It's 10:45pm on December 24th. A friday night. I'm sitting at home, drinking an Old Milwaukee, and listening to some music. This is like any other friday night to me. Go to the bar after work with my boss, get home early, and stay outta trouble. The fact that it's Christmas Eve really doesn't mean a damn thing to me. I went to the strippers and the OT before this. Not exactly full of yuletide spirit.
There is one thing I do like about Christmas though. In my never-ending quest to be anti-Christmas, I usually end up doing some entertaining and/or retarded shit on Christmas Day. Your average person probably looks back on Christmas Day's past and remembers a pretty standard 24 hours:
2008: At my parents house. Mom and dad argued. I hate my brother. Who needs 9 ties?
2007: At my brothers house. The kids got a Wii, and I wanted to shove a controller down little Billy's throat by 4:30.
2003: At my parents house. Mom and dad argued. My sister didn't show. Major drama OMG!
1996: At my parents house. I asked for a portable CD player. I got a walkman. I hate life.
And so on. My timeline is a little bit more entertaining, at least to me. So, here's a brief synopsis of some of my more interesting Christmas Days. Sure, I spent some with family too, but other than a fire poker fight or 2, it was usually pretty boring. These are my memories of the times I managed to bail on that bullshit and do something interesting. Without further ado...
2008 - I wrote about it last year. But, here's the cliff notes version of the 25th, if you don't feel like reading: A 24 hour train ride to Jasper full o' booze on the 23rd/24th led to a massive hangover that spilled over onto the 25th. The only cure was Pilsner, of course, but this was not to be. Nothing in town was open. Even our hotel bar didn't open till 5pm, which led to me basically crying in public. After it finally opened, it was less-than-fulfilling, so Len and I got the bright idea to go to the fancy lodge up the hill where actual people hang out.
Too bad it was CHRISTMAS HELL and the Disney movie cheerfulness nearly made us commit a homicide or 23. 14 dollar ceasars finally broke the drunk camels back, and after a brief stop back in the hotel bar where I purchased a 27 dollar 6 pack, Christmas was mercifully put to it's death via Comedy Roasts and my best friend Pilly.
2007 - Me, Lisa and Len all have various reasons to hate Christmas, and we figured since none of us could go on vacation, the best thing to do was to get drunk at the best bar in town (which happened to be the only bar open)...the Cambie. 194 people were invited. 3 showed. Me, Lisa, and Len. We arrived at noon. 6 other people were in the bar...which was 5 more than we expected. We set a firm no shots rule, and went to work on some 10 dollar pitchers of shitty beer, while Len's Mr Hanky doll eyed us warily.
After 8 hours of playing pool with immigrants, picking terrible music from the jukebox, taking pictures of Mr Hanky shamelessly swimming in our beers, and downing like 24 shots (we're not good at following rules), we were finally escorted from the premises. Lisa yelled "LET'S GOOO TO THE CASINOOOO" pretty much the whole way home on the skytrain before passing out, and I honestly don't remember what happened to Len. Dumping Lisa out of a cab onto her lawn at 9pm on Christmas Day while her parents looked out the window disapprovingly is way better than any shitty Christmas present I could get. That shit was GOLD!
2004 - You can read about it here, if you feel the need. If not...
Pretend you're me (but not as cool), and picture this: I wake up groggy and cotton-mouthed and take a look around. After a minute or so, my surroundings start to come into focus. I'm in a Days Inn hotel. In Anchorage, Alaska. I look over at the other bed. The person I came on this trip with isn't in said bed. This is all amusing and stuff, but our flight to Fairbanks leaves in 2 hours and going alone wasn't part of the plan. I gradually piece together the night before at Chilkoot Charlies (the best bar in the WORLD)...I came back to the hotel after nearly hiccuping draft beer all over some angry native broad. By myself. Len chose to stay. Uh oh.
While this assessment is being made, the door swings open and a fucking toasted co-pilot is standing there. He manages to make it to his bed, explaining to me that he was helping some dude change his transmission in -20 degree weather at 4am. This is highly amusing, until I inform Len that he can't go to sleep because we have to fly to Fairbanks in 2 hours. Many curse words followed.
Me and the zombie manage to get ourselves to the airport and onto the plane. Len is completely done at this point. Talking and walking is rocket science to him. The flight to Fairbanks is ridiculously scenic, and I celebrate this awesome show with an Amstel Light at 8:30am. Len dry heaves at the sight of it.
Upon arrival, we are ripped off by the only asian guy in town, who drives the taxi to our hotel. Len is asleep 0.243 seconds after we get into our room. I went to buy beer, and realized it was -37. I thought that was cool for about 20 seconds, until my face, nose, snot and beer all froze at once on the walk home. Seriously.
After Len slept off his hangover, we decided that we're going to North Pole, where Santa lives! Honestly. It's a real town with a real Santa house, like 11 miles north of Fairbanks. I know, the scrooges heading towards the heart of Christmas sounds weird, but cut us some slack, what else were we gonna fuckin do?
The lady at the hotel said Santa's house would be open. One 40 dollar cabride later, IT WAS NOT. Len pissed on his house to show him who's boss. Another 40 dollar cabride back, and we're pissed. We go looking for a restaurant for dinner. No dice. Everything was closed. Every. Single. Restaurant. In. Town. We ended up at a gas station, and we bought burritos for our Christmas dinner. I think we were asleep by 9:30pm. Goooo Christmas!
2003 - It's just me and Mikey. Jay just moved home, so we're down a roommate. In his honour, our whole goal for the day is strippers and beer, because we know he would approve. Mikey kept telling me about a poster he saw at Mugs (same peeler bar I was at today, different location) that said something about an all-day stripathon on Christmas Day. Nuthin says yuletide joy like amateur boobies, so we walked all the way down there from here (5km, give or take) in the early afternoon. Just to find out that it was closed on Christmas Day. What the fuck?
Apparently Daly can't read and it was on Boxing Day. Damn him! Either way though, we had committed ourselves to debauchery, so we went to the only place that was serving beer in all of New West...the riverboat casino. We played some blackjack and somehow we both won, probably 100 total between us, which basically doubled what we had to start with (fuck off, this was when we were young and financially irresponsible!)...so it was ON. Booze in face, pronto.
Somehow day turned to night, and some old lady was following us around, thinking we'd spend money on her or something. Obviously she was delusional, but she did give us one nugget of info - Barfly was open that night! Barfly (now The Standard) is a terrible club in New West, but it was Eden to us that night. Mikey and me ran to a cab to dodge the old lady, but she was like a fuckin' drunk FloJo and kept up with us all the way there. We jumped in, and she attempted to do so as well...but it was kind of difficult with Mikey's hand on her forehead, launching her away from the door.
So we get to Barfly...obviously, no one's there on Christmas Day. Maybe 6 people. That didn't stop Mikey from shotgunning a beer and doing a ridiculous dance on the floor that some of you have probably seen if you've hung out with him for any length of time. Suddenly we were the center of an 8 person club party...for about 10 seconds. It was about to be 9, because guess who walked in the door! The old lady! And she was PISSED. Somehow, Mikey talked her out of homicide and had her dancing within a few seconds, which was even funnier because she was easily 30 years older than everyone there.
A whole lot more liquor was consumed, and I woke up on the living room floor the next morning. That's about all I can tell you..I have no recollection of much else. Mikey eventually came out of his room and we had the same conversation we'd had countless times..."What the fuck happened?" "I dunno man." "How did we get home??" "No idea." "Do you have any money left?" "I have 5 bottlecaps and a bunch of ripped up coasters in my pocket. No money. You?" "I thought I had like 30 bucks in change, but they're all quarters. I have 6 dollars, tops." "What do we do now?" "Call Lisa and tell her to pick us up and buy us breakfast, that's what!"
In approximately 12 hours, 2007 will be repeated. I think over 160 people were invited this time. 10 SAY they're coming, but we know who's gonna show...me, Lisa, and Len. And hanky. It's gonna be a shitshow, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Merry Christmas motherfuckers. If you want to do something a little different this year, we'll be at the Cambie. Come on down. Make this a Christmas you'll actually remember.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Christmas Wish List 2009
I fucking hate this stupid holiday, but I'll get into the spirit this one time and offer the only thing worthwhile anymore - a little bit of advice. Specifically, advice to that rotund red-suited drunk that lives in a land about 11 miles north of Fairbanks. I know this, because I went to his house on Christmas Day once and he wasn't home. Len pissed on his house in retaliation.
Anyway...Santa, you fat bastard, here's how you could handle a few situations for me this year, okay? Some involve simply getting these people a present, some involve you getting off your duff and actually doing something about a situation. Without further ado...
Apple - Make the ipod designers attach something similar to a key tracer to the stupid things. Anyone remember key tracers? Where you clap or whistle, and the beeper thingy goes off and leads you to them? I need this for my ipods. I've gone through four shuffles this year. Four! At least make 'em glow in the dark/glow in the snow or something. Fuck.
Brittany Murphy - Oops. Scratch that one off the list.
Cambie Pub - Make sure they have plenty of shitty beer ready for us when we get there at noon on Christmas day. In addition, can you ask the bouncers to at least be gentle when they 86 us this time? Thanks.
DJ AM - Oops. Scratch that one off the list too.
Ex-girlfriends - Give them all coal.
Filipino lady that was singing along to her ipod at 6am this morning on the bus - Give her a swift kick in the babymaker and a right cross to the jaw. Please. No one wants to hear the "soothing" sounds of a howling cat that just stepped on a nail. At 6am. Because that's what she sounded like.
Georges St Pierre - Give him whatever he needs to so he can gain a little more weight and move up to middleweight. Believe me Santa, when he defeats Anderson Silva, you won't even need to stop in Canada next year. You'll have already given the entire country the best present EVER.
Hell -Santa, I don't know if this is in your power or not....but could you save me a nice, fiery seat down there? It's pretty obvious that all the retard/racist/sexist/filthy Jew jokes are going to catch up to me at some point.
Iceland - Just give the people of this fine country a little advice. Tell all the guys there that the rest of the world doesn't give a shit about Fall Out Boy or A-ha anymore, so you can all stop dressing like a member of those shitty bands. And for the ladies...tell them to keep being blonde and perfect. Seriously. You're all gorgeous. I love you.
Jess - I'm gonna need you to stop him from going anywhere new. Flying to Florida? Bird in the engine. Driving to North Carolina? Armed robbery around Atlantic City or so. Ferry to Nova Scotia? Sink that motherfucker, it's full of people who pay for their clothing and beer in cod anyway. In other words, don't let him wander. And try to keep his cousin's ego in check too. That one will be a lot tougher, I understand that..so Jess and I will do our best to help you out.
Kings - I know this is a tough one, but hear me out. Could you just find some way to enforce the laws of probability a little better when I play poker? When I pick up pocket kings, I'm supposed to win the majority of the hands I play with it. An ace isn't supposed to hit the flop every god damn time. I'm not supposed to be losing a shitload of cash with a hand this good. Fat guy to fat guy Santa, for reals...make this happen.
Luxembourg - You don't have to give the people of this fine country anything specific. I just threw it in here to make sure Jess knows that I'm going to Luxembourg and he's never gonna make it there! I win!
Miley Cyrus - Make her turn 18 faster so I can stop feeling so guilty every time I watch her videos on youtube. Over and over. And over. At least she's not Jojo, right guys? RIGHT?
NHL - Do everyone a favor and get Gary Bettman fired (and killed by something nasty, like scurvy!) so the league can stop moving backwards. Seriously Santa, you must have some appreciation for hockey, you live in the fucking cold. Does hockey belong in Phoenix? No. This one is high-priority, close in importance to the letter P one below.
Old Milwaukee - Give the makers of this delicious nectar whatever they ask for, because they are some of the greatest people in the world. They bring so many others so much joy. Even if they're asking for unethical stuff (immigrant children to chain up in their basement, the extermination of all Coors employees, etc), GIVE IT TO THEM.
Portugal - Nice and simple - a first-round exit from the World Cup. Highest priority.
Quinton Jackson - Just explain to Rampage that he's not an actor, he's a fighter, and all the whining in the world isn't going to make him an actor. Pick him up, carry him to the fucking cage, and let him humble Rashad Evans so I don't have to fucking hear from either of them anymore.
Roger Goodell - Pull his head out of his ass for him. And give him a sense of humor. The possession rules on catching a football shouldn't be more detailed than an Al-Queda plot to blow up a train station. Fining every guy that shows an ounce of personality is retarded. Pretend you're Chris Henry's fiancee, and throw Roger off a truck. Simple as that.
Ooh, that one was cold.
Sami Salo - Invent some sort of hybrid bubble that Sami can play in so he doesn't get hurt every 3 games. I'd say the same for Pavol Demitra, but he'd probably complain about the bubble not having Marian Gaborik in it, so he'd end up going home anyway.
Toronto - Separation. Banish the city from Canada. Banish the Leafs from my television. Before this though, make all the goofs that left the shithole for better weather and nicer people GO BACK so we don't have to hear about what a great place it is. If it's so fucking great, WHY ARE YOU HERE?
Uneducated debtors - Keep them believing their package will actually get there soon. And thank them for being deadbeats, because without these retards to find, I couldn't travel the world! You're dumb and I love you!
Village of Jasper - Wipe out every dingo-fucking Aussie that works there. Dude, they don't even know the 3 brands of Canadian beer they sell in their bars, and they're working...in Canada. Feed them to the moose, bury em in the snow, I don't care. Just make them gone.
Washington Redskins - Somehow, could you make the team hand the playcalling duties back to Jim Zorn? That "fake" field goal attempt last night was the ugliest football play I've ever seen. Ever. You guys are worse than the Lions and the Raiders COMBINED sometimes (that last comment was specifically aimed at Adam and Milo).
X - You think you could just get rid of this letter? It's fucking useless and pretty much grinds any alphabetical list to a halt.
Yellowknife - Prepare these people for the shitshow that awaits them when Len and I eventually make it there. And can you get Ice Road Truckers canceled? These tards don't deserve groupies, they're fucking truckers!
Zoos, specifically the Wellington Zoo - Make sure that animals don't stand up people who pay good money to come hang out with them. Stupid giraffe. You know what you can get him for me, Santa? A housing enclosure that's 2 feet shorter than he is. Then he'll know how I feel when I sit in the back seat of a car. Stupid giraffe.
Okay, that's enough venom for one Christmas. See y'all next year.
Anyway...Santa, you fat bastard, here's how you could handle a few situations for me this year, okay? Some involve simply getting these people a present, some involve you getting off your duff and actually doing something about a situation. Without further ado...
