A Bender in Queenstown

The best thing is as it was St. Patrick’s Day hundreds of optimistic Oirish punters would have backed them

Another day, another country, I said Farwell to the land of the long white cloud and returned to Australia but not for long, tomorrow I’m off to the land of smiles and ladies with adams apples, yep Thailand, for the concluding part of my jolly up. As much as I will miss Australasia I will not miss the hostels and some of the people I have been sharing with.

In my last dorm in Queenstown the cleaning lady actually came in with a camera one day to take pictures of our dorm, claiming it was without doubt the messiest room she had ever had the privilege to tidy. The room stunk of sweaty socks and any innocent traveler who happened upon our dorm was certainly entitled to think that we were holding some kind of ‘dirty protest’. The bizarre thing was out of the eight occupants six were women!

Things changed quite dramatically upon my arrival in Sydney though, I have ended up in a dorm with 5 blokes, a mixture of German and Swiss and they are the absolute complete opposite to the Queenstown gang, so opposite I’m starting to wonder if their not, you know….
They all wear white belts which makes me suspicious, they constantly do press ups sit ups and squat thrusts and by Jove men’s grooming has changed since I was a teenager (quite a while I’ll grant you).
I awoke today for example to witness 3 of them staring at themselves in the mirror; nothing else, just staring at themselves. They could only be looking at their faces because although the mirror was a full length job their view would have been obscured by the amount of men’s grooming accessories on the table. The only other place I have seen such an amount was in the Boots superstore on Oxford Street!


They all look like Bruno!


Back to my last week in New Zealand and a funny one it was too. First off if you are a regular reader you will remember the bungee story I repeated in my last dispatch, about the guys that give you an extra rush just as you are about to leap. I happily relayed this to my roomies and all of them looked at me like I was some soon of idiot and explained it happens all the time; they then relayed me a story I don’t think I have stopped thinking about since, its so sick its hilarious.
Apparently the operators at a bungee in South Africa decided to add to the fun of a young woman’s first jump with one of them shouting ‘Wait!’ just as she’s about to leap. Now think about it for a second, what you would do in this situation. Well that’s exactly what she did, she grabbed the nearest thing to her to stop herself, you guessed it, the unfortunate bloke who shouted wait and no he didn’t have any safety gear on. The good news (even though he died) was that the girl survived, just imagine the photo!

The Kiwi’s have a great sense of humour I have discovered. The two rascals who terrorize punters at the Nevis Bungee are not a patch on the bloke/blokesses who work for the road signs department. I say this as last week I was driving to Wanaka and decided to take the mountain route which involved navigating my way up a zig zagging road with no crash barriers, no road markings and at an incline of approx 80 degrees, in other words fucking scary.
Now there are a million road signs you would expect to see on such a journey, the only one I saw was about halfway up, it said, ‘towing not recommended’.
I was laughing so much I nearly careered over the edge but what a way to go, I bet I wouldn’t be the first.

I received an email from my Mother (happy birthday btw) last week saying how much she was enjoying following up on the places I had written about but that she could find out much info about Mangamuka Bridge, having thought about it there is only one way to find it from Ireland and that is with the wonderful tool that is Google earth.

http://earth.google.com/

then download it onto your desktop. It does take a while but it’s the most addictive tool for checking places out.

Whilst I’m on the subject of the earth I also went to the exhibition of Yann Arthurs –Bertrand, if you don’t know about this bloke or his works follow this link

http://www.yannarthusbertrand.com/index_new.htm

to see the most amazing pictures of the planet, plus its all done for a good cause, saving the planet so we can forgive him that’s he’s French.
Both these tools will probably be great ways of seeing Milford Sound, though of course the best way is to hire a car and make the 5 hour journey in 3 hours and then buy a ticket on a sightseeing ferry. I could go on and on about it but its easier if you look at the pictures.


Plenty of the ‘Lords of the Rings’ \Trilogy were shot here

If you like waterfalls that are higher then Niagara falls this is your place.

All the greenery and sounds fired up my Celtic blood which was just as well as the following day was March 17th, a day one or two of us have been known to celebrate. It wasn’t the only big celebration this week either, go to Google and enter march 14th, or click this link

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=march+14th&meta=

oh yes Ladies its our special day, you have valentines, now its our turn, I hope you all celebrated chaps the way I did, a steak dinner and errrrr an early night ;-)

Back to the 17th and I decided to buy myself a new top, a green one, for the days festivities. I entered a trendy looking place with 50%off stickers all over the place and thought I would impress the assistant with my street talk

Me: Fo shizzle, my nizzle, bizzle, dizzle some threads my sis, word up street, yo, u down wit dat!

Assistant: Certainly sir, what size?

Me: Err Fat please.

New top on I was ready to rock.

More Milford Pics

Actually that reminds me as a quick aside, no messing about over in NZ if your caught having a lash in the street, no fines, no jail time, oh no, guess what they do? They make the offender clean it up with his tee-shirt and seeing as they carry guns I doubt anyone is stupid enough not to comply, now that is quality justice in my opinion.

Back To the 17th and my good friend the Swan has a few rules that have made him the man he is and rules which I have been trying to follow;

Paul he would say, never back odds on away, water is your friend, you can’t get drunk on Guinness. Well I proved rule no.3 incorrect in sensational style on Saturday night. I went out strangely with a couple of American chaps who were sensationally funny and great company even though the afternoon started a little unhappily for me when one of them asked my age, 34 I replied, “Dude, you should be in a museum or something” he replied, after that I pushed my passport a little deeper into my pocket.

We began with Guinness, middled with Guinness and ended with Guinness with a few Guinness shots in between. To be fair to Queenstown the whole place was decked out in green and partied like they were all born in Dublin.

For a while we hooked up with 2 Japanese couples who couldn’t speak a word of English, I met them whilst they were trying to get served at the bar and naturally the English barmaid just kept raising her voice to make herself understood until I intervened. They all managed to get a pint and all drank it down without the little need of letting it settle.

We all kicked onto the world bar which was some experience even for a hardened nocturnal animal like myself and then left there to do some impromptu busking with some bloke playing the bagpipes (yeah I know but the Japanese assumed they were Irish) and then I cant remember.

I do remember the hangover the next day and the shock of watching a replay of Ireland beating Pakistan in the world cup, marvelous stuff.

I have been doing a little youtube watching lately and must link a couple of excellent things I spotted this week. Firstly that Inter Milan Valencia punch up. The thing that will disappoint any Inter supporter is the 3 missed tackles after that punch; I mean the blokes in a shell suit carrying a towel and he’s a defender yet he evades 3 lunges, count em

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHtDTqqHmaA

And to conclude the finest clip comic relief has ever done, if you don’t give money after this you never will, Ricky Gervais we salute you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-ia__1d_rM

Adios Land of the Long White Cloud, final shot of Milford