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May. 17th, 2009 05:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
clo_againSo my glacier hike was cancelled today. We had so much rain and wind and thunder last night that, in addition to the entire town (which to be honest is so not that big) not having power for about six hours, the track up the glacier was washed away. They were running a half-day hike instead (weather dependent) but I'd heard so many bad things about the half-day (not to mention one of the *plus* points someome told me was that the guides on the full day cut the steps into the ice, so on the half-day they're already there and you're not waiting around. But since there wasn't a full day hike...) I thought about it for about twenty minutes while we waited around for an update and decided it just wasn't worth the hundred dollars.
I'm kind of alternating between gutted and oddly relieved. Gutted because one girl showed me her pictures from the full day hike last night and it looked unfuckingbelievably awesome, but relieved too because the weather last night was so utterly terrible that I'd sort of accepted there was very little chance of us getting up there, though I'd dutifully gone out and bought sandwiches for lunch etc. because I'd have looked pretty damn stupid if I'd waved it off as "Of course we're not going!" and then we did. But I was just so tired. I was cranky yesterday with all the bus-hopping and out hostel is nice but the slightly funky kind where you wonder if they actually do change the sheets for every new person which is something I mostly don't think about (most hostels are good! YHAs, for example, are lovely and comfortable on the whole and for all its other failings, Base does at least seem to have clean sheets) but isn't exactly conducive to a restful night's sleep. I think the moving around every other day or so finally caught up with me and my subconscious was metaphorically digging in its heels and going if you climb a river of ice today, you will fall asleep while walking and die.
Which is probably only a slight exaggeration.
So instead I went back to the hostel, sat on the sofas in the lounge and did... nothing. I faffed around on iTunes, I charged my phone, I arranged my escape from Franz Josef a day early because the weather is apparently bad tomorrow too so no more chance of glacier hiking and I'll be damned if I spend another day sitting aimlessly (don't get me wrong, one day of fairly aimless sitting has done me a world of good but I'm fast heading into my last week here and there's a limit to how much time I'm willing to waste) because there is simply nothing else to do here when the weather is bad. Example: a little earlier, I walked a short way up the nearest trail to town which is about an hour round trip and apparently gives you a view of the glacier. Just before I stepped onto it, I admired the view of the mountains with the first little bit of snow I'd seen so far and little puffy wisps of cloud drifting between them.
Ten minutes down the track, after being throughly spooked by the gloom, the moss-encrusted woods, a dark and shadowy overhang that (UNHELPFULLY FOR THE FREAKING-OUT-NESS BY THE WAY SUBCONSCIOUS) made me think of the wolflike critter from The Neverending Story, I hit a bridge that was blocked off with a solid wooden gate and a sign declaring the track beyond was irretreviably DAMAGED BY FLOODING. After a brief reaction of "Thank you random trail blocker", I hightailed it back to the town thinking of a bar and possibly letting myself indulge in a Tui (my new favourite drink ever).
As I came out of the woods into actual daylight again, I happened to glance back at the mountains which I'd admired on the way in. It's a good thing I did then because now, fifteen minutes later, they were totally out of sight in dark grey clouds. Even the closest hill which really, not that far away in this town, was just an indistinct blur. On my way down to the bar with unsecured wireless (what I'm leeching right now), the weather chased me with rain and wind and finally hail. If some lovely person hadn't closed my trail off, I would've walked right into it.
In short, I'm not all that disappointed that I chose to avoid the half-day hike today. There're much better things to spend the hundred dollars (like Tui and the pretty paua shell necklace I just bought as my mother's present, unless I decide to steal it for myself before I get home) than being lost in a cloud for three hours. Next time I'm here (which will happen. I swear on Casper that it will) I'll try again.
So now I'm sitting in my favourite bar here, drinking my second (and last considering they're six dollars apiece :( ) Tui, full of delicious pizza and watching Good News Week download faster than I dared hope. Hey I'm a backpacker; if I downloaded it in the YHA tomorrow it'd cost me probably thirteen dollars or more; here it's free except for the price of the Tui which to be honest, I would've bought anyway. If my battery runs out before it finishes then I've chosen a table near a plug point and I will sit here with it plugged in. This is what backpacking does; if something can be had for free? NO SHAME IN TAKING IT.
Then I need to head back and repack my backpack. Again. At least I'm in Queenstown for four days; sure I'm moving hostels once but only just up the road which so doesn't count. I haven't spent four days anywhere since... since Australia. I'm so looking forward to it. Tomorrow I get a pretty long day just sitting on the bus too so I can sleep. That's mostly what I'm looking forward to when I get home; just lying in bed and not having roommates wake you up at 6am, or random French people yelling in the hallway for an hour when you're trying to nap or knowing you have to haul yourself out of your potentially-unclean bed at some godawful hour of the morning to fling yourself up mountains and take pictures of sea. I miss sleep. And Casper. But mostly sleep.
