Having had a very scary night’s sleep – waking up several times to more howling wind and rain, I made the most of a lie in and then set about packing up my things. Once that was done, I went off to the kitchen and found in there the random people from the camper van. I had some brekkie and a chat to them, before heading back to my room to pick up all the spare tea towels from my costume. I saw the bar maid from last night and gave her all the tea towels – I figure I won’t need to make another item of clothing out of them in the foreseeable future. She and I chatted for a bit, then I went and grabbed all my bags from the room and went and sat in the kitchen where it may have been one degree warmer than it was outside, whilst I waited for my bus, which was due at 12.30pm.
When I went round to the pickup point, out the front of the hostel (I hope you can see from the photo what a stereotypical one-horse town pub it is and why it could easily be from a teen slasher movie!), I was shocked to find six other people there waiting for it. Where they had come from, I did not know, but they certainly had not been at the hostel. They were carrying small rucksacks and hiking poles, so I guess they must have hiked to Barrytown this morning from somewhere else?!
The bus arrived and the guy threw us in quite quickly. It was a small transfer bus, taking us to Greymouth where we would change to a bigger bus. The drive to Greymouth was rather scenic as it took us along the coastal road. The driver’s speed was so fast that it was actually more terrifying than beautiful, as rather than thinking “What a lovely view”, I was instead thinking “Those rocks are rather close!”. Eventually we arrived safely in Greymouth, where we were thrown out from one bus onto another and quickly on our way again, with the same driver, driving at the same super-fast speed!
The bus wasn’t particularly full, but I got chatting to a couple on there from the UK. After twenty minutes, we arrived in a small town called Hokitika, known for its arts and crafts (I took this to mean ‘tat’) where we were given an hour long break. I went with the couple to find a cafe, which was a little hard as it was Sunday so most things were closed – eventually we found somewhere and enjoyed a coffee. We took one look in a Jade shop, just to kill a bit more time, then headed back to the bus. I spent the rest of the journey listening to music and trying to ignore the scary driving!
A couple of hours later, the bus pulled into Franz Josef and I hopped off. It was nice that the driver had actually dropped me at my hostel, rather than the middle of town. I checked in and found Daisy – everyone else was still at whatever activity they had been doing for the day (hiking, glacier walking, skydiving etc). He was just on his way to the hot pools across the road, so I joined him.
The temperature in Franz Josef was noticeably colder than it had been in Barrytown. Daisy had pointed out to me that I could see snow on the mountains that we were walking along the base of! I was finding the concept of going to the hot pools a bit peculiar for that reason – it was dark and really cold and we were about to sit outside in the pool! I was wrong though - the place was amazing, incredibly swish and not what you’d expect a back-packer to go to (although apparently I am a ‘flash packer’ so maybe it is more acceptable!). It was actually a spa with all sorts of beauty stuff going on, but we were just going to the hot pools. There were three different pools – each heated to a different temperature; 36o, 38o and 40o, covered by an awning thing and surrounded by tropical plants. First we went into the hottest one – it was like being in a super hot bath! Steam rose from the water and we sat on some rocks, chatting and getting incredibly hot. After a bit I felt like a poached egg, so we downgraded to the 38o pool for a while, then the 36o one which felt almost cold compared to the first one! Nic, Nicola and Jimmy joined us and we spent a while longer in the 36o pool before upgrading to 38o and finally 40o once more. It was lots of fun and very relaxing indeed. None of us wanted to get out, as it was so lovely in the water and we knew it’d be absolutely freezing when we did eventually get out.
Eventually, we decided we were prunified enough, so made the mad dash to get out, hopping briefly into the 36o pool along the way, in the vague hope that it might help us acclimatise to the outside temperature – it did not! We jumped in the shower and got changed, before heading outside into the chilly night.
Back at the hostel, I joined everyone in the bar and most people were really surprised to see me as they hadn’t realised I was going to be rejoining the bus. I had a drink and told them all about my knife making and terrifying experience of being alone in Barrytown. I heard all about their exploits on the glacier and I decided to go hang up my wet stuff in my room and before I had a chance to go back to the bar, I promptly crashed out for the night!
No comments:
Post a Comment