It's not America. This is the first startling fact about this holiday. After seven consecutive trips to America in just over three years, it feels very strange to me to be overseas and NOT be in America.

My wonderful Dad drove me to the airport. Well, I drove, he took the car home. I was ticked at myself for forgetting to bring my complimentary Qantas Pub passes and began my usual "I'm sure I've forgotten something crucial" routine. It wasn't the passport or the phone though and pretty much everything else is replaceable. My 737-800 got underway pretty much on time and I waved goodbye to the best city in the world once again. I heart my Sydney. :-) The flight was so short!! I mean, ridiculously so. They fed me breakfast, I watched one bad movie (Godzilla. Really bad.) and barely got comfortable before we were descending into the land of the long white cloud.

I'm going to pause and do a little cultural referencing here. My Aussies will know this, but the rest of you may not. In much the same way Australians are called Aussies, and the British are called Poms, and Americans are called Yanks, New Zealanders are called Kiwis. It's to do with a native animal here, OK? And "New Zealanders" has far too many syllables.

Back to the descent. My Dad has previously been to Kiwiland and suggested to me I sit on the left side of the plane, so I arranged this. Go Dad!! What a view!! Almost immediately after clearing the coast we cross a snow-capped mountain range. Some beautiful high peaks pierce through the clouds and look quite striking. I got some iPhone snaps but nothing to really do it justice. We get closer and closer to those mountains before we start turning in and dropping into the valley. Just like landing in Hong Kong in the old days. Except instead of dropping down between buildings and hanging a 90 degree turn inside metropolis and seeing people hang their washing on their apartment balconies out your window, it's the walls of a steep valley, topped by snowy peaks. It's fantastic!

Queenstown airport is a bit of an upgrade to Avalon. (I was there last weekend, so the memory is vivid.) It sure aint LAX though. I decided to be supersonically honest and declare my riding boots. You know on the customs form how they ask you if you've been around animals recently and if you're carrying any animal related "stuff"? Well, I owned up and said I had my riding boots (and half chaps) with me. "Please step over here to the right ma'am and we'll inspect your boots." Ummm, sure. Super. At that point I began to wonder if I could buy riding boots in Queenstown once they'd confiscated mine. Because they weren't exactly clean, you see. The customs bloke looked the boots over very, very carefully. After a minute or two he said, "I'll just take these for a quick clean." What? You're going to clean my boots? For real? Can I give you more things to clean? He returned five minutes later with a clean, and bagged, pair of riding boots. That haven't been cleaned since I bought them. Winning!

Outside and into the real world. I quickly get a cab to Queenstown proper. It's all of 12 minutes. AND NEARLY FIFTY DOLLARS!!!!! Heads up people. Split a cab where you can. They're a bit gougy here. It is tourist central, I realise that, but still. That seems ridiculous. I checked into Highview Apartments. Very modern, clean, got everything I need. Lovely little spot about a ten minute (Linley speed) walk out of town. Up a big hill. Worth it though!! The view from this property is just a bit speccy! Oh, and random side note, my bathroom has a heated floor. That is sensational in my books.

I marched down into town to get the lay of the land. First on my agenda was to touch base with the companies I have bookings with this week. Thanks to the kind of bipolar weather around here I may have to learn to be very flexible. :-P But everyone was lovely and helpful and very willing to go out of their way to answer my questions and help me. My beloved Poppet had warned me - you don't go to Queenstown for New Zealanders. There aren't any here. I think my cabbie was a kiwi, but that's it. Everyone else is from everywhere else around the globe. It's great! I also stopped for groceries and it's very hard to feel far from home when you can find Weet-bix on the supermarket shelves. :-D Sing it now, "But no matter how far, or how wide I roam, the Weet-bix proves I'm still at home."

I marched my purchases back to my room, put the milk in the fridge, because I can't live without breakfast and lay on the bed listening to kiwi news on the TV. They talked about "yisterday, niws, hiiiroes" and other strange things that sounded familiar and wrong all at the same time.

After that aural assault, I trundled back off again to town for dinner. I realised I'd kind of skipped lunch at the same time I'd skipped two hours of the day flying here, so I made for dinner like a bat out of hell.

I've been told. And I have listened.

Fergburger.

Those of you who have been here know the glory of which I speak. Those of you who haven't, should come to Queenstown. If you do nothing else but eat at Fergburger, it'll still be worth the trip. I ate. I revelled. I wondered what could possibly round out the night after that meal...

