Rizz goes round the world

Oh Queenie (Queenstown, NZ)

My lovely journey with my 26 Kiwi comrades ended, sadly, in Queenstown. After the QT, we'd, for the most part, be going our separate ways. Most would be heading on to Christchurch, but Joey and I would be doing the Bottom Bus, exploring the, this is a stretch, bottom of the South Island.

So, Queenstown. What can I say? Well, our welcome into the city: a bungee jump at Karawau Gorge, where bungee was first commercialized by AJ Hackett and his friend. Did you know they got their inspiration from Vanuata? In Vanuatu, young men leap off of rickety wooden towers with vines strapped to their ankles as a rite of passage. They're more hard core: their vines lack elasticity, and their jumps end not in a peaceful few bounces, but a faceplant into a pile of dirt. The funnier thing, I think, is that this rite actually used to be a fertility rite, and women used to do it, not men. The Christian missionaries, when they arrived in Vanuatu, were absolutely aghast, and, while they couldn't eradicate the practice, "at least" managed to turn it into a male ritual.

Anyway, after a few people on the bus (not me), did their bungee, we took a group picture and then headed into town to rest up a bit in preparation for our impending big night. I'm not going to bore you with all the stories, but I'll share a few little anecdotes to give you an idea of how the evening transpired. We'll start with LJ. Oh, LJ, our endearing driver. When we met him at Altitude, the bar downstairs from our hostel, at 9:30 PM, he was already exceedingly drunk. He was also dressed in a lovely outfit he'd acquired that afternoon at the Salvation Army: skintight green pants that reminded me of a Little League uniform, and a matching skintight green t-shirt. It was slightly obscene. Altitude was hosting that backpacking staple: karaoke. As people went up on stage to sing their songs, LJ stole their thunder by leaping onstage with them (complete strangers, mind you, not people from our bus) and doing little leaps and jigs and struts. Then we did an encore of Sweet Child of Mine, lifting LJ up above us as though he were crowd surfing. He started doing push ups off the ceiling, and then we all fell over on top of poor Joey. It was classic.

In terms of the rest of the night. Well, all I'll say is this: Joey visited Fergburger, home to ridiculously large burgers, 4 times in one night, I went to bed at 8 AM, tossed and turned until past noon, slept until 5 or 6... It was like I was back in Madrid. Took it easy the next night, and then sadly saw Pete, Ric, Tyrone and LJ off the following day. The Kiwi crew had officially been splintered. After wandering around the beautiful city of Queenstown (which is absolutely gorgeous: on the edge of a lake and framed by the snow-capped Remarkables, the scenery is breathtaking. Unfortunately, most usually miss it by sleeping all day. Queenstown, the birthplace of the bungee, plays hard), Joey and I hung out with the remaining crew that following night, then left at 8 the next morning for our venture down south. I had a relatively early night, turning in at 1 AM. But Joey got in at 7. Our alarms went off at 7:30. Needless to say, the trip down to Dunedin was a sleepy one for all.

posted by La Rizz @ 2:50 AM