Sheep

Now I am not saying that all Kiwis are sheep shaggers but.... I am in Queenstown now and there is a statue of the first settler here. He arrived with his wife and set up a farm and the town. Now who do you think is standing on the plinth next to him??? Hint- it isn't the wife! There really does seem to be rather a lot of sheep around. And deer. And llamas- weirdly.

So I did the kayaking thing yesterday, in the rain. I was glad that I had signed up to do it while I was still on the bus and the day was beautifully sunny- if I had seen the rain I think that I would have just spent another day in the hostel complaining about the rain. As it was, not only had I signed up already but had paid while standing in glorious sunshine. I ran through the rain to get to the meeting point and even believed their reassuring murmuring about it being sunny on the lake when it is raining in the town.

Turned out to be a great day. All clad in safety gear and floatation devices (rather better than the lack of anything secure when we went kayaking in the OCEAN in Vietnam) we were launched onto a wonderfully still lake. I was sharing my kayak with an English lad, Steven, he was in charge of the steering but that didn't help. We across the lake and into the forest on the other side. It was here that things started to get interesting as we managed to get wedged a fair few times with both ends of the boat stuck in some kind of weed or tree or both. It was frustrating trying to get out- you just want to get out of the kayak and give it a push but since the lake is 82m deep, it wasn't really an option. Frustrating or not, it was very satisfying when we managed to manoeuvre our way out with a lot of frantic back paddling and cursing.

It rained pretty much the whole time we were on the water which did mean something wonderful happened- as we came back out onto open water we saw the most brilliant rainbow I have ever seen. It rose from the lake, shimmered in front of the trees and arced its way over to the other side of the lake where it met its reflection on the surface. And, as if that wasn't enough, it had asked a mate to join it- two rainbows of colours not normally seen outside of a paint pallet. It was worth every swearing, cursing, getting stuck in a low slung tree just to see it.

And it was so awesome that none of us noticed how wet we had got. The drip skirts hid the damage until we all de-kayaked to discover that the rain had collected in such a way as it make us look like an incontinence meeting. And there was no way that my clothes were going to dry in time for the bus the next morning so I ended up with a bag of wet clothes sitting on the seat next to me all day.

Up early we drove for around 45 minutes and stopped to go and see a lake that mirrors its surroundings wonderfully. We walked through the forest to get there, oohed and ahhed for a bit, took a million photos and off we went. And that was pretty much the routine for the day. As we passed from West Coast towards the middle of the country the landscape changed. There was still great big mountains and gushing waterfalls rushing down their sides but the trees and general fauna changed a lot. We passed some beautiful lakes- which I can't remember the name of now- before finally arriving in Queenstown.

We also did a quick stop off at the home of bungee jumping- AJ Hackett's. As we got there a man was perched on the platform stuck to the edge of the bridge over the river. A women was watching him and telling a one year old and four year old 'look at daddy!'. The kids were quite into it until Daddy jumped, then the four year old burst into tears and needed a lot of reassuring that Daddy was OK. The next guy didn't have the same family support and jumped unheeded. The third guy lept off the edge and plunged into the water below up to his shoulders- remember that he was upside down. I thought I had seen bungee jumping before but hopping off a small platform on a beach in the UK is pretty different from this leap off a bridge. It was much scarier than I thought it would be.

Not tempted at all, before you ask!

I have tomorrow in Queenstown and then onto Dunedin and the rugby! I have been very lucky to get a bed for the night in Dunedin, apparantely. Luckily for me, Scotty the guide was in the internet place when I booked the ticket for the game. As I was leaping around telling people I was going, he got straight on the phone and found me a cancellation- phew! Others on the bus have not been so lucky but I think that I have been a bad influence and they are going to go there anyway.

Should be fun!