Walking to the ruined Castle.

Yet another trip to the Blue Mountains last Sunday. This time Allen and I had plans to walk from Katoomba to the Ruined Castle.

You can easily see the Ruined Castle from Echo Point where Greg and I were last week. It doesn't look that far away from Echo Point but long distances can be deceptive.

In the guide book the Ruined Castle walk from the Golden Steps is about six hours return and the walk to the Golden Steps from Echo Point is about three hours. We figured that we could do it in around seven hours if we had a reasonable pace and didn't get lost at all. The guides normally assume a slower pace.

We got to Katoomba by eleven, had a quick brunch and then headed off into the Mountains. Deirdre came along as well but not for the walk. She was all prepared for a day in Katoomba, browsing the shops and catching up on things in the art deco classic Carrington Hotel. Think of the hotel in the movie The Shinning.

At 12 we caught a tour bus to Scenic World, which is at the top of the railway from the base of the Blue Mountains. From here we walked to the top of the Golden Stairs where we could descend into the Blue Mountains.

I'm sad to say that the Golden Stairs didn't have any gold, but they were quite steep at some points and it helped make our decision to come back by a different route.

After a brisk walk we finally made it to the Ruined Castle. Initially we couldn't see too much of a view on the ridge because many of the trees were in the way. Then on one of the rocky outcrops we could see a couple that had climbed up there, so we figured we must be able to climb up there as well.

The climb up was a little tricky and I'm certainly glad that Allen and I didn't slip and fall at any point. It would be a long walk back with broken bones. The view from the top was really worth it. It was quite breathtaking to get to the top of a metre square ledge and look around. The views were as if we were in the middle of the Blue Mountains and we had a 360 degree panoramic view around us.

The first picture here is of me on top of the rocky outcrop that I climbed up first. The next two are of some of the views that we had from up there.

Strangely enough we had a phone signal on the top of the outcrop. So we phoned Deirdre to tell her that we were ok and that mountain rescue probably wouldn't be needed for us today. Allen had some binoculars and with these we could make out the Carrington Hotel as well as people at Echo Point. I wonder if any of them could see us as well.

In the second picture you can just about make out Echo Point and the group of houses on the left is Katoomba.

On the way back from the walk we didn't climb up the Golden Steps, instead we walked past them to follow the base of the Mountains around to the base of Scenic World and then we could climb up the same steps that Greg and I climbed last weekend.

However this route round the base of the mountains wasn't ideal. Along the path there was a landslide at some point in the past and the path was wiped out! We had to follow chalk arrows on the fallen rocks and some occasional black poles where the path used to be. Here is Allen on the edge of where an obvious mud slide had occurred recently wiping out the path as well.

At one point we did get a little lost and wondered off the path. However looking down the hill we identified one black pole and then gingerly took a route down to the pole and back onto the path. The sun was really beating down at us at this point, fortunately we both had been well prepared and bought plenty of water, sun screen and some snacks. It wasn't only the sun and landslides that we had to look out for though, the hot rocks were ideal places for venomous snakes as well.

We eventually made it past the landslides and were happily back into the cooler canopy of the trees.

We even managed to see a wallaby in the forest. Someone just walked past us only to see the wallaby run past them in the forest. We all quickly stopped and could see the frozen wallaby though the bush. Here's a small picture of it.

An hour or so later and we were finally back in Katoomba. Quite exhaused after a seven hour walk and in need of a decent pint.

We arranged to meet up with Deirdre in the Carrington for a well deserved beer.

Fortunately for me they served Guinness on tap, unfortunately it was very chilled but then that's Australians and their beer for you. Here's my Carrington Guinness in a Carrington labelled pint glass.

We had an average Thai meal in Katoomba before trying to catch the 9.25 train back to Sydney. You would think that with trains at 5.25, 6.25, 7.25 and 8.25 that there would logically be one at 9.25 as well. Unfortunately not, the next train after 8.25 was at 10.55! So seeing as there wasn't a 9.25 train we had to wait a further hour and a half for the last train home.

The good news was that we had plenty of time to get back to the Carrington then for another beer, the bad news being that we wouldn't get back to Sydney till one am and on a school night too.

Greg's Visit Down Under.

My friend Greg has been visiting me for the past week. He was going to a friends wedding on Manly beach anyhow and it was just coincidental that I was going to be here in Sydney as well.

