new zealand, part one
it's been a rough couple of days since we first got to new zealand. not bad, necessarily, but definitely rough. i'm still not sure of how i feel about it all, but it's been up and down for sure. i had moderately high hopes for a good time, despite the fact that my travel partner turned out to be a little less involved (read: not at all) in the planning of the trip than she'd promised (and i may hate planning, but i'm not terrible at it, so i chose to look past that) and then she turned up ridiculously late for check in (THE COUNTER HAD ALREADY CLOSED, WHAT THE FUCK, WHO DOES THAT) and made us so late to the gate that the flight attendant yelled at us to hurry up and run for the plane. (i've never been yelled at by a flight attendant before, and it makes the inner guai-kia in me want to cry a little bit.)
that said, the ten hour flight on jetstar was actually not terrible! the seats were decent, we weren't close to the babies or the toilets, and twenty minutes into the flight we hit a patch of turbulence, which meant the aircrew had to sit down and strap in, which meant that no one was around to watch us sneak our subway sandwiches instead of opting for the pricey, shitty jetstar food. yay!
unfortunately, we both wound up getting maybe two hours of sleep each, so we were totally slammed by the time we got to auckland. for whatever reason, i thought my partner was a more seasoned traveler than she actually is, so i let myself be talked into freshening up in the bathroom before customs -- what the fuck, nat, you fucking moron -- and in the end instead of like a five minute wait we came out of the bathroom to find ourselves at the tail-end of a half-hour long queue. funtiems.
ON TOP OF THAT, my cousin's friend, b, was picking us up from the airport, and anyone who knows me knows how i feel about meeting new people on my best days (/awkward turtle), never mind when i was feeling ready to crash and burn for the next twelve hours. we met, though, and it was slightly awkward at first, but he was very chatty, and very friendly, so it all worked out for the best. he bought us a lovely breakfast - avocado, bacon, eggs, hash browns and bread, mmm! - and then took us to check in at our hotel.
which was kind of fun, because it was basically a room above a bar-slash-tavern, and we arrived on st. patrick's day, so that was rowdy! and also there was no elevator so our check-in guy had to carry both our pieces of (20 kg!) luggage up nine small flights of stairs, three storeys in total, and wow, how much fun was that not, i can't even tell you. it was bad enough watching him do it, when i had to carry those bags down myself (yes, myself) two mornings later, i was about ready to cry, lmfao.
ANYWAY, we left the hotel to meet up with b, who was very kindly (and patiently) idling on the street in his car while he waited for us to get ready. he drove us around the city, to see the rose gardens, past one tree hill and the beaches, and loads of really pretty places that i don't remember.
and then, when we drove past an aquarium, let me talk him and my cousin both into paying $36 to go in and see it. WHY AM I SUCH A SUCKER FOR AQUARIUMS AND/OR ZOOS WHEN I HATE DOMESTIC ANIMALS SO. MUCH. I WILL NEVER KNOW. it wasn't the coolest aquarium i've ever seen but oh my gosh ALL THE PENGUINS. CAN I JUST *____________*
after, we headed down to the harbourfront, but the weather was miserable, on-and-off rain all day.
they were just declared a drought area two days ago, though, so we still technically brought the good weather with us. we ran through the rain and found ourselves a little fusion restaurant to eat at, but it was still pretty early and we were still kind of stuffed from lunch, so we had two starters - pizza bread and fries - and then decided to call it a night. my cousin was getting a little feverish from being caught in the rain and i was beyond exhausted; i'm not even sure i was in control of the words coming out of my mouth at that point.
i slept something like ten hours that night O: and i was feeling great when i woke up the next day. of course, in typical nat fashion, that didn't last long! we set off for a wine tasting tour around waiheke island that morning.
the island itself was gorgeous, and we had both a lovely (if sometimes incomprehensible) tour guide, and an equally lovely small tour group with us. we went around four gorgeous vineyards (jurassic ridge, mudbrick, kennedy point and obsidian) and drank a stupid amount of wine (like, fifteen different kinds?) (what happened to SIPPING at tasting, jesus christ) (and idc what people say, okay, i am never acquiring that taste, it is measured only in terms of bad, awful, and really fucking awful, as is the case with most alcohol, tyvm).
then we went to a ridiculously overpriced vineyard for lunch, and that's when things really went sour. i threw up twice in the bathroom. once before the food had even been served. i was kind of dizzy and kind of pukey and kind of really annoyed, and it only got worse when i didn't start to feel better after the first time i threw up. i got so frustrated i actually tried to stick my finger down my throat for the first time in my life. it didn't work (yay for my superior gag reflex…?) but i did eventually throw up again, and i did feel slightly better after that. my lovely tour group rallied around me, though, and kept getting the waitresses to bring me water and a paper bag, and the tour guide took extra care on his drive back to the pier in case i started feeling nauseous again. i've been mostly lucky with my companionship so far (:
on the bright side, the island really was gorgeous. my parents would've loved it. and i may have hated the wine, but i did have some excellent cheese and avocado oil, and also manuka honey, which i ended up buying a bottle of to bring home because OM. NOM. NOM. anyway. after our ferry ride back to auckland, i was feeling loads better, so we met up with b again. not my finest moment, i will admit, but the only reason i didn't protest outright was that he had been so lovely to us the day before, and he was really easy to be around. ALSO he turned up at our hotel with snacks for us, because he is legit the most thoughtful child (even if some of the snacks turned out to be pretty inedible).
