Queenstown

Air travel in New Zealand is so much different than here. Here, everyone is at the gate an hour before the flight, waiting impatiently. They board 30 minute early, and herd everyone like cattle onto the tube with wings. NZ? Not so much.

I was 55 minutes early for the flight, and thought I was at the wrong gate. There was no one there. Not a soul. I checked the screen 3 more times to make sure, then...waited. Alone. For a long time. A half hour before the flight, the crew came down and boarded. Still no other people, not even a gate agent. Finally, about 20 minutes before takeoff, people started sauntering in. We boarded with about 10 minutes to go, and took off right on time. No stress at all. I loved it. Of course, none of my stories end well, so something had to go wrong. Right?

We begin our descent into Queenstown, and I'm psyched. Can't wait to check this place out. We inch closer to the ground, until I can see the airport. Aaaand...the next thing I know, I'm glued to my seat. Like, fucking stuck to it. It took me a few seconds to figure out that we were going back up. Kids, you ever been on the Gravitron at a fair or amusement park? That's what this felt like. Basically, it fucking sucked. The captain did little to ease my panic/anger:

"Ho ho...sorry bout that mates! The weatha is a little unpredictable toduy (not a typo), and we had to abandon owwa (not a typo again) landing! Nuthin to worry about mates, we're just gonna circle around for a wee bit and see if we can land in a few!"

Yea, that "no stress" thing was beginning to grate on my nerves now.

Anyway, we eventually landed about 45 minutes later, and it was sunny. What a surprise. 2 seconds after leaving the airport, I already loved Queenstown. The airport was surrounded by grassy hills and it was like 7 degrees. Everyone was complaining but me. I loved it!

The ride into town was along a crazy river. Just beautiful scenery all around us. Most of the people in my shuttle were there for the opening of the ski season, and a couple told me about all the pubs in town. I knew it was a party town, but some girl told me there were around 50 pubs in the main part of town now.

50. 50 fucking pubs. Excuse the teenage texting talk here, but...OMG. LOL.

The best way to describe the town would be to say it looks like Banff, if Banff sat on one of the nicest lakes you've ever seen. Small, condensed alpine village with houses rising up the hills in every direction. Huge, snowy mountains surrounding that. And a massive, calm lake dead center. Here's some pics that don't do it justice because I'm a shitty picture taker:









QT was the first town I booked a hotel in, and was kicking myself for it for a long time. I spent way more than I should have, considering most of the other hotels a little bit out of town were way cheaper. As usual when traveling though, sometimes bad decisions turn out awesome. This was one of those. The hotel was right across the street from the lake, and built on an angle into a huge hill. I was on the 5th floor, and the back door on my floor led right out onto level ground. I don't think this really does it justice, but check it:





As I checked in, a bellguy grabbed my bag and attempted to help carry it up to my room. I didn't need help, cuz that bitch had wheels, but he insisted. In the space of 2 minutes, he had a) Told me where the best pubs were; b) Told me to avoid the hotel bar cuz it was too pricey; and c) Invited me out on a pub crawl with the hotel staff that night. Shiiiiiit...sounds good to me. I had an all-day tour booked for the next day, but I figured I'd just come back relatively early, get some sleep, and be good to go.

Why the hell do I think these things? Since when am I responsible?

It was only 2pm though, so I had some time before the pub crawl. I went for a walk along the lake, which was fucking insanely nice. I took so many pics, the batteries in my camera died. I went to buy more, and was instantly reminded that I was in a tourist trap village again - 35 NZ dollars for 4 batteries! What. The. Fuck. Granted, I did buy the best ones they had, but god damn smokey! Next up was the beer store, and it was similar. A 6 pack of the same beer was 6-8 bucks more than it was in Auckland. The winter paradise comes with a god damn high price.

