Journal
I kept this journal daily on my handheld Windows CE computer, a Hewlett Packard Jornada 820. I use an extremely casual style in my journals, so any grammatical errors are intentional.
24 January 2000
10:21am, 24 Jan 00 Alice Springs. Sunny, around 36C
...And the adventure begins. Flight doesn't take off for over an hour, but we're ready to go. Always get to the airport ridiculously early. It might be raining in Sydney, don't remember, but only around 23C so quite a bit cooler than here.
In Christchurch the weather is possible rain and t-storms, in the 40's F tonight. Long day...we won't arrive in Christchurch until just before midnight, local time. One of the Ansett flights from Sydney's just arriving...
5:15pm local, 24 Jan 00, Sydney airport, cloudy, 22C
Playing the waiting game. Flight was on time, no problems getting through customs. Rarely do, we're careful travelers. Only thing I forgot was to mention to Customs I was taking electronics, and get that ok'd. But since I purchased them in the US, I do have the US customs tag for them (this and the camera).
This is apparently the older, less posh area of the airport. Kinda dowdy looking here. We don't get into Christchurch until midnight local time, it's going to be a long day.
Flight to here was uneventful. I've really begun to dislike economy flying though, not nearly enough room to stretch out. And a perfect stranger sitting next to me - John gets the window seat on the way out, I get it on the way back.
25 January 2000
click HERE for all the photos for this day
1:06 am local, 25 Jan 00, Christchurch, raining, 14C
Got in around midnight, as scheduled. We're at the Airport Plaza hotel, right next to the Antarctic Center. Tired, but not super sleepy yet. Watching a really bad movie at the moment. This leg actually seemed to go faster than the previous, probably 'cause I was immersed in reading my book. Books are wonderful things, aren't they?
Tomorrow we pick up the car around 9:30, and drive to Greymouth. Feels great to know I'll see mountains tomorrow, and it's a lot cooler out. 40C was getting to me. Wonder how Meep is doing.
7:00am, 25 Jan 00 Christchurch, overcast, ?
Didn't sleep well last night, oh well. Overcast, damp looking and probably cold. Isn't it great?
9:51am, 25 Jan 00, intersection with 72, on 73 heading west. Raining.
Probably around 10 or 11C, not sure. We got our little green car, John's driving (obviously) and we're heading toward the invisible mountains. The closer we get, the harder it's raining. Ah, well. I think it'll clear a bit tomorrow, don't really know though.
This morning we went over to the Antarctic center to check it out. it was closed, of course, but it had a cafe that was open for breakfast, so we had a McMurdo muffin (just what you'd think it would be), John had a coffee and I had a large OJ as they don't have decaf except in a plunger. John tried to use the internet cafe terminal, but had problems with his compuserve account, so I let him use my usa.net account to send a message.
It's raining harder now. Guess it's going to be a wet day.
While at the cafe, picked up a paper that had an article about Greymouth. Apparently it's been raining heavily there and has been flooding.
1:09 pm, 25 Jan 00, Arthurs Pass, cloudy, spittin' rain
Just ate lunch at Arthur's Haus, we both had sandwiches. Clouds have lifted somewhat, and we have clear views of the closest mountains. I think there's a little bit of an upward climb left, then downhill all the way to Greymouth on the coast. John wants to get going so I'll stop now.
7:23pm, 25 Jan 00, Greymouth, partly cloudy, windy
Got into Greymouth around 4:00. A little difficulty finding our hotel, but did eventually. Weather began clearing up as we reached the west side of the mountains. After getting settled in, we went and wandered downtown, eventually eating dinner at the Anklebiter Cafe, which was recommended by our host - and was good, we both had pannini. After dinner, we spent a few minutes on the river, then much more time at the Tasman Sea. The beach is granite pebbles, big going to smaller the closer one gets to the water. Not good lounging beach but we both got a few interesting stones. As usual, John went and touched the water.
Got some gas, and now we're back in the room, watching CMT. I'm thrashed, and about ready to go to bed.
26 January 2000
click HERE for all the photos for this day
1:00pm, 26 Jan 00, Whataroa.
Stopped for lunch, toasties. On our way here, we went over two interesting bridges - one-lane bridges shared by cars and train tracks. interesting and a little nervous. We also stopped at Hokitika and the beach there, which was dark grey sand and lots of driftwood. Apparently in the late 1800s it was quite common for boats to ground on the sandbar there. About 30km from Franz Josef.
The beach at Hokitika, our first view of the mountains, and the Tsambo II, built in commemoration of all the ships who beached on the Hokitika sandbar
1:49pm, 26 Jan 00, Glacier View hotel, Franz Josef.
Suppose you can see the glacier, but not from our room... Very basic accomodation, even more basic than last night. But it's out of town, and quiet, I can hear a stream nearby. Off to see the glacier.
