Day 20: Saturday, March 22

Today is actually May 3rd, 2008. I have failed to recount the events of our last day in New Zealand until now, first because while I was on both planes, the asshole in front of me leaned his seat all the way back, leaving me with no room at all. Both fucking planes. Then, since we've gotten home, I've been procrastinating. Today Amanda is making me do it. So, while this entry will convey what actually happened, it will lack the eloquent grace of my previous entries (as Amanda put it) and probably leave out some of the finer details, which might be for the best.

We began our day by gutting the hotel room and repacking all of our stuff as haphazardly as we pleased, determined to simply sort it all out after we were safely home. We packed Lucy loosely and set out into Auckland to do the last of our souvenir shopping, which for me at least amounted to most of my souvenir shopping.

We parked under the Sky City tower again. As we left the ramp via the elevator ("lift"), we decided to go get our parking validated immediately, so as to avoid the hassles of trying to do it later as we had previously. We knew there was a validation machine where you could do it yourself, we'd done it the previous day (I don't think I mentioned this before…it was sitting outside the casino, which is within the Sky City Tower's lobby-building-thing, since the casino was closed for Good Friday). We went into the casino looking for the validation machine and ended up gambling. This was my first time gambling, ever. Alyssa's too, I believe. Amanda was our guide. She taught us how to run a slot machine. I frittered away ten dollars and that was enough for me. I had gambled. I was cool with it. Done.

We walked up and down Queen Street, pretty much their main shopping area, while Alyssa dove in and out of every single bookstore we saw looking for some books she could just as easily have gotten back home. She spent like $1,000,000 on books. Once she finally found her things, she started whining about wanting to go even though the rest of us had not finished our shopping yet. We are coming close to the point where I finally attempted to slit Alyssa's throat.

After that, we drove Blue Lucky Lucy to the New Zealand Rent-A-Car in Auckland, where we had naively assumed they would take the van and drive us over to the airport, like how they had picked us up from the airport in the beginning. How foolish we were! No. We had to pay five bucks a person to ride the shuttle bus to the airport. The lady at the front desk, when Amanda had asked about transportation to the airport, had said nothing of the fee. We thought it was free. Somehow we managed to scrape $15 out between the three of us.

Getting through the airport was an adventure into hell, and I don't mean the pizza company. First problem: the weight was not distributed evenly in our luggage, something was too heavy. I frantically unpacked everything and repacked it, throwing shit all around and into bags wherever I could, until I eventually ended up with a carryon bag full of dirty laundry, something which, the previous night, I had insisted I was not going to do. Alyssa blames me for buying so many CDs. I argue that my CDs all fit nicely into the bottom of one bag, whereas all her fucking books and the odd-shaped fragile souvenirs she bought for every single person she knows, including stuff for the kitchen at the pizza place she USED to work at, and people she hasn't seen in over a year, were the reasons for the packing difficulties. We should have just separated our stuff out and packed our own belongings so that Alyssa could have dealt with her own fucking shit. Bitch.

Airline regulations state that you can have two carryons which cannot be over 7kg each. I ended up with two which each weighed almost 12kg, but the one fortunate thing that happened in the airport was that nobody harassed me about my carryons.

We wanted to proceed to our gate, but apparently there is a departure tax that everybody must pay to get out of the country WHICH WAS NOT INCLUDED IN OUR TICKET PRICE. Why the hell wasn't that included?! There were over two hundred dollars in various taxes on those tickets in the first place! Even typing this now, over a month later, I can feel my rage returning. These are things which should have, at the very least, been explained to us ahead of time. Like maybe when we purchased the tickets. Me being completely broke at this point, Amanda paid my departure tax. She had also picked up the bill for the last few souvenirs I'd purchased.

That paid, we proceeded to our gate. I got up after a time to use the bathroom, which had the stupidest doors I have ever seen in my life. I opened the door and found a man using the toilet, excused myself and shut the door and walked away sheepishly. I had first said, if they're single toilet rooms, why don't they have locks on the doors? Because I had figured I was walking into a normal restroom. But no, once I got into one, I found that it was because they had some sort of electric lock which you had to activate by pushing buttons or something. I can't really remember, now, how all that worked, just that it was stupid.

So we're about to board the plane and they introduce our friend, Mr. "I have to randomly search bags because the United States government requires that of us for every plane coming near their airspace." I am holding a bag full of dirty laundry. I do not want the security guard opening my bag full of dirty laundry. As we stood in line, I saw him grab somebody for a random search and I said to Amanda and Alyssa, "Go! Go! GO!!" but quietly, because I didn't want anybody to know that I didn't want to be randomly searched because I did not want the security guard opening my bag full of dirty laundry. We managed to escape him.

Now on board an Air New Zealand 777, just like the one we'd rode over the ocean on the first time. Unfortunately, this time, we did not get window seats. In fact we were stuck right in the middle of the plane, but at least we were all together. The food was spectacular again. Seriously, that's some of the best food I've ever had in my life. On the plane I watched The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which was excessively long and thoroughly boring. I think it would have been better if it had been an hour shorter, it's kind of like the first Star Trek movie that way.

Apparently we flew through some sort of severe storm, the captain asked that the windows all be closed and we felt the plane rocking more vigorously than before. We're still not entirely sure what was going on, but Amanda and I both said that if we'd have had window seats, we'd have left the windows open.

Nearing the United States, an announcement was made that we had some paperwork to fill out before we could be let in. The captain specifically said, do not scribble or cross anything out, they would provide a replacement form if we made mistakes. So what does Alyssa do? She screws up, and then scribbles stuff out and does it again. I told her she had to get a new form. At first she wouldn't listen to me, but eventually she did.

This included a list of all items purchased in New Zealand which we were bringing back to the US. At first this was imposing to me, because I said there was no way I was going to remember everything that I purchased or how much I paid for it. If I was supposed to be saving receipts, they should have told me that beforehand! But seeing the small amount of space they gave for it, I just lumped everything into three broad categories and it totaled out to about $200. The rules, as printed on the back of that sheet, state that everyone is entitled to up to $800 before they have to pay duty on it. Amanda's also came out to between $200-300. Alyssa's came out to $1100. I told her she was going to have to pay duty on that, and asked if she just wanted Amanda or me to claim some of that so that she could get through customs. She said no and changed her estimates on her form, by scribbling them out and writing new ones in. I told her to get a new form and she said no. She said she had already filled it out twice and she was not going to do it again. This was where I threatened to slit her throat and actually meant it. I said, "We are going to get detained in customs. If they go searching through your bags and steal my shit, I am going to slit your throat." And I did mean it. It's such a simple form, there are like ten fields to fill out. If you've already got your numbers, like she did, it takes two minutes. After a heated argument Amanda finally somehow convinced her to do it. Given the opportunity right at that moment, if Amanda had not been sitting between us, I may have actually strangled her.

When we'd gone to New Zealand, we checked out baggage in Chicago and got it back in Christchurch, no problem. On the way back, for some reason, they unchecked all of our luggage in San Francisco, made us haul it across the entire freaking airport, and check it again. They didn't even look at it or anything, they just had us carry it across the airport for no apparent reason.

In customs, the guy read our immigration forms and saw that we were bringing food, so he asked what kind of food. I gave him a complete itemized list: three cans of macaroni and cheese, a bag of uncooked noodles, one jar of cheese sauce, one bottle of pancake mix, two bottles of soda. That is all. He told us to take our luggage over to a scanner across the room. So we hauled all our stuff over to that scanner, waited in a ginormous line, and when we got to the front of it, the guy asked us what we had, and I gave him the same itemized list. Then he said, "oh, you don't need to go through here. This is only for fresh produce and meat."

…

Assholes.

So we hauled our luggage across the great expanse that is San Francisco's International Airport, checked our luggage again, and waited at the gate.

We got stuck with about four rows in between each of us, and all of us exactly in the center of our rows with two people on either side in this American Airlines 777. It was seriously like, "Back to the ghetto with you!" The in-flight movie was Alvin & the Chipmunks. I strapped on my iPod and read Everything's Eventual by Stephen King for most of the flight, including the story "That Feeling, You Can Only Say What it is in French," which is about Déjà vu and a plane crash. King's own notes after the story say that he thinks the story is about Hell. Also not the pizza company.

By the time we landed, I had to pee so very, very badly, probably worse than I ever had in my life. I'm far too polite to ask two people to move for me so I can get up to go potty, and I figured that a four-hour flight shouldn't be too bad, right? Eh. The exceptional bumpiness as we taxied across Chicago's airport for over half an hour did not help matters.

We waited for probably half an hour for our luggage to come through the thing. We found Amanda's parents, and we went home. We dropped all of our luggage in a disorganized pile in the middle of our apartment, found out some of the souvenir gifts, and presented them to people at the homecoming/Easter party my mom threw for us at 10:00 at night.

And that's the story of why I hate airports.

pumpkins

Today we were at some kind of store (in New Zealand) and i saw the new Smashing Pumpkins album in the discount bin, right next to Who Let The Dogs Out. i laughed tauntingly.

Day 19: Friday, March 21

We stayed in bed pretty late, using the last of the internet I'd purchased the previous night. We also took full advantage of the fact that we had the same room for two nights and did not need to check out at 10am. Alyssa stayed in bed until 11 at least, I think. Then, we ventured out into Auckland.

Only to find that freaking everything was closed for Good Friday. Why the hell is everything closed for Good Friday?! Whose idea was it to make Good Friday a federal holiday?! It's ridiculous. We walked around downtown, which is a huge shopping district, and found the streets to be largely empty and nothing was open except for convenience stores and a handful of restaurants. We found one place that was open that touted itself to be a tattoo and body piercing place. The front door opened into a staircase (a fairly common setup for businesses in large cities in New Zealand, I've noticed. Even Burger King in Wellington was like that) which we climbed. At the top we found a sparse lobby where there were about eight people and a dog. Why would you have a dog in a tattoo and body piercing shop? Public Enemy had a dog there while I got my eyebrow and first tattoo done in 2005 and it struck me as not good. I don't want to say unsanitary but that is what I'm thinking. Somebody said, how can I help you? and I said that I just wanted to check out eyebrow rings, but I didn't see any there. The dude said that they don't do piercings anymore, just tattoos. So we left. At the bottom of the stairs, we saw a dry erase board which said something to the effect of "Body piercing and ring combo $35" or something. Makes you wonder. Why turn away business, especially on a day when just about nobody has left their homes?

We passed some musical instrument stores and some used record shops that were closed and it made me sad.

Then, we found Real Groovy.

They were open.

