Atomic Adventures

Theme Song of the Day:

1. "Slice of Heaven", theme song from 'Footrot Flats' by Dave Dobbyn

JUST ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL NZ VIEW

Indie Travel has its perks: the thrill of not knowing what lies around the next corner, where you will sleep tonight, or what adventures tomorrow will bring…

It also has its frustrations though.  Because it was so easy to get that killer $5/day rental deal from Christchurch to Queenstown, I figured that it would be simple to find a great deal to get our way back to Christchurch… not so. 

After 2 hours at the airport internet kiosk, on the phone, and visiting all the car rental outlets, there were no good deals to be found.  It would have even been cheaper to catch a flight back to Christchurch, or even Wellington had they not all been sold out. 

At times like these, you really appreciate having a friend in the business.  With a tip from EntirelyKiwi, we ended up booking a couple of seats on the Atomic Shuttle for only $30 – slightly more than the cost of our cab back to town.

The six-hour bus ride would take us on the direct route back via Tekapo and yet even more spectacular scenery, and get us into Christchurch at 10 o’clock that night.  We get the cool kids’ seat at the back of the bus and settle in for the epic journey north with our new travelmates. 

On one side sits a young Aussie named Lucky, who hangs off the side of skyscrapers with a bucket and squeegee to earn a living, and is on his way to North America in search of new adventures.  He’s sick of hitch-hiking this route and has decided to do it the easy way this time.  Kathy sits on our other, an India-born American from Georgia, who is studying pharmacology in Las Vegas, and is in the final days of a 6-week trip across New Zealand - her first solo travel adventure.  She ‘s just survived her first skydiving experience just the day before.

We wind through giant brown hills, follow bubbling creeks and rushing rivers, skirt massive mirror lakes as the afternoon sun silently backlights everything with an intense drama that culminates in a mad rush to pile out of the bus and snap a few shots of Mount Aoraki as the sun sets.

The bus drops us about a block from Christchurch town square half an hour earlier than our ETA, and we barrel out of the bus, stomachs growling, in search of room and board.  We opt for a room at the Camelot hotel for only $120/night instead of staying at the backpackers’ hostel next door.  With a heartfelt smile from behind the front desk, we are pointed in the direction of Sticky Fingers, a popular restaurant [and personal favorite of our concierge] that is right around the corner. 

As with most things in life that don’t go to plan, it all worked out in the end… and we had a great adventure getting there.  The people you meet along the way are one of the best things about Indie Travel.

EVERYBODY BACK ON THE BUS!!

Flat White Organic Free Trade Coffee …..………....…...............$3.50

Roasted Kumara Pizza at Sticky Fingers in Christchurch…………..$18

Cab ride to City Center from Queenstown Airport……………….......$25

Atomic Bus Fare from Queenstown to Christchruch [6 hours]…...$30

View of Mount Araki at dusk ….………….........................Priceless

PRICELESS

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ROADTRIP!! ~ Lake Tekapo

Theme Song for the Day:

1. "Happy Birthday", by Stevie Wonder

ROADTRIP!!

Solo travel has its perks, but there’s nothing like a great travel companion to really make  an awesome roadtrip.

COUCHSURFING HOST MARINA, OLA AND ME

I am being joined for the next two weeks by a friend from Hawaii, the beautiful Kapuaola Gellert [or just Ola for short], who is an Epedemiologist currently working and conducting medical research on the tiny island of Molokai.  She also happens to be a mad keen Waterwoman: StandUp Paddling, Outrigger Canoes, Surfing, and anything to do with ocean sports are the loves of her life. 

So at 10.26am I meet her at Christchurch airport’s baggage claim, we pick up our $5/day relocation rental special [Toyota Previa family van] and head towards Lake Tekapo.  We’ve got 48 hours to complete the journey and deliver the vehicle back to the depot at Queenstown Airport. 

