Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Queenstown cont'd

(Clark now- becoming a long post, sorry)
On our way back to Queenstown from Glenorchy, we got a call from Li (Bro. Scott's wife) who had gotten off work at Burger King earlier than planned. So, being 45 minutes away, our driver turned into Vin Diesel on Fast and Furious and cruised back to town. It was quite scary. Every time I was about ask him to slow down, which I was almost forced to do, I had to remind myself that the man drives worse roads than this everyday in a cement truck! He told us that, and it did bring a little bit of comfort.  So about Li. . . (as promised from before) Bro. Scott had mentioned casually that his wife was chinese and they had been married only a couple of years. Feeling like he left the story hanging like a carrot, we were forced to ask more questions that anyone would have, such as: Where did you meet? Where is she from?  Is this your first marriage? etc. . . He was more than happy to answer them all - plus a little more.
Mark, who is Bro. Scott, was once married to a New Zealand woman and had two children who are all grown up with families of their own. He was married to her for about 20 years or so. After years of rough patches, his wife's Bi-polar disorder became too much to handle and Mark decided to scoot from the coop. He packed his things and left the family. Years prior to the separation, when things were going fine, he mentioned to his wife after waking up that he had had a dream. In the dream he saw a young chinese girl and after had the impression that he and his wife needed to adopt this chinese girl. Nothing more came of the dream for several years. Later on, after almost 10 years of separation he moved to Queenstown.  He got to know some Chinese neighbors who mentioned they had a sister back in China that was in a pretty bad situation and wanted a better life somewhere else, like New Zealand. Due to tough immigration laws the best option was for her to marry someone from NZ. Optimistically, they asked Mark if he would be interested in doing them a  really big favor. Sure enough, he was willing to help out (always willing to help out the needy - we found out personally). Eventually they met through the neighbors and slowly got to know each other/date through MSN and email over a period of time. Meanwhile, he saved up money to go and "get"her. After arriving in China and speaking through a hand held translator, they began to arrange the journey to her new home. For whatever reasons, she was not allowed into the country right away so he had to come back without her and then wait for her to get permission. After a lot of protesting from her family back home and suspicious immigration officers, I am sure, she was allowed to come to live in NZ.
Anyway, pretty shady stuff, and as he kept feeding us the story we found out that she is only 26 years old. He is 53. Ha! Crazy and weird. He also believes that she was the Asian girl from his dream which at the time of the dream she wasn't even born yet! Revelation or justification, we can't be the judge of that, but either way it was really weird, funny, crazy and interesting all at once.
We made it to Burger King where Li was patiently waiting outside, then drove back to their home/our new home. Seeing the two of them interact made it all the more bizarre, not that they were being romantic in front of us or anything, but he called her darling, she watered the garden and fed the chickens and carried on like any married couple. We just couldn't quite wrap our heads around the fact that she was 26, but looked 20 and he was a 53 year old man who colors his hair and has kids older than his new wife. Stranger things have happened I'm sure but this one took the cake during our time in Queenstown.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. After we set up our tent in Mark's front yard we found out that they have two other male flat-mates to help pay the rent. Funny stuff.

So here it is, our home for the next 3 nights.
Michelle typing:
So we finished up our Sunday by setting up camp and strolling through the city and along the beach. It was a great day. Our favorite in Queenstown so far.

Monday, February 6: Monday we woke up and set out for a hike up the mountain. There is a gondola in town that takes you up to the top of the mountain where there are a lot of things to do such as paragliding, luge ride, mountain biking, dining, enjoying the great view, making and eating PB&J's... We did the later two. It was really pretty at the top and a great reward after basically climbing strait up the mountain. It was a lot steeper than we anticipated or we are just less fit that we realized. But it was a pretty hike, a beautiful view of Queenstown, and a great activity to get us ready for the Super Bowl.

