Category: New Zealand

All grown up? Really?

All grown up?

Well perhaps not All grown up

Just a little – both ways 🙃

Otherwise how do I explain a night out on the town – Queenstown to be exact with strangers?

Well Mum, it was like this you see, “ I Had to meet the people I was going to ride with – I mean I had No choice. So we met and I had to have a drink, just to be polite.

That drink just to be polite 😉 –

Turned out they were a lovely group of 👫 people, you would totally have approved Mum and we were really good and just had the one drink and then went to get some dinner. We totally planned to finish early because we knew we had to be fit to ride the next day.”

The dinner – we Knew, after the first sip of wine we would be friends for the whole 5 day ride 💕

And?

“Well after a great dinner with wine ‘and stuff’ ….

What stuff?

Well some Grappa, and some Kahlua and some Amarettos and some, well I think that’s all ….

Just some of ‘that stuff’ 🍷which confirmed we would be ‘friends for life ‘ 😉

Well I was on my way back to my Juicey Snooze (love saying that 😉) when my friend said she didn’t want to go to bed yet. Honest, I didn’t want to hang out but she did and I couldn’t leave her alone now could I?

So she took me to this fairy light boat to have a quick drink and she had never had mulled wine and so how could I say no?

And so?

The fairy lights boat and That mulled 🍷

And so we went, and we met these amazing young people who were such fun and it would have been rude to leave.

So you stayed?

Yes, well what else could we do? It would have been So rude to leave And we had such fun drinking mulled wine till they ran out …..

That lovely group of young people we met – I mean some responsible adult needed to be there – didn’t they? 🤣
I mean, what would You have done? 😉

And now it’s the next day and we have 🐴 horses to ride!!!

Help – maybe not so all grown up at all 😉😉

But it was Such fun 🤣

Sounds – Milford doubtful ; Doubtful certain

Such is the strangeness of the English language. Or rather the vicissitudes of the New Zealand weather.

A very early start, compounded by the complexity of daylight saving switch (will I be an hour early or late, does it go back or forward; no not the time I get that – spring forward, fall back; but the actual watch)

Fortunately along with my sleeping pod, juicy snooze (I just love using that name) offered me a wake up call so I left the time forward/back calculation to them.

So bright and early I stood at a bus shelter along with a large number of sleepy Chinese tourists. No I need to make a correction- the tourists need no correction, the brightness does. There was none, for almost the entire day.

We stood silent in the dark and rain waiting as instructed for ‘the bus’ which arrive and with it the brightness of my travelling companions, John and Carla.

Brightness is as much a thing of the heart as it of the sun and so with brightness in our hearts we set off.

To Doubtful Sound because it was doubtful we could get to our planned Milford Sound for fear of avalanches.

Which made us more confident about than Captain Cooke was when he named it and refrained from taking his ship, the mighty Endeavour in for fear he would not get her out. Ever cautious he was.

And so was our bus driver as he wound his bus along Lake Wakatipu, a huge dark mass of water (400m deep!) on one side and cliffs reaching up into the dark in the other.

From Queenstown to Kingston to Garston ( the most inland city in NZ) to Mossman to Manapouri – such a mix of names) we saw through the rain and mist, fields and fields of grass so green it reminded me of a melted green wax crayon – intense, solid. Lambs so newly born they could barely stand on their wobbly legs, sheep shorn in anticipation of the spring weather so forlorn wet and I would swear shivering as we and they prayed for clearer skies.

Freishens, thick coated heads down, backs to the wind (producing 50 000 Litres a day 😯)

We drove through old fairy tale forests- beech trees 1000 years old; gnarled, misshapen with long tendrils of moss and lichen. These trees hung of to the edge of mountains so steep that when you looked through them you saw nothing but the darkness of the rock. Definitely fairy tale forests, in this weather of the Brother’s Grimm variety.

And everywhere water, from the heavens, from the rocks, from the snow and sometimes it seemed from the very bowels of the earth

(Trivia 7-9 metres rain a year!) felt like he had most of it today 😉🌧

Oh and did I mention the wind?

Or the laughs?

Or the wine?

We went on buses, boats, buses, footbridges and buses and boats and through it all – had the most amazing time

And to round off a perfect day – the sky turned blue, the sun winked at us; the lambs on our way home were playing, the cows grazed, the passengers snoozed, and we had an extra hour of daylight to savour the gift of nature in all her disguises

Here’s hoping the weather plays ball tomorrow when we start riding

All grown up 😉

How grown up I feel sometimes.

I know I know, my Jess travelled half way round the world all alone on busses and things – but still her 60+ year old mother feels grown up today.

A lovely last walk around Mount Albert and coffee with Desna found me at the airport – alone.

Well not quite alone; I was accompanied by ‘my stomach’. Was it a butterfly 🦋 (or two, or a hundred)? Was it a knot? Or was it the excitement stirring energy? Hard to tell.

We all know I have a mixed reputation when it comes to catching flights. Add to that the modern way of phone boarding passes that scanners seem to have endless trouble with and you will understand my sense of achievement at getting onto the plane and in the right 💺 seat. Such a grown up thing to have done 😉

So all set I was – Queenstown here I come in my ‘paid extra for window seat’ because the view you understand is worth every cent. Well yesterday it was, today is raining and clouded over from whoa to go 😯 but still yesterday the view was So amazing

Leaving amazing Auckland
Approaching Queenstown above the weather – That waited for us in the tarmac ☺️

A municipal bus ride into central Queenstown, short walk up the hill and here I am – totally the wrong age for Juicy Snooze. But what fun

Reminds me of our municipal hard rubbish depot- follow the coloured line – mine was green

A Tiny pod of a room (most are shared – think backpackers) with a shower 🚿 that would not cater to a large soul but in that score I am fine.

My pod bed – I have a window (paid extra for that too 😉)

And so if the rain stops, the adventure may take a different turn but for now it is coffee and the AFL grand final