Riding with Skip

We were picked up by a taxi arranged by Real Journeys, our hosts for our overnight trip to Millford Sound, from Browns Boutique Hotel, and taken down to their main office in Queenstown. The taxi had already picked up a couple who came from Greenwich Village, New Youk. We squashed in and were soon down in Queenstown. Not soon after our coach arrived and we were invited to leave our bags at the rear of the coach and find seats on the coach. We were soon off by way of a couple of further stops to pickup others who were joining the trip.

As we left Queenstown along the side of Lake Wakatipu the driver introduced himself as Skip, went over the safety rules of travelling on the bus and told us what he would be doing to make our journey of 8 hours pass in the best way for us. I can not recall what he said but it soon became clear that we had not so much a driver as a very well informed teacher/commentator with a very drole sense of humour.

Skip was, I would say, in his 30s and an Australian from the north beaches of New South Wales who had arrived over in New Zealand to play footie which somehow now seems that I misheard. It doesn’t really matter though because the outcome of whatever he was doing was that he broke his leg, had time to get to know New Zealand and I think began to find the adrenalin loaded life of the South Island to his liking. From talking with him and listening to his commentaries it seemed that he had tried all the things New Zealand had to offer and was continuing to do so on a regular basis. I think he structured his life around these activities so for instance could be found in the winter season driving tourists up to the ski fields so that he could get in some snow boarding in between trips.

Over the years he had clearly come to like New Zealand and had become a fairly hard line conservationist. He was passionately against any form of development in Fiordland and was delighted that now it was a world heritage site this meant that the area was fully protected. In many places on the journey we could see miles of fields with a beautiful carpet of lupins which to Skip were a “noxious weed” since they were an imported arrival from abroad.

Skip would give us a commentary on everything that was interesting that we “did travel’ through. I digress here to explain “did travel”. Skip had a most delightful way of phrasing something in the past, he would use the verb “to do” to express the past tense. For example he would say, “ he did change his opinion” or “they did arrive in town”. This manner of speaking seemed to give a certain preciseness and colour to all he said, and in doing so made his commentary more colourful and interesting.

Skip's fund of knowledge was immense and covered , history, politics, conservation, flora, fauna, geology, etc etc. His explanations for what we were seeing and indeed sometimes what we were not seeing were detailed but never ever boring. He could make the 20 or so, was it, ice ages seem exciting and important to what we were looking at. He could show us that mans interference in nature has, certainly in New Zealand’s case, not always been to New Zealand's advantage. Hence his view that lupins are a noxious weed, that the 8o million or so possums are blight and should be culled asap and that movements such as those who speak out against the use of all fur for clothing are wrong.

We would stop frequently so that we could see and inspect something of interest or just so we could get good photographs, when incidentally Skip turned into a photographer. We stopped to see a steam train, mirror pools, kias, pristine pastures, chasms, interesting wooden bridges and of course for bio breaks and for lunch. The views and countryside along the way were fantastic. We learnt the history of the making of the Millford Road and the Homer Tunnel.

The eight hour journey past in a flash and before we knew we were in Millford Sound boarding our boats. Skip had “magiced” away the time in the most interesting of ways.

The key now was could this trick be performed on the way back, after all Skip had given us exhaustive explanations on the way down. Somehow, Skip managed it. We did one or two photo stops and we got some further explanations but Skip announced that he would not be doing so much commentating on the way back as he knew we wanted to sleep. We duly obliged went to sleep and woke up back in Queenstown, well it seemed like that.

When you get down to it the overnight Millford Sound trip takes 32 hours, of which 16 hours is spent on the coach but all daylight hours, and 16 hours is spent on the boat 8 hours of which is spent asleep. It follows that the success of the trip is not just about the beauty of Millford Sound but is at least equally about the coach journey. This journey could so easily ruin the whole experience but Skip not only avoids this but actually enhances the trip to the point that I personally will remember the coach trip at least as fondly as Millford Sound and maybe more and all down to the professionalism of Skip.

www.realjourneys.co.nz