back to pick up the underwater scooters. First we went down slowly so I could get used to the controls and the scooter and after that we started to descend quickly. Soon we stopped and Lance pointed at his computer, I looked at mine and saw that we were at 41.8 meters, eat that Jasper haha! We then slowly started to work our way up doing barrel rolls and all sorts of stuff along the way. Eventually Lance pointed at his computer again and I saw that it showed Deco, which meant that Lance had stayed down a little too long and too deep so he had to make an extra long safety stop to prevent decompression sickness. When we were doing our safety stop I looked at my air gauge and saw that I only had 10 bars of air left (which is virtually nothing) so I tapped Lance on the shoulder and signalled I was low on air. He looked at my gauge and when he saw how low I was he gave me his extra regulator to breathe from while we did our safety stop. When my 3 minutes were up Lance signalled for me to go up while he waited out the rest of his stop. When Lance was back on the surface as well I took off my gear and we discussed the dive a bit (Lance ended up on 30 bars, 50 bars is the usual ending pressure for a dive) and they dropped us off at our campsite so we could get ready for our canyon swing.
30 Minutes later we headed into town and I was really nervous. The jump was going to be a 60 meter freefall before the rope caught hold and swung you sideways. For more details see their website: http://www.canyonswing.co.nz/
They drove us up the mountain where they had their platform set-up. After they hoisted us in harnesses we got to jump off the edge one by one. The way in which you jumped depended entirely on you. I decided on "The Chair", meaning that they strapped me to some plastic lawn chairs and positioned me on the edge of the drop, backwards. I had to rock my chair back and forth until I finally fell backwards into the canyon. However, everytime I almost fell they grabbed the rope attached to me and pulled me back, and every time they did this they started making small talk again. After about 5 or 6 times I was ready to punch them in the face and my nerves were totally on edge. Then, finally, I leaned back again and slowly but surely fell off the platform, 60 meters down. After all the toying it was so unexpected that I totally forgot to scream as I flipped over and over on my way down. After they towed me back up and me and jasper checked our pictures we decided that $20 for a second jump was too cheap to turn down. For the second jump they suspended me head down, legs up facing the ground below me. Seconds after I got into position they unexpectedly let me go and I let out a loud scream as the ground came rushing towards me.
That night we were dead-tired, so it was fortunate that we had nothing planned for the next day.
Diving pictures:
http://s713.photobucket.com/albums/ww138/lingonlas/NZ%20maart%2011/
Preparation video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDGQR-fFe4U
http://s713.photobucket.com/albums/ww138/lingonlas/NZ%20maart%2011/
The next day we woke up early and packed up our tent, before heading to the other campsite we went to an outdoor shop to have our tent fixed. One of the zippers wasn't closing properly half of the time and it was really starting to annoy us, so we figured this was a good time to have it fixed. Rather than try to fix the zipper they just replaced the entire outer tent, which was nice.
We quickly moved our tent to the new campsite, had a shower and headed over to the dive shop (that wasn't actually a dive-shop). We (when I say we I mean Lance and his girlfriend Simone who run the place) loaded in the gear and headed off to the lake. Because he only had two scooters (and it would be too dangerous to escort two people on scooters) only one of us would dive at a time and after a game of rock-paper-scissors it was decided that jasper would go first.
About 40 minutes later Jasper and Lance resurfaced; Jasper seemed pretty excited and told me of the tricks he'd done and that they shot all the way down to 40 meters, the deepest we had ever gone. Then it was my turn. First we did a few excersises to get used to the system lance used, which was a little different from what we were used to, and after that Lance went back to pick up the underwater scooters. First we went down slowly so I could get used to the controls and the scooter and after that we started to descend quickly. Soon we stopped and Lance pointed at his computer, I looked at mine and saw that we were at 41.8 meters, eat that Jasper haha! We then slowly started to work our way up doing barrel rolls and all sorts of stuff along the way. Eventually Lance pointed at his computer again and I saw that it showed Deco, which meant that Lance had stayed down a little too long and too deep so he had to make an extra long safety stop to prevent decompression sickness. When we were doing our safety stop I looked at my air gauge and saw that I only had 10 bars of air left (which is virtually nothing) so I tapped Lance on the shoulder and signalled I was low on air. He looked at my gauge and when he saw how low I was he gave me his extra regulator to breathe from while we did our safety stop. When my 3 minutes were up Lance signalled for me to go up while he waited out the rest of his stop. When Lance was back on the surface as well I took off my gear and we discussed the dive a bit (Lance ended up on 30 bars, 50 bars is the usual ending pressure for a dive) and they dropped us off at our campsite so we could get ready for our canyon swing.
30 Minutes later we headed into town and I was really nervous. The jump was going to be a 60 meter freefall before the rope caught hold and swung you sideways. For more details see their website: http://www.canyonswing.co.nz/
They drove us up the mountain where they had their platform set-up. After they hoisted us in harnesses we got to jump off the edge one by one. The way in which you jumped depended entirely on you. I decided on "The Chair", meaning that they strapped me to some plastic lawn chairs and positioned me on the edge of the drop, backwards. I had to rock my chair back and forth until I finally fell backwards into the canyon. However, everytime I almost fell they grabbed the rope attached to me and pulled me back, and every time they did this they started making small talk again. After about 5 or 6 times I was ready to punch them in the face and my nerves were totally on edge. Then, finally, I leaned back again and slowly but surely fell off the platform, 60 meters down. After all the toying it was so unexpected that I totally forgot to scream as I flipped over and over on my way down. After they towed me back up and me and jasper checked our pictures we decided that $20 for a second jump was too cheap to turn down. For the second jump they suspended me head down, legs up facing the ground below me. Seconds after I got into position they unexpectedly let me go and I let out a loud scream as the ground came rushing towards me.
That night we were dead-tired, so it was fortunate that we had nothing planned for the next day.
Diving pictures:
http://s713.photobucket.com/albums/ww138/lingonlas/NZ%20maart%2011/
Preparation video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDGQR-fFe4U
http://s713.photobucket.com/albums/ww138/lingonlas/NZ%20maart%2011/
Monday, 8 March 2010
A new family
Standing just outside of Franz Jozef with a sign saying "Haast", we got picked up by a station wagon that seemed to already be packed to the brim. But, upon closer inspection there was plenty of space left for us and our gear, despite the fact that there were already four people inside. Apparently the two girls in the back had screamed at their dad that he had to pick us up and he complied. Sometimes I guess being two guys has it's advantages as well. Unfortunately they could only take us to Fox Glacier, which was about 50km south of Franz Josef.
After a while of standing there a van pulls over just in front of us, then 2 seconds later a second van pulls in and then a third van. We were unsure if they were stopping for us or for some other reason, but decided to ask anyway. Turns out they did stop for us and they were all travelling together, there was only 4 of them so they had exactly two seats left (they all had beds in the back), so Jasper jumped in one van and I jumped in another. The guy I jumped in with was called Jan and was from germany. The others were called Sebastian, Claudia and Colleen, two Germans and a french girl. Apparently Jan and Claudia had already met before in South America, but never exchanged adresses and then ran into each other again in NZ. Claudia was travelling with Sebastian after they met up in New Zealand a few days earlier and they picked up Colleen along the road, she was hitch-hiking like us. We travelled in formation and stopped at Fox Glacier along the way to take some pictures. We stopped several more times to take some pictures, the scenery was too stunning to be ignored. At first they were going to stay in Haast as well but eventually decided to go all the way to Wanaka. Seeing as we only picked Haast because we figured that was as far as we were going to get in one day we tagged along all the way to Wanaka. We went for dinner in a restaurant while Claudia was having some problems with her bank card and Sebastian was away half of the time to smoke. When the waitress asked if we were ready to order Claudia said "Mommy and Daddy aren't here yet but we'll order anyway" (Because Claudia and Sebastian were older than the rest she called em Mommy and Daddy). When she came back to bring us our drinks she asked if our parents had come back yet; by then Sebastian was there as well and the look on his face when Claudia said "Well this is daddy but mommy is still away" was priceless. After dinner we went to visit one of Wanaka's greatest attractions, Cinema Paradiso. A small cinema where instead of chairs they had couches, sofas and even an old VW Beetle for you to sit in. They were also renowned for their great ice-cream and cookies. The movie we watched wasn't particularly interesting but it was a nice experience.
The next day they were going to Queentown and we wanted to stay a bit longer in Wanaka so we booked another night at the campsite. Turned out that they were also staying the day in Wanaka so we tagged along with them as we paid a visit to the Puzzling World. First we had a play around in the great maze, which had 1.5km of paths to get lost in. First we had to find each of the towers in the right order and then back to the centre, this was a lot harder than we first thought and it took us quite a while to finish, eventually me and jasper were trying to find the exit and just kept ending up at the same place. Then we went into the halls of illusion where they had all sorts of 3D pictures and optical illusions.
