See You, South Island

So I recruited Haley, a new-ish Bumbles gal, to join me in my quest do the Kepler. Weather was not on our side, so about six hours before we were booked to set off, we got bus tickets on Naked Bus to Wanaka instead, as there seemed to be plenty of walking-related stuff to do there too.

We headed to a local cafe to get the skinny on the walk in Mt Aspiring National Park that we were planning to do from Raspberry Creek, as the locals usually have a good idea about where to go and the weather was looking a little more than iffy. Still, we were positive, and we greeted the girl in the cafe with hopeful faces and backpacks in tow. She really had a knack of delivering really quite bad news in a cheerful way. I thought she would make an excellent doctor.

'Well, you could go up to Liverpool Bivvy and spend the night there. Mind you, some people have died falling off the edge up there.'

Erm?

We bid our goodbyes just as brightly and wandered off to the DOC office to get some official information.

A cheery ranger manning the desk told us to forget our plans, and to illustrate the point, showed us a live webcam stream of the really quite unfantastic weather at the top of the mountain. We looked at each other blankly. What now? We were here with our packs, our geeky walking trousers, our dignity dangling by a single thread; we wanted to walk. To give this guy his due, he had some good alternatives prepared for our long faces – we could get ourselves over to Roy's Peak, a largeish hill-almost-mountain just outside of central Wanaka, which was on the way to another track we could tackle. This track was reachable by a 9k stretch of dirt road, where we could walk until we came to an 8k section of official track, that would lead us to a hut belonging to none other than Shania Twain. Yes, that's right, THE Shania Twain. Apparently she owns tracts of land in New Zealand with her husband. Who've thunk?

With this advice ringing in our ears, and our lack of proper organisation and forward planning proving slightly cumbersome, we decided to try and hitchhike to the base of Roy's Peak, walk to the summit and then tackle the path to Shania's, where we could bed down for the night, and maybe sing 'Man I Feel Like A Woman' until sunrise.

Time passed. Our thumbs remained stuck out, with less enthusiasm for every passing minute.

It began to rain.

We got a taxi to the base of Roy's Peak.

It looked like a fairly gentle climb up to the top, so with newly renewed gusto, we grabbed our packs and started the climb. About ten minutes in, the incline increased quite forcibly, so we decided to transfer our water, cameras and money to the stylish detachable bumbags we happened to have on both our packs, and abandoned the main frames to a discreet location on the side of the track. The scenery was pretty beautiful, and we got some nice photos of rocky outcrops, views down to the town, and the ridges meandering off of the Peak. But boy, was it hard. I huffed and puffed my way up as Hayley slim-ly and nimbly scampered ahead of me. 'Don't... hhhh.... feel like you....hhhhh.... have to wait for me...' I wheezed as my calf muscles complained with the effort. Hayley was of course kind and polite throughout, and kept pace as we talked about the treks we'd both done previously. Being from Montana, she was pretty used to running up hills and was generally a fair bit fitter (and younger!) than me. But after much effort, we both made it, and got a few snaps at the top of us against the backdrop of the town, and the reward of a 360 degree view from the peak. The walk down, as always, was torturous, and we stopped a few times to 'take in the view', ie: save our knees from spontaneous combustion.

At the summit

From this point onwards things went even less according to recently-hashed-together-plan. We managed to hitch a lift from the base of the peak to the beginning of the road leading to our next track. It was all dust and dirt and although we tried to hitch with every passing vehicle (as the road ended with the walking track and therefore pretty much everyone driving down it must have been going that way), but to no avail. A couple of kilometres down the road, laden with the heavy pack and choking on dust, I cursed Shania's heathen name and turned to Hayley with a new idea.

'So... would it be bad if we sacked off this plan and went into town for the night? Would you be really upset if we didn't spend the night in Shania Twain's hut?'

Hayley wasn't averse to this new plan, in fact she greeted the idea with something approaching enthusiasm, so we hitched a ride with a friendly older British couple back to Wanaka, where accommodation was sought and beers were consumed. This was much better than stale water and half a bar of Cadbury Energy for tea. We actually ended up in pretty plush hostel accommodation, with a shower, and a lovely kitchen where they grew (legal I might add) herbs you could help yourselves to.

The next morning, we were to tackle the Rob Roy Glacier walk, which was meant to be 'moderate' but I suspected definitely less challenging than his Peak. Once again our organisation failed us and we had to catch a minibus to the carpark, which was about 40 min – 1 hour out of Wanaka. Hitching probably could have happened but the weather was once again closing in and I don't think we were up early enough to secure the chance of a ride up there. We headed to one of the local mountain sports shops where we'd heard we could pick up a shuttle bus ride to the carpark we needed to get to. After a small, embarrassing incident where the shop lady had to call back the shuttle bus so it could pick us up (it was already on its way to the park), we all stood together and chatted about the dangers of hitchhiking while we waited for the shuttle.

