18/04/09

I got back in to bed at around 5am and as I walked in to the camper the smell of whisky breath smacked me in the face. It was rank. Helen had used the camper toilet in the night, but it was already full so the pan filled up with blue liquid and sat there all night. When we got up we had a tidy up, filled up with water and then emptied the toilet and the grey water. The waste started trickling out again and I got fed up with it so I rammed the hose up and turned it on full power. When I pulled it out a huge blob of noodles mixed with rice pasta and runny brown stuff seeped out followed by a full flow of dirty water. Without doubt the best sight in a while. Even when it was in full flow it still took about 20 minutes to fully empty.

We arrived in Arrowtown at about 11, were guided in to the car park by a Harold Bishop look-alike and all gave our gold coin donations to enter the 25th annual Arrowtown Parade. The first thing we did upon entry was buy some food from the closest bakery. Laura wasn't feeling very well at all and still claimed that it was Helen that was forcing drinks down her throat all night, even though Helen had no money and it was her buying all the drinks anyway. We spent the morning wandering around the market, smelling all the nice foods that were on offer. When we got to the end we found a cheap hot-dog stall and couldn't resist, they also sold cans of drink for $1 that said 'not for individual resale' around the side. On the way back out we spotted a cheese stall that were doing free tasters, Laura then found a pumpkin soup shop so got one of those and we then stumbled upon the best thing ever.

Up and down the road alongside the market were loads of push bikes being ridden by kids. There were about 50 of them in total, but they weren't regular bikes. The first weird one I spotted had had the front wheel replaced by a lawnmower. They had one of those really small ones a few unicycles
and loads more of really obscure ones. Helen and I were first on the scene and managed to get a go on the lawnmower first. We spent the next half an hour trying out all the different bikes. One of them had the seat hanging over the back of the back wheel and had crazy suspension so every time you peddled you did a wheelie and couldn't steer where you wanted to go and ended up falling off the back. It was quite funny watching the girls trying to get going on it, they didn't have much luck. There was a really weird one some kid was riding along which was really high and had 4 wheels, 2 on top of the other 2 so you had to peddle backwards to move forwards. There were some penny fathings and tandems that were welded together side by side. They were tiny though, I managed to get a go on one and struggled to get it going.

We then sat down on the side of the road and waited for the parade to begin. Laura must have been feeling hung over still because she went for more food. She'd already had a slice of pizza, soup and a powerade and went off and got a cornish pastie. While we were waiting at the side of the road a girl came along with a puppy that she couldn't keep under control. It was leaping all over the place trying to play with a nearby dog, Helen was bricking it. The parade began with a stream of around 50 vintage cars, the best one was the Herby look-a-like. There was a random army van with gun turrets all over it, then they finished off with a dog with a hat on. The parade continued with loads of random local stores trying to get some publicity, then all the kids with the freaky bikes cycled past nearly crashing in to the crowd. The sun was out, and something about the way it passed through it atmosphere caused a huge white circle to appear around it, much like the moon on the night of the full moon party in Koh Phangan, but much brighter.

We wandered around town a little longer after the parade had finished, Pat and Helen got a huge ice cream and we watched a barber shop sextuplet perform a never ending song while they ate them. On the way back we stopped off at the bakery again and I got a huge B.E.L.T sandwich, Laura got more food, a football pie and Rich got a slice of pizza. We left Arrowtown and drove off towards Te Anau stopping off at Queenstown on the way to pick up some food. When we parked up at the Fresh Choice in Queenstown Lauras creame cheese pot was still on the floor in the same place she had thrown it the other day. We arrived in Te Anau at about 1800 after seeing many sheep and parked up in a school car park to cook. We went out and scouted for the public toilets, they were at the back of a shop which was really weird. The shop was left open with no one attending it, just a sign saying theives will be prosecuted. Laura was shattered and just laid in bed and didn't eat anything. When we had finished cooking we couldn't be arsed to move, then when Rich went for a slash later some bloke caught him and gave him a warning that we would be fined $500 if we were caught camping here. So I got up out of bed and started to drive off along the road for Milford Sound. All of the laybys had strictly no camping signs, a few more miles down the road we went past a layby that didn't seem to have one and looked like there was a camper already there so I slowed down, reversed up and drove in, pulling up alongside the van which slowly started to look less and less like a camper. It was a bus with some old bloke whith a huge white beard in, as we pulled up he started waving at us guesturing for us to piss off, so I had to reverse out of a windy narrow overgrown path in the pitch black. Eventually we found a layby and just had to camp up right in front of a no camping sign and hope for the best. Laura and I were now no longer tired so we watched a few episodes of Simpsons to help us nod off.