A Mardi Gras Faux Pas

19/2/07 - 1/3/07

cigarettes smoked - 0 (yay me!), sandfly bites - 97 (I fucking wish I was kidding) , sandflies killed - I lost count after 58 several days ago in Doubtful Sound, but I think 120 would be an extremely conservative estimate (every last sodding one of the little bastards deserved it)

I dragged myself away from Kaikora once I realised that there really was no way I could swim with dolphins again as they were fully booked, and got a lift with an Israeli guy from my hostel who plays guitar rather well (especially considering he'd only been playing for 4 months) and who played U2 all the way to Christchurch. He was good company, and definitely preferable to sitting on a bus listening to my mp3 player. From Christchurch I made my way on to Lake Tekapo close to the foothills of the Southern Alps. Tekapo really is a beautiful lake - after I had unpacked my stuff, located the local supermarket, cooked yet more pasta and pigged out I went for a swim in the icy water. Later on I watched shit films (the hostel's collection wasn't up to much), while chatting to various other hostel residents and attempting more weaving - it turns out it's much harder without Rany there to advise and supervise. I gave up after an hour of making nothing more than a complete bloody mess.

The following day I made my way to Te Anau, doing a massive food shop in Queenstown on the way in order to get decent non-perishable vege food for the week of wilderness treks ahead (nice non-refridgerator vege food is hard to come in tiny towns like Te Anau). Unfortunately (due to my attempts to alleviate the boredom of two days travelling consecutively), I was somewhat under the influence when I did my wilderness food shopping, and as a result I had (and still have) a huge amount of chocolate, chocolate brownies, boysenberry danishes, spiced apple muffins, dried fruit, chocolate raisins, and other sweet munchie food, and not very many savoury options. I made it to Te Anau just in time to be half an hour late for my pre-departure meeting for the two day kayaking trip leaving the following day. After being told things that they'd already told me on the phone and then being given a list detailing everything that I'd now been told twice, I left and found my hostel, located my room and discovered that, not only were the beds of the non-bunk variety, there was a double bed going spare. When I had finished shrieking in delight (and disbelief that the other people in the room hadn't bagsied it yet) I went to cook, then came back and separated out my belongings into two piles - things I was taking in a kayak deep into Doubtful Sound, and things I wasn't, while chatting to a lovely amusing English guy and his rather sulky girlfriend. After much internal debate I decided to bring my lovely camera on the kayak (I didn't spend all that money to leave him behind any time I go somewhere interesting, only to find he's been stolen when I get back. Besides which, he's insured). Before I went to bed I checked the weather forecast for the next two days - rain the following day, rain and more rain the day after. Bollocks.

I got up at 5:30am, tiptoeing round the room getting my things together as quietly as possible so as not to wake my dorm-mates, in order to be picked up at 6:20. I sat outside waiting for 20 mins, wondering if I was somehow in the wrong place or had got the wrong time. Eventually the bus turned up and it transpired that two of the other kayakers had slept through their alarm. I tried and failed to catch up on sleep on the bus. Eventually we arrived at Lake Manapouri and we loaded the boat with our gear, set off, took some photos of the lake, and chatted to each other as best we could manage at that ridiculous hour. They seemed like a nice lot, except for one grumpy girl from somewhere up north who just kept snapping at her two male friends. It was a beautiful boat journey to the power station at the other end of the lake, where we sorted out our gear, waterproofed it and worked out what was necessary and what wasn't. As usual, I had brought far too much stuff, but as I was the only one having to carry it, I brought it all anyway. We changed into our wetsuits and went outside to find keas (a very pesky but cute mountain parrot - actually the only species of alpine parrot in the world) attacking our van and attempting to take it apart. After a long drive we arrived at the stunning Doubtful Sound, which was wreathed in early morning mist with the ridges on either side and the peaks hidden in the clouds. We loaded up our kayaks, (I was sharing a tandem with Matt - a friend of the grumpy girl), then we set off, with Matt taking the rudder and slaloming all over the shop.

