South Island - Part1

Mes chers amis,

L’inspiration me manquant et la plume fainéante, en gros atteint ldu syndrome de la page blanche  aigüe, je lègue pour quelques instants la lourde responsibilité à Joe, l’anglais avec qui je voyage depuis maintenant 6 semaines de vous faire partager de sa propre perspective un moment de notre road trip.

Cette part de mon récit sera donc intégralement  rédigée en anglais (mind you) et peut heurter la sensibilité de tout bon francophone qui se respecte,  extract from the highlights we have for the first week that we spend in the South Island

"Bonjour frogs hello a warm welcome from le roast beef. Well, Arnold has given me the privelidge to write on his soon-to-be world famous blog so I will do my best to maintain the high standards that im sure you have come to respect from the man himself. Hope you enjoy it.

 Well after a few uneventful days in a backpackers after the ferry over from Wellington we headed down the east coast and arrived in Kaikoura. It is a beautiful little seaside town set among a jaw-dropping background of snow-capped mountains- mountaians which would, unbeknown at the time, later be conquered by the ill-prepared and little known French and English backpackers »mountanears » . We spent the first few days trying, and failing, to catch some fish from the beach - ending up with a fair few dollars Worth of equipment being donated to the océan and a broken fishing rod.  Not being ones to be put off, and still driven by the now obsessive desire to catch that « premier poisson » we went to the fishing shop go tour rod fixed for free and recieved free béer from the guys in the shop for our troubles – things were looking up ! then later, i snapped the line, getting distracted by a mesmirizing sunset taking shape on the beach in front of our eyes. All was forgotten as we built a fire and watched the sun go down, how romantic, how french haha.

The next day we set off on our 3 days treck to hell , heaven and back. We were, of course so ridiculously unprepared, something that first hit me an hour after we left when we realised that we would have no toilet paper for the next few days and I ended up naked in the river going cave-man style – sweet-as. We spent the next 5 hours heading up river with no idea of where the hut for the night would be, or what time we ,ight finally reach it. At one point Arnold fell into the river and the only map we had ; which he had promised to « keep safe » ended up wet and unreadable – then it  got windy and started to rain, - we began to worry.  But fear not faithfull followers of Anrold, AKA « el gringo » AKA « peruvian sherpa/drug lord » we made it to the hut just as it was getting dark and ate our pasta with a plastic bottle- no cuttlery of course – and tried to get some sleep Inside the freezing cabin.

The next day was trop dificile mes amis ! We walked for 3 hours up the steepest track i have ever seen in my life only stopping to insult each other and think of how we were going to kill the woman who told us this would be a good route. By this time we were down to just half a litre of disgusting water from the hut and things were not looking good – it was exhausintg both mentaly and physicaly and although the sun was pounding down from the heavens it felt more like the fiery tourture one might come to imagine of hell. So yeah, we got there obviously, we ran out fo water but continued with our bottle of rhum and coke and reached the summit  of Mt Fyffe and were greeted by a stunning view.

 Going down was a lot easier , fuelled by the endorphines of success and the thought of a nice cold béer and a shower, we cruised back to the car, singing and shouting in a language unknown to either of us, we had done it."

Joe Campbell

Ascension du Mont Fyffe à 1600 mètres d'altitude

Coucher de soleil dans les Caitlins au sud du sud de l'île du sud

Seals, ou otaries aperçues dans les caitlins

Plage de Papatowai où l'océan emportera un appareil electronique m'appartenant

Coming next : Comment nous rencontrons Greg, un polonais legen-dary qui voyage depuis 20 mois à travers le monde, et qui va nous accompganer pour une autre randonnée de 3 jours "Te kepler track" classé comme Great walk, 65 Km, d'une intensité assez extrême affrontant les trombes d'eau et le froid.

C U

Comments

[Jérémy]

Good to hear some english humour. Joe, you make this post sound like a Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch.

[Katrin]

Easy reading and most fun. So please keep on writing in english every once in a while so everyone can enjoy :))) But it is an adventure, good luck to you there!