I was warned about Queenstown.
From my very first nights in Auckland I heard loud boasts of legendary nights out and hushed whispering of horrific incidents taking place in this gem of a town. Imagine Whistler Village, mountains, river rock and all, with an enormous teal blue lake 5 minutes walk away from a smattering of gourmet burger joints, nightclubs and pubs. Now inject this picture-perfect place with thousands of backpackers coming in on buses every day and locals comprising of the most intense party animals I've ever met. Fresh meat meets seasoned carnivore.
Singing and shouting wearing party hats, our bus arrived at AJ Hackett's bungy jump on the morning of one of the boy's 19th birthday. We all pitched in $3 and bought Tom a jump and 40 of us cheered him on as he did a perfect swan dive into the canyon wearing his party hat. Lana, a late 20s girl from Nova Scotia was shitting herself with anxiety about the bungy and was running on a smattering of herbal relaxation pills and sprays. She also did a perfect swan dive and I swear I've never seen a bigger grin in my life.
High on adrenaline and positivity, we headed straight to town. On the bus the girls are all talking about who's hooking up with who, who hooked up with who at the Poo Party, who wants to hook up with who in Queenstown. Lana asks me in a whisper who I think would be the best lay on the bus. I tell her she should talk to Michael aka Michiel aka Miguel, the most awesome Dutch dude from Holland. 32, part Indonesian, a winning attitude, rad dancer and into nice shoes, good wine and Robert Jordan novels, Michael is the pick of the litter except all the other girls on the bus are 19 or stupid or me. Lana smiles and says, "yeah maybe, we'll see."
Upon check-in at the Nomads hostel, I discovered the Scottish boys, the English lads, the Great Danes and the Dutch Girlz thoroughly entrenched in several hard days on the piss. Hugs, travel stories, photo sharing, phone number swapping, facebook adding.
First night out we headed to Altitude bar for free drinks, then to the World bar for more free drinks. Even though my first night in Queenstown was only 3 sleeps ago, I have a hard time trying to recall the details of the evening right now. Probably because World bar is known for it's tea pots - cocktails served in a tea pot with little shot glasses perfect for sharing. Or drinking in one go with the spout in your mouth. My beverage of choice for the night was appropriately named Ship Wrecked. It seemed like a great idea at the time...
Score count for the evening: pretty much everyone on the bus hooked up with someone, including Lana and Michael, Birthday boy Tom and one of the 19 year old English girls, German Rikki aka Oma (Grandma) and a Kiwi dude and a five-way between some Niina from Finland, an Irish dude, a 19 year old English boy and some random local girls.
Next day Amy, an absolute boozehound from Canmore Alberta woke me up and said her, Michael, Mark the Canadian and some of the English girls were headed to the park for a picnic. I put my specs and jeans on, walked straight to the bottle shop for some champagne and enjoyed a toast to Queenstown while enjoying fruit salad made from local produce we got at a fruit stand the day before. Return to hostel to sleep, shower, eat a Devil Burger (mmmmmmmmmmm Devil Burger) and prepare for round two - the pub crawl.
I've been on pub crawls in Victoria before with University and a few organized by friends for birthdays etc. Nothing could prepare me for the night that laid ahead. We start again at Altitude bar, redeem free drinks, head to the World bar, redeem free drinks. Head to maybe... lets say five more bars, each time welcomed with a free shot and everyone buying everyone drinks. We literally crawled back to the World bar at the end of the night, more free drinks, back to the Hostel, "I Love you" "No I Love you" chats in the lounge until 7am.
Yesterday morning I woke up and thought my eyes were bleeding. I put on my glasses, took them off - it made no difference, my eyes were worse than two piss drops in the snow. I was a bag of broken glass smelly and sweating on the top bunk. This was a day some of you may have received Facebook messages from me saying I think I may die if I keep partying. My apologies for any alarm, I'm much better today, especially because I ate only fruit and water yesterday, curled up with the Great Danes and nursed my hangover like a newborn kitten.
In such an attempt to remedy myself, I purchased some "legal high" products from the bottle shop - Puff the Magic Dragon, completely legal imitation weed with the same effects as the real thing only it smells like soap. And it works. :-)
It was one of the Dutch girl's last nights in town, our official real goodbye, so the Great Danes bought some imitation Ecstacy tabs, also from the "legal high" section, and I was happy to dance around Buffalo Bar with them tripping on pills while we all drank copious amounts of water. PS - I like how water is free in New Zealand. I hate paying $2 for a bottle of water in Victoria, but here they are happy to give you a tall glass of ice water with lemon and a straw so people don't even think you're not drinking. Thank you Buffalo Bar staff for allowing me to be a baby while coming to grips with the terrors of Queenstown.
It's always a bit melancholy around the hostel when so many folks from the bus have left, this one was espeically sad as Michael left today. However, I hear he was scheduled to leave tomorrow but changed his plans so he could continue traveling with Lana. Aw. <3
Aussie Carley arrived today (wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!) and we immediately went for a walk around the lake to catch up on shenanigans from the past week or so since we'd last seen each other in Nelson. When we get back to the hostel I see Niina, scandalous bi-curious girl from Finland, limping over in tears wearing a sling. She'd rented a dirt bike for the day to rip around town, and though she's pro and had been riding back in the lapland for 15 years, she totally spilled her bike and broke her collar bone and possibly fractured her hip which now looks like a pile of strawberry jam with a bandage on it.
Put Niina to bed, went and bought her some dinner, water and supplies, set up her laptop so she could Facebook home and got her extra bedding from reception so she can be propped up while writhing in pain and chatting. She doesn't speak much English so at this moment I'm just chilling out by her bedside, occasionally chatting in broken sentences and generally keeping her company. It's a few people's last night in town tonight so I'll be heading out to the bar again soon, will be getting on the ice water like an animal tonight!!! Yeah!!!
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