Lizard Island

In the morning, we were taken to the private area of the airport where we stored some of our luggage and eventually boarded a 12-seater Cessna with four other couples to fly to Lizard Island. It was pouring rain, but after about a half an hour we could see parts of the Great Barrier Reef from the air. Amazing views. The flight took about an hour, and we landed in the driving rain on the island’s airstrip.


Lizard Island is a national park with one all-inclusive resort on it with less than 50 rooms. The island is a granite heap almost on top of and otherwise surrounded by reef. There are 24 beaches, and suffice it to say that even though it rained almost all day, we loved it. Our suite is gorgeous, and every little detail around the resort seems to be anticipated and taken care of beautifully and with good design. The staff all live on site and some have been here a long time, only getting to the mainland 2-3 times a year or less. So everyone from spa to dive to waitstaff are very professional.

I was dying to get in the water, so we went for a swim on the beach in front of our suite and the sun started to peek out. We could see that if we had brought our snorkeling gear with us, we could snorkel right off the beach – tons of reef all around.

Lovely dinner, and hoping for a better day.

Travel Day - Cairns

After Christchurch (no problem about the rental car, by the way), we flew to Sydney, then to Cairns, where we were met by a car service and taken to the Shangri-La hotel for the night. Not the best impression of Cairns – think spring break town with lots of rowdy bars, less-than-bikini-clad girls, t-shirt shops, casinos. And LOTS of Asian tourists. At breakfast the next morning, the contingency was mostly Chinese. It didn’t look much better by day, but it must have been amazing in its natural state – between the ocean and the rain-forested mountains.

Christchurch Day and Night

We left Mt. Cook a little earlier than planned, since Christina had a cold, we couldn’t take advantage of the main thing to do there, hiking, and since it’d be best to recover in a place with easier access to things like stores and pharmacies (the hotel compound/village is the only thing there…the nearest pharmacy was 60 km away).


After having our car dented by a mountain guide backing her Land Cruiser (with hitch) into us (glad we got that extra rental insurance…), we headed for Christchurch in the afternoon and arrived in the early evening at The George (where Hillary Clinton stayed a few weeks ago, along with all her Secret Service detail).

So we had the entire next day to leisurely wander around Christchurch’s city centre – from climbing the cathedral tower to the botanic gardens to the arts district.

We found a Belgian beer pub housed in a historic building. We sat on the back terrace overlooking the peaceful willow-lined banks of the little Avon River where people sat drinking in the sun on their lunch breaks. After enjoying some Chimay and more food than we needed, we glanced inside the pub and saw a sporting event on the tv, and glanced a splash of teal. They definitely don’t wear teal playing cricket. And it’s not a rugby color. Could it be…..it was! The Bears beating the pants off the Dolphins!

Most people in this part of the world find American football boring, but the bartender said he plays with some friends a little on weekends, and is a big fan of Brian Urlacher and Devin Hester! We enjoyed another Chimay and watched the first and part of the second quarters.

We had dinner reservations at a restaurant on the river, about 15 minutes’ walk from the hotel. After a lovely dinner (couldn’t taste anything, though, due to the cold), we figured that a quick walk back and a long rest overnight would cure the cold. We sauntered back..or so we thought. It took us several blocks of interestingly-dressed women on every corner and the Salvation Army soup van to realize we had missed a turn and were wandering north on Manchester Street, which is apparently the seedy side of Christchurch after dark. Nice to know it’s not Disneyland! Ken doesn’t agree, but I thought they were much better looking than the former North Avenue Bridge crowd.

Too Many Cooks - No Such Thing

After paragliding over Queenstown (and landing on a school's rugby field - the kids didn't even notice) - we headed to Mt. Cook (Aoraki), the highest peak in New Zealand and where that intrepid beekeeper, Sir Edmund Hillary, trained before knocking off Everest.

Every road is a scenic road here, but this one was extra spectacular as we drove into the Southern Alps.  Burbly streams surrounded by acres and acres of lupins

And then Mt. Cook was in view, along Lake Pukaki, which is a brilliant shade of aqua, but opaque, both from the silt off the mountains.

Over the next day and a half, we got all sorts of views of this mountain...at dawn from our room::

Complete with rainbow:

From a helicopter:

From another mountain where the helicopter landed...

And we were fortunate to catch it reflected in a glassy Lake Pukaki as we drove to Christchurch

The New Zealand part of this trip is almost over...so sad.

Christina Screams Like A Girl

Capping off a few fantastic days in Queenstown, the Nevis Bungy - supposedly second-highest operating at 134 meters high over the Nevis River.   This was NOT the audio I was planning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPzvIPKWbCg

 

 

More about our other activities soon...  Unfortunately, our paragliding trip this afternoon is not possible due to wind conditions so we have to figure out something else to do...ATV tour? Horseback riding? Boogie boarding down a river?  Learning to fly and loop-the-loop an acrobatic 1930s biplane? Ziplining? Luging? The possibilities are endless around here.

I knew I shouldn't have had that big omelette this morning...

...since we spent the day hiking around the Franz Josef Glacier.  And when the guide tells you to hold your backpacks over your head and walk heel-toe as you squeeze through a crevasse that was slightly narrower than me.  I will definitely had bruised thighs, but at least they've been on ice most of today, to stop them from bruising...

Glowworms

We headed to the small town of Charleston, NZ, which used to be a gold mining boom town in the 1860s - the Glowworm Cave tour operates from there. We went to a clearing, andthe staff took their little train out of the garage.

We rode the train for about 10 minutes through incredible rain forest - then disembarked, got suited up in wet suits and other gear, and then hiked for about 15-20 minutes, including up 130 stairs to the cave entrance.  Along the way, we picked up huge inner tubes.  For a while, we explored the cave and formations, and then put our inner tubes in the cave river.  There were three of us plus the guide - we made our inner tubes into a chain, and floated backwards on our backs, looking above our heads to see an incredible display of glowworms on the ceiling and walls of the cave.  It was like seeing the Milky Way, or a ceiling covered in Christmas lights, while in the completely quiet and beautifully isolated environment of a cave.  Once out, we rode the tubes over some gentle whitewater down the river - the river was low, sowe got what ws described as a "river spanking."