Leaving Queenstown was hard, partly because of all the amazing people I was leaving behind, and also because there is so much to do I would love to stay longer. However, the drive up to Mt Cook was another breathtaking journey. We stopped at Lake Pukaki where you get a perfect view of Mt Cook and Mt Tasman in the background, and the water is the bluest you have ever seen. It's unique because of the particals that are carried down off the mountains blah blah blah - it's big and sparkly :-) . After taking a few essential photos everyone just didn't move because you know you'll never remember exactly how blue it was. It was pretty cool where we stayed at the base of Mt Cook too. There's a 2 hour walk to a lake at the base of the glacier which has a couple of streams feeding it and huge blocks of ice just floating around. The only down side is that all the dirt and rocks get washed off the moutain sides so the ice has a layer of grey/brown covering it. After a rain storm I imagine all that dust would be washed away and the ice would no doubt look spectacular.
After an amazing nights sleep - and a bath! (Baths are a luxury travelling) - we headed for Rangitata. The hostel however had overbooked itself and so a few of us volunteered to stay in Christchurch instead. It was a bit of a fiasco to be honest. First we got to the hostel we were NOT staying at and it was lovely (luckily we had a couple of hours there so I didn't miss out on much in the end). Then on our way to Christchurch we had the most miserable driver ever who told us, when it was too late, that the hostel we were going to was a dump, right in the middle of nowhere, and he couldn't understand why we wanted to go there. Well Mr Miserable, we didn't want to go there, we just didn't have time to really search around, but thank you for stressing us out and then refusing to drop us somewhere else. Anyway, in true 'Up Yours' fashion I went and had an amazing night regardless of what he'd said. Oh, did I forget to mention it was St Paddys day :-) . I had only been in the hostel about half an hour when I found myself playing f*** the dealer with the people already staying there, and naturally I ended up being the dealer who got f***ed the most and drank my entire bottle of red wine in about 10 minutes. Sweet as. Then it was onto some good old Irish whiskey, a trip to the local regae bar, and then back for more whisky. It was an awesome night! The guys were all a good laugh and after speaking to everyone that stayed in Rangitata, in the cold, watching telly, I am fairly confident I made the right decision going to Christchurch.
Anyway... as much as I love recapping on drunken antics I also have to say a little about Christchurch itself. Driving in you can almost feel the change in the atmosphere. There are orange cones and work in progress signs literally everywhere you look. A lot of roads are closed, and the ones that aren't have settled into a kind of wave formation. Closer to the centre of town there are barriers up around buildings, whole blocks of buildings in fact, because they're not safe anymore. We drove past one block that looked OK, until we moved around to the back, and it's just rubble. Even the headstones by the graves have cracked or fallen over. It's just a very sad sight.
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