Here's the tiny marina:



Main drag of town:



The backwardsness (totally not a word) of NZ reared it's head at my next stop though...a pub. Duh. A beer was only 6.50 NZD here, as opposed to the 9 NZD in Auckland. So everything else is more expensive, but bar prices area affordable? I figured those would be even higher too, but nope.

I did manage to embarrass myself in the pub pretty quickly, which shouldn't be surprising to any of you. There are 2 major beers in NZ - Steinlager and Monteith's. The bar's name was Monty's. They had Monteith's shit everywhere. The waitress was wearing a shirt with a big Monteith's beer on it. She was also pretty damn hot. Taking all of that into account, when she came to take my order, I...panicked and ordered a Steinlager. She looked at me like I was wee-todd-ed, which I totally deserved. Then looked all around the room, slowly, to make her point. Damn her. It's like ordering a Whopper at McDonald's. Genius, I is. Nice work Tim. One beer, and I was out to less embarrassing pastures. By that, I mean 3 other pubs for 3 other beers and lunch.

So, after walking around a bit more and lounging in my plush hotel room (that's internet cap was 10 times higher than any other hotel I stayed at, and had 11 channels!!), I went down to the lobby to meet up with the hotel people for the pub crawl. It was 6pm.

Uh oh.

All the pubs are within probably 6 square blocks of each other, and a lot have different happy hours. So everyone moves from place to place. Basically, the whole damn town is one huge pub crawl waiting to happen. There were 6 of us to start - 4 guys and 2 girls. And, get this - not one of them was from New Zealand. They were all just there working in town for ski season. 4 were Aussies. It was like Jasper all over again, where no one that worked in the fucking town was Canadian, they were all Aussies. Dingo fuckers strike again!

I wasn't nursing my drinks at the beginning, but I wasn't exactly mainlining them either. They followed the Aussie/UK/other immigrants tradition of taking turns buying rounds for everyone instead of figuring out the bill for each beer. I think I bought 3 by 10:30 or so, since people kept ignoring my attempts to buy them and grabbing the tab. Thanks. I was buzzing, having a good time, but being fairly quiet since I didn't know anyone that well. Then we got to pub # 4, and some dingo-fucking genius decided it was a jager bomb round, since they were on special at this pub. Awwww crap. There were only 4 of us at this point, but 4 jager bombs in an hour turned me from shy, buzzing Tim into loud, full-on-drunk Tim. It went pretty much downhill from there.

I remember everything up until pub # 7, I think. I didn't do anything too stupid up to that point, except for forgetting I had no belt on my jeans and watching them basically hit the floor as I was walking back to a table at one point. I actually did the exact same thing in the kitchen of a house party at Dana Milo's once. Drunken memories rule! Anyway, the "gym shorts backup plan" was brilliant though, and other than a lot of laughs, nothing bad happened. After that, I have brief memories of being lost in an alley, eating pizza, and yelling at ducks by the water, but nothing real concrete until the hotel again. 4:29am. Gotta be up in one hour and 31 minutes for the tour. Suuuure.

As you can probably guess, I missed the tour. It's too bad, cuz apparently Milford Sound is nice or something. Guess I have something to check out the next time I'm there! I woke up around 1pm, surprisingly not that hungover. I was starving though, so I headed out right after showering to grab lunch. On way through the lobby, I see one of the guys I was drinking with, Dave, leaning against the entrance with his eyes shut. Ouch. Guess he had to be at work at 9:30am. Double ouch. The next 2 minutes of convo were a double ouch right back at me though.

