Rizz goes round the world

My Kiwi Experience continued

So...

Lake Mahanapua:

In Lake Mahanapua (whose name I kept forgetting and so kept calling Lake Wannapupu), we stayed at a pub owned by Les. Les was the ultimate Kiwi character: a former All Blacks player (All Blacks= Rugby team in NZ) with a penchant for the word "bloody" who could now easily fill in for any of the members of ZZ Top. Les's pub is literally in the middle of nowhere, and so, to prevent the Kiwi Experience kids from getting into trouble out of sheer boredom, it is a tradition that, during our night at the Pupu Pub, we have a fancy dress (read: costume) party. I had suggested the theme of pirates, and after a vote, the pirate theme had won. So, on the way down to the Lake, we stopped in a small town called Greymouth to purchase our costumes. It was here that I discovered I had lost my ATM card, but no worries, I'd deal with that later. For now, I had to find a costume. I decided to dress as a bottle of rum: it was cheap and easy. So after an hour at the Warehouse (NZ's version of Walmart...The Warehouse! Where everyone gets a bargain!), spent running through the aisles and playing with various items for sale, in the manner of an unruly child with ADD, I emerged with my roll of brown paper and a party hat that would act as a bottle cap. LJ, our driver, emerged with a pirate costume whose size was appropriate for a 6-year-old. LJ, possessing quite a fondness for tight clothing, drove the rest of the way with his skintight, black and white striped belly shirt that was already starting to rip in some places.

After arriving in Lake Wannapupu, Les boarded the bus to jovially warn us (if warning can be done in a jovial way) against bringing alcohol on the premises (he'd search our bags during dinner and smash the bottles!) and doing naughty things in discreet hallways (there were cameras!). He also related the story, more than once, of how he hurt is arm after, would you believe it, falling out of the bloody bed. An endearing curmudgeon, Les had us at hello.

As we had arrived right before sunset, after our talking-to, we grabbed a couple bottles of wine and a few plastic cups, and headed down to the beach. Sitting shivering on a log, we watched the boys toss a frisbee in front of a frothy sea with a quickly setting sun as the backdrop. Then it was time to prepare for the party.

My costume was easy enough—cut an adequate length of paper, color in the word "rum", fashion some straps, and slip my bottle over my head. I was bunking with 3 other girls. Katy, a pirate, and Cheryl, Tinkerbell, also got ready quickly. Then there was Joey. Joey had decided to dress as a parrot. Getting ready proved more complicated than her wedding day will probably be, as she sat affixing feathers to her shirt with a 2 dollar stapler. We aided in her preparation by helping to construct her tail and beak, and fashioning her hair into spikes, loops and swirls with the aid of pipe cleaners. It would have made an interesting picture: Tinkerbell, a pirate, and a bottle of rum, gathered around a redhead betrothed in a rainbow of feathers and streamers, sticking pipe cleaners in her hair. When we were done, Joey was truly a masterpiece.

We headed off to the pub, giddy like high school girls on prom night. Would everyone else be as dressed up as we were? What would they look like? Would we fit in? Beyond feeling a bit self-conscious and silly, we were also aware of the prize to be won: the person with the most original costume that night would win a free Canyon Swing in Queenstown. Canyon Swing? It consists of a 60 meter drop, like a bungee. Unlike a bungee, your cord was affixed to a platform across the canyon from the platform from which you leapt, meaning after free-falling 60 meters, you weren't done yet: you'd swing back and forth another 200. Me? I was all set. I'd have been glad to have faded into the woodwork. No prize for me, thanks. Joey, though was keen on winning, and I was confident she had a chance.

And win she did. Well, second place. First place was won by Ric, who'd dressed as "The Plank". I ruined his costume later in the night when I decided it would be fun to make him lie on the floor so I could walk the plank. Of course, I wasn't content with just walking; I had to do a little dance as well. Joey came in second, as I mentioned, and third was won by Kirk, who'd fashioned a treasure map out of a brown sheet and a sharpie. Les was so impressed by our group's kindness and courtesy that he decided to award not just one, but two Canyon Swing vouchers, so Ric and Joey both won the freebie. He also awarded Kirk a voucher for free photos and DVD at the K-bridge bungee jump in Queenstown, site of the first ever commercial bungee jump. Kirk was less than thrilled. He's not really the thrill-seeker type.