we went up to the skytower after that, and it was everything you'd expect to see in a typical observatory deck, i suppose. i'm honestly never sure what i'm supposed to take away from that; i guess looking down at tiny buildings has never fascinated me much. auckland has a really interesting layout, though, i'll give it that. the buildings are all shaped in really new and ~exciting~ ways. idk.
i was starting to get pretty hungry by then, though, so we headed downstairs to a tapas restaurant that b reassured us was delicious (and holy fuck, was he right). BUT that was when my cousin dropped the bombshell on us: she'd invited another friend of hers, k, to join us for dinner. b wasn't particularly close to him - and didn't seem inclined to be, last we had spoken about k - and my cousin had told me once before that k was incredibly good-looking, which just made me fret about being stuck talking to b all night while my cousin got her flirt on with k. still, i resigned myself to a social evening i wasn't particularly been looking forward to, but oh my gosh, i could not have predicted how awkward things would get when k showed up.
which, okay, is a bit of an understatement, probably, because i don't think it is actually physically possible to be awkward for long stretches of time while around b, but k was really--not as put together as b was. they're both 23-year-olds, but b was incredibly worldly, a little charming (and he knew it), very talkative, very easy, and, at times more than a little pompous. k, on the other hand, was everything you'd expect a 23-year-old boy would be: very sweet, but kind of fratty, a little awkward and hesitant in his interactions, kind of quiet, and just not as easy to converse with. (ALSO NOT GOOD-LOOKING AT ALL, THANK YOU FOR THE FALSE ADVERTISING, COUSIN MINE). my cousin was just as stilted, so it fell to b to keep the conversation going. i felt a little bad, but they were talking about business and finance and friends they had in common, none of which are things i know about, so. it got a little better later on, though, after we'd left the too-intimate restaurant and went out to casually hang in the park with some (delicious, and stupidly expensive) ice cream. i spent a lot of time talking to k, and while he was still sweet and really chill, conversing felt like pulling teeth, and he didn't particularly have the most interesting opinions to share. alas.
he begged off soon after with some flimsy excuse about needing to get home to play poker with his only-in-town-for-a-day-or-two australian cousins, and then b walked us back to our hotel. all in all, it was an okay night, but that was two for two re: spending time with new people i didn't really care to spend time with.
fast forward to the next morning, when we were booked for a tour to rotorua via the waitomo glowworm caves. i'd REALLY been looking forward to this, but i erroneously assumed it would be fine to let my cousin do the booking (she literally booked maybe three of the two hundred activities we planned for this trip, and somehow she managed to in some way fuck all of them up in at least one respect, yay) so we realized at 7.20am that our pick-up wasn't at our airport after all, but at a building about five minutes away. pick-up time was at 7.30, and our tour provider kindly informed us that there was no guarantee she'd be able to get our bus to wait till we arrived. joy!
we did, thankfully, arrive, because i'd realized that this was a possibility the night before and done a little google mapping (yay for contingency plans), and i was so calm the entire time i almost didn't recognize myself. we actually thought for two minutes that we'd really missed the bus, and i was just like, "we'll be fine. you're paying for this by credit card, so you dispute the charge with your card company, and we'll go look for our friends from the tour yesterday and take them up on that ride to waitomo after all."
SERIOUSLY GUYS, WHO WAS THAT CHICK AND CAN I BE HER FRIEND?
no but it was fine, we didn't miss the bus. we weren't even the last ones on, as it turned out! and the drive up wasn't even that terrible because for the first time in about two days, i was able to access the internet! thank you intercity wifi :D that kept me entertained for about an hour or so, and then i slept the rest of the way to the caves. oh my gosh, you guys, waitomo was AWESOME. the glowworms aolskjdsdgdfg. even the cave itself was pretty interesting, if a little gross, with all those stalagmites and stalacites and other stuff i can't even spell. they wouldn't let us take photos inside the cave, but that's fine anyway, it's really something you have to see in person. it's just all kinds of breathtaking. mother nature at her finest~
after waitomo we got back on the bus and headed to rotorua. we had a couple of hours to spare but ended up just hanging out at an internet café for lunch because we were pretty exhausted. the food was GREAT, but the portions were ridiculous. they gave us a cup full of butter that was half the size of my fist, what even. i had the blat (bacon, lettuce, avocado and tomato) which was SO GOOD oh my god the avocado here is to die for and they have it EVERYWHERE and it makes me want to weep from how good it is.