At the end of the day we said goodbye to our new friends and promised we'd meet up again in Queenstown. The next day we started hitch-hiking pretty close to our campsite, this was what looked like the shortest road to Queenstown, even though it wasn't part of the highway. There was a couple already hitch-hiking and this was the first time we were actually hoping another couple would be picked up soon. When after an hour we still hadn't found a ride we decided to walk to the other side of town to where the highway was and try again there. We had been standing there for almost an hour and a couple of people had shouted to us that Queenstown was the other way; we starting to despair a bit and were unsure if we should remain there or walk back to our original spot. Luckily at just that moment a car stopped for us on the other side of the road and took us to Queenstown.
http://s713.photobucket.com/albums/ww138/lingonlas/NZ%20Maart%208/
videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXjKqpTQfts a kitten that was hanging around our tent in Franz Jozef
Puzzling world:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPmcMFHBzUI&feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjApAJCyTGY&feature=channel
After a while of standing there a van pulls over just in front of us, then 2 seconds later a second van pulls in and then a third van. We were unsure if they were stopping for us or for some other reason, but decided to ask anyway. Turns out they did stop for us and they were all travelling together, there was only 4 of them so they had exactly two seats left (they all had beds in the back), so Jasper jumped in one van and I jumped in another. The guy I jumped in with was called Jan and was from germany. The others were called Sebastian, Claudia and Colleen, two Germans and a french girl. Apparently Jan and Claudia had already met before in South America, but never exchanged adresses and then ran into each other again in NZ. Claudia was travelling with Sebastian after they met up in New Zealand a few days earlier and they picked up Colleen along the road, she was hitch-hiking like us. We travelled in formation and stopped at Fox Glacier along the way to take some pictures. We stopped several more times to take some pictures, the scenery was too stunning to be ignored. At first they were going to stay in Haast as well but eventually decided to go all the way to Wanaka. Seeing as we only picked Haast because we figured that was as far as we were going to get in one day we tagged along all the way to Wanaka. We went for dinner in a restaurant while Claudia was having some problems with her bank card and Sebastian was away half of the time to smoke. When the waitress asked if we were ready to order Claudia said "Mommy and Daddy aren't here yet but we'll order anyway" (Because Claudia and Sebastian were older than the rest she called em Mommy and Daddy). When she came back to bring us our drinks she asked if our parents had come back yet; by then Sebastian was there as well and the look on his face when Claudia said "Well this is daddy but mommy is still away" was priceless. After dinner we went to visit one of Wanaka's greatest attractions, Cinema Paradiso. A small cinema where instead of chairs they had couches, sofas and even an old VW Beetle for you to sit in. They were also renowned for their great ice-cream and cookies. The movie we watched wasn't particularly interesting but it was a nice experience.
The next day they were going to Queentown and we wanted to stay a bit longer in Wanaka so we booked another night at the campsite. Turned out that they were also staying the day in Wanaka so we tagged along with them as we paid a visit to the Puzzling World. First we had a play around in the great maze, which had 1.5km of paths to get lost in. First we had to find each of the towers in the right order and then back to the centre, this was a lot harder than we first thought and it took us quite a while to finish, eventually me and jasper were trying to find the exit and just kept ending up at the same place. Then we went into the halls of illusion where they had all sorts of 3D pictures and optical illusions.
At the end of the day we said goodbye to our new friends and promised we'd meet up again in Queenstown. The next day we started hitch-hiking pretty close to our campsite, this was what looked like the shortest road to Queenstown, even though it wasn't part of the highway. There was a couple already hitch-hiking and this was the first time we were actually hoping another couple would be picked up soon. When after an hour we still hadn't found a ride we decided to walk to the other side of town to where the highway was and try again there. We had been standing there for almost an hour and a couple of people had shouted to us that Queenstown was the other way; we starting to despair a bit and were unsure if we should remain there or walk back to our original spot. Luckily at just that moment a car stopped for us on the other side of the road and took us to Queenstown.
http://s713.photobucket.com/albums/ww138/lingonlas/NZ%20Maart%208/
videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXjKqpTQfts a kitten that was hanging around our tent in Franz Jozef
Puzzling world:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPmcMFHBzUI&feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjApAJCyTGY&feature=channel
Thursday, 4 March 2010
Cool
Carefully balancing on the front spikes of the crampons attached to my shoes I remove my right axe from the ice and hammer it as far up as I can. Dividing my weight between my right axe and my feet I remove my let axe and thrust it into the ice as high as I can. After feeling if my axes are in deep enough I shift all my weight to my arms and move feet up step by step. Suddenly the ice under one of my axes crumbles and breaks away. I fall, sliding down the ice. The cold hard surface of the wall grates against my chest. I stop with a thud, a large shock moving through my right arm. My right axe withstood the pressure of my fall and I was now hanging from one arm. Slowly I bring up my left arm and ram the axe in the ice, double checking to make sure the ice is strong enough to hold my weight. A little reluctant I continue my ascend.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves. After the knife making we went up to the pancake rocks and blowholes in the dark. We had to go either in the morning or at night to see the blowholes at high tide, and we'd not morning persons. At first we couldn't see anything and dismissed the blowholes as a lot of nothing, but then suddenly they spewed their watery load several meters in the air. We tried to take pictures, but it was way too dark to capture anything, despite the full moon iluminating the way for us. On the way back I suddenly saw something moving by the side of the road. I saw that it was a creature of some sorts so I took a quick picture. The picture showed a pair of bright red eyes somewhere in the trees. It was a possum! We quickly snapped a dozen pictures, the possum didn't seem afraid of us at all and at one point even got really close to us, but ofcourse moved just as I tried to take a picture.
The following day we hitch-hiked to Greymouth, a particularly grey and ugly looking town. The fact that it was pissing rain probably didn't help either. We decided to book two nights because Jasper wanted to do some quad biking. The rest of the day it didn't stop raining once, all of the grass turned into marshlands and big pools of water started to pop-up everywhere. The next morning we woke up to a sunny day however, and seeing as getting mud is half the fun of riding a quad bike it proved to be a good day. It would just be us two and a guide, so we wouldn't have to wait for any slow drivers or anything like that. After a quick lap through the practice track we headed out onto the track. It started off relatively easy, riding over rocks and through puddles of mud but it gradually got harder. Eventually our guide stopped and told us to put our quads in 4WD, we were starting to get to the hard part. After a long ride up a steep slope we started to go through a forest eventually ending up on the other side of the hill to descend a steep mud covered track. It required some careful maneuvering and half the time I ended up going down sideways. The overall track was quite tricky, but we managed to conquer all obstacles and after 90 minutes we arrived back at the farm.
The next day we headed to the Franz Jozef glacier, the rides hadn't been coming easy in the South Island and this day was no exception, but finally at about 4 pm we arrived in the town of Franz Jozef and booked into a holiday park. We had to pitch our tent on a miniscule patch of grass between the toilets and the playground. We went into the tiny village to book our trip to the glacier, arriving at the booking agency just after a bus load of people arrived. After waiting about 20 minutes we finally got to booking our trip and we decided to go for the ice-climbing, rather than a full-day walk over the glacier, since the ice climbing seemed to include a fair amount of walking as well.
We went to bed early and woke up the next morning at 6:15 still feeling pretty tired after people kept tripping over our tent all night. We showed up at 7:45 exactly on time and were told to sit and wait for the others. 25 Minutes later we were finally assembled and walked across the road to pick up the rest of our gear. Everyone received a pair of overpants, a backpack, a harness, a helmet, crampons, a pair of boots and gloves and a hat. A short 20 minute and a 30 minute walk later we arrived at the glacier where a couple of guides were still cutting out a path up the first steep part. Walking with crampons was awkward while we were still on rocks, but once we got to the ice it felt very natural. A short walk later we arrived at a vertical wall where one of our guides was already working on setting up our safety lines. When the lines were finally up we received instructions on how to use the axes and crampons. The trick was apparently to drive your axes in the ice one by one and then moving your feet up slowly while driving the spike on the front into the ice. Once your helmet reached your axes you'd rest your weight on your feet and move your axes up as far as possible, repeat until your at the top. I was the third person to give it a go and it was easier than I had feared, but slightly harder than I expected. Especially driving your feet into the ice hard enough to acquire some form of support proved to be challenging. After we all tried the wall on to different spots one of the guides moved to change the location of the lines while the rest of us went for a walk through the glacier. The scenery was beautiful and the sun made sure the temperature didn't drop too low. The ice cave we crawled through was bright blue and extremely slippery. After the cave we made our way back through the wall, the guide hacking away steps in the ice at points too tricky to walk down.
The second set of climbs proved to be harder than the first and I was to be the first to try one of them out. On my path, just before the top, was a large hole. I got up there fairly quick and easily but then I had to decide wether I was going to try and go around the hole or try to somehow climb in it. I figured going around was my best bet, but this was easier said than done. I had to move my left hand over the rope and try to get far enough to the right of it to be able to use my left pick as well, because the hole itself offered no spots for my axe at all. Hanging there almost sideways on the wall my axe decided it was enough and I was sent plummiting down, luckily I was attached to the safety rope and after a second of catching my breath I hacked my way back up to the hole and this time made my ay inside it, which proved to be a lot easier than going around. After everyone had their climbs we moved back down to the van and drove back to town.
We had been talking to a German girl during the day and we decided to have a drink in the local bar and play some pool. She was training to be a vet and did her internship here in New Zealand. When we asked if she had any crazy vet stories she said no. When we asked if she had any normal vet stories then she told us the story of how she castrated her own cat during a "bring your pet to school and castrate him/her" day.
Videos of our surf instructor in Gisborne that took us to the rehe rockslides as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gVQ4aizLw8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMTOSwJMn_E&feature=channel
Pictures:
http://s713.photobucket.com/albums/ww138/lingonlas/NZ%20Maart%205/
But let's not get ahead of ourselves. After the knife making we went up to the pancake rocks and blowholes in the dark. We had to go either in the morning or at night to see the blowholes at high tide, and we'd not morning persons. At first we couldn't see anything and dismissed the blowholes as a lot of nothing, but then suddenly they spewed their watery load several meters in the air. We tried to take pictures, but it was way too dark to capture anything, despite the full moon iluminating the way for us. On the way back I suddenly saw something moving by the side of the road. I saw that it was a creature of some sorts so I took a quick picture. The picture showed a pair of bright red eyes somewhere in the trees. It was a possum! We quickly snapped a dozen pictures, the possum didn't seem afraid of us at all and at one point even got really close to us, but ofcourse moved just as I tried to take a picture.
The following day we hitch-hiked to Greymouth, a particularly grey and ugly looking town. The fact that it was pissing rain probably didn't help either. We decided to book two nights because Jasper wanted to do some quad biking. The rest of the day it didn't stop raining once, all of the grass turned into marshlands and big pools of water started to pop-up everywhere. The next morning we woke up to a sunny day however, and seeing as getting mud is half the fun of riding a quad bike it proved to be a good day. It would just be us two and a guide, so we wouldn't have to wait for any slow drivers or anything like that. After a quick lap through the practice track we headed out onto the track. It started off relatively easy, riding over rocks and through puddles of mud but it gradually got harder. Eventually our guide stopped and told us to put our quads in 4WD, we were starting to get to the hard part. After a long ride up a steep slope we started to go through a forest eventually ending up on the other side of the hill to descend a steep mud covered track. It required some careful maneuvering and half the time I ended up going down sideways. The overall track was quite tricky, but we managed to conquer all obstacles and after 90 minutes we arrived back at the farm.