Apple - Make the ipod designers attach something similar to a key tracer to the stupid things. Anyone remember key tracers? Where you clap or whistle, and the beeper thingy goes off and leads you to them? I need this for my ipods. I've gone through four shuffles this year. Four! At least make 'em glow in the dark/glow in the snow or something. Fuck.
Brittany Murphy - Oops. Scratch that one off the list.
Cambie Pub - Make sure they have plenty of shitty beer ready for us when we get there at noon on Christmas day. In addition, can you ask the bouncers to at least be gentle when they 86 us this time? Thanks.
DJ AM - Oops. Scratch that one off the list too.
Ex-girlfriends - Give them all coal.
Filipino lady that was singing along to her ipod at 6am this morning on the bus - Give her a swift kick in the babymaker and a right cross to the jaw. Please. No one wants to hear the "soothing" sounds of a howling cat that just stepped on a nail. At 6am. Because that's what she sounded like.
Georges St Pierre - Give him whatever he needs to so he can gain a little more weight and move up to middleweight. Believe me Santa, when he defeats Anderson Silva, you won't even need to stop in Canada next year. You'll have already given the entire country the best present EVER.
Hell -Santa, I don't know if this is in your power or not....but could you save me a nice, fiery seat down there? It's pretty obvious that all the retard/racist/sexist/filthy Jew jokes are going to catch up to me at some point.
Iceland - Just give the people of this fine country a little advice. Tell all the guys there that the rest of the world doesn't give a shit about Fall Out Boy or A-ha anymore, so you can all stop dressing like a member of those shitty bands. And for the ladies...tell them to keep being blonde and perfect. Seriously. You're all gorgeous. I love you.
Jess - I'm gonna need you to stop him from going anywhere new. Flying to Florida? Bird in the engine. Driving to North Carolina? Armed robbery around Atlantic City or so. Ferry to Nova Scotia? Sink that motherfucker, it's full of people who pay for their clothing and beer in cod anyway. In other words, don't let him wander. And try to keep his cousin's ego in check too. That one will be a lot tougher, I understand that..so Jess and I will do our best to help you out.
Kings - I know this is a tough one, but hear me out. Could you just find some way to enforce the laws of probability a little better when I play poker? When I pick up pocket kings, I'm supposed to win the majority of the hands I play with it. An ace isn't supposed to hit the flop every god damn time. I'm not supposed to be losing a shitload of cash with a hand this good. Fat guy to fat guy Santa, for reals...make this happen.
Luxembourg - You don't have to give the people of this fine country anything specific. I just threw it in here to make sure Jess knows that I'm going to Luxembourg and he's never gonna make it there! I win!
Miley Cyrus - Make her turn 18 faster so I can stop feeling so guilty every time I watch her videos on youtube. Over and over. And over. At least she's not Jojo, right guys? RIGHT?
NHL - Do everyone a favor and get Gary Bettman fired (and killed by something nasty, like scurvy!) so the league can stop moving backwards. Seriously Santa, you must have some appreciation for hockey, you live in the fucking cold. Does hockey belong in Phoenix? No. This one is high-priority, close in importance to the letter P one below.
Old Milwaukee - Give the makers of this delicious nectar whatever they ask for, because they are some of the greatest people in the world. They bring so many others so much joy. Even if they're asking for unethical stuff (immigrant children to chain up in their basement, the extermination of all Coors employees, etc), GIVE IT TO THEM.
Portugal - Nice and simple - a first-round exit from the World Cup. Highest priority.
Quinton Jackson - Just explain to Rampage that he's not an actor, he's a fighter, and all the whining in the world isn't going to make him an actor. Pick him up, carry him to the fucking cage, and let him humble Rashad Evans so I don't have to fucking hear from either of them anymore.
Roger Goodell - Pull his head out of his ass for him. And give him a sense of humor. The possession rules on catching a football shouldn't be more detailed than an Al-Queda plot to blow up a train station. Fining every guy that shows an ounce of personality is retarded. Pretend you're Chris Henry's fiancee, and throw Roger off a truck. Simple as that.
Ooh, that one was cold.
Sami Salo - Invent some sort of hybrid bubble that Sami can play in so he doesn't get hurt every 3 games. I'd say the same for Pavol Demitra, but he'd probably complain about the bubble not having Marian Gaborik in it, so he'd end up going home anyway.
Toronto - Separation. Banish the city from Canada. Banish the Leafs from my television. Before this though, make all the goofs that left the shithole for better weather and nicer people GO BACK so we don't have to hear about what a great place it is. If it's so fucking great, WHY ARE YOU HERE?
Uneducated debtors - Keep them believing their package will actually get there soon. And thank them for being deadbeats, because without these retards to find, I couldn't travel the world! You're dumb and I love you!
Village of Jasper - Wipe out every dingo-fucking Aussie that works there. Dude, they don't even know the 3 brands of Canadian beer they sell in their bars, and they're working...in Canada. Feed them to the moose, bury em in the snow, I don't care. Just make them gone.
Washington Redskins - Somehow, could you make the team hand the playcalling duties back to Jim Zorn? That "fake" field goal attempt last night was the ugliest football play I've ever seen. Ever. You guys are worse than the Lions and the Raiders COMBINED sometimes (that last comment was specifically aimed at Adam and Milo).
X - You think you could just get rid of this letter? It's fucking useless and pretty much grinds any alphabetical list to a halt.
Yellowknife - Prepare these people for the shitshow that awaits them when Len and I eventually make it there. And can you get Ice Road Truckers canceled? These tards don't deserve groupies, they're fucking truckers!
Zoos, specifically the Wellington Zoo - Make sure that animals don't stand up people who pay good money to come hang out with them. Stupid giraffe. You know what you can get him for me, Santa? A housing enclosure that's 2 feet shorter than he is. Then he'll know how I feel when I sit in the back seat of a car. Stupid giraffe.
Okay, that's enough venom for one Christmas. See y'all next year.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Iceland, Part 2
Only took me like 3 months to get around to part 2 this time. Impressive! Might as well get right to it.
Bitch's flight didn't arrive till close to midnight, so he didn't end up getting to the hotel until just after 1am. I still wasn't dry from the mother of all rainstorms earlier, but the frosty hotel bar beers were helping me ignore it. 8.50 a beer though...god damn. The bar supposedly closes at midnight, but they stayed open to serve me until Jess got there. The hotel staff was quirky, but generally pretty nice.
So finally, bitch arrives. We took about 3 minutes to drop off his shit and load up our backpacks, and then it was pillaging time! We made our way over to the water, sat down, and cracked the first of many Icelandic beers. We were staying in an area that was fairly busy during the day, but absolutely dead at night. For the first hour that we sat on the rocks down by the water, I think we saw 2 cars total. It was dark, but not for long.
We had walked halfway to town along the Seabraut, but it was obviously dead and getting sort of repetitive, so we decided to double back and go the other way. After a while we came upon this strange structure. It's kind of hard to describe...it was a circular hill, with a building sticking out of the flattened top of the hill. Basically, someone built a hill over a building...or something. Here, a pic should clear it up a bit:
I know, Bitch looks extremely gay in the pic. You get used to it after a while.
So, we decided to climb the thing and sit up there and drink for a while. It wasn't anything really special, it was just...odd. We nicknamed it "The hatch", of Lost fame. If you haven't seen Lost...well, then the reference is lost on you. Pun intended.
Many more beers were consumed as we walked along the water, past more strange structures, a tiny-ass rock beach, and eventually right onto someone's property. There was a house there that amazed the drunks standing in their driveway (us). There were all sorts of carvings and gadgets and statues n shit all over the property. It was extremely odd. Somehow we never clued into the fact that we were basically trespassing and doing laps around someone's house at 3am. We're lucky the Icelandic popo didn't show up...but I don't think their tractors move very quickly, so we had ample getaway time.
After getting our fill of the house (which we labeled the Lost house, even though it has sweet fuck all in common with any house on Lost...go beer!), we wandered even further down the coast until the sun started coming up. In the same place it went down. At 4am. I still have trouble wrapping my head around that, and I saw it happen 3 more times before I left. We took pics and pondered intelligent stuff we had no business talking about with that much booze in us, then the moment stuck. The intellectual highpoint of the entire trip.
Birds!
We came across a big...uh, gaggle? of these weird-looking birds. Geese, but not quite geese. They weren't big enough. They were just standing around in a field, doing what pseudo-geese do, until Jess saw them. Jess has this thing about going fucking berzerk on animals. Don't ask me why. He just does. So, Jess sees them. He doesn't utter one word, he just charges and starts screaming. I know it sounds completely retarded, but I can't do it justice with words. I've seen it a few times already too...but this one was special, because who knows how Icelandic pseudo-geese will react to a chubby drunk berzerker, right?
Well, they ran. And they hissed. And they ran some more. Jess pranced after them, trying to go in 3 directions at once and falling down a bunch of times, until his energy reserves ran out. I fell down too...from laughter. Here are a couple pics of bitch in all his brilliance...
Around 6am, we decided to walk back to the hotel, after watching a HUGE ship go down some fjord and dock. Jess said cruise ship. I said cargo ship. We argued about it all the way back. Oh, and we fell down a lot, and spilled beer all over ourselves. We're classy like that.
What did we do when we got back to the hotel? Drank vodka and energy drinks for many hours until we were way too wired to sit in a tiny hotel room. Around that time, Marissa got to Iceland, but the person she was going to stay with didn't. So she ended up coming over to hang out with us. I don't think she was prepared for two drunken retards, but hey...at least we're entertaining. I started making fun of her about 3 seconds after I met her, and didn't stop until she left. I'm charming like that.
So, the 3 of us wandered downtown. We ended up stopping at a cafe/restaurant thinger called Cafe Paris, which just happened to have the hottest waitress of all time. I'm pretty sure she didn't really enjoy me staring a(nother) hole in her, but I was drunk and couldn't help myself. I'm writing this months later, and I still think she's insanely hot. Not as hot as the flybus ticket girl, but it was close.
After walking around for a while, we headed back down the seabraut to the hotel. Jess did flips on the grass and I threw his shoes into traffic. You know, man stuff. Marissa just looked on at our immaturity with disdain, but that's because she's from Buffalo and nothing fun ever happens there, so she didn't understand what she was witnessing. I think she would have left long ago...if she had anywhere to go.
Now that we had filled our day with Icelandic stuff and killed some time chillin, what was there to do? Drink at the hatch, that's what! We loaded up our backpacks and headed on over, climbed up the hill, and got drunk all over again. They talked nerd for a while, while I rolled down the hill a few times. I know some nerdspeak, but not like these two. They're both extremely fluent (and extremely lame). Whenever I'd get involved and try to steer the convo towards something not so fucking engineery, I'd get ignored while they argued over who has the nicer pocket protector or some shit. I had beer though, so it was all good.
This is the hatch lid:
That's how the polar bear got to the island.
When I finally got them to talk about normal stuff, I'd try to tell Marissa something about myself...and she'd already know it. I guess Jess decided to prepare her for possibly meeting me by doing what he does best...talking. And telling her EVERYTHING about me. I mean, I know I'm not supremely interesting or anything, but have you ever met a stranger and they already know your complete bio? It made for a pretty one-sided convo.
Me - "So, I guess you like the Sabres. I feel sorry for you."
Her - "I know you like the Canucks and you went to the World Juniors with Jess and yelled at Americans and you have been to a lot of other cities to watch hockey and you just got back from New Zealand and you like long quiet walks in the park and your birthday is July 30th and you're left-handed and you make fun of Jim a lot."
Me - "You know Jim?"
Her - "No."
Me - "Uh...I have no idea what to say now. You're chubby*."
*Before you get mad at me for calling a girl chubby, she weighs like 63 pounds. She's not chubby. I just like attaching completely unrealistic qualities to people to amuse myself. Like telling Jim he's smart.
So this went on for..a long time. Booze in face, fall down hill, rinse, repeat. Sun went down again, sun came up again...it was all somewhat routine the 2nd time around. We stagger back to the hotel. It's daytime again. Jess does what he always does when the entertainment stops for 10 seconds...he falls asleep. On the floor.
I try to fall asleep as well. Nyet. Not happening. Vodka/energy drinks + not adjusting to the time zone had Timmy Wide. Fucking. Awake. I watched The Hurt Locker (awesome movie) and tried to stave off the hangover. And fail miserably at it. I was hurtin for certain.
Jess slept until mid-afternoon while I laid there, wide awake, feeling like I was about to die. He got up and went for food and a walk with Chubby, but I couldn't move. Eventually he decided to take a tour out to a gigantic waterfall and Geysir (the geyser that all geysers are named after). I got all prepped to tough it out and go...and my body finally decided it was sleepy time. What the fuck? So, Jess and Marissa went on the 6 hour tour, and I fell asleep. At 4:30pm.
Yes, I know...I completely fucked this trip up to this point. So far I had seen barely any of Reykjavik, despite being there for 3 days. I hadn't gone on the main tour that every visitor takes. I hadn't been to a pub yet. I hadn't been to the main harbor yet. Hell, I hadn't talked to one Icelandic person that wasn't selling me something yet. This definitely wasn't a normal vacation for me. Did it get any better? You'll find out soon enough that it did not.
Bitch's flight didn't arrive till close to midnight, so he didn't end up getting to the hotel until just after 1am. I still wasn't dry from the mother of all rainstorms earlier, but the frosty hotel bar beers were helping me ignore it. 8.50 a beer though...god damn. The bar supposedly closes at midnight, but they stayed open to serve me until Jess got there. The hotel staff was quirky, but generally pretty nice.
So finally, bitch arrives. We took about 3 minutes to drop off his shit and load up our backpacks, and then it was pillaging time! We made our way over to the water, sat down, and cracked the first of many Icelandic beers. We were staying in an area that was fairly busy during the day, but absolutely dead at night. For the first hour that we sat on the rocks down by the water, I think we saw 2 cars total. It was dark, but not for long.
We had walked halfway to town along the Seabraut, but it was obviously dead and getting sort of repetitive, so we decided to double back and go the other way. After a while we came upon this strange structure. It's kind of hard to describe...it was a circular hill, with a building sticking out of the flattened top of the hill. Basically, someone built a hill over a building...or something. Here, a pic should clear it up a bit:
I know, Bitch looks extremely gay in the pic. You get used to it after a while.
So, we decided to climb the thing and sit up there and drink for a while. It wasn't anything really special, it was just...odd. We nicknamed it "The hatch", of Lost fame. If you haven't seen Lost...well, then the reference is lost on you. Pun intended.
