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Published: March 17th 2006
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Haggis
The scottish influence hey everyone,
There will be some overlap here between mine and marcs blogs, he is sitting next to me now writing but it's been such an ace last few days that i have to have my say too!
from my last blog.......Only spent a couple of days in Christchurch but really liked the place, it was so english it was unbelievable. Especailly hanging around with such fine examples of english gentlemen as Tom and Marc. Spent a day wandering round looking in the museum and sitting in parks and feeling very arty drinking capacchinos in cool little cafes.
After an educational evening watching jelly wrestling and meeting people with very interesting career choices we got up early to drive over Arthurs Pass to head right from the east to the west. I got to do most of the driving as marc had had enough time at the wheel of Frank, this also meant that he and Tom could practice their new found musical duo - guitar meets recorder - and their entensive repetiore of two songs. For three hours. yes thats THREE HOURS of stairway to heaven and the final countdown in a car. We had a good
laugh though, through the pain. Only kidding boys it was great.
Arrived on the west coast in Hokitika and headed straight for the festival. It was a gorgeous day despite the predicated rain and as promised there were some very wild foods there. Started of gently with a paua, a shell fish cooked in butter and garlic so it was actually quite tasty. Next was the woo hoo grub, (similar to a wycherty grub) big yellow and still alive. The most revolting thing i have ever put in my mouth. Standing there with a moving animal in my hand knowing i was going to eat it was possibly the most hideous moment of my life yet (well it felt it at the time anyway). with cameras ready the three of us threw the bugs in. the first bite was in the middle of the grub so kind of squishy and jelly like, second bite i got the head which crunched and i swear i could feel its teeth moving, third bite was the full explosion as my mouth filled with warm gooeyness. Sorry to anyone with a delicate stomach who is reading this, i actually feel sick just thinking
about it now!Third was haggis, even though it was brains and lungs etc it was a dream compared to the bug. Fourth delight was mountain oysters, a nice name for a not nice thing....yup we ate sheeps testicals! suprisingly not horrible, actually almost nice, almost. A bit easier to stomach as they were cooked with onions and presented in bread so they almost looked normal. Tom had most trouble eating these, think it may have been physcological (you must be used to my rubbish spellings by now). Maybe sitting around the back of the stall by the raw ones wasnt the best place!
Now for me the next tasty treat was so bad it requires it's own paragraph. I ate a ducks tongue. I still cant believe i did it, it was by far the worst of the whole day. Now i ahve enough trouble eating normal duck in a chinese restaurant when its all wrapped up in a pancake with yummy sauce so to be faced with a tray of ducks tongues was just physcologically (sorry) the hardest thing. Especially as its the quack factor which stops me eating them. But i couldnt let the side down. The
texture was as you'd expect, rubbery and springy then as i bit down more the bone in the middle provided some nice cheewyness. Horrendous. But i did it. Feeling invincible and knowing nothing could be worse than the duck i casually threw back a red bull and worm drink, mmmmm earth worms.
A fantastic day, even bumped into my previous travel partner Tomer and Jamie over a testical sandwich, which was nice. After a day washed down with smuggled wine and delicious cider we headed out and were greeted by an amazing sight and we realised how glastonbury could possibly be better...by transporting it down to a beach. a fair majority of the 20 000 people at the festival we're mulling around the beach with fires as far as the eye could see. I've never seen anything like it, almost like armaggedon or a scene from dday landings, astounding. So as marc played the guitar me and tom set up a fire and reminsed about the day. With the magical guitar magnet effect people soon came over to our fire and we sat round talking to lifesize zebra people and a few locals. To Tom and Marcs delight it
was time for the musical genius to be revealed and the recorder guitar duo went down a treat with everyone.
feeling pretty misty from the night before but still loving the camping vibe we headed off to a lake nearby to carry on the fun. Then we headed north to Greymouth, not a very exciting place as the name suggests. I bought my own hand line though so we went ot the wharf to try some fishing. Luck was with me in that i got a lot of bites but most of them seemed to fall off before i got the line up and they were pretty small fish. About the size of my old goldfish at home! Still i got two in which was very exciting, like a complete girl though i tried to touch it to take the hook out but ended up screaming and running away, so valient Tom came to my rescue and we re-released fish 1 and 2 back into their watery world.
More hot spa-ing at the new hostel and lots of whisky drinking before a sad goodbye to Tom and then it was just Marc and Claire again. We decided planning
So spa so good
marc wins a prize for worst caption competition was for wimps so without even a glance at a map we drove south to the sound of 90's dance hits and eventually came across Franz Josef. Yet another great hostel with free hot spa (where of all places i bumped into a girl from Bablake!). I was so so so excited to see a glacier for the first time with my own eyes, absolutely brilliant. i did develope glacier touretts though much to marcs annoyance as anytime the glacier came into view i got so over excited i had to shout 'GLACIER' as loudly as i could. Going walking on one for tomorrow and i cant explain how awesome it is to see and touch, and possibly lick, one after studying them for so long in geography.
Another huge blog, as much for my memories as anyone who reads this (mum) so sorry about the overlap. (By the way we're sticking well to your instructions mum not to 'do anything stupid'. Well as much as well can bearing in mind this is claire and marc)
And we have snow too now so i'm not so jealous of you lot at home! Take care everyone, love claire x
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Tomb
Tom bland
songs
Hey, we didn't just play the Final Countdown and Stairway to Heaven! We all also co-wrote a beautifull song about finding a special girl at a spelling conference and the love that developed. I had such fun!