So, we eventually left
Australia. It was a good country to see with all its airs and graces, its cockroaches and bed bugs, its drag queens and drag kings (VERY scary!) its gays and straights, its sights and attractions, its tourists and natives, its weird people (most of them we met) and its strange Chinese tourists. With all those things, it’s no wonder that little old UK fits into
Australia 33 and a half times!! Thinking about it now, it’s sad that we had to leave behind the lovely people we met, but shit happens! And we will see them again!
We actually got off to an interesting start in
New Zealand, as only we could! The flight was fine; we didn’t miss it, which I suppose is a bonus! But when we were queuing for customs they sent the sniffer dogs up and down the isles and guess who one of the dogs took a fancy too!!!??? ME! I knew I always loved dogs, but this was neither the place nor the time to get all soppy - especially coz the dog was muzzled and foaming at the mouth ready to bite! It would have been fine if it was just a quarantine dog - one that sniffs food etc, coz I would have just popped my little apple in the bin! But these dogs where trained to sniff out ecstasy tablets and white powder! Little did they know the only white powder I had was bastard talc! So I was calmly told I had to follow this butch dyke to get searched etc and was calmly taken to an area to wait until they where ready, so I proceeded to just make sure I'd remembered to throw away the gram of smack I had bought from the whore house we went to just before leaving Oz, and then got my magazine out to read with a grin on my face, because obviously I was innocent! For a minute I did think that maybe someone had planted something on me, but quickly got over that thought.
So the butch dyke - who, by the way, did not crack a smile once, or even speak to me nicely - came back to get me and lead me to this long silver table. She said I could take a seat in front of it, I said I would prefer to stand. She then literally tipped the entire contents of my hand luggage bag over the table, I mean everything! My camera, my journal, a pair of socks, a few tampons, wallet, toothbrush everything! And searched the entire bag getting swabs from various things to test in the machine - I just stood there grinning thinking it was the funniest thing in the world - a nice, Jewish boy with drugs! North West London hasn't so much as heard of such a thing! In fact, the first time someone offered me some Charlie, I told them no thanks, I’m wearing Jean Paul Gaultier! Anyway, so she searched some more, she should of got the idea that I didn’t have anything on me. Especially after reading parts of my journal, thinking she would get some juicy drugs raid plan instead she probably read 'The gay life isn’t much here. But the drag queens are fab!’ She asked me loads of questions obviously, did you pack the bag? Did anyone give you anything? Have you got anything on you? I wanted to say IVE GOT A FUCKING DEGREE, IM REALLY NOT THAT STUPID! But held back. She then asked why I thought the dogs had sniffed me out, I WANTED to say if I knew that you thick bitch, I wouldn’t be standing here! But what I actually said was 'well I had a little spray of the new Angel for men, but that’s it!’ She wasn’t amused! I wanted to tickle here, just to make sure she was actually human!
Anyway, she finished up, and obviously was unsuccessful. Thank god she didn’t pull the dreaded rubber glove on; I had my 'lawyer' speech all ready and waiting! She escorted me back to Lee, who was waiting for me by the luggage thing, and when she left me I turned round and said 'I think your dog’s need a bit of fine tuning, don’t you?' She didn’t reply and just walked off. Then Lee had some more good news, our bags where still in pissing
Melbourne! So for the first night we didn’t have a thing with us! Which was quite a relief in a strange way. but we eventually got the bags back in
Christchurch, our first stop for a night before boarding the kiwi bus!
From flying into
New Zealand, we could obviously tell it was a beautiful country, and from what we have seen so far, that’s exactly what it is (although they could get rid of some of the sheep! Make room for more humans maybe!). Our first stop on the Kiwi Bus was
Westport, on the west coast. I knew
New Zealand was an active kind of place, but the first stop was to book an activity! We booked quad biking and did it the following morning, at 8am! It was a lot of fun, there was only me and lee and the instructor coz everyone had done it the day before but there were no more places left. We rode around on tracks, in rivers, in mud, in rain. The instructor took pictures and made us do very butch manly things like stick our thumbs up! I thought if I’ve already done some kind of physical thing in the first 48 hours of being in the country, I’m going to need a holiday after being here! In one of my school reports in the games section it said something like 'it’s clear that Simon doesn’t like contact physical sport' and they weren't wrong!