Many more beers were consumed as we walked along the water, past more strange structures, a tiny-ass rock beach, and eventually right onto someone's property. There was a house there that amazed the drunks standing in their driveway (us). There were all sorts of carvings and gadgets and statues n shit all over the property. It was extremely odd. Somehow we never clued into the fact that we were basically trespassing and doing laps around someone's house at 3am. We're lucky the Icelandic popo didn't show up...but I don't think their tractors move very quickly, so we had ample getaway time.
After getting our fill of the house (which we labeled the Lost house, even though it has sweet fuck all in common with any house on Lost...go beer!), we wandered even further down the coast until the sun started coming up. In the same place it went down. At 4am. I still have trouble wrapping my head around that, and I saw it happen 3 more times before I left. We took pics and pondered intelligent stuff we had no business talking about with that much booze in us, then the moment stuck. The intellectual highpoint of the entire trip.
Birds!
We came across a big...uh, gaggle? of these weird-looking birds. Geese, but not quite geese. They weren't big enough. They were just standing around in a field, doing what pseudo-geese do, until Jess saw them. Jess has this thing about going fucking berzerk on animals. Don't ask me why. He just does. So, Jess sees them. He doesn't utter one word, he just charges and starts screaming. I know it sounds completely retarded, but I can't do it justice with words. I've seen it a few times already too...but this one was special, because who knows how Icelandic pseudo-geese will react to a chubby drunk berzerker, right?
Well, they ran. And they hissed. And they ran some more. Jess pranced after them, trying to go in 3 directions at once and falling down a bunch of times, until his energy reserves ran out. I fell down too...from laughter. Here are a couple pics of bitch in all his brilliance...
Around 6am, we decided to walk back to the hotel, after watching a HUGE ship go down some fjord and dock. Jess said cruise ship. I said cargo ship. We argued about it all the way back. Oh, and we fell down a lot, and spilled beer all over ourselves. We're classy like that.
What did we do when we got back to the hotel? Drank vodka and energy drinks for many hours until we were way too wired to sit in a tiny hotel room. Around that time, Marissa got to Iceland, but the person she was going to stay with didn't. So she ended up coming over to hang out with us. I don't think she was prepared for two drunken retards, but hey...at least we're entertaining. I started making fun of her about 3 seconds after I met her, and didn't stop until she left. I'm charming like that.
So, the 3 of us wandered downtown. We ended up stopping at a cafe/restaurant thinger called Cafe Paris, which just happened to have the hottest waitress of all time. I'm pretty sure she didn't really enjoy me staring a(nother) hole in her, but I was drunk and couldn't help myself. I'm writing this months later, and I still think she's insanely hot. Not as hot as the flybus ticket girl, but it was close.
After walking around for a while, we headed back down the seabraut to the hotel. Jess did flips on the grass and I threw his shoes into traffic. You know, man stuff. Marissa just looked on at our immaturity with disdain, but that's because she's from Buffalo and nothing fun ever happens there, so she didn't understand what she was witnessing. I think she would have left long ago...if she had anywhere to go.
Now that we had filled our day with Icelandic stuff and killed some time chillin, what was there to do? Drink at the hatch, that's what! We loaded up our backpacks and headed on over, climbed up the hill, and got drunk all over again. They talked nerd for a while, while I rolled down the hill a few times. I know some nerdspeak, but not like these two. They're both extremely fluent (and extremely lame). Whenever I'd get involved and try to steer the convo towards something not so fucking engineery, I'd get ignored while they argued over who has the nicer pocket protector or some shit. I had beer though, so it was all good.
This is the hatch lid:
That's how the polar bear got to the island.
When I finally got them to talk about normal stuff, I'd try to tell Marissa something about myself...and she'd already know it. I guess Jess decided to prepare her for possibly meeting me by doing what he does best...talking. And telling her EVERYTHING about me. I mean, I know I'm not supremely interesting or anything, but have you ever met a stranger and they already know your complete bio? It made for a pretty one-sided convo.
Me - "So, I guess you like the Sabres. I feel sorry for you."
Her - "I know you like the Canucks and you went to the World Juniors with Jess and yelled at Americans and you have been to a lot of other cities to watch hockey and you just got back from New Zealand and you like long quiet walks in the park and your birthday is July 30th and you're left-handed and you make fun of Jim a lot."
Me - "You know Jim?"
Her - "No."
Me - "Uh...I have no idea what to say now. You're chubby*."
*Before you get mad at me for calling a girl chubby, she weighs like 63 pounds. She's not chubby. I just like attaching completely unrealistic qualities to people to amuse myself. Like telling Jim he's smart.
So this went on for..a long time. Booze in face, fall down hill, rinse, repeat. Sun went down again, sun came up again...it was all somewhat routine the 2nd time around. We stagger back to the hotel. It's daytime again. Jess does what he always does when the entertainment stops for 10 seconds...he falls asleep. On the floor.
I try to fall asleep as well. Nyet. Not happening. Vodka/energy drinks + not adjusting to the time zone had Timmy Wide. Fucking. Awake. I watched The Hurt Locker (awesome movie) and tried to stave off the hangover. And fail miserably at it. I was hurtin for certain.
Jess slept until mid-afternoon while I laid there, wide awake, feeling like I was about to die. He got up and went for food and a walk with Chubby, but I couldn't move. Eventually he decided to take a tour out to a gigantic waterfall and Geysir (the geyser that all geysers are named after). I got all prepped to tough it out and go...and my body finally decided it was sleepy time. What the fuck? So, Jess and Marissa went on the 6 hour tour, and I fell asleep. At 4:30pm.
Yes, I know...I completely fucked this trip up to this point. So far I had seen barely any of Reykjavik, despite being there for 3 days. I hadn't gone on the main tour that every visitor takes. I hadn't been to a pub yet. I hadn't been to the main harbor yet. Hell, I hadn't talked to one Icelandic person that wasn't selling me something yet. This definitely wasn't a normal vacation for me. Did it get any better? You'll find out soon enough that it did not.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Iceland, part 1
I know, I know...I got home 3 months ago and haven't written about this. Don't act like it's unusual, everyone knows I'm lazy. I'm going BACK to Iceland in 3 months too, which is going to fucking rule. We'll get to that later though - for now, sit back, relax, and get ready to learn. I'm guessing 99% of you know nothing about Iceland, based on the same tired variation of a quote I got from all of you when I said I was going:
"Say hi to/kick/strangle/make sweet love to BJORK while you're in Iceland!"
To start the story, I will quote...myself. I know that's kinda arrogant, but it's easier this way. People ask why I wanted to to go to Iceland of all places. Here's why:
Seriously, a drunken conversation in Cabo is how this all came about. We're still working on the moon part of things.
So, bitch decided he was going to Europe for 2 weeks in the summer, and his first stop was going to be Iceland. He's a rat bastard, planning this trip right after I booked my NZ trip so I couldn't go along...it was his secret way of trying to catch up in our travel contest that I'm totally dominating him in. Anyway, I figured out the logistics and talked to my boss...and voila, I was able to go to Iceland for 6 days. Shazaam!
First step - train to Seattle. Since I had 2 hours to kill before the train departure, I decided to hit up the Ivanhoe for some hungover-curing beers. That place is always a gongshow, and it was in fine form on this day as well. As soon as I got there, a guy came in and sat down across from me with a pie in a box, one of those Safeway ones. He tried to cut it up into pieces with a plastic knife, but failed horribly. By the time he was done, it was just a pile o' pie, no individual pieces at all. That didn't stop him from scooping up a bunch with his hands into 4 different napkins and going around trying to sell pie to the other customers! It was damn tasty too.
I kid, I kid. About the tasty part, anyway. The rest of the story is true.
Train, hotel, sleep, blah blah. Departure day!
Eventually it was go time. I was seated in the exit row right before the entrance to business class, which was curtained off as usual. I guess the flight attendant got the booze cart wheel stuck on the last row of business class seats, and the cart just flipped right the fuck over. The cart, and many bottles of liquor, just took out the curtain and landed right in front of us. A couple of bottles whizzed right past us, a few rows down. Frankly, it scared the shit out of all of us in the exit row at first, because we certainly weren't expecting anything like that. But we certainly made the best of it.
About 2 seconds after the cart fell over, the old guy across the row from me sprung into action like an elderly spiderman. He whipped his seat belt off and pounced on a champagne bottle on the floor. Just as quickly, he whipped around and asked all of us "Champagne, anyone?" Hell yeah! He manged to fill up 4 of our glasses before the flight attendant LOST HER SHIT and started berating the guy in Icelandic. That made it even funnier, because Icelandic might be the funniest angry language in the world. After her tirade was over, he took a huge swig out of the bottle, smiled, and handed it to her. And she lost her shit again. Classic stuff. And for the record, business class champagne isn't half bad.
So, after all that, I arrived in Keflavik Airport. After another baggage screening (?) was immigration. The only question was "Where are you going?" "Uh...here?" The guy just gave me a strange look and waved me through. Odd.
So, now I'm in the main terminal. Due to my superior research skills, I know that buying booze at the airport duty free is up to 50% cheaper than in Reykjavik itself. How do I know this? A gigantic sign next to the baggage carousels that said "BUY DUTY FREE ALCOHOL HERE! IT IS UP TO 50% CHEAPER THAN IN THE CITY!"
I told you I was smart, folks.
My major problem was that I had only brought my daypack for the trip, and had no room to store much alcohol. Carrying a boatload of booze in a bag on a public bus is something I don't really enjoy, so I just bought a 6 pack of tallies for 880 kroner (7.75 or so), and went on my merry way. Until I came across another customs lineup. And an awesome conversation.
Customs guy - "You have duty free?"
Me: "Yes, a 6 pack of beer."
Him: "How long you here?"
Me: "6 days?"
Him: "1 beer a day does not sound fun."
Me: "Huh?"
Him: "You're allowed to buy as much beer as you want. Only 6? Only 6 is a waste!"
Me: *laughing* "I agree, I just don't want to carry 48 on the bus. It'll look strange. I can just buy more in town".
Him: "This is Iceland! Alcohol on the bus is okay! You better find a bank before you go to beer store in town. Very expensive."
Me: "How bad can it be?"
Him: "Have fun being not drunk!"
After that guy, I had to have my bag screened AGAIN for some reason, then I was finally free and clear. Finally, officially in Iceland. The absolute first woman I see after clearing all that was the chick who sold me my bus ticket into town, and she was unbelievably gorgeous (and not hairy). I wish I could have somehow taken a picture, because she was beyond words. Straight up supermodel. Selling bus tickets. I officially loved Iceland 30 seconds after I officially get there.
The busride in was...interesting. Most people would probably say that the landscape was ugly as hell. I didn't think it was ugly, just very odd. Barren, rocky...it looked like someone had taken a backhoe to the entire countryside. Apparently Iceland is the closest approximation to the moon's surface that you'll find on earth. Now I know why. Every so often there was steam rising from a small hill or mountain, which was a product of the geothermal activity Iceland is full of. Eventually the road gets to the coastline, which makes it even more odd. One side is brightly-coloured waterfront houses along a very cool rocky coastline...and the other side of the street is complete desolation and molten rock. Certainly a unique introduction, completely unlike anything I had ever seen before.
After changing buses and making it to the hotel, it was about 9am Icelandic time, or 2am Vancouver time. I was super excited to go exploring, so I did just that. I quickly realized something though - there were no people. Anywhere. I walked all over the damn place for 2 hours, and I saw a grand total of 2 people. No stores were open. No cars were on the road. Nothing. I was starving, and couldn't find anywhere open to get food. Not one store open, anywhere. So I went back to the hotel to ask some serious questions about why Iceland was fucking abandoned.
Turns out I got there on the tail end of Verslunarmannahelgi. Yes, that's actually a word. It means something close to "Labor Day Weekend". Apparently the entire country shuts down and everyone goes camping in "the islands" and they party. EVERYONE. The hotel lady (not hot, not hairy either though) told me everything would be back to normal in 2 days. But she said for those 2 days, I was basically fucked in terms of close restaurants and such. Greaaaaat.
At least I knew what was going on now. I went back to my room and brought up a (not-so) trusty google map. I realized then that I had severely underestimated Reykjavik. This hotel was a little further out than I had anticipated, and a combination of Reykjavik's circular streets and my terrible sense of direction meant that finding downtown was going to be pretty tough for me.
I asked about the bus, but she said it was running on a severely limited schedule. Plus, just look at that word for labor day weekend. Words that long are the norm for Icelandic. Trying to figure ANYTHING out was fucking difficult, especially bus signs. I was actually taking pictures of street signs so I could refer back to them if/when I got lost, because they were impossible to remember. I'm an Icelandic failure, what can I say?
I was also a sweaty pig from all this walking, so it was shower time. Right away, I could tell something was off about the shower. At first I thought it was me, but it turns out that the water smells like ass. If any of you have ever been to a hot spring (or Rotorua, New Zealand), you know that hot spring water smells like rotten eggs. Well, Icelandic water is all natural spring water, so...you do the math. Yes, all the water, including the tap water you brush your teeth with, smells like ass. Always enjoyable.
After getting clean but not feeling clean, I decided that I was going to go to the Kringlan. It's a huge mall about 3km from my hotel. It was also across the street from the hotel Jess and I had booked for the 4 days following, so scouting the neighbourhood seemed smart. Plus, it was a mall. It had to have something open, right?
Wrong. The entire mall was deserted. Every store between my hotel and the mall was deserted. And there were no people. Quite the introduction to Iceland. On top of that, I couldn't find our new hotel, even though google maps clearly identified where it was. Weird.
On the way back, I decided to just cut through the residential area and hopefully run into someone who could direct me to the gas station that hotel lady told me about. I was going to get lost anyway, so why not try? It actually worked out, and a nice lady directed me to the first meal I had eaten in a loooong time. Gas station sandwiches and pringles never tasted so good. They also sold beer, so I grabbed a few to compliment my 6 at the hotel, and went back there a happy man. For a while, anyway.
I did make the usual European shopping mistakes though. I learned this from my first trip in 2004, but it had been a while, and I epically failed on both counts:
Rule 1 - Sandwich packaging lies about ingredients. It will list 2 or 3, and leave out the other 9 that are actually on the sandwich. One of these unlisted ingredients is always some sort of disgusting sauce. All sandwiches taste bad in Europe, so don't buy them. Never forget this.