Alyssa said she had never seen so many CDs in one place in her entire life. They also had a massive selection of DVDs, music-related clothing, books, many racks of magazines, and other stuff. We were there for four hours while I paged through seemingly endless racks of CDs. NZ$125 later, I had 85 new CDs in my collection. Some of those are 2disc sets so it's actually a little higher than that but I'm not sure exactly. 40 of those cost me only fifty cents. Add in the ones I bought other places on this trip and I'm carting home nearly 100 new CDs. Some of it is stuff I already owned, but they're Australian versions with bonus tracks and such. Then there's the confusing issue of Dubstar. I have Dubstar's album Goodbye at home, or at least I thought I did. I had thought that this was Dubstar's only album. I found one in there with a different title, Disgraceful, that looked to have the same track list as my copy of Goodbye but different artwork and, obviously, title. I grabbed it. Later on I found Dubstar's Goodbye, but it was in a cardboard box rather than a plastic jewel case, so I inspected it, expecting bonus tracks, and instead found that the track listing was completely different than mine at home. So I bought that, too. I could probably yammer on and on about the stuff I bought in there, but nobody wants that except me. Some of these CDs I intend to make gifts of.

We returned to our ramp, which was once again under the Sky City tower, and we discovered that the tower was open, so we went up in it and watched the sun set over Auckland from 220 meters up. The Sky City tower in Auckland is the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere, by the way. Auckland's pretty at night from up there.

We stopped at Hell for some dinner and tomorrow's breakfast, and tried like hell to pack all of our shit. There's so much more of it than there was, but somehow, somehow, we did it. It was truly fucking amazing. I cooked a bowl of spaghetti in the microwave, just to use up the sauce and some noodles, since we're fairly certain that transporting unsealed food products is not allowed. We left two cans of macaroni and cheese out for breakfast (yeah, I know) and packed three more cans of food, a plastic jug of instant pancakes, a jar of cheese sauce, and a bag of uncooked elbow noodles. All of this food was purchased in our first few days here. We had intended to cook it over a fire as we camped one night, but apparently the whole damn country prohibits campfires. Also, we only hauled out the tent once in the whole trip, and that was the third day, before we even bought all this food. I realized, just then, our true genius though: we'd bought five cans of food, but we had no can openers, and only two of them (the macaroni) had pull tabs. Yeah. Brilliant.

It is now just past two in the morning. We plan to wake up in about five hours for our final day in New Zealand. I'mma take a poop and go to bed.

I'm ready to go home now.

Day 18: Thursday, March 20

We woke up and drove back into town, stopping first at The Long Black Café for breakfast. It was expensive and shitty. My toast was burnt, my eggs were burnt, my bacon was in these weird little patties that were tough to cut but tasted ok. Alyssa’s pancakes, which I ended up finishing, were burnt and eggy and kind of tastes like suck. Amanda’s French toast was good but small. We all had shakes. Amanda’s was supposed to be vanilla but it tasted like marshmallows.

When we went to buy tickets for the glowworm cave tour, the lady at the desk asked if we were students. I said not here, and she said, "do you have student ID from any college in the world?" so I whipped out my MATC ONEcard and she asked where that was from. I said Wisconsin, and then she got excited and told me all about how she loved the Dells and Noah’s Ark. I get a little fuzzy inside every time somebody here recognizes Wisconsin as, you know, existing. Because some people have never heard of it. We got a damn good discount for being students, and since she loved Wisconsin so much she didn’t even bother Amanda and Alyssa to go find their ONEcards, which they’d left in the van, she just took them at their word.

Our tour guide was a funny guy named Matt. They wouldn’t let us take pictures or video in the glowworm caves, I don’t see why not though really. I can understand no flash photography, probably damaging to the glowworms, but why can’t I bring my camera? Probably just so they can sell their $25 DVD in the gift shop. Amanda bought one. I’ll probably splice footage from it into my vacation video. Today I learned that fireflies are found only in the northern hemisphere. Glowworms are found only in New Zealand and Australia.

That was about all we did today. Then we ended up in Auckland, a journey which included a lot of travel on roads that were like interstates. In Auckland, we at one point found ourselves on a road that was eight lanes wide. Pretty impressive for New Zealand. The four laners were novelty enough, in a country where probably 90% of bridges (and there are a shit ton of bridges) have only one lane. Seriously, each bridge is marked in a way that gives one side right of way all the time and the other side always has to yield. It’s kind of ridiculous.

Auckland looks like Milwaukee but feels like Madison. We parked in a ramp, just to use a payphone, and the rates were astronomical. It was $7 for the first half hour, $14 for a whole hour and after that it just climbed until it reached something like $35 very quickly and tapered off. The way around that was getting your parking validated, which could only be done in certain places and only if you paid for stuff. We really only needed to use a payphone, but ended up eating some expensive ice cream and having a round of drinks just to get that parking validated. That brought our total for an hour and a halfish to five dollars for parking, which is reasonable. I guess it makes sense, that ramp is probably only supposed to be used by people who are patrons of the building above it. Still, when we stuck the ticket in the machine to pay, it said the total would have been $19 if it weren’t validated.

We ended up at the Ascot Star Motel, our main reason for choosing this one, which is relatively out of the way, being that the ad said free Wi-Fi internet. After getting the room for two nights and moving all our junk in (everything, literally everything from the van, since we need to repack for the flight home), I tried to log into their network. It told me I needed a password which I needed from the reception desk. I went to inquire and they told me I had to pay. Apparently, the free internet is only available in the lobby and it’s not Wi-Fi. I think that means false advertising, but since the guy at the desk was old and looked confused and gave me a deal on the internet, I didn’t complain too much. It was supposed to be five dollars an hour, but he gave me the whole night for five dollars. I let it go.

Tomorrow, we adventure in Auckland! This is what I have waited the whole trip to see. I’m excited.

Day 17: Wednesday, March 19

The Cosy Cottage was not very cozy. We all woke up with sore hips. We were only slightly better than when we’d slept in Lucy the previous night.

We didn’t do much. We went to the Hot Springs Beach in the city of Hot Springs Beach. People are really good at naming things here. The idea behind Hot Springs Beach is that there are hot springs under the sand, so people dig themselves holes in the sand and the hot water comes up and they sit in it, like a hot tub, and then the cold waves from the ocean wash over your hot tub and you just kind of relax there. Well, we started digging a hole, it kept collapsing in on us, and we started with a kind of already used hole that was full of cold ocean water. Well, we dug down a foot or so and then I just shoved my arms into the sand as deep as I could, got them all the way to the elbows, and found no hot water. People kept coming by asking if that was hot water we were sitting in, because there were a bunch of people but nobody else digging, maybe just to watch us fools first and see what we came up with. We’d say no, they’d be on their way, we’d be about our digging. The waves from the ocean kept washing into our hole and taking away all our progress, so we built up a wall around the hole tall enough to impede the waves. After maybe twenty minutes’ work on that hole, a big wave came and smashed our wall and flooded the hole. We were all facing the other way when it happened and it came as quite a shock. You should’ve heard Alyssa cry, I thought it was hilarious. We gave up on the hole, deciding that the hot springs were a myth and it probably came about because the first person there dug a hole for some reason, the water came in, and his body heat plus heat from the sun warmed it.

We instead decided just to play in the ocean, which was a lot of fun. I ran quite a ways out from shore and it was still shallow, up to my waist maybe, and as the waves would be coming in which were about as high as my head I’d jump into them and let them throw my lower half out from under me. I felt limber and young again. J slash k. Amanda and Alyssa took to waiting while facing away from the waves, and when the waves came, they’d leap the other way and swim, using the wave to propel them faster than most people are able to swim. Eventually, somebody found the hot springs; they were farther out on the beach and you can really only dig yourself a hot tub while the tide is out. I stuck my foot in a hot spring and felt like it was going to get burned, I probably wouldn’t have been able to sit in one. Amanda probably could, when she sets the temperature on the shower it burns my sensitive skin.

After our noses and eyes were sufficiently filled with salt water and uncomfortable, we drove away, toward the Wautomo Caves to see glowworms. The Wautomo Caves are located in a city called – wait for it – Wautomo Caves. We got there pretty late so we just found a hotel (a little pricier than usual for us, but also a little nicer). Finding a hotel was kind of an adventure. We’d first planned to stay at their holiday park in a cabin, as we typically do, but got there a scant twenty minutes after the park’s office closed. Bastards! Sorry, Tourette’s moment. We stayed in their parking lot a moment, using their lights to look through our Bible (the New Zealand Accommodation Guide we’ve been lugging everywhere for three weeks) to find someplace else that might have an open reception area. While we waited an employee of the park knocked on our window, wanting to know what we were doing there. We explained the situation, he told us all the cabins were rented anyway. At our next stop, the cheapest room available for three people was $140 for the night, but that included free breakfast. We drove out of Wautomo Caves, back to the main highway something like 10km away, and found ourselves in a more reasonable $105 room (still more than the $45ish we’ve been paying, but as stated, it was pretty nice).

Day 16: Tuesday, March 18

We set out to conquer Mount Doom at 8am. When the alarm went off at 5:30 we hit snooze until 6, but the sun was not out. It was pitch black. We snoozed until we saw sunlight, but at that point there was a car next to us with people outside preparing themselves to conquer Mount Doom, so we waited for them to leave. Right as they left, a car pulled up on our other side and people got out and started preparing themselves to conquer Mount Doom. So we waited.

It took almost an hour down the trail before we even got to the base of the mountain. Whoever thought it was a funny idea to make people walk an hour from the car park and then up the mountain needs a good roughing up. After a quick break we continued up the mountain. Why we thought it was a good idea to scale a mountain without eating breakfast is beyond me. We were extremely weak and whiny the whole time. Alyssa and I made it to the first crater and across, then up the opposite lip, but said we could go no further. Amanda had not yet seen her lake in the crater, which she was climbing for. So she left us there and continued upward herself. I fell asleep and was actually more comfortable lying on the rock than I’d been in the back of Lucy the previous night. We had all thought that was the worst night we’d spent in Lucy; none of us could get comfortable.

Amanda found her lake in the next crater up, took some pictures and some video, and returned to us. We then climbed down the mountain with expedience. As we were crossing the mostly flat path back to the car park, we came to a short drop which Alyssa started to jump off of, but caught her foot on something and fell instead. The way she landed I had expected she might’ve broken her arm, but it turned out that her knee took the brunt of the fall. Nothing broken, but her knee was banged up badly enough to slow our return considerably. We trudged onward. Eventually we decided that Amanda would stay with Alyssa and I would forage ahead so that I could get the van repacked and we could be on our way toward food quicker (the van was still disheveled from us sleeping in it; all the luggage was in the front two seats. It’s not so easy to drive that way).

