Fri 6 March 2009 - NZ South Island adventures cont.
Another rainy day. We left Abel Tasman and pegged it down to a place called Barrytown via a brief stop at the famous Punakaiki "pancake rocks" on the way. Don't ask me the geological whys and wherefores, but they looked ace...
When we arrived at the grotty little sticky floored boozer/hostel where we were to stay in Barrytown we were told by Mambo (looking more and more to me like a bespectacled version of Glen Kotche, drummer from Wilco) that the main reason for the night's stopover was so that our group (which now featured a few new members) could "bond". This basically meant getting right royally drunk and having a cross dressing party. Really.
Everyone dived into the dressing up box and got involved, but with mixed results...
As you can see most of the blokes in dresses looked like, well, blokes in dresses, and H managed to pull off a pretty solid Jack Sparrow. As for myself, I usually don't take much persuading to get a dress on. I've done it 3 times in my life (I'm talking fancy dress parties here, not my own private moments!), but this time I decided to go the whole hog. I shocked most of the group by shaving off what little whispy chin fluff I had been cultivating for the last few weeks, slicking down the barnet, shovelling on the slap, and donning a rather fetching evening gown which made me look like some sort of hideous cross between Jamie Lee Curtis and Liza Minnelli. I even found some clip-on earrings which despite hurting the hell out of my 'lobes, I became quite attached to.
Now, I've made a considerable effort to try and keep any photos of me as a lady off the electrical interweb, but in a shocking u-turn I shall share this one and this one only...
...and that's all folks! (thank god).
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The next day (7 March 2009) we were thankfully allowed to sleep in to midday before piling back on the bus and heading further south. We were heading towards Franz Josef glacier but stopped at a place called The Bushman's Centre on the way.
This was a tiny curious museum/sort-of-farm I guess in the "wild west" of the South Island containing frogs, eels, possums and a pig. There were also stuffed ferrets...
...and a very welcoming but pleasingly to-the-point sign at the door...
The owner Pete was a straight talking Kiwi man's man, aged about 50-ish, short and stout with a greying beard. He played us a documentary video which detailed his former profession back in the 70s and 80s: capturing wild red deer by jumping out of helicopters. Yep.
Before pressing play, Pete told us in his dry Kiwi brogue:
"Now, listen up. This film does feature some footage of animals getting shot. But may I remind you that this is the Bush Centre, NOT Pete's Lentil Farm. If you want to watch bean sprouts being grown you're in the wrong place. If you've grown up in a big box of cotton wool and you get upset by watching a few deer getting tipped then you'll just have to put up with it."
How excellent is Pete!?
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We arrived at Franz Josef by the late afternoon and I booked myself on a full day's climb up the glacier starting 7am the next morning.
Washing. Beer. Bed.
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