feckin' hate queenstown

i sit and type this in a slightly less excited mood than i was in the last update. in fact, i'm quite sleep-deprived and hungover right now so i have momentarily abandoned the health regime (though some would say that i did that last night when i accepted irish barry's offer of a round of tequilas plus all the free valentine's vodka punch...) in order to indulge in a moro bar, picked up for free in the cadbury factory, in order to raise one's blood sugar levels. yum. undoubtedly, the guilt will kick in in about 5, 4, 3... seconds.

god. we've got this really annoying 'older lady' in our hostel room here in qveenstown (said in a 'comedy' mock german accent). you know when you didn't get to bed until 4am and all you really want to do in the morning is just lie in bed and BE ALONE. god. everyone else in the room had the grace to just bugger off this morning but not bluddy hippy here. in fact, she kept getting up and leaving the room then coming back and pottering about and then, THEN, she opened the bluddy curtains really wide. i MEAN. thank god that i'm on the bottom bunk and i'd already created a kind of coccoon den by placing mine and bridget's towels in strategic places. but, still, the light came pouring through. god. why didn't she just BUGGER OFF. although it was quite funny when, after spending a good hour and a half lying in bed after she'd woken me up, she met me on the way to the shower and said 'oh, are you ill too?'. no. i'm not. i just want you to leave me alone, wench.

today has been quite a challenge in many ways. after dealing with the whole trauma of getting up, we discovered that we couldn't stay the third night in the hostel (the fecking bus is full tomorrow, when we wanted to leave for christchurch, so we're having to hang around a bit longer). then when all the nearby hostels said they were full for the weekend (too many bluddy people in this place), we were teetering on the precipice of distress and despair. luckily, this has been subsequently sorted by our managing to get into a slightly dodgy-looking hostel across the road that looks like some kind of rehab centre for metalheads. it has loud 'raaa' music on in the reception and the place is littered with people wearing chains. but they do do a free breakfast and have free internet AND they have a telly room which they said we can make full use of. brrrrilliant. the third distressing thing to happen today is that i've got my hair cut. i've been in nz so long now that i've managed to get my hair cut twice in this country. interesting fact. anyway, as always, i'm not fully sure as to how well the hair cutting has gone. it's only mildly shorter and there are bits which are seeming to have their own ideas about which way they should curl. but bridget thinks that all i need to do is wash it myself and it'll all be alright. fingers crossed.

anyway, update. thoughts on the south of the south island. yes. well, there are lots of little towns dusted upon the southern scenic road and they all are really reminiscent of the time in which they were built. there's lots of those stately bank type single block buildings that evoke the turn of the last century, though i could be wrong about the exact dates. you could really imagine those frontier people, setting up town and mining for gold. even invercargill, which is a fairly big town in kiwi terms, retains a feeling of its initial inception. there's a lot of scotland in the place, unsurprisingly. it looks like a scottish market town.

the most exciting thing about the drive from invercargill through the catlins and into dunedin was stopping off at nugget point where we actually got to see actual penguins. how cool! i'm not normally an animal type person but, really, these penguins were just the funniest thing i'd ever seen (or maybe i was just hysterical from being on the bus so long). we only saw two but the way they waddled out of the ocean and up the beach was really really funny. honest. and they were yellow-eyed penguins which, apparently, is the rarest breed.

and then we had another moment of hilarity on the journey, which we now affectionately refer to as the 'leek incident'. you see, i'd gone out shopping for food for the evening's meal and was gathering things to make some kind of ratatouie affair: chopped tomatoes, onion, pepper, celery and the like. anyway, we'd stopped for lunch and, in another moment of hysteria, started waving the 'celery' i'd bought around in the air like a jedi. bridget just looked at me and said 'christine, what is THAT? why have you bought a leek? you were not instructed to buy a leek'. i tried to explain that it was actually celery, as i was instructed to buy, when i realised that it was, indeed, a leek. oops. oh, how we laughed.

the place we stayed in dunedin was just lovely. we opted out of the hostel favoured by stray because, quite simply, it was shite. and instead we stayed in this lovely old victorian building that was converted from an old hospital, apparently complete with ghosts and everything. we never saw ghosts but we did experience a deathly chill, simply because the woman next to bridget decided she really needed to let that antarctic blast in through the window all night because she 'needed some air'. what a div.

and so to the chocolate factory. it was great. bridget had already been on the tour so she prepped me about the importance of getting in first answering the tour guide's questions as you get more free chocolate. and, damn, i was good. in fact, it got a bit embarrassing as i was fighting off small children for the free feed. though at one point i did give one particular chocolate bar i'd just won to the small boy next to me. it made me look good and, well, it was only a crunchie and everyone knows they're rubbish. so fun was had by all and the best bit was when they took you inside this massive metres-high silo and unleashed a tonne of chocolate to create a huge chocolate fall. hurrah.

and so we're back in qveenstown (sorry, there are just so many germans about and it's mildly amusing to hear them say it) and it's just tourist central here. loads of americans, too. lake wakatipu (which is another of my favourite words) is bluddy lovely, especially at sunset, but there are just far too many people here for my liking. it is a place without soul. i don't think very many new zealanders actually live here. and it looks just like a swiss alpine village type affair so it doesn't even look like new zealand. bridget really likes it here, though, so there are some people who would choose to be here, but not me. though we are about to head down to the lake and each adopt our own artistic pursuits, alone together, as i try to finish my book and bridget draws the remarkables, so that may help to change my mind. you never know.