I couldn't take any more time off work so other than weekday evenings I only had one weekend to show him around.

Seeing as the weather was a bit overcast, we decided to go to see the Maritime museum on Saturday.

There is a retired submarine moored next to the museum and we got the chance to take a look around it. It was quite fascinating to be able to wonder around a real submarine.

For all you geeks out there (me included) it's an Oberon class submarine called HMAS Onslow. A diesel/electric submarine, which was in service from 1969 to 1999. Here you can see Greg with his head in the escape tube in the forward torpedo room. As you can imagine submarines aren't really designed for people over six foot tall.

This is a picture of some of the crew quarters. I really feel sorry for the bloke who had the top bunks here. There is barely enough room to turn over in the bunks.

Even for me the passages were very narrow and I could barely walk with my shoulders square on to them. There were several retired volunteers on hand to answer questions about the submarine and explain parts of it. I had plenty of questions and it was a pleasure for me to be abroad the submarine.

The following day we planned a long day trip to the Blue Mountains to see the main sights there. We caught a train out there, which is roughly a two hour train trip from the city centre. We got there around one and had a bite to eat in Katoomba and then took a good five hour walk around Echo point, to the Three Sisters and then down into the valley into Laura forest and back around the base of the Three Sisters. Then up the other side at Orphan rock and back to Katoomba.

Here you can see the steep steps down the side of the Three Sisters rock formation. I could imagine the walk up the steps being quite a good work out! Fortunately we were walking down them, if you lost your footing on the metal steps then it would have been quite a fall down.

The weather was ideal for a long walk as it was a little overcast and a little misty in the air. If it was sunny then we would have really struggled in the heat and humidity.

This middle photo is of me in the middle of the Laura forest, obviously exploring paths never trodden by any human being. Well actually there was a well-worn path throughout most of the walk. The walk around the Laura forest was not as popular though and as a result much well worn and all the better for it. We only saw one bloke going the other way in the forest, while for the rest of the walk we saw quite a few other people doing the three sisters walk.

There were plenty of tourists around the place and I really got quite annoyed when I saw some of them nonchalantly littering the path with their rubbish. So much so that Greg and I had a loud conversation about how stupid some people are who litter the place. However, they either didn't understand us or just plain ignored us



This final photo is the obligatory photo of the Three Sisters rock formation from Echo point. Once we got round here for the second time it was quite late but at least there were only a handful of tourists about the place so it made the place much more peaceful.

You can just about make out a small walkway between the first sister and the main rock headway. That was the start of the walkway down the side of the Three Sisters.

Once we got back to Katoomba we had a well deserved Thai meal in what seemed like someone’s front room. The meal tasted so good, but then again we had just walked around 7km and really needed the fill up.

Rainforests and Reefs.

My last week has been spent away in Port Douglas, visiting the Daintree Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef with my friend Niki. We only spent a couple of full days there, one at the rainforest and one at the reef.

I had a little time in Cairns wondering around the streets in the early morning waiting for Niki to arrive on her flight from Brisbane. I couldn't say that I was that impressed with the place. It was basically a town made for tourists with loads of shops and restaurants. Nothing really noteworthy as far as I could see and I was glad that I decided to stay in Port Douglas rather than Cairns.

The Daintree Rainforest was quite impressive from what I saw of it. We basically took a one-day trip around the area, visiting many sites such as Cape Tribulation, Mossman Gorge, the Daintree River where we saw wild crocodiles and the rainforest.

Here is a picture of one of the great trees in the rainforest. The temperature wasn't that hot but it was very humid adding to the atmosphere in the rainforest.

I would have preferred to go for much longer walks deep into the rainforest, but Niki wasn't so keen on walking and didn't have as much interest in the place. Maybe next time...

The following day we went out to the Barrier Reef. I was a little apprehensive about this trip as I'm not a confident swimmer and wasn't sure how I would react to not being able to stand when out on the reef and snorkelling.

Here you can see me all decked up in my smurf suit, read stinger suit but we all looked like smurfs in them. Fortunately I had a black one while some others had bright blue ones. It should protect against any box jellyfish in the reef. They said that there shouldn't be many there but we may encounter one if we were unlucky. They are one of the most poisonous animals on the planet and their tentacles can cause immense pain so I wasn't going to take any chances.

