This seal's been out too late clubbing

Oh snap! I did not just say that.

Land of the crayfish

Because I don't particularly like getting wet early in the morning, and because dolphins are assholes. I was not one of the people who opted to go swim with the dolphins. This ultimately proved to be the better choice because there was apparently quite a bit of chundering going on in the boat, and there was a scheduling screw up, so they all ended up holding up the bus for an hour or two and missing out on lunch.
Haha dolphin lovers, haha.

Moving on, what I did do that day was not quite so different. I went to watch another marine mammal who had not quite progressed as far along the evolutionary trail as dolphins. Yes I went to go get amazingly close to these cute, adorable, fluffy, vicious little fucks known as seals. I was smart enough to utilize the zoom function on my camera, but not everyone was, which gave me the pleasure of watching someone run like hell from this great floppy barking beast, and then observe in amusement as they returned, now comically cautious, to retrieve the stuffed animal that they'd dropped (for the record, the stuffed animal was our tour groups mascot named "blackie", after the all blacks, being that he was shaped like a rugby ball and had a silver fern on his back)

Well we spent a little longer on the beach than we meant to, so when the group of people I was with decided that they were going to have subway for lunch (honestly, why do they always have a specific place in mind? It's more trouble than it's worth, just find a nice place, sit down and eat!) we ended up walking 4km to the nearest one and back, resulting in us having to inhale our food and rush back to the pickup point on an overly full stomach (not pleasant).
Not that it actually mattered, because like I said before, the dolphin swim people held up the bus for over an hour, so we were left sitting there, cramped and annoyed. I amused myself by playing with a bee who had been crawling around on [another tour groups] bus driver's back. Turned out the thing was dying and couldn't even fly, so I just stuck in on the back of my wrist, watched it crawl around, and freaked people out with it until our bus finally came, at which point I left it on a bush (where, I've got to be honest, it was probably a sitting duck for a bird to eat it. Meh, circle of life)
Settled myself down for a good long busride then we had to stop anyway for the dolphin swimmers to get their lunch, so while others took the chance to preemptively stretch their legs (like we hadn't been standing around waiting enough) I went and finished my book.
Now with nothing better to do I could only watch the beautiful south island scenery roll by as we made our way to Motueka and our next accommodation.
There we were greeted with another group on the same tour (just one day ahead of us, we stayed two nights at that place). We tossed around a rugby ball until a dinner of nachos, after which we were treated with an activity.
The boys (of both tour groups) were sent outside while the girls were told what was happening. There was suddenly loud cheering from inside. One of the boys from the other group commented, "Oh, this is gonna be good"
Me:"The hell do you mean 'this is gonna be good', are you stupid? If the girls are cheering this can only be very very bad."
Turns out I was right. Of course it wasn't really all that satisfying to say "I told you so" when our task was to dress up as girls and put on a fashion show.
Yeah you heard me. Honestly I'm surprised pictures haven't been put up on facebook by now, but I don't have them, so don't even bother asking.
At the very least the group of girls in charge of "decorating" me actually dressed me like a girl, rather than a slut, which was the unfortunate (and stab-your-eyes-out unseemly) fate of most of the guys.
After that we all retreated to our rooms like whipped dogs with their tail between their legs to get changed and wash off the makeup (I only had eyeshadow, other guys had it much worse), but still, girls have chemicals and stuff to get this shit off. To hell with science and their goddamn water resistant shit, I had to rub eyelid skin off to get rid of it. Eyelid skin! Do you know how unconfortable that is?

Christchurch

First day of the trip proper, and people are already into the whole “get to know you phase” where one asks where you’re from, your name, your age, then promptly forgets it all, only to be forced into the circumstance where they need to ask you again. We were driven up to Christchurch proper and shown around (still on the bus) so we could get an idea of where to head to for lunch, and where to meet the bus afterwards. Eventually they took us to the laser tag place, which was to be our main activity for that day. We had to split into two groups because the arena wasn’t big enough for all of us. I was in the second group so like any productive group of teenagers we stood around outside talking about nothing in particular.

When it was finally our turn to go I was pleasantly surprised to find the guns were actually pretty decent (I’ve always hated the guns at laser tag places. Too small, too bulky, horrible firing, there’s always something wrong with them). They were well sized to be wieldable in either one or two hands without too much trouble, and they offered you the option of switching between a long distance “rifle” laser, or a wide spread (but short range) “shotgun” blast.

Our team ended up winning, because despite the fact that the other team had the best players, they also had a lot more of the worst, plus one girl whose gun didn’t work but whose vest did (an unfortunate combination that ended in something around negative 600 points)

I was ranked second best on my team, so I can’t really complain.

Anyhoots, after that we were sent off to find lunch for ourselves, and although I would have been perfectly happy to stop at one of the many food courts (actually only one, but our group got lost and ended up walking past it about three times), the people in my group insisted on finding a “FoodWorld” (a supermarket chain over here). After a few botched directions we actually found one, so I finally got to consume something.

After that the guys were pretty much dragged along after the girls from department store to department store (we had hours until the bus left, what were we supposed to do?) until we finally reached the cathedral square.

Now Christchurch, believe it or not, has this really big church that you can go inside and look around. It’s not quite “European cathedral” big, but it’s big enough. I managed to tactfully avoid it last time I was down there, but this time there was no stopping it (damn you kenophobia, damn you to hell).

After that little adventure we gathered onto the bus and took off to our next destination, Kiakoura (which literally means “crayfish, food”. Maori get real creative with their names). We unloaded our junk from the bus and made to our rooms. I was originally in room “blue duck” with a few other people until Vince (France) decided he didn’t want to be in room 8 (there wasn’t really a sensible numbering system at this place) all by himself, and switched out with me. So I ended up getting my own room.

