Hello, Intuition Calling

Each time we travel, there is at least one instance where my intuition does its little niggle nudging to make me aware of something, but I just brush it aside in total ignorance. You would think that the two times I did just such a thing and was attacked twice in Santiago, Chile, a lesson would be learned. I have trust issues. What can I say and my intuition is right up there with all of the other trust issues. Fortunately, this time was not a major issue. 

Hence, when we went to bed last night, as customary, I set the mobile phone as an alarm clock. Ron will sleep until the very last milliseconds before he absolutely needs to get out of bed. He has perfected the three minute shower to the point you can calibrate your egg timer by him. His usual last communication at night is “I don’t need to get up until ____” . This is my signal that I need to be up and ready to go before I wake him. Last night, I thought he said “I don’t need to get up until 6:30.” With that in mind, I set the clock for 6am. However, that little voice in my head kept trying to pass messages through the synapses, but there must have been too much traffic at the time with all of the “To Do” lists racing through my mind. The intuitive messages never cleared the stop sign.

As most mornings, I am up before the alarm. I was showered, dressed, had my bed stripped of linens and ready to get breakfast ready when I wake up Ron. I am fixing tea, sharing the kitchen with four Asian women who are already eating bowls of noodles that are permeating the air with a luscious aroma making me now despise the English muffin I had been craving only thirty minutes earlier. Breakfast was ready: two cups of tea made, two muffins toasted and buttered, but no Ron.  

After traipsing down the long hallway grumbling under my breath about his sense of time, I found he was still wandering aimlessly in a room the size of a large closet. “Breakfast is ready.” I say with the best non-irritated tone I can muster at that hour of the morning.  “What is the rush? We have an hour before we need to catch the bus.”  he questions. Finally that repressed thought comes to the surface. “What time is the bus again? “ I ask. The bus is at 7:05am, it is now 6:57am. Yesterday when we timed the walk, it took fifteen minutes to get to where the bus will pick us up. Being conscientious of hostel rules, plus having this complex about being the best boy in the world, I cannot leave our teacups unwashed. I dump the tea, toss the bags, wash the cups, dry them and have them arranged neatly on the shelf. I accomplish the same with the muffin plates and the butter knife.
 

Ron has already left me behind, which is fine. He is taller, but I am a faster walker, so I catch up and overtake him within minutes of my rushing out the hostel door. Thankfully, I had taken all of our linens down earlier and put them in the proper receptacle or I would have had a day long anxiety attacks over being a bad commune-ist.
 

If you remember my bout with the glacier, I can now confirm that it is not icy conditions that make me winded and wheezy. Flat, warm, dry land is just as unsatisfactory in stressful conditions. As I am racing to the bus stop, which happens to be another hostel, I am starting to resemble the offspring of the Pillsbury Doughboy and Huff’ N Puff the dragon. The Amazing Race has nothing on me; I am halfway to the bus stop when I see the bus pull around the corner. There are still 3 blocks to go, but the bus has the advantage over me. I weigh the options. I could say screw the bus and we stay another night, but then the domino effect would come into play. We would then miss our bus tomorrow. Option 2 – jump in front of the bus to slow it down. The final option – give the driver some signal that we should be on that bus, so wait for us. We will be there once I am fully resuscitated again. By divine intervention, the Asian women did what I could not manage. They stopped the bus. The driver let us on. It turned out it was not their bus, so they had to get off.

We made it back to Queenstown, moved to the YHA Central, because our bus leaves early tomorrow; this is right downtown, where the other YHA is not. Check-in is not until 2:30, but our suitcases are still locked away at the Lakefront property. After getting some breakfast, we dropped off what we felt comfortable leaving in long term storage at our new place and went to rescue our bags from the old one. Once we were downtown, we locked them up in storage too. That is where they will live until we leave for the bus.

There is so much beauty here in Queenstown; it is a thrill to be back. Good, now what do we do? Shop, we will shop for the things we did not get before. Sheep puppets are on the list for our friend’s children. Two sizes are perfect for the two small sized children, but both are under five years old. The same store and many others sell some rather queer products that even some of our bus drivers have mentioned as being best sellers here and in the Asian market. Two that I find particularly attention grabbing are the Green Lip mussels and sheep placenta. Reportedly, the Green Lip mussels restores joint tissue and is used for arthritis. Sheep placenta comes in several forms to fight aging. Choices are creams and capsules, Which is least tempting, to smear placenta on your face or to ingest it in capsules?  In the short time we are in the store looking a the puppets, a drove of Asian pile into the store and plunk down the sheep placenta by the shrink wrapped 6 packs.