Breakfast [at noon] is a smoked chicken panini with blueberry salsa and melted camembert cheese from Vic’s [again!], where we make more new friends at the table.  Apparently, in Christchurch you make friends by slamming down your table number to startle your neighbors… Anna and Paul are studying Organic Horticulture and turn me on to some key people and places to visit while I am here. 

LAKE TEKAPO

The 3 hour drive to Tekapo takes us through the rolling green pasturelands of Central South Island.  The cloud cover is low, muting the colors and swallowing the hilltops.  Sheep, cattle, deer and lamas munch and stare as the kilometers easily tick past, and before we know it we round a sweeping corner and are greeted with an epic turquoise view of Lake Tekapo. 

After a good hour taking photos on the shoreline behind the iconic Church of the Good Shepard, we check into The Chalet, a cozy little boutique inn run by Swiss-expat couple Walkter and Zita.  The couple has been here since 1987, and show us the available rooms with obvious pride –Zita has designed each one herself.  We drop our bags and head to the Alpine Springs Spa and Winter Park for a Skate‘n’Soak. 

Two Hawaiians on an ice rink?  Trouble.  Luckily, there is only one spill between us [me of course], and the rink is empty so as to minimize the risk of us mowing down any unsuspecting skaters. 

...AAAAAAHHHHHH...

The natural hot spring waters are slightly salty, and wonderfully steamy in the cold night air.  There are three pools ranging in temperature from 36 – 40C degrees; we choose the warmest pool to soak our tight hamstrings and watch a group of backpackers flirt with each other across the way.  Ah, the simple voyeuristic pleasures of people watching…

Dinner is at Pepe’s pizza and pasta tavern: one large handmade pizza, half venision [with BBQ sauce and roasted kumara] / half lamb [with mint jelly and roasted potato] with a pint of Speights cold ale to wash it down please.  Lamb and venision pizza… only in New Zealand.  

BEN AND JUAN FROM GREAT BRITAIN

Two friendly Brits, Ben and Juan join us at our booth and we strike up the travelers conversation: where you from, where you been, where you goin’…?  Turns out they have been on the road for 5 months now, and have covered the skifields of Europe, the backpacker treks of Southeast Asia, the trails of Nepal, the suburbs of Sydney, and are now in search of the magnificent scenery and powder snow of New Zealand.  It’s also Ben’s birthday, so we end the night with a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday [the traditional version, seeing as no-one knew the words to the Stevie Wonder version], and show some restraint by not dancing on the tabletops per his request.  

Happy Birthday Ben!

THE WATERS OF LAKE TEKAPO REALLY ARE THIS COLOR!

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Tasmania: Day 3 - "Guns Don't Kill People; People With Moustaches Kill People."

Theme [Road Trip] Songs For The Day:

1. "Ramble On", by Led Zeppelin
2. "Never Going Back Again", by Fleetwood Mac
3. "A.M. 180", by Grandaddy
   

ROADTRIPS ROCK!

Today's mission is to make the four hour drive up to Launceston in time to meet up with another traveling friend for lunch, then make the two-hour journey up through Devonport to Ulverstone, where we will find our way to the Bedford's property in the mountain bush in time for dinner.

The drive up through Tassie's Midland Highway takes us through the agricultural center of the state. The sky is filled with puffy, backlit clouds, the asphalt disappears quickly beneath the campervan, and the iPod is cranking out some great road tunes.

Trucks shake the van as they thunder past in the opposite lane,while the gently rolling hills and greenery stretch all the way to the mountains carpeted in dark green eucalyptus stretch on the horizon, punctuated every now and then with a craggy cliff face yawning skywards. These mountains beckon silently, persistently: "Come, explore us, hike us, wander us...there is much to discover."

AUTUMN IN LAUNCESTON

Launceston sneaks up on us at around 2pm, and the autumn sun is shining brightly. This town looks and feels very much like Hobart, with its short, squat buildings and no-nonsense vibe. Autumn is still very much in effect here, and the afternoon sunlight sets the orange and yellow leaves ablaze. I am always so impressed with Autumn, and the warm, brightly shifting hues that celebrate its arrival.

