South Island Mayhem

---

---

The pressure of so much rain and cloudy days has begun to drive us a bit batty. So all in all we did our fair share of dancing on tables and lounging about at the hostel clubs. Of coarse our hobbit coach was challenged to a drinking contest with some locals. All that matters was that 8 of us stood against many as we held our rum and yeager. And yes, table dancin did insue. After learning the native haka earlier in our voyage I discovered a new found strength when it came time for the fellas to dance in their undwear.

You'll notice some fashionable pictures of us in costumes and plastic bags. Long story short, it was heavy with rain and so we stopped off in Barrytown where the local bar has a long tradition of having everyone dress up. I opted for the funky looking friar/gilligan hobbit apparel where as clover whipped up a quick sultry black trash bag dress. Fun fun!

The next day we were lucky enough to get in on some bone carving. Amazing what half a day, cow bone and some drill bits can result in. We wanted to get some Jade Maori carving necklaces but due to us being on a backpacker budget we opted for the bone carving. So after a couple hours of inhaling cow bone fumes we became the proud owners of our new maori necklaces. Much cheaper in the end and we get to say we made them ourselves.

Things of Note. Locals like to say blah, blah, blah, "sweet as". It's almost like the Canadian "Eh" that goes at the end of a statement. However it sounds like people are going around saying "Sweet Ass" which cracked us up everytime we heard it. Sweet as what, is the question? Then we started to look around and appreciate that in New Zealand everything is "Sweet As." The hot springs, the mountains, the ocean. We'll almost everything. The rain is more like, "Dumb As".

So last but not least we wrap up our New Zealand tour with a discussion of their hamburgers. In Auckland I made the mistake of just glancing at a hamburger called the "White Lady" and ordering it. When the order came up I was literally handed a this mound that took both hands to hold. We lumbered off to our hostel room since it was late and I felt bad devouring this heap of food in front of people, let alone the occasional bum. Once in our room I had to investiage this enourmous and I really do mean enourmous mound of food that was called a hamburger. This is what I found. Lot's of mayonaisse squished around rings of pineapple, greasey fried egg, rasher of bacon (rasher = cool way to say lot-o-bacon) steak slab, pickles, onions, lettuce, tomatoes, and BBQ sauce. Whooaa, don't take Hamburgers for granted in New Zealand. Some of them are yummy, but I'd almost say the broccoli pancakes will keep you around longer. 😞

---

Photos

The Red Zone.
As the hobbits move foward to destroy the ring, they stop over at the ever popular Lava Lounge to quench thier parched throats.

West Coast South Island
Nice stop over along the coast.

Pancake Rocks.
Cool Limestone rocks.

Barrytown oddities
Find the boy. Ack!

Barrytown
Giligan with his hotty in the local pub. She'll whip him into shape.

Bone Magic.
Clover goes native and makes a maori bone carving necklace.

Clover's Necklace.
The Bone Masterpiece.

Wellington
Notice the floating metal fern ball. (Wellington is technically on the North Island but what the heck, we're posting it here.)

Queensland.
A very cool adventure town. Tad bit on the spendy, but a cool must see town.

Sweet As.
Figure this had to be worth of the New Zealand expression, Sweet As.

Dance Fever looking good.
Crazy crazy night in wellington. Not sure how but we all ended up dancin on the tables in a dance off.

Dance Fever Not Looking Good.
Pulling upon our Haka Dance skills we rally to the table to do our male strip tease for the drink challenge. We few stood against many is all that counts. The rest is grim.