Tavelogue Days 12 and 13

Travelogue Days 12 and 13

Day 12

Well, hmm. Sadly, there isn’t that much that can be said about our 12^th day in the trip. Jamie and Ami were leaving around noon, so we pretty much puttered around the house through the morning, waiting for the inevitable end of our trip. Libby spent a little time in the morning packing, then went back and finished in the afternoon—I stayed plenty clear of the packing, just to keep from causing any unnecessary stress with my near complete lack of Tetris skills.

Invercargill’s airport, though, did have a quite amusing statue in the front. It’s of two “sporty” girls—I’m not sure what sport they would be playing, and of course I didn’t take the time to notice such details. Probably it was some local color sport of choice for girls involving sheep or “decks” or kicking unsuspecting farm boys in the fork. Who knows. Maybe they were punting kiwis, lord knows I would have if I could have. All I know is that it involved a ball. Anyway, the statue itself was amusing because these two girls were wearing quite short skirts and both of them had their hands in the air. Usually, detail isn’t paid to the little things in these types of commemorative statues, but this artist obviously felt that the little things DID matter—well, actually, the not-so-little things in this case. These girls were . . . substantial. Not chunky or obese or anything, but possibly stocky, or husky by boy standards. And stocky girls have “back,” to be sure. And a noted consequence of raising one’s arms while wearing a short, I don’t know what it would be called—a jumpskirt outfit, maybe?—is that one’s lower parts will be partially exposed. And these girls were bearing butt cheeks, or at least the hint of the crease where butt cheek meets upper thigh. It made me laugh and take a picture.

Besides that, we packed and I figured out how to work the custom weather features on their satellite TV, because I like weather and am a loser. Libby and everyone else went shopping AGAIN, for what I have no idea, but it couldn’t possibly have been important. And that, sadly, was pretty much it. We finished packing and went to bed fairly early because we had to leave for the airport in the morning at 6:00 to make Molly and JF’s flight in Queenstown.

Day 13 (and 14, technically)

Our day started early and the first few hours of it were spent on the road to Queenstown. John was able to go along with us, which was nice—it meant one less goodbye that we had to say the night before. Mostly we dozed on the trip. Most notable was John, who curled up in a ball on one of the back seats of the van and covered himself up with ALL of the blankets that Karen had packed for us to sleep in on the trip. No part of his body was visible, and he wouldn’t move while we packed our bags over the top of him, into the large back seat. Then, not knowing that John was even along for the ride, Molly tossed one of her 200 lb. bags on what she thought was a pile of blankets. Much hilarity ensued, except from John under the covers, who just muttered a few incoherent curses and went back to sleep within five minutes.

In Queenstown, we saw Molly and JF off, with much wailing and gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair and all of those other sad-emotion-type actions that people do, but we had a few hours to kill before our flight left, so we decided to wander around the commerce district of Queenstown, which was something we hadn’t had time to do on our first trip through.

We stopped into a Chemist—which is a much more diabolically satisfying name than our equivalent “drugstore” can boast (oh, and it is possible to buy codeine products over the counter there for colds, which kept Libby, James, John and Karen, I believe, half stoned for a few days of the trip as well—and if they weren’t taking the cold medicine, then I guess they must have just been stoned instead)—so that Darrell could buy, of all things, a comb. He said he had been without one for an unfathomable period of time, like a year or two. I’m not sure if he was looking for some special, orthopedic comb or something, and that was why he hadn’t found one for such a long period, or if he just hadn’t thought about it when he was somewhere that sells them, and I don’t remember if he was successful in finding one while he was there, but we stopped to look for one, I do remember that.

After the Chemist, we wandered around more or less aimlessly, up one street and down the next. Queenstown has what must be a prosperous commercial district. Everything is so expensive there that they would HAVE to be prosperous. We passed a few realtors on the streets too and they all had pictures of houses they were selling in the area. A small, beat up, one bedroom loft would sell for something like $100,000, and small houses were going for half a million dollars. It was criminal. (And, of course, I can’t verify any of those numbers, I might be way off base for all I can remember, but I know they were WAY overpriced and that’s all anyone needs to remember)

We bopped into and past about a quarter million “outdoors” stores, selling camping, skiing and hiking gear. You can’t punt a kiwi in Queenstown without it careening off two or three outdoorsy stores during its flight. Every third store sold this type of gear, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating here. Not much at least. After a time, even Libby and Darrell were able to pass them without caring what they had for sale—especially since the first several we passed had identical equipment and clothing at near identical, inflated prices.

