The time is currently 1:36am. I am writing to you from the overnight area of the Christchurch airport where Josh, Mikey and I are spending our last night in New Zealand. Doesn't get much more tragic than that my friends. Our flight leaves at 8am tomorrow so we are only just beginning the all night battle at the airport. Josh and Mike have of course already found some cute girls to flirt with and I have already managed to fall asleep only to be awakened by airport security telling me to be more vigilant with my bag watching.
Anyways on to the happier stuff, because yes, thankfully things did get better post Queenstown depression.
Some of you have said my blog has lost some of its zest and enthusiasm as of late, so here's hoping this blog entertains you guys.
As a three man crew our remaining days on Queenstown became pretty routine... Go to the casino in the morning so the boys could bet on hockey, go to the beach which was rock, not sand (aka bad) , go back to the casino so the boys could collect their winnings from the hockey bets, proceed to watch mike march over to the roulette table where he would contemplate betting on 16, would end up betting on red and proceed to lose his winnings, usually in addition to an extra 5-10$. Josh was a little more cautious with his winnings but did occasionally follow the same misguided path. Other than that, we got to watch a Canadian street performer named Billions Cobra wiggle his body through a flaming tennis racket (pretty impressive), we watched some movies with hostel buddies, and got many 60 cent Mcdonalds cones for late night treats. We also played the Queenstown frolf course which was sickkkkk but embarrassingly I got my ass whopped, even by Mike.
Now I know what your guys are thinking: "What happened to these guys? Where's the action, where is that youthful irresponsibility that they possessed before their friends left?". To that I say be patient, we are slowly working our way back and it started in the lovely city of Dunedin, our next stop.
I have to admit, when the three of us were deciding where to spend our last days in New Zealand I was horribly stubborn. I wanted to go back to sunny, amazing Nelson, and that is all I wanted. I stomped, I huffed, I puffed, I scowled, but the boys resisted my temper tantrum and out ruled me, deciding to go to Dunedin. For those of you who don't know, Dunedin is a university town in the almost very south of New Zealand, and it just so happened that we rolled in just in time for the tail end of frosh week. The city was buzzin with kids running around and I realized pretty immediately that it was going to be awesome. That being said, our hostel was not at all awesome. The hostel owner was an overweight ginger woman well beyond her prime. She was grumpy and useless and she knew it. The hostel itself was small and it gave the impression that someone had rubbed mothballs all over it. The decorations hadn't been updated in years. On the walls hung creepy folky pictures of clowns, teddy bears and the like. She had also glued a blue string across the entire room like it was wall paper.. I'm not sure if that was ever in style but I can tell you it somehow terrified me. There was also a note, clearly attempting to be funny, saying all encounters with the hostel ghost should be reported to the ginger, and Mikey got quite scared when he claimed he heard the ghost on our first night.
Dunedin actually ended up being a really beautiful place. We saw the campus and it brought us all back to our glory days. Mike was especially nostalgic. On our way to campus we walked through student housing and it honestly reminded me of fanshawe student housing post homecoming/frosh/st patty's. The kiwis definitely know how to rage, I'll give them that. We also went shopping and checked out the worlds steepest road (pictures to follow) which was actually pretty fun. It took us 2 hours to get to the road and we were starting to get delirious but thankfully found it just in time! When we got to the top we met a group of American and Canadian students who were heaps of fun and we watched people drive up the hill and rip down it which was pretty scary at times. Scary fact: 2 people have died going down, one using a garbage bin to get down. We took some scenic pics and walked back through the botanical gardens (average) then headed home. The big social event of the 3 days there ended up being the Saturday. Our roommate, a German girl named Meike, introduced us to some of her friends, 2 Chilean hostel workers named Pablo also joined us along with 2 of our new German friends, Marie and aly and we hit the town. We ended up going to this underground bar (literally under the ground) and had an awesome night dancing. The boys were disappointed by the gender ratio but I think it was a welcome anomaly.
Just saying this for the purpose of saying it and it has no relevance, but the 383994th German that we met on this trip was a 19 year old standing at 6'9". I lie to you not. Josh and mike looked like they were midgets that this guy could crush.
Another exciting thing about Dunedin was that it was crawling with All Blacks and other pro rugby players because they had a game while we were there. We ended up catching up with a few that we met at the bar in Queenstown and had a nice chat. Pretty cool, pretty cool.
On Sunday morning we hopped on another inter city bus (makes me desperately miss the kiwi) and headed to our real final stop, Christchurch. For those of you who don't know, in 2011 the city was hit by an earthquake and it pretty much ruined the middle of the city. This makes for some pretty cool sites, but also severely limits what you can do there. Yesterday we had a pretty great time walking around the "red zone" and checking out the damage. It was really kind of eerie being in such a quiet and dead place when you knew what it used to be.
Once again we got stuck in a shotty hostel with an even more annoying owner, but these things are easily bearable for one night. Today we woke up and had to check out at 10am with no plan and no place to go other than the airport by 10pm. We ended up spending most of the day in search for any food other than McDonald's, and just as mcdonalds seems to ensure will happen, we failed. When we weren't eating, we were sponging free wifi wherever we could get it to help pass the time in the boring place that is Christchurch. The highlight of the day hands down was watching Mikey get pooped on by a seagull, but he really took it in stride. Props to him for that. At 9pm we hopped on a bus to the airport and didn't look back.
Despite ending this trip in one of the worst possible places, these 5 weeks were the best of my life. I never thought I could love another country so much but New Zealand has definitely won me over.
I also never expected to meet so many amazing friends, but I did. To commemorate our time here, Ive made a bit of a list of the bests and worsts of the trip...
Best 3 places: Wellington, Nelson and Queenstown
Worst 3 places: Kaiteriteri, Waitomo and Christchurch
Best day: Mount doom hike
Worst day: today in Christchurch
Best nights out: Wellington, poo bar and 1st night in Queenstown
Best bar: El Horno
Best dance partner: Karl
Best use of a staircase: Ryley
Best Canadian accent: Annie
Worst Canadian accent: Karl (wow you made the list twice!)
Best bus driver: Gary
Best way to spend 40$/second: Nevis Bungy
Worst way to spend 120$ in a day: Milford sound
Best hostel: tie between base taupo, nomads queenstown and prince Al's in Nelson
Worst hostel: base Wellington
Best beach: cathedral cove by hot water beach
Worst beach: Queenstown rock pit
Best view: mount Victoria in Wellington
Best cook: tie between Jess, karl and wild
Cutest couple: Karl and will (followed closely by Annie and Karan and then I guess by Jess and will)
Worst coordination: Lizzie but only just barely beating out Rishi due to the tumble down mount vic
Best roommates: the super 6
Best photographer: Wild
Best nickname: the ice man
Best restaurant: far badgerz in Queenstown
The person that everyone wants to be: Eoin
Best buddy: tie between Rishi, Lizzie, Will Wild, Annie, Jess, Laura, Slinger, Ryguy, Karl & Karan <3
New Zealand, I love you and I'll never forget you, but I've got a plane ticket to Sydney that's telling me we've got to go our separate ways. I will be back, but for now it's on to the land down under!
No comments:
Post a Comment