Can you see the nervous look in my face?

As usual once I got there I didn't have any problems in the swimming in the sea. I just jumped into the water and managed fine. What really helped was the 'noodle' float that they provide you, which is just a foam tube. It allows you to easily float on the surface without having to tread water all the time. Quite good for me seeing as I can't tread water for very long, I tend to sink quite quickly!

I would smile for the camera, but smiling while trying to breathe is quite tricky for me. A wave will have to do.

The reef really was an amazing place to see. From only about fifty metres from the back of the boat you could see bits of the Barrier Reef only a metre below you. The view was quite magical, so many different colours and amazing fish. Since Naheed used to keep some marine fish I knew a little about the different fishes there.

There were all sorts of species that I recognised from Naheed's marine tank and trips to the marine shops. I even saw a starfish and a few goby fishes which are fishes that sit on the sea bed. Some of the corals were absolutely massive and I was quite jealous of the divers that I could occasionally see below me that were much closer to them.

I'm in the background of this photo of one of the larger fish in the reef. If you clicked your fingers at the fish it would come up to you thinking that you had some food. I managed to stroke the fish that this point which was quite special.

I would have loved to spend more time at the reef. We had three thirty minute dives at different parts of the reef and I was dying to stay out as long as I could. This is somewhere that I'd love to come back to, and possibly learn to dive as well.

I would thoroughly recommend that anyone who visits Australia takes a trip to the Barrier Reef as it was something very special.

Ouch, ouch, ouch!

I went mountain biking in the Blue Mountains this morning with Ian and a few of his friends. There were about eight of us in total.

We had to get up very early for a Saturday morning. Ian and I had to get up at 5am to get to Penrith for a six thirty train. A very funny thing happened on our way, along the motorway we were following a police car which was just travelling along. We then saw two cars parked along the hard shoulder and in front of the two cars were two guys who were fighting! They were shirt pulling and throwing punches. Needless to say the police car immediately put on the lights and pulled over. God know what the two guys were fighting about, Ian figures that they were probably drunk.

Once we started out on the bike ride, I was getting along quite well and flying down the track.

However, after about a couple of kilometres I came round a bend a little too quickly and came across some quite rough rocks. I managed to dodge the first few but ran into a bigger third one. My bike just gave way under me and sent me flying to one side.

Unfortunately the front wheel of my bike was buckled and a couple of spokes were broken as well. I was more annoyed that I couldn't go any further on the ride than of my injuries.

You can see the mess the fall made of my cycling shorts. Fortunately I didn't break any bones but I was quite badly grazed all over my right hand side.

I looked at my right arm after getting up and noticed the graze on the top of my arm and didn't think much of it. Ian then passed by and stopped to see if I was ok and then noted that the bottom half of my arm was bleeding.

I suffered a few more grazes on my chest, right side, hips, thighs and knees. Fortunately I didn't quite land on my head so there wasn't much damage to my cycle helmet.

My watch on my left arm was also a casualty. I managed to bend the clasp on the metal strap so had to have that repaired as well. I told Ian to carry on as I could quite easily walk back to the train station and then catch the train back home. Especially after we had got up so early, I didn't want to spoil his ride as well as mine.

I've managed to get my bike repaired already and that cost £60 for a new front wheel. They have replaced the old one with a much more sturdy wheel which should withstand much more punishment. My watch will take a little longer to repair as a new clasp will cost me £80 and needs to be ordered specially from Tag and won't arrive till Wednesday.

As Allen said to me later on at least the bike and watch can be easily repaired while I'll take a little longer to be repaired and can't just go and buy a new arm or hip.

I guess I'll have to take it a little easier over the next few days and be a little more careful in future. Still I was still lucky not to break a bone and don't mind the pain too much. Sleeping well tonight may be a different matter though!

Visiting Friends.

My friend Niki visited me in Sydney this week to see how I was getting on and take a long holiday to visit some of her relatives in Australia as well.

She really wanted to do the Harbour Bridge climb so I decided to go along with her, despite the extortionate price of the climb at £100.

To be quite honest I found the bridge climb to be quite mundane and boring. It was very relaxing and quite refreshing to be outside on the bridge but not "The climb of my life" as was advertised by the bridge climb people.