We drove kind of a long way before stopping for food. It had been nearly 24 hours since we’d last eaten by the time we got to Taupo, which had a strip full of restaurants all clustered together. I wanted a buffet, so I could eat it. All of it. We chose Pizza Hut, hoping they had a lunch buffet here in New Zealand. Apparently they do, but we missed it. We elected to get a special called the Big Night In, which consisted of three large pizzas, a 1.5 liter bottle of soda, garlic bread, and fries, but they let us change the fries to another garlic bread. We then also added an order of dippers, which are like Topper Stix if you’ve ever been to Topper’s Pizza. I’m not sure how else to describe them. Do our Pizza Huts have those? I’m not sure, I don’t frequent Pizza Hut anymore.

Then, after the order is placed, I said we’d eat it there and they said that was for takeaway only. What? I can’t eat my pizza here? I asked to speak to the manager but she was busy, so I ended up talking to the assistant manager or something, and she just kept saying something stupid about how it costs them more for us to eat in and that special is cheap already or whatever. That basically sounds to me like, "we don’t want to wash our tables." How much does it cost you to wash a damn table? There is nobody else in the restaurant, literally nobody. You’d rather have your employees standing around with thumbs in their asses than take five seconds to wipe down a table and keep some customers happy? Assholes. So we ate on their picnic table right outside the restaurant. I don’t know if they saw us or not, they didn’t say anything. I’d half expected them to come out and tell us to leave but they didn’t. I think I’m going to write a complaint to corporate and see if I can get some free pizza.

We continued our journey. We stopped at Wai-O-Tapu, which is a geothermal site with mineral lakes, mud pools and a geyser. They were closed, but I don’t think we’d have gone in anyway since they were charging $27 per person just to walk around and look at stuff. This country is ridiculous, I’m surprised they don’t charge foreigners for the air that they breathe.

We stopped for the night in Rotorua at the Cosy Cottage Motor Lodge. We all took showers, since some of us (Amanda) had not showered in as many as four days. Then I spent much of the rest of the night pulling dead skin off of my shoulders and arms, while Amanda worked on my back. Then I cooked a pot of spaghetti, which we’d bought two weeks ago with the intent of cooking while camping, but apparently campfires are illegal in this entire country. Our cottage had a stove and a refrigerator.

Day 15: Monday, March 17

When I woke up I felt much, much better. I had been able to sleep on my left side for most of the night, and toward the morning I even rolled onto my right side. We woke up but didn’t get out of bed; after a short while, I even crawled over into Amanda’s bed and she could touch me without causing massive amounts of pain. When I finally got up, I discovered that I could lift my arms most of the way over my head, and I even put on a t-shirt by myself and wore it without issue. It was green, in fact Green Lantern, for St. Patrick’s Day.

After we cleared out of our ginormous cabin, we headed north, with me back in the driver’s seat again. I asked Amanda where we were going and she said north. I asked her an hour later and she said north. We took a scenic route to where we were actually going so that Amanda could see a river, but she didn’t tell us when we passed the river, she just took some pictures out the car window and we kept going. Later, when she guided me back to highway 1, I said, "Highway 1? Why didn’t we just stay on 1 in the first place?" and she said because she wanted to see that river, and I said I didn’t see the river. I said, how many miles out of the way did we go so you could see the river that I didn’t even get to see? And Alyssa found this hilarious for some reason. It turned out to be about 50 kilometers out of our way, and we didn’t even stop. Amanda said, "Do you want to go back?" and Alyssa busted out laughing again, so hard we thought she’d hurt herself. It was a ways back so I said no. Alyssa continued to laugh. We attempted to kill her by referencing previous things that she’d laughed hard at on the trip, first the workers in Hell’s kitchen and then I said, "I think that, to kill her, we’re only about one Don Street, Go! away," and she stopped breathing for a time. I said, "Right, then."

We did a lot more driving, trying to get to a volcano with a hard name that I can’t think of. I’ll just refer to it as Mount Doom, since this volcano was used as Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings movies. We almost arrived at the volcano at around 3pm, but we were dangerously low on gas and weren’t sure if we could make it the 7km off the main drag to the volcano, then the 7km back plus the 20 or so to the next town, so we just headed up to the town. The town had no gas station. They sent us to a village called National Park Village, where they had a gas station where I had the most interesting conversation with a clerk. We’d decided to have lunch in town, before scaling Mount Doom, so I went in to inquire about any restaurants in National Park Village. There were two clerks, a woman and a man, and both were busy. I wandered for a bit, waiting, and then the woman came to be available. I asked her if there were any restaurants in the village, and she pointed at the man and said, "you need to talk to this guy." He had just come to be available.

He was facing away at that moment, as I walked over to him he turned around and said, "Why a toaster?"

"That’s amazing," I said. "I’ve had it for about two months now and you’re the first person to say something." I went on to explain the toaster. We then discussed restaurants for a few minutes, then he asked where I was from. "Wisconsin," I said.

"Aaah! The Big Cheese!" I was shocked that he knew where Wisconsin was, very few people over here do. He went on to relate his stories of spending a summer with a friend in Wisconsin where they got really, really drunk and filled a boat with beer and just floated down a river for a whole weekend drinking. I thought that was a very Wisconsin thing to do. We also talked about Indianapolis for a bit. I didn’t think he could have been in New Zealand for very long, he doesn’t have the accent.

TANGENT: Sam and the others in Indianapolis always tell me that I have this Wisconsin accent, which I’ve finally begun to recognize. It’s something in the way we say the letter O, they say, and I can hear it now. That said, I think the New Zealand accent is largely in the letter E. There is no short E, only long. Like when they say "left" it comes out like "leeft." Like "leaf." Interesting. I digress.

On that guy’s advice, we went to a bar called the Schnapps Bar. Alyssa and I discussed what a great story it would be to tell people back home that we got really fucking drunk and climbed a mountain, so we ordered alcohol with our lunches. The two of us got huge salads that cost $22. Amanda got a bowl of soup for $9, which was also huge. The drink I ended up with was that same Jamaican rum, whose name I still cannot recall, in pineapple juice. I can’t really say what I thought of it, it wasn’t bad but it wasn’t good either. I probably won’t try it again.

But everything was expensive. For Amanda and I, lunch came to $40, which was much more than I’d intended to spend on lunch. Given that over half of that was my salad, I feel less bad about adding alcohol, I thought that would be more costly, I guess. Alyssa’s drink was $12. It was a Kamikaze Shaker.

We went back to the same gas station with the intent of buying a small bottle of vodka to mix with this lemon soda I’d purchased at a previous gas station that wasn’t very good by itself. I had said I thought it might taste better if we took it home and added rum or vodka, and Amanda – Amanda! – had said, why wait until we get home? Unfortunately the gas station did not sell liquor. The same clerk said to me, "go back to the building where you had lunch, it’s the window on the left side." We felt a little dumb…at least I did. We went back, but a liter of vodka cost $38 so we said forget this and drove out to Mount Doom.

It was past 5pm by the time we got there. We were going to start out anyway but it took so long to get everything prepared, and I don’t even know what the hell it was that took so long since I was pretty well ready to go as soon as we arrived, and by the time we started out for the mountain (listed on the signs in the parking lot as a 7-8 hour walk, round trip), we knew it would be dark before we reached the top, and what Amanda really wants to see here is the lake in the crater. So we walked out about twenty minutes from the car park, where it’s still largely flat, to take some pictures. For some reason Amanda’s camera stopped working. It worked just fine right as we started walking, we took some pictures in the car park, but suddenly the buttons wouldn’t work. It turned on, the viewscreen worked, if you flipped the switch to different modes it would work, but none of the buttons would do anything. At first I suspected magnetic interference from the mountain, but Alyssa’s camera worked fine. We walked back to Lucy. We are going to sleep in Lucy tonight and set out to conquer Mount Doom at approximately 6am tomorrow. Or so we say.

Day 14: Sunday, March 16

I woke up in even more pain than I’d yet been. That night had been one of the most painful experiences of my life. When I woke up, I could not lift my right arm more than a quarter of the way up. The left was a little better and made it almost to the halfway point, or nearly straight out. Amanda put some of the blue aloe vera on me that we’d purchased in…was it Nelson or Picton? I think Picton. It was aloe vera with menthol in it, designed to cool burning skin. It cooled me too much. It made me downright cold, and the cold hurt the sunburn. I’d been getting chills ever since I’d relinquished control of Lucy to Amanda a few days past, and the chills have hurt more than just the burning. My skin felt like it was on cold fire. The addition of this extra cooling sensation was killing me. Eventually, the lotion dried, and I felt well enough to attempt to put on a shirt. I only packed one button-up shirt for the entire trip, its intent was to slip over a black t-shirt in case we decided to dress up nicely for a night on the town during the trip (probably Auckland, which Alyssa and I have resolved to get drunk in), but I’ve now worn it for two days because it’s the only shirt I can get into with relatively little pain.

We spent most of the day in Wellington, which is a nice place. It really does remind us of Madison, now that we see it in the daylight. We first drove around in search of Peter Jackson’s house, since he lives in Wellington, but couldn’t find it. It’s not as though we had his address, anyway. We then tried to find our way to the center of town, where we hoped to find some breakfast/lunch (Amanda and I had eaten some moofins at the cabin, Alyssa had none. She wanted breakfast, we wanted lunch…easily accomplished together). We found a restaurant called Burger Wisconsin (slogan: "The World’s Best Burgers!" Really!), but they didn’t open until 5pm. I’ve noticed a bunch of places that don’t open until supper time; the first was that pasta place in Te Anau but there’ve been several we’ve seen since. Next door to Burger Wisconsin was, ahem, Hell. We got some takeaway from Hell. As we sat there waiting for our pizza, we kept making wisecracks about Hell which I’m sure that many, many people have made before. I just about killed Alyssa, who receives plenty of pain from her sunburn when she laughs, when I motioned toward the area behind the counter and said, "All of these people work in Hell’s kitchen!" I got a bumper sticker that says, "I’m Going to HELL!" and has a picture of Satan driving a delivery hearse. Hell’s phone number is (keep in mind this is a New Zealand phone number, so yes it will look wrong to you US fools): 0800 666 111. Also bear in mind that 111 is the number for 911 in New Zealand. They had a poster on the door, which the other Hell we ate at didn’t have, that said: 0800 666 111: The Number of the Feast.

Then we drove around looking for a place to eat Hell’s pizza. We were hoping for a park or something with a picnic table or at least a bench in the shade, I stress the in the shade part because the sunlight even touching my arms is painful, but we ended up parking Lucy in a ramp and eating there. Then, we ventured out into Wellington for some shopping. We also saw the Parliament building (Wellington is the capitol of New Zealand, and its second-largest city), and the theater where The Return of the King made its premier.

