Aul Pupppps: New Zealand, why not?

Or so the fake prop tourist board poster in Flight of The Conchords says, why not indeed. I was anticipating Melbourne so heavily that I'd kind of neglected to give New Zealand a lot of thought, so when we left Aus for their very sparsely populated neighbours, all I had expected were nice folk as the majority of kiwis I've encountered have been real nice people.

Anyroad, we flew over, and even upon flying over the place looked so epic and unspoiled, which was to be a running theme of this journey. The scenery and climate reminded me of home, except 10 time more epic. We didn't have a lot of time there so we were restricted to the south island, but we so much to see we didn't spend much time doing nothing- case and point right here demonstrated by Cris posing for a picture AND standing on a log at the same time, way to maximise your potential and exploit your multi-tasking predisposition C-dogg.

Was I speaking office? Sorry, its from being stuck on a bus full of retired sharks! We took a coach trip around the south island which turned out to be mainly populated by retired American tourists and the odd Japanese tourist, all of whom were equally weighed down with camera gear and khaki pants that went up far too high. With either you had to be quick off the mark with the aul soul catcher- look at this fugger, poachin' some scenic gold like its no one's business, oh golly.

Along the way we were luckily to encounter some designated leisure roll areas, man, 2 of the best parks ever- the top is in Christchurch- it has 3 inter-linking mini ramps that'll give even the most hardened street vet a good time, and the lower one is in Queenstown, which is devoid of any traditional tranny but instead has Jersey barriers and quirky bank configurations to beat the band, highly original and a provider of endless good clean fun. Swell.

Ireland's national feast day happened to fall while we were in Queenstown and the locals really took to it, even if they weren't that sure what it was about, apart from getting plastered.

We celebrating by jumping off a bridge with giant elastic bands attached to our feet. Upon booking the bungee an imminent feeling of cringe halted me from requesting a discount for being Oirish and jumping on Paddy's day- but after I'd paid it turns out there was a discount for that exact situation- jokes on you paddy, sheeeed!

Being conscious of racking up some mad exxtreme points we went jet boating through a gorge. The boat could go over very shallow parts of the river and the pilot did his best effort of pretending to kill us, much to the delight of a Japanese pensioner sitting in front of me, rarely seen a human so stoked in all my lifetime!

Zoooom!

We capped off out Paddy's day extremities by getting a chair lift up a mountain and coming back down on these luges, basically glorified go-karts, lame helmeted fun was had.

Then back to the park for a few wallies, possibly one of the the funnest feeling tricks- up there flat bar front boards and fs 5.0s on tranny.

Man, this guy, I christened him Bill due to his resemblance to the Microsoft peddler, straight outta middle America and ready to educate the world on stuff he's never encountered. At every coach/boat stop he loudly dictate to his daughter and wife the workings of this mysterious land. At one point on a cruise though an epic fjord he noticed small aircraft flying overhead- part of a tourist service to get a birds eye view. Bill felt the need to give their overpass through the fjord's valley a nice commentary. "See that, loogadat!He's gonna swing left lookadat!" Plane swings right. "He's gonna swing right, see" His powers of observation did not end there as the plane's climbed to pass over the near-by mountain peaks "lookadat" Again, louder this time so the whole boat can hear "Look at that, see that, he's headed straight for that mountain, lookadat!!" Cue plane manoeuvring away from mountain "HOLY BUCKETS, you see that?!!" Yeah!! Right on!