We paid for the sunset climb, but unfortunately the weather started out overcast and then turned quite rainy and windy. The occasional gust of wind did make the walk down a little more exciting though.

I booked a day of work on Wednesday and hired a car to visit the Blue Mountains for the first time finally!

Allen recommended that we visit Euroka Clearing if we wanted to see some wild kangaroos. Sure enough when we got to the clearing there were half a dozen grey roos in a clearing. I even managed to get quite close to one of them to be able to stroke it.

It was quite exciting to be able to stroke a wild kangaroo. The animal didn't appear to mind at all that I was right up to it and stroking it. It did get up afterwards and have a good scratch. Probably getting rid of the fleas that I had passed onto it.

We went to the main places around the Blue Mountains to see the Three Sisters rock formation and also the skyway cable car and train. We wanted to ride the skyway cable car which has a glass bottom across the ravine, but unfortunately it wasn't working for some reason.

Instead we had a short walk around the edge of the mountains. I wanted to do the longer walk into the ravine but Niki wasn't quite up to it really. I'll definitely have to come back to the place to explore some more as it's only about 90 minutes drive from Sydney centre.

Star Jumping Over New Zealand Week Two.

Sunday 22nd

We finally arrived in Fox glacier after a day and a half of driving. The weather for the second full day of driving was absolutely atrocious. It did nothing but rain all day with low cloud, so we couldn’t see much scenery on our travels. There were plenty of impressive lakes and mountain edge driving though. We weren’t very optimistic for the Fox Glacier trip on Monday. I noticed that they run ice climbing day sessions at the glacier along with a tour, so I talked Steve into having a go, instead of just doing a boring day trip walking over the glacier.

We were very lucky again and the weather for Sunday was fantastic, such a contrast to the day before. So far when we’ve been travelling the weather has been bad and when we’ve been doing activities the weather has been sunny. Here you can see the intrepid adventurers part way though our climb to get to Fox Glacier. As well as Steve and myself there were two other plucky climbers, Stephanie and Adam, as well as our two guides Mike and Troy. You can see Mike on the left.

This is the head of the glacier. It was very impressive and one of the fastest moving glaciers in the world at about a metre a day at the bottom and up to ten metres a day at the top. It is 13,000 metres in length and contains roughly 25 billion litres of ice!

The strange thing was that around the glacier is tropical rainforest and bare rock. It felt very surreal to be on a giant lump of ice while surrounded by forest and mountains.


This is the view up the glacier from one of our climbing positions. It really looked like polystyrene foam or icing sugar to me, such a strange tint of blue all over the ice.

Can you guess who this is?

Any more of an idea? The persons back is very wet because at the bottom of the crevasse it is only just wide enough for the knees and back.

Yes, it’s only me, smiling and happy as usual when doing something dangerous. I really enjoyed the climbing, my last six months working out with Quentin really paid dividends, as my arms were well up to the task of pulling my body weight up. We did seven different climbs over the day and some of the more than once.

This is a photo of one of our last climbs. You can see Steve climbing up from a crevasse that we were initially lowered down to first. I’m at the top obviously doing some press-ups, as the climbing wasn’t enough to tire me out. :-)

Each time one of us was lowered down into the crevasse we wanted to be lowered a little bit further. I almost managed to get down to the bottom where there was some melted water, but I couldn't get any further down at because the gap near the bottom was too narrow. Less pies next time I think.



This is another picture of Mike who is looking rather cool for the camera while Steve is struggling to pull himself up at his feet.


Monday 24th

We drove from Fox Glacier to Picton on Monday. It’s around a six-hour drive for us so quite long, but the scenery was as stunning as ever. Unfortunately for me I was caught speeding along a very straight road. It was as straight as I could see, but I didn’t see the police car hidden in a ditch on the left of the road with a policeman measuring my speed. I was caught doing 116 kmph, when the speed limit along the road was 100 kmph. By the way that the police man was talking both Steve and I thought that he was going to let us off seeing as we were tourists and not going massively over the limit. However he did give me a ticket, fortunately it was only for $120 (£40). I have paid it off at a local Westpac bank and am annoyed about it but I was over the speed limit and at least the fine was only a small amount.

We stayed overnight at Picton, which really is a dead town with only the main ferry terminal to Wellington in the north island of any note. Our motel room was really horrible with grotty furnishings and bedding. The toilet was more like an out house with a window which wouldn’t close as well as ants in the kitchen. Well at least it was cheap at only £15pp and only for one night.