anyway, after that we made our way to the maori cultural tour and hangi (aka dinner) we had booked. oh my gosh that was probably my favourite thing we've done to date. we had the bubbliest bus driver, which was a little grating at times, but mostly just great fun, and we had to pick a "tribe leader" to represent our bus in front of the other maori chiefs. it was hard not to get a little ruffled by the clear gender divide/differences throughout the evening, but i hate when anyone thinks they have the right to tell an entire culture UR DOIN IT RONG, because let's be honest, finger-pointer, UR DOIN IT RONG. so--live and let live, i guess.
anyway, it was a really amazing evening aside from that! we learnt little maori catchphrases from our bus driver before entering the village. a handful of maori warriors came out to issue te wero (a challenge of peace). they made faces and gestures and some people may have found it funny but i was pretty terrified. although this is coming from the girl who still gets scared of the lion dancers, so that's probably not saying much. STILL. one of our bus chiefs had to go up to accept the peace offering from the warriors, and i would have shit myself if i were him, so maybe there's a good reason women aren't allowed to be chief after all. anyway, after that, all the bus chiefs had to perform the hongi with the maori chief, which is basically exchanging two eskimo kisses and the greeting "kia ora". there was something really, really lovely about watching it all happen, idk (:
then we were escorted into the village, and went around in small groups to various "stations", where groups of maori people explained little things about their way of life to us: wood carving, weaving, the kind of games they play, how their warriors keep fit, chants, and the haka. they also showed us the literal hole in the ground that they were cooking our food in!
we were ushered into what they called their big house after that, and the entire group put on a little concert for us, where they sang and danced and showed us a proper haka. it was really impressive all round, and then they shared a traditional love story about their people and two direct descendants of the people in said story came up to sing a song that had been written about it, and oh my gosh, THEIR VOICES. i was a little misty-eyed by the end, and definitely got goosebumps all over.
it was time for the hangi after that, which was awesome because we were SO HUNGRY by then. the food was pretty awful, second worst meal we've had here so far, but it was a really interesting experience anyway, and we got to sit at a somewhat subdued but no less fascinating table. the group on one side of us were all from rotorua, and were really familiar with maori culture despite not actually being maori themselves, and they clearly loved the culture so much that it was hard not to be equally enthused. on our other side were two boys that we decided by evening's end were probably gay, talking to an old white american couple about their travel plans and their future dreams. it was just--a really heartening evening all round.
then we were dropped at our bus stop by the same bus driver (who was ridiculous and made us all sing a song from our country, and refused to let me and my cousin off without at least a verse of our national anthem -- although, okay, other people get actual songs and all singapore really has is our national anthem, yay us). and then she drove around a roundabout maybe six times while singing "she's been coming round the mountain" at the top of her lungs. it was fantastic. i love crazy old ladies.
the rest of the night was fairly uneventful while we waited the two hours for our overnighter bus to wellington to show up at the station. i slept maybe three hours because i kept periodically waking up thanks to people turning on the lights for no reason, or talking really loudly, and somehow or another i always managed to catch the saddest parts of whatever podfic was on at that point, and then i would weep myself back to sleep. suffice to say it was not the most restful of journeys.
which made today suck even more, because we arrived in wellington unshowered, unbrushed, and generally unready to face the day, but we had a full day lord of the rings tour booked that was due to start in two hours, because WE'RE GENIUSES LIKE THAT. WHO NEEDS SLEEP ANYWAY? NOT US. thankfully the owners of our hotel, gourmet stay, are so, so lovely and accommodating and wonderful and let us use their bathroom to freshen up as much as possible and leave our luggage with them and told us to have breakfast in their café before the tour because it would perk us right up and it TOTALLY DID. BEST BREAKFAST EVER OH MY GOSH. i had avocado and cherry tomatoes on toast with lemon aioli and alsdjksgdg oh my god i'm still gurgling just thinking about it.
ANYWAY. we were picked up for our tour shortly after, and while it seemed to get off to a good start, with a friendly, almost-hyperactive guide, and a lovely swedish-german couple in the group with us besides, i was feeling pretty hopeful. then we got to the last pick-up stop, and i knew we were in for trouble. AND BOY WAS I RIGHT. this fucking awful couple got into the bus with us, and the guy was a huge fan of lotr, only in the really-fucking-obnoxious-and-not-fun-at-all sort of way, in that he basically bullied his girlfriend into watching the trilogy and basically belittled her every time she was confused by a movie reference or hadn't read one of the ten thousand books tangentially related to the series. WHAT THE FUCK. THAT'S NOT WHAT I SIGNED UP FOR, AND IT'S DFEINITELY NOT WHAT I PAID $170 FOR, OKAY. I WANTED ENTERTAINMENT, FUCKFACE, NOT SOME KNOW-IT-ALL JERKFACE WHO HAD A BILLION RHETORICAL QUESTIONS TO ASK THE TOUR GUIDE "JUST TO TEST HIS KNOWLEDGE" HOW ABOUT KINDLY FUCK OFF OFF MY BUS ASSWAD. and also he was one of those REALLY HEAVY BREATHERS and oh my fucking god i would take b.o. over heavy breathers ANY DAY OF THE WEEK, jesus christ, my skin was crawling every time he stood behind me I WAS SO ANNOYED FOR SO MUCH OF TODAY THAT TOUR WAS LIKE TEN HOURS CHRIST ALMIGHTY.