Our stop after
Westport was Mahinapua. Now I know some of you have done the Kiwi bus, but I’m totally unsure as to why on earth they would use this as a stop! Its in the middle of bloody nowhere and the pub where we stayed (aptly named the Poo Pub) was owned and run by a 70 year old local who looked like he hadn’t seen a razor or a shower in 50 of those years! The dorms where alright, considering the actual place looked like a WW2 air shelter, the beds however, where probably kept from WW2! That night we had a little ritual fancy dress party. Me and Lee went as the T Birds to the 3 Pink Ladies we had met on the bus; Karen, Suzanne and Leanne whom we are with the rest of New Zealand and
Fiji. The walls of the pub are lined in pics of past fancy dress parties, from the year dot! It was fun, but still remains a mystery to me. The morning after the night before we headed over to the much anticipated Franz Joseph with our new friends. We stayed 2 nights, and on the second day we did the glacier walk. We opted for the Champagne Backpackers version of seeing the massive ice cube - the Heli-hike! Yup, we got a helicopter up to the top of the glacier - canapés and red carpets! The views from the heli where just unbelievable and the 2 hour walk was incredible. Really was a once in a life time thing. I have always liked slush puppies, and I think if I was 16 again and 20 stone, I would loved to of poured some strawberry flavouring on it and quite happily sat there and munched my way through! At one point I nearly slipped off, but luckily grabbed onto the French woman in front of me, much to her shock! Nearly bringing her down with me!
From Franz Joseph we went to Wanaka which was a quaint little town that had unbelievable views and good beds! We stayed in a cheap hotel with a TV and bath and everything so we were happy. We literally haven’t watched TV in weeks, let alone Desperate Housewives!!! So pleased when that came on. We didn’t really do anything in Wanaka, it was more of just somewhere to stop and catch up on sleep! After Wanaka we headed to Queenstown. On the way into Queenstown we stopped at the Bungee jump place to watch those who booked previously. I watched a few and started to think it looked quite fun and maybe I'll have a go, but then I woke up! As active as I’am in
New Zealand, there’s no chance of me willingly tying my feet to an elastic band and jumping into a stream with X many feet below me! There’s also no chance of me doing a skydive, so please don’t think you’re gonna see a DVD of me dong one! With my ballast it probably won’t be possible. Besides which I just about walk onto a plane these days, let alone push myself out of one! Queenstown was nice; it was mainly a place to book activities.
We stayed 2 nights in Queenstown, and on the second day we did the Milford Sounds trip. It was really good to see, but we were all a little disappointed because of the price and what we actually saw. We sat on a bus for 4 hours to get there then a boat for an hour then the bus again for another 4 hours! Milford Sounds is an actual world heritage sight, well then again so is the water front in
Liverpool!! The scenery was lovely, but there are only so many hills with trees and sheep on that you can marvel at! Besides which, over 80% of passengers on the boat where Indian. I’m talking about 30 adults and about 500 screaming kids! And that was just one family. It was quite windy and I thought for a minute that the spindly Indian kids where going to start flying off the side of the boat like lemmings! They didn’t.
I did get some lovely pictures of Milford Sounds, of the waterfalls and the penguins and the seals. We left Queenstown and headed back to Christchurch for one night as a stop over to continue up to the
North Island which you will get to read about next time. It’s been really nice actually over the last week or so to have other people round us. Karen is just lovely and so much fun, cant say the same about Suzanne but she is still lovely (but has one of those really annoying northern accents which seems to drag on and on, it takes her like 30 seconds to say the word No! – I’m going to hell, I know I am!) and Leanne whom we actually left in Queenstown was a laugh.
Fiji should be fun with them, but I’ve heard its raining there at the moment! The south island was great with some truly amazing scenery and we met really lovely people there. The Kiwi bus is good, although I think we are all slowly getting a bit tired of it, having to wake up at stupid o'clock only to choose whether to sit next to a native weirdo, a bossy German or someone with bad flatulence. Only a week to go!
Lots of love as always
Si xxxxxxxxxxx