We caught the 10am ferry to Wellington the following morning, it was still raining and a little windy. The ferry trip turned out to be quite an adventure as it was really blowing a gale in the Cook Strait and there were four metre waves! This meant that the ferry which was quite large, was moving up and down like a roller coaster for over three hours, as the captain could only do ten knots in the rough seas. The usual three-hour crossing took four and a half hours.

Plenty of people were sick on the ferry as well. I felt a little queasy after a couple of hours, but closing my eyes and trying to sleep managed to get me through the trip. Steve was ok throughout the journey and took some cool video clips of the sea. He said that walking to the back end of the boat looked like a warship with people laying down over all the floors and being sick. Most of the sick people went there as it was meant to be less rough there than the front where we were. He also said that the men's toilet was a real mess of sick and one poor bloke lying on the floor being very ill.

The ferry people were saying that they only just decided to sail that morning and the ferries later on were cancelled. Wellington airport was also closed for the day due to string winds. We got off lightly though as the last ferry after ours took ten hours to cross!

We finally arrived at Whakapapa village late in the evening. After the Picton motel we decided to treat ourselves to a top hotel and booked ourselves in at the Grand Chateau Hotel for two nights. A five star hotel for only £30 a night pp, what a bargain.

Hopefully the weather would be better tomorrow four our day long walk along the Tongarrio Crossing in the Tongarrio National Park. It’s where Mount Doom was filmed for Lord of the Rings. The concierge said that he thought that there was a metre of snow along the walk though which doesn’t sound good.

Wednesday 25th

Unfortunately the guide at the tourist office didn’t recommend that we try the Tongarrio Crossing today as there was significant snowfall last night and the weather was going to be unpredictable today. Instead we were told that the Tama Lakes walk would be just as good and last around 4-5 hours as well.

This is about a quarter of the way around the walk at the Taranaki Falls. It was quite impressive as you can walk right up to where the water hits the stream if you want to get a little wet. This is about as far as I could get before getting significant spray from the water.


Here is the view of Mt Ruapehu which we had all along our walk and would be steadily heading towards all day.

Near the end of the walk we had a steep walk up the side of the mountain to get to see the edges of the craters. There were steep drops either side of the narrow path. Steve slipped a couple of times, but he was never really close to falling down the sides.

The wind was also blowing quite hard up here and you could almost lean into it and stay upright. My windbreaker was definitely very useful and was worth its weight in gold.




More views of the path along the ridgeline of the lakes. The lakes were created as a result of old explosion craters on the Tama Saddle between Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe mountains.














Me with my star jump on the top of the ridge.











Thursday 26th

This is a view of the hotel main ground floor parlour room. It was very stylish and a great place to just sit down and have a beer or play a few frames of snooker. It was built in the style of an English stately home and originally opened in 1929. The food was very tasty there too with some of the best room service that I've ever had.

There was enough snow left to do some snowboarding as well! We only found this out after chatting to some of the other hotel guests. I was gutted that I could have bought my snowboarding kit along and had some more fun on the slopes.

We left the lovely hotel early to head towards the Waitomo Caves because we were running out of holiday time so only had a few hours there before we wanted to get to Auckland and spend at least one day there.

The two-hour cave tour that we did was very impressive. Fortunately we only had a small tour group with five of us in all. Here is a view of some of the sea deposits that forms the stalactites and stalagmites.

If you’ve ever seen the horror film The Descent then you’ll appreciate how scary it could be to be down the caves in some cramp conditions. The tour route was very sparsely lit so you could barely find your way around the place. It was amazing to notice the difference in atmosphere inside the cave from the outside. There was a definite earthy smell in the caves and various sections of the caves were sealed off with automated airlock style doors. Very cool!

This is one of the smaller paths leading off the main path. One of the most famous things about the caves is the Glowworms. You have to see them in pitch blackness to really appreciate them. They look like very small and bright neon lights glowing in the cave walls. You can just see a few of them in the darkness of this image. The bright lights are used to attract insects to them which the glowworms can catch in sticky web lines try drop down from their bodies.

Here are some stranger stalagmite formations. They almost look like H.R. Geiger images, very creepy. I would have loved to have the time to go abseiling and black water rafting along these caves. Even better would be to go pot holing in the caves and have a chance to explore new areas of the caves. They are still finding new caverns to this day.









