Back to earth with a bump, a shudder and an icy slap around the face

Queenstown, South Island, New Zealand

I have always found it fascinating how your environment can affect your perception and mood. For example, during our last month in New Zealand I have been feeling extremely lucky to be here. To be able to wander to and fro as I please without the merest hint of stress, pressure or discontent. Feeling young at heart and eager to enjoy the many and varied experiences this country has to offer. I was viewing the world through the eyes of youthful exuberance and I had even been asked for I.D. when buying booze, for the first time in twenty years (although the legal drinking age is eighteen, most shops ask for I.D. from anybody under thirty. I still enjoyed it). However, on my first morning in Queenstown I awoke to realise that I am actually a scruffy, unemployed, overweight, unhealthy, middle-aged grouch with a girl's haircut and limited prospects. It came as quite a shock to the system, let me tell you. You see, Queenstown claims to be the party capital of New Zealand. It also claims to be the ski capital and the adventure capital of New Zealand. And we arrived at the height of ski season. In the middle of the school winter holidays. And on a Friday night. Shit!

Because we are apparently at the height of NZ's harshest winter for decades, most of the towns we have visited are empty of tourists and the briefest search usually turns up a great room for not a lot of money. Not so in Queenstown. The place was packed to the rafters and what it was packed with was lots of very healthy, wealthy, young people sat outside the many bars and restaurants after finishing a hard day on the piste, flashing everybody with their pearly white teeth and designer sunglasses. Then you have me, wearing the same clothes I have been wearing for the last fourteen months, badly in need of a haircut and feeling old enough to have fathered most of the people around me. And that was just the start.

For the lion's share of our travelling so far, Cara and I have enjoyed a fairly comfortable lifestyle. Of course, we're backpackers eking out our day to day existence on a modest budget and living out of a bag, but for most of the countries we have visited, those few pounds went a long way and we have rarely had to go without. Plush rooms, fancy restaurants and exotic excursions all fell easily within our financial grasp, and enjoy them we did. Our budget was as strong as an ox and could handle everything we threw at it. Then we arrived in New Zealand. We had to cut back on many of our usual luxuries and watch the pennies a little more closely. The budget started to look a little pale around the edges and it was losing stamina rapidly. Then we arrived in Queenstown. Almost immediately the budget suffered a full blown coronary and began hemorrhaging cash in all directions. We tried everything to staunch the flow of money, but it continued to spurt out of every pocket. Nothing could be done and we were both reduced to eating packet noodles in front of the TV whilst the train of inebriated party-goers passed beneath our window.
..

Our original plan was to stay in Wanaka, about a hundred kilometres north of Queenstown, and spend a week or so skiing and snowboarding on the nearby slopes. Unfortunately, the only way we could afford any of the accommodation was for both of us to turn tricks on the lakefront, and even then we'd be struggling (whilst Cara could have earned a mint, it turns out it would have cost me a fortune and on the balance of things we would still lose money). Even after moving down to Queenstown, we quickly discovered our plans might prove to be more than our terminally sick budget could take. Couple that with the fact that we had arrived during possibly the busiest skiing period of the entire year and it was clear we needed to rethink our agenda. We decided to stick around for a few days to do the various activities we wanted to get done in town, then move south toward Milford Sound, before heading back to Wanaka after the school holidays were over.

.

We booked ourselves onto New Zealand's world-famous Shotover Jet, which involves sitting in a jetboat and driving up and down the canyons of the Shotover river. It was actually great fun, despite the arctic winds and large ice patches on the riverbanks, and quite a novel experience. The boats are extremely quick and agile and can take you places that a boat has no right going. The driver fires the boat full tilt at the rock walls of the canyon, only to whip the steering wheel away at the last second, bringing you so close to the rocks you fear your earlobes might remain behind, dangling from a piece of protruding granite. He also spins the boat in rapid 360 degree turns and skips across riverbeds barely deep enough to wash a sparrow, while his passengers squeal and yelp in mock terror. It is much more enjoyable than it sounds, although that's probably because I'm not describing it very well. The closest analogy I can think of is this; it is like having a pneumatic drill vibrating the length of your spine whilst a grinning maniac drives you straight at a brick wall at top speed, and all the while somebody else is firing crushed ice at your face from a shotgun and tipping water into your lap. You try to smile but a frigid wind freezes your features into a fixed, rictus grin and your left eardrum implodes when the petrified Korean lady sitting next to you screams her surprisingly capacious lungs into the side of your head. There, now that sounds like fun doesn't it? Give it a go, you'll never look at a pedalo the same again.

.

That afternoon we took a ride up Queenstown's world-famous gondola cable car, to see the world-famous views over the world-famous lake where world-famous people take world-famous paragliding rides off the world-famous hill and the world-famous blah blah blah. We also enjoyed the world-famous Skyline Luge ride, which is actually more like a toboggan than a luge, as you sit on it rather than riding supine (something to do with soup?). Actually, it's more like a dinner tray with handlebars than a toboggan, but now I'm just being pernickety. Either way it is excellent fun, only costs a couple of dollars, and is probably the most fun you can have wearing a helmet. That night we treated ourselves to Guinness and draught cider in a local pub and the next morning, tired and hungover, we set off for Te Anau from where we would go to see the world-famous Milford Sound.

.

Mik