Rule 2 - Carbonated water. For some reason, Europeans loooove carbonated water, and they're terrible about labeling which bottles are carbonated and which aren't. I fucking hate carbonated water. Guess which one I bought.
My hotel room was really nice. Spacious, cool furnishings, comfy bed, etc. I was worn out, so I figured a couple beers and some Icelandic TV sounded interesting. As I said in my NZ blogs, I'm a sucker for foreign TV for some reason. It almost always sucks, but it's interesting to see how badly they rip off American TV. In Iceland's case, it...was stranger than I expected. BBC News, 4 channels in english with Icelandic subtitles, and the strangest music channel I've ever seen. Here's a pic of the screen that displayed all the time:
All that comfort turned out to be a bad idea though, because around 4pm, I passed the fuck out. And woke up around 10:30pm. It was still light out, so I went for a walk to attempt to watch the sunset. Cloudy. No dice. It got dark around midnight, so I went back and vegged. Drank my remaining duty free beers and started on the gas station ones. These new ones tasted pretty bland, but whatever, they were cheap. I was chuckling to myself about how wrong/stupid the customs guy was about the "expensive beer in town", when I read the can and realized how wrong/stupid I was.
2.3 percent. Low-alky beer. Blah.
Turns out they can sell this shit anywhere and it's super-cheap because it's pretty much impossible to get drunk off of. So, now not only was I very bored in an abandoned city, I was also drinking the equivalent of O'Douls unknowingly. FML. After mindlessly playing on the net for a while, I noticed it starting to get light again around 3:30am. So it was light out for 20.5 hours a day and dark for 3.5 in August in Reykjavik. Very cool. Sleep came again not long after that, and day 2 in Iceland was about to begin.
Jess wasn't arriving until 1am, so I had the whole day to myself. My goal was to check into the new hotel and head downtown somehow. As stated above, I knew where the new hotel was because google maps told me. About 3km from the current hotel. I started walking around 10am. It was 8 degrees outside and sunny, which is perfect weather to me (I'm weird). I cut through the suburbs again, and didn't see a single person. Eventually I arrived at where the hotel should be. There were 5 identical apartment buildings there, so I figured one had to be the hotel, right? Nope. I wandered aimlessly around them, and up and down the side streets for a while, trying to find the hotel. No dice.
At this point, I was a little shaken. How can the hotel I pre-paid for no longer exist? Was this some huge Icelandic scam? I would have asked someone for directions, but it should be pretty obvious by now that people were hard to come by. The mall across the street had tumbleweeds rolling through the parking lot. (Well, not really, but it's a fitting description). The only solution I could think of was to walk back to my original hotel and use the internet again.
3km later, and I'm back. And tired of walking. Go to google maps. Hotel is where I just was. What the fuck? You'd think after 2 trips there I'd stop fucking trusting google maps and actually go to the hotel's website, but noooo. Timmy not that smart. I go ask hotel lady. She tells me it's down by the water. Water? What water? I hadn't even seen the water since I got there. Finally, I tell her my story and give her the address, and she laughs and tells me that the street (Borgatun) is nowhere near the Kringlan, and heartily laughs at my story about walking there twice to find it.
Whore.
She draws directions on an actual paper map (something I probably should have considered buying, I dunno, right when I fucking arrived there!), and I head out. For the third time. In the other direction. And guess what? I found the fucking hotel down by the fucking water. It only took 3 hours and 8.5km of walking. Iceland 5, Tim 0.
So, this new hotel has many pros and many cons. The room key was huge and metal, and the door opens towards you, not into the room. The room was fucking tiny, easily 1/3 of the size of my last room. 2 single beds, a small table between them, and a tiny bathroom. But, the hotel had a bar and buffet restaurant, and was across the street from a subway and gas station, 3 doors away from a liquor store, and half a block from the water. I'll take location over comfort any day.
After a nap, I walked along the seabraut (the road along the water) in the direction of downtown, but bailed before I got there. Why? The biggest rainstorm of all time drenched me, that's why. I was repeatedly warned about how crazy Icelandic weather was, but it was the summer! How bad could it be? I didn't want to pack much, so I ignored all good sense and brought a grand total of one hoody and no jacket.
Bad idea, Tim.
My hoody was so wet, it didn't dry for over a day. Yeah. Cold weather + no dryer = wet Tim. You ever had the discomfort of slipping on a soaking-wet hoody whenever you wanted to go anywhere, because it was either that or freeze your balls off in a T-shirt? Welcome to my world. Tim Burke, world traveler extraordinaire.
So far, Iceland had humbled me. Basically, it had kicked the shit out of me. Luckily, things could only go uphill from here, because Jess was due to arrive soon. Looking at his ugly face for a few days certainly wasn't enticing, but at least Iceland would have someone new to beat the tar out of and it might leave me alone. It turned out that was at least partially true. You can tune in for part 2 to hear about our drunken misadventures. Peace out.
"Say hi to/kick/strangle/make sweet love to BJORK while you're in Iceland!"
To start the story, I will quote...myself. I know that's kinda arrogant, but it's easier this way. People ask why I wanted to to go to Iceland of all places. Here's why:
We go back to the hotel room for a bit, and chill on the patio (which is directly above the entrance to the hotel). After one of these tequila beer thingers (and the 2 margaritas he had at the hotel bar), he is...well, drunk. He starts telling the world how he has a laptop worth 3 grand and a camera worth 1500 in our room, and he doesn't care if anyone steals it, cuz it's INSURED, BITCHES! And we plan a trip to Iceland, and the moon! Shut up, it was funny at the time.
Seriously, a drunken conversation in Cabo is how this all came about. We're still working on the moon part of things.
So, bitch decided he was going to Europe for 2 weeks in the summer, and his first stop was going to be Iceland. He's a rat bastard, planning this trip right after I booked my NZ trip so I couldn't go along...it was his secret way of trying to catch up in our travel contest that I'm totally dominating him in. Anyway, I figured out the logistics and talked to my boss...and voila, I was able to go to Iceland for 6 days. Shazaam!
First step - train to Seattle. Since I had 2 hours to kill before the train departure, I decided to hit up the Ivanhoe for some hungover-curing beers. That place is always a gongshow, and it was in fine form on this day as well. As soon as I got there, a guy came in and sat down across from me with a pie in a box, one of those Safeway ones. He tried to cut it up into pieces with a plastic knife, but failed horribly. By the time he was done, it was just a pile o' pie, no individual pieces at all. That didn't stop him from scooping up a bunch with his hands into 4 different napkins and going around trying to sell pie to the other customers! It was damn tasty too.
I kid, I kid. About the tasty part, anyway. The rest of the story is true.
Train, hotel, sleep, blah blah. Departure day!
Eventually it was go time. I was seated in the exit row right before the entrance to business class, which was curtained off as usual. I guess the flight attendant got the booze cart wheel stuck on the last row of business class seats, and the cart just flipped right the fuck over. The cart, and many bottles of liquor, just took out the curtain and landed right in front of us. A couple of bottles whizzed right past us, a few rows down. Frankly, it scared the shit out of all of us in the exit row at first, because we certainly weren't expecting anything like that. But we certainly made the best of it.
About 2 seconds after the cart fell over, the old guy across the row from me sprung into action like an elderly spiderman. He whipped his seat belt off and pounced on a champagne bottle on the floor. Just as quickly, he whipped around and asked all of us "Champagne, anyone?" Hell yeah! He manged to fill up 4 of our glasses before the flight attendant LOST HER SHIT and started berating the guy in Icelandic. That made it even funnier, because Icelandic might be the funniest angry language in the world. After her tirade was over, he took a huge swig out of the bottle, smiled, and handed it to her. And she lost her shit again. Classic stuff. And for the record, business class champagne isn't half bad.
So, after all that, I arrived in Keflavik Airport. After another baggage screening (?) was immigration. The only question was "Where are you going?" "Uh...here?" The guy just gave me a strange look and waved me through. Odd.
So, now I'm in the main terminal. Due to my superior research skills, I know that buying booze at the airport duty free is up to 50% cheaper than in Reykjavik itself. How do I know this? A gigantic sign next to the baggage carousels that said "BUY DUTY FREE ALCOHOL HERE! IT IS UP TO 50% CHEAPER THAN IN THE CITY!"
I told you I was smart, folks.
My major problem was that I had only brought my daypack for the trip, and had no room to store much alcohol. Carrying a boatload of booze in a bag on a public bus is something I don't really enjoy, so I just bought a 6 pack of tallies for 880 kroner (7.75 or so), and went on my merry way. Until I came across another customs lineup. And an awesome conversation.
Customs guy - "You have duty free?"
Me: "Yes, a 6 pack of beer."
Him: "How long you here?"
Me: "6 days?"
Him: "1 beer a day does not sound fun."
Me: "Huh?"
Him: "You're allowed to buy as much beer as you want. Only 6? Only 6 is a waste!"
Me: *laughing* "I agree, I just don't want to carry 48 on the bus. It'll look strange. I can just buy more in town".
Him: "This is Iceland! Alcohol on the bus is okay! You better find a bank before you go to beer store in town. Very expensive."
Me: "How bad can it be?"
Him: "Have fun being not drunk!"
After that guy, I had to have my bag screened AGAIN for some reason, then I was finally free and clear. Finally, officially in Iceland. The absolute first woman I see after clearing all that was the chick who sold me my bus ticket into town, and she was unbelievably gorgeous (and not hairy). I wish I could have somehow taken a picture, because she was beyond words. Straight up supermodel. Selling bus tickets. I officially loved Iceland 30 seconds after I officially get there.
The busride in was...interesting. Most people would probably say that the landscape was ugly as hell. I didn't think it was ugly, just very odd. Barren, rocky...it looked like someone had taken a backhoe to the entire countryside. Apparently Iceland is the closest approximation to the moon's surface that you'll find on earth. Now I know why. Every so often there was steam rising from a small hill or mountain, which was a product of the geothermal activity Iceland is full of. Eventually the road gets to the coastline, which makes it even more odd. One side is brightly-coloured waterfront houses along a very cool rocky coastline...and the other side of the street is complete desolation and molten rock. Certainly a unique introduction, completely unlike anything I had ever seen before.
After changing buses and making it to the hotel, it was about 9am Icelandic time, or 2am Vancouver time. I was super excited to go exploring, so I did just that. I quickly realized something though - there were no people. Anywhere. I walked all over the damn place for 2 hours, and I saw a grand total of 2 people. No stores were open. No cars were on the road. Nothing. I was starving, and couldn't find anywhere open to get food. Not one store open, anywhere. So I went back to the hotel to ask some serious questions about why Iceland was fucking abandoned.
Turns out I got there on the tail end of Verslunarmannahelgi. Yes, that's actually a word. It means something close to "Labor Day Weekend". Apparently the entire country shuts down and everyone goes camping in "the islands" and they party. EVERYONE. The hotel lady (not hot, not hairy either though) told me everything would be back to normal in 2 days. But she said for those 2 days, I was basically fucked in terms of close restaurants and such. Greaaaaat.
At least I knew what was going on now. I went back to my room and brought up a (not-so) trusty google map. I realized then that I had severely underestimated Reykjavik. This hotel was a little further out than I had anticipated, and a combination of Reykjavik's circular streets and my terrible sense of direction meant that finding downtown was going to be pretty tough for me.
I asked about the bus, but she said it was running on a severely limited schedule. Plus, just look at that word for labor day weekend. Words that long are the norm for Icelandic. Trying to figure ANYTHING out was fucking difficult, especially bus signs. I was actually taking pictures of street signs so I could refer back to them if/when I got lost, because they were impossible to remember. I'm an Icelandic failure, what can I say?
I was also a sweaty pig from all this walking, so it was shower time. Right away, I could tell something was off about the shower. At first I thought it was me, but it turns out that the water smells like ass. If any of you have ever been to a hot spring (or Rotorua, New Zealand), you know that hot spring water smells like rotten eggs. Well, Icelandic water is all natural spring water, so...you do the math. Yes, all the water, including the tap water you brush your teeth with, smells like ass. Always enjoyable.
After getting clean but not feeling clean, I decided that I was going to go to the Kringlan. It's a huge mall about 3km from my hotel. It was also across the street from the hotel Jess and I had booked for the 4 days following, so scouting the neighbourhood seemed smart. Plus, it was a mall. It had to have something open, right?
Wrong. The entire mall was deserted. Every store between my hotel and the mall was deserted. And there were no people. Quite the introduction to Iceland. On top of that, I couldn't find our new hotel, even though google maps clearly identified where it was. Weird.
On the way back, I decided to just cut through the residential area and hopefully run into someone who could direct me to the gas station that hotel lady told me about. I was going to get lost anyway, so why not try? It actually worked out, and a nice lady directed me to the first meal I had eaten in a loooong time. Gas station sandwiches and pringles never tasted so good. They also sold beer, so I grabbed a few to compliment my 6 at the hotel, and went back there a happy man. For a while, anyway.
I did make the usual European shopping mistakes though. I learned this from my first trip in 2004, but it had been a while, and I epically failed on both counts:
Rule 1 - Sandwich packaging lies about ingredients. It will list 2 or 3, and leave out the other 9 that are actually on the sandwich. One of these unlisted ingredients is always some sort of disgusting sauce. All sandwiches taste bad in Europe, so don't buy them. Never forget this.
Rule 2 - Carbonated water. For some reason, Europeans loooove carbonated water, and they're terrible about labeling which bottles are carbonated and which aren't. I fucking hate carbonated water. Guess which one I bought.
My hotel room was really nice. Spacious, cool furnishings, comfy bed, etc. I was worn out, so I figured a couple beers and some Icelandic TV sounded interesting. As I said in my NZ blogs, I'm a sucker for foreign TV for some reason. It almost always sucks, but it's interesting to see how badly they rip off American TV. In Iceland's case, it...was stranger than I expected. BBC News, 4 channels in english with Icelandic subtitles, and the strangest music channel I've ever seen. Here's a pic of the screen that displayed all the time:
All that comfort turned out to be a bad idea though, because around 4pm, I passed the fuck out. And woke up around 10:30pm. It was still light out, so I went for a walk to attempt to watch the sunset. Cloudy. No dice. It got dark around midnight, so I went back and vegged. Drank my remaining duty free beers and started on the gas station ones. These new ones tasted pretty bland, but whatever, they were cheap. I was chuckling to myself about how wrong/stupid the customs guy was about the "expensive beer in town", when I read the can and realized how wrong/stupid I was.
2.3 percent. Low-alky beer. Blah.
