Awesome!
I asked Jamie the other day what the best day of his life was. Those of you who know Jamie will not be suprised to hear that he couldn't think of one. For me every single one is pretty God damn special but Wednesday and Thursday will surely be high above any other.....so far.
Just to update you with some stats. The rainfall on Wednesday. 208mm fell in 24 hours. For those of you still on the imperial scale thats 8 inches!!!! The wind blew to 100kph and at times the rain was falling at 36mm per hour. The most rain they've had there for a few years apparently.
So after the absolutely incredible day on Milford Sound on Wednesday we headed out at noon to Doubtful Sound. This trip involves a boat across Lake Manapouri, a coach across the road through Wilmot Pass (built for the Hydro Power Station) and aboard our cruiser with 70 odd other people. The first bonus was that it was even going ahead. The previous days rain, which by this time had broken to clear blue skies and flat calm waters, had washed away 200m of the road so all the other cruises were cancelled. We night cruising people were special though and when the coach reached the top of the pass we all disembarked and were ferried by helicopter to the boat. What a way to start.
The cruise itself was everything you could have hoped for. The scenery was incredible, the food superb and the crew made Caledonian McBrayne look they are made of stone.
This cruise cost $315 (about 140GBP) and was an absolute bargain. An experience of a lifetime. When we anchored for the night, in Precipice Cove, we were treated to an excellent and very humourous slide show by the resident nature expert.
Halfway through this show some murmurrings started and we delayed the rest of the show so we could all head onto deck to watch an amazing sunset turning the clouds fiery orange and sending rays of orange light between the hills. It was almost as good as you'd see in Barra.
We cruised back in this morning and this time had to settle with a short walk across the now partially repaired road. What an incredible experience and coupled with the previous trip surely do add up to a lifetime highlight. What a place.
We're now back in happenin' Queenstown, we'd forgotten it was summer to be honest and it's pretty hot here today. We negotiated a landslide on the road too. They were in the process of tidying up and had a couple of stop-go men in place. As the cars in front of us passed through you could see things falling down from the top of the slip. The stop go man stopped us and told us it was starting to move. Being New Zealand he didn't tell us to turn back or wait or anything girlie like that. Nope, he said 'On you go, keep your eye on it and put your foot down if it starts moving'. Happy days.
Anyway I've uploaded alot of photos. I have a cracking video too but I need to reduce the size of it to upload so i'll try and get that done on Jamie's new PDA.
Hope everything is going great with everyone.
Cheers
Peter
Just to update you with some stats. The rainfall on Wednesday. 208mm fell in 24 hours. For those of you still on the imperial scale thats 8 inches!!!! The wind blew to 100kph and at times the rain was falling at 36mm per hour. The most rain they've had there for a few years apparently.
So after the absolutely incredible day on Milford Sound on Wednesday we headed out at noon to Doubtful Sound. This trip involves a boat across Lake Manapouri, a coach across the road through Wilmot Pass (built for the Hydro Power Station) and aboard our cruiser with 70 odd other people. The first bonus was that it was even going ahead. The previous days rain, which by this time had broken to clear blue skies and flat calm waters, had washed away 200m of the road so all the other cruises were cancelled. We night cruising people were special though and when the coach reached the top of the pass we all disembarked and were ferried by helicopter to the boat. What a way to start.
The cruise itself was everything you could have hoped for. The scenery was incredible, the food superb and the crew made Caledonian McBrayne look they are made of stone.
This cruise cost $315 (about 140GBP) and was an absolute bargain. An experience of a lifetime. When we anchored for the night, in Precipice Cove, we were treated to an excellent and very humourous slide show by the resident nature expert.
Halfway through this show some murmurrings started and we delayed the rest of the show so we could all head onto deck to watch an amazing sunset turning the clouds fiery orange and sending rays of orange light between the hills. It was almost as good as you'd see in Barra.
We cruised back in this morning and this time had to settle with a short walk across the now partially repaired road. What an incredible experience and coupled with the previous trip surely do add up to a lifetime highlight. What a place.
We're now back in happenin' Queenstown, we'd forgotten it was summer to be honest and it's pretty hot here today. We negotiated a landslide on the road too. They were in the process of tidying up and had a couple of stop-go men in place. As the cars in front of us passed through you could see things falling down from the top of the slip. The stop go man stopped us and told us it was starting to move. Being New Zealand he didn't tell us to turn back or wait or anything girlie like that. Nope, he said 'On you go, keep your eye on it and put your foot down if it starts moving'. Happy days.
Anyway I've uploaded alot of photos. I have a cracking video too but I need to reduce the size of it to upload so i'll try and get that done on Jamie's new PDA.
Hope everything is going great with everyone.
Cheers
Peter
posted by PeterZ at 7:32 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home