West coast

Well, here I am in Hokitita on the west coast where we have a couple of hours to catch up on emails and have some lunch. It's quite cold and overcast but dry.

Since my Queenstown adventures I've been jet boating on the Wilkin river which was good fun, if a little tame after the canyon swing. It's incredible how those boats work in only a few mm of water. The river was low so you could frequently feel the stones under the boat in the really shallow sections. Yesterday we were in the town of Fox, home to the Fox Glacier. I decided not to partake in the glacier walk, having seen the glacier at Chamonix and done an ice hike in Chile, so instead I jumped on a bike and cycled up to the foot of the glacier with a couple of others from the bus. It was hard work on the old legs being on a bike but worth the uphill cycle. We then went on to Lake Matheson, a small lake nearby and walked around that before tucking into a well-earned ice-cream. We camped at a beautiful spot at Okarita last night.

I was in cook group so didn't see the sea by daylight but was instead rustling up some tasty nachos to feed the troops. We had a beach fire last night and I enjoyed a few glasses of delicious Hawke's Bay Pinot Noir. Interestingly and annoyingly, the Australian wine is really cheap here, about four quid, but the NZ stuff is very pricey. Last night's bottle cost me about 7 quid (sorry, can't find the pound sign) but I wanted to try the native wine and support the wine industry here. It was worth the money though and I'll be looking for another bottle tomorrow I reckon.

Today we stopped at a quirky museum and watched an interesting film about the deer hunters. I may have mentioned that deer aren't native to NZ but were brought over by the Brits. They soon ran amok and ate the native bush so were hunted. The demand for venison grew, with lots being exported to Germany, so the Kiwis decided to capture the wild deer alive and set up deer farms. Some crazy Kiwi dudes trialled jumping out of helicopters onto the backs of the deers, wrestling them to the ground, then they tied them up and choppered (good Kiwi word) them back to civilisation where you now see lots of them in fields, just like our cows and sheep. Strange but true.

We are at tonight's camp, at the Pancake Rocks (Punakaiki) for two nights so it will be nice not to be up at the crack of dawn to take down tents. Think there's a bit of walking and the option of a horse ride. Not quite high adrenaline but pleasant nonetheless. We get pancakes for brekkie too. That's a bonus.