The next day we headed to the Franz Jozef glacier, the rides hadn't been coming easy in the South Island and this day was no exception, but finally at about 4 pm we arrived in the town of Franz Jozef and booked into a holiday park. We had to pitch our tent on a miniscule patch of grass between the toilets and the playground. We went into the tiny village to book our trip to the glacier, arriving at the booking agency just after a bus load of people arrived. After waiting about 20 minutes we finally got to booking our trip and we decided to go for the ice-climbing, rather than a full-day walk over the glacier, since the ice climbing seemed to include a fair amount of walking as well.
We went to bed early and woke up the next morning at 6:15 still feeling pretty tired after people kept tripping over our tent all night. We showed up at 7:45 exactly on time and were told to sit and wait for the others. 25 Minutes later we were finally assembled and walked across the road to pick up the rest of our gear. Everyone received a pair of overpants, a backpack, a harness, a helmet, crampons, a pair of boots and gloves and a hat. A short 20 minute and a 30 minute walk later we arrived at the glacier where a couple of guides were still cutting out a path up the first steep part. Walking with crampons was awkward while we were still on rocks, but once we got to the ice it felt very natural. A short walk later we arrived at a vertical wall where one of our guides was already working on setting up our safety lines. When the lines were finally up we received instructions on how to use the axes and crampons. The trick was apparently to drive your axes in the ice one by one and then moving your feet up slowly while driving the spike on the front into the ice. Once your helmet reached your axes you'd rest your weight on your feet and move your axes up as far as possible, repeat until your at the top. I was the third person to give it a go and it was easier than I had feared, but slightly harder than I expected. Especially driving your feet into the ice hard enough to acquire some form of support proved to be challenging. After we all tried the wall on to different spots one of the guides moved to change the location of the lines while the rest of us went for a walk through the glacier. The scenery was beautiful and the sun made sure the temperature didn't drop too low. The ice cave we crawled through was bright blue and extremely slippery. After the cave we made our way back through the wall, the guide hacking away steps in the ice at points too tricky to walk down.
The second set of climbs proved to be harder than the first and I was to be the first to try one of them out. On my path, just before the top, was a large hole. I got up there fairly quick and easily but then I had to decide wether I was going to try and go around the hole or try to somehow climb in it. I figured going around was my best bet, but this was easier said than done. I had to move my left hand over the rope and try to get far enough to the right of it to be able to use my left pick as well, because the hole itself offered no spots for my axe at all. Hanging there almost sideways on the wall my axe decided it was enough and I was sent plummiting down, luckily I was attached to the safety rope and after a second of catching my breath I hacked my way back up to the hole and this time made my ay inside it, which proved to be a lot easier than going around. After everyone had their climbs we moved back down to the van and drove back to town.
We had been talking to a German girl during the day and we decided to have a drink in the local bar and play some pool. She was training to be a vet and did her internship here in New Zealand. When we asked if she had any crazy vet stories she said no. When we asked if she had any normal vet stories then she told us the story of how she castrated her own cat during a "bring your pet to school and castrate him/her" day.
Videos of our surf instructor in Gisborne that took us to the rehe rockslides as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gVQ4aizLw8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMTOSwJMn_E&feature=channel
Pictures:
http://s713.photobucket.com/albums/ww138/lingonlas/NZ%20Maart%205/
Saturday, 27 February 2010
Knice guy
Once upon a time there were two little boys who liked to play with knives. Everywhere they went they brought along their trusted pocket knives and brandished them at every opportunity. They saw a great many things with their knives as companions, but now they had come across something special, something new. They had stumbled upon a flyer depicting the ancient and sacred art of knife making, on it was written in big red letters: "Make your own knife!"
This had the boys bubbling with excitement and they knew they couldn't resist the pamphlet's hypnotic charm. For many nights they laid awake dreaming of the knife they would make and how it would be the best knife in the world. And then, finally, the time had come!
They had to wake up early, really early "but waking up at 8:15 was worth it if you got to make your own knife!" thought the boys.
As they were still finishing their morning routine they were approached by a woman, "Are you two the ones making your own knives today?" she asked. "Yes, that's us" the boys replied as they dropped everything they were doing and hurried to the woman's car.
The car was old and dusty with an equally old and dusty dog (but not any less cute) sitting in the back seat. "Don't mind the dog" the woman said "He's old and deaf, but very friendly." The boys didn't mind. What one of the boys did find strange however was the fact that a large slab of rock was sitting on the floor of the car, but he didn't dwell on this for very long. After all, it was almost time to start making knives!
20 Minutes later the boys arrived at an old farm house with a forge outside and a whole bunch of anvils scattered around. There were a lot more people standing there, waiting just as anxiously as the boys for their chance to make knives. The woman's husband was standing in the middle of the group of people making smalltalk while he waited for everyone to arrive. He was wearing a brown blacksmith's apron and looked quite old with his grey hair and over sized glasses, but he sounded quite friendly. "Right" he said as he saw that everyone was here "If you'll follow me to those chairs we'll give you all a shirt and a pair of glasses to wear." The man walked almost like a penguin, without bending his knees, and the little boy wondered what was wrong with him. "Maybe he has two wooden legs" he thought. He was handed one of the ugliest shirts on earth and a pair of safety glasses to put on and a piece of tape that would serve as a name tag. Suddenly the boy noticed that the old man and woman were also wearing name tags and that they were in fact called "Steven" and "Robyn".
After leading the group back to the forge Steven gave some instructions on what was to be done to make a knife from a blank piece of steel. He gave everyone their very own piece of steel to work with and fired up the forge.
"We're going to stick our metal into the forge until it's red hot, being very careful not to take it too far, because that will ruin the metal" Steven said. "Now, could I borrow your steel for a second there Rob?" he asked as he took Rob's piece of metal and stuck it in the forge. "Do you see how Rob holds his metal straight as he pushes it into the forge, checking every now and then if his metal is the right colour?
"Beautifully done Rob, you did that perfectly" he said as he gave Rob back his piece of metal. "It's almost as if you've done that before!"
"The trick to hammering your metal into the right shape is to hammer it while it's hot and to hit it with the centre of your hammer, not the edges"
As Steven was giving these instructions the little boy was getting more nervous by the second. "What if I mess it up and ruin my blade!" he thought. Luckily, he didn't have to go first. After seeing 4 people do their parts before him he felt a little more confident, even if he would mess it up slightly, Steven would be able to fix it without problems.
Very carefully he stuck his piece of steel in the forge making sure to check on it regularly to see if it showed that bright orange glow yet. When it finally turned orange he quickly pulled it out of the forge and onto the anvil. He started to hammer and hammer as if his life depended on it, making very sure to hit it with the centre of the hammer only. The hammer rained down in loud ringing bangs as at least half of the blows hit the anvil instead of the blade. Not because the boy couldn't aim, but because he was being a little over-cautious to hit exactly the right spot on the blade.
After a while he stuck the blade back in the forge till it turned orange and then banged away to heart's content. Soon his blows were getting less frequent and sweat was starting to form on his brown, he was getting tired. "You can just put your hammer down and take a breather if you want" said Robyn, and so the boy did. He decided this was a good time to ask the expert's opinion on his progress and called over to Steven. Steven shuffled over, picked up the blade and said "Good job there Tim, looks like this one is done!" and he proceeded to hammer a curve in it for the handle to go on.
A little perplexed the boy said thanks and walked to put his blade in the bucket of water, he had thought he was only about halfway through hammering his metal. Afterwards Robyn stripped the metal grip off the blade and gave it back to the boy, saying he should start grinding the side of it on 4 different belt grinders. After using the first grinder he saw the metal turning bright, but he didn't notice any difference on the other grinders. Nevertheless he did what he was told and soon found himself standing with a slightly blade shaped piece of metal with a shiny centre part.
"The reason we grinded the centre" Steven said "Was because this makes it easier for the brass decoration to stick to the blade."
He then told everyone to glue two pieces of brass to either side of their blade and then drill two holes all the way through. After some more glue they inserted some brass pins and hammer them until the brass was fitted into place. Then they had to cut the handles out of a piece of wood and glue them onto the blade as well. Some more brass pins ensured that the wood was secure. After everyone had their handle glued to the metal Steven explained the group how they had to finish their handle before lunch. After everyone had their wood grinded down to roughly handle shape they were told to fill all the gaps with epoxy resin as fast as possible. "Especially the back crack!"
Then it was time for lunch and the boys feasted on their first cheese sandwich in what seemed like ages. After everyone went back for seconds and the dog finally decided he wouldn't be able to get any more food the group went for a walk. During this walk one boy remarked to the other "I wonder if we're going anywhere specific or if we're just going to walk the dog as a group" the other boy wondered exactly the same.
After the "walk" they went to the super swing. The super swing was a huge contraption and looked rather intimidating. "Why don't you go first Tim." Robyn said. The little boy complied and sat on the swing as five men were grabbing hold of the rope attached to it. At Robyn's mark they all ran backwards and pulled on the rope as hard as they could. The little boy went higher and higher and the ground got farther and farther away. Just before the people on the ground released the rope he felt like he was hanging horizontally and then went soaring down at high speed. Afterwards it was time for the other little boy to ride the swing and he too was impressed by the height he reached. None of the others seemed keen on riding the swing so they went back to the house where the boys passed the rest of the time by throwing axes and metal stars at a huge wooden target.
When Steven was done grinding off the excess metal off everyone's knife (this was too dangerous for the people to do themselves) the people collected their knives again. This time they were told to grind the blade down ever so slightly on a number of different grinders to achieve a mirror like polish. When everyone was done on the grinders they were told to go out to the front of the house where a number of chairs was waiting for them. Here they were to grind down the last blemishes off the blade manually using different grains of sandpaper.
