February 8-9, 2001 - Makarora to Queenstown
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| Between Makarora and Queenstown, New Zealand |
We stopped a few times along a large lake area that had a beautiful setting. Then we stopped at the first ever Bungy Jumping site in the world where people jump off a very high bridge into a rushing river. Just looking at them jump gave me a funny feeling in my stomach.
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| World's first Bungy Jumping site outside Queenstown, New Zealand |
They can either have the bungy adjusted so they just hover above the water, or have half of their bodies dipped into the water before being pulled up and caught by a waiting boat. We stopped and watched the jumpers for a while before heading to Queenstown.
Dino dropped us off at our hostel, Scallywags, in the afternoon and I couldn't be any happier to get away from that annoying bus driver. A very eccentric guy named Evan, who has a fairly male chauvinistic characteristic, manages the hostel. He put us in what he called the "boys room", which is furnished with new condoms and old bras from his previous conquers.
He also openly stared and complimented some of the female tenants about their anatomy, which they just smiled and ignored. We showered and changed and went into town to meet up with some of the people from our bus for drinks. Fat Larry was trying to convince us that he walked the entire time back at Abel Tasman and we laughed along with him. That was the last time I saw Fat Larry.
I got up a bit late the next day because there wasn't anything planned for the day. I took my time to get ready and headed for my hike.
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| View from Queenstown Hill hike, New Zealand |
The Queenstown Hill hike started at a fairly steep entrance already and it wounds through the top of a hillside. There were numerous wild flowers along the path and also a heavily wooded area with lovely reddish-orange mushrooms. It was a bit windy at the top. The hike gave me a lot of time to think about my travels and how I'm burning out a bit with all the Magic bus stops and packing and unpacking of my backpack.
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| View from Queenstown Hill hike, New Zealand |
When I got back into town and walked by a bridge, there was some sort of filming going on. It was an Indian film company, filming some scenes by a bridge where this guy gives this girl a necklace and she acts surprised and hugs and kisses the guy. There was no audio track of course - like most Asian films and commercials, all the sounds, including voice are all dubbed in at the end.
The entire production was so bad that at first, I thought it was a bad joke. They wanted to have birds and seagulls flying in the back, so they asked this fat white guy, who was gorging on a burger to throw some of it behind the couple to incite a feeding frenzy from the seagulls. The guy agreed to do it for A$5 and started throwing big chucks of his burger behind the couple.
A few times, the pieces hit the couple on the head. The pieces were so big that I'm sure it would show up on the film. The whole scene just looked so ridiculous, like something they would do on Saturday Night Live. I had a good chuckle over the whole thing and continued to head back to the hostel.
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