December 20th We camped beside the road, with a bubbling stream beside us and a paddock full of friendly cows to meet. We jumped the fence to say hello, holding out our blades of grass invitingly. Why we think they'd prefer ours to the stuff that's at their feet, I don't know, but that's beside the point. We were making an effort to be friends. We inched forward, making gentle coo-ing noises to ensure they knew we meant no harm. One bowed it's head at us, and I, thinking we were being let privvy to some ancient bovine greeting, bowed back. That's when we noticed that accompanying the bowing, was some stamping off the hoofs, and some snorting as they moved into a circle around us. That's when Brian chose to look a little closer, and said "Uh....sweetie....these aren't cows. Put the grass down and walk away slowly." We both did as he said until we were far enough away to not be able to hear the bulls' snorts and stamps anymore..... We did a cave rafting trip. We shared the tour with two hyperactive American-sounding Swedes from Sydney, and our tour guide was NZ's answer to Steve Irwin. Every now and then, at completely random moments, he would just let out a "whoo-hoo!" and make us all jump. We wouldn'd even be DOING anything - just walking sedately along a track through the cave, and suddenly there'd be a "WOO-HOO!" behind us. I think the Swedes enjoyed it. I for one, being the only girl in the group, endured the most. In typical tour-guide humour, I was the butt of every joke, and my name was mentioned far more than necessary. "Lara, if you look up now, you can see sparkly things that look like diamonds!" Brian said afterwards, he could have sworn the mist coming out of my mouth was in fact smoke coming out of my ears. Since being here, we've been admiring all the (expensive) jade jewellery. We've become convinced that every green rock we see on the ground is in fact jade. It got to the point at one stage, when we were driving along in Bessie, when Brian just suddenly skidded to a stop, jumped out and ran across the road to a river, saying "Did you see that big piece of jade in there?!!" I smiled to myself as I got out the video camera, and he started to cross the river, jumping from rock to rock...and fell in. Not to be persuaded, even as I'd started giggling, he pursued his conquest, and came upon the green stone... only to find it a normal, every day river rock covered in lush green moss. There are acrobatic cows in NZ - I bet that's not advertised as well as the sheer no. of sheep there are. This is definitely a bigger drawcard. The one we saw was very impressive. Walking towards our oncoming-bessie, this particular cow (we shall name him Morris for the sake of the story) suddenly became aware of our presence and got scared. It started to run right, and then left, and then suddenly it was in splits, with its nose touching the bitumen. Full 180 degree split. I scored it a 9.5 (no pointed toes). Speaking of acrobatics of sorts, I have done my fair share. After 2 weeks of being on the Island, I couldn't take it any more and threw myself off a mountain. ...... Luckily enough I was attached to a hanglider at the time. The feeling was pretty awesome. It was terrifying to run off the side of a mountain, with every part of my body telling me "Don't be stupid! This isn't what you're supposed to do! Humans can't fly!" I think I was actually dragging my tandem instructor backwards up the hill, while he tried to do the running for both of us. But once my feet left the ground, it was incredible. Looking down on the tops of the trees and seeing a tiny triangular shadow - that was me! All the time I spent contemplating my own death before we jumped, I should have been worried about Brian's - apparently the driver did 100km's an hour trying to get down the mountain fast enough to catch my landing on camera. He didn't, but at least we're both still here to tell the tale. On the drive away from that, Brian was telling me about a girl who'd dis-attached herself from her tandem partner to do a base jump the other week. I looked concerned, and said "I hope her partner knew she was going to do that!" Brian laughed, saying "Well, I guess the parachute on her back kind of gave it away...." Bugger. The drive to Milford sound was pretty spectacular. We stopped for a short while to have a taboggan using an old crate we found by the side of the road. The kids in the area looked at us longingly as we shot down the hill and got thrown out, landing head first in piles of snow. We actually saw the drive to/from Milford Sound 4 times. Not bad, really, considering it was in the space of 2 days. We only planned on the once, but circumstances led us in a different direction. We'd been there, and were heading back (there's only one road in/out). It's an amazing drive with spectacular scenery, but quite long and windy, and there's a 15 minute wait for the lights at Homer tunnel. So we'd done that twice, and had stopped for lunch - toasted sandwhiches. I was just about to get the can opener to open the pineapple, when... "Sweetie?" (You all know what that means) "Have you seen my knife?" Now, to put this in perspective, this is the third leatherman wave knife the boy has gone through. One was lost on Fraser Is, another on a school camp. Looked like no. 3 was to be somewhere in Milford Sound. Still, we made the long journey (including the 15 minute wait at the lights) back to where we'd stayed the night before, and amazingly enough, someone had handed it in.
Driving along the coast again, we headed out to a point called "Cosy Nook". I suddenly grabbed Brian's arm and stared open-mouthed out the window. I couldn't believe my eyes. I very nearly did the cartoon rub-my-eyes-and-look-again trick. Luckily I realised before I did that. "What?" Brian said, confused. "Nothing." I mumbled. "WHAT?!" I mumbled again, something incomprehensible, until his exhasperation got to me and I said in a small voice "I thought that bird was flying backwards." I DID! I could have SWORN it! It had a long tail and a short little head, and I could have sworn it was flying backwards. I only wish I had have kept my reaction to myself. Driving along again the day before yesterday, we saw a small stumpy animal meander across the road. We stopped, turned around, and found a hedgehog to play with. Neither of us had ever seen one, so it was time for lots of photos before we let him go, facing away from the road this time. We walked back to the car, all excited about our find, jumped in, started to drive off....and that's when we realised we were bogged....again. Poor old Bessie must be glad to have seen the back of us. Luckily we were only a couple of hundred metres from a farm, which owned a 4WD. Still it was enough time for me to get laughed at by a mini-bus full of tourists who came across our predicament. Yesterday was our last full day with the van. We spent it at Mt Cook, where we ate lunch with snow drenched mountains in the background. We had two ducks circling us the whole time - ducks that resembled vibrating vacume cleaners with sinus problems. Their snorting and snuffling just rising to new crescendos as we relented and held out tidbits of our lunch to them. So, we handed over Bessie today, luckily. When we finally found the place again, the guy's reaction was "That's not one of our vans." Considering the trouble we went through to get the bloody thing, I sure hope it was! Although, maybe it explains a bit??? Luckily Byron came out and recognised us and all was good.