After a lengthy paddle, when we felt we'd really earned it, we stopped for lunch, then I persuaded our guide, Ben, to let me have a go in his single kayak and for him to take the tandem with Matt. I've taken out single kayaks many times before, but I never realised how much harder work they are than the tandems, until I tried to keep up with them and constantly found myself miles behind. The upside to this was that I frequently found myself paddling on my own with no-one else around, and I could no longer hear the louder people in the kayaking group, just the sounds of keas and gulls calling overhead and in the bush. It was utterly peaceful. It drizzled for most of the day, but whenever there was a break in the rain I'd get my camera out and take loads of pictures of the moody, misty mountains around me. When we were given an hour to explore and everyone else sped up to go and look at some waterfalls, I hung back and had a quiet moment thinking about Steve, remembering how when he'd come back from his travels in South and Central America with Ruth, we sat down and went through 13 packs of photos in one sitting, with him telling me the stories behind all of the photos. He told me about being at a temple in Mexico, or perhaps Peru, for sunrise, and he and Ruth were travelling with a girl at the time who just wouldn't shut up trying to describe how beautiful the scene was. He said basically that everything she said fell short, and that the sound of her voice was detracting from the serenity of the moment, but she just couldn't seem to shut up. When I caught up with the group, Ben was making them all sit still and quiet in their kayaks, just to appreciate the stillness of the Sound. I was quietly impressed that he managed it! We paddled to the end of a branch of the Sound called Hall Arm, watched and listened to the spectacular falls for a few moments, then went back to the camp where we were staying that night, carried our kayaks in, set up our tents, went for a swim, slathered on sandfly repellant too late when we realised how badly we were being bitten, and then cooked food. After food we stayed up chatting much later than I'd planned - the irritable, loud girl actually turned out to be very amusing, you just needed to get used to her caustic, sarcastic sense of humour first. There was much discussion of plans to kidnap Ben our guide, so that we wouldn't have to return to the real world, hopefully ever.

The following day we woke to see blue skies with patchy clouds, not the heavy rain that had been predicted (after a couple of months here I've found that the best way of taking weather forecasts in NZ is to assume the opposite of what they say is going to happen will be true - you can almost forgive them for this given the mountainous landscape and the microclimates that this leads to, but still, I can't help feeling that they predict the weather here by communing with the higher powers using tarot cards, tea leaves, I Ching...). I went out to the water to take in my first views and my first photographs of the enormous peaks surrounding me at close proximity. I had no idea of the scale of the sound yesterday as the peaks were all obscured by clouds, but today the view was mind-bogglingly spectacular. I completely failed to do the views justice with my photographs and once again lamented my lack of a wide angle lens (the sounds in Fiordland are narrow and steep sided and just won't fit into my view-finder).

I made myself some porridge for breakfast in a billy pot, then spent half a decade trying to clean it without detergent and only had time for a quick dip before we set off. Just as I was walking back to my kayak to load it up to leave, a cry came from the shore. As it sounded rather like "Dolphins" we all raced to the shore in time to see the dolphins (bottlenose this time) arcing gracefully through the water. I tried and failed to get decent photos of them (I was in such a hurry that I forgot to change the aperture/shutter settings now that I was taking photos zooming in on the dolphins in the murky water). I suggested going for a swim with them, but Ben was in a particularly dictatorial mood this morning and insisted that we get the boats out. Damn, damn, damn.