We also passed through a park, which had a commemorative statue to Jebediah Queenstown in it. He was standing—surveying the land that he would conquer and settle, which would be subsequently named after him—next to his big blue sheep, Ferdeckin (I’m not sure how kiwis would pronounce this, but I THINK it would be amusing and appropriately sheep-shagging related), who was rumored to be his legal wife and chief military advisor. I also completely failed to take of a picture of this hilarious statue, and I humbly apologize for that.

We had another “hamburger” at a place called Fergburger, which wasn’t at all sexy like it sounded like it should be and which served us another one of New Zealand’s ridiculous culinary disasters on two buns—though, admittedly, this one was far more edible—and then we headed to the airport.

At the airport, we were informed that we should pack EVERYTHING into our checked bags, because the lady behind the counter had no idea what they were and weren’t confiscating thanks to the failed terrorist plot to blow up Washington or whatever. If she had, instead, chosen to stay informed on the day-to-day business of her chosen profession, she would have learned that, in fact, they were only restricting any liquids from entering the planes and electronic devices had pretty much all been cleared. Of course, we didn’t find this out until we were in Aukland and our checked bags were already in the hold of the plane with the gremlins and snakes, so we went the entire trip unable to use any of the distracting devices that we had packed specifically for the purpose of using on the very long plane flight.

Instead, we were forced to watch pretty much ALL of the in flight movie and television options that we hadn’t watched already on the way out, which we did for almost the entire flight because neither of us slept for more than two or three hours. It was a long, long, boring, and almost entirely unmemorable flight. The only sort of interesting thing that happened was time related again. We left at 12:30 pm from Queenstown on the 17^th, and we arrived in Wichita at 8:50 pm on the 17^th—meaning our twenty-six or so hour flight took us only eight real hours. It was very weird.

Also, it took me FAR longer to get used to the time change coming back than it did going down. I was groggy and out of it for nearly two weeks—and my sleep schedule still hasn’t completely recovered almost a month later.

Ah, hell. Has anyone else ever put a pot of coffee on to brew then, distracted for some reason, forgotten to put the decanter back where it belongs? I just did. And it made quite a mess in my kitchen. I was so distracted with trying to remember if anything interesting, at all, had happened on our flight home that I came back into my office with the decanter still sitting on the counter. Stupid.

In Conclusion

I highly recommend a trip to New Zealand. Even if you don’t have highly entertaining family members to fill your days, as we had, there is more than enough country to see to keep a traveler busy for at least a month—and I’m only counting the south island since I have no knowledge whatsoever of the north island.

And I could certainly see the appeal of moving down there now. Libby and I had a conversation about that while we were there—how, in many ways, it was nice to leave EVERYTHING behind. “It’s a lot like when we went to college,” she said. And it was, almost exactly. When I moved to Wichita for school, I left all of my high school friends and my family behind, and I only sort of keep up with any of them anymore (extended family, obviously, not immediate, who I talk to at least once or twice a year, if they’re lucky). I had a fresh start. I could be whoever I wanted to be and nobody would know any different. It was very liberating in many ways, and we agreed that moving down there would be almost exactly like that—a fresh start with a clean slate and no preconceived notions by us or by those around us. But, then, eventually, just like when we moved away to college, we would build up the new responsibilities and the new problems and the new drama and everything would end up exactly the way it always had been, just with different names to remember and different scenery (which, admittedly, is pretty fantastic). And that, we figured, just wasn’t enough of a trade for losing contact with all of the friends and family that we have here.

So, sorry all, you’re stuck with me and my god-awful-long emails and my whatever else you lot have a problem with. And, folks in New Zealand, we’re definitely planning on coming down as often as we can—it is a wonderful place to visit—but I don’t think we’ll be ex-patting it down there with you anytime soon, unless the world descends into utter chaos and we need a place to hide until it all blows over. Then, perhaps, New Zealand would be a pretty perfect place. I can’t imagine any world powers worrying that much about taking over New Zealand. And that, I think, is one of its most endearing charms.

To those of you who actually took the time to read all of these -logues, thank you. To everyone else, cram a bastard in it.