The end result of the shopping: I managed to buy some CDs for mostly reasonable prices, finally. My main purpose for CD shopping around here is to find stuff you can’t get in the States, but I’ve been largely unsuccessful in that. It seems that New Zealand has mostly the same stuff, just more expensive. New releases around here generally go for $34, which does not even out by the exchange rate at all. The average price seems to be about $30, even for used. It’s ridiculous. Today I bought four for $10 each, one of which is extremely difficult to come by in the US but not impossible (Radiohead - My Iron Lung), and one is a two-disc set where the US release is only a single disc (Silverchair – The Best Of Vol. 1). The other two I wanted, but mostly just paid that much for so that we could listen to them in the van (I figure it’s roughly US$8 each, for The Dandy Warhols – Welcome to the Monkey House and Tool – Opiate, which I think might have a different cover in the US but I’m not sure). Then I paid $15 for an Australian pressing of an album by an Australian band (Grinspoon – Thrills Kills + Sunday Pills), a band which is largely unknown in the US and I rarely see their albums but have managed to score two others for US$3 or less. Then I bought a magazine (NME…it’s from the UK) which came with a free CD, which has 14 songs, 13 of which are covers. I’m a little worried to listen to it (haven’t yet)…it does have My Chemical Romance on it, who I hate, and they are covering Song 2 by Blur. There’s also covers of Nelly Furtado, Rihanna, Amy Winehouse, and Devo, among others. I’ve never heard of most of the bands committing these covers, but some have cool names, like Does It Offend You, Yeah?, The Futureheads, and Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly, for example. Some of the bands doing the covers on here are also being covered on here. Alyssa bought Trapt’s second album Someone In Control and Darren Hayes’s second album which I can’t think of the name of right now. I didn’t even know that Darren Hayes had a second solo album, I thought his first one tanked so badly he’d retired. Must’ve done better outside the US.

There is this Pearl Jam boxed set that I saw at the record shop where I bought Punk-O-Rama 8 that is seven discs worth of live Pearl Jam, three complete shows, that they were selling for NZ$70 and I thought that was fairly reasonable then, I just figured that if I bought it we’d be so sick of Pearl Jam by the time we reached Auckland that I’d not be able to listen to them for a year. I saw it today for $60 and was going to buy it, but the clerk at the used record shop couldn’t find the discs. The next two record shops didn’t have it. I was hedging on this before, but now the fact that I can’t seem to get it has made me want it very badly. I’ve tried reasoning with myself that I don’t need it, I own three or four legitimately purchased discs worth of live Pearl Jam already, plus I downloaded some, and I know where I can download more, but for some reason I just really, really want this boxed set now. I’ve never seen it back home so maybe you can’t get it in the States, or maybe it just came out and I haven’t heard of it but it will be there when I get home, I’m not sure. I wish I had greater access to the internet so I could look this stuff up.

We drove on and ended up in Levin, where we ate at McDonald’s (Kiwiburgers…they’re cheeseburgers with poached eggs under the patty an a beet above the patty. Interesting, and satisfyingly yummy). Then we decided that since it was almost 9pm, we’d find a place to stay in Levin. We found a holiday park where we got a cabin. As we entered the park there was a metal sign with the words "Live Dead Slow Children" on it.

This cabin is like a palace. It’s huge. I said we had three people, they gave us a cabin with six beds in it, one of them being a double. It also, unlike every other cabin and lodge we’ve stayed in, has its own toilet. It’s simply excellent.

I seem to have healed some today, I’ve got a greater range of motion in my arms now, the right one can come up a bit above straight out and the left one can get over my head. I look really nasty, though; my right shoulder is pretty much one huge blister. The left seems to have some very small blisters on it as well. I was feeling more comfortable with my skin, but as I’ve been typing this suddenly my chest has become uncontrollably itchy and there seems to be nothing I can do about it. This sunburn is the worst thing that’s ever happened.

Day 13: Saturday, March 15

I felt a little better when I woke up. I suppose that all the tossing and turning over the night had desensitized me a little bit. Then I took a shower. The water hitting my skin was painful, but mostly just on the shoulders. When I shampooed my hair I kept yelling, "Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!" because lifting my arms above my head was still so very painful. Somehow I got the shampoo in. Getting it out proved to be more difficult.

Amanda got another coat of aloe vera on me and somehow, somehow I got a shirt on. The shirt was very uncomfortable, but I managed. We checked out of the hotel and did some shopping around Nelson.

I kind of liked Nelson. It’s not a bad city, really. Our first stop ended up being a guitar shop, where I found this ridiculously cute guitar that couldn’t have been more than a meter long, it’s intended for kids but I had to try it out. I very nearly bought it just because it was so cute, but it proved to be very difficult to tune and then to keep in tune. So I decided that while cute, it wasn’t practical. Unfortunate, really, because I would have totally bought it. It was small enough to fit in my luggage, but I probably would have just used it as my second carryon.

Amanda and Alyssa checked out some clothing stores, and I wandered around. Two large streets made up of mostly shops, and it seemed to be almost entirely women’s clothing stores. Then, right in the middle of it, there was a hunting and fishing shop. It seemed very out of place.

Amanda finally mailed the postcard to her family that she’d picked up in Christchurch.

We ate at a pizza place called Hell. I thought it was awesome. As we entered I shouted, "Tonight we dine in HELL!!" Their pizzas had names like Wrath, Sloth, Gluttony, Envy, Nemesis, and such. We got a large Greed and a large Mordor, which had venison pepperoni on it. We also got lemon pepper tater wedges and garlic bread. It was very reasonably priced and the food was delicious. Their pizza boxes had perforations so you could punch out part of it, which assembled into a 3D coffin if you only had one or two pieces left.

It is also noteworthy that Hell was across the street from St. Stephen’s Angelican Church.

After eating, we headed for Picton, where the ferry to the north island leaves from. Picton wasn’t very big. We ventured around the shops, which were largely souvenir-type things, and a lot of people commented on Alyssa’s sunburn. I was wearing a t-shirt so you couldn’t really see mine, but she had a tube top on. There was a store called Music World, so we went in, hoping that maybe we could get some new music for the van since the Punk-O-Rama CDs are starting to get old. We’ve been with those for nearly a week now. Music World was a terrible disappointment. Seriously, I counted the CDs in the store: 55. Total. And 15 of them were Christmas music. They had some for less than $10, but the only one I might’ve bought was Eve6’s Horrorscope, for six bucks, but I’ve already bought that twice, Amanda and Alyssa both have it, so it didn’t seem like a wise purchase. Perhaps if it had been the Japanese version instead of the American, I’d have sprung at it (the Japanese version has extra tracks), but no.

We got some ice cream, hit up a few more shops where we bought nothing, and headed back to Lucy for another coat of aloe vera, and looked through our guidebooks to try to find a place in Wellington to stay for the night. We figured we had best call ahead since the ferry wouldn’t be getting in to Wellington until around 10pm, and from our experience most reception areas, at least on the south island, close before 8, usually at 6. Ridiculous, I say, to close the reception at a hotel/motel/hostel/campground so early! That should definitely be a 24 hour thing. I guess New Zealand is just way more laid back than America. Anyway, we picked a holiday park (which is like a campground), called them up, and got a cabin for the night at a very reasonable price. Their reception area closed at 10:30pm, I thought we might make it but wasn’t sure, so she said there was a yellow box on the front of the reception building where she’d leave the key and a map. We headed for the ferry.

The ferry was really cool. It was not at all what I had expected. I definitely expected something bigger than the Colsac Ferry up in Merrimac, Wisconsin, which I’ve ridden many times in my youth, but I guess I hadn’t expected such a step up in luxury. Inside was as nice as the airplanes we’d been on, but less cramped. The upper deck even had a full bar, complete with full time bartender. We sat on some nice couches and played a few games of Zombie Fluxx, then just read for a while. Amanda played Civilization III on Alyssa’s laptop. We watched the south island slip away, never to be seen again by me, probably, and watched the sun go down over it. It was dark when we arrived in Wellington (duh), and we were amazed that it was an actual city. Seriously, Wellington looks like Madison, at least from the limited bits of it we’ve seen thus far. We even ended up on a highway that looked like an interstate. On the South Island, I think the only four-lane highway we’d seen was in Nelson, and that was just a big road. This one had actual exit ramps. As we were driving down the highway in Wellington toward our campground, we saw an exit ramp that came directly down into a gas station, and then another ramp leading up from it. There were no other roads to this gas station. We thought that was cool.

When we got to the holiday park, at 10:40, just in time to miss the reception staff, I found the yellow box and there were two envelopes in it. One was labeled "Triggs" so I took it. Once we were piled into the cabin, I went to take a 2 and read some Stephen King before bed. The toilet had the strangest flushing method I’ve seen yet.

Day 12: Friday, March 14

We got nuked. It was terrible.

We started out by waking up way late, slightly after 9:00. We ate breakfast at that café, which was rather good. Alyssa and I each had a croissant with bacon and stuff inside. Amanda had muesli. Alyssa and I thought the muesli looked fairly gross. Amanda said it was healthy and her mom would have liked it. We made fun of her saying that she didn’t actually like it, just ate it because she thought her mom would like it. But apparently she liked it. I don’t know.

Then, we set forth to walk down the spit. The sign said 2.5 kilometers. Amanda thought that would be a nice morning walk and then we could head back down to Abel Tasman National Park, where she wanted to do a walk along the beach. Amanda and Alyssa put on sunscreen, I didn’t because I didn’t think we’d be out for very long.

Well, we walked. And walked and walked and walked along the beach. From the maps, Farewell Spit looks like it’s all beach, but no, there’s a bunch of trees in the middle of it that are mostly dead, and beach along each side. The only reason it matters is because we thought we’d be able to see the whole spit, but with the trees in the way we couldn’t. Amanda thought we’d just snap a few pictures and be on our way. I kind of wanted to see both sides of the spit.

We had walked for well over 2.5 kilometers. We’d been walking for over an hour and then we lost Alyssa, because she didn’t want to keep the pace that Amanda was setting. As Alyssa faded into the distance, I told Amanda that she must’ve read the sign wrong, and it must’ve been 25 kilometers. Maybe there was a bug that looked like a decimal point or something. We kept looking at the end of the spit saying we were this far already, we couldn’t quit now. But it was really hot and the beach was probably the least beautiful thing we’ve seen in New Zealand. It had garbage all over it, and actually about where we’d started from it was more crushed seashells than sand. Plus usually when you think beach, you figure it’s sand next to water, right? Well, this was sand next to dirt, which had some large puddles in it. The water was probably a kilometer out from the beach.