As everyone was sitting there grinding away at their blade, looking out over the sea the little boy remarked to his friend "I imagine this is what it must have been like for people that got sent to sea to recover in the old days. Though I imagine their activities were a little less lethal"
Finally when all the blades were shining Steven lead them back to the other side of the house. "Just a final layer for the handle and we'll be having champagne!" he said as he showed the group how to cover their handle with a waterproof finish.
After everyone was done the group went inside and waited for their glass of champagne. As Robyn brought out a big tray filled with wine glasses Steven confessed to a secret: "It's not really champagne he said, it's made here on the westcoast. We call it berrypagne." As someone remarked that it tasted quite good he said "Thanks! We actually make it ourselves. What vintage is this dear?" he asked Robyn "I think this is the 2:30 vintage"
"There you go" Steven said "It's had about 1,5 hours to mature in the plastic bottle, which is important! You see, what we do is: We carefully select a bottle of wine from the local store (the cheapest one) and... well looking at that soda machine bottle you can probably guess the rest!"
Everyone laughed at this and finished their glass. The two boys were really starting to feel the effects of the alcohol and being very careful not to stab anyone with their brand new knife they joined the rest for a group photo outside.
Feeling slightly tipsy they thanked Steven and Robyn for a wonderful day and headed back with a huge smile on their face and their very own knives in their hand.
This had the boys bubbling with excitement and they knew they couldn't resist the pamphlet's hypnotic charm. For many nights they laid awake dreaming of the knife they would make and how it would be the best knife in the world. And then, finally, the time had come!
They had to wake up early, really early "but waking up at 8:15 was worth it if you got to make your own knife!" thought the boys.
As they were still finishing their morning routine they were approached by a woman, "Are you two the ones making your own knives today?" she asked. "Yes, that's us" the boys replied as they dropped everything they were doing and hurried to the woman's car.
The car was old and dusty with an equally old and dusty dog (but not any less cute) sitting in the back seat. "Don't mind the dog" the woman said "He's old and deaf, but very friendly." The boys didn't mind. What one of the boys did find strange however was the fact that a large slab of rock was sitting on the floor of the car, but he didn't dwell on this for very long. After all, it was almost time to start making knives!
20 Minutes later the boys arrived at an old farm house with a forge outside and a whole bunch of anvils scattered around. There were a lot more people standing there, waiting just as anxiously as the boys for their chance to make knives. The woman's husband was standing in the middle of the group of people making smalltalk while he waited for everyone to arrive. He was wearing a brown blacksmith's apron and looked quite old with his grey hair and over sized glasses, but he sounded quite friendly. "Right" he said as he saw that everyone was here "If you'll follow me to those chairs we'll give you all a shirt and a pair of glasses to wear." The man walked almost like a penguin, without bending his knees, and the little boy wondered what was wrong with him. "Maybe he has two wooden legs" he thought. He was handed one of the ugliest shirts on earth and a pair of safety glasses to put on and a piece of tape that would serve as a name tag. Suddenly the boy noticed that the old man and woman were also wearing name tags and that they were in fact called "Steven" and "Robyn".
After leading the group back to the forge Steven gave some instructions on what was to be done to make a knife from a blank piece of steel. He gave everyone their very own piece of steel to work with and fired up the forge.
"We're going to stick our metal into the forge until it's red hot, being very careful not to take it too far, because that will ruin the metal" Steven said. "Now, could I borrow your steel for a second there Rob?" he asked as he took Rob's piece of metal and stuck it in the forge. "Do you see how Rob holds his metal straight as he pushes it into the forge, checking every now and then if his metal is the right colour?
"Beautifully done Rob, you did that perfectly" he said as he gave Rob back his piece of metal. "It's almost as if you've done that before!"
"The trick to hammering your metal into the right shape is to hammer it while it's hot and to hit it with the centre of your hammer, not the edges"
As Steven was giving these instructions the little boy was getting more nervous by the second. "What if I mess it up and ruin my blade!" he thought. Luckily, he didn't have to go first. After seeing 4 people do their parts before him he felt a little more confident, even if he would mess it up slightly, Steven would be able to fix it without problems.
Very carefully he stuck his piece of steel in the forge making sure to check on it regularly to see if it showed that bright orange glow yet. When it finally turned orange he quickly pulled it out of the forge and onto the anvil. He started to hammer and hammer as if his life depended on it, making very sure to hit it with the centre of the hammer only. The hammer rained down in loud ringing bangs as at least half of the blows hit the anvil instead of the blade. Not because the boy couldn't aim, but because he was being a little over-cautious to hit exactly the right spot on the blade.
After a while he stuck the blade back in the forge till it turned orange and then banged away to heart's content. Soon his blows were getting less frequent and sweat was starting to form on his brown, he was getting tired. "You can just put your hammer down and take a breather if you want" said Robyn, and so the boy did. He decided this was a good time to ask the expert's opinion on his progress and called over to Steven. Steven shuffled over, picked up the blade and said "Good job there Tim, looks like this one is done!" and he proceeded to hammer a curve in it for the handle to go on.
A little perplexed the boy said thanks and walked to put his blade in the bucket of water, he had thought he was only about halfway through hammering his metal. Afterwards Robyn stripped the metal grip off the blade and gave it back to the boy, saying he should start grinding the side of it on 4 different belt grinders. After using the first grinder he saw the metal turning bright, but he didn't notice any difference on the other grinders. Nevertheless he did what he was told and soon found himself standing with a slightly blade shaped piece of metal with a shiny centre part.
"The reason we grinded the centre" Steven said "Was because this makes it easier for the brass decoration to stick to the blade."
He then told everyone to glue two pieces of brass to either side of their blade and then drill two holes all the way through. After some more glue they inserted some brass pins and hammer them until the brass was fitted into place. Then they had to cut the handles out of a piece of wood and glue them onto the blade as well. Some more brass pins ensured that the wood was secure. After everyone had their handle glued to the metal Steven explained the group how they had to finish their handle before lunch. After everyone had their wood grinded down to roughly handle shape they were told to fill all the gaps with epoxy resin as fast as possible. "Especially the back crack!"
Then it was time for lunch and the boys feasted on their first cheese sandwich in what seemed like ages. After everyone went back for seconds and the dog finally decided he wouldn't be able to get any more food the group went for a walk. During this walk one boy remarked to the other "I wonder if we're going anywhere specific or if we're just going to walk the dog as a group" the other boy wondered exactly the same.
After the "walk" they went to the super swing. The super swing was a huge contraption and looked rather intimidating. "Why don't you go first Tim." Robyn said. The little boy complied and sat on the swing as five men were grabbing hold of the rope attached to it. At Robyn's mark they all ran backwards and pulled on the rope as hard as they could. The little boy went higher and higher and the ground got farther and farther away. Just before the people on the ground released the rope he felt like he was hanging horizontally and then went soaring down at high speed. Afterwards it was time for the other little boy to ride the swing and he too was impressed by the height he reached. None of the others seemed keen on riding the swing so they went back to the house where the boys passed the rest of the time by throwing axes and metal stars at a huge wooden target.
When Steven was done grinding off the excess metal off everyone's knife (this was too dangerous for the people to do themselves) the people collected their knives again. This time they were told to grind the blade down ever so slightly on a number of different grinders to achieve a mirror like polish. When everyone was done on the grinders they were told to go out to the front of the house where a number of chairs was waiting for them. Here they were to grind down the last blemishes off the blade manually using different grains of sandpaper.
As everyone was sitting there grinding away at their blade, looking out over the sea the little boy remarked to his friend "I imagine this is what it must have been like for people that got sent to sea to recover in the old days. Though I imagine their activities were a little less lethal"
Finally when all the blades were shining Steven lead them back to the other side of the house. "Just a final layer for the handle and we'll be having champagne!" he said as he showed the group how to cover their handle with a waterproof finish.
After everyone was done the group went inside and waited for their glass of champagne. As Robyn brought out a big tray filled with wine glasses Steven confessed to a secret: "It's not really champagne he said, it's made here on the westcoast. We call it berrypagne." As someone remarked that it tasted quite good he said "Thanks! We actually make it ourselves. What vintage is this dear?" he asked Robyn "I think this is the 2:30 vintage"
"There you go" Steven said "It's had about 1,5 hours to mature in the plastic bottle, which is important! You see, what we do is: We carefully select a bottle of wine from the local store (the cheapest one) and... well looking at that soda machine bottle you can probably guess the rest!"
Everyone laughed at this and finished their glass. The two boys were really starting to feel the effects of the alcohol and being very careful not to stab anyone with their brand new knife they joined the rest for a group photo outside.
Feeling slightly tipsy they thanked Steven and Robyn for a wonderful day and headed back with a huge smile on their face and their very own knives in their hand.
Tuesday, 23 February 2010
Tropical paradise
After resting in Picton for two more days we headed out for Nelson. It didn't take us long to catch a ride, 3 girls turned around to pick us up after initially driving past us. They had a typical backpackers van with a bed in the back instead of seats, but this was no problem for us and so we set out. About halfway to Nelson the girl behind the wheel says that she's starting to run low on gass and that we should keep a lookout for a gas station. 5 Minutes later she says we're REALLY low on gas with probably enough gas to last us another 10 minutes. 10 Minutes later we're still in the middle of the back-country with not a single structure in sight, let alone a gas station, and she's really starting to panic now. I shoot jasper a quick glance and see that he's thinking the same as me, this sort of stuff only happens to us.
Surprisingly 10 minutes later we're still going strong and are even approaching civilisation again with a spot of luck we might even make it to a gas station! And sure enough we make it without so much as a stutter from the engine; girls get way too excited over silly things like being low on gas. . .
They drop us off in a Holiday Park in Nelson, which was about 20 minutes walking from city centre despite being the closest one around. We pitched our tent in the concrete-like ground, unable to force our pegs in deeper than about 3 centimeters and praying that it'll hold.
