Skittles, skiiing and stripping

---

As a belated birthday treat for Cate (as if seeing a big tree wasn’t enough!), we’d arranged to have a skiing lesson at SnowPlanet (just outside of Auckland) and then we were allowed to spend as long as we wanted afterwards using the slope too ... awesome.

We had an hour long lesson with just the two of us and the instructor, so we got lots of attention paid to all of our skiing deficiencies (and there are many of them), and by the end of the hour we’d managed to pick it back up again to a competent enough standard to be let loose on the slopes by ourselves again (we’re level three skiers don’t you know ... I dread to think how many levels there are!) although I was still having constant problems walking in the skis and dismounting the ski-lift. In fact at one point during our lesson they had to stop the ski lift with everyone on it as when I tried to get off I started sliding backwards down the hill before falling over in a heap. He literally let go of the ski lift and stood there facing up the hill, not even making an effort to move and hence he slid backwards and took out some poor kid that was on the ski lift behind him. Incredibly amusing to watch - I couldn’t help but laugh, (at him not with him...I mean with him not at him. Well he wasn’t laughing but anyhoo.)

I can only imagine that Cate was trying to make me feel better by doing something more spectacularly bad when at one point in the afternoon she came raring down the hill a little too quickly, panicked about the speed she was going and stood up straight, which had the effect of speeding her up even more and losing all control she had over her direction. So I stood there at the bottom of the slope as I watched her career towards the little travelator/escalator that’s in the middle of the slope full of little kiddies going up to the top of the beginners run. Credit to her though, she managed to crash land on the travelator in such a way that she didn’t spear any children on her skis! Yeah that was pretty embarrassing...my skis came off my boots and a member of staff had to come and pick me up. Not cool. I also had a close call with a ski/snowboard jump much higher up the slope that afternoon during our lesson. I tried to do the snowplough but no matter how much I did it, I couldn’t keep from speeding up as the slope was too steep and so I tried to ski across the slope instead of down it, but this was parallel skiing which sped me up even more. I was heading straight for a ski jump so after squealing out loud I managed to throw myself down on the side of the jump. I did not want to be going over that at speed, or at all!

Our lesson had been at 1pm and we didn’t end up leaving SnowPlanet until after 5:30pm by which time they’d closed down one of the ski-lifts. The one that remained had two exit points; right at the top (which we weren’t ready for) or half way down the slope just beneath the landing zone for the snowboard jumps (death-wish!) so this kind of hampered the fun somewhat, but four and a half hours of skiing is more than enough for Cate’s 28 year old knees anyway. Ha-de-ha toy-boy. You’ll be 28 before you know it boy wonder.

We then spent our last night in Bertha in the Orewa carpark, (where sods law came into play as they didn’t lock the toilets that night and I didn’t need it either) before heading into Auckland the following morning to give our little campervan back to her rightful owners. It wasn’t exactly a teary farewell (well not from us anyway, I can’t speak for Bertha) as I think we were definitely both ready to sleep in a real bed again and be transported around with somebody else driving. But I’ll definitely miss the freedom that Bertha gave us, if we’d have been on the Kiwi Experience, Stray or Magic Bus then we wouldn’t have seen half of the things we saw on our little trip.

One maaaaassive downside to having given Bertha back was that we had to carry our backpacks around again, and after 31 days of not even having to think about carrying them around they felt heavier than ever as we lumbered through Auckland searching for a hostel. We settled on the cheapest we could find, knowing that our frustrations with campervan beds would make it seem like luxury no matter what, and checked in to an 8 bed dorm at Queen Street Backpackers right in the centre of town. We had two main reasons for our visit to Auckland; to catch up with some old friends and to catch our flight to Santiago, beyond that we had nothing planned and I can assure you that the prospect of spending some time doing nothing was a pretty good one. That said, after a little dander around the streets near the hostel we had to head straight back home to get showered and sorted for a night on the town with Barney.

Barney is a mate of mine from my bartending days in Sheffield; many was the weekend we’d spend making cocktails at extravagant weddings in various posh locations around South Yorkshire, leaving with bellies full of the top-notch food that the guests had been having, our wallets full from the ridiculously good wages we got paid and usually a bottle or two of spirits for our ever increasing collections at home, before heading out to the late bars on Division Street to mince around with Tony, Stew, John, etc until the wee hours of the morning. Going out with Barney was always a good night ... and it seems that it’s still the case!

