New Zealand – Some people “pack” “stuff” for long holidays; others show up on the other side of the world with nothing but the clothes on their back and figure shit out. Not that I intended to be in the latter category, but I’m a light packer anyway, and emergency tacky t-shirt shopping to replace the downright appalling clothes I traveled in has found me wandering the streets of Queenstown, New Zealand in a NEW ZEALAND! t-shirt, with no particular worries. The airlines will figure out if they can get our backpacks to us at any point in the next four days, and until then I have a gorgeous leather journal, a pen, this iPad, and my boys. It’s enough. (Underwear though – you never really appreciate some things till they’re gone)
I like to celebrate getting off three consecutive flights that have taken me halfway round the world by getting on two more flights. Transit as a whole went fine, backpacks wandering into the Fijian wilderness notwithstanding – but when you’re no longer noticing takeoffs and landings, it’s time to stop. Five planes between Toronto and Queenstown, each progressively smaller than the one before, till we got an honest to goodness prop plane for the last, which swung and bucked deliciously as we dropped out of the clouds, cut between the mountains, and landed in one of the many place on this earth that just have to be seen to be believed. People come to Queenstown, said a British girl at our hostel, and never leave – she’s been here for 18 months so far. Me, Dave and Demetre (and some other guy) are holed up in a brilliant 4-person dorm, aiming to sort out our next few days in a town where 3 shops out of 4 are dedicated to one extreme sport or another – heli-biking caught my eye – before my medication runs out and I turn into Murdock from The A-Team. Which, with all this talk of helicopter torque turns, would probably be just the ticket anyway.
You listen to a lot of music on 22 hours of flight time, and figure out a lot of things by osmosis in the meantime. The stars above, the clouds far below, and the answers to questions you never needed to ask. Jet lag? Not an issue. The sun is rising over the mountains. Try sleeping through THAT.
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