Me: "Wow dude, you're looking rough!"
Dave: "Heey! Missed the tour huh mate? Not surprising. So where's the girl?"
Me: "....what? What girl?"
Dave: *laughing, then grabbing his head* "Owww me head. The girl from the bar. You didn't bring her back here?"
Me: *absolutely shocked* "Bro...I have no idea what you were talking about".
Dave: *laughing so hard the other people in the lobby are looking at him* "You don't remember her? At all? Hell, how much do you remember?"
Me: "WHAT GIRL!?!?!"
Dave: "The one that met up with us at Barmuda, Dawn. The one you were making out with in the alley. You don't remember that? I thought for sure you brought her back here. We all left you down by the casino with her."
Me: *mumbling* "That explains the ducks and the alley."
Dave: "Wha-"
Me: "Dude, I'm pretty sure I didn't bring anyone back here. I certainly don't remember that. Holy shit. I remember her, but I don't remember anything about making out with her or anything. Wow."
Dave: *still laughing* "Mate! That's too funn-"
Me: "Holy fuck, what else did I do?"
Dave: "Do you remember your trousers falling down in Mahones?"
Me: "I remember the pants, not the name of the bar. Did it happen more than once?"
Dave: "Not that I seen. But that was probably the funniest thing that happened all night. All month!".

By now, about 6 people are watching us have this convo, and they're all pretty amused. I'm not going to lie, I'm pretty fucking embarrassed, but I needed to get to the bottom of this.

Me: "So I didn't do anything else retarded that you saw?"
Dave: "No mate, you were hilarious. Other than yelling WHORES! at random women--"
Me: "Not the first time, believe me. Anything else?"
Dave: "You were trying to tell a story about someone throwing shot glasses, and you elbowed Ian in the head pretty hard doing the demonstration."
Me: "Again, not the first time. That's it?"
Dave: "That's all I remember mate. But I was talking with my girl a lot and probably missed some of it."
Me: "Greeeeaat."
Dave: "I have to drink with more Canadians mate. But only when I don't have to work the next day."
Me: "Man, I feel like an idiot."
Dave: "Who cares mate, you're leaving, what, tomorrow? None of these people are gonna to see you again. Go home and tell your friends you got lucky."
Me: "They'd all know I'd be full of shit, and that I would have fucked up the situation. I might as well just tell the truth."

4 people in the lobby, and Dave, laugh at this. Joyous.

Me: "Anyway Dave, thanks for the good times. It was awesome of all of you to invite me out."
Dave: "Anytime mate. Anytime."

After all that, I needed more than lunch. I needed a beer. Finding out all that stressed me out for a bit, but like Dave said, who the fuck cares, right? Running into that girl might have been awkward, but luckily that never happened. After grabbing food and beer, I decided to walk all over the city. There's a big garden area on one side of the lake, so I cruised through that for a bit. Pretty nice. It was my idea of perfect walking weather - about 5C and cloudy. Most people think I'm nuts for liking it like that, but as you know by now, I hate heat. It was super nice.

After a couple more hours going up and down hills and exploring the rest of the town, it got foggy. Like, crazily foggy. I couldn't see 20 feet in front of me walking all the way back to the hotel. I couldn't see the lake at all from the hotel, and it was only across the street. Awesome. I was impressed with how much I had covered, so I decided to chill in my room and take a well deserved nap. I woke up around 7pm, and actually considered a round 2, but my brain immediately said "Noooooo dipshit noooooo. Your bus leaves at 9am tomorrow. You can't miss this bus. Smarten up."

I decided to go out, but take it easy, which led to one amusing moment that night. Dave told me a bar had half-price pizza, so I headed over there. I put my hoody on because it was below zero by now, and it reeked like a campfire. "Fuck, was I at a campfire last night? I don't remember that at all!", I thought. Well, I went into the Buffalo Club and got my answer. The bar had a massive fireplace in the middle, with people sitting all around it. Hmm, okay. I walked up to the bar, and went to order a beer. Before I said anything, the bartender chicky said:

"Hey! The crazy Canadian!"

Awww crap.

Yup, that was one of the bars we had been at. I told her I didn't remember that, but it explained why I smelled like a campfire. She laughed. I asked her how bad I was, but she set my mind at ease by saying I didn't do anything wrong at all, I was just making fun of someone we were with and was pretty funny. And I bought 2 rounds of jager bombs and dropped all my money on the floor both times. More jagers? Yaaay.