After leaving our tent in this mildly unstable position we head to town to buy some groceries and check out the local activities. We notice a flyer saying the largest flying fox in New Zealand is here in nelson so we call them up and arrange for pickup for the next day.
The following day we head to the i-centre to await pickup and when, 30 minutes after the agreed on time, they still haven't picked us up we decide to call them and see what's up. They apologise and say their van was full (or something like that) and that someone would come around to pick us up in 15 minutes.
20 Minutes later we finally get picked up and eventually driven up to the top of a hill where we get strapped in some hanging seats and released to soar off the mountain. Even though we reached speeds of up to 85 km/h it wasn't really all that exciting. Fun? Yes. Worth 75 dollars? Maybe not. But still, it was an interesting experience and gave us something to do for the day.
After we bought some lunch in the supermarket we headed back to the campsite where I sat down in the kitchen to heat my pizza bread while Jasper went back to the tent to grab cutlery. After 2 minutes Jasper comes back empty handed and says "Are you coming? We're gonna have to file a report to the police, they broke into our tent and stole my netbook." The bastards had turned our bags completely inside out leaving our belongings scattered through the tent. It seemed that all they took was Jasper's netbook and my universal adapter and cellphone charger, perhaps mistaking them for the adapter for jasper's netbook.
We stayed in nelson for a few more days to file an official report and gather all the required information regarding the netbook to file for insurance.
Luckily we didn't have anything special stored on the netbook, we had all the pictures either on our cameras or posted on the internet and there wasn't much room left for anything else.
After a few days we set out for Motueka from where we wanted to go into the Abel Tasman National Park for a multi-day kayak trip. We found the Holiday park there to be a lot more luxurious than the one in Nelson, they even had a heated pool and a jacuzzi (which we could use for free with our top 10 membership card). We decided to relax here for a few days before heading off to Marahau from where we would hop on kayaks and into the park.
We booked everything from the Motueka i-centre and to my surprise jasper suggested we do a 5-day trip (which seemed to be the maximum amount of days you could hire for) as he didn't seem to be too keen on kayaking when I suggested it a month earlier.
We also stocked up on supplies while we still had acces to a supermarket, which meant lots of canned food (baked beans and canned spaghetti, yummy!) and food bars.
After spending a night in Marahau we headed to the kayak company and received instructions on how to pack our stuff so that they stayed dry and how to handle the kayak in different sorts of weather. I was in the front and jasper in the back, operating the rudder; it seemed my only special task was to break the waves "The person in front is going to get wet" he said. . . great!
We headed to the beach where he made us paddle around for a bit to show we paid attention to his instructions and then headed out for ourselves off to our first campsite! The weather wasn't particularly enjoyable when we set out and it promised to get a lot worse before it got any better. As we rounded the first set of cliffs we beared the full brunt of the wind and waves started to crash into us, occasionally splashing over the boat and into my face. The scenery was beautiful but the incessant rain meant we weren't able to take any pictures nor enjoy it to the fullest; we'd just have to pray the weather would improve over the next days.
After only about 2 hours of paddling we arrived at the campsite, and not a moment too soon; my muscles were aching and my shoulders hurt from the unusual motion. The rain was still coming down in streams so we had no choice but to set up our camp as fast as possible and pray it didn't get too wet. After the tent was up we explored the rest of the camp, which consisted of one tap with water you had to treat or boil before you could drink it and two toilets the were basically holes in the ground with a cabin over it; they smelled horrible.
We spent the next 2 hours or so reading in our tent, where it was at least dry. By the time the rain had stopped and it was safe to come out we saw that there were a lot more tents around us. After exploring the area around the campsite and walking up to a lookout point we decided to make dinner, forced to eat it on the table furthest away from our tent because the other occupants had claimed the other tables. They'd piled all their stuff on them so we couldn't use them despite the fact they weren't actually sitting at them. At dusk we brushed our teeth and headed to bed, though we wouldn't be able to sleep until the americans from the tents next to us finally shut up and went to bed 2 hours later. The following morning we quickly walked to a neighbouring hut where we replenished our drinking water, before packing up our stuff in our kayaks and heading out again. The weather had increased significantly, despite the fact that there was still a strong breeze it was warm and sunny. This lifted our spirits and made us forget about our aching for a while at least.
The landscape looked even better in the bright sun, with blue sea wherever you looked and golden beaches scattered all around the coast. On the way to our second camp we passed an island that doubled as a seal colony and stopped there to take some pictures. The still rather large waves meant that it was extremely difficult to take sharp pictures though, so unfortunately most of the pictures turned out extremely blurred.
As we passed a river inlet we decided to paddle into it, here the water was extremely calm and jasper even managed to climb out of the kayak at one point to answer nature's call.
At about 2 in the afternoon we reached our second campsite, which was situated in a beautiful bay with gorgeous sandy beach all around it. This time it was much more enjoyable to pitch our tent, seeing as there was no need to hurry in order to keep the inside dry. Afterwards we explored the campsite and found that this one even had a sink! Though the water still wasn't drinkable. The toilets were the same, except for the fact that these had wasps inside them, angry wasps.
We spent the rest of the day hanging out and climbing over the rocks. Eventually the other campers started to trickle in, including the very same Americans that annoyed us so much the day before, this time we'd claimed our table before they could though.
After some more canned food for dinner (and a slight crisis with wet matches) we dozed off and read while the sun was slowly starting to sink behind the hills in the distance. When it got too dark to read we turned in again, and though the Americans were just as noisy as the day before we were now tired enough to sleep through it.
The third day the weather was perfect and sea was very calm, so we even managed to snap a few decent pictures; though it was still hard to get the horizon straight, with the kayak bobbing up and down all the time. We passed another seal colony, though this one was significantly bigger and there were a lot more seals on it. We explored another river (almost getting stranded in the process) but were too tired to do much more and so headed towards our next campsite. This one was even more luxurious with flush flush toilets and a special shelter for cooking! There were still a lot of wasps but none of them in the toilets fortunately. The beach was pristine and the sea was just the right temperature for swimming.
The next we gently started to make our way back to marahau, stopping at one more campsite before we'd reach the town again the next day. Our muscles were really starting to hurt now and we were very grateful when we finally arrived at the campsite, the one where we gathered water on our first day. This one was the most luxurious of them all with flush toilets and drinkable water!
As we were about to set up our tent I spotted a guy and a girl walking to the toilets and i knew I'd seen them before somewhere. Just as I was telling Jasper that I thought those were the people that gave us a ride to Whitianga way back when we were still in coromandel they turned as well and said "Hey, didn't we give you guys a ride a few months back?" We caught up with them and exchanged stories before they headed off to the beach and we set up our tent.
The last day seemed like it was the longest (though in truth it might have been the shortest) of the entire trip, our muscles were starting to protest heavily and the going was starting to become tough. Because we had to make a long stretch through open water, rather than staying close to the shore it seemed like we were going even slower than we actually were. By the time we landed on the beach we decided to just beach the kayak and quickly go to the shop to buy food and an ice-cream. As we returned from the shop and looked to see if our kayak was still there we noticed that it was no longer fully on the beach was starting to get surrounded by water; the tide was coming up a lot faster than we'd thought. I made a quick run for the kayak (it was my idea to go to the shop in the first place) and waded the last few meters through knee deep water before arriving at the kayak just as it was beginning to drift.
We dragged it up further on the beach and called the kayak company who said that they'd pick it up at about 4:30, which meant that we'd have to either wait for about 4 hours or just pick up the most important stuff and walk 20 minutes back to the camp; we did the latter ofcourse.
As we were enjoying a nice hot shower after 5 days of salt water I really noticed how tired my arms were when I almost didn't have enough strenght left to wash my hair.
That afternoon we picked up our bags from the kayak company and set up our tent. We decided we'd stay in the Motueka top 10 Holiday park with it's jacuzzi and heated pool for 2 more days to recover before making our way further along the west coast.
Pictures:
http://s713.photobucket.com/albums/ww138/lingonlas/NZ%2023%20februari/
Surprisingly 10 minutes later we're still going strong and are even approaching civilisation again with a spot of luck we might even make it to a gas station! And sure enough we make it without so much as a stutter from the engine; girls get way too excited over silly things like being low on gas. . .
They drop us off in a Holiday Park in Nelson, which was about 20 minutes walking from city centre despite being the closest one around. We pitched our tent in the concrete-like ground, unable to force our pegs in deeper than about 3 centimeters and praying that it'll hold.
After leaving our tent in this mildly unstable position we head to town to buy some groceries and check out the local activities. We notice a flyer saying the largest flying fox in New Zealand is here in nelson so we call them up and arrange for pickup for the next day.
The following day we head to the i-centre to await pickup and when, 30 minutes after the agreed on time, they still haven't picked us up we decide to call them and see what's up. They apologise and say their van was full (or something like that) and that someone would come around to pick us up in 15 minutes.
20 Minutes later we finally get picked up and eventually driven up to the top of a hill where we get strapped in some hanging seats and released to soar off the mountain. Even though we reached speeds of up to 85 km/h it wasn't really all that exciting. Fun? Yes. Worth 75 dollars? Maybe not. But still, it was an interesting experience and gave us something to do for the day.
After we bought some lunch in the supermarket we headed back to the campsite where I sat down in the kitchen to heat my pizza bread while Jasper went back to the tent to grab cutlery. After 2 minutes Jasper comes back empty handed and says "Are you coming? We're gonna have to file a report to the police, they broke into our tent and stole my netbook." The bastards had turned our bags completely inside out leaving our belongings scattered through the tent. It seemed that all they took was Jasper's netbook and my universal adapter and cellphone charger, perhaps mistaking them for the adapter for jasper's netbook.
We stayed in nelson for a few more days to file an official report and gather all the required information regarding the netbook to file for insurance.
Luckily we didn't have anything special stored on the netbook, we had all the pictures either on our cameras or posted on the internet and there wasn't much room left for anything else.