We make contact with Aisha, a friend of Jill's who has just completed a week's worth of WWOOFing on a horse ranch in the area we are headed towards. There is time to kill before she can meet up, so we find our way to the public library for some quick internet access to check email accounts after two whole days without internet access. I am amazed that I have survived 48 hours without updating my Facebook status... hanging out @ home for the last few weeks, I have been updating my FB status 20 or 30 times daily, cliffhanger updates and deep thoughts such as "eating toast" and "gone out for another coffee" and "why do we have toes anyways??"...

100 new emails later, I find myself being kicked off the computer by an annoyed librarian, so I head out to catch up with the girls who have gone ahead in search of lunch. Launceston is a wonderfully small city - more like a country town - you can almost see horse & carriages being driven around the wide streets here. I pass a group of Harley riders relaxing in front of a two-story brick government building with tudor windows that is right out of an old British colonial movie. I walk around a few city blocks with my mobile phone thrust infront of me, snapping pics every 10 steps or so, fascinated with the long shadows and dramatic lighting that the afternoon sun is casting.

Aisha is catching Jill up on her travel adventures since the last time they saw each other, and they are poring over highlighted maps in their guidebooks when I find the cafe they have been hiding in. We slow down to 5km/h and push her out of the back of the campervan to drop her off at her hostel and cheerfully wave goodbye in the rearview mirror on our way out of town; it is 4:30pm by the time we leave Launceston and strike out for Ulverstone.

The LET'S GO IN AUSTRALIA guidebook says that the best view of Devonport "is from the rearview mirror", but as we approach this town the sun is setting dramatically right in front of us. Nature's lightshow is expansive and brilliant and dramatic and calming all at the same time, and oooohs and ahhhhs bubble from my lips unconsciously as the spectacle unfolds.

SUNSET ON THE ROAD TO DEVONPORT

Problem is, the late departure from Launceston mens that we arrive into Ulverstone, another quaint coastal town [from what can be seen], well after dark. Now we are faced with the task of finding our host, who lives deep in the mountains on a self-sufficient compound that he has built to escape from society. What's more, he doesn't really want to be found. The directions to his place are somehwat cryptic:

"Not easy to find, its better to phone with a map in front of you. If your in Ulverstone head to Sprent, Castra, Nietta, Leven Canyon, go past Leven Canyon until the bitumin, continue for 4.8 Klm, we are on the right just past 6 or 7 letter boxes that will be on your left."

In hindsight, the directions actually make perfect sense... though not while winding through unfamiliar narrow roads in the darkness from Ulverstone. The road gets progressively narrower and more unsealed, and a couple of logging trucks barrel down past us, their bright lights looking like alien motherships in the complete absence of streetlights. The campervan shudders as the roar past and I pull nervously onto the shoulder to give them a wide berth.

We take a turn marked LEVYN CANYON and the road surface is no longer sealed - not quite blacktop, but not quite dirt road. A few turns in and I slow right down to about 40 km/h as the bouncing bottoms of some small furry creatures bound away from the headlights. Pairs of glowing eyes turn away and become bouncing tails disapperaing into the night. They look like plump, oversized rats on pogosticks, and for the longest time we are unable to catch a good look at them. We find out later that they are wallabies, very plentiful in this part of the world.

The road drops away on one side, and treetops can be made out at eye level - we are skirting the edge of a valley, or perhaps the sheer edge of a canoyon wall; we cannot tell in the darkness. After the two trucks, there are no other cars to be seen, and the houselights on either side of the road become fewer and further between, until eventually we are buzzing along in near-total darkness, with only a slim sliver of moon and the twenty meters or so of headlights lighting the way.

After an hour or so, we slow right down to make a sharp corner at the bottom of a switchback, and spot a lone house up a hill to the left. The sign says FIRE BRIGADE, and this touch of civilization gives us a surge of renewed confidence that we may be on the right track.