I looked at a bottle of sheep placenta capsules. The label states two pearls a day will meet your daily recommended requirements for sheep placenta, but possible side effects could be: wanting to graze, rather than eat full meals, turning sheepishly shy, continuing to believe the grass is greener in other pastures, your hair my need shearing more frequently, but if you feel baaaaad in anyway, stop taking them regardless of how young you may look. One thing is for sure, this is one factory tour I don’t mind missing out on. Just imagine, a slew of sheep lined up all giving birth at the same time, while they are collecting… well you get the idea. We are considering getting into the sheep ranching business after we heard it can take years off of your looks. 

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Two Photo Albums Are Now Online

I have uploaded two albums into Ryan and Ron Do the World.

Queenstown, New Zealand

Queenstown to Te Anau to Milford Sound, New Zealand

I keep getting Queenstown and Queensland mixed. Sorry for that.

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Sunday, Getting High

Queenstown is a place that knows how to capitalize on capitalization. Today is Sunday, yet by 9am all of the restaurants were open followed by the stores by 10am. Without any supplies for breakfast we went looking for an eatery. Vudu Café had received good reviews in both Lonely Planet and TripAdvisor prompting us to seek it out. There are two locations here. OH MY HEAVENS! For pancakes they charged NZ$26, while an omelet with bacon had the sticker shocking price of $32. The place was half full too. Go figure. I should have done a quick visual to see how many were eating and who only had drinks; that is the real key. Wandering around, most of the eateries had similar prices. Location, location, location.

We finally found a lovely restaurant on the second floor of the mini-mall. Windows on two sides provided a lovely view of the downtown while we were eating our “breaky croissant”. Yes, breakfast is ‘breaky’. Our croissant was halved with the bottom topped with hash browns, scrambled eggs, and then hollandaise sauce. The top was plain waiting for butter and jam. Each of us had one of these with a café latte and a long American coffee for the grand total of NZ$32. It was a sumptuous breaky with a lovely view, in calm surroundings, making it the perfect choice.

On the other side of the waterfront, there is a peninsula jutting out into the lake. We were told there is a garden there, so that was on the agenda for exploration. With the entire waterfront being exquisitely beautiful, it stood to reason that the gardens would be as well. Named the Queenstown Garden, clever name I thought, the initial area is a huge pond filled with water lilies bordered on either side by gardens of earthbound flowers. Further into the gardens are bowling greens, similar to the Italian game bocce and beyond are tennis courts, On the other side is an ice skating rink overlooking the other side of the waterfront. Ron and I decided to explore different areas and arranged to meet at a particular bench.

When I arrived early, I was taking in the view of the boats on the lake, people parasailing, and the others who were strolling on different paths. To my left, I saw this chain link basket type thing on a pole. I had no idea what it was, but it certainly would not hold trash. Just as I turned my head to the right, something yellow and pancake flat whizzed past my face; shortly it was followed by a similar item, only blue in color. I had not realized it, but I was in spectator seating for Frisbee Golf. I had heard of it, but never witnessed it.

We have probably explored the town up one side and down the other by now, but being Sunday, it has a different mystique about it. Up one street and down another, we looked in all of the windows, but never dared step foot into a store for fear there would be something screaming our name. We are especially prone to this tactic when merchandise begs us to pay the fees to help them escape indentured servant status and adopt it as our own. One store grabbed me and dragged me inside. It was a bookstore with a “BIG NEW YEARS SALE”. That always throws me off my guard allowing for the seduction to take place like the Sirens who lured the sailors in Greek mythology. Once in the store, I found a half a dozen new books I would like by authors I have read in the past, Sue Gruen, Janet Evanovitch, Jed Redfield, Patricia Cornwell, and others. Each book is giving me its own pitch on why I should cart it out of there. “You know you have always loved everything Patricia has written so far, and I am even better than the others. I would love for you to flip my pages and run your fingers over my text. Shove that bookmark deep into me when you need to put me down and I will keep it tightly in place for when you return and pull it out again.” Then another book is pulling at me “Janet’s other books all made you laugh out loud or at least chuckle, but with me she went into an entirely different direction. Would you like to explore the places I can take you? You will never think of Janet the same again.” They almost had me convinced. Each of them had a lovely front cover, but we all know about judging books by their cover. What you need to make a final judgment is to turn them over to check out the other side. Whoa Momma! Flip these babies over and what shock do you discover? A price tag of NZ$40 that is what you find there. Sorry Pat, Jan and all of the rest. I am afraid you will just have to sit here awhile longer. Someday we will all be together, but the time is not right for now.

