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.
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