We pressed on. Eventually I couldn’t even see Alyssa in the screen on my camera at 68x zoom. Then, when we finally got to what we thought was the tip of the spit, it turned out it wasn’t. It was just a bend where we couldn’t see past the trees. We said, well fuck this, and we went back. We had taken to walking across the dirt instead of the beach because it would be more of a straight line back to the café and therefore quicker. I had taken off my shirt because I was so hot. We kept saying, "I hope Alyssa turned back!" and we kept thinking that we’d get back to the café and she’d be sitting there with a carafe of water, waiting for us. But no, we found her, still casually strolling down the beach, and we yelled to her to come out on the dirt with us as we walked back. I took my shoes off, following Amanda’s example, and splashed through some puddles to cool off.

Then, the tide came in. We wound up back on the beach, which was covered in broken seashells and rubbish, so we had to put our shoes back in. I lost a sock on that beach. My shoes became filled with the sand that was all over my feet, and that was not comfortable. When we finally reached an area where there was shade, I stopped to take my shoes off and dump out all the chunks of broken seashell that had somehow accumulated in them.

We finally made it back to the café, where we got a liter of water and three cans of soda, sat there and drank in the coldness, and then left for Abel Tasman Park.

That sign had said 2.5 kilometers. Apparently there was supposed to be some sort of trail not far from the café which led across the trees in the middle, so you could see the other side of the spit, and then back to the café. We never did find that trail. After looking at a map of the spit, we discovered that the entire spit is, in fact, 25 kilometers long, and we probably did the first 20 of it, meaning we’d walked 40 kilometers with no shade or water in about four hours.

By the time we got to Abel Tasman, none of us wanted to walk. We went in far enough to see a beautiful beach, where we stood and let the waves lap over our feet for a while, took some pretty pictures, and left.

It was my turn to drive, but I was so badly sunburned that by the time we got back to Takaka I had to have Amanda take over for me. Just letting the sun touch my skin was making it hurt and I could barely move my arms. I rode shotgun from there, where I swaddled myself in a soft blanket, mainly to keep the sun off of me but also because it was soft. We drove to Nelson, a city we’d passed through the day before, and got an expensive hotel room, where we were able to finally see the extent of the damage the sun had done. I was red all over. Amanda said she thought even my nipples were sunburned. Alyssa was also as red as a beet. I know I’ve been redder than that before but it’s never hurt so bad. I honestly had cried for part of the drive between Takaka and Nelson. Amanda, who was barely pink from the sun, left Alyssa and I and walked down to a store not far from the hotel to get some aloe vera. Alyssa ordered a pizza. I laid in the bed and wished I had died. My back was probably the least sunburned area of me, my shoulders were the worst. I sleep on my side almost exclusively; it’s nearly impossible for me to sleep on my back and I think I’ve slept on my stomach maybe once in the last five years. Somehow, despite the pain, I managed to get onto my side and drift nearly to unconsciousness, but not totally.

We had pizza, Amanda played nursemaid to Alyssa and I, slathering us with aloe vera and tending to our various other needs since, as said, I could barely use my arms, and Alyssa was not much better.

I spent the night tossing and turning very slowly and didn’t get much good sleep at all.

Day 11: Thursday, March 13

In the morning we paid four dollars for half an hour of internet, which was resourcefully used to email Amanda’s mom and say happy birthday, and for me to finally check my myspace, which I’ve not done since leaving. I was briefly on at the hostel we stayed at in Oamaru, but the internet there was so slow and we were pressed for time, I only had time to change my status to "in New Zealand," which was something I’d intended to do before leaving. Paying for the internet also got us some change that we desperately needed, because some of the laundry had not completely dried the night before and we needed to run another dryer cycle. We packed up, we got gone. Then we had some fun.

We first checked with a place for swimming with dolphins, but they were pretty heavily booked up, so instead we went down to another place where you got to swim with seals. Seals! How cool is that? It was really awesome. We got decked out in wet suits and everything. Then we got on a bus, which took us to a boat. We cruised out to a rock formation out at sea where there was a seal colony. We were advised not to get too close to the rocks or the seals, and actually touching the seals was expressly forbidden. The water was cold, but after the initial shock of getting in, it was ok. The wet suits kept us pretty warm. I had started hyperventilating a little bit when we first jumped in both from the cold and because I have not breathed through a snorkel in many years. I took the snorkel out and took some deep breaths, then put it back in, and was ok, although I’ve not had to pee so badly in a while. There were several times as we swam that I felt warm suddenly and hoped that I hadn’t just wet myself. Judging by the waterfall I unleashed in the toilet when we got back, I’d say I remained continent in the water. Amanda theorizes that I was swimming through other people’s pee. Comforting.

After we’d been in the water for a while the seals started coming up to us and lazily swimming around us. At one point I was face down in the water and a seal swam directly under me, so close I could probably have touched him. Seals are really cute up close. Sea water is really gross. Alyssa accidentally swallowed a bunch of it and returned to the boat because she felt sick. One of the ladies that was with us on our swim also returned to the boat, and they talked for a while about all the basic stuff. They were a family of four from Maryland. One of their daughters was in New Zealand on a six month visa. She didn’t say what for. I guess there are a lot of veterinarians that do extended stays in New Zealand for school, because they have a really great program here. I wonder if that’s what she was here for. Aside from the group of us three and that family of four, there was also a couple on the tour with us who, I believe, was from Shanghai. I know they said they’re going to Shanghai from here, but I’m pretty sure the guy said "back to Shanghai and back to work."

We were in the water for probably two hours, and then we returned to base, where they had hot showers and I had an unpleasant experience. The father in the family broke all the most important man-laws known to men. So, there were four showers all behind the same shower curtain. I went in first and took the farthest one, and left my swimming suit on. The guy from Shanghai came in next and took a shower, leaving an empty one between him and I. The farther shower had a wet suit lying on the floor in front of it, so I suspect that’s why he didn’t take it. He also had his swimming suit still on. Then suddenly, I look up from wetting my hair and there’s this butt naked old man standing right next to me. And then he starts talking to me. Talking to me! Naked old man talking to me!! Right, so when you’re at a urinal, you don’t talk to your closes friends while you’re peeing. When strangers walk in and take the urinal next to you and start talking, that’s a horrible breach of man etiquette, but unfortunately a relatively common one. So if that’s the case with peeing at a urinal, what do you think you should do when you’re naked in a shower next to a man you’ve not known for more than three hours? SHUT UP.

So, being as I was blocked in to the shower by this naked old dude that I could not get around, I just waited until he left the shower, but it was getting hard to find things to do that didn’t look like I was obviously just waiting for him to leave, so I ended up just kind of staring into the corner and absently running my hands through my hair. When I exited the shower, he was standing butt naked in the middle of the changing room, talking to the guy from Shanghai. What the hell am I going to do here? Fortunately after a moment in which I was toweling off, Amanda yelled into the men’s room that she and Alyssa needed the soap and shampoo, which I had, so I brought it out to them. When I walked back into the men’s room I locked myself into the stall and peed, and waited for the old guy to leave.

But we swam with seals! It was fun. They also let us pay in American dollars, which saved us the conversion fee that we’ve got to pay for just about everything else.

We ate at the Why Not Café, and I’ve realized that the answer to the question (Why Not?) is because they have expensive shitty food.

We continued to drive north. We stopped at a café in Takaka. We had actually stopped to use Takaka’s public restroom, which was across the street, but heard music and followed it. There was a guy with a guitar and a guy with drums and they were playing folky music. I thought they were pretty good. I saw a sign indicating that it was open mic night. Alyssa and I went to the bar to get drinks (Alyssa, screwdriver; me, rum and L&P, which was damn good; Amanda, apple juice). After a while the guy got off the stage and someone else went for it. He introduced himself as being thousands of miles from home, which was Ireland. He then used the time to tell stories of he and his wife traveling across America. While they were just stories, he spoke in a tone that seemed like poetry recital. Then he picked up a guitar and played some songs. I thought he was really boring. We discussed leaving. I got up to find out more information about the open mic. I didn’t have to walk far, the guy who’d been playing guitar when we’d first arrived was standing near the bar talking to another guy and I heard the words "house guitar" mentioned. So instead of leaving, I got Amanda and I another round of drinks (same) and we waited my turn to play. I played "The Meaning of Life" and "Old Man" and then was asked to leave the stage because "some of the locals wanted to play." I wasn’t sure if that meant they didn’t like me or what, but realizing that the guy who’d been up before me only played two songs and, aside from his stories, the Irishman before him had played only two songs, I guess that was just what was allowed, although being as the guy running the open mic night, who was that first guitarist, had played at least six songs after we’d walked in and who knows how many before that, and since he was the one taking the stage after me, I just think he’s an asshole with a big ego. Instead of calling it open mic night he should just say that he’s playing a show that night or something. We left before he started playing again. I’m not bitter though, I’m just glad I got to play. I’ve been itching for it. Although I really wanted to play four or five songs, I was going to slip in "Smile" next, the last song from the Doodle Taintstein EP, which has never been played live. Eh.

We kept driving until we got to Farewell Spit, which is this big spike sticking off the top of New Zealand’s south island. We parked in the lot at the café at the edge of the spit, and slept in the van.

Day 10: Wednesday, March 12

Amanda went to take a shower in the morning. As soon as she left the room, Alyssa and I returned to bed. When she came back, rather than yelling at us to wake up (as would be usual), she jumped back into the bed with me shouting about how there was no hot water. She’d just taken a cold shower. Alyssa decided then that she would not be showering today. We calculated then that she’d not showered in four days, although she insisted it was only two. We ended up proving her wrong. I said that I would shower anyway since I hadn’t the day before and, as previously stated, I am a smelly, smelly man. When I arrived at the restroom, I entered the men’s shower stall, disrobed, and turned only the hot water knob, leaving the cold entirely alone. Yes, the water was cold, but I didn’t think it freezing. It was warm enough for me to contend with long enough to shower. I quickly closed the window in the shower stall, which was letting in plenty of cold air. Roughly the time that I got the shampoo and soap all over me, the shower miraculously heated up. It was still not on par with where I would have liked, but it was much better. I hoped that it wasn’t just that my nerves had been deadened to the cold, but when I opened the shower curtain later, there was steam in the changing area.

There was a book on the nightstand next to the larger bed in the room that looked like a restaurant menu, but with way more pages. Flipping through it, it turned out to be pretty well the guide to Reefton. First it had information on all the historical sites and such the town had to offer, then information on all the hotels (that was sort of surprising, that they’d advertise for their competition like that), and then the complete menus for all the cafés and restaurants. Pretty much nobody had breakfast. One place did. We thought it odd that they served omelets for lunch, but not breakfast. My breakfast vote lay with finding a gas station and getting those excellent meat pies we’d had the previous day. As it turned out, there were no gas stations in Reefton, and all the convenience stores seemed to still be closed at 10:30.