The Fear Factory, that's what. Most Aussies will know that Queenstown is famous for its ski fields in winter. Many Aussies will also know that Queenstown is famous for some "other" activities. The rest of my FB friends have probably not heard of Queenstown. This is OK. You are about to learn. In keeping with the apparently global mission of scaring people to death, Queenstown now has a "haunted house" feature. Poppet had told me about it and said I *had* to try it. And seeing as it was directly on my way home, I felt I had to.

In I went. I've done "walk-throughs" before. I know the idea. Spooky set-up, spooky setting, actors with a penchant for scaring the pants off others. Red welcome mat, spider webs hanging off everything, dimly lit, Narnia lanterns everywhere, it's very atmospheric. As I walked in, a couple were sent through ahead of me. I paid, handed over all my belongings and was asked to pose for a photo at the red entry door. When the lantern beside the door went green, I was told to go ahead. So off I went. Alooooooone. Into pitch freaking darkness.

They tell you to follow the little red lights, which is pretty straight forward. You can nearly always see at least one high up on the wall, but you can't see anything else. They tell you to put your arms out so I did, and walked through with my fingers trailing the walls ahead or beside me. The first scare is someone dragging their fingers across your arm and purring so close against the back of your neck it makes your hair move. When you quite naturally turn around, they flash a light on their face and shriek like banshees. It's massively disconcerting and if you had blood pressure higher than 100 over 70 you would probably jump or react. I just grinned. It was really effective!! And the purring was just like Gollum saying "My precious..." but without the actual words. The little creep followed me down that dark hall too, purring the whole way like I was a nicely anticipated snack. And on it goes. There are lots of different scares. Noises, lights, blasts of air, actors, moving floors and the best one - ELECTRIC SHOCK WALLS. They KNOW you're going to feel your way through and at one point I followed the red light to the end of a hall but when I got there it disappeared. So I reached all around me and BZZZZZK. Electric shocks!!!! Figured out which way to go pretty fast. Through a doorway that felt a bit loose, and sure enough, I faintly heard someone behind me so I knew it was going to get slammed on me. I looked over my shoulder and said, "Will you get that for me?" I'm sure I was a disappointment for them. They were trying very hard. The chain maze was disconcerting and I can understand people getting very, very freaked out in there. At one point you get a bright flash of "lightning" which shows you a plastic wrapped corpse on a noose right in front of you. At another point I could feel a "scalp" and hair hanging from the chains. I said to the person I knew was ghosting me "I can feel hair. Is this yours?" And when I lost sight of the red lights, and couldn't see a single thing, I just stopped. You KNOW you are not alone in that room. There are people bursting through the chains and grabbing you and screaming in your ear at random points. It could be incredibly overwhelming if you got your blood up doing it. Truthfully. But I don't scare easily so I would just stop and look around for the red light. And in the quiet, out of the darkness, a voice very literally purrs "Over here..." and they flicker a trail of lights for a moment.

IT. IS. SO. COOL!!!!!!

I got to the end and went through a door and was suddenly back in reception. The guy at the counter said "Hey, how'd you go?" I replied that it was a blast and I loved every minute. We chatted for a moment while he showed me the photos they'd taken of me in there getting my frights. We heard some yelps and screams and bangs behind the wall. He glanced up and said "That couple in there are going to sprint through that door." Me: "Really?" He nodded. I turned around and within seconds, the same door I had strolled out, BURST open and a man and woman very literally RAN through the door and two thirds of the way across the room, SCREAMING as they went. Wow. I wouldn't have believe two adults could behave like screaming children if I hadn't seen it myself. They sank into chairs and after about thirty seconds started laughing.

Me: Where are you guys from?
Them: California.
Me: Ahhh... I see. :-D

So I looked at my photos. All three were exactly the same, from three different scares. I am paused, I have one hand on the wall, and at best I look pensive. See photo I've included. I hung around long enough to see the photos from the Californian couple. They took one look and bought the LOT. It was fabulous. In the first one, they'd run so fast they were barely still in the shot. In the second one, she had grabbed him so hard she'd jumped half way up his back, and both of them were wide-mouthed-screaming. THAT is probably how normal people react. I obviously have no blood pressure.

I walked back to my room grinning like a fool. I'm grateful for the big hill. If I'm going to eat Fergburger every day - which I plan to - I need all the exercise I can get.

Big things planned for tomorrow, so I should probably try to sleep. Stay tuned, kids. That was just the arrival and unpacking. :-D