Friday 27th

For our final day and a half we went to Auckland to explore some city life in New Zealand. The South Island really is underpopulated and a bit too sparse for my liking. The North Island has more people but most of them live in Auckland.

I went to the Main and New Auckland Art galleries as part of my final day. The art was surprisingly good for such a small collection, almost as good as the collections that I've seen in Sydney.

We also went up to the top of the Sky Tower. It's very similar to the Sydney tower but a little bit taller, just to beat the Australians I bet. There were some great views around the city and we went up there just around sunset for a few beers and to reflect on our holiday here. Auckland is like Sydney but everything is a little bit smaller. It even has a harbour bridge which doesn't look a patch on Sydney's coat hanger.

I've had a really great time over the past two weeks and would love to repeat the skydiving and take up some climbing as well. I will probably get a chance to have a go at both activities in my remaining time in Australia.

Star Jumping Over New Zealand Week One.

Sunday 15th.

I have two weeks in New Zealand so there will be a long update for the next few entries.

The flight was ok, but I would only fly with Jetstar for a maximum three to four hour flight as it was a budget airline. Even the seat arm rests felt quite hard and weren’t padded. Having to pay for the food and drink wasn’t that nice either, even the water had a cost with it.

Christchurch was a nice place, only nice. It’s described as the most English city in New Zealand and I could see why. We didn’t arrive here till gone ten pm so got to the hotel at eleven. Asked around for a late night place to eat that wasn’t McDonalds or Burger King (yes they have Burger King here instead of Hungry Jacks in Australia). Finally found a place called the Honey Trap, which was a café restaurant. Had a quite tasty chicken salad and we then went for a walk around the city.

The city was quite open in layout and also surprisingly quite dirty as well. We felt quite safe enough at night, unfortunately everything was closed when we got here as it was a Sunday night.

Monday 16th

Managed to get up late today, as I had forgotten to change my mobile phone time so it was set for 7.30am, but wouldn’t have gone off till 10:30am! I woke up when I heard the cathedral church bells ring nine times.

We picked up our car hire and drove down to Queenstown. The scenery along the way was quite stunning. Here is a picture of the very turquoise Lake Pukaka, with Mount Cook in the distance. Well we would have been able to see Mount Cook if the cloud cover wasn’t so low. We decided not to drive up to the summit because we wouldn’t have been able to see anything anyhow.

The lake was just so calm with barely any ripples along the surface. We walked down to the edge of the lake along the rocky stones. The water felt quite icy cold, which doesn’t bode well for the planned white water rafting later on this week.

The third piture is me, catching up on some exercise seeing as I had to miss the gym on Saturday morning.

Steve took some more photos along the six-hour drive from Christchurch to Queenstown. This one is of Lindis Pass, the roads would have been fantastic to drive along if only we had a decent car to drive with instead of the obligatory white Toyota Corolla saloon car. Still I had fun driving along the roads anyhow.

Once we got to Queenstown we checked into our pre booked hotel. The hotel was the Thomas hotel, which was recommended by the Lonely Planet book. Unfortunately it was a guesthouse rather than a hotel. It was a quite grubby room and the shower didn’t work properly. When we complained about this and decided to tell them that we wanted to check out immediately, the receptionist then offered us a much better studio apartment that was in a separate part of town but was much cleaner and newer.

We have also booked a skydive for tomorrow morning at 10.30 because the weather is predicted to be much better then. Hopefully I’ll survive to update more on this blog tomorrow night. :-), But even if I die, don’t be too sad as it’ll be a good way for me to go.

Tuesday 17th

Sky diving, but only from 9,000ft!

I can only show you the pictures. It was amazing fun and I would love to do it again and again. I was surprised how calm I was on the way up while Steve was more than a little nervous. I just thought well I’m going up in this small plane and then would jump out when I was told to. The pre-briefing was just that very brief, and then we were put into the plane and ready to go. I was lucky enough to get a good window seat right by the exit and saw the great views as the plane took off and climbed. Then it was all go and I was jumping out of the plane. Fantastic, what fun!

Just take a look at the pictures.

I wonder how mad I must have been to remember to wave at the camera just before my jump. Steve said he was too busy not looking at the ground and trying not to think about what he was about to do.