In the next town, we found our gas station, and I found my pie. Hell yes.

We drove to Hanmer Springs, one of two homes of the hot springs. We paid $12 for a day in one of Hanmer Springs’ thermal spas, which was essentially several pools at various temperatures with various elements in them, such as sulfur, which are supposed to be good for your skin. We spent five hours relaxing in the water and doing nothing. It was most excellent.

We decided not to eat in the café at the spa. We were going to, even though it was a little on the pricey side, but as we went up to order we saw a sign saying that they had a "limited menu" between the hours of 4 and 6pm. It was not quite 5:00. We inquired as to what the limited menu was, and they said pretty much chips (fries). We decided to leave. As we were coming up to Lucy the van, we saw a guy sticking something under her windshield wiper. He smiled and nodded at us and walked away. We investigated the note, which we’d seen him stick under a wiper on every car in the lot, and it was an ad for an Asian restaurant called Captain’s Wok (although, on the note, they’d misspelled their own restaurant as "Caption’s Wok") which was just down the street. We decided to eat there. The same guy who left the note took our order. He did not speak English very well. He seemed excited, or happy at least, when I asked to bring chopsticks. There was a large computer monitor set up where they were showing a live performance by Shania Twain. The food was absolutely awesome and with huge portions for a reasonable price, as most Asian places are. We managed to eat and leave before "Man I Feel Like A Woman" came on but unfortunately not soon enough to miss "That Don’t Impress Me Much." I don’t much like Shania Twain. Her lyrics are egotistical. At one point during the show she had some guy come on stage, and he proposed to his girlfriend. Amanda, who’d not been paying much attention (I’m not sure why I was) asked who that guy was. I said, some guy. The conversation progressed somehow to Amanda asking if he was one of her backup dancers. Alyssa and I had a good laugh. Amanda was confused.

We continued on to Kaikoura, where we found a holiday park and got a cabin for the night. We were going to stay in the van again to save money, since none of our electronic devices needed charging (amazingly enough, not even my camera…probably since we spent the day in the hot springs and didn’t really have use for the electronics), but we desperately needed to do laundry. The Laundromat in town was a bit expensivo. The holiday park we ended up at was less so. Yes, I realize that paying more at the Laundromat and saving the cost of lodging for the night would have cost less, but there were other factors involved in the decision that I don’t particularly want to discuss, save to say that we would still have gone the Laundromat route if the Laundromat had restrooms. What the hell kind of Laundromat, or any business, doesn’t have restrooms?! Jerks.

We kind of pulled a fast one on the holiday park and said there were only two people. It’s cheaper that way and I don’t understand why. There’s still three beds in the cabin, but we’re only using two, so what difference does it make? I feel kind of bad about it but only a little. This whole country feels like a ripoff. I coined a new slogan for New Zealand. Here it is: "New Zealand!: We Fuck The Tourists As Hard As We Can!" or, if that’s too long and cumbersome: "NZ: Fuck The Tourists!" or "NZ: It’s Better On TV!"

I’m not overly impressed, if you can’t tell. Amanda and Alyssa are having a better time here, anyway, and I’m still glad I came. I’m not going to have an opportunity like this again, probably. I want to go to Holland.

Over and out. More tomorrow.

Day 9: Tuesday, March 11

Arglesfarg.

Last night before I went to bed I seem to have written the word "arglesfarg" and I’m not entirely sure why. But I think I’m going to leave it there.

We woke up this morning with a Wicked van behind us. The side we could see said "Oh So Emo" and had a picture of an emo kid on it. We didn’t venture around the other side for fear of what the people within would think. They’d probably be hot half naked girls that would think I was a creepy rapist or something and pull a knife or call the cops or something.

After digging a path to the driver’s seat, which largely consisted of Amanda moaning about how badly she had to pee, I drove us back to Hokitika, to the same bp gas station that we’d stopped at the night before and gotten that fruit juice smoothie from. Amanda called bathroom first but she was too slow getting out of the van and I took it (there was just one unisex). As I walked out she gave me the evil eye and said, in a low, dark voice, "Youuuu…." When I explained that it took her too long to exit the van, she claimed it was Alyssa’s fault for hiding her shoes, or something.

We got another jug of that fruit smoothie for breakfast, as well as these awesome hot pie things. Mine had minced beef, bacon, and cheese inside. It was kind of like a portable pot pie. Then, we drove. We drove for well over 200km too see some caves. On the way we stopped to see what are called the Pancake Rocks and Blowholes, where my camera died since I’d not had the ability to charge it the night before (slept in the van, eh). The last 14km was on a gravel road that wound ridiculously tightly, I could drive no more than 30kph at best, 10 in some spots. It took half an hour to cover that last 14km. Finally, we arrived at the Oparara Basin, home of the Oparara Arch, which is a large rock tunnel thing, and the rock overhangs outside of it for a bit. It looks really cool but it was not worth the drive to see it. In the same area, we saw two caves: the Crazy Paving Cave and the Box Canyon Cave. They were boring. The end.

So we drove 120km back exactly the way we came and didn’t eat until after 6, in Westport. That’s something like 10 hours without food. We weren’t starving though; we’re getting used to eating only two meals a day on this trip. It saves money and time, I guess, and I guess we’re probably losing weight. The shorts that I spent the first few days in don’t fit me anymore, they fall off of my ass. When I take my shirt off, I am still fat though. Maybe by the end of the trip that will change a little? I doubt it.

Tonight I ate Chicken Cordon Bleu. Mmmmm.

We then drove on to Reefton, which is very close to the hot springs. The drive here was a little maddening; we called the hotel we wanted to stay at from Westport, they said to get there by 9. It was already going on 8 and it was another 80kmish. That would have been easily doable if only for two factors that I didn’t get: (a) straight or at least straightish roads, and (b, which wouldn’t be a big deal if a had been satisfied) no rain. But lo, it did rain on us but only while I was navigating 200° turns (yes, I mean turns that brought us to face a direction farther around than completely reversed. I know what I’m talking about) on roads that had, immediately to my left, a sheer drop off of a cliff with little to no guard rail to speak of. Occasionally there were trees. More often there was nothing.

We made it to the hotel with seven minutes to spare.

Wilson’s Hotel is old and rickety and has lots of character. I like it. It looks like the perfect setting for a ghost story. Even the lady that runs it, who was very kind and offered to bring us drinks in our room even at this hour, was dressed in a manner that you would expect of a ghost story. She looks out of place in this century. Victorian, even, perhaps. After we’d gotten everything into the room I went to explore the bathroom at the end of the hall (no bathrooms in the hotel rooms, just a sink, which is rather curious). After groping around in the dark for several minutes, I located the light switch to the bathroom next to a different entrance to the same bathroom. I can’t quite figure out where that other door leads, though; maybe to the roof?... Then I discovered that each stall has its own light switch. Each stall, though, is a completely enclosed room in its own right. There are actual walls between them, not restroom stall walls, and a full door. As I sat on the toilet, a moth fluttered around, trapped in the room with me, and irritated me a bit. Then it landed on my back. I began talking to it, saying things like, "I don’t mind you in here, sharing the most intimate of moments that I won’t even let my girlfriend in on, but do stay off of me! And my clothes!" because it kept crawling into my drawers as they sat on the floor. Moths eat clothing, don’t they? In the end, after flying around crazily and whacking himself so hard into the walls that I thought he’d squash himself like, well, a bug, he flew himself into a spiderweb. By the time I was finished in there, he’d gotten himself out, and when I opened the door, he flew away.

When I returned to the room and opened the door, I scared the shit out of Amanda and Alyssa. I saw Alyssa first, lying on her bed with horrified expression. Amanda was on the other side of the door to me and when I closed it, I saw her in fighting stance.

Good times. I shall now go to bed.

Day 8: Monday, March 10

This morning I completely forgot to take a towel with me when I went to shower. I did not realize this until after I was done showering. So, I stood there like an idiot for about ten minutes trying to air dry before I finally broke down and used the clean shirt that I’d intended to wear today. Then I left the showering supplies in the bathroom. Fortunately they were still there when I returned for them.

Our breakfast today consisted of potato chips. Yum.

After we left the campground, we did a lot of driving. Fortunately, it was Alyssa’s turn. Ha ha sucks to be her.

Our main focus for the day was seeing glaciers. The first stop we made was the Fox Glacier, which was an hour and a half walk just to see a bunch of ice lodged between some mountains, which we were viewing from several kilometers away. Apparently, in order to actually go on the glacier, you need to pay a buttload of money for a guided tour. I call bullshit on that. It’s just a block of ice. I’m from Wisconsin. I can handle it myself, thanks.

Along the path, Alyssa died because she is horribly out of shape and I got sick, possibly because I am horribly out of shape. Amanda charged forth like there was nothing unnatural about walking such a steep, constant uphill path. We walked over a river at one point. It was a very shallow river and there were large rocks which were easy to jump to and from. The water was so clear, we couldn’t help but cup our hands and drink some. It actually tasted very good. On the way back down, which was much more expedient and easy, we observed a large rock that was positioned strangely. It had a name. I’ve forgotten the name. I felt like puking on it, which I mercifully did not do.

The next stop was in the town of Fox Glacier, which is aptly named after the Fox Glacier. We ate at a ridiculously overpriced restaurant; by ’ridiculously overpriced’ I mean Amanda paid nine dollars for a coffee cup worth of tomato soup. If we’d had any indication of the portion sizes, this would not have come to pass. Alyssa got a burger for $14, but it was a huge burger. I got a salad. Salads are supposed to be cheap, right? This one was $18. It was a large salad but there ended up being a good amount of it that I wouldn’t eat. I think there were equal parts lettuce and onions. Also there was some kind of unidentified meat trying to blend in with the chicken; it was darker and very, very salty, and after I ate some and determined it was revolting, I inspected it closer and came to the conclusion it must be fish. I’m assuming it was sardines, possibly anchovies, but probably sardines. I was not pleased. Otherwise, the salad was good. It came with four slices of garlic pesto bread, which was great. We ordered raspberry lemonades, which turned out to be Sprite with a shot of raspberry juice in the bottom. I also got a glass of water, which I found to be bitter and would have rather had the river water that we’d drank on the glacier path. I think that water might have been clearer, too. All in all, if it weren’t the case anyway, we’d never go back to that restaurant.

So then we drove on to the next glacier, the Franz Josef Glacier, which was a much shorter walk though still uphill, and also viewable only from a distance. Disappointing, yes, but at least I can say I’ve seen glaciers. As we drove back down the road that led to the glacier, we saw a sign that said, "In 1720 the glacier was here!" and were a little amazed. I’m not sure if we were amazed because it moved that fast, or because it moved that slowly.