I finished my food and beer there, and thought about checking out some other places...but I was paranoid I'd go into another bar I'd already been in. I was also worried about running into that girl and having to explain myself (or worse, ask for an explanation!). So I mildly chickened out and went to the beer store. Some jager bombs (cans of red bull come with a baby bottle of jager attached to them. Dope idea), and some beers.

Red Bull at 9pm? What the fuck was I thinking? I was up till 4am. Luckily I still got 4 hours sleep, and was wide awake and unhungover when my bus showed up to take me to Dunedin. This was definitely the most unique bus trip I've EVER taken, but I'll get to that next time. Word.

Here's some more pics:

Kiwi birdhouse (yes, that's the entrance to a building)



More scenery stuff:

Auckland

If you wanna skip this one, you're not missing much. Auckland really wasn't that exciting. Things didn't get good until my next stop.

Auckland has a nice airport. Customs was pretty easy. I just went to a flight-crew only aisle and acted like I had no idea what I was doing. They had me through in seconds, while everyone else from my flight waited. I pointed and laughed. They didn't like it.

I took a shuttle to my hotel instead of the cheaper bus, as a reward for not spending much in Rarotonga. True to form, I forgot everything's opposite there driving-wise, and spent a minute or so wondering why there was no door on the shuttle. Nice work dumbass, check the other side. Oops. The drive there was similar to the UK - full of roundabouts I could never navigate in a million years if I could actually drive. The hotel was dead-center downtown, 2 blocks from the harbor, facing the busiest street in the city (Queen St). Got a 10th floor room with a pretty dope view - check it...actually don't. I can't get the night pic to actually show the tower for some fucking reason. Check my facebook if you care. It's the same as the pic below...but at night. It's all lit up n stuff. Use your imagination.

For some reason, I've always been interested in TV in other countries. Not necessarily the shows, just what kind of channels they get and how much they copy/steal American stuff. Let's just say TV in New Zealand is lacking. In my room, I got the following - 4 NZ channels, Sky Sports, Sky News, 2 radio stations (?), and a 24 hour yoga channel. What the fuck? Then I went to plug in my netbook to get some internet action, and got another shock - it was 33.69 a day, and you can only use 100MB of bandwidth. I knew the price going in, but download caps? And that low? Brutal. I couldn't go to a few sites I normally frequent (not that kinda shit, eff off) because they use a lot of pics and videos and would eat up the allowable amount. AND, it was 10 cents a MB over the limit. Ridiculous.

I also remembered when I got there that I had lost an entire day. I took off from Raro at 5:45pm thursday, and landed at 8:15pm friday, since I crossed the international date line. I knew I was getting that day back when I came home, but I still felt cheated somehow. It was also completely disorienting, and I couldn't figure out what day it was for over a week after that. The people from home that I talked to didn't help, because they were a day behind me. You think it's easy to figure out? Try living it junior!

All this, and I haven't even been outside yet. It was walky time. It didn't take long to realize that a lot of downtowns are the same, but Auckland's is extremely similar to Vancouver's. It was almost eerie. Take out gastown and add some hills, and I felt like I didn't even leave home. The good thing was that there were no homeless people and it felt a lot safer, but...it was still boring. I hate downtown Vancouver, so it's not surprising that I wasn't a big fan of downtown Auckland initially. It didn't help that the one pub I went into had what seemed like crazy expensive beer at the time - 9 NZ Dollars. That's only about 6.50 Canadian, but still shocked me. I was consistently whining about the price of stuff, then immediately happy when I realized that it was 30% cheaper in Canadian. I love New Zealand.