Apart from the winners, it was an impressive outing by all, from Carly and Sam, the couple from England who'd fashioned themselves a pirate ship, to Daragh, who wore the symbol for Pi on his head and a T-shirt with a farting rat (Pi + rat = pirate. The farting was superfluous.)

The night reached its peak as Tyrone, a half-Irish half-Spanish guy from Bilbao, Spain, lined us up and taught us how to take tequila shots the Spanish way, which involved licking salt off of the neck of the person behind you and retrieving your lime from his mouth. I was unluckily positioned in front of a very young local, whose facial expression was equal to someone who'd won the lottery. He was not so happy when I informed him that I don't take salt with my tequila shots. I don't think he quite understood, and spent a few minutes saying to me "What about the salt? You forgot about the salt." Then Joey was nearly abducted by a drunk local man who had bought her a bone-carving necklace and who also kept trying to steal her away to see the glow worms in the caves nearby. She escaped unscathed, with a story to tell. Fun was had by all.

Franz Josef:

A bit too much fun, perhaps. As I woke up the next morning on my top bunk, my head slightly throbbing, I remembered what awaited me that day. Provided the weather was nice, which, seeing as it rains over 200 days a year in the Franz Josef region, was on the unlikely side, I would be propelling myself out of the door of a small plane with a hopefully capable stranger strapped to my back. I stole a glance through the curtain of the window at the head of my bed. The sky was bright, sunny, and blue. So much for the past week's forecast, which assured that a front of messy, nasty weather would be heading through the area starting that morning. Was this good luck or bad? I was happy, though still a bit anxious: if you thought the weather in New England is finicky, go to the South Island of New Zealand. I just wanted to know definitely: would I jump or would I not? I still had to wait and see. At any rate, I was happy the weather was nice, but my happiness was more out of complacency rather than eagerness. As is typical of its behavior, my brain refused to process the fact that, within the next 6 hours, I'd be jumping out of a plane. Instead, it looked at the situation the way a dog may perhaps watch as its owner does jumping-jacks. Mildly interested, perhaps even amused, its tongue rolling out of the side of its mouth, he watches this bit of odd, foreign activity being performed not by him, but by someone familiar and somehow connected to his reality. That was how my bemused brain was looking at my impending dive.

At any rate, there were a few hours to go still, and a good deal of surreal absurdity, before I could even ponder the reality of what I was about to do. On the way to the Franz Josef glacier, we hopped off the bus at a place called the Bushman's Centre. I just didn't quite know what to make of this place, a small museum that celebrated the Wild Wild West of southern New Zealand. You haven't seen pride in place until you've been to the South Island, let me tell you. They put America's biggest patriots to shame. The excited owner of the Bushman Centre, we'll call him Mac, boarded the bus, decked out in short shorts and hiking boots, the western man's uniform, to excitedly tell us about the fun that awaited us. I call it a museum (well, they call it a museum), but it's the oddest museum I've ever seen. They had 3 main exhibits. The first consisted of a wild pig we could pet and feed. From Mac's description, we were expecting an angry bohemoth to come charging out when we opened the gate. He was a bohemoth alright, but barely angry, and more like ambling than charging. When he was done happily munching on his bread, he laid down and rolled over to have his tummy rubbed.

The second exhibit was a possum. Yes, a possum. As in the animal that ends up as roadkill in NZ with an even greater frequency than in the States. Apparently possums are different from o'possums, or whatever we have in the States. Instead of a white rat-like animal with a long snout and tail, this guy was actually pretty cute--wide-eyed and brown. We fed him Chex.

The third exhibit was actually a film. The film celebrated the brave men who leapt out of helicopters and tackled deer a couple of decades ago. Yes. They jumped out of helicopters. Moving helicopters. And jumped on top of deer. To capture them. And string them up in nets dangling from the helicopter. And bring them to farms. See, deer are not a native species, and had become an enormous nuisance, chowing through and ruining thousands of acres of grassland. So the Kiwi solution was to capture them and put them in farms. Kiwis enjoy their venison, so may as well farm the deer for the meat. Why use a net, though, when it's more fun, and more extreme--Kiwis love the extreme--to tackle them from the air? So the Bushman Centre described and celebrated this process, in a film set to the tune of Danger Zone.

I don't think any other day could have provided such a satisfying lead-up to me jumping out of a plane.

posted by La Rizz @ 11:27 PM