i wanted so badly to love the experience, because it's lotr, and it's RIVENDELL, and LOTHLORIEN, and shut up, okay, the best part of lotr is the elves because they're the prettiest, and aoljsdgfh I WAS SO EXCITED FOR IT. and then today turned out to be a total suckfest, and it was the bummiest thing to ever bum. we went to see (parts of) the great river anduin, rivendell (which was the biggest disappointment, but also hysterical because we got to see a cheap imitation of sting and also the spot where orlando took his "tree" promo photos as legolas), and also lothlorien (which was gorgeous and also MY FAVOURITEST) and i got a photo of the exact spot where smeagol goes fishing with (and subsequently kills) deagol and it was the COOLEST THING EVER~
and then we stopped for lunch at some awful establishment in the middle of nowhere (where asshole fanboy and his girlfriend were all THAT WAS SOME GOOD PIZZA and i was like SHUT UP FOR FUCK'S SAKE WHAT DO THEY FEED YOU IN LONDON) (i was really grumpy okay) (ilu london) (and my londoners) (no but really your food is generally pretty terrible :/)
ANYWAY. we were seriously lagging after lunch, and asshole fanboy was only getting douchier, so seeing isenguard wasn't as fun as it should have been. it was pretty, but after lothlorien it was kind of underwhelming, and i was basically checked out of the twenty-minute conversation asshole fanboy had with our tour guide about some ~deeper meaning~ bs about the trees and the valar or the istari or who-the-fuck-ever, so. :/ (seriously, though, at one point tour guide was talking about lembas and swedish-german lady was all, "what's lembas?" and asshole douchebag was all, "did somebody just say what's lembas? seriously?" WELL EXCUSE YOU FUCKWAD SORRY SOME PEOPLE HAVE THINGS TO THINK ABOUT THAT AREN'T ALL THE BREAD VARIETIES AVAILABLE IN MIDDLE EARTH YOU PRETENTIOUS LITTLE DICKFACE GO THE FUCK BACK TO STAR WARS AND STAY THERE DIPSHIT THIS FANDOM DOESN'T NEED YOU
A. N. Y. W. A. Y. i was really glad we went to weta cave after that, not just because it was cool and i finally got to step away from the james cameron / avator hate campaign our tour guide was on (um yes actually i would watch avatar over lotr a sixth time fuck you very much AND ALSO TITANIC IS MORE THAN JACK AND ROSE ON THAT FUCKING PLANK OKAY and also i appreciate that peter jackson is a huge fanboy filmmaker who wants to be bff with his entire cast but DON'T FUCKING KNOCK THE INTIMIDATION ROUTE, I HAVE MAD RESPECT FOR THAT ROUTE, BECAUSE IT FUCKING WORKS, if david fincher was all LET'S BE BEST FRIENDS WITH THE CAST AND CREW and stopped demanding 99 takes of each scene do you think his movies would be the way they are? PROBABLY NOT. and at least james cameron's blockbusters are consistently epic, okay; peter jackson has lotr and, what, king kong? as blockbusters? and let's be honest the hobbit was really nowhere as awesome in scale as lotr, and the only people who think otherwise are the delusional fanpeople, COME ON, AT LEAST ACKNOWLEDGE THAT INSTEAD OF MAKING YOURSELF SOUND LIKE A CRAZY FANPERSON TOO.)
i have a lot of unresolved feelings about today. :/
WHATEVER. weta cave was great and really cool and i got to look at some avatar stuff on top of lotr, which was a huge bonus. unfortunately, then i also realized that weta seems pretty indiscriminate about the films they choose to work on, so. they do beautiful work every time, but i doubt i'm going to jump on board any film franchise based solely on weta agreeing to work on it. after weta we headed to the outskirts of the shire, where we got to see where the hobbits were chased down by the nazgul king. funtiems!
except all we really wanted to do was get back to the hotel, and then we finally did, and there was wifi, and a room waiting for us in an otherwise unoccupied "wing" (three rooms clustered together and we're the only ones here and thus the only ones using the shared bathroom THANK YOU HIGHER POWER). and the lovely hotel owner was making a run for pizza and offered to get us back one as well when we said we were just going to order in ourselves and loll around in bed (FOR THE FIRST TIME IN LIKE 40 HOURS?!) and now i think i blew the wifi trying to dl all my tv and hopefully the bandwidth resets at midnight and my cousin will be able to access it to do her work again, whoops.