We then did quite a bit more driving, attempting to stop for gas in three small towns, but the gas stations were closed and didn’t have pay at the pump. This was between 6 and 7pm. New Zealand is ridiculous about closing times.

We pressed on to Hokitika, the largest city on the West Coast. Though not necessarily out of necessity, we chose to sleep in the back of the van to save money. Perhaps to recoup some of the loss from that outrageously priced lunch of ours. We made a quick stop at a gas station to fill up and get something cold to drink. Amanda and I got a fruit juice smoothie thingy to share and it was really good. Then we drove out of town and found a nice lookout with a sign saying camping is ok. We threw all the luggage into the front two seats and laid all the back seats down, which fold neatly into a kind of mattress, and snuggled into the back like gerbils.

Day 7: Sunday, March 9

In the morning, we wandered around Queenstown looking for breakfast. We failed to find breakfast. We ended up deciding it was close enough to lunch time, and in an effort to save money, chose Kentucky Fried Chicken. There seem to be more KFCs in New Zealand than even McDonald’s. Plenty of Burger Kings, too. But anyway, we got ripped off at KFC. We ordered a thing of Popcorn Chicken and a thing of mashed potatoes, and a large drink, and it came to nine dollars. This box of popcorn chicken that we got was about the size of your average fruit pie box, and the potatoes were in what might be described as a double shot glass. For nine dollars. We should’ve gone to McDonald’s, we mused. We also finally wound up in a used records store. I really liked whatever they were playing in there but I neglected to inquire as to what it was, it sounded like it could’ve been the 5678’s but I’m not sure. I’m not overly familiar with the 5678’s but it’s that style of music. I don’t even know what genre that is. Anyhow, they were charging $30 for used CDs. $30! I found stuff in there for $30 that I’ve plucked off the dollar rack at Half-Price Books. That’s another thing that’s really expensive here: books. There was a bookstore that we walked by near that record shop that had a table with a sign that said, "Stock up on the classics! 3 for $20!" and they were paperbacks. But back to the CDs: the cheapest one I saw in there was $10, and it was a single. There was a table full of discounted CDs outside of the store on a table, and I saw some singles for $1-2 that I might’ve considered buying but didn’t. It would be nice to have a greater variety of music in the van, since we are still just listening to that Kerrang! CD over and over and over, but seriously. It’s ridiculous. I probably won’t find any CDs worth buying until we get to Auckland and by then it won’t matter so much because we’ll be going home. Either that or I’ll end up returning home with no other new music at all, which would be a big disappointment.

So I failed to avoid that gondola. Hesus Cristobal Jehosephat, that thing was steep. And there were sheep grazing and sleeping on the side of the mountain. Ridiculous. The view from the top was pretty nice, though. Then we went back down and I thought I’d shit myself.

We walked around Queenstown for a bit more and stopped at an internet shop type thing, where you could get fifteen minutes of internet for a dollar. It’s the lowest rate I’ve seen on internet yet, and we hadn’t checked our emails since Oamaru, so I decided it may be worth it. I had two emails from my mom, one just a response to my first email to say they were glad they’d heard from me and such. The second was an article saying that Gary Gygax had died this week. I think that’s really sad. I had always wanted to meet him, and had come close once. We were in the same room, anyway, it’s just that it was a very large room and there were about 10,000 other people in it. I am of course speaking of GenCon. Gary Gygax, for those who don’t know, was the creator of Dungeons & Dragons. He was 69.

We got some ice cream. Alyssa got a waffle. We headed out of Queenstown and up to see some Lord of the Rings film sites. First was a site not far outside of Queenstown where Gandalf rode to Isengard, plus a forest that briefly stood in for Lothlorien.We ended up on a gravel road that wound around through a forest and over a stream, which we had to drive through (it was no more than a few centimeters deep at the point where we crossed). Then we saw an exclamation point sign with a note under it (we’ve been seeing these signs across the country; I’m pretty sure it just means "attention!") that said "Film Crew." So we saw a bunch of trailers and large vehicles that were part of a film crew. We ended up turning arund and going back, but we kind of wish we’d kept going. We’re pretty sure they must have been filming The Hobbit, Amanda figures they were probably filming some Mirkwood scenes.

The next place we stopped was Arrowtown, which is where Frodo crossed the Ford of Bruinen, where Arwen saved him from the Nazgul.

We then drove to Wanaka. We stopped at a gas station, where an old lady asked me for directions to the supermarket, and we washed Lucy’s windows because we could hardly see through them anymore. We can see now! Shortly after we left the gas station, I saw the supermarket.

We stopped again by Lake Wanaka because Amanda wanted to take some pictures, and I saw a "Play It Again Records" across the street. So Amanda got her pictures and I walked over to the record shop, where just about everything was still thirty dollars used. The only thing I saw that really seemed like it was almost worth paying for was a seven disc Pearl Jam boxed set for $70. It had three complete shows on seven discs. I decided, though, that I’ve got a ton of live Pearl Jam and $70 wasn’t worth it to me. Plus, I was just so sick of that Kerrang! CD that I needed something, anything else, but if this was the replacement, I’d probably be so sick of Pearl Jam by the end of the trip that I’d not be able to listen to them for a year. So instead I allowed myself to be ripped off and bought Punk-O-Rama 8, a two-disc punk compilation that I could easily get brand new in the States for like eight bucks, for $20. But at least now we have something else to listen to! I thought a compilation would be best since it’s got multiple artists, so we won’t get bored with it so quickly.

We decided just to stay in Wanaka for the night and got a cabin at a campground. We’ve been talking cabins for the whole trip but this is the first one we’ve actually stayed at. It was pretty nice, actually, except a little smelly. It was pretty well the same setup we’d had the night before, although a little bigger and a little cheaper ($62 as opposed to $85). Once we got our stuff unloaded, Amanda & I went for a walk around the campground and then around town, where we took pictures of a Wicked van that had John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson from Pulp Fiction painted on one side, and Uma Thurman on the other. There were people in the van, though, so we didn’t want to seem stalkerish and walk around their van taking pictures, so we got those two as we walked by and figured we’d get the back on the return trip. Unfortunately, by the time we headed back to the campground, that van was gone. We keep seeing awesome Wicked vans, there’s plenty of them in my video. There’ve been several that we’ve seen and not gotten pictures of that I wish we had, though.

Back in the cabin, we finally downloaded Amanda’s pictures into my laptop. There are 1676 of them so far. We perused them until the laptop battery died, then I stuck it on the charger and we went to bed. We were on the top bunk, and Amanda somehow managed to fling her pillow off of it during the night so she stole mine. Urgh.

Day 6: Saturday, March 8

This morning was very hygienic for me. I actually brushed my teeth last night for the first time since the morning we left. This morning I showered and, also for the first time since we left, shaved. It’s weird being that clean again, almost.

I drove today. It was a lot of driving. First we drove something like 100 kilometers down to Milford Sound. The drive from Te Anau to Milford Sound is said to have the most beautiful scenery in all of New Zealand, and after seeing it, I think I agree. I mean, I haven’t seen all of New Zealand yet, but I think it’s gotta be pretty tough to beat what I saw after we went through the tunnel. There are no words to describe the breathtaking mountains and forests and rivers and trees and everything that we saw. Then we saw the burned out husk of a blown up tour bus sitting on the side of the road. It couldn’t have been there very long because there was some type of a public service vehicle parked in front of it, I don’t think it was a cop but I could be wrong, standing there scratching his head. We weren’t really in a position to stop and gawk so we continued on.

It was $65 per person to take the boat tour. I can feel next month’s bills not getting paid. But we think it was worth it. The scenery off of the actual Milford Sound (which is, according to the tour narration, not actually a sound, but a fiord) is unbelievable. I got lots of video, including the boat shoving itself nosefirst into a waterfall, twice. On the way back in to the dock, we stepped downstairs for a bit into the café area and got some soup.

I feel that the soup itself constitutes a new chapter in our lives. This was excellent soup. It was two dollars a cup for a little Styrofoam coffee cup of this tomato soup, which was described by the lady who gave it to us as "very oniony" although I didn’t think it was that oniony. It was quite simply the best soup ever, and I don’t much care for tomato soup regularly. After we ate the soup and were walking back toward our van ("Lucida" or "Lucy"), Amanda began to sing songs about the soup, which included lyrics such as, "Soooooouuuupp. Sooooooouuup!! Soupy soooooooooouuuup! It’s so goooooooooood. Soupy soupy sooooouup!!!"

We then returned exactly the way we came, over 100 kilometers, back to Te Anau because that is the only road in and out of Milford Sound. I guess they want to build a quicker route for the tourists, but it’s being opposed by many people, especially from Te Anau, because the new route would have to go through national parks and also Te Anau’s entire economy would disappear since it’s built on the tourism that’s forced to come through en route to Milford Sound. Anyway, we ended up eating in Te Anau again, this time at a convenience store/chicken stand type thing. Their sign said, "Fish & Chips" and beneath that, "Chicken & Chips," so we had Chicken & Chips. It was pretty good for the price we paid for it. Then we had ice cream. Then we discovered that I am too retarded to work the pumps at the gas station.

From Te Anau we drove to Queenstown, stopping first so that Amanda could rinse Sprite out of her shoe. At that same stop I decided to go pee, and promptly discovered a urinal even worse than the one at the albatross place. Take that urinal, from the albatross place, and remove the grate. Instead of standing over the drain I am now on a cement block well behind the trough, still pissing on the wall, although now there is nothing to catch the little dribbles at the end, it’s just going straight down between my shoes. A less observant man would probably get it on his feet. At least these ones flushed…unendingly. When I had walked into the restroom I saw three of these monstrosities, acting as waterfalls in their own right. When I was finished, I washed my hands, and discovered nothing to dry them with. It’s not like the paper towel dispensers were empty, it’s that there were none…nor any blowdryers, nor the cloth towel rolly things. Just pants.

We continued to Queenstown. We stopped again at a lookout over a lake which we can’t remember the name of, only that it was the most beautiful shade of blue ever to have human eyes set upon it. There is no way that our pictures or video will do it justice, this is one of the many things about New Zealand which simply must be viewed with your own eyes. It was so brilliantly amazing.

