Les' Briefing
Meet Les Lisle. He's somewhere upwards of eight-four years of age and purportedly New Zealand's oldest publican. Les can grill up one heck of a steak and throws together quite possibly the best venison stew I've ever had. He's also completely nuts. Roll together every ornery old guy you've ever met, slap on a big beard and a Kiwi accent; imagine him spouting loud, folksy
The thing is: there's little likelihood you'll ever meet Les unless you're travelling down the west coast of the South Island on a Kiwi Experience bus. He owns and runs the Mahinapua Hotel at Lake Manihipua, a little backwater spot on State Highway 6, between Greymouth and Franz Josef. In fact, I think his business has come solely from hosting Kiwi Experience passengers for the past decade. And there's only one reason we stopped there: so that we could party it up whilst wearing stupid costumes at a rickety motel in the middle of nowhere.
The "P" Party
Our night was brought to us by the letter "P", meaning that we had to dress up as something beginning with, oddly enough, "P". Our accoutrements came courtesy of the dollar store in Greymouth and I think everybody did a pretty good job of getting into the spirit of things. For example, see the nice couple on the far left of the photo above. They came dressed as "pensioners".
Flying over Fox Glacier
As much as fun as it was to socialise over bitch-distributed beer, and listen to our normally affable bus driver physically threaten anybody who dared to play Kings of Leon's Sex on Fire on the jukebox (after hearing it for the fifth time that night), I had to end the evening early. This was because I was part of a small group that had to be up at stupid o'clock in the morning to make the drive down to Fox Glacier, ahead of the bus. That morning was the only chance we'd have of jumping out of a plane on New Year's Eve.
(To see video of the jump, click here.)
A Long Way Down
That sky dive was absolutely amazing. I jumped (well, more like fell) out of the plane into the middle of thick cloud, emerging a few seconds later with a ridiculous view some twelve-thousand feet above Fox Glacier and the Southern Alps.
An Obligatory Up-Chute Shot
We landed back on Earth about five minutes later. I was exhilarated, pumped up with adrenaline, and my inner two-year-old was running rampage around my head just screaming, "Again! Again! Again!". It was the perfect way to ring out an already crazy year.
(The outfit I jumped with -- Sky Diving New Zealand -- was fantastic. Highly professional, with a great sense of fun. Unfortunately, I found out ten days ago that their 100% safety record was shattered when one of their planes went down, strangely just hours after the Christchurch earthquake. The pilot, four jump masters and four tourists were all killed. I don't believe I met any of the involved staff while I was there, but my thoughts go out to all of their families.)
New Year's Eve in Franz Josef
After dedicating the jump to 2009, it was time to head back to Franz Josef to ring in 2010. As you can see, a lot of us decided to get some further use out of the three or so dollars we'd spent in Greymouth the previous day.
Climbing the Terminus
Again, any thoughts of an all-night bender were foiled through an early-morning wake up in order to spend New Year's Day hiking on the Franz Josef Glacier. By 11:00am, still somewhat drowsy and hungover, our group found ourselves climbing up stair carved into the terminus of the glacier. While I'd been somewhat spoilt by the sublime glaciers in Argentine Patagonia, the hike at Franz Josef was very well done, with a lot of time spent on, in and between the ice.
Manouevering Through the Ice
My first few days on the South Island were spent in a state of chilled out relaxation. Those three days between Lake Mahinapua and Franz Josef went right to the other extreme and I left the area looking forward to getting to Queenstown for a little bit of rest.
Considering Queenstown sells itself as the "Adventure Capital of the World", that's the very definition of irony.
The Terminus of the Franz Josef Glacier
Related Posts:
1. Starting Down the Wet Coast of New Zealand
2. New Year's Eve 2009
3. The Kiwi Experience
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¹ I actually wrote this down when he said it just to make sure I had the wording correct.
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