He moved over to Auckland four years ago and is still living the good life in the bar industry (although it’s only the good life if your mates and significant other(s) work those silly hours too) ... so after picking us up from the hostel we headed straight to his current employer, a little bar on the Quay called Bubble. We started the night off with a few sedate drinks at the bar hearing all the gossip about the employees before making a particularly early start on the shots, getting stuck in to the Skittles vodka at 7pm. A couple of shots later we were headed next door into the restaurant (called Mecca, REALLY nice food.) While we chose our main courses, Barney nipped off to have a word with the head chef to get us some free starters, reappearing with some glasses of wine too.

Needless to say, it was a night where we let our hair down totally and after a lovely dinner of beef fillet and lamb shank, we continued to drink (a nasty shot surprise of green chartreuse instead of apple sourz for Matty when he returned from the toilet...he really thought I drank it too...no chance) and a trick shot of skittles vodka (Laura - this is the best shot ever!) with Tabasco sauce in it for Barney courtesy of the waitresses. I managed to get away with it relatively unscathed thank goodness! Until the hangover kicked in of course.

Once we had paid a ridiculously cheap bill for our meals and drinks, (thanks again Barney,) he told us that he had another ‘treat’ in store for us. It wasn’t the kind of ‘treat’ I had expected but you will understand why in a moment when I explain. We ambled around the corner to an ‘ice bar’ called Minus 5, picking up Barney’s friend Louise on the way (by the way, if you ever happen across her ex-boyfriend, don’t yawn ... you don’t want to know why)where they made us put on heavy winter wear coats - I say ‘made us’, I was loving the fact that they made me put on a big all-in-one snow suit and booties because I was wearing a dress. I felt like a little kid again. It was ace! An ice-bar is basically a bar that is made out of ice for those of you who aren’t familiar with the term. It had ice sculptures, ice sculptures that dispensed shots of alcohol, glasses made from ice and so on. Oh and it is pretty cold in there too! After having more free drinks, Barney told us that he had seen a photograph outside on the ‘ice bar wall of fame’ showing two men in their boxers in the ice bar. What happened next was not for the faint-hearted! (Evelyn, you might want to stop reading here...!) Barney persuaded Matt to go outside with him, (not that Matt took much persuasion), strip to their boxers, and come back into the bar with their duffle coats and little black booties on. Unfortunately there was a group of girls who knew Barney and told him that they would be offended, so they had to wait for them to leave before they could start their icy shenanigans. It was quite a sight - the next group of girls that came in were loving it but I don’t think they were loving it quite as much as Matt and Barney who were behind the bar, pouring alcohol into each other’s mouths from the spirit bottle pourers, in just their boxers and a pair of Ugg booties. Really classy hey?

Unfortunately we had only taken out our old camera with us so the photos don’t really do the situation justice. After a short while of mincing around in their underwear, posing behind the love heart ice sculpture and on the rugged couch, they sauntered off to get changed and with a sad farewell to my snow-suit or ‘onesie’ as the Kiwis called it, we headed out to more bars where we drank more shots and more cocktails. At the beginning of the night I never thought I’d end up behind the bar in -5oc conditions making cocktails for a crowd of rowdy women in only my boxer shorts and a pair of little black booties ... although I should’ve guessed there’d be some nudity involved as the last night out with Barney (four years ago) ended in shirts-off, trousers-down action on West Street in Sheffield - the man’s an exhibitionist.

By now Scooby (Barney’s mate from Sheffield who was now living with him in Auckland) had joined us and we then headed off in a taxi to a bar called Racket to meet some award-winning bartender chap and drink obscure cocktails. [b[ We ended up in an Irish bar called “Danny Doolans” which is pretty much the same as what O’Neills on Broad Street was like 10 years ago, we started to slow down and realised that it was coming to the end of our night out in Auckland. Matt, however in his drunkenness called a ‘dance off’ with Barney, not for himself of course, but doing his little trick of telling people that his wife is really good at things, he called it for me instead. Apparently it’s bad to think that your wife is good at things? It most certainly is when you tell people that she is good at ‘rapping’ like on Fraser Island, and now dancing which leads people to expect that I am when I am not! Very awkward! So there I was at 3 o’clock in the morning in an Irish bar, competing with Barney for title of the best dancer. I’m not sure if there was a conclusion to it as our attention spans weren’t very long and soon we were trying to get people to take group photos of us before wishing each other farewell and getting lost in Auckland whilst trying to find our hostel. All in all an awesome night, big love Barney Toy.

