July 17, 2019
My apologies for so little blogging notes today. Very difficult to text or voice-to-text through climbing and what do I say? "Great climb? Awesome scenery? Great people?" Yup to all that. Here's the pictures mostly. 😊
Was up at 6:30. Dawdled on internet & chatting with friends until 8. Breakfast was leftover salmon, bread, & tea. Getting a lot more bread on this trip than I usually eat at home.
9:45 Took my luggage to the meeting site for the climbing tour. Says they have snacks & equipment for us, but I have my leftover lamb & bread. Not a true baguette, but it's got a nice hard crust. Wasn't sure what I was supposed to do with my luggage during this time so brought it instead of leaving it at the Hotel. I knew the tour was supposed to get back in plenty of time for my ride to Queenstown, but wasn't sure if it would be enough time to get back to the hotel and down to the bus stop.
Heh… Apparently they have speed traps in every country. 🤣
Waterfalls Climb - https://www.wildwire.co.nz/climbs/go-wild/
Lovely drive out to the falls. Had to drive through the fields with cattle & deer to get to the climb.
Tour guide is named Adam. (Say "Hi, Adam!") Quiet group this morning… Small group - 5 of us plus Adam. Woops! Correction.... turned into a group of 4. That makes 3 who dropped the tour this morning. Bummer for them!
Mark was originally going to be with our group today. They are required to have 1 person for every 4 people and with the 5 people it required one more an added trainer. Was sorry he couldn't join us - hit it off talking with him about the Dark Crystal's new prequil on Amazon. (this was follow up to his mention that Amazon is making a Hobbit Prequil also.... omg.... New Zealand is going to just get officially renamed "Hobbitland") Sorry Mark! (that's him in the orange)
So apparently this method was originally used in a range of mountains called the Dolomites. I thought that was just a type of rock. D'ow! Here's a picture of how the carabeners work with this method. There are three attached to the body - Two on short bungees (called "Crab Claws") and one on a shock absorber called a "Shorty" due to the short rope attachment. It is really an excellent method for moving laterally across a rock face with a larger number of people.
Must put the crab craws on the steel cable in opposing positions. 1. latch shorty to bar, 2. move over both crab claws, 3. release shorty, 4. keep going -- pretty easy
Adam was explaining that the long climb here is the Highest Via Ferrata waterfall climb in world. Pretty awesome. I wish I had signed up for the long climb. The short climb was fun, but it was just NOT ENOUGH!!!
Ebony was my climbing partner on falls climb. We officially didn't have partners, but we climbed together & took pictures for each other. She and her partner (who remained behind) are from Sydney, Aus. They'll be over here for about the same length of time as I'll be. Only a 3 hour flight for them, though. Wish we had it that easy!!! 🤣🤣
VIDEO LINK - me crossing bridge
Top of our climb - there's 200% more climbing distance to get to the very top point. I totally would have been all over that if I didn't have a bus ride waiting and others in the group. I think Adam would have been up for it though!
Shadows of our movement across the bridge. I really liked the view.
I expect to have more pictures/video to share - Ebony will be putting hers in the shared Google folder when she can, but they're not obsessive over here about Google Drive & Gmail the way we are in the states. I don't think they're used to being in the cloud yet. Of course... with the crummy wifi I've had today at the hotel, I totally get that.
Rocks! Here are pictures of some of the Schist in the mountain we were climbing. Schist is a foliated metamorphic rock - so you can see the gorgeous banding of quartz between the darker bands of Hornblende. 
FROM THE TOP OF THE CLIMB
Eating my lamb sandwich for lunch - bunch of little house wrens feeding on my crumbs. I like them - my little friends. 😍
Bus ride on the way back stopped at a fruit stand -- lots of dried fruit and some fresh. But this was the funniest thing to me. Yams! Probably real Yams, but I've never seen them. I know we usually call Sweet Potatoes and Yams the same thing in the US, but I always thought we had yams and the sweet potatoes were some foreign substance.
Article 1: Yams vs. Sweet Potatoes
Article 2: New Zealand Yams - NOT the same
QUEENSTOWN!!!
Rode bus for two hours to get to Queenstown. Nice Hotel. Also ate the lamb and bread for dinner here. Not happy about the internet service at hotel - keeps dropping out so I put my phone on a hotspot to complete the blog. 
Actually.... wow... I didn't do badly at filling in all the gaps from today. Good thing I had pictures to follow! 😻
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