We took a ferry from the North Island where we live to the South Island. It was super rainy and shitty and windy and cold outside.
Until we got past the halfway point to the South Island, when all of a sudden it was magically sunny and clear and beautiful:
Fresh off the boat we went on another wine tour. But this time it was a tour for how the wine gets made. The other one was just a testing tour. We did get to test some wine on this one though, but despite that fact, the tour was dreadfully boring.
Barrels full of wine. I guess the hole in the barrels where they fill them up are called "bung holes". When they lady was telling us about the filling process she was talking about how they stain the barrels dark because there is lots of "spillage from the bung holes" and it's mostly red sediment "and you don't want to see that red sediment all around the bung holes." Me and Stan were trying soooooo hard not to laugh, it was insane. I know it's juvenile, but that made it all that much more harder not to laugh. There were only 6 people on the tour plus the tour guide, so it was painfully obvious that we were complete assholes.
The only good thing that came out of the tour is that I fell in love with the girl working at the on-site restaurant. Love at first site, just walked in, looked over and got butterflies in my stomach. I creeped this picture of her. She was pretty impressed when I ordered a free glass of water.
New Zealand has amazing scenery. One second it is flat and bare like Saskatchewan, then a half hour later it will have mountains and almost tropical forests. One part the vegetation was so thick that it looked like Jurassic Park.
I also saw lots of really nice sunsets.
Once we got to our first hostel we were unbelievably stoked to find out there was a makeshift ping-pong table, so we got some beers and had a tournament. We played on that thing non-stop every time we were at the hostel for days. We even went to the bar one night, came back at like 2:00 super drunk, and started playing. At one point a lady who worked for the hostel came to tell us to keep it down, and when I heard the door I thought it was Kyle and yelled at her "FUCK YOU KYLE!" Whoops. Hopefully they thought we were American.
Jarrad won.
The next day we woke up early and went on a Kayak tour. Check out this dope kit I put together. And the answer to your question is yes, I have been wearing that flannel everyday.
All these photos were taken by Stan. The trip was amazing. About 3 hours long, we went through skinny little cave tunnels that I didn't even think we could go through, we crept up on seals on rocks, we tried to catch jellyfish swimming by, all types of fun stuff. The scenery was breathtaking.
Me and Jarrad crept up on this bird to take a closer look. It took a shit, and we moved on.
Here's a video of me and Jarrad tearing shit up.
The next day we woke up early again and went for a hike through the Abel Tasmen park, one of the most famous nature reserves or something like that in New Zealand. You take a water taxi out, and then just walk back. Along the way the boat guide showed us some cool stuff like this giant split rock.
The beach we got dropped off at.
The hike was fucking long. The boat just kept going and going and I couldn't believe how far away we were. It ended up being an 11.5 KM hike, and took us over 4 hours. We saw amazing scenery, but it was just too long for me. After awhile I was just like "Okay trees on the left, mountains on the right, dirt path, OH! Here's the ocean again." But we did see amazing scenery. We went to this lookout point where I climbed out on a rock and got a picture overlooking the most beautiful blue ocean ever, but I accidentally deleted it. Fuck. Maybe Stan will have a picture of it. Anyway, here's the photos that I managed not to delete.
Here's a video I took to show the view at the top of a hill in the park.
A few nights later we went up to Christchurch and went to see a rugby game.
It was a long weekend and the game was completely sold out. It's sort of like the Labour Day games in the States. It was super fun actually.
"TURN HIM OVER! TURN HIM OVER!!" "IRRESPONSIBLE TACKLE!!!" I was yelling out all kinds of shit that I heard other people say, I had no idea what was going on. The day before we had all gone to a betting agency and bet money on the game. We all won all of our bets. I came out $25 bucks ahead. GO CRUSADERS!
They also sold these genius 4-packs of plastic bottles. That made the game more enjoyable. Except apparently we were supposed to get a toque that had big long ear flaps that worked as a scarf attached. We got hosed.
A few days later we went swimming with dolphins in the wild. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever done in my life. You take a boat out into the ocean, and there is no guarantee that you will even see any dolphins, and if you do find them, there is no guarantee that they will be down for interacting with you because they are wild. We cruised around for more than half an hour, and didn't see any dolphins, then we got a call on the radio from the other boat that they had found some, so we headed over there. At first there were only about 20-30 dolphins, so we all got out and started swimming with them. You have a snorkel mask on, and you just swim with your face down, and try and make noises to attract them to you. Personally, I was singing Funky Town by Lipps Inc., and I think the dolphins reacted quite positively to it. At one point I was way far off from the rest of the swimmers and I had like 9 dolphins swimming around me in circles. It was so rad, they come right up to you, and start to circle you, and you're supposed to try your best to circle with them, because that's how they play. They look you right in the eyes, and it's so amazing. You're just swimming and connecting with these wild animals. I couldn't believe it.
After swimming for a bit, a bigger pod of dolphins came and picked up the ones we were swimming with, so we got back in the boat and caught up to them. By this time, there was probably a couple hundred dolphins, and we could see them jumping out of the water, doing backflips, all kinds of stuff. Unreal. So we got back in and swam with them again, and then again a bigger pod came and pulled the dolphins away, but it was amazing. At one point I was looking straight down at about 6 dolphins swimming around, and then all of a sudden a pod came along underneath me and I started swimming along with them as fast as I could, and I must have been passed underneath by about 200 dolphins. It was so crazy. Also, before they all took off, I think maybe the dolphins must have been enjoying my rendition of Funky Town a little too much because I saw like 3 couple dolphin-fuck right in front of my eyes. I saw the little dolphin cock come out, go into the dolphin pussy, and then come back out. I couldn't believe it. The first time I saw it I laughed so hard that my mask popped off a bit and I snorted up and choked on a bunch of salt water.
After the second time we swam with them, we just got back in the boat to follow the pod and take pictures. This was also amazing, as the whole pod came together and there must have been at least 500 dolphins out there cruising along, jumping out of the water, swimming right beside the boat, it was unbelievable. It was a real dream come true, I've wanted to do this seriously since I was like 10 or 12 years old. I took about 5 long videos of the dolphins cruising along and cresting and stuff, but unfortunately I accidentally deleted a few of them, but here's the pictures and videos I have left.
Here's some videos I took of the Dolphins. I had about 5 of these videos, but accidentally deleted a bunch of them. Here's the ones I have left.
After all that exciting stuff we made our way back to the town where we catch the ferry. It's a really small town, and we had about 6 hours to kill in the rain, so mr and Kyle went to see a movie. The theater had 30 seats in it and we were the only two watching the movie. In fact, since we were the only ones, the lady that sold us the tickets told us if we didn't like the movie playing, she could just play a different one. It was actually really fun being in a place like that with just the two of us. We talked as loud as we wanted, yelled at the movie when it sucked, and ripped farts and burps. Ahhhhhh this is the life.
Well that's it for this. Now I am back in Wellington, and I leave for Japan for 3 weeks in 2 days from now. I'm sure I'll have lots to write about during that trip. See ya.
Post Edit - Here's some photos I stole from Stan's camera to make up for ones I lost:
We totally zoomed out on this badboy.
Okay so this is the rock I climbed out onto that I was talking about. But I deleted the picture. This is Stan, so just imagine this same picture, but a green shirt, 5 inches shorter, 30 pounds heavier, and bald. Yep.
This was a rock beach that was only out there at really low tide. Some super cool landscape.
More dolphins!!!