We kayaked back up hall arm, and after a half hour or so, the dolphins came back past us, one of the dolphins coming within about 10 metres of us (sadly I didn't get any decent pictures this time either as I couldn't get my camera out of the waterproof bag fast enough). We followed the dolphins up to the main reach, watching from a distance as they did syncronised acrobatics. The wind picked up until, by the time we reached the main arm of Doubtful Sound, we were battling serious head winds in order to reach the island on which we had planned to have lunch. Inevitably, when our arms felt like they were about to drop off and float away, we gave up, turned around in the opposite direction, rafted up and unfurled a sail to do all the work for us. When we were nearly back at our original starting point we stopped for a brief lunch, and I then hurried everyone into their kayaks to get back (I needed the loo and couldn't face the arduous task of peeling off my wetsuit and squating, so that I could spend half an hour yanking the wetsuit back on, just for 30 mins worth of kayaking, when I could wait, take my wetsuit off, use a proper flushing toilet, and not put the wetsuit back on again). In no time we were back in font of the van, hauling our kayaks in. When I'd hurriedly located the toilets and returned, much happier, I stripped off the remaining layers and went in for one last dip into the icy waters of Doubtful Sound before we loaded up the van and headed back. We did a mini 20 minute wander along the old walking track that used to lead from Lake Manapouri to Doubtful Sound before the road opened, and took in the last breathtaking views of the area before we were dragged away by Ben (he hadn't turned out to be terribly amenable to our kidnapping idea). After arriving back in Te Anau, we all went off to our separate hostels, stood under hot showers for eons waiting for our shoulders to unknot themselves and to move back to their natural positions about 3 inches further apart. We met up again that evening at an Italian restaurant (yummyummmyummyummyummy) to celebrate both our achievements and being back in a place with more restaurants than sandflies (my many, many bites were only just starting to itch now).

The next day was spent getting ready for starting the four day Milford Track the following day. I went through my things 3 times to make sure I had everything on the list, and to try to summon up the ruthlessness to eliminate the unnecessary luxury items (pois, San Juan etc). As usual I failed at the latter task, and by the time I had done a bit more food shopping (to try to add a few savoury items for the sake of my teeth), and hired the gear that I didn't have (cagoule that was nicked, billy pot, pan and plate/cup/cutlery set), I had filled my 65 litre rucksack and day pack and had the excess in a plastic bag. I decided "Bugger it", as I couldn't be bothered to unpack and go through my things again.

Later on in the day a woman named Patsy appeared, and it turned out she was due to start the Milford Track the following day too. She was ridiculously smiley and jovial and I knew instantly that we'd either become good friends over the course of the next few days, or that she's irritate the shit out of me. Thankfully it turned out to be the former. Patsy lent me a spare compression sack she had lying around for my clothes (I repacked and still had some things in a carrier bag), then quickly e-mailed a few friends and family members to remind them that I would be in the arse-end of nowhere for the next 4 days, and so not to panic when I didn't reply to e-mails. I finally got to bed around midnight, and was so exhausted from preparing for and thinking about the track that I passed out immediately, despite the infuriatingly itchy sandfly bites on my feet.