tomorrow morning we fly off to queenstown! we have a full, full schedule ahead of us, and i can't wait! (only i am going to be mostly sans-alcohol for now; i'll just drink with my eyes on our other, like, three wine tasting tours. alas.)
that said, the ten hour flight on jetstar was actually not terrible! the seats were decent, we weren't close to the babies or the toilets, and twenty minutes into the flight we hit a patch of turbulence, which meant the aircrew had to sit down and strap in, which meant that no one was around to watch us sneak our subway sandwiches instead of opting for the pricey, shitty jetstar food. yay!
unfortunately, we both wound up getting maybe two hours of sleep each, so we were totally slammed by the time we got to auckland. for whatever reason, i thought my partner was a more seasoned traveler than she actually is, so i let myself be talked into freshening up in the bathroom before customs -- what the fuck, nat, you fucking moron -- and in the end instead of like a five minute wait we came out of the bathroom to find ourselves at the tail-end of a half-hour long queue. funtiems.
ON TOP OF THAT, my cousin's friend, b, was picking us up from the airport, and anyone who knows me knows how i feel about meeting new people on my best days (/awkward turtle), never mind when i was feeling ready to crash and burn for the next twelve hours. we met, though, and it was slightly awkward at first, but he was very chatty, and very friendly, so it all worked out for the best. he bought us a lovely breakfast - avocado, bacon, eggs, hash browns and bread, mmm! - and then took us to check in at our hotel.
which was kind of fun, because it was basically a room above a bar-slash-tavern, and we arrived on st. patrick's day, so that was rowdy! and also there was no elevator so our check-in guy had to carry both our pieces of (20 kg!) luggage up nine small flights of stairs, three storeys in total, and wow, how much fun was that not, i can't even tell you. it was bad enough watching him do it, when i had to carry those bags down myself (yes, myself) two mornings later, i was about ready to cry, lmfao.
ANYWAY, we left the hotel to meet up with b, who was very kindly (and patiently) idling on the street in his car while he waited for us to get ready. he drove us around the city, to see the rose gardens, past one tree hill and the beaches, and loads of really pretty places that i don't remember.
and then, when we drove past an aquarium, let me talk him and my cousin both into paying $36 to go in and see it. WHY AM I SUCH A SUCKER FOR AQUARIUMS AND/OR ZOOS WHEN I HATE DOMESTIC ANIMALS SO. MUCH. I WILL NEVER KNOW. it wasn't the coolest aquarium i've ever seen but oh my gosh ALL THE PENGUINS. CAN I JUST *____________*
after, we headed down to the harbourfront, but the weather was miserable, on-and-off rain all day.
they were just declared a drought area two days ago, though, so we still technically brought the good weather with us. we ran through the rain and found ourselves a little fusion restaurant to eat at, but it was still pretty early and we were still kind of stuffed from lunch, so we had two starters - pizza bread and fries - and then decided to call it a night. my cousin was getting a little feverish from being caught in the rain and i was beyond exhausted; i'm not even sure i was in control of the words coming out of my mouth at that point.
i slept something like ten hours that night O: and i was feeling great when i woke up the next day. of course, in typical nat fashion, that didn't last long! we set off for a wine tasting tour around waiheke island that morning.
the island itself was gorgeous, and we had both a lovely (if sometimes incomprehensible) tour guide, and an equally lovely small tour group with us. we went around four gorgeous vineyards (jurassic ridge, mudbrick, kennedy point and obsidian) and drank a stupid amount of wine (like, fifteen different kinds?) (what happened to SIPPING at tasting, jesus christ) (and idc what people say, okay, i am never acquiring that taste, it is measured only in terms of bad, awful, and really fucking awful, as is the case with most alcohol, tyvm).
then we went to a ridiculously overpriced vineyard for lunch, and that's when things really went sour. i threw up twice in the bathroom. once before the food had even been served. i was kind of dizzy and kind of pukey and kind of really annoyed, and it only got worse when i didn't start to feel better after the first time i threw up. i got so frustrated i actually tried to stick my finger down my throat for the first time in my life. it didn't work (yay for my superior gag reflex…?) but i did eventually throw up again, and i did feel slightly better after that. my lovely tour group rallied around me, though, and kept getting the waitresses to bring me water and a paper bag, and the tour guide took extra care on his drive back to the pier in case i started feeling nauseous again. i've been mostly lucky with my companionship so far (:
on the bright side, the island really was gorgeous. my parents would've loved it. and i may have hated the wine, but i did have some excellent cheese and avocado oil, and also manuka honey, which i ended up buying a bottle of to bring home because OM. NOM. NOM. anyway. after our ferry ride back to auckland, i was feeling loads better, so we met up with b again. not my finest moment, i will admit, but the only reason i didn't protest outright was that he had been so lovely to us the day before, and he was really easy to be around. ALSO he turned up at our hotel with snacks for us, because he is legit the most thoughtful child (even if some of the snacks turned out to be pretty inedible).
