การเดินทาง: Queenstown, New Zealand

Day 20

I start the day off trying to hitchhike to Queenstown about 1.5 hours south of Wanaka; the keyword being 'trying'. I've heard enough people talk about doing this that I decide I must do it over here. It's a good way to spend time with the locals, create a good story, do something crazy. In the US hitchhikers are generally thought of as homeless, drug-addicted, hippies; pick your stereotype. In New Zealand, its so common that it's hard to find someone that hasn't done it. Apparently the hierarchy is s follows, from easiest pickup to hardest pickup: single girl, two girls, girl with a guy, single guy, two guys, and any more than 2 of anyone is nearly impossible. Also, you need to look respectable and find a place a bit outside of town with room for the car to pull over.

So I'm walking out of town which is fairly easy since Wanaka isn't too big and I find a good place. I throw my bag down and put my thumb up. Eye contact is important so I look at everyone going by. Some cars have kids (It's a NZ holiday now, so the families are out and about), some smile and wave back, some cars are full. I see a car pulling over just ahead and am a little confused because the car was full of people. Three guys get out, and all of the sudden I realize that MY hitchhiking spot just turned into a group hitchhiking spot. Rule number one of hitchhiking; don't have more than 1 dude. Dammit!

They are all cool, surfer looking, Queenstown-sign toting dudes. "Hey mate, you going to Queenstown too" one of them says. "Trying to, yeah." I respond. All of us spread apart down the road, and I quickly realize that no one is going to pick this many people up. After about 20 minutes, I pull out my phone, look up the bus schedule, find out a bus leaves in 30 minutes for Queenstown. I contemplate staying, but want to get to Queenstown sometime today so I head to the bus stop. I have the lurking feeling that the second I leave will be the second that someone drives by and wants to pick us up. Then again, I could be there for hours. You never know.

I leave the now shirtless hitchhikers, who at this point are basically standing in the middle of the road trying to flag down cars, to themselves.

On the bus, I meet a guy from Switzerland (Dom), and we go to same hostel. It's a cool place called 'The Flaming Kiwi'. We settle in and meet some others in the kitchen while eating dinner. We decide to go out to the bars for our first drinks in Queenstown; the adrenaline and alcohol fueled adventure sports capital of New Zealand. At the first bar, we order some drinks and within basically 30 seconds of grabbing mine I'm ambushed by 3 guys who seem to know me. It takes me a minute, but I realize that they are the 3 hitchhikers from earlier with shirts on and sunglasses off. "Hey mate, glad you made it! Sorry for jumping in on your spot earlier, but that's as far as our ride would take us" one of them says. "No worries, How long did it take ya?" I shoot back. "About an hour, a DHL truck picked us up, and haha, we all piled into the back. No seat belts of course." another guy says. We talk for a couple minutes and they wander off to another bar. It still amazes me how easy it is to run into people out here and Queenstown is not exactly a small place.

Our group heads to a bar called Winnies. It's a bar/club where they open the entire roof every hour. It's really cool in the summer because the cool air rushes in and freshens the place up. I have a conversation with an English guy about tipping (you don't tip in NZ); he thinks it's better not to tip, I play devils advocate and argue that tipping is better. Truth be told, each system has it's benefits, but I kind of prefer the non-tipping system.

Hitchhiker friends

Welcome to Queenstown

Day 21

I wake up with a mild hangover, which is expected. I make some lunch and drink about 3 cups of free tea to get back to normal. I'm going hiking today!

Right next the the hostel there's a mountain where all of the para-gliders drop off to go gliding over the lake onto a landing spot in a city park. This basically means that you see the para-gliders slowly drifting down in the sky all day long. They look like colorful dandelion seeds (with the puffy ends) constantly blowing in the wind over the city. It's a cool site to see. Anyway, I'm going to hike up the mountain to the point where they jump off.

I start out the hike near an old cemetery. Some of the gravestones are from the late 1800's which is kind of neat. I wander around for a bit before starting into the woods. The first 20 minutes are basically straight up-hill. I pass by a girl who is coming down and ask how difficult it is to the top. I ask mostly to make conversation. She tells me it's hard, but worth it. I pass by a bunch of downhill bike trails, and the occasional biker shoots past down into the woods in a seemingly reckless fashion. After an hour or so I get to the top. The entire forest has the faint smell of cotton candy and I don't know why. Flowers perhaps.

At the top, I discover a playground. There are the para-gliders dropping off, a road luge coarse, a bungy platform, a restaurant, a bike shop, and a perfect view of the blue lake, mountains, and city. I sit and look at the view for awhile. There are so many things going on up here! I see boats motoring around the lake below as well. After resting for awhile I wander over to the bungy platform and wait for someone to take the plunge. A couple guys jump off and it looks absolutely insane. My time will come.

It's far quicker to get down the mountain, and back at the hostel I meet an american guy. We talk in the room for a couple hours about business ideas for travel (mobile applications) I learn that he has written a couple and is making about $400 a month passively. Not much of course, but better than nothing. We are inturrupted by the English guy from last night. It's time t hit the bars again!

I go out with a couple girls, Dom, and the English guy. We meet up with a Swiss guy I had met earlier in Franz Joseph and I end up hanging out with him and his friends the rest of the night. We see the funniest drunk guy I've ever seen. He reminds me of the guy in 'Weekend at Burnies' (youtube it), stumbling around by himself in this constant state of falling but amazingly not completely falling over. We all laugh heartily at this spectacle. Eventually 2am rolls around and everyone heads home. I get some pizza and do the same.

Paragliders!

