Monthly archives: February 2008

19/02/08
Just thought I’d let you all know that for the first time in the entire trip, there are no pictures, or maps, or really any stories to tell you for the day. Yup, I took the day off. Fully. I did laundry, did lots of Internet-y things, ran some errands in town, and even hired a movie to watch. Popped up some popcorn, and watched it in the late afternoon before the kids got home. Once Julia and Mark got in, I took them out for some Mexican food for supper. Tomorrw, I start the day with a ride on the historic TSS Earnslaw, a coal-fired steamer to get to a gravel road that will take me to the Mavora Lakes where I plan to camp for the night. Day after that, on to Te Anau, and my day trip to Milford. However, you’ll read about those things in due time, so there! Hope you all enjoyed your day off for Family Day as much as I did for my Recovery Day!! 🙂

16/02/08 to 18/02/08
Wow! Well, I’m back from another great weekend of tramping in the wilds of New Zealand. This time, I was tackling the Rees-Dart Track, as well as tacking on a full-day hike to the Cascade Saddle and back. Normally, they rate this as a 4-5 day tramp, but I was doing the whole thing including the Saddle side trip in 3 days. Perhaps that’ll give you an idea of why I took a day off when I got back. The third day was definitely killer, and took me 9 grueling hours of hiking to finish off. However, I’m getting a little ahead of myself, and I’m aiming to fill you all in on at least some of the details of those three glorious days. Read on for the details, and check out the maps (day 1, day 2, day 3) and the pictures (day 1, day 2, day 3). The day 3 map is highly abbreviated, as the batteries were dead fairly early that day. Oh well.

15/02/08
Howdy sports fans! Well, now that I’m back in Queenstown after a few days of hiking, and before I head back out on the road, I guess I should fill you in on the last few days of adventures that I was on. Last time you heard from me, it was Valentine’s day. After a delicious meal of Rack of Lamb prepared by Mark, we decided to hit the town for a few hours of up-to-no-goodness. The only problem is that it was pouring rain. So, in order to get ready, we decided to have a bottle of wine and a few beers before heading out. That worked out okay, but the problem was that I had to get up early the next morning to head out for some bungy jumping. Yup, adrenaline day 2 was all about bungy jumps! I was heading out to the Kawarau Bridge for the original commercial bungy jump, and then to Nevis, a high-wire bungy which is the highest in NZ at 134m. I put together a little map of the day, to show you where these are, and there are also all kinds of pictures up for you to look at. Read on mates!

14/02/08
Wow, look at that kids, it’s St. Valentine’s Day! Well, I can’t say I’m doing anything romantic at all to mark the day, but rather, chose to hurtle myself over a canyon and fly through the same said canyon in a jet boat. Later on tonight, I believe my hosts and I will be doing somewhat of a pub crawl around Queenstown. Lucky for me, they don’t really celebrate Valentine’s Day, so I’m not really intruding. Otherwise, I would’ve just found my own entertainment for the night elsewhere. Today is another pseudo-rest day, with the most I’m doing physically is walking to town and back to get shuttle buses. The legs are recovering nicely, and I think I’ll be back on track with another day like this. Lucky for me, that’s exactly how I planned it out! Hee hee. Anyway, for today, I put together a map showing where I did things, but they are not my typical biking maps. Read on, and check out the pics too.

13/02/08
Hey gang, well, I made another valiant attempt at taking a rest day in Queenstown today. My legs were just basically shot from all the riding, hiking, canyoning, glacier climbing, etc. etc. I haven’t given myself a proper rest day, and I’ve decided that Queenstown, with its myriad of adrenaline-filled activities will serve as a vacation point for me. For the next few days, all the activities I’m undertaking are very low on the physical scale, but high on the adrenaline scale. I’ll be shuttled to various places to do all sorts of expensive things that involve me jumping off things, riding in high-speed vehicles, etc. However, for the first day, I thought that I’d just get sorted out, do laundry, catch up blogs, book activities, and just generally sit my butt on a couch. However, as is often the case with ActiveSteve, I made it a good bit of the day, but eventually, my itchy feet made me get up and head into town. No map today, but read on for a little about what I did, and hopefully the pictures will be up shortly.