Sep 2006

We’d heard from many a Kiwi that Queenstown was the most happening place in the country. In New Zealand ‘happening’ must mean the same as ‘full of idiots’ in Britain. Ironically - please correct me if I’m one of the several million who misuse that word on a regular basis - most of the ‘idiots’ were from the land of hope and glory. I know I’m being woefully unpatriotic when I say this, but I dread seeing other British travellers abroad, as they are generally rude and annoying, making us all look bad.

Queenstown was full of young English guys and gals who just loved to prove my pessimistic hypothesis correct. In every shop, bar and restaurant there’d be an obnoxious group of lads in their Liverpool or Man-United shirts, or a drunken cluster of laddettes wearing their hula-hoop-sized hoop earrings and oh-so-trendy sportswear. It was a real shame because the town’s setting couldn’t be more picturesque - and for New Zealand that’s saying something! The Spectaculars are a - for want of a better and less predictable word - spectacular range of snow-capped mountains surrounding Queenstown. The composite image of mountain in front of lake, in front of more mountains is something very special that words cannot do adequate justice. Please see the attached photographs!

Not wanting to waste our time snow-ploughing down the slopes - a term I learned when I had a party at the dry ski-slope in Halifax, aged 10 - we weren’t doing any skiing in the skiing capital of New Zealand. Mainly because we’d knew we’d be crap and probably pick up all sorts of injuries that our insurance wouldn’t cover. But also because we’d have to spend time with more annoying English guys who‘d want to make us renounce our citizenship. No, our plans for Queenstown were to saddle up and head through the trees of Lothlorien on horseback! In another activity we’d probably be crap at, that our insurance also didn’t cover, we booked a half-day riding tour through some of the filming locations from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The stables were about a 40 minute ride out of the town, in a place the name of which eludes at this moment, and they smelt thoroughly of horse crap and posh people. The weather was terribly cold. They had suggested on the phone earlier that we wear six or seven layers! So, attired in our 5 T-shirts topped off with our ultra-80’s style primary-coloured jumpers we picked up in Rotorua, we would have blended nicely into the video shoot for Hey Micky. Alas, that video had already been shot some 20 years ago, so we just looked plain stupid. However, our horses didn’t seem to mind being ridden by a couple of 80’s throwbacks, and besides, they gave us Countryside Alliance-style overcoats as an extra layer (yes it really was that cold!). I felt more inclined to drive a Landrover and shoot foxes than ever before, but I had to stay focused on the task at hand: attempting to mount my horse, Randal.

Describing our ride without it turning into one of those long boring narratives I mentioned earlier is tough. So, I’ll simply say it was awesome fun and we thoroughly enjoyed it! Both our horses walked pretty much where they wanted, regardless of how we pulled on their reins. Neither of us fell off, so that was a plus point. Also we saw where Sean Bean got shot in the Lothlorien forest, as well as the setting for Isengard (correct spelling anyone?!).

That was about it for Queenstown, apart from our little trip to the Casino, where, being the high rollers we are, we spent of grand total of about $10 on the slot machines. It did take us about 3 hours to finally lose our last $2, but by that time our eyes were hurting far too much to consider playing any longer. We left Queenstown the next morning to head back west to the flatlands of Canterbury and the South Island’s only half-big city, Christchurch. After another beautiful, but quite uneventful Intercity/Newmans coach journey, we arrived around 5pm and checked into the same hostel we had stayed in the previous week. Our flight to Brisbane was mid-morning, so we didn’t have to get up too early. We decided to get some beer to complete our ‘drink beer every day in New Zealand’ thing we seemed to fall into about half way through - we worked out while we were in Rotorua that a night hadn’t passed without us ingesting some kind of alcoholic beverage, so we continued… and a month later on our final night we weren‘t going to be beat! With Bad Boys 2 being the only thing on TV, you can’t really blame us for taking comfort in beer: Martin Lawrance really isn’t very funny, even after several bottles of Tui - a nice NZ ale if you can get your hands on it! So that was that. With the inspiring dialogue of a Michael Bay movie sending us to sleep, I wondered if I’d be glad to leave New Zealand in the morning. “Oh Hell No!” shouted Will Smith as five thousand cars and two million lorries exploded in unison. My thoughts exactly.

Anyways, apologies for taking so long to write this one up… at this rate we’ll be back home before I get to Cairns! Just so you know, its all good here at the moment, but the hot weather is about to start and we’ll probably be roasted alive. Check your forecasts for the insane northern Queensland temperatures! Wooo!

Andrew.