300 meters until put a stick in your eye

It is Thursday morning here in NZed, 48ish hours before I head back home. It’s funny how during the first week of the trip we kept saying, “I can’t believe we’ve only been traveling X days.” Now it’s like, I can’t believe I only have two days left. Doesn’t seem fair that I have to go home, and that bitch Liza gets to stay another six months. Then again I’m pretty satisfied not doing research on the effect of climate change on markets (DING! Finally am able to summarize why she’s here!) (Insert comment from Liza on reading this post – Nope, that’s still not quite it, maybe we can discuss my research on the five hour drive today to make sure you REALLY get it by the time you leave)

But anyways, here’s what’s been up. After our long day on the slopes, we came home and cracked a bottle of Chardonnay we’d bought from our friend Kim at Waitiri Creek, and had a hot tub. As with everything at our shitty lodge, the hot tub was grotesque. If I wind up with some sort of infectious disease and/or rash and/or pregnant, I will know why.

Liza has been very concerned about the fact that I’ve yet to have any lamb, so we rectified this with dinner at an Italian place on the lake, Luciano’s. We split some foie gras, and then she got a gnocchi with a porcini mushroom sauce, drizzled in truffle oil, and I got a duo of lamb shank and lamb rack on a parmesan mash with fresh green beans and peas. Yeah, think about that for a second.

As we wound down our dinner, I heard the lady next to us order the same gnocchi. I leaned over and said she wouldn’t regret it, and then we chatted with her and her husband for about ten minutes. They were in town from Melbourne to ski, and though at first they seemed quite delightful, they asked Liza if she actually believed the science behind climate change, and then talked about how greedy the Aborigines and Maori are. Seems everyone’s just a little bit racist. They did totes buy our story about meeting in a dance class, so success!!

Post-dinner, we bounced to a couple places for after dinner drinks. A lad on the street told us to get ourselves into Bar Up for a Money Shot, as they were two for one. It had three layers of liqueur and a dollar sign in cinnamon on top, and we were instructed to put it in our mouth and swish it around, and no they couldn’t tell us what it was but that it would go down smoothly. After giggling a bit, we did as instructed, and it was amazing. “But then once I got it in there…”

One last restless night at The Lab, trying not to catch a disease, and Wednesday morning we “checked out” for Milford Sound. I say it in such a way because when we arrived their system was down, so we didn’t pay, and no one was there when we left, so we didn’t pay. If I can get out of paying for that place, major plus one. We were supposed to stay there again end of the week, but wisely cancelled our reservation and found something better. We then had an amazing breakfast burrito at a restaurant called Halo (think I’m addicted to its light), and after we were done and saw the French toast, decided a trip back was a must. Then it was time to get on the road…yet again.

The drive to Milford is kind of annoying because if you could just cut straight over from Queenstown it would probably take 15 minutes. But because of some stupid nature preserve bullshit, and some stupid mountains, you have to make a giant U and it takes 4-5 hours. We decided to drive all the way to Milford Sound instead of staying halfway, so that we are driving less today to get back to Queenstown.

The Fiordlands National Park is New Zealand’s rawest wilderness (!!), and we probably passed less than 50 cars on the whole drive from Queenstown (which took us through the deer capital of NZed (!!)). We stopped along the way at some designated vistas, and did a couple quick tramps. Lonely Planet says that on the Te Anau – Milford Sound highway you’ll find yourself rounding corners and exclaiming “Oh Wow.” We cackled; then they were right (JUST LIKE ME!). Absolutely spectacular. The pictures we took will never do it justice, and so finally at one point I just put my camera away and took it all in.

Our lodging for the evening, the Milford Sound Lodge, is literally the only lodging for the entire area. We are right in the middle of a valley, and right now lying in bed I can see three huge waterfalls out the window (they’re a bit bigger because it’s been raining all night). We checked out Scrabble (I crushed Liza) and Monopoly (she won, but only because we quit…I was making a comeback) made some dinner, and then actually got to bed somewhat early. As I mentioned it’s been raining, so we’re hoping it will clear up a bit before our 11:45 cruise on Milford Sound so we can see some penguins and dolphins and such. I didn’t drive 8 hours round trip for nothing!

Now for the good stuff:

-At the tail end of our journey last night we went through a long dark tunnel underneath one of the mountains. I think I saw Voldemort carrying Frodo on his path to Mt. Doom. Or maybe I’m getting my stories confused.

-Tramping times, as estimated by the New Zealand parks department (holla Leslie Knope!) are a bunch of boohickey. The first tramp we did today was marked as 45 minutes return. Even with photo opp, it was 25 minutes. Maybe we’re just really good at tramping (at least I know Liza is).

-At the tail end of our second evening in Queenstown we popped in one last place for some $5 mulled wine. The bartender was from Chile, so Liza took the opportunity to impress him with her Espanol. He was reeeeeally unimpressed. She got pissed and threw a glass at him. Someone needs some snuggles.

-The Scrabble game got really ugly really quickly. If someone could do us a solid and look up the following words and confirm validity and correct spelling: xi, gode and wean. At the end, since I was winning so soundly, and leaving a major black mark on the entire Fulbright program, I allowed the following words: ditso and ilife. Points will be awarded today for each use of the word ditso.

-We’ve officially run out of things to talk about, our weddings are fully planned, our family issues are well described, we know each of our favorite things (Fruit: Steez – Apple, Beall: Papaya), and have had two conversations about whether we like cabbage. So now we’ve resigned ourselves to playing 20 questions and, Marry, Fuck, Kill. Tom Brokaw is awesome

-We are wearing stripes today, naturally, because we’re going on a boat, and Liza, of course, packed extra stripes to make sure this happened.