beauty and the beers
it's been a pretty good couple of days. as charlie and paddy were leaving at 8am today, ruling out silliness on monday night, we thought we'd have a big night out when we arrived in queenstown. over the course of the last few days it's transpired that the myriad germans are actually pretty safe, and there was a fair amount of stray bus love growing, so we were joined by jasmine, katherine, marco (i love you), laura, her cute (charlie)/ minging (everyone else) mate, thomas, and a few other teutons. we tucked into the beers, and after a few hours the inevitable bad dancing started: it all got a bit out of hand when we arrived in a bar where you can buy a teapot full of shooters that you just pass around, using the neon shot glasses they hand you. by this stage only charlie, marco, jasmine and katherine and i were still standing, and a few teapots later we were having trouble doing that too. pausing only to let charlie be a dirty old man (8 years!) i collapsed into bed at about 4am.i'd been a bit worried about who we might be sharing our dorm with, but they turned out to be three really reasonable english guys: they party hard, but are as considerate as can be hoped for. the kiwi experience gang don't mess about though... they've been in queenstown drinking hard for just under two weeks and have spent nearly two thousand pounds each! insanity. they stayed in bed, but at 11am the three of us, plus jasmine and katherine, struggled into our hire car, furiously regretting the night before, to drive to wanaka.
the drive itself was an absolute pleasure: i really appreciated the beauty of our surroundings much more than from the bus, especially in the unfettered sunshine. maybe it was being able to open my window, maybe it was the fact that we weren't being herded on and off like cattle, but by the time we arrived at wanaka we were all feeling much better about nz as a whole. the three hour walk up to the top of a mountain was easy enough, and the view, the whole ambience, was just so peaceful: there was no one up there but the five of us, and we just sat at the peak looking over lake wanaka one way and, when the clouds shifted, mount aspiring the other.
we got back amazed at how good, and cheap, a day in nz could be. i'm quite gutted that i hadn't met even one of the boys earlier, i might be enjoying nz a bit more with the independence of a car. there still is no off the beaten track in the sense that i understand it, but you just feel slightly freer. but then i suppose i wouldn't have met any of the people i did if i hadn't been on the bus, so...
the bus going south left at 8am, but the three of us were getting a bit emotional, so we thought we'd just have a few beers in our room. i'm not quite sure how it happened, but at 3am we were back drinking teapots. bad news, especially at 7.30am when i dragged myself out of bed to say goodbye to the gang. sad times, they've actually been a really cool collection of people, and i will definitely be having a few beers around europe with them when i return.
feel a bit like death today, i really, really need some sleep, so i'm just chilling out and doing very little, getting ready for my bus journey to christchurch tomorrow.
posted by bicrom @ 2:10 am
<< Home