Stewart Island - Day 1

Okay so I'm finally getting around to post about my actual time in Stewart Island. We left early Saturday morning (the 19th) and drove out to Bluff - which is where we were to catch the Ferry over the strait to Stewart Island.

I slept most of the way (thankfully) even though Donald and Daniel had their road trip music faded to the back speakers and so it was quite loud. However, if I'm tired no amount of music can stop me from sleeping!

We got to Bluff and checked in quite early and then killed some time before getting onto the Ferry. After having stood in line for a looong time waiting for them to load the luggage onto the boat, we finally got on and chose the three middle seats at the very front of the ferry, where the skipper proceeded to announce that "it'll be quite a smooth ride with only metre and a half rolls or so". I was assuming this meant that the waves were "only" a metre and a half high. Yeah - wow. The ride was magnificent - I stood at the front of the boat (it's my place) holding on tightly from behind the glass, watching what I thought to be quite massive swells coming up on us - then we'd tip our nose up nice and high while we went up...and then after a slight pause, fell nose-down into the water. It was thrilling - I hardly left that spot at the boat even though I'm sure many other passengers would've wanted a piece of my view.

We got to the wharf at Stewart Island and got picked up by a guy who works for "Stewart Island Experience", which is owned by Real Journeys (the company that Rae works for; which is how we managed to get on this whole trip in the first place). He picked us up and took us on a bit of a tour around town before taking us back to his holiday home that he hires out to backpackers and tourists. We got to stay there for remarkably cheap!

Then he took us back down to the wharf because we were scheduled in for a "Semi Sub" trip...where we sit about 1 or 2 metres below the waterline in a boat with windows all over the place to check out the local marine life. It was interesting, though blurry. I got a few pictures but none really good enough to put up on the website - they'd be best shown in person so I can point out the smudge in the background which is supposed to be a fish. hehe

But you know what really grinds my gears (hehe)? When an old lady sits down beside you and anytime that there is something to see out YOUR side of the window, she stands up, puts both hands on your shoulders or one on your leg and throws all her weight on you just so she can stay balanced. Meanwhile, your neck is twisted and pressed up against the glass so hard that you seem to have lost your hips, as you can no longer feel them.

Anyways, after the little tour through the water, we got out and headed straight for the Stewart Island Experience Visitors Centre, where we were certain to get a couple of scooters for a really cheap price! So we each paid our share of money (I got stuck with the little moped that is part of last generation's scooters because they were all out of the new fandangled ones) and took off. Well, Daniel and Donald took off much faster than I did - partly from apprehension and "I'm getting too old for this" and partly from the fact that it was far more gutless than their crazy scooters.

So I ended up going shopping for stuff for tea (dinner) and then going on a little trek around to the beaches by the place we were staying at. I got sand in my eyes and mouth from the blowing wind on the long stretch of beach, but it was so thrilling to open it WIDE up to a MEAN 35 km's per hour! hehe yeah so like I said it wasn't as good as the others.

Donald and Daniel would, from time to time, zoom past me going at least 55-60 k's and they actually thought I was so slow just because I was a chicken. Then Daniel (being the gentleman he is) traded me scooters - even after I had fallen over on mine and took his crashing to the ground with me. He saw how crappy it was but still put up with it.

So mostly we just scooted around the whole place til about 3:00, then started heading back up to the house (a deadly trek up two long and steep hills). They decided to go for a walk looking for Paua on the rocks. It started REALLY raining on their way back and they got soaked to the bone. I decided that after that painful trek up the hills (my ankle wasn't agreeing with me), there was no way I was leaving that house until it was my last time ever leaving it. So we had tea and played Monopoly for 3 and a half hours - each of us getting extremely tense with eachother each time we started going broke.

Then I went to bed in my "Captains Quarters" (the master bedroom) and the boys slept on the lazyboy chairs so not to mess up beds that they would have to make in the morning.

Oh yeah and I forgot to mention...back when we were going nuts on our scooters and finally decided to stick together while we wandered, we ran into some drunken fratboys walking along the side of the beach road. The first time we passed them, they tried to convince each of us that something was wrong with our scooters (we passed them at about 3 second intervals each). The second time, Daniel wanted to annoy them so he decided to speed ahead and blare his little honker horn while coming straight for them (not close enough to be dangerous of course). Well the boys decided it would be fun after Daniel passed, to pretend to push one of their buddies in front of the next person to come - which was Donald on the little crappy scooter. Well since he and I were going relatively the same speed I was only about 10 feet behind him...and when one of the boys pushed his friend in front of Donald, he had to slam on the breaks and swerve...

Well he ended up swerving directly in front of me and I had VERY little time and room to react. I ended up half on the beach and almost up Donald's butt. We were so close to crashing and it would NOT have been pretty with me going (at full tilt) about 50 k's per hour with nothing between us and the road but a few layers of material.

I'll admit, I had to FORCE myself to keep riding giving them nothing but a verbal hiding because I knew that if I got off that scooter, someone was ending up with a blood nose (and they wouldn't even expect it was coming from a 5'2" chubby kid who can kick over 6 feet in the air). I was absolutely fuming and Donald felt so bad about it that he apologized as if it were his fault. Poor kid. Man I wanted to get those guys sooooo bad.

The end.