we went up to the skytower after that, and it was everything you'd expect to see in a typical observatory deck, i suppose. i'm honestly never sure what i'm supposed to take away from that; i guess looking down at tiny buildings has never fascinated me much. auckland has a really interesting layout, though, i'll give it that. the buildings are all shaped in really new and ~exciting~ ways. idk.
i was starting to get pretty hungry by then, though, so we headed downstairs to a tapas restaurant that b reassured us was delicious (and holy fuck, was he right). BUT that was when my cousin dropped the bombshell on us: she'd invited another friend of hers, k, to join us for dinner. b wasn't particularly close to him - and didn't seem inclined to be, last we had spoken about k - and my cousin had told me once before that k was incredibly good-looking, which just made me fret about being stuck talking to b all night while my cousin got her flirt on with k. still, i resigned myself to a social evening i wasn't particularly been looking forward to, but oh my gosh, i could not have predicted how awkward things would get when k showed up.
which, okay, is a bit of an understatement, probably, because i don't think it is actually physically possible to be awkward for long stretches of time while around b, but k was really--not as put together as b was. they're both 23-year-olds, but b was incredibly worldly, a little charming (and he knew it), very talkative, very easy, and, at times more than a little pompous. k, on the other hand, was everything you'd expect a 23-year-old boy would be: very sweet, but kind of fratty, a little awkward and hesitant in his interactions, kind of quiet, and just not as easy to converse with. (ALSO NOT GOOD-LOOKING AT ALL, THANK YOU FOR THE FALSE ADVERTISING, COUSIN MINE). my cousin was just as stilted, so it fell to b to keep the conversation going. i felt a little bad, but they were talking about business and finance and friends they had in common, none of which are things i know about, so. it got a little better later on, though, after we'd left the too-intimate restaurant and went out to casually hang in the park with some (delicious, and stupidly expensive) ice cream. i spent a lot of time talking to k, and while he was still sweet and really chill, conversing felt like pulling teeth, and he didn't particularly have the most interesting opinions to share. alas.
he begged off soon after with some flimsy excuse about needing to get home to play poker with his only-in-town-for-a-day-or-two australian cousins, and then b walked us back to our hotel. all in all, it was an okay night, but that was two for two re: spending time with new people i didn't really care to spend time with.
fast forward to the next morning, when we were booked for a tour to rotorua via the waitomo glowworm caves. i'd REALLY been looking forward to this, but i erroneously assumed it would be fine to let my cousin do the booking (she literally booked maybe three of the two hundred activities we planned for this trip, and somehow she managed to in some way fuck all of them up in at least one respect, yay) so we realized at 7.20am that our pick-up wasn't at our airport after all, but at a building about five minutes away. pick-up time was at 7.30, and our tour provider kindly informed us that there was no guarantee she'd be able to get our bus to wait till we arrived. joy!
we did, thankfully, arrive, because i'd realized that this was a possibility the night before and done a little google mapping (yay for contingency plans), and i was so calm the entire time i almost didn't recognize myself. we actually thought for two minutes that we'd really missed the bus, and i was just like, "we'll be fine. you're paying for this by credit card, so you dispute the charge with your card company, and we'll go look for our friends from the tour yesterday and take them up on that ride to waitomo after all."
SERIOUSLY GUYS, WHO WAS THAT CHICK AND CAN I BE HER FRIEND?
no but it was fine, we didn't miss the bus. we weren't even the last ones on, as it turned out! and the drive up wasn't even that terrible because for the first time in about two days, i was able to access the internet! thank you intercity wifi :D that kept me entertained for about an hour or so, and then i slept the rest of the way to the caves. oh my gosh, you guys, waitomo was AWESOME. the glowworms aolskjdsdgdfg. even the cave itself was pretty interesting, if a little gross, with all those stalagmites and stalacites and other stuff i can't even spell. they wouldn't let us take photos inside the cave, but that's fine anyway, it's really something you have to see in person. it's just all kinds of breathtaking. mother nature at her finest~
after waitomo we got back on the bus and headed to rotorua. we had a couple of hours to spare but ended up just hanging out at an internet café for lunch because we were pretty exhausted. the food was GREAT, but the portions were ridiculous. they gave us a cup full of butter that was half the size of my fist, what even. i had the blat (bacon, lettuce, avocado and tomato) which was SO GOOD oh my god the avocado here is to die for and they have it EVERYWHERE and it makes me want to weep from how good it is.