After a few days we set out for Motueka from where we wanted to go into the Abel Tasman National Park for a multi-day kayak trip. We found the Holiday park there to be a lot more luxurious than the one in Nelson, they even had a heated pool and a jacuzzi (which we could use for free with our top 10 membership card). We decided to relax here for a few days before heading off to Marahau from where we would hop on kayaks and into the park.
We booked everything from the Motueka i-centre and to my surprise jasper suggested we do a 5-day trip (which seemed to be the maximum amount of days you could hire for) as he didn't seem to be too keen on kayaking when I suggested it a month earlier.
We also stocked up on supplies while we still had acces to a supermarket, which meant lots of canned food (baked beans and canned spaghetti, yummy!) and food bars.
After spending a night in Marahau we headed to the kayak company and received instructions on how to pack our stuff so that they stayed dry and how to handle the kayak in different sorts of weather. I was in the front and jasper in the back, operating the rudder; it seemed my only special task was to break the waves "The person in front is going to get wet" he said. . . great!
We headed to the beach where he made us paddle around for a bit to show we paid attention to his instructions and then headed out for ourselves off to our first campsite! The weather wasn't particularly enjoyable when we set out and it promised to get a lot worse before it got any better. As we rounded the first set of cliffs we beared the full brunt of the wind and waves started to crash into us, occasionally splashing over the boat and into my face. The scenery was beautiful but the incessant rain meant we weren't able to take any pictures nor enjoy it to the fullest; we'd just have to pray the weather would improve over the next days.
After only about 2 hours of paddling we arrived at the campsite, and not a moment too soon; my muscles were aching and my shoulders hurt from the unusual motion. The rain was still coming down in streams so we had no choice but to set up our camp as fast as possible and pray it didn't get too wet. After the tent was up we explored the rest of the camp, which consisted of one tap with water you had to treat or boil before you could drink it and two toilets the were basically holes in the ground with a cabin over it; they smelled horrible.
We spent the next 2 hours or so reading in our tent, where it was at least dry. By the time the rain had stopped and it was safe to come out we saw that there were a lot more tents around us. After exploring the area around the campsite and walking up to a lookout point we decided to make dinner, forced to eat it on the table furthest away from our tent because the other occupants had claimed the other tables. They'd piled all their stuff on them so we couldn't use them despite the fact they weren't actually sitting at them. At dusk we brushed our teeth and headed to bed, though we wouldn't be able to sleep until the americans from the tents next to us finally shut up and went to bed 2 hours later. The following morning we quickly walked to a neighbouring hut where we replenished our drinking water, before packing up our stuff in our kayaks and heading out again. The weather had increased significantly, despite the fact that there was still a strong breeze it was warm and sunny. This lifted our spirits and made us forget about our aching for a while at least.
The landscape looked even better in the bright sun, with blue sea wherever you looked and golden beaches scattered all around the coast. On the way to our second camp we passed an island that doubled as a seal colony and stopped there to take some pictures. The still rather large waves meant that it was extremely difficult to take sharp pictures though, so unfortunately most of the pictures turned out extremely blurred.
As we passed a river inlet we decided to paddle into it, here the water was extremely calm and jasper even managed to climb out of the kayak at one point to answer nature's call.
At about 2 in the afternoon we reached our second campsite, which was situated in a beautiful bay with gorgeous sandy beach all around it. This time it was much more enjoyable to pitch our tent, seeing as there was no need to hurry in order to keep the inside dry. Afterwards we explored the campsite and found that this one even had a sink! Though the water still wasn't drinkable. The toilets were the same, except for the fact that these had wasps inside them, angry wasps.
We spent the rest of the day hanging out and climbing over the rocks. Eventually the other campers started to trickle in, including the very same Americans that annoyed us so much the day before, this time we'd claimed our table before they could though.
After some more canned food for dinner (and a slight crisis with wet matches) we dozed off and read while the sun was slowly starting to sink behind the hills in the distance. When it got too dark to read we turned in again, and though the Americans were just as noisy as the day before we were now tired enough to sleep through it.
The third day the weather was perfect and sea was very calm, so we even managed to snap a few decent pictures; though it was still hard to get the horizon straight, with the kayak bobbing up and down all the time. We passed another seal colony, though this one was significantly bigger and there were a lot more seals on it. We explored another river (almost getting stranded in the process) but were too tired to do much more and so headed towards our next campsite. This one was even more luxurious with flush flush toilets and a special shelter for cooking! There were still a lot of wasps but none of them in the toilets fortunately. The beach was pristine and the sea was just the right temperature for swimming.
The next we gently started to make our way back to marahau, stopping at one more campsite before we'd reach the town again the next day. Our muscles were really starting to hurt now and we were very grateful when we finally arrived at the campsite, the one where we gathered water on our first day. This one was the most luxurious of them all with flush toilets and drinkable water!
As we were about to set up our tent I spotted a guy and a girl walking to the toilets and i knew I'd seen them before somewhere. Just as I was telling Jasper that I thought those were the people that gave us a ride to Whitianga way back when we were still in coromandel they turned as well and said "Hey, didn't we give you guys a ride a few months back?" We caught up with them and exchanged stories before they headed off to the beach and we set up our tent.
The last day seemed like it was the longest (though in truth it might have been the shortest) of the entire trip, our muscles were starting to protest heavily and the going was starting to become tough. Because we had to make a long stretch through open water, rather than staying close to the shore it seemed like we were going even slower than we actually were. By the time we landed on the beach we decided to just beach the kayak and quickly go to the shop to buy food and an ice-cream. As we returned from the shop and looked to see if our kayak was still there we noticed that it was no longer fully on the beach was starting to get surrounded by water; the tide was coming up a lot faster than we'd thought. I made a quick run for the kayak (it was my idea to go to the shop in the first place) and waded the last few meters through knee deep water before arriving at the kayak just as it was beginning to drift.
We dragged it up further on the beach and called the kayak company who said that they'd pick it up at about 4:30, which meant that we'd have to either wait for about 4 hours or just pick up the most important stuff and walk 20 minutes back to the camp; we did the latter ofcourse.
As we were enjoying a nice hot shower after 5 days of salt water I really noticed how tired my arms were when I almost didn't have enough strenght left to wash my hair.
That afternoon we picked up our bags from the kayak company and set up our tent. We decided we'd stay in the Motueka top 10 Holiday park with it's jacuzzi and heated pool for 2 more days to recover before making our way further along the west coast.
Pictures:
http://s713.photobucket.com/albums/ww138/lingonlas/NZ%2023%20februari/
Monday, 22 February 2010
Into the dark, cold depths of the sea
After a boring 3 hour boat trip we arrived in Picton on the south island, only to find out that someone had mistaken our cooler bag for theirs. Goodbye pans, condiments, food and more. Even though our trip on the south island didn't start off too great the weather was perfect and after a quick snack at the Dutch Bakkerij we found that the campsite was one of the best we'd been at so far and not expensive at all. After we pitched our tent we went for a stroll through the small town. I happened to have read that one of the largest diveable wrecks in the world (the Mikhail Lermontov: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Mikhail_Lermontov) was very close to Picton, so we stopped by one of the dive shops to see if the ship was within our maximum allowed depth of 18m. Turns out it wasn't. We had heard from someone we met earlier in our travels that an advanced open water course was very expensive; in excess of $1000, but still we decided to ask how much they charged for the advanced course. Surprisingly it was only $500, which was very tempting, but we decided to think about it some more before deciding anything.
As we returned to our tent we agreed that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity and that we'd go for it.
The next day we booked our course and found that we could even choose to do part of our training dives at the Lermontov, which we ofcourse did. This meant however that we'd have to wait for over a week before we could begin our course, and jasper suggested that maybe we could do a couple of our training dives in the week before that. So it was settled, we'd have our Navigation and Peak performance Buoyancy dives on monday and then the rest of our dives at the lermontov during the weekend. This left us with 3 days before the first dives, which I hoped was enough to get rid of my cold. I also sauntered into a 2nd hand booksale that day and bought more books than I probably should have. . .
After watching a lot of movies on the movie channel and hanging out in the pool for days it was finally time for our first couple of dives. We were both slightly nervous, because it had been about 2 months since our last dive and I was still a bit congested (this can cause problems with clearing your ears).
After gathering our gear and loading them into the van we headed out to the harbour, where we walked into the sea with our gear on. Turns out we had nothing to be worried about, the dives were going to be shallow (only about 9m deep) and my ear wasn't clearing as easily as normal but I still didn't have any problems with it.
First we had to do our peak performance dive, which was supposed to help us increase our buoyancy control, but since we'd already done our initial training in thick wetsuits we had no trouble achieving and maintaining neutral buoyancy. It wasn't until after we had to swim through a hoop that I suddenly shot up a few meters and surfaced. This wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't for the fact that I was now experiencing what they call a reverse block, where the pressure in your ear canal is greater than the pressure of the surroundings and can't be released, it was very painful. I lingered at the surface for a bit thinking our instructor would come after me, but apparently she didn't see me shoot up. Eventually I spotted their bubbles and swam over to their locations before descending again.
We had so much air left in our tanks after the first dive that Andrea (our instructor) figured we'd probably be able to do the second dive off the same tank. First up we had to line up our compasses to one off the boats before descending and trying to find that ship's anchor chain. Jasper took off and Andrea followed him, my compass however showed a different direction so I was unsure whether I was supposed to go off on my own or keep following Jasper and Andrea. Eventually Andrea stopped while jasper continued, I tried to signal to her that my compass showed a different direction but I don't think she understood. Jasper eventually returned to us as well and we headed off to a different point from where we were supposed to swim in a square pattern. Jasper headed off first and I followed soon after, counting 5 fin kicks in one direction, readjusting my compass and counting 5 kicks in another direction until I'd completed the square. During the last 5 kicks I kept desperately looking for the red sponge that Andrea pointed at as the start of the course but I couldn't find it. Thinking I probably didn't pass it yet I continued to swim in the direction when i suddenly felt a tug on one of my fins. Apparently I had swam so close by Andrea that my fin hit her, but I never noticed. Together we waited for Jasper but he didn't show, so we went back to shore where we found jasper waiting. Apparently jasper hadn't seen Andrea make the square signal and thought we were just heading back to shore. So he had to do the square pattern again, and I was to be his safety buddy; unfortunately by this time our tanks had gone so empty that we no longer had enough wait to stay submerged so jasper was forced to do his square on the surface. Afterwards we had to swim 30m to determine our average distance per fin kick and our average underwater speed.