I got up early to sort out the last of my things and to dump the stuff I wasn't taking in the storage room, I hurried off to the DOC centre later than planned and only just made my bus (I got onto the bus to cheers and laughter from the people who'd been watching me running with bags almost as big as me. I bowed and told them that running for buses is the latest adrenaline sport). We made the boat and the bus driver looked at me doubtfully and asked if I was sure I didn't want to repack my bags and send stuff back to the youth hostel with him. I declined and ignored the wise voice at the back of my mind telling me to do it and save myself the agony (I take the Magnus Magnusson attitude when it comes to physical challenges, once I've started them). We loaded our stuff onto the boat across lake Te Anau and a huge German guy started chatting to me, wondering if everyone would be doing the track, I wasn't sure as there seemed to be far too many of them (thankfully it turned out that most of them were just doing a day walk on the track). The first day's walk was just 5km from Glade Wharf to the Clinton Hut. I spent every step of it thinking of ways to repack my luggage and what bulky food I could eat so that I wouldn't be carrying the fucking carrier bag anymore. The problem is, you can't throw anything away - you have to carry all your rubbish out as there's no road access and there are no rubbish collection facilities. Eventually I arrived, dumped my bags with extreme relief, changed into my bikini, intending to go for a swim, and went for a wade instead as I couldn't bear to go in further than bum depth (the water was substantially colder than the 10.5 degree water in Doubtful Sound, and I hadn't walked nearly far enough to be desperate for water that cold). I made the most of the remaining sunshine that day (rain had been forecast for the rest of the walk) and sunbathed. Later I sat down with Bronwyn and Jo, a mother and daughter who had impressed me with their hardiness earlier by actually swimming in the river while I shrieked and shivered. We played San Juan until Patsy turned up (she had got on the later boat across to the start of the track). In the early evening, the hut warden took us all on a guided nature walk, showing us how to identify various plants and animals, telling us all sorts of interesting information about the ecology of the area, the medicinal properties and other uses of the plants, and he got us to eat and smell the more vile tasting and smelling plants, I'm not entirely sure why, possibly for his own amusement. When we got back to the hut we cooked (I bunt my fingers repeatedly trying to light the gas hobs and made a right old bloody mess with my far-too-small-billy-pot that kept boiling over on the rubbish gas flames that went out every time you tried to turn them down). When my food was ready Patsy and I got chatting to an Aussie guy called Tony, Peter - the German giant from the boat who had already taken to calling me honey, sweetie or darling at every given opportunity, and Sam - my eye-candy for the next few days. One rule of travelling that I've noticed over the years is that the more effort a place is to get to, the higher the quality of the company you find there, and the more you manage to avoid the pissed 18-22 year old contingent - as a result, the people I met while walking the 54km through the Fiordland wilderness were (nearly) all great guys and fabulous company. After dinner we had a talk on the weather forecast for tomorrow. Although experience had taught me to ignore it, I listened. The met office had issued a severe weather warning for the next day (they were predicting 15cm of rain in one day starting at 3am) and the ranger went through the various safety and evacuation procedures in case the path flooded (apparently in weather like this you can be walking waist deep in mud - I thanked my lucky stars that I had had the sense to wrap everything in my rucksacks up in plastic bags). Before bed, the rather dedicated hut ranger took us on a mini walk to see a rock shelf studded with a constellation of glow-worms. I went to bed happy and certain I was going to sleep like a log.

I proved myself wrong by waking at 3am feeling like my feet were on fire - I'd been scratching my sandfly bites in my sleep by rubbing my feet together and the itching had reached a crescendo that was enough to wake me. I finally managed to get to sleep at about 5am, just in time to be woken up by the first people leaving at 5:30am, slamming the door on the way out. Keen bastards. I finally gave up the battle for sleep at about 6am, made myself porridge with dried apple bits and chocolate drops (Sam it turns out is not just a pretty face, he's also a culinary genius - I'd have never thought of bringing chocolate drops along to put in my porridge). Patsy and I were among the last to leave at 8:30am as I did some lightning speed repacking and managed to eliminate the third bag (if I hadn't I don't think I'd have made it through the first day with mind and body intact).

As it turned out (surprise, surprise), the severe weather warning turned out to be completely incorrect, we were beset by drizzle for the entire day - just enough to cause waterfalls to cascade down from the misty mountaintops on either side of us as we walked towards the MacKinnon pass, but nowhere near enough to flood the track, thankfully. Patsy and I walked together, jabbering to keep our spirits up, as any bits of us uncovered by waterproofs were drenched in rain, and any bits that were covered by waterproofs were drenched in sweat. Eventually I came to the conclusion that I prefered rain to sweat and took my waterproofs off.

Every so often we crossed paths with Tony and Carlton - Tony was even more obsessed with his camera than me, had an umbrella so that he could take photos in the rain without getting the lens wet, and didn't seem able to put his camera away. Carlton and Patsy were remarkably patient with our snap happy ways. After 16.5kms walked, 300m climbed, and more waterfalls than you could shake a walking pole at, we arrived at the Mintaro hut exhausted and ravenous. I managed to persuade Tony to do my washing up in return for a back massage (I really didn't fancy scraping pasta and porridge off my rubbish billy again with the none-too-powerful biodegradable washing up liquid), troughed half a ton of pasta, then attacked various muesli bars, chocolate bas and dried fruit for dessert. I like being able to use trying to lighten the load of my heavy bags as an excuse to eat like a pig. Tony, Peter, Patsy and I played a game of San Juan, ending with Peter kicking our arses (never play a game involving constructing civilisations with a civil engineer). Eventually I went to bed, determined that tonight I'd sleep like a baby after todays exertions. Oh no no no no no, that was not to be - once again I woke at about 3am after a foot rubbing frenzy, feeling like my feet had been napalmed.