The night is teeming with wildlife, and as the bitumen (asphalt) ends, the campervan clatters on over corrugated dirt road and even more wallabies scatter out of headlight range. I swerve to avoid a large possum that looks like a cross between a large cat and a racoon, and is sitting adamantly in the middle of the road. A ghostly shape whispers through the air in front of us, and for a few moments we follow a tawny frogmouth hunting along the road on silent wings.

The road gets rougher and rougher, until it is clear that we are creeping along logging tracks now, massively wide tree trunks dimly visible through the thick underbrush caught in our headlights on either side of the road. We've gone 16 km past the end of the bitumen into the mountains, and I notice that the petrol tank gague is reading 1/4 full... time to turn around before we break an axle or run out of gas or get bogged or... HIT A WOMBAT..!

...a fat little ball of muscle and fur waddles calmly across the road directly in front of the van, and as I hit the brakes he doesn't skip a beat as he calmy walks under the front wheel well and off into the night. It is well known in Australia that if you hit a wombat, he is likely to do more damage to your vehicle than you are to it... this is an animal who evades his predators by burrowing into the ground and presenting his bum to his attacker, whose teeth are unable to penetrate the tough, bony hide there.

LOST IN THE BUSH

We continue back the way we came, deciding to ask directions from the last house we saw before the end of the bitumen, keeping our eyes peeled for those 6 or 7 mailboxes referred to in the directions. There are more possums and wallabies on the way back out, and some Tassie devils even lope along side the van for a few meters, do a couple of confused circles as we stop to get a closer look, then decide to explore the underbrush off the side of the road. As we near the end of the dirt road, a couple of very unhelpful cows look very bored when we stop and ask for directions and shrug us off without so much as a grunt or moo.

The Fire Brigade turns out to be an older white-haired couple who eye us suspiciously as I jump up and down to catch their attention. He sizes me up, this wild-haired, unwashed, brown-skinned traveler doing jumping jacks outside his window in the middle of the night in front a a rental campervan that reads HAVE A DEVIL OF A TIME on his driveway... he decides that yeah, he could take me... and comes outside into the cold to see what I want.

"Bedford is it?" he says, looking me straight in the eye. Then something like "Yeah, figures..." under his breath before he proceeds to give me directions on how to find the cluster of mailboxes at the side of the road that will tip us off to the entrance to the Bedford property.

5km after the end of the bitumen, we just make out the mailboxes at the edge of the headlights, and find tire tracks leading off into the woods to the right, so I gun the engine to get the van up the embankment. The "road" is rocky and the van slips and slides underneath us as we twist and turn and finally crest a hill. A cold, solitary light can be seen shining through the trees up ahead. The van slips down the slope and the headlights show us a junked car next to a horse shed, building materials scattered around the yard, and old Toyota 4wd parked backwards against the main house. The digital clock in the van blinks 10:07pm.

A moustached man in a beanie is moving around under the solitary compact flourescent lightbulb that lights the place, and as I kill the engine Jill says, "Good thing you didn't wear your moustache t-shirt today..." We jump out of the van bearing gifts, wine bottles in hand and are greeted by a happy, slobbering, leaping juvenille bulldog and the moustached man, who has a glass of wine in one hand.

I notice a severed wallaby head squinting up at us behind the two, and gulp as I reach out my hand to introduce myself: "We've brought wine!"

"Finally found the place didjya?" he says quietly. "Yeah well it's not easy is it....I'm Poida, nice to meet ya. Come on, let's have some wine and then I'll give ya a tour of the place!" he says, with a handshake as hard as rocks.

Above, the moon has set, and the Milky Way stretches out across the entire night sky, silhouetting the tall eucalyptus trees that close in all around us.

I smile and blow warmth into my hands: Welcome to Tassmania.

'NUFF SAID.