Day 22

I have to move to another hostel because the one I am currently staying in is fully booked for Christmas Eve and Christmas. It's no problem because I find some room at another one right down the road. I meet a really cool Austrian guy in my new room.

We meet up with some friends in the other hostel and go play frisbee golf in a park.

We meet a Swiss guy with a slack line and proceed to play around on this thing for over an hour. It's basically a seat-belt type material you tie up between two trees and try to balance on it and walk. The better ones can do tricks. I decide I must get one.

We see a portable stripper pole in the park with a group of girls sitting around, one is performing (not in a dirty stripper kind of way but an artistic, graceful, ballerina-esqe kind of way) No joking, it's very artistic. A group of guys look on in amazement and smoke cigarettes. I could keep my eyes off it to be quite honest.

We go to a cowboy bar and have a couple drinks because they are cheap...when in Queenstown.

One of the Swiss guys in our frisbee golf gang is participating in some kind of travel challenge. One of his 'challenges' is to put as many people in a phone booth as possible. We help out and fit about 6 people in there. Me and the organizer climb on top for the photo.

We go to the 'Fergburger' restaurant. It's a famous burger joint in Queenstown. It's a good burger but not the best I've ever had. That honor goes to the Unami Burger in LA.

We go to another bar and order a bucket of coronas.

We go back to Cowboy bar and play shuffleboard for a couple hours.

I stay up till 3 am talking to Chris in the room about Europe and I felt like I got a good history lesson. I learn he is biking across New Zealand. This is something I would like to try.

http://swisstravelfreak.com/

Day 23 Christmas Day

Christmas is very anti-climactic when you are out exploring the world. Far away from friends and family, it kind of just feels like just another day. It doesn't help that it's summer time in New Zealand and it doesn't feel like Christmas weather. I begin to realize that it's not the day of the year that makes it feel like Christmas, it's the family, the food, the cool weather, Christmas lights. In the absence of these things, December 25th is truly just another day.

In Queenstown, people seem to treat Christmas as a day to party and drink beer. Not a bad way to spend Christmas I guess. After partying for quite a few days this week, I use it as day to relax. Eventually Chris and I make dinner, have a few beers, and basically sit around and talk for a couple hours.

We end up going over to the other hostel to meet with some friends. We plan to spend the evening at the beach to watch the sunset and hang out. I run into a couple more people I've met in Queenstown and we form a circle on the beach. I bring a bottle of wine that I originally needed for cooking, but it will not go to waste at the beach. We all sit around and watch the sunset, pass the bottle of wine around, and talk.

Merry Christmas!

Day 24 Boxing Day

“Today is the first day of the rest of your life” so I decide to start the first day of the rest of my life with some bungy jumping. The particular destination I choose to do this is an old bridge right outside of Queenstown. The platform is about 43 meters above one of New Zealand’s clear blue rivers. There’s no better place to spend $150 to scare the absolute crap out of yourself I assure you.

Now, I’ve known that I was going to do this for awhile now. The skydiving was completely unplanned in New Zealand but the bungy jumping was a planned enemy, a self-created one if you will. You see, I’m not afraid of many things in this world but jumping off a bridge head first into a river might be at the top of the list. I don’t like heights, so I wasn’t really looking forward to doing it as much as I was looking forward to getting it over with.

I get to the bridge around noon. It’s a busy day for the bungy because everyone is on holiday in New Zealand. This means you get to watch a lot of people jumping before you get your chance to go. I probably watched 20 people do it. They create a cool atmosphere up there. They have a combination of hip hop and techno music radiating from the bridge. The river has cut a path through the rock and like the rest of New Zealand is pretty beautiful.

The people have a mix of styles and reactions after they summon the courage to jump. Some people scream, some are too scared to scream. Some people jump, some are too scared to jump so they kind of bend at the knees and slowly fall off. Some people are obviously nervous, some try to hide it. Some get dunked into the water, some don’t. The only common thread is that everyone falls fast.

As I stand in line to go on the bridge, I see how they hook people into the harness. I wouldn’t say I was scared at this point but I definitely had a heightened sense of awareness. There was some adrenaline pumping for sure. I described this before with the skydiving, but I think you almost get immune to some of these crazy things because you have been doing and seeing them nonstop.

So it’s my turn to go and the guys hook me up. He asks me if I want to get dunked in the water, and I willingly oblige. It’s a hot day anyway. Here’s where it gets crazy. I stand up, and sort of hobble over to the edge of the platform. There a couple of cameras you have to acknowledge (wave, thumbs up, whatever to want), then you’re on your own. My first mistake was looking down into the rushing river below and the fear just rushes in. For a split second it feels like I’m in a plane that’s crashing down to earth, you know what is going to happen and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. It feels like you are committing suicide…everything in you tells you that what you are doing is a bad idea…a really bad idea. I look straight ahead, take a deep breath, and jump. It happens so quickly that I didn’t have time to rationalize the decision or convince myself that it would be fine. You just do it, you flip the switch.

When you’re falling, it’s pretty intense. Your stomach feels like it is in your throat. The water races into view and the cord starts to have some tension as the water nears. My head and arms touched the cold water and then I bounced back up. Then you fall again, repeat. After the initial drop everything slows down and you can enjoy it. It’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever done, and would do it again with no second thoughts. This heights thing isn’t so bad after all.

A boat picks you up on the river and takes you to the shore. I pass an older couple who have been watching from below. They ask me how it was, and I respond with “incredible, amazing, unbelievable”…some word in this family. They also ask me if I jumped with confidence or kind stumbled off the edge in fear. I tell them I jumped, but inside my head I’m not 100% sure. I need to look at the video evidence.
The video evidence comes back favorable, I jumped like a champion.