Turns out they can sell this shit anywhere and it's super-cheap because it's pretty much impossible to get drunk off of. So, now not only was I very bored in an abandoned city, I was also drinking the equivalent of O'Douls unknowingly. FML. After mindlessly playing on the net for a while, I noticed it starting to get light again around 3:30am. So it was light out for 20.5 hours a day and dark for 3.5 in August in Reykjavik. Very cool. Sleep came again not long after that, and day 2 in Iceland was about to begin.
Jess wasn't arriving until 1am, so I had the whole day to myself. My goal was to check into the new hotel and head downtown somehow. As stated above, I knew where the new hotel was because google maps told me. About 3km from the current hotel. I started walking around 10am. It was 8 degrees outside and sunny, which is perfect weather to me (I'm weird). I cut through the suburbs again, and didn't see a single person. Eventually I arrived at where the hotel should be. There were 5 identical apartment buildings there, so I figured one had to be the hotel, right? Nope. I wandered aimlessly around them, and up and down the side streets for a while, trying to find the hotel. No dice.
At this point, I was a little shaken. How can the hotel I pre-paid for no longer exist? Was this some huge Icelandic scam? I would have asked someone for directions, but it should be pretty obvious by now that people were hard to come by. The mall across the street had tumbleweeds rolling through the parking lot. (Well, not really, but it's a fitting description). The only solution I could think of was to walk back to my original hotel and use the internet again.
3km later, and I'm back. And tired of walking. Go to google maps. Hotel is where I just was. What the fuck? You'd think after 2 trips there I'd stop fucking trusting google maps and actually go to the hotel's website, but noooo. Timmy not that smart. I go ask hotel lady. She tells me it's down by the water. Water? What water? I hadn't even seen the water since I got there. Finally, I tell her my story and give her the address, and she laughs and tells me that the street (Borgatun) is nowhere near the Kringlan, and heartily laughs at my story about walking there twice to find it.
Whore.
She draws directions on an actual paper map (something I probably should have considered buying, I dunno, right when I fucking arrived there!), and I head out. For the third time. In the other direction. And guess what? I found the fucking hotel down by the fucking water. It only took 3 hours and 8.5km of walking. Iceland 5, Tim 0.
So, this new hotel has many pros and many cons. The room key was huge and metal, and the door opens towards you, not into the room. The room was fucking tiny, easily 1/3 of the size of my last room. 2 single beds, a small table between them, and a tiny bathroom. But, the hotel had a bar and buffet restaurant, and was across the street from a subway and gas station, 3 doors away from a liquor store, and half a block from the water. I'll take location over comfort any day.
After a nap, I walked along the seabraut (the road along the water) in the direction of downtown, but bailed before I got there. Why? The biggest rainstorm of all time drenched me, that's why. I was repeatedly warned about how crazy Icelandic weather was, but it was the summer! How bad could it be? I didn't want to pack much, so I ignored all good sense and brought a grand total of one hoody and no jacket.
Bad idea, Tim.
My hoody was so wet, it didn't dry for over a day. Yeah. Cold weather + no dryer = wet Tim. You ever had the discomfort of slipping on a soaking-wet hoody whenever you wanted to go anywhere, because it was either that or freeze your balls off in a T-shirt? Welcome to my world. Tim Burke, world traveler extraordinaire.
So far, Iceland had humbled me. Basically, it had kicked the shit out of me. Luckily, things could only go uphill from here, because Jess was due to arrive soon. Looking at his ugly face for a few days certainly wasn't enticing, but at least Iceland would have someone new to beat the tar out of and it might leave me alone. It turned out that was at least partially true. You can tune in for part 2 to hear about our drunken misadventures. Peace out.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Rotorua and Auckland Again
Everything after Wellington was gonna be downhill, because it was the coolest city ever. Obviously I didn't know that when I planned the trip though, or I would have scheduled more time there. Instead, I was off to my last real destination on the trip...Rotorua. I almost didn't even go there, but everyone I had discussed NZ with said it wouldn't be a compete trip unless I did. It's the center of Maori culture apparently, and full of geothermal areas that were apparently pretty cool. So, I went.
I sorta wish I hadn't.
Nothing bad happened or anything. It's actually a nice place. It was just boring...partly cuz of the weather, but mostly cuz I'm incredibly lazy sometimes. It's not like this trip had been really intense or anything...to be honest, I really hadn't done much at all. It was the first trip I've ever gone on where I didn't go completely gung-ho the entire time, and it was relaxing. I think I got a little too into that vibe in Rotorua, cuz...I didn't do much of anything.
I arrived around noon or so, and proceeded...to watch UFC 98 on my laptop. Hey, I'm an addict, leave me alone. It was pouring ass rain anyway, so walking didn't look stupidly appealing. After that was over and the rain let up, I went for a walk down to the lake, which is pretty damn nice. But, since this is me and not a normal person talking, something had to go wrong.
I'm chillin on a bench, minding my own business, when a...gaggle? of black swans swam over and jumped onto the dock, probably 15 feet in front of me. Pretty cool lookin, and big mofos too. I sat there and observed them for a bit, till one veered outta the pack, and walked towards me. No big deal, right? It's just a swan. It's not a Rarotongan pig or anything. I was getting my camera ready to take a pic of my new friend, and shit went sideways. I dunno why, but as soon as I took the camera out, he threw it into hyperdrive and in no time, he was right beside me.
And unhappy.
Since I have very little experience with swans, but a healthy fear of anything that's black (JUST KIDDING!), I attempted to exit the bench. As I did, the little fucker bit me! Or tried to, anyway. He sorta gripped onto my pant leg and gave a few tugs, before I realized exactly what was happening. And you know where it always goes from there, if you've ever read any of my other blogs...
Scream like girl, run for life.
Why the fuck do animals always attack me? What did I do to them? Did I go one too many zoos, and they feel exploited? Did they circulate my picture around the animal kingdom, with an "approach and bite immediately" command attached? What the hell? It's not like I even provoked the fucking thing, unless he's camera shy or something. Either way, fuck swans. And pigs.
So, after that little Rotoruran experience, I immediately hated this place. When I hate somewhere, I do what all mature adults do...head straight to the liquor store, then to my hotel for the night to enjoy rugby. And I watched Juno, and thought it was funny. Don't hate. Haters. Oh, one more thing happened - I ordered Domino's. It's sort of unusual for me, but I didn't feel like going back out. I know you don't give a shit what I ate, but it sets up a story where I look stupid the next day, so I'm sure you can cut me some slack.
So...the next day. The weather was much nicer, so I decided to walk over to the mud park. I doubt it's actually called that, but it was the only redeeming quality of the park - bubbling mud pits. Once I got to Rotorua, I realized that all the fancy geothermal activities that are actually cool cost a looootta money. I still had a fair amount of coin left, but didn't really feel like parting with a chunk of it to see mud geysers, when free mud ripples were just up the street. Leave me alone, it made sense at the time, okay?
The park was pretty cool. I forgot to mention that, because of all the geothermal activity, the whole city smelled like sulfur. Or rotten eggs, take your pick. At my hotel down by the lake, it wasn't so bad. This park though...wow. My nose felt like it had been assaulted. It was unreal. Luckily I didn't bring a snack to eat, because there's no way I would have been able to stomach it. So, the whole park is just paths that wind through mud lakes. Some just steam, some bubble, some are practically erupting. The steam is so thick you can barely see your way around, which made it pretty eery and cool.
After all the park excitement, I walked the long way back to the hotel, through the center of town. And it was Ledger. Really Ledger.
*Writer's tangent*
What does Ledger mean? It means dead. DEAD. I started using it in my Jasper blog, and it makes me laugh every time I think about it, so I'm keeping it. I could update it to a more contemporary death for each blog, like "Jackson" or "Fawcett", but Ledger is more fitting. My stories, my death reference!
*Tangent over*
So yea, there was nothing going on. It was sunday afternoon...I shoulda guessed that, but oh well. I went into a restaurant and asked where a convenience store was, and was directed to the "dairy" down the street. Dairy = convenience store in New Zealand. See, I know all the slang. I'm cool like that.
So, after grabbing some water and walking around for a while longer, I walked back to my hotel. I hadn't approached the hotel from this side yet, and found something that was amusing and annoying at the same time - a Pizza Hut. ATTACHED TO THE HOTEL. The night before, I had paid a 9 dollar delivery change to get a pizza brought to my room by Domino's...and the fucking Pizza Hut was no more than 150 feet from my room. My own stupidity usually makes me laugh though, so it's all good.
Other than all that, there's not much else worth mentioning about Rotorua. It's nice n all, but it wasn't what I expected. I didn't see a single Maori there. I saw some stores that sold some Maori trinkets. There was a Maori hut thinger that they do shows at outside my hotel. That's about it. Doesn't calling it a "hut thinger" make me sound so cultured?
The next morning, I got up and ready to go catch my bus to Auckland. I didn't think this bus ride would be nearly as entertaining as my last one though, because I only spent a dollar on it. Yes, one dollar. A 4.5 hour bus ride for 1 dollar. Go New Zealand. I was expecting chickens and scabies to be coming along for the trip, but the bus wasn't that bad. It went through Hamilton though. Wow, that town's a shithole. Glad I didn't decide to go there (not that I, or anyone else that doesn't live there, would have any reason to). It also went through a town called Whatawhata, and by a car lot in it called "5999 and under". Why is that funny? We were stopped a light, so I got a good look at 15 cars or so. Yup, you guessed it...all over 5999.
So, back in Auckland. Same hotel, same weather, same mirror image of home. I knew this place so well by now, I gave 2 people directions. 10 bucks says they got lost, but that's not the point dammit. I guess I could have gone and done something new with my one day left in Auckland, but eff that. I vegged and watched TV. Got a good night's sleep, cuz the 12.5 hour flight to San Fran the next day was gonna blow. Guess what? It sure did blow. But the wait at the airport was funny.
I paid a few bucks for wifi at the airport, because I was there 4 hours early. So I'm sitting there, and a fucking stunner walks by. This woman was supermodel-gorgeous. I basically eye-raped her, but it was sooo worth it, because...as she was walking by, she looked back to see if someone was catching up to her....and walked directly into this huge helicopter ride for kids that was in front of her. She did a header right over the top of the thing, landed facefirst, and basically somersaulted through to finish on her back, laying flat out. Everyone else went silent...I laughed. Loud. For a long time. I got a ton of dirty looks for that, but fuck it, IT WAS HILARIOUS. It would have won the 10k on America's Funniest Videos every damn week.
So, after laughing at that for a solid 3 hours, I finally boarded. Had an exit row seat. So far, so good. Then my serenity was destroyed by the biggest fucking Tongan I've ever seen in my life. That doesn't really mean a lot, since I've only ever seen one Tongan in person, but just go with it. This guy was massive. His wife was sitting behind us for some reason. I offered to trade seats with her, but she didn't want to for some reason. Weird. Anyway, the wifey was from San Fran and spoke english just fine. My new friend to my left? Nyet. Not a lick of english. Had never left Tonga until earlier that morning. Wooboy.
He has NO IDEA what was going on. Seatbelts? Tray tables? Armrests? White people? All of this was completely foreign to him. I'm not even being racist or anything either. His wife actually said "All of this stuff is completely foreign to him."
This is what made it so odd to me that his wife didn't want to sit next to him. Maybe she just didn't want to have to explain all this stuff to him, and decided to leave it to me. So I've got a guy that's easily 3 inches taller and 50 pounds heavier than me, completely tattoo'd, and hopelessly clueless about THE WORLD sitting next to me. I had to help him with everything. The TV screen pulled up from underneath the seat, and it was like fucking magic to him. He looked like a 6 year old opening the coolest Christmas present of all time. I was trying not to laugh, because I know that Tongans are fucking savages when they're angry (pun intended). So yeah...isuch a weird flight.
At hour 8 of 12, I started getting uncomfortable and bored. I dunno if you've ever flown anywhere for that long, but at a certain point you just hit your limit. You can only distract yourself for so long, then it becomes readily apparent that you are fucking hating life at that moment, and nothing is going to change for the next _ hours. For me, the blank was 4. I was fucking miserable. I was shifting in my seat every 10 seconds, nothing on the entertainment system could hold my attention, and obviously I couldn't sleep. I nearly went out of my fucking mind. I just sat there and watched my watch, while the Tongan watched me. It was...odd. To say the least.
FINALLY I got to San Francisco. I got to my hotel at 2:30pm. I was asleep by 3pm. And I didn't wake up until 5am the next day. Yup, I'm a sleeping machine. Got up, went to the airport, and started to type the first entry of the NZ blog on the comfy flight home. And I was pretty amused by my welcome home present.
My boss picked me up from the airport, around 10am. As soon as I got into his truck, he gave me a Pilsner! "Drink this". Yes sir! Two more of those in the 15 minute drive back to work, and I was fucking flying. After that, I located 6 people in 5 hours. Maybe morning beers are the key to tracing success!
So...overall, what did I think of the places I went? Well, the Cook Islands are...interesting. I was amazed by the scenery of the island and the people were awesome. It was very cool getting to see how Island Life works, in a place that's not polluted with American culture (eg. Hawaii). Some people could stay there forever...me, not so much. Heat and beach life aren't for me. I'm a city boy. For a South Pacific stopover though, I highly recommend it. Awesome place.
As for New Zealand - I absolutely loved it. Couldn't give it higher marks. I feel like I was able to get a good feel for both islands, and notice the small cultural differences in each. The south island felt more laid back, and the weather was certainly colder. The north was more cosmo and stuffy, but I still enjoyed it a lot. I didn't go to Christchurch, which is apparently the stuffy capital of the south island, so that could be why I came away with those impressions.
The people were amazingly helpful and friendly, more than anywhere else I've ever been. Even more than home, which surprised me. They also face many of the same social challenges that Canada does, which is something I didn't expect at all. For instance, there is a lot of tension with the huge population of Pacific Islanders and Maori in New Zealand. You could almost call it racism, but it doesn't seem that outright. The Islanders and Maori situation there is startlingly similar to the First Nations situation in Canada. I'm not going to get political, cuz you came here to read the funny, not the serious...but the similarities blew me away.
So, while New Zealand does have it's issues, it's a lot like home - a fucking great place to visit and live. It's also a lot cheaper than home, which made it an even better destination. I definitely want to go back someday and check out the stuff I missed (go jager bombs)...and just to hang out there again. I've never really been anywhere else that made me want to stay so bad. I didn't feel like a tourist there, really. I felt at ease, and I loved it. So people, if you ever get the chance to go...DO IT. Fuck Australia. It's all about New Zealand.