anyway, after that we made our way to the maori cultural tour and hangi (aka dinner) we had booked. oh my gosh that was probably my favourite thing we've done to date. we had the bubbliest bus driver, which was a little grating at times, but mostly just great fun, and we had to pick a "tribe leader" to represent our bus in front of the other maori chiefs. it was hard not to get a little ruffled by the clear gender divide/differences throughout the evening, but i hate when anyone thinks they have the right to tell an entire culture UR DOIN IT RONG, because let's be honest, finger-pointer, UR DOIN IT RONG. so--live and let live, i guess.
anyway, it was a really amazing evening aside from that! we learnt little maori catchphrases from our bus driver before entering the village. a handful of maori warriors came out to issue te wero (a challenge of peace). they made faces and gestures and some people may have found it funny but i was pretty terrified. although this is coming from the girl who still gets scared of the lion dancers, so that's probably not saying much. STILL. one of our bus chiefs had to go up to accept the peace offering from the warriors, and i would have shit myself if i were him, so maybe there's a good reason women aren't allowed to be chief after all. anyway, after that, all the bus chiefs had to perform the hongi with the maori chief, which is basically exchanging two eskimo kisses and the greeting "kia ora". there was something really, really lovely about watching it all happen, idk (:
then we were escorted into the village, and went around in small groups to various "stations", where groups of maori people explained little things about their way of life to us: wood carving, weaving, the kind of games they play, how their warriors keep fit, chants, and the haka. they also showed us the literal hole in the ground that they were cooking our food in!
Click to view we were ushered into what they called their big house after that, and the entire group put on a little concert for us, where they sang and danced and showed us a proper haka. it was really impressive all round, and then they shared a traditional love story about their people and two direct descendants of the people in said story came up to sing a song that had been written about it, and oh my gosh, THEIR VOICES. i was a little misty-eyed by the end, and definitely got goosebumps all over.
it was time for the hangi after that, which was awesome because we were SO HUNGRY by then. the food was pretty awful, second worst meal we've had here so far, but it was a really interesting experience anyway, and we got to sit at a somewhat subdued but no less fascinating table. the group on one side of us were all from rotorua, and were really familiar with maori culture despite not actually being maori themselves, and they clearly loved the culture so much that it was hard not to be equally enthused. on our other side were two boys that we decided by evening's end were probably gay, talking to an old white american couple about their travel plans and their future dreams. it was just--a really heartening evening all round.
then we were dropped at our bus stop by the same bus driver (who was ridiculous and made us all sing a song from our country, and refused to let me and my cousin off without at least a verse of our national anthem -- although, okay, other people get actual songs and all singapore really has is our national anthem, yay us). and then she drove around a roundabout maybe six times while singing "she's been coming round the mountain" at the top of her lungs. it was fantastic. i love crazy old ladies.
the rest of the night was fairly uneventful while we waited the two hours for our overnighter bus to wellington to show up at the station. i slept maybe three hours because i kept periodically waking up thanks to people turning on the lights for no reason, or talking really loudly, and somehow or another i always managed to catch the saddest parts of whatever podfic was on at that point, and then i would weep myself back to sleep. suffice to say it was not the most restful of journeys.
which made today suck even more, because we arrived in wellington unshowered, unbrushed, and generally unready to face the day, but we had a full day lord of the rings tour booked that was due to start in two hours, because WE'RE GENIUSES LIKE THAT. WHO NEEDS SLEEP ANYWAY? NOT US. thankfully the owners of our hotel, gourmet stay, are so, so lovely and accommodating and wonderful and let us use their bathroom to freshen up as much as possible and leave our luggage with them and told us to have breakfast in their café before the tour because it would perk us right up and it TOTALLY DID. BEST BREAKFAST EVER OH MY GOSH. i had avocado and cherry tomatoes on toast with lemon aioli and alsdjksgdg oh my god i'm still gurgling just thinking about it.
ANYWAY. we were picked up for our tour shortly after, and while it seemed to get off to a good start, with a friendly, almost-hyperactive guide, and a lovely swedish-german couple in the group with us besides, i was feeling pretty hopeful. then we got to the last pick-up stop, and i knew we were in for trouble. AND BOY WAS I RIGHT. this fucking awful couple got into the bus with us, and the guy was a huge fan of lotr, only in the really-fucking-obnoxious-and-not-fun-at-all sort of way, in that he basically bullied his girlfriend into watching the trilogy and basically belittled her every time she was confused by a movie reference or hadn't read one of the ten thousand books tangentially related to the series. WHAT THE FUCK. THAT'S NOT WHAT I SIGNED UP FOR, AND IT'S DFEINITELY NOT WHAT I PAID $170 FOR, OKAY. I WANTED ENTERTAINMENT, FUCKFACE, NOT SOME KNOW-IT-ALL JERKFACE WHO HAD A BILLION RHETORICAL QUESTIONS TO ASK THE TOUR GUIDE "JUST TO TEST HIS KNOWLEDGE" HOW ABOUT KINDLY FUCK OFF OFF MY BUS ASSWAD. and also he was one of those REALLY HEAVY BREATHERS and oh my fucking god i would take b.o. over heavy breathers ANY DAY OF THE WEEK, jesus christ, my skin was crawling every time he stood behind me I WAS SO ANNOYED FOR SO MUCH OF TODAY THAT TOUR WAS LIKE TEN HOURS CHRIST ALMIGHTY.
