Funyakking

Got 2 weeks to cover this time, between recovering from my cold and some fairly ordinary weather haven't been out and about quite as much while I'm in Queenstown so didn't have much to say last week. I've had a fairly quiet time here compared to what most people usually get up to here, I've been exploring some of the trails, wandering along the lakeshore and up to the gondola. There's been a few real stand-out moments, firstly we got a snowfall down in town the other day, probably the last one we can expect for the season so I was glad to see that. I did get caught a bit off-guard by it though, was up in town at the time and didn't have my longjohns or any proper waterproof clothes on. Seeing as it started with a little bit of hail and it's a fair walk back to my hostel I had to wait in town for it to finish, although I spent it in Starbucks with a hot chocolate, reading a book so I somehow managed to endure that. As soon it was over though it was back to the hostel for my longjohns and then back out to enjoy the snow.



The next day was a weird one, pretty much the whole day there were occasional snowfalls, but never enough to stay around for long, and also something which may have been hail but which I thought of more as granular rain as it wasn't big enough to hurt (although it did sting if the wind got behind it). It might have been sleet, I've never been exactly sure what that involves. Apparently this was only about the second snowfall in town in months so I was pretty lucky to catch it.

My luck with the weather got even better after that, as the next day I went on a trip around the lake to the Dart River. It was an incredible day, perfect weather, lots of snow on the mountains - we went on a one hour jetboat trip up the river from Glenorchy, then they dropped us off and we travelled back in these inflatable canoes they call Funyaks (I'm guessing because they're more fun than regular canoes). Being on my own I got to go with one of the guides, which made my day really easy as he could steer with just the current most of the time and I hardly ever had to paddle. So being essentially ballast, I could just sit there and take in the view, taking the occasional picture, and watch everyone else spin and narrowly avoid rocks and so on. On the down side, I didn't actually learn much about how to steer a canoe myself which is a shame as I'd love to do it again sometime. In fact looking at the pictures that night I was ready to go back out there again the next day.



Mind you I did get to man one on my own when I gave one of the guides a hand at lunch to move some of them downstream, but because I hadn't had a chance to actually try it beforehand it wasn't exactly a stunning display on my part. Nothing disastrous, I just ran aground once (well, only slightly, it was really shallow and I could push off again) and didn't go very straight exactly but I laneded it safely in the end. And by landed I mean, got the canoe close enough to the guide for him to grab it and drag it ashore (look, there were more rocks and they spun the canoe just as I was coming in, he was just saving me an extra walk to the lunch spot, I'm perfectly confident I would have landed at some point before I reached the actual ocean).



So there you go, no nudity this time, about the best I can do is a picture of me in my wetsuit, which didn't fit well enough to be even slightly revealing but it will have to do.