I was a big fan of 2 things about Auckland though - the liquor store directly across the street, and room service! Shut it, I'm a baby. A 4.5 hour flight takes a lot out of a moo cow! Since downtown at night was kind of lame, I just chilled and watched some terrible TV. One room service beer was the same price as a 6 pack across the street, 7 bucks Canadian. One roasted lamb thinger and a moderate amount of non-room service beer (somewhere between 3 and 13) later, I went to sleep, kind of dissatisfied with Auckland so far.

Next day wasn't much more exciting. I started off by walking down to the harbour. Auckland is known as the "City of Sails", so I was expecting a kickass waterfront. Ah, no. Most of it is still a working port, thus it's pretty gritty. The area with all the fancy sailboats and expensive bars/restaurants is okay, but nothing compared to Stanley Park or Coal Harbour. I got my first taste of the difference between Canada and New Zealand when I sat down on the patio of one of the pubs. I waited...and waited...and waited. No service. I guess you have to go in and get your own in NZ. Oops. That was a nice waste of 15 minutes.

Since that didn't stimulate me much, I decided to walk all the way up Queen St (3km or so) to check out what the main drag was like during the day. It turned out to be 3 things - busy, multicultural, and expensive. The most amusing thing I saw was a squeegee kid. My guess is that they're not common in Auckland, because the people in every single car he approached were scared shitless. Two women actually screamed when they saw him, which made me laugh pretty hard. Neither the women or the derro (derelict, homeless person, etc) found my laughter very funny themselves, but I'm just a dirty tourist so I'm allowed to laugh at dumb shit. The reaction to him really was the most interesting thing Queen St had to offer. The rest was pretty generic. Malls, restaurants, asians, bad driving...it was like Richmond without an Ikea.

After the long walk, I figured it was pub time. 9 dollar beers again, but this pub had slot machines! These things should just bend you over and service you when you walk in though, because they're fucking rapists. When there's no one in a pub at 3pm, they're the only entertainment, so I got to playing. 2 cent slots can't pilfer that much money from you, right?

Wrong.

This Mike Tyson of a machine (only rapist I could think of offhand) ate my 20 bucks quicker than Juhl downs a cheeseburger. Quicker than Lisa mainlines a double vodka. Quicker than Jess claims the top bunk on a yurting trip. Okay, you get the idea. Anyway, I hadn't even finished 1/3 of my beer. So, like an idiot, I put in another 20, and decided to play fewer lines so my money would last longer. Good idea, right? Fuck that. I would have got as much entertainment dropping the 20 in a garbage disposal. Somehow, I was down 40 bucks in 5 minutes. Well, 49 including the beer. This is when being a loser doesn't feel so bad though, cuz 49 NZ bucks is only 34 Canadian. Not so bad at all. Yea, that made it all better. Stupid machine.

Dealing with all that excitement earned me a relaxing hotel stop, so I chilled for a while and drank beers that weren't 34 bucks a piece. I guess there were more "touristy" things I could head out and see, but I'm not really a typical tourist most of the time. I'm waaaay prettier. Anyway, Auckland has museums and underwater penguin adventures and cool islands n shit, but come on...how could any of that top the Mercure hotel and a Tui (the only good IPA beer in the world) on a saturday afternoon? Chalk another day up to me being a lazy bastard.

While I was lazing about, I noticed that there was a rugby game on. I quickly figured out that there are only 3 sports on TV in NZ - rugby, cricket, and netball. Netball is neutered basketball for white girls that doesn't allow dribbling or body contact. Basically, it's fucking stupid. Cricket's not so bad if you have 3 days to watch a match. Rugby though? Fucking AWESOME. I can't believe I have any respect for NFL players after watching high-level rugby. These guys beat the living bejesus out of each other, with no pads. I just happened to show up on the last day of the Super 14 season, and got to watch 3 games that decided who'd make the playoffs. They all ruled. Rugby's my new favourite sport (other than hockey and MMA).