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Tasmania: Day 2 - The Tasman Penninsula

Theme Songs for the Day:

1. Oompa Loopma Remix, by G-Penguin
2. O Fortuna, composed by Carl Orff

THE TASMAN PENNINSULA
1 1/2 - 2 HOURS' DRIVE EAST FROM HOBART

I love the smell of coffee and chocolate in the morning.

It is the Breakfast of Champions, and for my money, certainly beats that other breakfast of champions and artistic types all over the world: coffee and a cigarette.

Ahhhh chocolate.... food for the soul...

O, chocolate, how do I love thee, let me count the ways...


THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY:

As we drove around the neighborhood last night looking for someplace to park the campervan, I kept spotting purple roadsigns reading "CADBURY" in that delicious cursive font that graces their chocolate bars. It was only because of the better judgement of my navigator that we did not camp out in the parking lot of the Cadbury Chocolate Factory, just 4km up the road from the caravan park.

THE MORNING VIEW FROM

"TREASURE ISLAND" CARAVAN PARK

I walk along the dark waters in the cold morning to stretch sleep-twisted muscles, backlit clouds roll in overhead, while a wispy white cloudbank sweeps over a craggy rock face looming in the distance behind me.

This morning's mission is simple: get to the Chocolate Factory for a chocolatey morning meal with the fabled Oompa-Loompas, excuse me, "Little People" as they preferred to be called in this part of the world. There are no Little People to be seen anywhere on the premises and I use my Sherlock Holmes skills to deduce that they must be nocturnal, like so many other species of unique Aussie fauna.

The "tour" turns out to be a 30-minute audio/video presentation about the history and processes of the factory [who knew that chocolate is not fattening when consumed on a Thursday!?], Willy Wonka was not there [in fact I was nearly thrown out at the mention of his name; he owns the other chocolate company that begins with "N" and ends in "E"], and apparently rivers of chocolate dow not run through fields of candy at this chocolate factory. I thought it best not to ask if we could see the Great Glass Elevator.

Insiders' tip: the coffee in the cafe is forgettable, but the hot chocolate is amazing!! Check out the vintage posterboard advertisement that reads CHOCOLATE SAVES LIVES ...and stop by the gift shop to buy $50 worth of non-fattening-on-thursdays chocolate for like twenty bucks...


THE ROAD TO PORT ARTHUR:

Next stop: Port Arthur. Once the most feared penal colony in Australia, in high school I read a novel titled "Come Danger, Come Darkness" about a teen who is sent there from England for stealing a loaf of bread and escapes. The novel captured the harsh conditions endured by the convicts, and the stark contrast of this brutal human place set in the swirling mists of the Tasman Wilderness. I've been curious to visit ever since.

LOOK CLOSELY: YOU CAN SEE
GHOSTS OF TALL-MASTED PIRATE SHIPS
MOORED IN THE SHELTER OF THE BAY

It takes about an hour to get to the first distraction - a turnoff to Pirate Bay, Devil's Kitchen, and the Blowhole. The photo on the roadsign sells me in 3 seconds to take the next turnoff, and shortly thereafter we crest a turn and hear angel choirs singing as the view reveals itself. Unlike fast food menu pics, roadsign photos and postcards never capture the majesty of being enveloped by a sweeping vista in nature.

The road winds down to the water's edge, and we are greeted with a different roadsign: "WELCOME TO DOO-TOWN". Twenty or so endearingly quaint cottages in various stages of ramshackle are clustered around the small harbor at the end of the Bay, with names like "MUCH ADOO ABOUT NOTHING", "DOO ANYTHING", and "DOO F#&K ALL" [sic]. Sheer awesomeness. There are absolutely no people in and around the town.

The Blowhole is suitably impressive, a tunnel about 80 feet long, with an almost perfectly flat roof carved out of the sandstone leading from the ocean to a small pool which surges with the waves rolling through the tunnel. From the right angle, it looks like a very miniature ocean that has simply appeared in a rocky outcrop in the bushlands behind the beach, complete with tidal wave action and all. The oceans are calm today, so now and then the Blowhole half-heartedly spits up a lazy tendril of oceanspray.

