The Big Coincidence

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This photo was taken at Milford Sound, in New Zealand’s south island. This is hands down the most beautiful place I've ever visited. We were staying in a hostel that was like something from a horror movie. It consisted of log cabins in a forest and was powered by a generator that went off at 11pm. We were only there for two days, waiting for enough snow to get some snowboarding in a town called Wanaka, a few hours north. While we were there I got chatting to an Australian guy who had a really girly name, like Hillary or Lindsay. We talked the usual small-talk bullshit for some time before he asked me where I was from. I told him Scotland and he asked where. He had been in Scotland once. I said Fort William and he was like No way! That’s one of the places I visited! He said he’d met a guy while he was travelling and had stayed in this guy’s house while he was there. He wondered if I knew the guy, even though he was a bit older and Fort William’s not that small a place. Neil Robinson, he said. I asked what Neil looked like. He described my travelling buddy’s big brother, Neil Robinson, exactly. He said he’d stayed in a chalet in the family’s garden, the same chalet that we so often got drunk in. He also described my friend as a little blonde girl who had taken a bit of a fancy for him. I went and got her. She was as amazed as I was at the coincidence, although slightly embarrassed by his memory of her. Shortly after that we left there to drive east. The snow gods were not smiling on us that summer.

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