Kia Orana.
I sorta wish I hadn't.
Nothing bad happened or anything. It's actually a nice place. It was just boring...partly cuz of the weather, but mostly cuz I'm incredibly lazy sometimes. It's not like this trip had been really intense or anything...to be honest, I really hadn't done much at all. It was the first trip I've ever gone on where I didn't go completely gung-ho the entire time, and it was relaxing. I think I got a little too into that vibe in Rotorua, cuz...I didn't do much of anything.
I arrived around noon or so, and proceeded...to watch UFC 98 on my laptop. Hey, I'm an addict, leave me alone. It was pouring ass rain anyway, so walking didn't look stupidly appealing. After that was over and the rain let up, I went for a walk down to the lake, which is pretty damn nice. But, since this is me and not a normal person talking, something had to go wrong.
I'm chillin on a bench, minding my own business, when a...gaggle? of black swans swam over and jumped onto the dock, probably 15 feet in front of me. Pretty cool lookin, and big mofos too. I sat there and observed them for a bit, till one veered outta the pack, and walked towards me. No big deal, right? It's just a swan. It's not a Rarotongan pig or anything. I was getting my camera ready to take a pic of my new friend, and shit went sideways. I dunno why, but as soon as I took the camera out, he threw it into hyperdrive and in no time, he was right beside me.
And unhappy.
Since I have very little experience with swans, but a healthy fear of anything that's black (JUST KIDDING!), I attempted to exit the bench. As I did, the little fucker bit me! Or tried to, anyway. He sorta gripped onto my pant leg and gave a few tugs, before I realized exactly what was happening. And you know where it always goes from there, if you've ever read any of my other blogs...
Scream like girl, run for life.
Why the fuck do animals always attack me? What did I do to them? Did I go one too many zoos, and they feel exploited? Did they circulate my picture around the animal kingdom, with an "approach and bite immediately" command attached? What the hell? It's not like I even provoked the fucking thing, unless he's camera shy or something. Either way, fuck swans. And pigs.
So, after that little Rotoruran experience, I immediately hated this place. When I hate somewhere, I do what all mature adults do...head straight to the liquor store, then to my hotel for the night to enjoy rugby. And I watched Juno, and thought it was funny. Don't hate. Haters. Oh, one more thing happened - I ordered Domino's. It's sort of unusual for me, but I didn't feel like going back out. I know you don't give a shit what I ate, but it sets up a story where I look stupid the next day, so I'm sure you can cut me some slack.
So...the next day. The weather was much nicer, so I decided to walk over to the mud park. I doubt it's actually called that, but it was the only redeeming quality of the park - bubbling mud pits. Once I got to Rotorua, I realized that all the fancy geothermal activities that are actually cool cost a looootta money. I still had a fair amount of coin left, but didn't really feel like parting with a chunk of it to see mud geysers, when free mud ripples were just up the street. Leave me alone, it made sense at the time, okay?
The park was pretty cool. I forgot to mention that, because of all the geothermal activity, the whole city smelled like sulfur. Or rotten eggs, take your pick. At my hotel down by the lake, it wasn't so bad. This park though...wow. My nose felt like it had been assaulted. It was unreal. Luckily I didn't bring a snack to eat, because there's no way I would have been able to stomach it. So, the whole park is just paths that wind through mud lakes. Some just steam, some bubble, some are practically erupting. The steam is so thick you can barely see your way around, which made it pretty eery and cool.
After all the park excitement, I walked the long way back to the hotel, through the center of town. And it was Ledger. Really Ledger.
*Writer's tangent*
What does Ledger mean? It means dead. DEAD. I started using it in my Jasper blog, and it makes me laugh every time I think about it, so I'm keeping it. I could update it to a more contemporary death for each blog, like "Jackson" or "Fawcett", but Ledger is more fitting. My stories, my death reference!
*Tangent over*
So yea, there was nothing going on. It was sunday afternoon...I shoulda guessed that, but oh well. I went into a restaurant and asked where a convenience store was, and was directed to the "dairy" down the street. Dairy = convenience store in New Zealand. See, I know all the slang. I'm cool like that.
So, after grabbing some water and walking around for a while longer, I walked back to my hotel. I hadn't approached the hotel from this side yet, and found something that was amusing and annoying at the same time - a Pizza Hut. ATTACHED TO THE HOTEL. The night before, I had paid a 9 dollar delivery change to get a pizza brought to my room by Domino's...and the fucking Pizza Hut was no more than 150 feet from my room. My own stupidity usually makes me laugh though, so it's all good.
Other than all that, there's not much else worth mentioning about Rotorua. It's nice n all, but it wasn't what I expected. I didn't see a single Maori there. I saw some stores that sold some Maori trinkets. There was a Maori hut thinger that they do shows at outside my hotel. That's about it. Doesn't calling it a "hut thinger" make me sound so cultured?
The next morning, I got up and ready to go catch my bus to Auckland. I didn't think this bus ride would be nearly as entertaining as my last one though, because I only spent a dollar on it. Yes, one dollar. A 4.5 hour bus ride for 1 dollar. Go New Zealand. I was expecting chickens and scabies to be coming along for the trip, but the bus wasn't that bad. It went through Hamilton though. Wow, that town's a shithole. Glad I didn't decide to go there (not that I, or anyone else that doesn't live there, would have any reason to). It also went through a town called Whatawhata, and by a car lot in it called "5999 and under". Why is that funny? We were stopped a light, so I got a good look at 15 cars or so. Yup, you guessed it...all over 5999.
So, back in Auckland. Same hotel, same weather, same mirror image of home. I knew this place so well by now, I gave 2 people directions. 10 bucks says they got lost, but that's not the point dammit. I guess I could have gone and done something new with my one day left in Auckland, but eff that. I vegged and watched TV. Got a good night's sleep, cuz the 12.5 hour flight to San Fran the next day was gonna blow. Guess what? It sure did blow. But the wait at the airport was funny.
I paid a few bucks for wifi at the airport, because I was there 4 hours early. So I'm sitting there, and a fucking stunner walks by. This woman was supermodel-gorgeous. I basically eye-raped her, but it was sooo worth it, because...as she was walking by, she looked back to see if someone was catching up to her....and walked directly into this huge helicopter ride for kids that was in front of her. She did a header right over the top of the thing, landed facefirst, and basically somersaulted through to finish on her back, laying flat out. Everyone else went silent...I laughed. Loud. For a long time. I got a ton of dirty looks for that, but fuck it, IT WAS HILARIOUS. It would have won the 10k on America's Funniest Videos every damn week.
So, after laughing at that for a solid 3 hours, I finally boarded. Had an exit row seat. So far, so good. Then my serenity was destroyed by the biggest fucking Tongan I've ever seen in my life. That doesn't really mean a lot, since I've only ever seen one Tongan in person, but just go with it. This guy was massive. His wife was sitting behind us for some reason. I offered to trade seats with her, but she didn't want to for some reason. Weird. Anyway, the wifey was from San Fran and spoke english just fine. My new friend to my left? Nyet. Not a lick of english. Had never left Tonga until earlier that morning. Wooboy.
He has NO IDEA what was going on. Seatbelts? Tray tables? Armrests? White people? All of this was completely foreign to him. I'm not even being racist or anything either. His wife actually said "All of this stuff is completely foreign to him."
This is what made it so odd to me that his wife didn't want to sit next to him. Maybe she just didn't want to have to explain all this stuff to him, and decided to leave it to me. So I've got a guy that's easily 3 inches taller and 50 pounds heavier than me, completely tattoo'd, and hopelessly clueless about THE WORLD sitting next to me. I had to help him with everything. The TV screen pulled up from underneath the seat, and it was like fucking magic to him. He looked like a 6 year old opening the coolest Christmas present of all time. I was trying not to laugh, because I know that Tongans are fucking savages when they're angry (pun intended). So yeah...isuch a weird flight.
At hour 8 of 12, I started getting uncomfortable and bored. I dunno if you've ever flown anywhere for that long, but at a certain point you just hit your limit. You can only distract yourself for so long, then it becomes readily apparent that you are fucking hating life at that moment, and nothing is going to change for the next _ hours. For me, the blank was 4. I was fucking miserable. I was shifting in my seat every 10 seconds, nothing on the entertainment system could hold my attention, and obviously I couldn't sleep. I nearly went out of my fucking mind. I just sat there and watched my watch, while the Tongan watched me. It was...odd. To say the least.
FINALLY I got to San Francisco. I got to my hotel at 2:30pm. I was asleep by 3pm. And I didn't wake up until 5am the next day. Yup, I'm a sleeping machine. Got up, went to the airport, and started to type the first entry of the NZ blog on the comfy flight home. And I was pretty amused by my welcome home present.
My boss picked me up from the airport, around 10am. As soon as I got into his truck, he gave me a Pilsner! "Drink this". Yes sir! Two more of those in the 15 minute drive back to work, and I was fucking flying. After that, I located 6 people in 5 hours. Maybe morning beers are the key to tracing success!
So...overall, what did I think of the places I went? Well, the Cook Islands are...interesting. I was amazed by the scenery of the island and the people were awesome. It was very cool getting to see how Island Life works, in a place that's not polluted with American culture (eg. Hawaii). Some people could stay there forever...me, not so much. Heat and beach life aren't for me. I'm a city boy. For a South Pacific stopover though, I highly recommend it. Awesome place.
As for New Zealand - I absolutely loved it. Couldn't give it higher marks. I feel like I was able to get a good feel for both islands, and notice the small cultural differences in each. The south island felt more laid back, and the weather was certainly colder. The north was more cosmo and stuffy, but I still enjoyed it a lot. I didn't go to Christchurch, which is apparently the stuffy capital of the south island, so that could be why I came away with those impressions.
The people were amazingly helpful and friendly, more than anywhere else I've ever been. Even more than home, which surprised me. They also face many of the same social challenges that Canada does, which is something I didn't expect at all. For instance, there is a lot of tension with the huge population of Pacific Islanders and Maori in New Zealand. You could almost call it racism, but it doesn't seem that outright. The Islanders and Maori situation there is startlingly similar to the First Nations situation in Canada. I'm not going to get political, cuz you came here to read the funny, not the serious...but the similarities blew me away.
So, while New Zealand does have it's issues, it's a lot like home - a fucking great place to visit and live. It's also a lot cheaper than home, which made it an even better destination. I definitely want to go back someday and check out the stuff I missed (go jager bombs)...and just to hang out there again. I've never really been anywhere else that made me want to stay so bad. I didn't feel like a tourist there, really. I felt at ease, and I loved it. So people, if you ever get the chance to go...DO IT. Fuck Australia. It's all about New Zealand.
Kia Orana.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Wellington
I said I'd do Wellington and Rotorua in one blog, but eff that. I'll just do one at a time. Deal with it.
So, the last time you heard from me, I was kicking an Otago girl outta my hotel room. Go Tim. After all that excitement, I packed my shit and headed for the airport. One other woman was on the airport shuttle. We get to the airport, I collect my boarding pass, and proceed to the gate. When I get there, I realize that something very strange just happened...
I didn't have to clear security.
Like, no baggage screening, no metal detector. Nothing. Anyone can come and go from the gates. What fucking year is it here, 1965? I realize that terrorists aren't exactly sitting in their caves, planning to blow up all 29 people on the Air New Zealand flight from Buttfuck to Middle-O'-Nowhere, but still, no security at all? What the hell?
After thinking about that for a half hour or so, we all board our flight, and...the lady from the shuttle is sitting beside me. Weird. It was a short, comfy flight into Wellington, but the landing was unreal. I had heard it referred to as "Windy Welly", but I had no fucking clue what I was in for. The plane was swaying back and forth so bad, I was pretty certain a wing was going to hit the runway before the wheels did. But, since you're reading this, that obviously didn't happen. So far, flying in NZ was full of adventure. If shitting your pants is an "adventure".
Get off the plane, and onto another shuttle...and the same woman gets on the shuttle. Wow, this is getting "breakfast buddies in Jasper" like. Then, it got even weirder when she got off at the same hotel as me. What the hell? We were both eyeing each other warily, because it was a pretty fucking big string of coincidences. No, I didn't end up tossing her. Probably shoulda though.
Hotel was dead center downtown, so I went for a long-ass walk in the rain. The city is FUCKING SWEET. Right on a big harbor, super-clean downtown that wasn't too busy, and houses sprawling up the hills in all directions. No homeless people at all, unlike Auckland. This was a pic I took from the museum...it's some ritzy area of town:
Anyway, after all that walking, you can guess where I stopped:
Hey, I was thirsty, leave me alone. This was the coolest pub EVER though. They showed every North American sport imaginable. The NBA Finals were on when I was in there, but they also show the MLB, NFL, and...the NHL! Hell yes! And pints were 5 NZD, so like 3.40 Canadian. What's not to like?
After that, I went to what is referred to as the best museum in NZ, Te Papa. It's mostly Maori-oriented stuff, and it's fucking HUGE. 6 floors, massive building, tonsa shit in it. To be honest, I wasn't that impressed. All that space didn't contain much cool shit. The Otago museum was like 10% of the size, and still had cooler stuff. Maybe I'm just not a museum guy, who knows. Here are a couple pics from the museum.
A Marae, some sort of Maori humping hut or something:
The jungle area outside:
I went back to the hotel and chilled for a bit, then got keyed up for the big rugby game. My hotel had a bar in the lobby, so I ventured down there for a few wobblers and discussed the game with a few people. As usual, all the Kiwi's were super nice and helpful in explaining the finer points of the game I hadn't grasped yet. Wellington's team, the Hurricanes, were in the semi-finals and people were pretty excited for it. Unfortunately they lost, but it was still a super good game and I met some cool people.
I didn't want to pay bar prices all night, and I was pretty tired from the walk earlier, so I went looking for a liquor store. I found one..and it was closed at 6pm on a saturday. Odd. I ventured a little further and didn't find anythin else, so I went back to my hotel to inquire about this. The lady at the desk said "That's the only liquor store around here. Downtown is pretty dead at night on the weekends."
WHAT?
The city is very cool, but they do little to cater to the thousands of people that stay in downtown hotels each night. It might be on purpose, so the people are forced to get food and drink from their hotel at inflated prices, but it was pretty shitty. Every pub in the area was fucking jam-packed due to the rugby game, so I had no choice but to chill in the lobby bar for a while longer and watch some more rugby (different league, different rules. It'd take too long to explain). I called it an early night a few hours later.
