Rounding off, slowing down and heading out

The best blog in the world. To understand the poignancy of this statement, you must have visited New Zealand yourself. It is a country of immense beauty, visual variation and is unique in terms of fauna and flora. What you will notice even more when visiting however, is that the locals consider every (notably incredible) mountain, glacier, valley, volcano, rock, tree to be the most significant of its kind in the world. Now, Im not professing to have been everywhere in the world, but what I do know (seemingly better than the locals) is that the world is a rather big place. So claiming that a valley in the Otago plains is "the best place to go gliding, in the world" is a rather over-fascinated view of a commonly over-proud New Zealander. On one day on the South Island, I counted our guide mentioning SEVEN things that were the greatest in the world. Thats about the only thing that bugged me in my time there.. which considering the source, is some compliment!

After the adventures of the Kiwi tour so far, New Zealand handed me a corker to round it all off - and that corker is Queenstown. Justifiably, the greatest town in the world to end an epic 4 week tour of New Zealand. It is a sweet combination of excited travellers, bars, activites, beaches, cold-water lake and spectacular surrounding scenery. To sum it up, I started my 28th birthday with a 134m bungy jump at the AJ Hackett centre - not at all an insignificant achievement, it was so incredibly fun I wanted to do it again... except that it costs more than the average annual wage of a South African worker. With adrenalin pumping and some good camaraderie, we spent the rest of the beautiful sunny day at the beach, enjoying some local beverages and dipping (ever so quickly) in the chilly waters of Lake ???. A romantic dinner at the waterside (pizza and pre-mixed mojito straight from the bottle) led into a night out on the town with friends and it was wrapped up as well as I could have hoped. Certainly the best birthday I can remember, but just like the previous 4 days, simply another day in Queenie.

However, as they say (I have to thank Buzz, our driver, for teaching me that saying... used exactly once in every sentence he muttered!), all good things must come to an end. So with a final early start and some problems with the passenger list, I was off on the Kiwi bus to New Zealand's second largest town (and home of the Crusaders of course!), Christchurch. I did plan to stop for a day or two in the Mt Cook national park for some final Kiwi-style tramping, but the "flexibility" of the Kiwi Experience once again disappointed as I would have had to wait 5 days to get the next available seat out! So had to make do with the standard tourist snap from across the lake :-( Arriving in ChCh couldn't be a bigger contrast from Queenstown if they had designed it. Not all bad though, I met up with my old varsity mate Greg and stayed with his young family just out of town - a great way to unwind after 4 hectic weeks. In one single solitary day of pampered home sleeping goodness, I returned to the backpacker hostel to meet two good German friends and walked around feeling like a businessman in a suit - such was the outsider feeling that had been cast upon me! Thats not to say that we didn't have any fun - as the very long Friday night, on a pre-paid bar tab, (read: gift straight from heaven!) will readily attest ;-)

And as quick as that, this chapter of my trip was satisfyingly completed. Sitting in Sydney as I write this, it was just a short 3 hour flight across the Tasman to the "western island" as the Kiwi's call it. Who was to know what the next chapter would hold for me, but whatever was predicted could never have imagined this... Can anyone spell Trainspotting?