"Mate, you're an idiot. That's daft even by our standards, and as you might have noticed, we can be pretty crazy round here." Such were the words spoken by Ian, the fine Kiwi gentleman in the pub as he handed over my enticingly pint-shaped prize for becoming the first man anyone, be they backpacker, local or tourist guide, had known to be dumb enough to walk New Zealand's famous Tongariro Crossing in flip-flops. Sweet. As. Such is the refreshing extravagantly experimental attitude of New Zealanders and all the tourists that roam the land in order to jump off buildings rather than simply to take pictures of them, that one has to hike 17km up and down two mountains with rocks sharper than Paul Merton's wit in footwear designed for nothing more strenuous than the occasional couple of steps down to a beach merely in order to have something to brag about down the pub later on. Sky-diving, white-water rafting, zorbing, bungying, abseiling 100m into a cave and then walking (or rather clambering and wading) for 3 hours over the rocks and through the water in order to reach daylight again and all the other cool stuff this country demands that you do can only take one so far when every other b***** has met the demands as well. Repetition is the action of the unimaginative and the unnecessary, thus I think I'll have to do my next skydive in a dinner jacket and my next bungy in a monkey suit.