Two waterfalls on the way bracket the Franz Josef Glacier. This photo was taken quite a distance from the glacier - so far that people standing next to it could hardly be seen.
10:04pm, 26 Jan 00, Glacier View. Partly cloudy - raining over the mountains.
Found out to our disappointment people are not allowed near the glacier except with a guided (read, you pay for it) tour. However, there was a park ranger type there, probably a worker, who was allowing some folks to go through so we went through as well. The riverbed we walked on was all scree, boulders and rocks, difficult to walk on. We walked by two really nice waterfalls, had to cross some waterways, but did get relatively close to the glacier, well, at least within a quarter to half kilometer away. Which was a lot closer to the glacier than the lookout point. They say it's too dangerous to get close to the glacier without a trained escort, as it could break off ice or explode at any time. Possibly true, but certainly the guide companies make more money when it's the only way to actually touch the glacier. We had to be satisfied with chunks that had broken off.
The
water coming off the glacier wasn't the clear bluish color I expected. Instead,
it's a weird chalky grey color, like clay. Its rock dust in suspension, apparently.
Water off the waterfalls was closer to the color I expected.
The weather today has been very good, but you can tell the weather is much less nice further into the mountains - dark, nasty clouds which fortunately break up when they get over the western edge. They did sneak over the mountains enough at sunset to spit rain on us and throw some rainbows around.
After visiting the glacier, we went to the 'town' of Franz Josef.
About a dozen buildings, most of them guide or helicopter glacier rides. Two
souvenir stores, bought a T-shirt and pin in one, and a wool sweater in the
other. Ate at a place called the Beeches cafe, had panini again, this time chicken
and mushroom sauce. It was very good. We went to the tiny grocery store and
picked up drinks and in John's case, chips. We actually found some public internet
terminals and both of us caught up on our email. We wandered around a bit, went
back to the room, went out to the nearby lake, Lake Mapourika and hung out for
a little while.
Now we're sitting in the room, fighting off sand flies, which are about the size and annoyance of bush flies, but they BITE like mosquitoes. We'd left the windows and door open for a while, and now I'm paying the price. Been bit twice so far.
27 January 2000
click HERE for all the photos for this day
10:30pm, 27 Jan 00, Queenstown, Melbourne motor Inn. Cloudy
Got started early this morning, up at 6am. Walked down to the
bridge, looked at the glacier - still clouds over it, probably usually are.
Got on the road at 7:30am. Stopped at Fox Glacier - for a short
time at a cafe there, then drove up to the glacier and took the walk to it.
Arduous
for me and my knees, with the climb to the glacier being steep. Worth it though.
We were the only ones there, so we slipped under the barrier and took each other's
pictures touching the glacier, and I took a couple more of the tremendous ice
cave the water comes out of.
Fox Glacier
It gets quite cold around a glacier, as you'd expect around a huge ice cube... A cold wind blows from the heights, and you can feel the cold radiating both from the glacier itself and from the odd-colored water coming out of it. The water has rock flour in suspension, which gives it the strange color. The other strange thing about the area was that it is temperate rain forest. I kept thinking the forest looked very strange, but if you see it as a rain forest, it looks much more normal. But its still strange to drive through rainforest to get to a glacier.
Round trip to and from the glacier had us hitting the road again around 10:00 (I'm a slow walker). We stopped at a couple places along the way - lakes and lookouts, etc. I was kinda being anal, thinking we had to get to Queenstown by a certain time (before everything closed) but John finally convinced me to relax.
Knights' Point and Lake Wanaka
Towards the end of the trip we stopped at Lake Hakawa. It was a very beautiful glacier blue lake, ringed by mountains. The lake here, Wakatipu, is also that blue, though not all lakes in the region are.
Lake Hakawa
Once we arrived in Queenstown, we dumped our stuff, freshened up, and headed back out. Our hostess informed us that the town doesn't shut down until around 9pm. We wandered around downtown for a while - I still havent purchased many souveniers - ate dinner at the 'food court' in the O'Connell Mall, then shopped some more. John kept bugging me about going up in the gondola, so eventually, around 8:00 or so, I gave in. While we were up there, we had a beer and checked out the observation deck. As this was a more or less spur of the moment thing, I didn't have my camera along, and so don't have photos of the view from up there.
Skyline Restaurant, at the top of the mountain
Once we got back down, we wandered around town for a little while longer, stopped at a Mobile for water and munchies, and now John is watching Terminator 2.
28 January 2000
click HERE for all the photos for this day
Eyre Mountains, Queenstown, morning
Jan 28 3:03pm Mount Cook. Sunny, beautiful, warm
We got upgraded, and I'm currently sitting on our porch, looking out at Mount Cook and the Hooker Glacier, truly a stupendous sight. Now that Johns' back with the rest of our things, I'll go get my camera now.
