Out the window, mountains and fiords pass by in what just might be the wettest part of the world. Inside I drink from my 1.5 liter coke bottle, purchased as it was cheaper than the 500 ml counterpart. Typical New Zealand delightfulness.
The boys and girls on the day-trip sing along to the music, and I giggle silently thinking of how they would have been hardly born when the music first played. I myself was young, at a stage where I could talk unashamedly about unrequited love without a sense of meta-irony. Times were different when my head lulled to The Verve for the first time.
Looking around me I am surrounded by passion, love, and lust filled youth. More of us need to escape our home towns when we are still nineteen. When we are the type of people who believe the best way (possibly correctly) to get a girl is to tussle your hair roughly, and cement with a bit of gel. When we are the type of person who wakes up at 6am to prepare for a 7am bus trip, knowing full well the importance of spending an hour applying our MAC makeup just so.
The bus took out out to Milfordsound, yet another world heritage site. I really do need to make a check list and see how many I've knocked off. There are less than nine hundred. Don't get me wrong, that's a lot – but I'd like to think I've seen my fair share. You go through some towns and you can click off a few. Sometimes just for the town itself.
We stopped and went on short little ten minute walks around mirror lakes, and through overgrown forest, reminding me of the Canadian rain forest that few people know to exist. The lake did not mirror, and the forest was less than beautiful, even with the gorge below carving out the rock wall. The sky was grey, and the rain was pouring.
While this detracted from images fired, when we came out the other side of Homer's tunnel, into a world reminiscent of that from the biological theme park, built on a small island off the coast of Costa Rica, the cliff faces were covered with dozens of waterfalls breaking up and joining together, like lightening bolts seeking the most direct route from sky to ground.
Beauty exchanged for wonder.
Alpine parrots hopped along while precocious teenage girls looking for potential partners, perhaps to be realized over drinks at the bar later in the evening, chased them. The male counterparts laughed on; the photographers were less than amused. I took my photos fast, and early. Do not underestimate the actions of hormone fulled Brits and Aussies away from home for the first time. The statistics of how many return with all sorts of fun STIs is shocking, until one thinks about it, then it just seems as if the guess were low-balled.
We boarded a boat and spent two hours travelling through the canyons, mountains cropping up all around. The first half hour was spent eating a hot buffet. There would be time to look outside when that was done. And there was. Standing on the observation deck I was one of a half dozen from the two hundred below, willing to deal with the winds and the rains. I would only be here once, and eight degrees is cold by no means. Especially when there was a heat exhaust nearby, keeping my camera lens warm and dry, if not myself.
The boat let us off, after passing fur seals lounging on rocks by the shore, at an underwater observation centre. Descending down stairs, labels reading up and down seeming like optional suggestions to some of the visitors, we made our way to the bottom floor where portholes allowed us to view fish feeding, and black coral (white from that which covers it.)
What makes this centre so special is that due to the temperatures of the waters, the ten meters below surface simulate a depth dozens of times what it actually is. Fish that would not venture into these shallow depths make their way only here. It is a rare opportunity that could not hold many eyes, save for the, “two starfish having sex over there!”
[note: listening to a music mix I've created, I just thought – Hey! That sounds like Matty P. And it was Matty P with his “Solo Slumber.” I forgot that I had/dug on this song. Good for you Matty P. You go Matty P. Send me more of your creations.]
The bus ride back was filled with sleeping, and for the last two hours, Team America World Police. Eh.
Back in the hostel I talked to people in my room for the first time and realized what this week could have been like in a social environment such as this. It was not to be. But there are still a few weeks left of solo travel to figure out.
And that's that. Good-night Queenstown.
[note: I'm listening to “Gravity” from Glee. This is one where the guy wants to sing the song, so he has a sing off with the girl, and he stumbles and throws the competition by not hitting the right note. Am I the only person who thinks his version was terrible, and that even if he did hit the right note he still would have lost, on – you know – the fault of being terrible?]
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