New Zealand Travels (April 3rd, 2003) Siberian Experience

We took a fairly quiet trip down from Franz Josef to Makarora. To call this place a one horse town would be to grossly overestimate the local population. Put it this way, when the Magic Bus rolls into town the population doubles. This is no disrespect to the locals who are lovely people, but I wouldn’t want to spend more than one night there. Having said that, I had a fine old time doing the Siberian Experience, followed by a night of serious beers.

So what is the Siberian Experience? Well, dear reader, sit back and relax while I tell thee of a saga of near heroic proportions. Oh, wait, that’s for later.

The trip I went on involved a place flight, a walk and then a jet boat ride home. The place was a trusty old Cessna. Nice and light so that the smallest puff of wind would shunt her sideways, or down. And, let’s face it, a mountainous valley like those that surround good old Makarora is full of turbulence. So we ducked and dived, weaved and wobbled and ended up shunting and shimmying before we finally swooped down in a 2G steep circle dropping 2000 feet in as many milliseconds. And then we gently touched down onto a little gravel strip in the middle of nowhere.

We got out of the plane, the pilot pointed vaguely across a shallow river saying "Go that way, the boat’ll be along to pick you up. Oh yeah, you need to cross the river." And he climbed back into the plane and took off.

There were a few people already waiting for us and they didn’t look too experienced at hill walking. So Chris and I adopted a sort of "We’re your guides, let’s go cross the river" attitude. Thank God for quick drying socks and my ever-present towel. Always know where your towel is, they say, and mine lives in a small net attached to my day sack. So I looked organised, at least.

The walk itself was pretty lightweight – especially after the glacier stuff earlier, so it wasn’t long before we arrived at the little jet boat jetty. In fact we were about an hour early and the sand flies must have thought that Christmas had come early. Fortunately, Mr Organised had learned from his experiences in Abel Tasman and always carried bug spray in his day sack. Not that it did much good – these little bastards were probably immune to the stuff having lived off DDT since birth.

Eventually the jet boat arrived and we shot off over the shallow water at a blistering pace. Flying over the rive in a jet boat is an experience like no other. The boat handles as if it is on fails, not on some dodgy meandering mountain stream. This is indeed fortunate, especially when you’re flying towards a very solid bank of rocks – sideways – only to be saved from crushing agony by a quick flick of the steering wheel and the 90 degree turn that instantly follows. This high speed snaking roller coaster ride from Hell went on for nearly an hour by which time my face was aching from laughing so much. And the wind chill probably contributed, too.

By the time we got back to the others we were at least a pint behind so it was hand to the pump to pour our own from our shared 50 litre barrel. Which shortly extended to 75, and then, after a bit of salesmanship from me, graduated to a full 100 litres of beer consumed during the evening. By about 30 people.

I didn’t roll in until 2am after spending the night being Guru, Musical Conductor, Financial Advisor, Business Analyst and Marketing Strategist. Not necessarily in that order. Funnily enough, the subject of Computer Programming never came up which bodes ill for that part of my life in the future, I feel. Time for me to execute a sharp change of career I do believe. Anyway, I had a brilliant night and I may have influenced one of the locals to start up a silver jewellery business. So look out world, Makarora is getting onto the map.