After updating our diver logs we agreed to do the knowledge reviews the next day, so that evening we had some studying to do. The next day we met one of the people going with us to the lermontov lodge over the weekend, a polish man named Marek; He'd just finished his advanced open water the week before and was going for his master scuba diver. After completing the knowledge reviews we were free to do whatever we wanted for the next 4 days, which included a lot of TV and hanging out at the pool. We did meet some nice girls that day, starting with the youngest one whom we engaged in a fierce battle with foam pool toys. Afterwards we met her older sisters whom were both very nice, we even got the oldest one to join in on our water based battle-royale.
Then the day had come, we packed our tent and headed off to the dive shop where, due to a small misunderstanding, we had to gather all our gear once more.
The other people driving up to the lodge with us that day were Marek, a dutch guy everyone called 'Nine' (he was actually called Sjoerd) and an irish guy.
The road up to the lodge was very windy and took about 3 hours, by the time we got to the lodge the sun was going down. The lodge itself was surprisingly well maintained and luxurious, though the beds were just standard bunk beds, there were comfy couches and a tv. After a nice dinner we quickly discussed what we were going to do the next day and headed to bed.
After sleeping on cold hard matts for months you'd expect one to be able to sleep well in a proper bed, but I couldn't get myself to fall asleep. Still, the next the nerves made sure I was wide awake and ready for my dives.
After a short boat ride we reached the lermontov, or well the location where it sank. It was in the middle of a fairly shallow inlet only about 40 meters deep, from the surface it was hard to believe that a ship so big could be hidden in the water here, but apparently on some days when the water is exceptionally clear you can see it lying there from the surface. After kitting up and doing our buddy checks me, Jasper, Marek and Andrea jumped in the water and we slowly descended down the mooring line that was attached to the front of the ship. Our first was to be our "Deep Dive", our first dive deeper than 18 meters. We would first do some excersise, which weren't more than simple observations of change in colour and water temperature. Then we would receive a tour along the outside of the ship, going past cranes, the bridge, the radio antennas, the exhaust funnel and some of the windows on the side of the ship. Because the ship was on it's side and the visibility was poor I found it very hard to recognise any of these features. Andrea had also warned us that Marek was a bit reckless and annoying while diving, and during this first dive we noticed this for ourselves; he would stay annoyingly close to you so that you'd keep hitting him with your fins and he'd swim all over the place (including over you) at one point knocking my regulator (the thing with which you breathe) out of my mouth. He also kicked up silt and destroyed the visibility where-ever he went.
After we surfaced we headed back to the lodge for some hot dogs and bread. We discussed what we saw and what we were going to do for our next dive. Initially we were going to penetrate the wreck on this dive, but it seemed Andrea wasn't comfortable with Marek just yet and so we agreed to just do an exterior dive.
After descending along the mooring line once more Marek did an excersise for one of his advanced courses which was supposed to determine if he was suffering from Nitrogen Narcosis or not. This is a condition which sometimes occurs during deeper dives and is comparable to being slightly drunk. He had to do the same excersise on the surface and compare the time it took him to complete it, it took him 3 times longer underwater so it's safe to say he was slightly narced. After a tour along the windows on the side of the ship, past a bar and an arcade hall we headed back to the bridge. Here it seemed Andrea had decided to take us for a short trip inside the ship as she asked everyone if we were comfortable going inside. After we confirmed we were she signalled that she was going in first, then Jasper, then me and finally Marek. After she had gone through the small window Jasper tried to follow but Marek tried to follow at the same time causing them to bump into each other and into the window. After backing up jasper managed to get in without interference from Marek and as I was about to go through I noticed that Marek was getting ready to go in as well, so I signalled to him that it was in fact my turn and went in. Inside it was pitch black and it wasn't until after a second or two that your eyes adapted to the light enough to be able to see anything. Inside there were still consoles standing and control boards hanging from the wall behind them. After a few seconds we emerged from the top (or rather the side) of the bridge and headed back to the mooring line.
After a short trip back to the lodge to fill up our empty tanks we headed back out again to do our photography dive. First we went into the Nevski bar where I took a picture of one of the stools, the rest of the bar was too dark and murky to make decent pictures of. Afterwards Andrea took us to somewhere on the stern of the ship, while she and Marek headed off to do a navigation excersise, where we could take pictures and do what we pleased for a while. Only a second after they left they came back however and Andrea took us to a different spot, we didn't understand why but later she told us that marek had kicked up so much silt that it would have been impossible for us to take clear pictures. We took turns taking pictures of each other and of fish, not always as succesful as we'd like to have been. Due to the poor light conditions it was very hard to take clear pictures underwater and because the fish swam around so much it was hard to capture them. At one point Jasper posed with what looked like an underwater spore pod, and afterwards signalled for me to do the same so he could take a picture of me. At this point I decided it would be fun to have a picture without that ever present regulator in my mouth, so I took it out as jasper was aiming the camera. Since the camera has to allow for more time to let enough light in it takes a few seconds for it to take a picture and I remember thinking "Hurry up. . . Hurry up!!" After the picture was taken I quickly popped my regulator back in my mouth and breather that lovely air, jasper laughed and signalled I was crazy, I laughed as well and looked at the picture. After a while longer we had run out of things to take pictures of and we starting to run short on air, we decided to wait a bit longer before we'd make our way to the surface alone and after jasper did a salto I saw Andrea and Marek approaching. With minimal air reserves we made it back to the boat.
The next day Andrea was to clean the hut and so couldn't escort us around the wreck, fortunately Nine offered to take us on a tour. After landing on the boat he swiftly took us to the stern and led us into the covered pool, which was pitch black, and past the bar. He then led us through the wintergarden, which was essentially a corridor with a lot of glass windows now, the way the light reflected off the algae stained windows was magical. After we went up a set of stairs we reached one of the balconies and were in open water once more. He took us past the funnel (this time I did recognise it) and through the bridge (all the way through the bridge this time), he then pointed us to the mooring line before heading off on his own treasure hunt.
The next dive was just going to be me, Jasper and Marek. Because Marek had the best computer it was decided he was going in the lead, after hearing this Andrea and Brent, the owner of the dive shop, got very nervous and brent told Marek to be very careful and that "Their life is in your hands!", all very confidence inspiring. We were just going to head to the gash that sank the ship and maybe, if we had enough air, to the propellors. After we landed on the ship marek proceeded to head in the wrong direction and I had to stop him and turn him the right way. As we followed the side of the ship down deeper and deeper visibility dropped to a meter max, we could see each other and the side of the ship and that was about all. the damage we were told, was at about 27 meters deep, but marek simply plummited down the ship and soon ended up at about 32 meters deep. After I signalled to him that he was too deep and we went back up to 27m we checked our air supplies; I had almost used up half my tank through stressing out so much, and that despite the fact that I had a ridiculously well filled tank. As we were asking each other how much air we had left I suddenly noticed that the ship was gone, I couldn't see it anymore! I signalled this to the others and swiftly headed back where I'd last seen it, one fin kick later and I almost crashed head first into it, just to give you an idea of what the visibility was like. We levelled at 27 meters and starting heading towards the stern of the ship, when we passed under un arch (I think it was a supporting strut) I looked back to find that I couldn't see jasper anymore and in the second it took me to stop and look back I found that I almost couldn't see marek anymore either. I quickly caught up to marek and together we headed back; fortunately jasper had borrowed a light from Nine for the penetration dive we did earlier and we soon spotted him again. After swimming back a bit more I suddenly noticed a black shadow under me, the gash. Ofcourse Marek didn't notice it and swam past it at his murderous tempo; we pulled him back and checked out the hole. Afterwards we decided it was a good time to head back to the surface and abandon all attempts to find the propellors. When we got a bit higher up the visibility increased dramatically and we could see where we were again. Marek seemed a bit lost however and as we reached the roof of the bridge he stopped and almost seemed to want to go a few divers we saw swimming a bit deeper to ask for directions. After I indicated we had to go over the side of the ship he followed me and soon we found the mooring line and made our ascent. The dive only took about 20 minutes but it felt like an eternity and we had all used up far more air than we should have for so short a dive.
With this last stressful dive survived we could look back on a succesful dive trip and could proudly claim that we were now Advanced Open Water Divers.
As we returned to our tent we agreed that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity and that we'd go for it.
The next day we booked our course and found that we could even choose to do part of our training dives at the Lermontov, which we ofcourse did. This meant however that we'd have to wait for over a week before we could begin our course, and jasper suggested that maybe we could do a couple of our training dives in the week before that. So it was settled, we'd have our Navigation and Peak performance Buoyancy dives on monday and then the rest of our dives at the lermontov during the weekend. This left us with 3 days before the first dives, which I hoped was enough to get rid of my cold. I also sauntered into a 2nd hand booksale that day and bought more books than I probably should have. . .
After watching a lot of movies on the movie channel and hanging out in the pool for days it was finally time for our first couple of dives. We were both slightly nervous, because it had been about 2 months since our last dive and I was still a bit congested (this can cause problems with clearing your ears).
After gathering our gear and loading them into the van we headed out to the harbour, where we walked into the sea with our gear on. Turns out we had nothing to be worried about, the dives were going to be shallow (only about 9m deep) and my ear wasn't clearing as easily as normal but I still didn't have any problems with it.