I won all 3 rugby bets I made online, which earned me back the money I lost to the sexual assault machine in the pub. To celebrate, I went...back to a pub. Duh. Too bad it was a miserable failure. Don't get me wrong, there are lots of pubs, but they were either packed with rugby watchers, or waaay beyond my idea of a dress code. I couldn't find anything other than my hotel bar, which seemed pretty lame. But, a pub is a pub is a pub, and the lamest places can turn out to be pretty damn cool sometimes. I talked to just about everyone in there (all 7 of them), and they were all from other parts of NZ. Despite the multiculturalism outside the hotel doors, these people acted like I was a huge novelty by visiting their country. They bought me beer, enviously bitched about Australia, and explained cricket well enough that I actually understood the rules. Sort of. The best part was, unlike Australians, it seems that Kiwis use very little slang, so I could actually understand what they were saying. I learned more about NZ in those 4 hours than I had in 4 months of research.

Folks, nights like this are why I travel. Anyone can sit in front of a computer and memorize stuff, but LIVING this stuff is how you really learn about places and people. I'm lucky that I'm consistently able to meet people that are willing to take the time to help me get a feel for the places I go. I'm not the most outgoing person, but Kiwis are extremely personable people and made me feel at ease no matter where I was. It was awesome.

Where was I? Auckland, right. So after the informative night and a good sleep, I got up with the intention of taking this hop on/hop off bus that goes all over the city and covers the main sights. Notice the word intention. Apparently that good sleep wasn't quite long enough, because the next thing I know it was 1pm. Go Tim. I decided to hit up a pub for lunch and...they're all closed. Say what? Apparently Auckland still likes Jesus or some shit, because everything was closed on sunday. Another reason to dislike religion. It also happened to be raining, which actually didn't bother me since it was 20+ degrees every other day so far and I hate heat. I decided to go for a long ass walk, and cover everything in the downtown core I hadn't already seen.

An hour later, I was back. Come on, this is me we're talking about. Were you expecting a 12 hour trek or something? Suuuure. I'm a giraffe, not a camel. Turns out there's just not a ton to see. Some nice buildings. A supposedly nice square that's under construction. And so on. So, now what? What to do, what to do? There was another hotel bar on the top floor, so why not check that out?

All I can say about it is HAHAHA. I paid another 9 NZD for a beer, and sat down to look at...the exact same view that my hotel room has, but 3 floors up. What. A. Waste. And to top it off, they didn't have one TV in the place. There just so happened to be the most important (and last) Super 14 game of the regular season about to start, and they don't have a TV? What the fuck? One shotgunned beer and an elevator ride later, I was back in the lobby bar. TVs! Jager bombs! Rugby! I'm sure you can guess how this afternoon/night ended.

So, I woke up hungover. Quelle surprise! Apparently I came back to the lobby twice to tell them my room card wasn't working...turns out I was just trying to get into the wrong room. Oops. Don't remember that. I was told that little nugget of info during checkout, while a Contiki tour full of hot women was checking in. Damn me and my shitty timing! Normally I wouldn't give a shit about being a retard, cuz let's face it...that shit happens all the time. But I was actually staying in this hotel again the next week for my last night in NZ, so I'm sure they were SUPER HAPPY to have me as a returning guest. And I ended up finding out for sure when I got back. As usual - Go Tim.

After a nice tour of the city via the shuttle driver who had to pick people up all over the damn place, I was on my way to Queenstown. That little tour actually gave me some hope for the city, cuz the burbs are pretty nice. I'd say Auckland is a nice mix between Vancouver and San Francisco. Pretty nice surroundings, hilly, nice houses, and very clean. You could definitely live in worse places. I still hadn't felt like I had left home yet in terms of NZ though, so I was excited about moving on into "real" New Zealand. And I definitely got my money's worth. You'll find out about that next time.


Bonus pics. Don't worry, if you like pics, there are lots more of the other cities. Auckland just wasn't that interesting.


Hotel room view during the day



The "City of Sails". Yeehaw.