because i've been questioned about it, the whale rescue i thought i might try to participate it (if it had still been alive) would have involved covering the whale with towels and keeping it wet with buckets of water and helping turn it the right direction to swim out once the tide came in, etc. i was not planning to perform CPR (dad) or pull on its tail to get it back in the water.
it is tuesday january 22 today (which means it's monday back home). i haven't been great about saying which day things were happening. so that clears that up.
yesterday we hung out in queenstown. our hostel was truly awesome. it was called hippo lodge and we paid the most we've paid so far for a private room but it was one of the nicer places (my 2nd favourite). the view of the lake and the rest of queenstown was amazing. which obviously meant we were at the top of a big steep hill. which was unfortunate for me because i'm not great with directions and jess and i split up at the end of the day and i forgot exactly which street to walk up. so i picked the one i thought, got to the top (huffing and puffing), and couldn't see my hostel anywhere. then i walked back down and asked someone. she laughed at me and said i'd actually gone up the right one but just had to go up the staircase. funny but i had absolutely no recollection of going down a staircase in the morning. jess assures me we did. but i am very unobservant about things like that. so back up the giant hill. oh well, good training for the Routeburn. anyway, while in queenstown we did a bit of shopping for the big hike, booked the trasportation (it's not a loop so we start and end in different places), booked our accomodation in Fiji, and booked a day trip to Doubtful Sound. after that we drove the 2.5 hours to Te Anau where we are doing a homestay. nice clean cozy house with a real friendly guy who was so excited about our whale story and wanted to see our pictures. so it's been good.
Doubtful Sound. Stunning.
this morning we got up early and walked to the corner in the rain (our first day of rain since Auckland - we've been very lucky) to catch the first bus (referred to all day as a coach). it took us to the visitor's centre in Manipouri where we caught our first boat and crossed Lake Manipouri. Beautiful ride in the mist and rain. Good news is our raincoats appear to work okay. Once we arrived at the other end of the lake, we did a quick tour of an information centre and then we caught our second bus which took us first on a tour of the power station (we rode a bus for about 20 minutes underground and then had a nice tour - neither jess nor i had fully read the description of the day so this was an enjoyable surprise for both of us). the coach then took us over the 21km Wilmont Pass road (the most expensive ever built in New Zealand. owned by the power company and only accessible by water on both sides) which took about an hour to reach Deep Cove. Tons of waterfalls and trees and plants and moss (my secret weakness - spaghnum mostly. it's harvested here and used for all sorts of interesting things). then we caught our second boat and had a lovely three hour cruise through the fjiords and into doubtful sound. it was all misty and "moody" in the morning and majestic and lovely. it had stopped raining but remained overcast until we turned around at the tasman sea and cruised back. then the sun came out and we had a completely different view of everything. loved it.
we went back to our bus at Deep Cove and back over Wilmont Pass road. caught that boat to cross Lake Manipouri again. rode that bus back into Te Anau. all said and done we had 4 bus rides and three boat rides. long brilliant day.
this evening we've done nothing but eat supper (our favourite meal, pasta with tuna and boiled carrots) and organise our food and packs for tomorrow. we catch our first bus at 7:30 and are back off to queenstown. we've got two hours and then we catch a second bus to glenoarchy which drops us at our starting point, the Routeburn Shelter. we will spend our first night at Routeburn Falls Hut and our second night at Lake Mackenzie Hut. that info is mostly for my dad since he likes to follow along on my trips. to the rest of you, if you were bored you should have skipped that sentence.
so won't be much news from us in the next few days. i've never done a three day hike before. apparently the second day is the hardest. and to make it extra fun, the forecast is rain! we've been told to be ready to walk through a half metre of water if it rains. sounds like fun.
now i shall go and drink tea with the homeowner and another guy staying here (i think the accent is scottish) and then head to bed.
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