Me just exiting the plane and enjoying the view down.

I did try to fly like superman, quite obviously the adrenaline had got to me by this point. The line coming out the back of my instructor is a small chute to stabilise us while falling.

Big thumbs up because I was having so much fun falling at 200kph towards the earth.

This is one of the funniest photos of me ‘whooping’ just as the main chute is deployed.

Me and my instructor Peter just after landing. It was quite good fun jumping and I would love to do it again and again. It wasn’t the adrenaline rush that I quite hoped for though as I did take it all in my stride and even felt quite calm afterwards. Maybe subsequent jumps will be more fun when I can take it all in.

This is a very good one as Steve was the second one out of the plane, you can see that the plane pilot was obviously a total nutter. Steve said that when he saw me jump out of the plane he though, shit, Will has just jumped out of the plane! He was quite thankful when his chute opened.

Later on we went to the gondola station in Queenstown after lunch. There were some great views of the surrounding lakes and mountains of Queenstown. The place would be a great snowboarding resort in the winter and I’d love to come back to do some boarding here as well as another jump. You can see that the views of the mountains were just breathtaking.



At the top of the gondola station there was a walk that you could follow that went further up the mountain. At times the path did get quite narrow with a lovely drop on one side but it was quite refreshing to climb up and walk along to enjoy the scenery. I could have been Julie Andrews in another life.



Wednesday 18th

We had a long lie in today and white water rafting wasn’t planned till just after lunch. We went for the more difficult course despite the fact that initially Steve was a little wary of going for it rather than the easier course. The guide at the shop said that we would enjoy the more difficult course more than the easier one.

The 45-minute drive along Skippers Canyon Road was quite spectacular. It is one of only two roads in New Zealand that people aren’t insured to drive along. The sign clearly stated that mini busses and trailers weren’t allowed along it. Of course we were in a mini bus and had a trailer with three rafts on it!

At times you could only look out and down one side of the bus to see a sheer drop to the river. Most people in the bus were trying not to look down as it was quite nerving to drive along the single-track road. Apparently you can mountain bike down the road as well which I thought would be an excellent adventure for a later date.

The rafting was quite good fun. Initially we had a few lessons and mainly what to do if we fell off the side of the raft. There were eight people to a raft and around five rafts going down the course all at the same time. It only took about 90 minutes to complete the Shotover river. There were around eight different rapids along the course ranging from three to four+ difficulty levels.

I almost fell out at one point when we went into the cliff edge when I didn’t expect it, but fortunately managed to stay in the raft. In the poor quality picture you can see me (or my teeth) looking directly at the camera. I saw the man filming us as we went past him and into the rapid so decided to not duck down and instead stay up to smile at the camera. I have quite good video footage of me going past the camera with a big smile on my face while everyone else around me is ducking down and getting submerged. You can just make out the top of Steve’s helmet to the left of my face.

We were drenched quite a few times along the river and that just made the ride even more fun for me. The water was quite cold at only 4 degrees but seeing as we were paddling as well, it helped keep us warm.

Thursday 19th

We headed down to Milford Sound for today and tomorrow. Unfortunately the weather was very wet and blowing a gale on the way down there. As can be seen from the photo it was very cloudy and there was very heavy rain as well. Milford Sound was quite impressive though the sheer scale of the place was breathtaking in itself.

The population of Milford Sound is only quoted at around 170 odd, so there wasn’t much happening in the place.

We stayed at the Milford Lodge, which I can only describe as basic YHA accommodation. It’s the last time I share bathroom facilities if I have a choice! The rooms were basic wooden huts that did make quite a noise in the strong winds. We jokingly said it was like a concentration camp because you could hear every footstep of people walking along the front of our room.

Fortunately for us the weather turned for the better the following morning as we were out sea kayaking. The weather couldn’t have been better as it was sunny with occasional clouds. We had a good time in the kayaks on the sound. The trip lasted around four hours and some of the close up views of the sides of the fiord were brilliant.



The above waterfall is apparently the fourth highest waterfall in the world at 150ft tall.

This final picture is of us returning home after a long mornings kayaking. The kayaks were two man kayaks and quite stable, however due to the sitting position in the kayak, the base of my spine hurt all the way through the trip. I’m thoroughly expecting it to hurt quite a bit tomorrow morning!