The view from our room
3:21pm
More settled now, John's checking out the restaurant menus. Looks like the cloud bank is slowly making it over the range, Mt Cook is becoming obscured.
Got up at 7am this morning, went into town and had McMuffins at McDonalds, took a couple of pictures, and headed out. Stopped at Cromwell, did the internet thing and stopped at the grocery store for lunch items. Did a lot of driving, a bit of stopping, and finally found a little rest stop where we had lunch and hung out a bit.
Now we're just trying to figure out what to do next.
8:56pm
The sun is setting, but Mt. Cook is still white, so sunset hasn't happened yet. However, with the tall mountains all around, the sun went behind them around 6:30.
What we ended up doing was taking a long walk to the Kea Point lookout, and hanging out for a while.
View from Kea Point
After returning from the observation point, we spent some time trying to decide what to have for dinner, it being John's birthday. John wanted to just have bar food, but the bar in question is way over at the Glencoe area, and too far to walk as we are both tired (and as the Glencoe Wing is closed, likely the bar there is too). We have a good parking spot so we didn't want to take the car.
While we were at the observation point, we heard a loud, drawn out cracking noise, which we determined must be in the clouds that were rolling over the ridgline of Mount Sefton. Sounded like thunder at first, then like we should be seeing tons of snow cascading down, but nothing happened. Later, now that the clouds have dissipated somewhat, I can see a long (can't say how, 1/2, mile?) crack in the snow high up on the ridge. A very large chunk of neve (top of the glacier) has settled. Took a look at it through John's monocular.
The mountain's starting to change color, time to take another photo.
OK done. Just in time, as the mountain's color has changed again. I love mountains, they change moods often and even if you live near them for years, they always look different, depending on the weather and time of day.
Waiting for sunset. It must be pretty close, as the high clouds are starting to turn pinkish. It's also turning colder, and here we are in our stocking feet. John's studying Mt. Cook with his monocular, and commenting on the snow fields.
Mt. Cook strikes me as a very photogenic mountain. I'm starting to think some of the mountain photos I've seen in the past were this mountain, instead of somewhere in the Rockies which is what I usually assume.
29 January 2000
click HERE for all the photos for this day
8:41 am, 29 Jan 00 Mt. Cook. Cloudy, cold
A Kea who is interested in my shoes.
There's a Kea on the porch above us, no doubt attracted to John's feeding of the sparrows. We're sitting on the porch drinking our coffee.
We ended up getting up a little late this morning, as we're both really tired. We went outside when we heard a couple of Keas nearby, and went to investigate. They are large parrots that apparently can be rather destructive, "Please Don't Feed The Keas", usually with a picture of a couple of Kea destroying a hiking boot.
They're quite clowns, and we watched them for a few minutes, and took a couple of pictures. Now we have about a dozen sparrows finishing off the crumbs John has been throwing out. English Sparrows are everywhere, but I was suprised to find there are chaffinches too.
It looks like it's snowing on Mount Cook this morning, and/or the clouds are lowering. The Kea are quite noisy birds, I hear them further down the hill now. Easy to hear how they got their name.
A Kea's checking us out, but seems to have decided we don't have anything interesting.
3:29pm Christchurch. Raining
Arrived at the Australasia just a few minutes ago. Found "The Horse Whisperer" on TV. The room is actually surprisingly large, with room for a loveseat couch between the two beds.
Very boring drive in. Mount Cook became increasingly covered
with cloud, and by the time we reached the lookout 2km beyond the intersection
we could see only the bottom of the mountain, basically beneath the snow line.
We stopped at Lake Tepako 
for
coffee and a quick snack. Purchased a Merino wool sweater with "Mount Cook"
on it, and ended up wearing it as the weather is wet and chilly today. Still debating if I want to wear it under my Bushman jacket or not. Probably
not.
We're going to hang out for just a little while, then drive to the airport, visit the Antarctic Center, turn the car in then take a cab or bus downtown.
9:30pm cloudy but no longer raining
Took the car to the airport, no problem getting there. Dropped it off, waited for around 40 minutes for the city bus. A garrulous older gentleman was there, and went on about taxi drivers around the world. He was retired American military, and travels via Mac flights.
We took the bus to Cathedral Square, walked around for a few minutes, then decided to pick up dinner at the first place we had passed - a souvlaki place. Took them back to the room, ate dinner, and have been here ever since. As I didn't sleep well last night, I'm really thrashed and ready to go to bed.
This doesn't look to be the best neighborhood, so it's just as well we returned the car tonight, at least we won't have to worry about it.
There's a scruffy black cat that greeted us on our arrival here, he really wanted to be invited inside.
