Making Mischief in Makorora

Having flaked out so early last night, this morning I got up bright and early, ready for our next travel day to Makorora. I was the first one to the bus, so popped my bags on and helped Daisy chivvy people along. As I waited for them, I was able to appreciate what Daisy had been saying yesterday about the snowy mountains – I hadn’t really been able to see them properly as it was dark, but in the morning light, I could see how the mountains with their snowy caps loomed over the hostel. It was quite beautiful, although a little peculiar as the vegetation in the area was not what one would expect of an alpine climate – they were all rainforest type plants (the hostel is called ‘Rainforest Retreat’ after all).

Once everyone was on board, we headed off and I was able to see just how small Franz Josef was, as within moments we were through it! We drove for a while up through Fox Glacier (not a mint in sight!). It was interesting to hear that the water level of their river is rising so quickly that the town is going to have to move within the next decade or two (that’s the beauty of making houses out of wood – you can just pick them up and move them along to somewhere else!). From there we went onto Lake Matheson where we hopped off the bus for a walk to see the lake and its iconic picture-postcard views.

The walk was supposed to take twenty minutes and I powered along with Dan at the front, even though we were walking pretty fast, it certainly was longer than that. We did appreciate the beauty of our surroundings as we walked, with mountains and alpine views. Eventually we came to the lake; famous for its mirror-like views f Mount Cook and Mount Tasman (NZ’s highest peaks). As it was a bit cloudy, the view wasn’t as good as it looks on all the postcards we’d seen, but it was pretty nonetheless. Dan and I powered back ahead of the others so as to get back to the bus in time, but we needn’t have bothered as everyone took so long that we ended up leaving almost an hour late and annoyingly, when we got back to the bus, the clouds cleared and the sun shone, which would have made for a far more beautiful view of the mountains over the lake!

Eventually everyone came back and we were ready to go. The next part of our drive took us along the Haast Pass and through the Mount Aspiring National Park and was incredibly scenic and very varied, as throughout the day along this one road, we passed through rainforest, alpine forest, beech forest, up mountains and down to beaches – a very eclectic road indeed. We stopped along the way at Ships Creek, a beach where there was a half hour walk you could do, but after hopping off the bus, everyone had hopped back on again less than ten minutes later. The reason – sandflies.

Now I don’t have a particularly good relationship with sandflies as it is they who bit me so much in Myella that I ended up with gigantism of the hand, ear and knee – so I was not in the mood for a repeat; I think I was out of the bus for around three minutes and had been bitten several times already. The thing with sandflies is that they are a bit stupid and hover around a bit before they land on you, so this can mean you can swat them before you get bitten, but this is not always the case. If they do manage to land on you, the reason you find out is because you actually feel them bite you; it’s a really sharp stabbing pain, often drawing blood, it really itches but if you scratch it, it then makes the bite a heck of a lot worse and they flare up like they are on fire. I have learned that the best thing to do is try and avoid touching them – a scratched bite will bleed more and take ages to heal. One girl on the bus was absolutely covered in bites and she scratched them so much that it ended up looking like she had measles. Yuck.

This section of the west coast is sandfly territory and it was incredibly unpleasant. The Mauri story about sandflies is that the gods created them so that man did not spend too long on the west coast and kept moving, so that they did not stay and destroy the amazing natural beauty of the west coast, but instead seeing it long enough to appreciate it, then getting bitten by sandflies and so moving on. I think this is the first Mauri story that I understand and actually is believable – it certainly worked on us!

Anyway, after our incredibly brief stop at Ships Creek, we went a bit further down the road to a picnic place to stop for lunch, hundreds of sandflies had joined our bus gang (uninvited!) so along the way everyone splatted as many of them as they could! It caused quite a lot of amusement, although annoyingly we still got bitten in the process! The scenery was still quite rainforest-like and lush with vegetation. At our lunch stop, Daisy asked if he could borrow my knife to make his sandwich, so it was unveiled and everyone thought it was awesome! It certainly did look the business! I allowed Daisy to be the first person to use my knife; he felt very honoured! It worked a treat. Boys being boys, a couple of them had a look at it and asked if it was sharp; I told them it was ‘religiously sharp’ and then they tested it and cut themselves, thankfully only a little bit, but it certainly proved the point that Steven had made when he told me about how to qualify how sharp it was to people!