As we walked, we came across this tiny Episcopalian church and wanted to peak in, but the service was going to start in only a few minutes. The woman priest ran into us as we were trying to catch a peek; she invited us in to services. I went once this trip filling my annual quota. She suggested we look anyway, but we said we would return later.

I did not need a crystal ball to tell me there is another bus trip in my immediate future. I am feeling too well rested for it to last. We found a bakery open, so we bought breakfast items, came back to the hostel and packed our things. For 2 nights, we will be in Millford Sound and then returning here for one night. Rather than schlep our things, we are storing them in their storage container, taking only backpacks for our 2 nights away. Electronics and toiletries are all we need. After that was taken care of, we shot up to the room for a quick nap, but upstairs or next door, someone was practicing break dancing by breaking someone’s’ bones tossing them against the wall.        

Barry and Jim, the couple we met in Christchurch strongly recommended taking the cable car to the top on the mountain and have a cheese platter once there. What they forgot to share was that it was a mile high climb to get to the ticket office. There is never a taxi around when you need it. I thought I was being smart diverting our route away from the one hundred stairs leading to the next street  by using an alternative street with a slow incline. However, one we zigged in one direction, we had to zag back again and up and up and up some more on inclined streets that are not fat people friendly who have O2 ratings in the same range as Sarah Palin’s popularity amongst Democrats. This almost made me decide to either bungee jump or parachute down the mountain. If the glacier hike and this trek to the admission office don’t kill me I must be leading a charmed life after all.

The cable car ascends 732 meters up. Once there, the view is phenomenal. We went to the place Jim and Barry suggested, but the place was filled. All along a glass wall, they have couches with coffee tables between them for eating, drinking, and viewing the panoramic sights. Fantastic, but we really wanted the cheese platter too. Besides the cable car ride, there are a couple of places to do bungee jumping, so we watched those brave souls or damn fool depending. There is what they call a luge with 2 tracks, but unlike the Olympic luge, these are like little go-carts that you drive down steep tracks. There are two observation decks so we spent a goodly amount of time watching people do things that we would never consider.

Giving it one last shot, we returned to the bar area where we were hoping to have a cheese platter. It was emptied out.  We were able to have a beer, salute Jim and Barry for the suggestion and ordered the cheese platter that they suggested. Expecting to be paying a premium for food and drink the cheese platter was only NZ$15 and the beers were 7.00 each. Another shock came when the platter was delivered. There was 5 really good sized chunks of different cheeses, more than 6 different crackers and 5 of each type, two large pieces of dried apricots, dates, cashews, raisins and fresh grapes. This turned into our dinner. Jim if you should read this, thanks for the idea. It was a perfect afternoon.  

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The Lord, the Lion, and the Wolverine Are Not Here No More

Queenstown is magnificently beautiful sitting on the water with the mountains parading in the background makes it the perfect setting for visual banquets. Walking down to the center after breakfast was delightful. We had two choices of YHA hostels: Lakefront or Central. Although the central would be in the center of the city, this is idyllic for its view. The walk to town is not at all tiresome because the scenery along the way transposes time into another dimension.

With great luck, today was the weekly crafts market. Tables of vendors were spread all over the waterfront selling the projects of their labors. One woman had bouquets of roses on long stems all woven from flax. One man had a limestone type material with hammered copper squares of local lore stamped into them. They were quite lovely and a set of three was reasonable, but there is always the question of luggage room followed by the weight at the airlines. Instead, I settled for a kitchen hand towel that has a Velcro over strap to go over a cabinet handle. It is decorated with sheep of course. There were these girly-girl miniature charms for a bracelet shaped like ice cream cones, flip-flops, and cupcakes. I think Ron’s great nieces will love these; we bought three for each of the girls. One woman impressed me the most. She was a little old lady who was selling leather thong jewelry. Most of it was nothing special, but there was something about her that felt almost magical. I had to buy something from her. For decades, I have worn something on my wrist, but have not for years. She had simple single leather thong bracelets with a single turquoise bead where symbols on it represent wealth, prosperity, and health. There is one on my wrist now and I am only NZ$2 short for it.
  