i wanted so badly to love the experience, because it's lotr, and it's RIVENDELL, and LOTHLORIEN, and shut up, okay, the best part of lotr is the elves because they're the prettiest, and aoljsdgfh I WAS SO EXCITED FOR IT. and then today turned out to be a total suckfest, and it was the bummiest thing to ever bum. we went to see (parts of) the great river anduin, rivendell (which was the biggest disappointment, but also hysterical because we got to see a cheap imitation of sting and also the spot where orlando took his "tree" promo photos as legolas), and also lothlorien (which was gorgeous and also MY FAVOURITEST) and i got a photo of the exact spot where smeagol goes fishing with (and subsequently kills) deagol and it was the COOLEST THING EVER~
and then we stopped for lunch at some awful establishment in the middle of nowhere (where asshole fanboy and his girlfriend were all THAT WAS SOME GOOD PIZZA and i was like SHUT UP FOR FUCK'S SAKE WHAT DO THEY FEED YOU IN LONDON) (i was really grumpy okay) (ilu london) (and my londoners) (no but really your food is generally pretty terrible :/)
ANYWAY. we were seriously lagging after lunch, and asshole fanboy was only getting douchier, so seeing isenguard wasn't as fun as it should have been. it was pretty, but after lothlorien it was kind of underwhelming, and i was basically checked out of the twenty-minute conversation asshole fanboy had with our tour guide about some ~deeper meaning~ bs about the trees and the valar or the istari or who-the-fuck-ever, so. :/ (seriously, though, at one point tour guide was talking about lembas and swedish-german lady was all, "what's lembas?" and asshole douchebag was all, "did somebody just say what's lembas? seriously?" WELL EXCUSE YOU FUCKWAD SORRY SOME PEOPLE HAVE THINGS TO THINK ABOUT THAT AREN'T ALL THE BREAD VARIETIES AVAILABLE IN MIDDLE EARTH YOU PRETENTIOUS LITTLE DICKFACE GO THE FUCK BACK TO STAR WARS AND STAY THERE DIPSHIT THIS FANDOM DOESN'T NEED YOU
A. N. Y. W. A. Y. i was really glad we went to weta cave after that, not just because it was cool and i finally got to step away from the james cameron / avator hate campaign our tour guide was on (um yes actually i would watch avatar over lotr a sixth time fuck you very much AND ALSO TITANIC IS MORE THAN JACK AND ROSE ON THAT FUCKING PLANK OKAY and also i appreciate that peter jackson is a huge fanboy filmmaker who wants to be bff with his entire cast but DON'T FUCKING KNOCK THE INTIMIDATION ROUTE, I HAVE MAD RESPECT FOR THAT ROUTE, BECAUSE IT FUCKING WORKS, if david fincher was all LET'S BE BEST FRIENDS WITH THE CAST AND CREW and stopped demanding 99 takes of each scene do you think his movies would be the way they are? PROBABLY NOT. and at least james cameron's blockbusters are consistently epic, okay; peter jackson has lotr and, what, king kong? as blockbusters? and let's be honest the hobbit was really nowhere as awesome in scale as lotr, and the only people who think otherwise are the delusional fanpeople, COME ON, AT LEAST ACKNOWLEDGE THAT INSTEAD OF MAKING YOURSELF SOUND LIKE A CRAZY FANPERSON TOO.)
i have a lot of unresolved feelings about today. :/
WHATEVER. weta cave was great and really cool and i got to look at some avatar stuff on top of lotr, which was a huge bonus. unfortunately, then i also realized that weta seems pretty indiscriminate about the films they choose to work on, so. they do beautiful work every time, but i doubt i'm going to jump on board any film franchise based solely on weta agreeing to work on it. after weta we headed to the outskirts of the shire, where we got to see where the hobbits were chased down by the nazgul king. funtiems!
except all we really wanted to do was get back to the hotel, and then we finally did, and there was wifi, and a room waiting for us in an otherwise unoccupied "wing" (three rooms clustered together and we're the only ones here and thus the only ones using the shared bathroom THANK YOU HIGHER POWER). and the lovely hotel owner was making a run for pizza and offered to get us back one as well when we said we were just going to order in ourselves and loll around in bed (FOR THE FIRST TIME IN LIKE 40 HOURS?!) and now i think i blew the wifi trying to dl all my tv and hopefully the bandwidth resets at midnight and my cousin will be able to access it to do her work again, whoops.
tomorrow morning we fly off to queenstown! we have a full, full schedule ahead of us, and i can't wait! (only i am going to be mostly sans-alcohol for now; i'll just drink with my eyes on our other, like, three wine tasting tours. alas.)