The next day had one purpose - getting to hang out with a giraffe! The Wellington Zoo has a program where you get to go inside a giraffe's cage and feed him and pet him n shit. I'd been looking forward to this for a while, because giraffes are my cousins, according to most of my friends. And they're cool, like me. So about 2 hours before I was going to head out, I got an email from the zoo:
"Dear Mr. Burke,
Due to the current weather conditions, the giraffe is not accepting visitors today for the safety of the giraffe and the zoo visitors. We are sorry for the inconvenience. If you would like to reschedule, please contact us. We can also offer you a refund if necessary.
Sincerely,
Angry Asshole Giraffe and friends"
I told Lisa about it, and surprisingly she came up with a pretty witty burn:
"Are you kidding me? Not even a giraffe will keep a date with you? haha!"
Damn you woman.
Since I didn't have much else to do, I just went exploring in the rain again. The most famous building in Welly is called the Beehive. Doesn't look like a fucking beehive to me though. Here's a pic - Beehive or no beehive?
I spent most of the day just checking out various things downtown. The city is more livable than touristy, which I liked very much. I didn't dig everything closing early though. The wind got tiresome after a while too. Hey it's wind, how bad can it be, right? BAD. My hat blew away 3 different times. Walking around felt like you were walking uphill, because it was a struggle to walk into it. I'm not even kidding. And this isn't even me being lazy. Honest. Fo' real.
I managed to grab food and beer at a regular time on this day though, so it was all good. I had an early flight to Rotorua, so I figured I'd stay outta pubs and just chill in my room and watch rugby. Mission accomplished, and I won 45 bucks betting on the games. I had no clue what the fuck I was betting on, but it made the games interesting at least.
It was still raining like hell the next morning, but I had a flight to catch. Go to get on the airport shuttle, and GUESS who's on there. Yup, the lady from before. I wanted to say "Hellllo NEWMAN". She was my nemesis!
So, the last time you heard from me, I was kicking an Otago girl outta my hotel room. Go Tim. After all that excitement, I packed my shit and headed for the airport. One other woman was on the airport shuttle. We get to the airport, I collect my boarding pass, and proceed to the gate. When I get there, I realize that something very strange just happened...
I didn't have to clear security.
Like, no baggage screening, no metal detector. Nothing. Anyone can come and go from the gates. What fucking year is it here, 1965? I realize that terrorists aren't exactly sitting in their caves, planning to blow up all 29 people on the Air New Zealand flight from Buttfuck to Middle-O'-Nowhere, but still, no security at all? What the hell?
After thinking about that for a half hour or so, we all board our flight, and...the lady from the shuttle is sitting beside me. Weird. It was a short, comfy flight into Wellington, but the landing was unreal. I had heard it referred to as "Windy Welly", but I had no fucking clue what I was in for. The plane was swaying back and forth so bad, I was pretty certain a wing was going to hit the runway before the wheels did. But, since you're reading this, that obviously didn't happen. So far, flying in NZ was full of adventure. If shitting your pants is an "adventure".
Get off the plane, and onto another shuttle...and the same woman gets on the shuttle. Wow, this is getting "breakfast buddies in Jasper" like. Then, it got even weirder when she got off at the same hotel as me. What the hell? We were both eyeing each other warily, because it was a pretty fucking big string of coincidences. No, I didn't end up tossing her. Probably shoulda though.
Hotel was dead center downtown, so I went for a long-ass walk in the rain. The city is FUCKING SWEET. Right on a big harbor, super-clean downtown that wasn't too busy, and houses sprawling up the hills in all directions. No homeless people at all, unlike Auckland. This was a pic I took from the museum...it's some ritzy area of town:
Anyway, after all that walking, you can guess where I stopped:
Hey, I was thirsty, leave me alone. This was the coolest pub EVER though. They showed every North American sport imaginable. The NBA Finals were on when I was in there, but they also show the MLB, NFL, and...the NHL! Hell yes! And pints were 5 NZD, so like 3.40 Canadian. What's not to like?
After that, I went to what is referred to as the best museum in NZ, Te Papa. It's mostly Maori-oriented stuff, and it's fucking HUGE. 6 floors, massive building, tonsa shit in it. To be honest, I wasn't that impressed. All that space didn't contain much cool shit. The Otago museum was like 10% of the size, and still had cooler stuff. Maybe I'm just not a museum guy, who knows. Here are a couple pics from the museum.
A Marae, some sort of Maori humping hut or something:
The jungle area outside:
I went back to the hotel and chilled for a bit, then got keyed up for the big rugby game. My hotel had a bar in the lobby, so I ventured down there for a few wobblers and discussed the game with a few people. As usual, all the Kiwi's were super nice and helpful in explaining the finer points of the game I hadn't grasped yet. Wellington's team, the Hurricanes, were in the semi-finals and people were pretty excited for it. Unfortunately they lost, but it was still a super good game and I met some cool people.
I didn't want to pay bar prices all night, and I was pretty tired from the walk earlier, so I went looking for a liquor store. I found one..and it was closed at 6pm on a saturday. Odd. I ventured a little further and didn't find anythin else, so I went back to my hotel to inquire about this. The lady at the desk said "That's the only liquor store around here. Downtown is pretty dead at night on the weekends."
WHAT?
The city is very cool, but they do little to cater to the thousands of people that stay in downtown hotels each night. It might be on purpose, so the people are forced to get food and drink from their hotel at inflated prices, but it was pretty shitty. Every pub in the area was fucking jam-packed due to the rugby game, so I had no choice but to chill in the lobby bar for a while longer and watch some more rugby (different league, different rules. It'd take too long to explain). I called it an early night a few hours later.
The next day had one purpose - getting to hang out with a giraffe! The Wellington Zoo has a program where you get to go inside a giraffe's cage and feed him and pet him n shit. I'd been looking forward to this for a while, because giraffes are my cousins, according to most of my friends. And they're cool, like me. So about 2 hours before I was going to head out, I got an email from the zoo:
"Dear Mr. Burke,
Due to the current weather conditions, the giraffe is not accepting visitors today for the safety of the giraffe and the zoo visitors. We are sorry for the inconvenience. If you would like to reschedule, please contact us. We can also offer you a refund if necessary.
Sincerely,
Angry Asshole Giraffe and friends"
I told Lisa about it, and surprisingly she came up with a pretty witty burn:
"Are you kidding me? Not even a giraffe will keep a date with you? haha!"
Damn you woman.
Since I didn't have much else to do, I just went exploring in the rain again. The most famous building in Welly is called the Beehive. Doesn't look like a fucking beehive to me though. Here's a pic - Beehive or no beehive?
I spent most of the day just checking out various things downtown. The city is more livable than touristy, which I liked very much. I didn't dig everything closing early though. The wind got tiresome after a while too. Hey it's wind, how bad can it be, right? BAD. My hat blew away 3 different times. Walking around felt like you were walking uphill, because it was a struggle to walk into it. I'm not even kidding. And this isn't even me being lazy. Honest. Fo' real.
I managed to grab food and beer at a regular time on this day though, so it was all good. I had an early flight to Rotorua, so I figured I'd stay outta pubs and just chill in my room and watch rugby. Mission accomplished, and I won 45 bucks betting on the games. I had no clue what the fuck I was betting on, but it made the games interesting at least.
It was still raining like hell the next morning, but I had a flight to catch. Go to get on the airport shuttle, and GUESS who's on there. Yup, the lady from before. I wanted to say "Hellllo NEWMAN". She was my nemesis!
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Dunedin
Before I start my Iceland blogs, I need to finish my New Zealand ones. As usual, I'm lazy as hell. I've been totally jetlagged since I got home from Iceland for some reason. Could have something to do with staying up for 40 hours straight, then sleeping during the day every other day until I came home. Who knew that would screw your internal clock up?
This blog will cover my insane trip between Queenstown and Dunedin, and my 2 day stay in Dunedin itself. I will combine Wellington and Rotorua into the next entry, which will finish things off so I can move onto colder climates. Anyway, last time you heard from me, I had just spent an enjoyable 2 days in Queenstown, most of which I remembered. But not all.
So I woke up bright and early, kind of disappointed that I had to leave QT. Other than my drunken escapades, the town really sucked me in, and I could have easily spent a lot more time there. It probably worked out for the best though, because it's not very big and I had seen everything there was to see. So, onto Dunedin. I had booked a combination bus/train tour that also got me to Dunedin. The premise is that the bus takes me from QT to the train, and the train winds through some funky valley until you're back on the coast in Dunedin. I'm not a big fan of buses normally, but what the hell, right? Well this turned out to be the best bus ride EVER.
I'm waiting outside, and a coach arrives. You know, those greyhound-looking mofos. Seat like 50 people or something. I get on and go to walk to the back and quickly realize...there's no one else on the bus. The driver says "Where ya goin? Sit up 'ere with me mate. You're the only customer today."
What?
Yes people, I had a full-sized coach...to myself. For a 4 hour ride. Besides being odd, this seems like extremely bad business. It's not like I paid a mint for this bus ride. I'm pretty sure my fare didn't even cover the gas money to get there. I wasn't about to question my good fortune though (ya know, since I don't like people), so I just sat up front. It took about 45 seconds to get even more odd.
"So where do ya wanna go mate?"
What?
I gave the answer that most people would give...wherever you were going, obviously. "Dunedin?"
"Well I know that mate. Ya think I'm daft?"
"Uh..."
"I mean what do ya wanna see on the way?"
"I didn't know I had an option?"
"Since you're the only guy on here, I'll take you to whatever you want to see, as long as we're at the train station by 12:30. You like Lord of the Rings? Dams? Sheep? Aaaah...you look like a man that likes sheep mate!"
What the hell do you say to that? The bastard was calling me a sheep fucker! I just started laughing uncomfortably and said "I thought this was a tour. You pick the destinations, I take the pictures. I didn't exactly study for this! And I don't like sheep like you're implying I like sheep! *pause* "There any giraffes around here though?"
He laughed and said "I think we're going to get along great, mate!" Okay, we'll start off by goin to Cromwell for breakfast and figure it out from there!"
Sure. What else am I supposed to say? "NO! FIJI! NOW!"
So we headed off along another side of the lake towards Cromwell. As we approach the town, the driver goes "Hey, you wanna go see a bunch of fruits?" No, driver...no I don't. And I'm starting to get a little worried about this here driver. What he was talking about was pretty fucking amusing though, if a bit weird:
Don't even ask why the town has a gigantic fruit statue out front. The driver had no idea, and neither did any of the people we talked to while we were eating breakfast. It's a pretty little town though, surrounded by those mountains in the pic, with a cool river running through it. Very visually impressive, but quite small. Driver (he told me his name once, but I didn't remember nor did I care to - I just called him driver) said Cromwell was "boring as shit" and full of "old nosy people". It wasn't hard to see that, despite my limited time there.
After breakfast, he again asked me what I wanted to do. I had no idea, so I asked him to at least give me some suggestions. He suggested a massive sheep station, checking out the Clyde dam, some of the small towns along the way, or skip most of that and drive around LOTR land for a while. I liked LOTR, but I'm hardly a hobbit groupie, so I suggest as much of all that as possible. He was cool with that, so we were on our way.
First stop was the Clyde dam. It was...a dam. Fairly big, rushing water, etc. Nothing too special. Driver seemed disappointed I wasn't impressed, so he told me a story about how locals earn good luck points from the local gods for tossing tourists into the dam. I told him he'd have to get a backhoe in here, stat, if he wanted to get me over the fence and into the dam. He cracked up and let me live, luckily.
Next up was an aborted trip to a sheep station. As we were driving up, he asked me if I liked Canadian music at all. I replied in the positive, and he blew me away with his response - "Good, because this station is owned by Shania Twain. We see her in the grocery store in Cromwell all the time. Nice lady." HOT DAMN! We were goin to Shania's house! Then he crushed my dreams with a quick "She's only down here a couple months of the year mate. Certainly not in may, when the weather's shit!"
My dreams were dashed again when we drove up towards Lake Wanaka, and it started to snow. Driver quickly said that it would be a bitch to get all the way up there, and there would be no guarantee we'd get to see much anyway, since it's so big and the gate might not be open. How big? Try 42,000 acres. Wow. That's a lot of sheep. "Well, maybe we can find a giraffe station around here so you can get a shag in. How about llamas? Can you handle llamas?" Asshole.
So, back east we went. It was snowing a lot harder now, and it was pretty hard to see where we were going. You ever been the only one on a bus in a snowstorm? It's oddly comforting. We were laughing about the first line of the newspaper report if we ended up crashing - "A 52-seat coach has been found destroyed in a storm. The driver, one passenger, and a llama were all found dead aboard..."
During the drive, I asked driver a million questions about New Zealand and beyond. He hated being a bus driver, but had no choice. He worked in the mines in Australia for years, making killer money and only having to work a few months a year. But the economy died, the jobs dried up, and he had to move back home to NZ. Jobs were hard to come by, and this was the best he could do at the moment. He explained what life in small town NZ was like, and how people view foreigners like me.
His best story involved a buddy of his that had an odd dream - ever since they were 14, this guy always talked about traveling America coast to coast...via Greyhound. 12 years later, he saved up for his big trip, ponied up huge money for the airfare and bus tickets...and found out how sketchy Greyhound and it's stations are. He was expecting to travel in the lap of luxury! For 12 years, he never did any research about it at all! Awesome.
After passing many, many sheep and going through about 7 different changes in weather, we arrived in Rohan. For the uninformed, Rohan is a region of land in Lord of the Rings. It was pretty impressive when you're there, but it doesn't translate well to pics - check it:
See? Boring. The rocks in the ground were pretty crazy up close though. Definitely worth the detour, but more of a "ya had to be there" kinda thing. After we drove through Rohan for a bit, driver turned off the paved road onto some crazy gravel road. He saw the look on my face and said "Relax canuck, this is the way to the train station. You're not getting murdered. You think I would have wasted all this gas bringing you out here to murder you, mate?" Asshole.
Driver warned me that the train station was in the middle of nowhere. During the summer, the train goes all the way into Middlemarch, a town about 15km up the tracks. For some reason, in the winter it won't go that far, and you're forced to come out to this station. When he said the middle of nowhere, he meant it. It was called Pukerangi, but why label it as a place when no one lives there? There was NOTHING around, and the train station was pathetically tiny. See?
That's the town! What the fuck!