Most of the group hung out in the hot tub (which was way too small for all of us) until my group “the chickens” had to go upstairs and help cook dinner, which in all it’s cannibalistic ironic glory, happened to be chicken and couscous. (No one, not even the tour director knew what the hell couscous was, so I had to explain it)

Later, we decided to chill in the sauna for a while, but we got kicked out because apparently someone had reserved the pool area that night for a party (selfish bastards). On my way out I managed to pull off a spectacular slip on the tiled floor, which wouldn’t have been nearly as bad if the entire poolside wall wasn’t a great big window, displaying my clumsiness for all to see.

Just in case we hadn’t had quite enough of this day, Aiden decided to host a quiz night to see what we remembered about Christchurch. I made it to the third to last round, so really not too shabby. We were reminded of the wakeup time and what rooms the chaperones were in, which happened to be “narwhal”. It is common however in the Maori language to pronounce “wh” as “f”, so our chaperone told us he was in “narfal, whatever that is” I did a little mental facepalm and listened to the final announcements.

After spending the next few hours establishing slapjack and bullshit as the card games of choice, I finally retired to my room, where I spent most of the night making tremendous progress on my book, ultimately regretting it the morning after.

Day Zero

First day of my south island trip and I was ready to go. Small suitcase bursting at the seams, Neville and Sian dropped me off at Queensgate (the local mall) in time to catch the “airport flyer”, which is a bus that goes all the way to the Wellington Airport. These busses are huge, longer and wider than city busses. They have wide leather (or faux leather, who cares?) seats, a television that shows you weather, news, a real-time street camera on the side of the bus, and a flight time table so you can tell when you’ve missed your flight, and free wi-fi. All for a forty-minute bus ride max.
Anyway, I arrived at the airport super early, so the ticket counter wasn’t even open. Tried doing the electronic ticket thing but the kiosk didn’t recognize my name. That along with the fact that the place I had bought the ticket from didn’t give me any kind of conformation number made me start getting pissed and worried that I wasn’t actually booked for the flight.
All the worry was for naught though, for I was accepted without question once the people arrived at the counter (which was only after an hour of waiting and the buildup of a monstrous queue behind me)
The pictures are of the winner for the World of Wearable art competition in Wellington. It was standing in the lobby while I was waiting, so I took a picture.
Realizing that I still had an hour left until my flight I walked as slow as physically possible into the airport. Realizing that wasn’t going to kill enough time I went to the bookshop and after much deliberation decided to buy Richard Dawkins new book “The Greatest Show on Earth”. I have to say, it was probably the best $40 of my parents money that I have ever spent. A hefty book, it massacred time that needed killing and kept me awake on the bus rides around the south island for about half the trip. Anyway I read that until my flight left, and while it was flying.
I met up with the Reeds (the same people I went to the south island with before) planning to kill the time in-between when my flight arrived and when I actually had to meet up with the group. Turns out one of their son’s friends just turned 18, so I got to crash a birthday party. It was actually really fun; they made me feel welcome even though I was kind of a last minute guest. Apparently they’d been told “a lot about me”, gods know what.
Highlight of the party, spaghetti pizza, no seriously kiwi’s are weird. The kebabs (they never say the shish for some reason) were actually delicious, and I learned a new card game (I think it’s called Mao or something) in which the entire point is to learn the rules. No one can tell you how to play, you just have to figure it out. When you win a round you get to make a new rule that you don’t tell anyone, it’s actually really fun.
After that they dropped me back at the airport where I met up with Ayden (our tour director), some other person from NZET (the tour company) that I never saw again, Masha (Russia), and Aikiko (Japan). After it was apparent that no one else was showing up, we went back to the bus where the rest of the group was waiting. A not incredibly short, but not terribly long either bus ride away we arrived at our accommodations and met up with the last few people on the list who weren’t at the airport.
We were given our room numbers and then went to the dining room, where we were served a “Kiwi classic”, bacon (which equals ham in kiwi speak) and egg pie (actually a quiche, not a pie). Esther (Brazil) found a fly in her salad and subsequently did not eat her greens for the rest of the trip.
We were then given a little exercise to do, we each chose a buddy (via a random draw) and had to learn some fact about them to recite to the rest of the group. I was chosen by Samia (Brazil) and I chose Heidi (Finnland) (pronounced “Haidee” or “Haydee”, I still don’t know, I swear she changed it every day). Every time we boarded the bus we had to check for our buddy (just to make sure no one got lost).
Anyway, after that I retreated to my room to read about the domestication of silver foxes until I went to sleep.

First of many

Alright you impatient cretins.
I know it's been a month in the making, but trust me when I say there were a lot of pictures to sort through (especially from Milford Sound). Anyway, I'm done now, just remember to read from the bottom up. If the whole set isn't up when you read this then my internet probably conked out in the middle of uploading or I had to go to bed (I don't know how long this is going to take) Either way, the rest would be up shortly.

Two more posts regarding Halloween and Guy Fawkes day will follow in due time.

So sit down shut up and listen, 'cause I've got a story to tell.

Here comes the deluge

I just got back from my ten day trip to the south island, and obviously I'm not going to be able to fit all that stuff into one blog, so I'm splitting it up by the day. It will take me a while to write all the blogs and comb through all the pictures, but I think you'll all enjoy it once I'm done. Just remember to read it bottom to top. In the meantime here's a picture of my tour group. Sorry it's so blurry, it's a picture of a picture, I'll scan it sometime soon.

Iron and Stone

I thought you guys might enjoy these pictures. This guy owns a whole bunch of property, and he's slowly transforming the place into a kind of junk amusement park, all by himself. Well you can't accuse him of not having ambition.

[edit] the boat at the very beginning has nothing to do with the junkyard, I accidentally posted it. It is the boat that they brought King Kong over in.