While the girls go on their helicopter ride onto the glacier followed by a walk down it, I go on a quad bike ride over a rocky glacial plain. I am the only paying member of the group (NZ $150), the other two being the guide and girl from Cheshire who works at the company’s booking office.
When I went quad biking in Turkey, I ended up being told off by the teenage guide for driving too aggressively, which was surprising considering that the man in the office where we picked up the quad bikes advice was to avoid going by the police station if any of us didn’t have a driving licence. On this trip however I am encourage to go fast, as we are going through streams and, off the official track area into woodland, muddy terrain. At one point, we come across a long patch of thick mud, where even my guide gets stuck. When I manage to navigate my bike through without a hitch, I feel quite smug.
In conversation, I tell him that I have been overland across Europe, Asia and Australia before getting here, and that I think New Zealand is the most beautiful country of all. ‘We know’, he says. ‘Shame about the people who live here though’, I respond in jest. New Zealanders are actually a very friendly bunch. Except for the ones who aren’t. But as the New Zealander I talked to at the Morris Minor campsite we stayed at the night before going to Milford Sound said, there are arseholes everywhere. Unlike one or two countries I have been to, nobody here has threatened to kill me. Yet.
The girls come back thrilled with their helicopter experience and, more so, the walk over the glacier and through its ice caves and crevices.
After our respective adventures, we move along up the west coast, stopping to camp at the DoC site near Hokitika. This is an old mining area, and some fellow campers are fossicking for gold in the nearby stream. They are friendly enough, but when we ask if they have found anything, the response is poker faced silence.
In the evening, there are some more of what I had thought were Kiwis (the birds) wandering around us. They look like a good meal, and are flightless easy prey too, so it is not a surprise to learn that they are endangered in this hunting friendly land, despite them being the national bird. However, I am told that what I see are probably Wekas / woodhens, a similar looking bird with a smaller beak.
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| whether there be gold, I'm not sayin' |
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