Sunday, Feb. 5
Speechless. Today has surpassed any other day for the views and experiences I have had thus far in Queenstown. We woke up bright and early at 7:15 to make our 8 AM kayaking appointment. Hey, guess what we had for breakfast? No, not PB&Js, they were TOASTED PB&Js. Such variety! (Don’t worry Mom and Dad, I get nutritional variety later in the day.)
We were the only people on our kayaking this morning and our guide picked us up in this funky hippie van outside our hostel. He had dreads and was a super chill guy. As we got in the van he said, “let’s listen to some Kiwi music to get in the real New Zealand mood.” (Kiwi’s are this weird semi-extinct bird of New Zealand, and the Kiwi music was a great variety of hippie/chill tunage.) It was about a half our drive to our kayaking location and he stopped to tell a few stories along the way. We stopped at this thing called 12 mile delta (actually, the location of where we had gone canyoning a few days ago), and it was the location of a huge gold rush that had happened a number of years ago. Our kayaking location was on this beautiful lake surrounded by SNOW CAPPED mountains! I kid you not, the water was crystal clear and we were pretty much the only people on the water. We were all in two person kayaks, and I got to paddle with our guide steering in the back. I actually loved it because he told me lots of stories and started giving me advice for when we take our RV adventure toward Milford Sound.
The lake is home to a few islands, one of which is called Pig Island. We actually stopped at Pig Island for a snack of delicious home-made chocolate raisin bread amazingness as well as some Hot Orange (aka hot orange juice, but better and with lots of sugar.) He even made the bread himself. When we were stopped we got out to take a few pics and noticed that the rocks were really flat. So flat that we were able to skip them around 15-35 times (Joe got an insane rock that skipped like 40 times, no joke.) We also noticed that there was another kayak already on the island when we arrived, and as we were enjoying our snack, our guide stopped and started laughing. I was sitting right next to him and all of a sudden I heard a woman shrieking and making, well let’s just say some very interesting sounds. Ahem. Cough. Clear throat. Cough again. Awkward silence……..
Needless to say the guide and I started cracking up and he starting to clap to let the two love birds know we were there. The others in our group didn’t catch on until I explained later but it was so incredibly funny. We got back in and started kayaking again around the island and as we passed the other kayak we saw the two people—they were actually friends of our guide from college that had borrowed a kayak and had spent the night camping out on the island. They just didn’t realize that we were going to be there so soon that morning. Haha!
We got to take some incredible pictures of our red kayaks against the clear blue water with the snow capped mountains in the background. Just think about that for a moment. It was incredible. Oh, and did I mention that while we were all enjoying the simple beauty of the area, our guide began to say how some of the Lord of the Rings (LOTR) movie scenes were filmed where we were. Yeah. One of the mountains had been removed using filming technology and it was replaced with the two towers, and then another few scenes had been shot there as well. Oh, and did I also mention that as he’s casually telling us this he explains how he helped to be in the movie. Yeah, he was an extra but you can actually see him in a few different scenes. Nbd.
Our guide was such a great guy, and he was also an amazing story teller. He told us this folk tale of how the lake came to be. There is this strange tide that happens where the lake rises and falls but it is not in sync with the moon. It apparently is linked to the heart (island) island of this man still beating. Really crazy but also very interesting. There is also this island that is forbidden to touch because the ancient people that used to rule the area placed the bodies of their dead leaders there, so no one travels to that particular island.
On our way back to Queenstown our guide pipes up to ask if we wanted to check out a waterfall, to which we all, without hesitation, said yes. He literally pulled off to the side of the road right hten and there and we got out, crossed the road and started hiking into the brush. We went in a little ways and sure enough, tucked away off the road there was this beautiful waterfall. We all got to climb behind it and take lots of pictures. I even washed my face in it and took a sip! It was so fresh. Our guide said that one time his little sister and him were driving down that road and their car broke down so they decided to do a little exploring, and they ended up finding it. I seriously could not have asked for a more perfect morning.
We came back and finally made ourselves a hearty meal. We cooked up some tubular spaghetti, meat and cheese spaghetti sauce, and some good ol’ frozen veggie blend. It was so good and I finally felt stuffed, a feeling I haven’t felt in awhile. Oh, and I met some great guys in the kitchen today while we were cleaning up because I wanted to get rid of our extra veggies. They were from Britain. Then, we grabbed our towels then headed to the beach where we got lots of sun. It was such a beautiful day at the beach. We even went to get some gelato at Patagonia’s, a local gelato shop that has *drum roll please* FREE WIFI!!!! Ahhh such an amazing find.
No comments:
Post a Comment