And once again I was woken, just after I had finally fallen asleep again, this time by keas outside the hut (they sound rather like crows, but with more of a "Keaaaa" noise than a "Caaaaw"). I staggered downstairs, glaring at everyone and everything I saw along the way (except of course for Sam), until I spotted that the ridges of the Mackinnon pass were not covered in cloud, as the hut warden had predicted the night before. I realised that we might actually be able to enjoy the view from the top of the pass after climbing 600m to get there, but only if we hurried. I gobbled down my breakfast (porridge with dried apple and pineapple, and chocolate covered raisins - yes Mum, I know it sounds like one of my culinary inventions from when I was five, but it's far nicer than it sounds, trust me), threw my belongings in my bag, and Patsy and I managed to leave relatively early for once. This of course means that we were overtaken by a stream of people who walk faster than us, but left later than us. We chose not to be too demoralised, and focused instead on the number of people that we overtook (who were all about twice our age, but that's neither here nor there). Along the way we saw keas, wekas, NZ robins, tuis and bellbirds (they're the ones that we kept hearing in Okarito that sounded like techno doorbells, Maz). We eventually got to the top (in one and a half hours, compared to the predicted 2 hours - considering the number of photo stops and the amount of crap I was carrying, that's pretty good) just in time to enjoy a bit of the view from the top of the aptly-named 12 second drop cliff edge before the clouds rolled in, obscuring the view for the rest of the day apparently, so we were bloody lucky. Just as we were giving up on seeing any more of the view, a kea landed right next to us on the cliff edge. We took several pictures of us standing next to it, and lots of close ups, and were so busy playing photographers that we temporarily forgot everything we'd been told about keas being pesky creatures. I took the picture of the kea on my rucksack (above) just a second before it snatched the plastic bag from inside my rucksack and flew off with it. I got a bit of a telling off for that from one of the guided walk guides (for the people with more money than sense to find their own way on a well marked path). Oooops.

We climbed for another 20 minutes to the highest point on the track, from where we had a wonderful view of the clouds completely obscuring the valleys between the cloud covered peaks. We stopped for lunch, as we felt we'd earned it, then started the 970m descent to Dumpling Hut. Everyone had gone on and on about how this is the hardest bit of the track, but it wasn't as bad as I'd expected, probably because we had regular breaks as Patsy had hurt her leg muscles early on, and wanted to take it slowly. We ploughed on slowly but surely, with Patsy in fits of ecstasy over waterfalls pouring off rockfaces around every turn and the moss hanging from the trees and growing on every available surface as far as the eye could see (apparently Arizona isn't quite as moist), while my walking trousers slowly started to sink down my bum, until I looked like I belonged to some sort of hip-hop popular beat-boxing combo. Either I was losing weight, or my rucksack was too heavy.

An hour from the end of the day's walk we left our bags in a shed and did a detour to what we had been told were NZs highest waterfalls and the 5th highest waterfalls in the world - the 580m Sutherland Falls. Since then I've looked online, to find that no two websites agree on their lists of the highest waterfalls in the world - Sutherland Falls is either the 5th, 6th, 12th, 14th or 60th highest waterfall in the world apparently. Wherever they appear in the global hiearchy of waterfalls, they were pretty stunning - the kind of waterfall that would be inviting to stand under after a long days walking if the sheer force of them wouldn't break your neck instantly. We tried taking photos, but ended up spending more time cleaning our camera lenses as there was so much spray in the air that the lens would fog up in seconds. We walked back to the track, fetched our bags and walked the last hour to the hut, dumped our bags and went for a swim in a nearby creek. It was sooooooooo cold, but I hadn't had a wash for 2 days and had carried about 15kg for 30kms, so wild kiwis couldn't have dragged me away from that water. Patsy was less enthused and just dipped her feet in. Peter, being typically teutonic, took a more ballsy approach and stripped off completely. Not a shy man, our Peter.

