Hotel Whataroa – part 1
(as always: first links to pictures: from the hotel (click me) and from the skydive (click me))
Oh dear – where am I supposed to start? For 6 days I’ve been stuck here somewhere in the middle of nowhere in the run-down accommodation ever – and it’s just great! Milford Sounds? Mount Cook? Pancake rocks? Fjordland? Lake Wanaka? Abel Tasman? Marlborough Sounds? Boring stuff! It’s not about the places, it’s the people you meet! 😀
Well, to be honest, the surroundings here are anything but boring and unspectacular – having the Franz Josef glacier right in front of my nose, enjoying the best view of the stars and the Milky Way at night and experiencing untouched nature isn’t the worst thing that could happen to me…and originally the idea of my trip wasn’t to tick as many „must-sees“ as possible, but to spend as much time as possible with the locals here and to get to know their attitude to life and absorb it. That’s exactly what happened to me now – purely by chance. Chance is a really great thing, it automatically seems to steer me in the right direction. At least for most of the time. 😉
The stories of the last 6 days are enough for a book. Starting with the way I ended up here in the first place. I had booked a flight over the glaciers and as I already wrote, on the way here there was a small landslide – a „slip“ – which made the only road leading here to the glacier completely impassable for almost 3 days; I had heard this from other travellers before, so I was prepared to wait a good hour before the „slip“, because after the full closure the road was only opened for 10 minutes every full hour. A great window of time to look for a place to stay. Which I found very quickly – I planned to stay at as little tourist place as possible and in the Campermate app I saw the „Hotel Whataroa“, located 30 minutes before the Franz Josef glacier. The comments were like „Don’t go there! The owner sends you to the public toilets at night and in the morning“ or „This is a ghost town! No people, no light, nothing“ or „5$ for a shower, 13$ for a tent but no water, no toilets“ – that was 2017.
For the last two days there were two new comments: „The hotel is being renovated by a super nice woman…ok, it’s not perfect, but you can play billiards and there’s fresh milk from the owner’s cows“ and „Such a cute old hotel. Hot showers and toilets work! The owner is sooo lovable and friendly. Give her a chance to do something with the hotel! But be careful: she is the best billiard player ever!“ So of course I had to go directly there 😛
When I got there, nobody was there and I was like, „Oh, my God, what a dump!“ As luck would have it, Katrina, another traveller from the Czech Republic, arrived at the same time. We inspected the hotel together – in New Zealand there are castles, but nobody uses them!
So we went through the hallway, the kitchen, the dining/living room, the bedrooms and the bar and with every step the jaw fell further down – we looked at each other and couldn’t believe that this was a hotel that was actually open. At times we burst out laughing and felt like we were on another planet. Somehow looked up a bit more for an abandoned hotel, where horror movies are shot or something…but somehow still very charming! 😀
After we had a relaxed chat for about two hours on one of the benches in the „garden“, the owner Madeleine called „Mads“ suddenly appeared – was it already clear to me at that time that I would not only spend one night there, but the rest of my valuable time here in New Zealand? 😛 I don’t know…
Anyway, the three of us had a great evening, first we had curry, then we played billiards and enjoyed the music from the jukebox – I think we went to bed around 3 o’clock, actually forced by caring Mads, because my sightseeing flight was waiting for me the next morning and I should have slept well for it. „What the hell Tobi! It’s already 2 AM! C’mon! Go get some sleep or you will either miss your flight tomorrow or at least not be able to enjoy it properly!“ – and actually I wanted to pack my clothes the next morning and drive directly south after the flight, but then everything changed. Somehow I couldn’t find my glasses in the morning. I thought it was at the billiard table in the locked bar – at least I thought that the bar was locked, which surprised me, but apparently I was still too drowsy…afterwards it turned out of course that neither the bar was locked, nor that my glasses were in the bar…I had put Katrina a note with the info about my glasses under the door and that I would probably come back.
Well – despite everything 😉 it was „nevertheless“ great to see the glaciers from above in perfect weather! Amazing panorama, megacool and very interesting, because the pilot provided us with a lot of information about the mountains, lakes etc.! 🙂 Besides the meeting point for the flight at the airfield I also saw the hangar for parachuting / skydiving and that of course gave me an idea…;-)
Anyway, the pilot said to me on the tarmac after landing: „You were Tobi, right? You are missing your glasses, isn’t it? Mads found them!“. And me „Pardon?! How the hell do you know?!“ – he had already received the information about my glasses during the flight, because Mads had called the office in the meantime, after she had found my glasses in my room…sweet! 🙂
When I was back at the hotel and talked to Katrina about the great flight experience and dropped the sentence that I might still have a parachute jump „on it“, Mads whirled around us and did what she always does: on the one hand, to do everything at the same time without any obvious plan, on the other hand, to come up with some surprising plans. Suddenly she came up to us and said: „Hey! Katrina, I organized a helicopter flight for you! Tobi, the guys from skydiving still have a place available – how about that? But you have to decide quickly, in about two hours it’s going to start…“ – Uhhhh, okay?! – we couldn’t refuse the offer and barely three hours later Katrina had landed on the glacier with the heli while I had fallen out of the plane – pictures of the jump can be found here (click me).
To be continued…