We needed to be back for our Lord of the Rings tour. When we booked it at the tourism office yesterday, we were told they also covered The Wolverine and Chronicles of Narnia. Honestly, I have never watched the Lord of the Rings movies, nor have I read the books. As a young teen, I had read The Hobbit with youthful lust and then started to move on to the trilogy. After three chapters of the first book, it absolutely held no interest for me at all. Never have I returned to Hobbit land. When the movies came out, my interest lasted for about twenty minutes before I left Ron to view it solo. Alternatively, I have read the Chronicles of Narnia, watched the first movie and have seen every movie Hugh Jackman has ever been in including The Wolverine. Why you may ask would I choose to do the tour when I have allowed myself to be deprived of the primo fantasy that has successfully captured billions of others worldwide that LTR has done? It is simple: peer pressure. The scenario in my head went like this.

Someone: “You were in New Zealand? Fabulous! How lucky for you to be where they filmed the LTR trilogy. You did do a tour, didn’t you?”
Me: “No, we didn’t.”
Someone: “You didn’t? What are you crazy? You went all the way to New Zealand and you did not do one LTR tour? How could you? What were you wasting your time with anyway, glacier walks?”
Me (Internal dialogue): We should have done the tour. Why didn’t we do the tour just to say that we did it? Now I wish we had done. How stupid of us to not have done it. What idiots. Ron is the idiot. He should have insisted we do the tour. That’s it. It is Ron’s fault. He should have insisted. What a wussy he is for not insisting. Ron, Ron, Ron!

I always think about picking and choosing my battles. It was easier to do a damn tour than it was to explain to dozens of people why we didn’t do the damn tour. It was also easier on Ron. Sometimes he does not insist when he should, so I have to protect him against me. I did it more for Ron’s sake. This saved him tons of anxiety and grief.

The tourism office told us our option s for tours. There were three different companies that had an offer, but the basic differences were the prices, costs, and fees. Oh, there was a time element too. I could be bored to death for a half a day or a full day in which they would throw in a tedious lunch with a few more hours of riding in a comfortable van as opposed to a 4x4. All of this was only NZ$100 more. We survived Tanzania and Kenya roads; we can deal with a 4x4 and have crackers for lunch. So I am expecting Hobbit house or at least the holes where they used to live, even if they have since been evicted. What more was I expecting? I am not really certain knowing this was not Disney World or Rome, Italy where you could see the sets of the television series Rome, but I was expecting something movieish. Movieish is not in my dictionary, so I am creating it. Remember, you read it here first. Whenever it is used from now on, I want royalties.
 
Another fantasy was shot to hell. Thirty million sheep in one country makes it really easy to pull the wool over one’s eyes it seems. Yea, we had a very nice guide Craig, who drove us kilometer after kilometer explaining a zillion things, yea, of which billions were not movie related. Yea, we saw parts of the area we would never have seen on our own. Did we see one Hobbit hole? No! Did we see one tree running around on its roots? Nope! I would have settled for Hugh Jackman’s beard trimmings from Wolverine, but that didn’t happen either. What did we get to see? One incredible work of nature after another, but with Craig stating “See that forest there? In one of the LTR movies, so and so ride a horse through those threes.” Or “See that area there? That is where they come riding the oliphants.” They were digitally mastered in so nothing like an elephant or oliphant ever touched the shores of New Zealand in the making of this film. I really wanted to see how Hobbits decorated their holes, but that was not in the cards. “See that island over there? There was a scene filmed there for the Narnia series.” Craig also has a hobbit of saying “Yea” ad nauseam.

By the way, it seems the movie studio destroyed all of the sets used here for "patent issues" from what Ron read, but according to Craig it was due to "environmental concerns". Who knows?

This comes with a warning label. When you look at the photos for today, don’t blame me if there are no Hobbits, witches, lions, or wardrobes. If there was anything associated with Hugh Jackman you can bet I would not share with so don’t even think about it. Fine, there was nothing for me or for you. All you will get to see is more beautiful scenery. Rotten luck I know.

After Ron made a delightful chicken dinner with frozen stir fry veggies and instant rice, we walked down to the waterfront. There were crowds of people enjoying the summer Saturday evening. Ron had read about a particular café that supposedly had the best ice cream and coffee in the city. Having to test that theory I had fig with pistachio and dulce de leche; Ron tried the cookies and cream with white chocolate and hazelnut. Enjoyable, but when it makes a guest appearance later on my waist, I will weigh in to tell you if it was really that delicious.

Related articles

• Lord of The Rings Inspires Real Hobbit Houses (bookstove.com)
• Warner Bros. to handle 'Hobbit' in most overseas markets, fund MGM's half of budget (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
• Elijah Wood Reportedly Returning To Middle-Earth For 'The Hobbit' Cameo (moviesblog.mtv.com)

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