Paradiso

Aoraki – It’s at the point now where we’re becoming playfully annoyed with the whole thing, coming around yet another corner to see yet another vista that must be witnessed and photographed and enthused over. Enough already, New Zealand – WE GET IT. Rocketing up from Wanaka through Twizel (Pelennor Fields – rah!), we arrived at the glacial valley in front of Mt. Cook to have our asses handed to us once again by the improbably astonishing landscape. It doesn’t suck here. It, apparently, never sucks here.

Having climbed more than enough mountains on our own power, thankyouverymuch, we booked a chopper to fly us to the Franz Joseph glacier in the mountain range near Mt. Cook; touching down on the snow field, the three of us pretty much turned into lunatics, running around throwing snowballs at each other and doing snow angels before tucking back into the chopper to fly around the peaks. Not inexpensive – actually, nothing around here is – but a real highlight of the voyage so far. I’ve never been in a helicopter till now, and having made a promise to be safe, don’t intend to do anything riskier than that – which in New Zealand is a challenging proposition, in that every regular activity seems to be available here in high-speed and on fire. What I don’t like about, say, skydiving or bungee jumping is the fact that while the margin for error might be incredibly small, the consequence of error is certain death. If my helicopter went down over the snowy peaks, I’d just take it as an opportunity to brush up on my survival skills. I’ve got things to get back to.

Last night in Wanaka we went to the Cinema Paradiso, which is a small cabin-like movie theatre with its own restaurant and bar (and the best – the actual BEST – fresh-baked cookies for intermission). The theatre itself is full of squashy armchairs, and one car. The feature was no great shakes, but the experience was enviable. It’d be worth moving to Wanaka just to run that place (in addition to all the other reasons it’d be worth it).

As we left the movie theatre a pack of younger folk heard us talking and an American girl ran over excitedly and asked, “Are you from the U.S.?” “Canada,” I replied. She slunk away dejectedly. “Oh.”