Arriving in Queenstown - Night 94

The magic bus was not set to roll through Wanaka

until 2pm, so I spent the morning relaxing at the Purple Cow. Reading in the sun with a cooling breeze coming down from the snowfields of Mt. Aspriring and across Lake Wanaka time seems to float on by. I’d be lying if I told you that there weren’t times during a trip of this length when things may seem a bit boring, but what are the alternatives, what else would I be doing? I’d much rather feel bored by an alpine lake in the middle of a New Zealand summer than in my cubicle amidst the dreary gray of a Seattle winter.

The Original Bungy

Despite all this, my mind wasn’t perfectly at ease. There was a nagging feeling of anxiety over the bungy jump that I was planning on doing on the way to Queenstown. Upon boarding the bus our driver told us that do to extreme volume at the jump center we may not get to go. We arrived at the Kawarua Bridge/A.J. Hackett Bungy Jump Center around 4:30. By this time I was calm and had accepted that I was just going to do it. Swaggering up to the counter with my pride on display, I was shot down like an opening day duck – all the spots for the afternoon were booked. Not surprising, considering it was a Saturday during absolute peak season. I may or may not have time to make it back out during my stay in Queenstown. No big loss I guess it is a quite expensive 2 seconds of freefall ($200 once you include the DVD).

As we pulled into Queenstown, it looked eerily like a scene from Panama City, FL in the middle of March. Drunken teens staggered this way and that, gaggles of girls in short shorts and huge sunglasses warily jaywalked enroute to another bar. Welcome to Queenstown, New Zealand’s number one tourist destination. Compounding the fact that it was a Saturday during peak season, there was also a large 7-man rugby tournament going on as well. The city was a madhouse and it was only 6pm.

The last ones off the bus, it was nearly 7pm by the time I checked into the Pinewood resort. In front of me in line were two girls and a guy wearing a UW-Lacrosse shirt. I struck up a conversation with them and eventually they asked me what town I was from. When I replied, “Bonduel” they just laughed and pointed at the payphone in the corner where Lucas Rank was busy trying to call home. As it turns out he and 19 other UW-Lacrosse kids are here on a one-month adventure vacation. After a bit of story sharing, he gave me the bad news: the Packer game would not be televised in this town. Apparently he and another guy went to every bar in town and asked if they would be showing NFL playoffs, all replied negatively.

That evening I met a few people from the bus at the Red Rock Bar. As I briefly alluded to earlier, there is some serious talent in this town. Down the west coast of New Zealand we were consistently playing with minor league (AA at best) quality, but this was an immediate step straight through to the All-Star game. To be completely honest, for every hot girl there were three drunken guys in trucker hats and wife-beaters fresh in from the Nevis jump. We enjoyed a few beers and everyone headed home early, tired from a long drive and needing some sleep for the big plans tomorrow. Queenstown is one of those places that is hard to pull yourself from the bar, but equally hard to justify spending the whole next day hungover.

written by

exumenius on January 12, 2008 from Te Anau, New Zealand

from the travel blog: Kiwis and Kangaroos

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