We’ve not yet seen much of Queenstown. We arrived, drove around nervously (I probably looked like an idiot to the traffic behind me), and somehow found our way to a free public parking lot. At least, Amanda thinks it’s free…I’m not sure. In any case Lucy didn’t get towed away while we walked around to find a payphone. Amanda called a place to see if we could get a cabin for the night, meanwhile Alyssa and I stood outside the phonebooth discussing things such as the Lord of the Rings store across the street (which was closed) and the boat around Milford Sound. See, there was this guy that was checking Amanda out for the entire trip. Staring, really, and not being subtle about it in the least. I said, that’s ok, I was checking his girlfriend out too. Alyssa found this funny. When Amanda emerged from the phonebooth she informed us that the place was all out of cabins, but there was a lodge we could get for a little less than twice the price. Then she looked at me and said, "And who were you checking out?!" Alyssa found this funny as well, so I explained the situation to her. We all had a good laugh and she continued to chastise me for the rest of the night, in what I assume was a mostly unserious playful manner. Hmm. We called a few more places for accommodations and ended up settling for the cabin from the first place.

Although Queenstown seems to be the first place we’ve been to since Christchurch with even a semblance of nightlife, we opted to stay in since it was getting fairly late (9:30ish) and we had stuff to do like write in this journal and charge our electronic devices. I said I didn’t feel so bad about not going out tonight as long as we get to spend some time in town tomorrow, this looks like it could be the city to change my mind about this country. So far I think it’s beautiful, but uninteresting otherwise. You can only look at beautiful scenery for so long before you need something to do.

I’m hoping that tomorrow, I’ll find a record shop, and buy something, anything, so that we can listen to something other than that Kerrang! CD a-fucking-gain. We’ve seriously listened to it about 50 times now, because the majority of New Zealand has no radio and it remains the only CD we have.

Tomorrow, I hope to avoid being dragged onto the Queenstown Gondola. It’s like the first gondola, in Christchurch, except almost vertical, and to the top of a bigger mountain. It makes me cringe just looking at it from many kilometers away.

Day 5: Friday, March 7

I though it was the most comfortable night’s sleep I’d had since the motel, despite the fact that I was in the driver’s seat with my feet around the pedals all night. Alyssa disagreed heartily. She was riding shotgun. Amanda got the back seat to herself, which she said was ok except that she couldn’t stretch her legs out which sucked. I guess I made out the best then.

When we woke up, I stated a desire to leave expediently, as I was unsure whether we’d parked in the right place and I didn’t want anybody coming up to us and saying, "what are you doing there?," so we pretty much just drove back to Invercargill. We stopped at that same gas station to fill up and use the bathroom, and get breakfast since Alyssa had smashed our muffins in her sleep. We ate the smashed muffins anyway. From there we argued over who got to sit in the back seat and, when Amanda finally defeated me, we were on our way.

We were heading for Te Anau, but somehow ended up in Otautau when our highway inexplicably ended. We simply came to a fork where neither direction said Te Anau anymore, and were dumbfounded until I pointed out the sign behind us stating that Te Anau was 111 kilometers back the way we’d just came. As it turned out, we’d missed a turn about thirty kilometers back, so it was about 60 kilometers of ground that we didn’t need to cover. Less than an hour of lost time, really, and just some more New Zealand that we got to view, so not such a bad mistake.

We decided that, since we were so uncomfortable the previous night and since we saved a bunch of money by sleeping free, we’d splurge a bit and get some real beds to sleep in. We checked in to the Fiordland Motor Lodge, which has another name that I can’t think of, and got a room with three beds for $85. They didn’t have anything else left for less than $120. It had a big bed and two small ones, so we threw all the gear on the one in the middle and Amanda & I took the big one. I took a massive shit since I hadn’t pooped at all since Christchurch. After Alyssa got done looking through some pictures of her dogs and Amanda & I got done beating the hell out of each other and, inadvertently, rearranging the furniture, we went for a walk around town. We were trying to find our way to a restaurant aptly named Pizza & Pasta. As we walked down the main drag, we stopped for a moment to consult our map and make sure we were actually heading in the correct direction for this Pizza & Pasta place, which we were, but as we stood there looking over the map a helicopter randomly flew directly over our heads by about ten feet and landed the same distance away from us. And I kept yelling, "where’s my camera now?! Where’s my camera now?!" because it was back at the hotel charging, since we didn’t get a chance to charge it the previous night (see: slept in the frigging van).

When we finally found Pizza & Pasta we discovered that it didn’t actually open until 5:30pm. Strange? Kind of. It was a different restaurant until then, some kind of a bakery. We each got milkshakes from the bakery (Alyssa, chocolate; Amanda, banana; Trevor, Strawberry) and wandered around through all the tourist shops. We got some little gifties for people back home, but not much…I’m trying to save all of that for Auckland so that we don’t have to haul it all over the country for the next two weeks. We saw the same lady minding two different shops, I got a slight déjà vu. We headed back and ended up right in front of Pizza & Pasta. I had the most awesome lemon chicken & bacon spaghetti. Alyssa had some kind of spaghetti that she picked most of the contents out of. Amanda had a lasagna. It was good. We drank more L&P in some cool glass bottles that I kept.

We returned to the motel, where I took another massive shit and it rained a lot. I finally emptied all of the video and photos out of my camera (there was still stuff from GenCon in there). I finished typing this.

Day 4: Thursday, March 6

We woke up sore from sleeping on the ground. I think it was exceptionally hard ground at that camp site, which is not what you’d expect. We took showers, packed up, took down the tent, and then checked out literally two minutes before we’d have been charged for another day. We spent most of the day just driving. First we went around the Otago peninsula and visited New Zealand’s only castle, Larnach Castle. It cost $25 per person to get in. The money goes to the restoration efforts. I guess it was worth it, maybe. They wouldn’t let us take any pictures or video inside the castle, so I don’t have any. It’s pretty small for a castle, really, it more just resembles a large house, with turrets on the top. There was a video set up in one of the rooms downstairs that gave a brief overview of the castle and the lady that currently owns it, who is not related to the Larnach family at all. The video seemed mostly a commercial to buy a longer video from the gift shop. Frankly, it wasn’t that interesting. We read through a bunch of posters about William Larnach and his family, and we didn’t really like any of them, they were kind of a family of jerks. William had like eight kids from two women and didn’t start until he was almost thirty. He married his dead wife’s sister, then she died and he married somebody who was about 25 years younger than he was, then his eldest son had an affair with her or something. I don’t know. William Larnach shot himself to death in the Parliament building, which is pretty crazy. One of his sons did the same thing. As we continued through the castle, when we got to the uppermost floor, there was a door that led to a staircase suspiciously similar to the one in Christchurch Cathedral: like a tube, spiraling ever upward, enough to give claustrophobics seizures. This one wound the other way. We got to the top and were outside, on top of the castle in an observation area. They let us take pictures off of that so we got plenty, the scenery was beautiful, like most of New Zealand is. This is a remarkably beautiful country; even the largest cities are nice. Even in Christchurch it’s all spread out and clean and the people are really friendly.

We exited the castle and spent a good deal of time walking around the grounds. The gardens were pretty. I got lots of video of them. Then the camera died, as it has been doing constantly since I’ve only got a two or three hour battery in it. I had intended to buy the six hour battery before GenCon last year, it’s US$100 but I think it’s worth it, but I’ve never gotten around to purchasing it. The camera is constantly dying right before cool stuff happens.

Next we traveled on to a place where you’re supposed to be able to see albatrosses, which are pretty rare. We went into the building, they had a suggested donation of two dollars which we foolishly paid. After using the worst urinal ever conceived by man (keep in mind how often I bitch about the urinals in Indianapolis), we walked around the building for a few minutes, saw some posters about the albatross, a gift shop, and then walked through a doorway which deposited us outside. We got exactly nothing for our two dollar donations. That’s another six bucks out of the vacation pot that was completely wasted. You can’t really get close enough to see the albatross unless you pay for a guided tour, which was something more to the tune of $30, of course. I’m really sick of the way that everybody here tries to part you from your money while giving you essentially nothing. We walked down to another area where you can sometimes see an albatross for free, and waited there. We saw one but it was so far off that I would have written it off as another seagull, which were plentiful and very close to us, if somebody hadn’t pointed out the wingspan. It would have made a very disproportionate seagull. All in all, we left that place feeling ripped off and discontent.

Let me describe the urinal.

I had just essentially pissed on the wall. I walked into the bathroom and saw no toilets, just another door which I assumed led to a lone stall. To the right of the door, there was a metal plate against the wall and a grating over a trough that had a drain in the bottom. So, feeling unconfident, I stood on the grating and opened up. It didn’t seem right and the whole time I was wondering if someone was going to walk in and say, "what the hell are you doing?!" but instead, when somebody did walk in on me peeing, he stood on the grate next to me and opened his fly. That was uncomfortable. It was the worst urinal ever.

From there, we drove. And drove and drove and drove forever. We stopped twice to do some nature trails, which were really nice and had waterfalls. The first one felt much like walking into a rainforest. It’s unfortunate that the video camera was dead but we got plenty of wonderful pictures.

We drove some more. It was getting on 8:00 and we figured we had better find a place to stay. We passed some motels and I’m not sure why we didn’t stop and take one, but instead pressed on toward Invercargill. We didn’t get there until 9:30ish. The map of Invercargill that we had was nowhere near adequate and only had a tiny chunk of downtown. The campground that we wanted to get a cabin from, the Beach Road Holiday Park (located on Dunns St.), was not on the map. We stopped at the first gas station we saw and I went in to ask directions. The kid at the counter had blue hair. I complimented him, stating that I’d had that color once (which is true, probably about when I was his age)(god I’m old) and he gave me a map of the whole city and drew directions on it. The campground had a sign on the office door saying it was closed and we could "help ourselves" to a tent site or powered site. For tourist flats and cabins call these numbers. So I wrote down the numbers and we headed back to the Pizza Hut we’d seen in town, because we were ravenously hungry, having not eaten a meal since breakfast and only surviving on chips and Pods (Pods: they come in four flavors which are all well-known candy bars, like Milky Way and Mars, and are little scoops of cookie with little drops of candy bar in them). The pizza was exceptionally cheap, we got a large Meat Lover’s for $10. That’s 10 New Zealand dollars. You can’t get a large specialty pizza in the States for eight bucks. From there I called those numbers and nobody answered. We tried to figure out where to go from there, but it was past 10 and nobody was open. One of Pizza Hut’s delivery drivers, Carl, was excessively friendly and first called the nearest campground for us, then rifled through the phone book to find us the four nearest motels. We thanked him and were on our way, but could only find one of the places he spoke of. His directions were a little unclear and included the phrase, "Don St Go, Right Then."

It may be noted that we’ve had a downward spiral in sleeping arrangements the whole vacation thus far. We went from an exquisite motel the first night to a cramped hostel the second. Camping on hard ground the third.

We ended up helping ourselves to a tent site and sleeping in the van. I couldn’t figure out where the tent sites were, there was no indication on the sign at the office and no signs to point us the way. I found a big open area and parked the van next to a pine tree and hoped for the best.