Five minutes up the road from Doo-Town is the Devil's Kitchen, which is what I am excited aboot [sorry, The Canadian's accent is rubbing off on me...]. Lucifer is out today, or sleeping deep in the narrow cave we can see far below, while the ocean feature he has sculpted through his kitchen sends a wave or two at a time rolling through the massive canyon sounding like a giant sheet of paper slowly tearing.

The tallest trees you see at the top of the photo at right are 2-3 stories high...a natural sink and kitchen bench can be made out from our vantage point, and there is a rock shelf that makes up the floor which extends out 60-80 feet past the base of the cliffs, where Peter later tells us that they drop straight down as deep as they are high.

We hit the road and cross the narrow isthmus [seriously, how often do you get to use the word "isthmus" in a sentence??] of Eaglehawk Nest, where a pack of monster bulldogs on shackles just long enough to touch each other once guarded the crossing so that escaped convicts could not get through. That's what the statue of a massively rabid bulldog said, and that's the story I am sticking with. It is said to be true.

As I coax the campervan through the twisting roads towards Port Arthur, I can't help but think that were I an escaped convict, I would like nothing more than to carve out a patch of bushland here and live off the land... The waterways touch both sides of the road in places, the eucalyptus grows thickly to the water's edge, and the afternoon sunlight streams through the gathering mists.

When the roadsigns finally announce Port Arthur, we drive past 3 empty parking lots before pulling up in front of the vistor center entrance. The tours range from half-day walks to 3-day experiences, complete with breakfast & dinner packages. It costs $2 for a brochure and there are pricetags on everything else in the place. This is not the experience I came to Tassie for, so I quickly decide to leave before they charge us for breathing in the historic air.

Besides which, there was a Tasmanian Devil Reserve that we passed on the way in that looked like a whole lot of fun.


TASMANIAN DEVILS:

Three words to capture the essence of the infamous Tassie Devils.

Ferocious. Precocious. Capricocious. ...nope. Let's try again...

Lost. Dazed. Confused. ...yeah, that's it:

I am told that they are indeed quite feral and ferocious when feeding, but the Tassie Devils we meet this afternoon may have gotten into the Koalas' stash of the good green stuff that makes them so rasta-mellow... These guys lope around their enclosure amicably with silly gaping grins and vapid eyes, pausing often to remember what they were doing again, then doing little circles before loping away, thrilled to be coming around the corner to meet us again. Hours of entertainment for the whole family!

We meet three Locals at the Dunnaly Pub that evening, which I again cleverly deduce to be the original watering hole for convicts who managed to escape and avoid the rabid hounds of Eaglehawk Nest.

"Have a beer mate, you deserve it..." and again I imagine myself as that escaped convict, this time sitting at the bar top relishing my newfound freedom and wondering, Tasmanian-Devil-like, what my next move is going to be.

Anyways, I ask these three guys where we can go to get a good feed around here before 6 o'clock, and I don't miss the glint in their eyes as they glance at each other before answering: "Awwww yearh, nuh ...the foodssh roooly good he-yahh....youse should staaay it'd be well worth itt.... we come he-yah ev'ry Thursdeee noight!!". They are pissed as farts [American translation = "quite drunk"], enamored with The Canadian's blonde hair and blue eyes, and very entertaining, so we decide to stay and have a couple beers with them.

The Locals promptly decide to celebrate by stoking the fire to keep us warm, and proceed to fall over each other stuffing the fireplace so full of oversized logs that it may qualify for a bushfire instead of a glowing hearth of embers. In Tasmania, they don't use a fire poker to move the logs, they simply kick the fire around with their boots. And plumbers' crack is never attractive, but quite hilarious in the right context.

Oh, and they make a really great drop of port in this part of the world:

A RATHER NICE GLASS OF PORT

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