I thought I was going to have a similar hangover to the one in Pai in Thailand that put me off alcohol for weeks at the beginning of our trip, but I was quite chipper in the morning, unlike Matt who struggled a little. Pah, I certainly wasn’t the only one struggling (although I don’t think I’ve ever seen Cate drink so many shots in all my life.)

So the next day we took it very easy for most of the time, trying to get ourselves back into some sort of decent state for our next catch-up session, with Cate’s old school mate Ria (and her new boyfriend) in a really cool pub down by the harbour called The Northern Steamship. I personally was still on another planet that afternoon, so was definitely pretty dreadful company (sorry Ria!) but luckily Cate was somehow still feeling fine (I was convinced that she must’ve woken up still drunk and that a hangover would kick in, but no). Just say it...I can handle my drink better than you Matty G!

It was once again really good to see a familiar face and catch up with what was going on in Ria’s life as I hadn’t seen her for over two years - she moved over to New Zealand to teach and never came back to England. It seems that a lot of British people do that and I’m really not surprised as New Zealand is similar to England, just even more beautiful. We had lots to talk about but eventually parted and Matt and I once again wandered the streets of Auckland city centre, just looking around really and not doing much else. That night we treated ourselves to Dominos pizza - so much better than in England - and sat down in front of the TV at the hostel which was playing the film “Hotel for dogs” and then “Nick and Nora’s infinite playlist.” Lots of doing nothing. We had to get ourselves sorted the next morning, bags packed and brains in gear for an 11 hour flight to South America that afternoon.

And that was New Zealand - extraordinarily stunning scenery, snow-capped mountains, bare mountains, vegetated mountains, lakes, fields, valleys, hills, waterfalls, fjords, sounds, glaciers, glacial moraine, rivers, forests, geothermal activity, (smouldering land, mudpools, geysers, hot springs), volcanoes, rainbows, sunsets - amazing cloud formations, need I go on? I just think that with hind sight though (that wonderful thing that has annoyed us lots on our travels) we shouldn’t have used Bertha for the whole trip ; staying in a campervan when it is freezing cold isn’t too much fun, and living in a metal box on wheels that has cooking smells, Matt’s stinky socks, putting your bed up most nights (when we could be bothered to take it down and put up the table instead) and having to go to the toilet in putrid pits and public places was just too much to do day-in day-out for 31 days. Too long. Not too long in New Zealand though - just too long in the camper.

Cate and Matt xx

Tallies - End of New Zealand

Transport:
Mini bus: 6
Campervan: 1
Cable car/Gondola: 2
Luge: 5
Ferry/catamaran: 3
Aeroplane: 1
Car: 1
Ski lift: too many to keep count
Luge lift: 5

Icecreams:
Matt - 5
Cate -1

Illness:
Cate - rash on stomach, cold.
Matt - cold.


Broken/lost:

Matt - Nationwide bank card swallowed up by ATM

Showers: (We thought this was going to be a rare occurrence at the beginning and it was - we only got to shower at holiday parks and racked up these numbers by having more than one shower when we went to holiday parks.)

Matt - 10 whilst with Bertha
Cate - 14 whilst with Bertha


Places we slept:
DoC campsite: 11
Holiday park: 10
Freedom camping: 8
Private land: 1
Hostel: 2

Bertha (our campervan) stats:

Filled up Bertha with diesel: 16 times
Total cost of diesel: $682.10
Litres of diesel: 574.75Litres
Total mileage: 5508KM

---

Photos

DSCF9220
Cate's "onesie"!

P1120827
Catey, Matty, Barney and Scooby

P1120837
The one bit of site-seeing we did!

DSCF9240
Ready ...

DSCF9241
Steady ...

DSCF9242
Go!!!