That evening we discovered that Sam had managed to steal a bottle of whisky from the guided walkers hut (with the help of his friend who works for the guided walking company), so we all drank (rather a lot) to our aching limbs, and to the hardest part of the walk being over.

After lengthy, giggly, half-pissed conversations, and many attempts to get back massages off anyone whose hands still worked, we all staggered back to our dorms, and everyone slept the sleep of the tipsy, except for me who once again slept the sleep of the badly bitten, and was then woken for a second time at 6am by one of the early risers having a loud conversation outside everyone's dorm. As I could hear that everyone in our dorm had woken up, and since I was the one closest to the door, I stuck my head outside to politely ask the man to keep it down, but before I could say anything he shouted "I know, I know, I'm waking you up because you all woke me up with your snoring." I didn't know where to begin replying to something as irrational and mean as this, so I decided to go back to bed and speak to him when he'd gotten over his early morning grump, or at least when we could argue without keeping people awake. An hour later I got up again and he hadn't left yet, so I went to speak to him, to point out that talking loudly is more of a conscious decision than snoring, when you're unconscious (not sure it was me, to my knowledge I don't snore, but I have just given up smoking, so anything's possible), and when I managed to get a word in edgeways again to point out the sandfly bites that had caused me to loose so much sleep, explaining that I didn't need to be woken up just as I'd managed to get back to sleep again, and neither did anyone else. He called me a spoilt little girl, shouted at me and was generally incredibly rude. Much as I hate to admit it, I think I'm a little bit past the age where people can get away with patronising me by calling me a little girl, and since he was being such a rude, ageist git, I had no qualms whatsoever about telling the belligerent, decrepid old fart to fuck off. People shouldn't talk over me rudely, with no regard for reason first thing in the morning. It's not my best time.

Once again we set off after a hurried breakfast, this time with Patsy not waiting as she had an earlier boat to catch than me. The day's walking was stunning as the landscape gradually changed from mountainous to fiordland, with blue skies, blue water and beautiful fresh air. I kept leapfrogging past Peter (or babycakes, as I'd taken to calling him) and Sam. An hour from the end of the walk we came to a beautiful spot with a glacial waterfall that would have been just perfect for swimming if it wasn't for the fact that the water was, as said, glacial and about 6 to 8 degrees (just to put that into perspective people, the cold dip at a turkish bath will be about 18 degrees). Peter and I went in anyway, Peter complaining that there were too many people around (only 4 of us went in, about 20 people watched though) to skinny dip. I stood thigh deep for about 6 or 7 minutes while everyone told me that it would just get harder to go in. When everyone else had given up coaxing me in, I had a reckless moment and dived in on impulse, before I could change my mind. It was really, really cold - I know I've said that before, but other cold swims were nothing compared to this water. The great thing is when you come out though - you feel so refreshed and clean, which is wonderful after not having access to a shower or a bath for 4 days. And it's pretty amazing considering I was only in for about 10 seconds.

I left the waterfalls early as I was starting to develop blisters on my heels and wanted to give myself plenty of time for the last stretch, so I wouldn't risk missing the boat. I arrived in plenty of time, before Peter and a group of Canadians that I'd chatted to a few times (I only caught one of their names though - Carol). We took lots of "We've done it" photos, caught the boat back, and then discovered that we had to walk 2km to the hostel in Milford. This did not put me in a good mood. Peter wisely decided to leave me to walk on my own and stopped at a cafe while I stomped and huffed onwards.

