Copyright ©
Carey Evans.
Last modified: Wed, 11 February 2004.
Not all of my holiday is here yet. I’ll add it as I type it in. The details about my trip away were entered two months after the trip, based on a notebook and my memory, so the use of past tense is different to the other entries on my diary.
Happy New Year, 2001! Time for another update, before I forget all the details.
First up, it looks like I’ll have to go through and fix all the pages on this website. I’ve been getting the quotation marks wrong all this time, according to this summary. The worst part is that 4Suite doesn’t have any easy way to output “, for example, unless I move to UTF-8 output.
In other news, I’ve put a few photos up on Yahoo’s photo album pages (though they’re borken as I write this). Currently there’s landscape pictures, and pictures of me. I’ve bought a new camera with a timer function, so soon there should be landscape pictures featuring me. Still, check it out if you’re curious about what the author looks like.
For future reference, here’s what I got for Christmas from my family last year, as far as I can remember now. From my brother Tim, I got a large Van Gogh print, and I gave him some coasters based on another Van Gogh print, of sunflowers, as well as an obnoxiously bright yellow set of plastic tumblers and a jug.
My parents got me a huge cookbook, a lemon juicer, and a wine rack. In return, I bought Dad a book about 4WD tracks in the South Island, and Mum a trowel and trowel-like fork thing. I also bought my grandparents a small patio rose.
Today is the second day of the first real holidays I’ve had since November 1999. This is good, though the length of time without holidays is not.
Going on past experience, this should mean I’ll have the time to keep this page more up to date, as well as a bit more interesting stuff to write about. Given that, I suppose I should have done something yesterday and today to talk about here, right?
Well, no, it doesn’t look like it. I got a bit done yesterday, mostly doing a bit of shopping, getting prepared for go awaying on holiday. I haven’t bought much yet — some insect repellant, and Stingose in case that doesn’t work, and some extra batteries.
Of more interest, I went down to the visitors’ centre in the square and picked up a glossy brochure about the Coast. This has a nice summary of some things to do, as well as a nice big map. This should go well with the road map I bought last year, which includes a useful travelling times and distances page.
As for today, I’ve done even less. I slept in late, then haven’t done anything for the rest of the day, apart from feeding the ducks some stale bread earlier.
Maybe I’ll do something more interesting tomorrow.
It took me a while longer to get going on Wednesday morning than I’d planned. I had to finish packing and get everything down to the car, then realise after I’d left that I’d forgotten my contact lenses, then realise I had very little money and find a cash machine, and finally drive past my parents’ house to pick up some leftover sandwiches to have for lunch. Then I was ready to head for the West Coast, and at least my Mum and Dad’s house is in the northwest of Christchurch, so it’s in the right direction.
The first place I stopped on the way over was in Darfield, with a slightly plausible excuse for surprising Rebecca at work. (There should probably be more about her somewhere on these pages, but for now, she’s mainly responsible for the gap in diary entries between early and late 2000.)
After she shooed me away, I continued on to Klondike Corner. This was the first time for ages I’d driven on any kind of hills, apart from up on the Port Hills a couple of times, and it taught me a few things about hill driving that prepared me for later on my journey:
You can’t go up a steep hill in fourth gear.
When the sign says 35 km/h, it doesn’t mean 60.
It takes a lot longer than half an hour to go 50 km, even when the speed limit is 100 km/h.
And truck drivers that wave you past on uphill stretches of road are some of the most wonderful people in the world!
I also learnt, while eating lunch at Klondike Corner, that an insect repellent based on DEET does work on sandflies. I spread it on my arms, and they only bit me on the neck.
I reached Hokitika at about 16:30, so it’s just as well I hadn’t decided to try to drive directly to the Franz Josef glacier township. Although I’d packed a small tent, I changed my mind about camping after getting to Hokitika, so instead I got a very small, plain cabin. For $18, I got one double bed, one table attached to the wall, one single-bar heater, one light bulb, two hooks and two chairs.
After wandering around most of the Hokitika town centre, I decided to eat at a place called Trappers. It’s a West Coast themed restaurant, with antlers and old saws hanging from the walls, and a stuffed possum in one top corner.
It seems that this was a good decision, since the thar in boysenberry sauce was cooked just right. The desert was very nice too, though I guess it’s a little bit harder to make a chocolate cake I won’t like. And even including the two Monteith’s beers, the meal was still quite a reasonable price.
After all the driving on Wednesday, and without even taking part in any of the activities, I was tired enough that after watching the sunset at about 21:00 I just went to bed, without having to wonder what I’d do for the rest of the evening.