Hi folks!
A couple of other interesting days lay behind me now. Sebastian and me got two rental cars, since we are now more ore less travelling separately due to different interests. We got these cars for a really cheap price since they are "well used", which means that my one has already been driven for 250000 km. But until now it works without a problem, although in the first night the horn suddenly kept making noise so that the neighbors came to my hostel and wanted the guy who was owning the car out on the streets.
So after I left Christchurch on Monday I drove to Methven, which is the entry point to the Mt Hutt Reserve, the NZ ski wintersport area that provides the longest snow in NZ. On Wednesday we hired some snowboard gear and off we went to the slopes on Mt Hutt. Since I had done snowboarding only once which was 2 years ago I had some severe problems in the beginning, including some very rough bounces onto the ground. But fortunately Sebastian helped me out with some good advice with which I could improve my skills enourmously. At the end of the day I finished the slope very easy and almost without falling down. It was great fun actually and very different from skiing.
The day after I drove off to Lake Tekapo, a huge mountain lake which is famous for its blue-green colour. Unfortunately the road conditions were so bad that I had to put snowchains on, but the road remained a hazardous ice track. Because of heavy clouds and snowfalls the lake's beautiful colour was not really recognizable, and driving further was not really advisable as well due to increasing strength of snowfalls and freezing due to evening darkness. So finally I stayed at the local YHA (the international version of the german "Jugendherberge") and had a nice evening in front of a woodfire in the lounge room. There were not many people but there was one interesting italian guy who was doing kate snowboarding. Just imagine a guy on a snowboard riding through snow covered hills while being pulled by a kind of parachute.
The next day I drove to Mt Cook, which is the highest mountain in New Zealand with 3750m. I met up with Sebastian there and we did an extensive snow hike into the valley from where we could catch a few views on the massive mountain. Sometimes our legs disappeared until the knee into the snow and it was hard to follow the walking track since there were no markers. We managed to get into the valley a few km and came back some time after darkness had taken place. Fortunately Sebastian had a torch so we could follow our traces back.
Today I drove all the way down to Queenstown, which is the adventure capital of NZ. The first commercial bungee jump in the world was established here from the kawarau bridge, which rises up to 43 m above a river. I finally want to face a bungy jump, but I am about to decide for the much more scary thing, a jump down from a steel cord held gondola, which lets you drop down from 134 m. I saw photos today and I can tell you, I was frightened only by the sight of it...
I will let you know if I really had the guts to do it.
Until then take care and stay easy!!