It's hard to say which made me feel more joyful - putting my bags down in my dorm and feeling my shoulders float away, taking my walking boots off my sore, bitten and blistered feet, or standing under the hot shower until my rank, BO ridden body felt, and smelt human again (it took a while). I bought a bottle of wine with the Canadians, we polished that off pretty quickly while Carol (who's an osteopath), bless her heart, gave everyone treatents, and then they and Peter took me out for a meal - I hadn't budgeted for that, and there was no cashtill in Milford. Bless the lot of them. We ran into Tony on the way down to the restaurant, coming back having already eaten, and dragged him back on the promise of alcohol. It wasn't difficult.

The following morning I woke early to pack my things up quickly in order to say bye to the Canadians, who were going kayaking (I was seeing Tony and Peter later), and get to my boat in time. I left my bag in the luggage storage room, got a lift half way to town with the kayaking people, then speed-walked the rest of the way, arriving at the ferry terminal just in time to see my boat pulling away. I managed to wangle a ticket on the next boat, went to the cafe for a hot chocolate, and was just sipping it when I noticed that the get-well-soon-bracelet that I'd made for Steve (when I was stuck in Thailand waiting to come home when he first got sick) was no longer on my wrist.

I can't even begin to accurately describe the next four hours, but for the record I'll try. Time appeared to stop as my brain felt like it was immitating a whirling dervish inside my head. I tried to slow it down long enough to remember when I'd last seen it (over an hour ago in the hostel) and where I'd been since. I retraced my steps several times, leaving a message with a different group of kayakers and leaving photocopied notices, begging whoever found it to e-mail me and to return it to me, on every surface I could find. After the first round of retracing my steps failed to produce the bracelet I started crying. By the time I'd been round again I was hysterical, blotchy and covered in snot. I don't think I've ever hated myself as much as I did then. Eventually I gave up and returned to the hostel to collect my bags, and to check my e-mail, hoping that my notices would produce some results. I found my bags and was just hunting through them for a jumper, when Steve's bracelet fell out. It must have been pulled off when I shoved things into my bags at lightning speed that morning. It goes without saying that I felt massively relieved, but Christ did I feel like a dickhead. The only thought that made me feel better (sort of) is that Steve would have been laughing his arse off at the punchline of that story - classic "Calamity Cath".

Needless to say I got on the next bus out of Milford (without doing a boat trip round the sounds - at the time that was the last thing on my mind, but now I wish I had). I returned my hired gear, picked up the rest of my belongings from the hostel and went to meet Peter and Tony, and we ran into Patsy on the road (she hadn't stayed in Milford, but had gone back to Te Anau, in order to catch a bus that she'd ended up missing that morning). They noticed my red eyes pretty quickly, so I got the explaining what had happened over and done with as quickly as I could (I barely had the energy to explain, I felt so drained), and they responded by pouring alcohol down my neck before Tony, Peter and I travelled on to Queenstown.

When we got there we found our hostels and met up for a meal. I gradually cheered up and came back to life as the wine flowed freely, and then someone (it may even have been me) suggested going for a drink when the restaurant shut. We found a loud bar with live music and a dancefloor which Tony dragged me straight onto. The man is even less shy than Peter, but in a very different way. Being twice the average age of everyone else on the dancefloor didn't faze him at all, and he quite happily jumped around pulling some very odd faces while air-guitaring. I tried not to laugh too much and danced my arse off too. We managed to coax Peter onto the dancefloor eventually, and by the time I left to go back to the hostel I felt relatively normal again, having laughed my head off and having actually had a good night, despite having had one of the worst days of my life.

I don't have the energy to write anything more tonight, and am still a week out of date, but I really want to post this to get it over and done with, and so people don't worry or anything. I realise that I haven't explained the title, but I can't be bothered to think of a new one, so you'll just have to wait for the next posting, which will hopefully bring you up to date. I also can't be bothered to edit it for smelling pisstakes - Maz, fell free ot srot it uot, if u can be boverred, or fi it''''''''''s boverrrrring yuo ennuff.