Now I'm yawning but I have another thirty-eight minutes to sit here surreptitiously before I can leave with GNW safely on my laptop. Maybe I'll order a coffee. I saved myself $150 by being a lazy ass today; I can afford a little caffiene in my life.
edit: Bwahahahah, I just caught one of the bar staff as he went past, to ask for a coffee, and he was like "Yeah, of course love." Except his voice is exactly the same as the voice Peter Serafinowicz puts on to play that guy whose voice "does things" to Fran in Black Books. EXACTLY.
I did not crack up but it was close. :D
I'm kind of alternating between gutted and oddly relieved. Gutted because one girl showed me her pictures from the full day hike last night and it looked unfuckingbelievably awesome, but relieved too because the weather last night was so utterly terrible that I'd sort of accepted there was very little chance of us getting up there, though I'd dutifully gone out and bought sandwiches for lunch etc. because I'd have looked pretty damn stupid if I'd waved it off as "Of course we're not going!" and then we did. But I was just so tired. I was cranky yesterday with all the bus-hopping and out hostel is nice but the slightly funky kind where you wonder if they actually do change the sheets for every new person which is something I mostly don't think about (most hostels are good! YHAs, for example, are lovely and comfortable on the whole and for all its other failings, Base does at least seem to have clean sheets) but isn't exactly conducive to a restful night's sleep. I think the moving around every other day or so finally caught up with me and my subconscious was metaphorically digging in its heels and going if you climb a river of ice today, you will fall asleep while walking and die.
Which is probably only a slight exaggeration.
So instead I went back to the hostel, sat on the sofas in the lounge and did... nothing. I faffed around on iTunes, I charged my phone, I arranged my escape from Franz Josef a day early because the weather is apparently bad tomorrow too so no more chance of glacier hiking and I'll be damned if I spend another day sitting aimlessly (don't get me wrong, one day of fairly aimless sitting has done me a world of good but I'm fast heading into my last week here and there's a limit to how much time I'm willing to waste) because there is simply nothing else to do here when the weather is bad. Example: a little earlier, I walked a short way up the nearest trail to town which is about an hour round trip and apparently gives you a view of the glacier. Just before I stepped onto it, I admired the view of the mountains with the first little bit of snow I'd seen so far and little puffy wisps of cloud drifting between them.
Ten minutes down the track, after being throughly spooked by the gloom, the moss-encrusted woods, a dark and shadowy overhang that (UNHELPFULLY FOR THE FREAKING-OUT-NESS BY THE WAY SUBCONSCIOUS) made me think of the wolflike critter from The Neverending Story, I hit a bridge that was blocked off with a solid wooden gate and a sign declaring the track beyond was irretreviably DAMAGED BY FLOODING. After a brief reaction of "Thank you random trail blocker", I hightailed it back to the town thinking of a bar and possibly letting myself indulge in a Tui (my new favourite drink ever).
As I came out of the woods into actual daylight again, I happened to glance back at the mountains which I'd admired on the way in. It's a good thing I did then because now, fifteen minutes later, they were totally out of sight in dark grey clouds. Even the closest hill which really, not that far away in this town, was just an indistinct blur. On my way down to the bar with unsecured wireless (what I'm leeching right now), the weather chased me with rain and wind and finally hail. If some lovely person hadn't closed my trail off, I would've walked right into it.
In short, I'm not all that disappointed that I chose to avoid the half-day hike today. There're much better things to spend the hundred dollars (like Tui and the pretty paua shell necklace I just bought as my mother's present, unless I decide to steal it for myself before I get home) than being lost in a cloud for three hours. Next time I'm here (which will happen. I swear on Casper that it will) I'll try again.
So now I'm sitting in my favourite bar here, drinking my second (and last considering they're six dollars apiece :( ) Tui, full of delicious pizza and watching Good News Week download faster than I dared hope. Hey I'm a backpacker; if I downloaded it in the YHA tomorrow it'd cost me probably thirteen dollars or more; here it's free except for the price of the Tui which to be honest, I would've bought anyway. If my battery runs out before it finishes then I've chosen a table near a plug point and I will sit here with it plugged in. This is what backpacking does; if something can be had for free? NO SHAME IN TAKING IT.
Then I need to head back and repack my backpack. Again. At least I'm in Queenstown for four days; sure I'm moving hostels once but only just up the road which so doesn't count. I haven't spent four days anywhere since... since Australia. I'm so looking forward to it. Tomorrow I get a pretty long day just sitting on the bus too so I can sleep. That's mostly what I'm looking forward to when I get home; just lying in bed and not having roommates wake you up at 6am, or random French people yelling in the hallway for an hour when you're trying to nap or knowing you have to haul yourself out of your potentially-unclean bed at some godawful hour of the morning to fling yourself up mountains and take pictures of sea. I miss sleep. And Casper. But mostly sleep.
Now I'm yawning but I have another thirty-eight minutes to sit here surreptitiously before I can leave with GNW safely on my laptop. Maybe I'll order a coffee. I saved myself $150 by being a lazy ass today; I can afford a little caffiene in my life.
edit: Bwahahahah, I just caught one of the bar staff as he went past, to ask for a coffee, and he was like "Yeah, of course love." Except his voice is exactly the same as the voice Peter Serafinowicz puts on to play that guy whose voice "does things" to Fran in Black Books. EXACTLY.
I did not crack up but it was close. :D