The pleasant older lady's expression clouded over when she recounted a tale about a friend of hers who was threatened by a crazy hitchhiker. Apparently this hitcher wouldn't get out of the cab of her friend's lorry until he was taken to the destination he wanted to get to. Somewhat taken aback by this hitcher's lack of awareness surrounding the principles of hitching (you get a lift as far as you can towards your destination but only within the intended route of the driver who picks you up), her friend politely insisted that he wasn't going where the hitcher wanted to go, in fact, he was headed in pretty much the opposite direction, so perhaps the hitcher ought to get out of the cab and wait for another lift? This hitcher got upset and petulant and refused to get out, so the driver had to physically remove him from the lorry and report him to the police. With this story ringing in our ears, along with the advice from the friendly yet morbid shop assistant of the day before ('people have died...'), we were picked up by a nice safe bus and taken towards Mt Aspiring National Park.

Anyway, the walk itself was beautiful, not a lot different from the Routeburn, with scenic cascading waterfalls and beautiful silver ferns lining the paths. We eventually hit the top of the walk without really realising it. A majestic glacier stood, gravely staring down anyone who hung around at the top of the path. We had it to ourselves for about five minutes before the hoards descended, and decided to celebrate by opening Hayley's tin of lemon pepper tuna and eating it on crackers.

On our way out of the park we had an 'only in New Zealand' moment when we met the older couple who had given us the lift to Wanaka after our abortive attempt to get to Shania's hut. We took a couple of photos with them and congratulated them on their stamina – I'm only 27 and felt pretty old when I'd finished our previous day's walking, never mind this one. We said our goodbyes and left them our email addresses on their car so that they could send us their photos.

Our final epic adventure moment was our lift home to Queenstown. We grabbed our packs with heavy hearts and stood at what looked like a prime location to nab a lift straight there; at the entrance to the Crown Range Highway. After waiting about twenty minutes with our thumbs stuck out and walking trouser legs rolled up in a coquettish but really rather unsexy attempt to try and speed up the process, two American guys pulled over. I can't recall their names (Hayley?) but they were biblical, and from Durango, Colorado, which happened to be somewhere we had camped on the America portion of the trip. The only way I can describe them is 'Wayne's World', which ended up being their new name as I couldn't remember their real ones. Fortunately, Hayley, being young, cool and American to boot, managed to keep the chat going as I sat in the corner making the odd remark which sounded out of context and quite middle-aged in comparison. Smooth.

We made it home safely despite some Wayne's World-Worthy driving along mountain passes with small fences and long drops on one side, and even got dropped off at our door. Oddly enough, I bumped into both of them again about a week later (only in New Zealand), suited and booted, as they walked into the Christmas dinner service at Heritage. It was only slightly embarrassing approaching them with a tray of cheap fizzy plonk and a Santa hat balanced precariously on my head.

This brings me nicely onto Christmas Day, and my first Christmas out of England, let alone away from family. However, being as most of us were in that situation, we became each other's surrogate family for the festive period, exchanging gifts (Daisy even went to the trouble of wrapping all hers up individually and putting them in stockings...), eating a roast we all cooked together with others in the hostel and even having a dip in freezing Lake Wakatipu, where the temperature stays the same pretty much year-round; horrendously cold. It was definitely a bracing dip, fortunately we had freak weather somewhere in the '40s so it was a good preparation for working the night in aforementioned Santa hat. I managed to psyche myself up for the cold by repeatedly shouting 'This is SPARTAAAA!', thus giving other lakegoers the impression that we were either a group of Roman-era battle re-enactment geeks in bikinis or an outing from the local psychiatric ward on their Christmas 'treat'.

As for work, dinner service went by without ever really getting horribly busy, I got tipped handsomely and we all got to pick at the buffet afterwards which meant I had two enormous Christmas dinners in one day – pretty much just like home then. Post-work, fellow colleagues Max, Nicole, Kirsten and Connor joined me for a night of drunken revelry at Tardis, which was packed and about the only place open, even though most people in Queenstown work in hospitality and it might have made sense to open a few more bars.... I'll never fathom that one out.

The rest of that week was spent getting ready to, well, leave Queenstown. The unthinkable, after such a comparatively long time there. However, I felt ready to leave, and I don't really enjoy drawn-out goodbyes so I won't go into all that. Suffice to say, I packed my belongings, spent New Year's Eve wandering about town finding people, saying quick goodbyes (except for the hour or so spent at the bar in Heritage, sipping on cocktail leftovers and trying not to cry), eating fish and chips as comfort food and watching Queenstown's 'spectacular' firework display through the window of a Jucy van while it rained cats and dogs outside. The next morning, it rained heavily (pathetic fallacy be damned!) and Daisy swung by in the Jucy van on her airport pickup stint to give me a lift to my flight. Sophie, badly hungover and having to work at her cleaning job on New Year's Day, got a lift with us too and it was all a bit depressing saying goodbye to my roommates and fellow cleaners at once. We had, after all, pretty much shared the ins and outs of each other's lives for the past few months and got to know each other well.

I was sniffling in the corner of the airport waiting for my flight to Auckland to be called when I heard a familiar voice, and a mug of swirling, hot tea was thrust in my face.

'Cup of tea, mate?'. It was Daisy, and a touching final farewell for my last hour in Queenstown.

Hope to see you again someday, South Island.