First we had to do our peak performance dive, which was supposed to help us increase our buoyancy control, but since we'd already done our initial training in thick wetsuits we had no trouble achieving and maintaining neutral buoyancy. It wasn't until after we had to swim through a hoop that I suddenly shot up a few meters and surfaced. This wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't for the fact that I was now experiencing what they call a reverse block, where the pressure in your ear canal is greater than the pressure of the surroundings and can't be released, it was very painful. I lingered at the surface for a bit thinking our instructor would come after me, but apparently she didn't see me shoot up. Eventually I spotted their bubbles and swam over to their locations before descending again.
We had so much air left in our tanks after the first dive that Andrea (our instructor) figured we'd probably be able to do the second dive off the same tank. First up we had to line up our compasses to one off the boats before descending and trying to find that ship's anchor chain. Jasper took off and Andrea followed him, my compass however showed a different direction so I was unsure whether I was supposed to go off on my own or keep following Jasper and Andrea. Eventually Andrea stopped while jasper continued, I tried to signal to her that my compass showed a different direction but I don't think she understood. Jasper eventually returned to us as well and we headed off to a different point from where we were supposed to swim in a square pattern. Jasper headed off first and I followed soon after, counting 5 fin kicks in one direction, readjusting my compass and counting 5 kicks in another direction until I'd completed the square. During the last 5 kicks I kept desperately looking for the red sponge that Andrea pointed at as the start of the course but I couldn't find it. Thinking I probably didn't pass it yet I continued to swim in the direction when i suddenly felt a tug on one of my fins. Apparently I had swam so close by Andrea that my fin hit her, but I never noticed. Together we waited for Jasper but he didn't show, so we went back to shore where we found jasper waiting. Apparently jasper hadn't seen Andrea make the square signal and thought we were just heading back to shore. So he had to do the square pattern again, and I was to be his safety buddy; unfortunately by this time our tanks had gone so empty that we no longer had enough wait to stay submerged so jasper was forced to do his square on the surface. Afterwards we had to swim 30m to determine our average distance per fin kick and our average underwater speed.
After updating our diver logs we agreed to do the knowledge reviews the next day, so that evening we had some studying to do. The next day we met one of the people going with us to the lermontov lodge over the weekend, a polish man named Marek; He'd just finished his advanced open water the week before and was going for his master scuba diver. After completing the knowledge reviews we were free to do whatever we wanted for the next 4 days, which included a lot of TV and hanging out at the pool. We did meet some nice girls that day, starting with the youngest one whom we engaged in a fierce battle with foam pool toys. Afterwards we met her older sisters whom were both very nice, we even got the oldest one to join in on our water based battle-royale.
Then the day had come, we packed our tent and headed off to the dive shop where, due to a small misunderstanding, we had to gather all our gear once more.
The other people driving up to the lodge with us that day were Marek, a dutch guy everyone called 'Nine' (he was actually called Sjoerd) and an irish guy.
The road up to the lodge was very windy and took about 3 hours, by the time we got to the lodge the sun was going down. The lodge itself was surprisingly well maintained and luxurious, though the beds were just standard bunk beds, there were comfy couches and a tv. After a nice dinner we quickly discussed what we were going to do the next day and headed to bed.
After sleeping on cold hard matts for months you'd expect one to be able to sleep well in a proper bed, but I couldn't get myself to fall asleep. Still, the next the nerves made sure I was wide awake and ready for my dives.
After a short boat ride we reached the lermontov, or well the location where it sank. It was in the middle of a fairly shallow inlet only about 40 meters deep, from the surface it was hard to believe that a ship so big could be hidden in the water here, but apparently on some days when the water is exceptionally clear you can see it lying there from the surface. After kitting up and doing our buddy checks me, Jasper, Marek and Andrea jumped in the water and we slowly descended down the mooring line that was attached to the front of the ship. Our first was to be our "Deep Dive", our first dive deeper than 18 meters. We would first do some excersise, which weren't more than simple observations of change in colour and water temperature. Then we would receive a tour along the outside of the ship, going past cranes, the bridge, the radio antennas, the exhaust funnel and some of the windows on the side of the ship. Because the ship was on it's side and the visibility was poor I found it very hard to recognise any of these features. Andrea had also warned us that Marek was a bit reckless and annoying while diving, and during this first dive we noticed this for ourselves; he would stay annoyingly close to you so that you'd keep hitting him with your fins and he'd swim all over the place (including over you) at one point knocking my regulator (the thing with which you breathe) out of my mouth. He also kicked up silt and destroyed the visibility where-ever he went.
After we surfaced we headed back to the lodge for some hot dogs and bread. We discussed what we saw and what we were going to do for our next dive. Initially we were going to penetrate the wreck on this dive, but it seemed Andrea wasn't comfortable with Marek just yet and so we agreed to just do an exterior dive.
After descending along the mooring line once more Marek did an excersise for one of his advanced courses which was supposed to determine if he was suffering from Nitrogen Narcosis or not. This is a condition which sometimes occurs during deeper dives and is comparable to being slightly drunk. He had to do the same excersise on the surface and compare the time it took him to complete it, it took him 3 times longer underwater so it's safe to say he was slightly narced. After a tour along the windows on the side of the ship, past a bar and an arcade hall we headed back to the bridge. Here it seemed Andrea had decided to take us for a short trip inside the ship as she asked everyone if we were comfortable going inside. After we confirmed we were she signalled that she was going in first, then Jasper, then me and finally Marek. After she had gone through the small window Jasper tried to follow but Marek tried to follow at the same time causing them to bump into each other and into the window. After backing up jasper managed to get in without interference from Marek and as I was about to go through I noticed that Marek was getting ready to go in as well, so I signalled to him that it was in fact my turn and went in. Inside it was pitch black and it wasn't until after a second or two that your eyes adapted to the light enough to be able to see anything. Inside there were still consoles standing and control boards hanging from the wall behind them. After a few seconds we emerged from the top (or rather the side) of the bridge and headed back to the mooring line.
After a short trip back to the lodge to fill up our empty tanks we headed back out again to do our photography dive. First we went into the Nevski bar where I took a picture of one of the stools, the rest of the bar was too dark and murky to make decent pictures of. Afterwards Andrea took us to somewhere on the stern of the ship, while she and Marek headed off to do a navigation excersise, where we could take pictures and do what we pleased for a while. Only a second after they left they came back however and Andrea took us to a different spot, we didn't understand why but later she told us that marek had kicked up so much silt that it would have been impossible for us to take clear pictures. We took turns taking pictures of each other and of fish, not always as succesful as we'd like to have been. Due to the poor light conditions it was very hard to take clear pictures underwater and because the fish swam around so much it was hard to capture them. At one point Jasper posed with what looked like an underwater spore pod, and afterwards signalled for me to do the same so he could take a picture of me. At this point I decided it would be fun to have a picture without that ever present regulator in my mouth, so I took it out as jasper was aiming the camera. Since the camera has to allow for more time to let enough light in it takes a few seconds for it to take a picture and I remember thinking "Hurry up. . . Hurry up!!" After the picture was taken I quickly popped my regulator back in my mouth and breather that lovely air, jasper laughed and signalled I was crazy, I laughed as well and looked at the picture. After a while longer we had run out of things to take pictures of and we starting to run short on air, we decided to wait a bit longer before we'd make our way to the surface alone and after jasper did a salto I saw Andrea and Marek approaching. With minimal air reserves we made it back to the boat.
The next day Andrea was to clean the hut and so couldn't escort us around the wreck, fortunately Nine offered to take us on a tour. After landing on the boat he swiftly took us to the stern and led us into the covered pool, which was pitch black, and past the bar. He then led us through the wintergarden, which was essentially a corridor with a lot of glass windows now, the way the light reflected off the algae stained windows was magical. After we went up a set of stairs we reached one of the balconies and were in open water once more. He took us past the funnel (this time I did recognise it) and through the bridge (all the way through the bridge this time), he then pointed us to the mooring line before heading off on his own treasure hunt.
The next dive was just going to be me, Jasper and Marek. Because Marek had the best computer it was decided he was going in the lead, after hearing this Andrea and Brent, the owner of the dive shop, got very nervous and brent told Marek to be very careful and that "Their life is in your hands!", all very confidence inspiring. We were just going to head to the gash that sank the ship and maybe, if we had enough air, to the propellors. After we landed on the ship marek proceeded to head in the wrong direction and I had to stop him and turn him the right way. As we followed the side of the ship down deeper and deeper visibility dropped to a meter max, we could see each other and the side of the ship and that was about all. the damage we were told, was at about 27 meters deep, but marek simply plummited down the ship and soon ended up at about 32 meters deep. After I signalled to him that he was too deep and we went back up to 27m we checked our air supplies; I had almost used up half my tank through stressing out so much, and that despite the fact that I had a ridiculously well filled tank. As we were asking each other how much air we had left I suddenly noticed that the ship was gone, I couldn't see it anymore! I signalled this to the others and swiftly headed back where I'd last seen it, one fin kick later and I almost crashed head first into it, just to give you an idea of what the visibility was like. We levelled at 27 meters and starting heading towards the stern of the ship, when we passed under un arch (I think it was a supporting strut) I looked back to find that I couldn't see jasper anymore and in the second it took me to stop and look back I found that I almost couldn't see marek anymore either. I quickly caught up to marek and together we headed back; fortunately jasper had borrowed a light from Nine for the penetration dive we did earlier and we soon spotted him again. After swimming back a bit more I suddenly noticed a black shadow under me, the gash. Ofcourse Marek didn't notice it and swam past it at his murderous tempo; we pulled him back and checked out the hole. Afterwards we decided it was a good time to head back to the surface and abandon all attempts to find the propellors. When we got a bit higher up the visibility increased dramatically and we could see where we were again. Marek seemed a bit lost however and as we reached the roof of the bridge he stopped and almost seemed to want to go a few divers we saw swimming a bit deeper to ask for directions. After I indicated we had to go over the side of the ship he followed me and soon we found the mooring line and made our ascent. The dive only took about 20 minutes but it felt like an eternity and we had all used up far more air than we should have for so short a dive.
With this last stressful dive survived we could look back on a succesful dive trip and could proudly claim that we were now Advanced Open Water Divers.
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