30 January 2000
click HERE for all the photos for this day
8:51am, 30 Jan 00 Christchurch sunny, 20C
A beautiful, sunny morning. A gift, as it's supposed to be cloudy and raining. Although we basically stayed up until 2 am watching most of The Horse Whisperer, I had actually gone to bed at 10:30, and slept through Six Days, Seven Nights so I've had enough sleep, I hope. Tomorrow we have to get up at o'dark-hundred (probably 3am) as our international flight leaves at 5:45am.
Some coffee in the room, then more coffee, possibly at the Montana Bakery/Cafe (which we passed last night) and then wandering. I'm actually not really interested in shopping, so not sure if I'm going to have a lot of fun, but we'll get a lot of exercise...
6:57pm Christchurch Sunny, 25C?
Turned out to be a beautiful day, with only passing clouds. We did "breakfast" in the room, coffee and finished off the cheese and onion cracker sandwiches. Did some email on Cathedral Square. We then wandered about a bit, and had a bite at a place called the Muffin Break. John and I both had savory muffins and I enjoyed one of the rare times I can find brewed decaf.
We wandered around town using the tram system, which goes in
a loop from Cathedral Square to the Botanical Gardens. We started at Cathedral
Square, 
then
went over to the Art Gallery, which had both the (apparently) regular weekend
market and the World Busker's Festival. I wanted to get something from a little
hidden-away international food thing - like a food court - but that muffin was
really filling. I did pick up a couple of cat silhouettes but nothing more.
Made a short stop at the Canterbury Museum - John spent longer than I, I went
out to the Botanic Garden next door and dozed in the grass under a tree, near
the fountain.
From there we visited the rest of the Botanic Gardens.
The gardens were very nice, and had some really impressive trees. We sat unknowingly under a tremendous oak tree until it decided to gain my attention by dropping an acorn on my head. I then paid proper attention to it. :)
Another impressive tree was the biggest bloody eucalyptus I've ever seen. It was GIGANTIC! Looks like it might be a coppiced tree - it looked like, and was the size of, four to six trees grown together. We also enjoyed a rose garden, heather garden, tropical garden and cactus garden.
Got a little misplaced trying to make our way back to the tram,
ended up at Hagley Park, where there is a Blues, Booze and BBQ festival currently
happening. Couldn't convince John to visit the festival, so we caught the tram
again and got off at Victoria Square. Hung out there a little while, looked
at a sculpture which I guess you could call a Maori Totem pole,
saw a flower clock, watched a punt going upstream on the Avon and a bunch of
kids skateboarding. We then got back on the tram and took it to New Regent street.
It's probably quite a lively street during the week, but was a ghost town today.
We had passed a place called Nachos and thought it might be an interesting place
for dinner. Not a very big menu (nachos, tacos, tostadito[sp?] or burritos)
but the tacos were quite good, and John enjoyed his tostadito as well.
After that, we took the tram back to the market for dessert. It was quite good, a booth that serves freshly mixed ice cream and berries. It might be a bit of a scam, she takes a scoop of ice cream and a scoop of fruit and dumps it into the machine, but what comes out, though undeniably berry flavored, is always the same color and my raspberry yogurt had strawberry seeds in it. It was very tasty, so I didn't care in the least.
After dessert, we walked back to the room. I've repacked everything and am just hanging out. As we are being picked up at 3:50am, we have to get up at a really ridiculously early hour. I'll probably not take a shower until we get home tomorrow.
Looks like my battery is finally getting lower (41%), debating whether to bother recharging it tonight. I didn't use it on the plane at all on the trip out, but did use it in the airport... as it says I have 6 to 7 hours of battery time left, think it'll be fine :) Still think this Jornada is better than buttered bread...
31 January 2000
5:01am, 31 Jan 00 Christchurch airport dark, cool
Shuttle bus arrived right on time, then wandered around for a while picking up other passengers. We arrived here around 4:30, it's very quiet so going through customs, etc was easy. Plane boards in about 15 minutes.
7:51am Sydney airport Sunny, high wispy clouds, 19C
Uneventful flight. No problems getting through customs as we made a point of not purchasing souvenirs that must be declared. Kind of a bummer, as there was some beautiful wood products at the shops, as well as lots of wool skins and stuff. At any rate, aside from my bag getting heavier every minute, we got through just fine. Flight arrived a little early as well. Our next flight doesn't board until 9:10, so we have just over an hour to wait. John's off exploring, I did an initial run just a bit ago, and will probably go out again later.
I'm carrying water this time, and it seems to be a good idea. I'm hot and sweaty just now, though a little better as I've freshened up. I ran out of book on the previous flight, but can play games on this, still have about 3 hours of time. Last time I charged the battery was... Greymouth. Not bad, considering both John and myself are keeping journals.
Wow, you actually read the whole thing? I'm impressed! Hope you enjoyed it. If you've visited my website before, you know this is a new project for me. Please tell me what you think of it!