Having been bitten again, we continued on our drive and came to Thunder Creek Falls where we stopped for a short walk to go and look at a 30m waterfall. It was pretty and waterfall-like. I think I might have started getting a bit weary of water-related scenery, we have seen quite a lot of it. I am appreciating how lovely it is, but am becoming less enthused! Thankfully, at this point, the sandflies seemed to be dissipating a bit, so this was causing less agro for us.

Back on the bus, we continued along the Haast Pass and came to a bridge called Gates of Haast, where we all hopped off and walked across. I am still not sure about this, but Daisy said it was traditional for backpackers to walk across the bridge naked. Thankfully no one did. It wasn’t a long bridge but it did offer us the chance to see some more pretty views, including another water-related thing, in the form of a river. Once across the bridge, we got back on the bus and continued our drive up the mountains.

Along the next part of the Haast Pass I noticed that the vegetation had changed and now looked less like rainforest. We stopped for another walk at Blue Pools, where the path took us through a forest of beech trees and down to a very wobbly rope bridge, then another, until we came to some pools which were indeed very blue. Their strong colour is caused by the colour of the rocks below, which make them look strikingly blue and turquoise. Again, although I appreciated how pretty (and blue) they were, I was not really feeling particularly passionate about water-related views, so didn’t hang about that long. I was more interested in the beech forest, as it was rather mysterious with lots of rotten tree trunks and large canopies of leaves – these forests apparently feature heavily in LOTR, in the bits where there are the big tree people (excuse my lack of LOTR knowledge, as I don’t know what they are called) and also the scenes where the hobbits are being chased through the forest by the Orcs (ok, so I know that is more or less what the whole of the three films consists of, but there is one bit where that happens and someone dies – it might be Sean Bean, or do I mean Sean Penn, I don’t know, it’s the blonde one that isn’t the good looking one (is the dark haired good looking one Aragon?) – I saw the films enough times, bit by bit, but they still confuse me). So that was what made the forest vaguely interesting, then again Daisy could have been fibbing and they might not be the forests from the films at all, who’s to know?!

Back on the bus, we made the final bit of the journey to Makorora. Daisy warned us that Makorora was another one horse town. He lied. Makorora was a town with about a quarter of a horse; maybe just a front leg. It consisted of an ‘i-site’ (the name for NZ tourist info place) and that was about it. The i-site was also where we were staying. We checked in and went to our cabins – they were actually really cool; twelve bed dorms (no bunk beds – hurrah!) with their own bathroom – it was nice sharing en mass. We made a girls’ dorm, with honorary girl, Jimmy. After a good girlie chat and general chill out, we got showered and dressed and headed down to the bar.

The Makorora i-site’s pub is the centre of the community. There were five people in there who were not with us, all looking a bit like hicks; they stared at us like we were really peculiar and Daisy dared me to go and talk to them and tell them that I was the driver – I declined. The boys played pool whilst we chatted. I found some amusement watching a little mouse run over the back of the sofa, then down the arm and onto the seat; apparently that’s what one would expect from being in the countryside. A little later the karaoke book was being passed around and I desperately hoped that it was not going to be a big hit. Thankfully it was not and only a few of the gang sang.

A little way into the evening, one of the hicks came over to me whilst I was at the bar, he had no front teeth and looked quite scary, he started talking to me and I decided to have a bit of a laugh. I told him I was the Stray driver and he looked a little startled. I don’t know how, possibly he had been drinking too much, but I managed to convince him that I was the Stray driver (called Panther!) and I was training Daisy up as a new driver! I wasn’t certain that he had believed me, but then he went back over to the other four hicks and started telling them all about it! They were really impressed that a girl could be a Stray driver and spent the rest of the evening talking to me about my job and NZ in general, even calling me ‘Driver’ and ‘Panther’! Daisy was rather impressed that I had risen to the dare and succeeded!

Also, during the same period, a couple of the people from the bus chatted to me about being a Stray employee. It seemed that the bus rumour about me working for Stray had not been quashed as I thought it had been, so I figured it would be fun to go along with that too, so perpetuated the rumour (well it would only be perpetuated amongst that particular clique) with discussions about the best things about working in the hospitality and tourism industry and how best to get into it. I surprised myself as to how good I was at bluffing my way through this fallacy of being a Stray employee! Rebecca and I had quite a giggle about it as she was helping me in the deception!

After a few more drinks, a bit more giggling and a few more knowing glances at the hicks, it was time for bed!