The view from the top. The chair lift is for the luge ride.
Everyday there are constantly paragliders in the sky 

We are a long way from home
Clark is pointing out where we had just hiked to. You can see the restaurant at the top.

We hiked back down and found the first bar that was playing the Super Bowl. It was really crowded but after standing around for a few minutes a couple of chairs opened up so we snatched hem up. After a few quarters I started falling asleep, so I left the bar, found some grass and the sun, and had a nice nap. Clark, being sorely disappointed with the result of the game, came and joined me for some nice relaxing time in the sun.
After our nap we headed up to the Holiday Park that we had stayed at the night before and used the showers. Technically we weren't supposed to, but because we had to pay two dollars for a shower we didn't feel too bad about it. We think the One Armed Bandit (self named one armed camp director) may have been on to us towards the end of our stay in Queenstown.
Apparently February 6th is Waitangi Day which is the celebration of the signing of a treaty between britain and the Maori Chiefs. I only know that because I just googled it. According the the celebration in the Queenstown botanical gardens, Waitangi day is the celebration of drinking a lot of beer with all of your friends on a hot summers day, and nothing else at all. We could hear the Maori music all throughout the city, so we decided to go over to the gardens to join the celebration. We were expecting to see food, activities, a market maybe, but there was absolutely nothing going on except what you see below.


Vintage Booze Cruise 
 It made for a great people watching day.

Later that night we bought some fish and chips or "fush and chups" as they pronounce it in NZ. Delicious as always. We ate them on the beach and watched the people and the seagulls until the sun went down.



Before we went back to our tent at Mark's house, we went back up to the Holiday Park to use the computers they have up there. Again, we were paying for their services so we didn't feel like trespassers. And we had payed them 40 bucks a night for 3 nights to sleep on a tiny piece of grass, so we were just getting our moneys worth. Anyway, we booked two tickets for the Nevis Bungy Jump and then headed back to our tent.

Tuesday, February 7: We already posted the pictures of Clark's jump that we bought from the bungy place, but here are a few more that we took




I tried to upload a video of my jump but it won't work, so I'll try to put it on YouTube or something later on.
Unfortunatly I jumped with our camera case tucked into my harness, woops, but luckily the camera wasn't in it, and our new camera didn't even fit in the case anyway. Like I said in the other post about the jumps, it all happened so fast, but I knew it was a bad idea to tuck the case in my harness when I did it. You can see the case if you look close enough in the video.
Anyway, the jump was SO fun! We both wished we could do it again right after so we could take it all in the second time. It was quite the fall though, 5.5 seconds free fall, and a total of 8.5 seconds until the bungy starts pulling you back up. It was a blast.
Look at the older posts if you didn't see the pictures of Clark's jump already. They're really cool pictures and sort of give you a better idea of how far the fall is.

After we got back from the bungy jump, we got our swimming suits on and went to the beach. It was a perfect day with only a few clouds in the sky, which were spaced perfectly to give relief when the sun was getting really hot. It was so nice to relax and lay in the sun all afternoon.

Amazing day at the beach. The little man right in front of me was probably 80 and wearing a blue and pink striped speedo
After we had soaked up the sun, we rewarded ourselves for eating PB&J's for the past 3 days with this...




FERGBURGER. Clark had been drooling over these burgers he kept seeing all over town and so we decided we would save up and treat ourselves to these monstrous burgers before we left Queenstown. The place was always packed especially at dinner time. It was a madhouse and we had to wait forever for our food, but it was well worth it. It tasted as good as it looks. We could have done without the fries though. It was a ton of food.
It was a great end to an even better day.

Actually this was the great end to the day...


more to come...

2 comments:

  1. Oh my . . . please keep the posts coming. Some people's stories are just surreal, are they not? The Fergburger looks amazing. I'm still drooling over the Harry's meat pie that I had in Sydney. Stay safe, you two, and continue to have a great adventure!!

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  2. AHhahahahahha. I laughed so hard at the celebration pictures. Man. Awesome.

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