So, after an awesome 4 hour bus ride, it was time to part from Driver...or so I thought. Turns out I was wrong, because he was handing the bus off to someone arriving on the train, and coming to Dunedin with me. Sweet. We headed off on the train, and while I'm sure it's a killer ride in the summer, it was raining like stink and I couldn't see much out the window:
Basically I just bullshitted and did a couple of jager bombs with driver on the way down to Dunedin. He told me some more stories about his family, and about the train we were on. Once we arrived in Dunedin, he even grabbed a mini-shuttle and drove me to my hotel. I tried to tip him, but he wouldn't accept my money. "Spend it on beer mate. After you see the girls here, you'll see that I'm doing you a favor. You're going to need those drinks!" Awesome! He turned out to be correct.
So...Dunedin. It was pouring rain when I arrived, so I just decided to chill in my hotel room for a bit. That got old real quick, so it was off to explore, rain or not. I didn't make it far the first night, just up onto the main strip, walking up to the University and back. I contemplated a pub, but I was pretty soaked and pooped, so I just went to a 24 hour market and grabbed food and beer. I spent a quiet night alternating between drinking, watching rugby, and writing a couple of articles. Such an exciting life on the road.
The next day actually turned out to be a lot of the same. After walking around Dunedin a lot, I realized three things:
1. The town had some great architecture.
2. The town had some shitty weather.
3. The guidebook lied about a lot of stuff.
My main goal of the day was to find the "drinking barns" they talk about so much in Lonely Planet. "Cavernous, barn-like pubs filled with drunken students". Sounds like fun to me. What did I find? Semi-large pubs. That's it. Like the Foggy Dew (Fuck you Foggy!) or Clancy's. Just spacious. Not barns! No barns! Denied. They still had beer though, so all was not lost.
After a couple wobblers, I headed down to Otago University and into the Otago Museum, which was supposedly the 2nd best museum in the country. Surprisingly, it didn't disappoint. Right inside the door was a stuffed moa. A moa is a HUGE extinct fuzzy bird. Bigger than an ostrich. The museum worked on donations, and you stuff the donations into the moa. He was awesome. Moa!
Some of the carved statues were really cool:
There were lots of other cool things in there too. I putzed about in there for a couple of hours, then walked around the city some more. Saw some cool buildings n stuff:
Train station
Cool church
After all that touristy stuff, it was time for some more pub action! I walked up to a big pub, and this sign was posted at the front entrance:
Really? Fucking Rock Paper Scissors? These were some simple folk! After laughing at the sign for a little bit and getting strange looks from passers-by, I decided to go inside and take this bitch down. That thought lasted about 8 minutes - I got bounced in the first round, over a pint of Mac's Gold. Dammit. I continued to make fun of the whole idea of it though, since, let's face it, it's a pretty stupid contest to have. One guy finally had enough, and directed me to the corner. He didn't say anything, just dragged me to the corner and pointed at a poster:
If you can't make that out, it says you can "win a trip to Canada to compete in the World RPS Championships." At that moment, the dragger spoke.
"You think we're fucking simple, you wanker? You want to call Kiwi's names because we like this stuff? Your country hosts the fucking WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS MATE! What the fuck does that make Canadians?!?"
Touche, bastard.
He was good-natured about it though, so I sat around and drank with the players? for a while. Cool guys. They led me to another bar, where I met a few of their female friends. I happened to mention that Otago (university name) must mean "ugly girl" in Maori, which one of the guys thought was hilarious enough to repeat TO ALL THE WOMEN. Thanks champ. One of the chicks actually though it was funny though, for some reason. I talked to her over many beers, and...I woke up next to her in my hotel room the next morning. Yes folks, I'm pretty sure my traveling draught is over! I can't guarantee what happened with 100% accuracy, because I don't exactly remember 100% of it...and I'm 100% sure she looked a lot better the night before...but who cares, I'm not picky! I'm sure she was just as disappointed when she woke up and saw me! SCORE!
I gave her the boot quicker than you can say beer goggles, and packed up and headed to the airport a happy man. Dunedin might not have been the coolest place ever, but at least Otago girls are easy. Which means I'm obviously going back.
This blog will cover my insane trip between Queenstown and Dunedin, and my 2 day stay in Dunedin itself. I will combine Wellington and Rotorua into the next entry, which will finish things off so I can move onto colder climates. Anyway, last time you heard from me, I had just spent an enjoyable 2 days in Queenstown, most of which I remembered. But not all.
So I woke up bright and early, kind of disappointed that I had to leave QT. Other than my drunken escapades, the town really sucked me in, and I could have easily spent a lot more time there. It probably worked out for the best though, because it's not very big and I had seen everything there was to see. So, onto Dunedin. I had booked a combination bus/train tour that also got me to Dunedin. The premise is that the bus takes me from QT to the train, and the train winds through some funky valley until you're back on the coast in Dunedin. I'm not a big fan of buses normally, but what the hell, right? Well this turned out to be the best bus ride EVER.
I'm waiting outside, and a coach arrives. You know, those greyhound-looking mofos. Seat like 50 people or something. I get on and go to walk to the back and quickly realize...there's no one else on the bus. The driver says "Where ya goin? Sit up 'ere with me mate. You're the only customer today."
What?
Yes people, I had a full-sized coach...to myself. For a 4 hour ride. Besides being odd, this seems like extremely bad business. It's not like I paid a mint for this bus ride. I'm pretty sure my fare didn't even cover the gas money to get there. I wasn't about to question my good fortune though (ya know, since I don't like people), so I just sat up front. It took about 45 seconds to get even more odd.
"So where do ya wanna go mate?"
What?
I gave the answer that most people would give...wherever you were going, obviously. "Dunedin?"
"Well I know that mate. Ya think I'm daft?"
"Uh..."
"I mean what do ya wanna see on the way?"
"I didn't know I had an option?"
"Since you're the only guy on here, I'll take you to whatever you want to see, as long as we're at the train station by 12:30. You like Lord of the Rings? Dams? Sheep? Aaaah...you look like a man that likes sheep mate!"
What the hell do you say to that? The bastard was calling me a sheep fucker! I just started laughing uncomfortably and said "I thought this was a tour. You pick the destinations, I take the pictures. I didn't exactly study for this! And I don't like sheep like you're implying I like sheep! *pause* "There any giraffes around here though?"
He laughed and said "I think we're going to get along great, mate!" Okay, we'll start off by goin to Cromwell for breakfast and figure it out from there!"
Sure. What else am I supposed to say? "NO! FIJI! NOW!"
So we headed off along another side of the lake towards Cromwell. As we approach the town, the driver goes "Hey, you wanna go see a bunch of fruits?" No, driver...no I don't. And I'm starting to get a little worried about this here driver. What he was talking about was pretty fucking amusing though, if a bit weird:
Don't even ask why the town has a gigantic fruit statue out front. The driver had no idea, and neither did any of the people we talked to while we were eating breakfast. It's a pretty little town though, surrounded by those mountains in the pic, with a cool river running through it. Very visually impressive, but quite small. Driver (he told me his name once, but I didn't remember nor did I care to - I just called him driver) said Cromwell was "boring as shit" and full of "old nosy people". It wasn't hard to see that, despite my limited time there.
After breakfast, he again asked me what I wanted to do. I had no idea, so I asked him to at least give me some suggestions. He suggested a massive sheep station, checking out the Clyde dam, some of the small towns along the way, or skip most of that and drive around LOTR land for a while. I liked LOTR, but I'm hardly a hobbit groupie, so I suggest as much of all that as possible. He was cool with that, so we were on our way.
First stop was the Clyde dam. It was...a dam. Fairly big, rushing water, etc. Nothing too special. Driver seemed disappointed I wasn't impressed, so he told me a story about how locals earn good luck points from the local gods for tossing tourists into the dam. I told him he'd have to get a backhoe in here, stat, if he wanted to get me over the fence and into the dam. He cracked up and let me live, luckily.
Next up was an aborted trip to a sheep station. As we were driving up, he asked me if I liked Canadian music at all. I replied in the positive, and he blew me away with his response - "Good, because this station is owned by Shania Twain. We see her in the grocery store in Cromwell all the time. Nice lady." HOT DAMN! We were goin to Shania's house! Then he crushed my dreams with a quick "She's only down here a couple months of the year mate. Certainly not in may, when the weather's shit!"
My dreams were dashed again when we drove up towards Lake Wanaka, and it started to snow. Driver quickly said that it would be a bitch to get all the way up there, and there would be no guarantee we'd get to see much anyway, since it's so big and the gate might not be open. How big? Try 42,000 acres. Wow. That's a lot of sheep. "Well, maybe we can find a giraffe station around here so you can get a shag in. How about llamas? Can you handle llamas?" Asshole.
So, back east we went. It was snowing a lot harder now, and it was pretty hard to see where we were going. You ever been the only one on a bus in a snowstorm? It's oddly comforting. We were laughing about the first line of the newspaper report if we ended up crashing - "A 52-seat coach has been found destroyed in a storm. The driver, one passenger, and a llama were all found dead aboard..."
During the drive, I asked driver a million questions about New Zealand and beyond. He hated being a bus driver, but had no choice. He worked in the mines in Australia for years, making killer money and only having to work a few months a year. But the economy died, the jobs dried up, and he had to move back home to NZ. Jobs were hard to come by, and this was the best he could do at the moment. He explained what life in small town NZ was like, and how people view foreigners like me.
His best story involved a buddy of his that had an odd dream - ever since they were 14, this guy always talked about traveling America coast to coast...via Greyhound. 12 years later, he saved up for his big trip, ponied up huge money for the airfare and bus tickets...and found out how sketchy Greyhound and it's stations are. He was expecting to travel in the lap of luxury! For 12 years, he never did any research about it at all! Awesome.
After passing many, many sheep and going through about 7 different changes in weather, we arrived in Rohan. For the uninformed, Rohan is a region of land in Lord of the Rings. It was pretty impressive when you're there, but it doesn't translate well to pics - check it:
See? Boring. The rocks in the ground were pretty crazy up close though. Definitely worth the detour, but more of a "ya had to be there" kinda thing. After we drove through Rohan for a bit, driver turned off the paved road onto some crazy gravel road. He saw the look on my face and said "Relax canuck, this is the way to the train station. You're not getting murdered. You think I would have wasted all this gas bringing you out here to murder you, mate?" Asshole.
Driver warned me that the train station was in the middle of nowhere. During the summer, the train goes all the way into Middlemarch, a town about 15km up the tracks. For some reason, in the winter it won't go that far, and you're forced to come out to this station. When he said the middle of nowhere, he meant it. It was called Pukerangi, but why label it as a place when no one lives there? There was NOTHING around, and the train station was pathetically tiny. See?
That's the town! What the fuck!
So, after an awesome 4 hour bus ride, it was time to part from Driver...or so I thought. Turns out I was wrong, because he was handing the bus off to someone arriving on the train, and coming to Dunedin with me. Sweet. We headed off on the train, and while I'm sure it's a killer ride in the summer, it was raining like stink and I couldn't see much out the window:
Basically I just bullshitted and did a couple of jager bombs with driver on the way down to Dunedin. He told me some more stories about his family, and about the train we were on. Once we arrived in Dunedin, he even grabbed a mini-shuttle and drove me to my hotel. I tried to tip him, but he wouldn't accept my money. "Spend it on beer mate. After you see the girls here, you'll see that I'm doing you a favor. You're going to need those drinks!" Awesome! He turned out to be correct.
So...Dunedin. It was pouring rain when I arrived, so I just decided to chill in my hotel room for a bit. That got old real quick, so it was off to explore, rain or not. I didn't make it far the first night, just up onto the main strip, walking up to the University and back. I contemplated a pub, but I was pretty soaked and pooped, so I just went to a 24 hour market and grabbed food and beer. I spent a quiet night alternating between drinking, watching rugby, and writing a couple of articles. Such an exciting life on the road.
The next day actually turned out to be a lot of the same. After walking around Dunedin a lot, I realized three things:
1. The town had some great architecture.
2. The town had some shitty weather.
3. The guidebook lied about a lot of stuff.
My main goal of the day was to find the "drinking barns" they talk about so much in Lonely Planet. "Cavernous, barn-like pubs filled with drunken students". Sounds like fun to me. What did I find? Semi-large pubs. That's it. Like the Foggy Dew (Fuck you Foggy!) or Clancy's. Just spacious. Not barns! No barns! Denied. They still had beer though, so all was not lost.
After a couple wobblers, I headed down to Otago University and into the Otago Museum, which was supposedly the 2nd best museum in the country. Surprisingly, it didn't disappoint. Right inside the door was a stuffed moa. A moa is a HUGE extinct fuzzy bird. Bigger than an ostrich. The museum worked on donations, and you stuff the donations into the moa. He was awesome. Moa!
Some of the carved statues were really cool:
There were lots of other cool things in there too. I putzed about in there for a couple of hours, then walked around the city some more. Saw some cool buildings n stuff:
Train station
Cool church
After all that touristy stuff, it was time for some more pub action! I walked up to a big pub, and this sign was posted at the front entrance:
Really? Fucking Rock Paper Scissors? These were some simple folk! After laughing at the sign for a little bit and getting strange looks from passers-by, I decided to go inside and take this bitch down. That thought lasted about 8 minutes - I got bounced in the first round, over a pint of Mac's Gold. Dammit. I continued to make fun of the whole idea of it though, since, let's face it, it's a pretty stupid contest to have. One guy finally had enough, and directed me to the corner. He didn't say anything, just dragged me to the corner and pointed at a poster:
If you can't make that out, it says you can "win a trip to Canada to compete in the World RPS Championships." At that moment, the dragger spoke.
"You think we're fucking simple, you wanker? You want to call Kiwi's names because we like this stuff? Your country hosts the fucking WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS MATE! What the fuck does that make Canadians?!?"
Touche, bastard.
He was good-natured about it though, so I sat around and drank with the players? for a while. Cool guys. They led me to another bar, where I met a few of their female friends. I happened to mention that Otago (university name) must mean "ugly girl" in Maori, which one of the guys thought was hilarious enough to repeat TO ALL THE WOMEN. Thanks champ. One of the chicks actually though it was funny though, for some reason. I talked to her over many beers, and...I woke up next to her in my hotel room the next morning. Yes folks, I'm pretty sure my traveling draught is over! I can't guarantee what happened with 100% accuracy, because I don't exactly remember 100% of it...and I'm 100% sure she looked a lot better the night before...but who cares, I'm not picky! I'm sure she was just as disappointed when she woke up and saw me! SCORE!
I gave her the boot quicker than you can say beer goggles, and packed up and headed to the airport a happy man. Dunedin might not have been the coolest place ever, but at least Otago girls are easy. Which means I'm obviously going back.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
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:
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:
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