Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Monday, February 7, 2011
Blind Leading the Blind
Queenstown, a town home to only 15,000 people, houses 140 bars, infinite hotels, and one hostel that is the size, and as nice as the White House. Nomads Travelers Hostel, equipped with a sauna, pool tables, stainless steel kitchen, and a cinema was jam packed with travelers ready to make moves. With that being said, every Monday evening calls for a Blind Leading the Bind Bar Crawl, throughout Queenstown! After finishing some Tapas and Mojitos with Doug at our favorite spot on the water, we headed to the crawl. At our first stop, the free drink was a shot of grenadine, fructose, corn syrup, melted fruit role ups which had the consistency of the inside of gushers. After taking that, we strolled on over to bar number two where we took the equivalent of a shot of absinthe mixed with baby formula. If that wasn’t enough to make you gag we met our first friend of the night who was the alleged VP of Freight Transportation for Australia, an enthused economist, and a faster talker than Wagnus/ and or Pascal. After a detailed walk through of Australia’s current economic state, a brief run through of their demographics, and his future predictions for what we still think is one of the best places in the world, (and watching some limbo) we were ready to move on. We strapped on our blind fold, got in the conga line and progressed to bar three. We walked up stairs only to find Tony Hawk Pro Skaters and their protégés showing off on a HALF PIPE. We were approached by lets call him Joe Trucker, only to hear about his last joint venture, were he lost almost half a million and his brother lost even more. He definitely started feeling bad for us because he knew this was about as fun for us as detention, that he then felt obligated to buy us both Jack and Cokes. We re-entered the conga line where Carley met a new friend by the name of English Chris. He was an enthusiastic 26 year old who had a knack for showing off his dance skills.
Thankfully, we made it to Chicos, bar four. As it was still fairly early in the night Chicos was similar to a 6th school dance, girls on one side, guys on the other, and bunch of characters in the middle. The female equivalent of Kid Rock, Chloe Kardasian, an extra from Dropkick Murphy’s and Waldo were all enjoying Usher’s Great Hits, other teen bop 6 tunes, best of Hillary Duff, and RHCP. Unfortunately again, we still didn’t have our dancing shoes on, so Joe Trucker made his way to Birmy, and English Chris found Carley. Joe was telling us he was too self conscious to dance, thinking we were the same, meanwhile we just weren’t looking to grind to Creed. The 48 Jack and Cokes hit Joe and he approached Kid Rock. Sadly for the spectators, they were interrupted by the Blind Leading the Blind’s weekly dance off. The 3 participants were Joe Jonas, Ned Flanders, and the winner of amateur night at Southern Exposure. One song wasn’t enough, so they brought the contestants back for more. Round two, “Chloe” (no coincidence Center St. girls), Joe, and Ned got serious, and no one was backing down for a free bungee jumping trip. Song 2 started, Chloe and Ned’s shirt went flying , and everybody was acting as if they just been electrocuted. Once Ned took his pants off, Chloe started doing everything from donkey kicks, hot dog rolls, somersaults, the worm, high knees, and what looked like a 5 year old attempting a cart wheel across the stage. Carley spit out her drink, and we both got the biggest ab work out either of us had had in the last two weeks. Finally the Jonas brother started pulling out Micael Jackson moves, and ripped his cardigan in half. This 2 minutes in itself was worth a trip across the world. We tried to catch our breaths, but were interrupted when English Chris came over and tried to dance with Carley. Flinging her around the room like a skip it, she politely backed away, and we both started watching Joe do a dance he could have only learned from a kangaroo, or frog…if they could snap. Birmy was on the side watching all of this take place, and was delighted to say yes when Chris asked Carley to dance, knowing what it would be like. Michael Jackson won the dance off and we were off to last stop World Bar.
World Bar, was where we spent the other night, (we will talk about that in a later post), but tonight was different with our motley crew since they serve “tea pots” filled with liquor and liquid nerds. We had our last shot of the night which was just as bad as the last 4, watched a couple of our people do some moves under a strobe light, and bid our new friends farewell. We made it back to the hotel, and were ready for a full day of wine tasting, Birmy’s first experience driving on the opposite side of the road, and a beautiful morning run around the lake.
Queenstown has been incredible! We will update the details shortly, however last night’s remains far too vivid to ignore.
MUCH LOVE! BC
Thankfully, we made it to Chicos, bar four. As it was still fairly early in the night Chicos was similar to a 6th school dance, girls on one side, guys on the other, and bunch of characters in the middle. The female equivalent of Kid Rock, Chloe Kardasian, an extra from Dropkick Murphy’s and Waldo were all enjoying Usher’s Great Hits, other teen bop 6 tunes, best of Hillary Duff, and RHCP. Unfortunately again, we still didn’t have our dancing shoes on, so Joe Trucker made his way to Birmy, and English Chris found Carley. Joe was telling us he was too self conscious to dance, thinking we were the same, meanwhile we just weren’t looking to grind to Creed. The 48 Jack and Cokes hit Joe and he approached Kid Rock. Sadly for the spectators, they were interrupted by the Blind Leading the Blind’s weekly dance off. The 3 participants were Joe Jonas, Ned Flanders, and the winner of amateur night at Southern Exposure. One song wasn’t enough, so they brought the contestants back for more. Round two, “Chloe” (no coincidence Center St. girls), Joe, and Ned got serious, and no one was backing down for a free bungee jumping trip. Song 2 started, Chloe and Ned’s shirt went flying , and everybody was acting as if they just been electrocuted. Once Ned took his pants off, Chloe started doing everything from donkey kicks, hot dog rolls, somersaults, the worm, high knees, and what looked like a 5 year old attempting a cart wheel across the stage. Carley spit out her drink, and we both got the biggest ab work out either of us had had in the last two weeks. Finally the Jonas brother started pulling out Micael Jackson moves, and ripped his cardigan in half. This 2 minutes in itself was worth a trip across the world. We tried to catch our breaths, but were interrupted when English Chris came over and tried to dance with Carley. Flinging her around the room like a skip it, she politely backed away, and we both started watching Joe do a dance he could have only learned from a kangaroo, or frog…if they could snap. Birmy was on the side watching all of this take place, and was delighted to say yes when Chris asked Carley to dance, knowing what it would be like. Michael Jackson won the dance off and we were off to last stop World Bar.
World Bar, was where we spent the other night, (we will talk about that in a later post), but tonight was different with our motley crew since they serve “tea pots” filled with liquor and liquid nerds. We had our last shot of the night which was just as bad as the last 4, watched a couple of our people do some moves under a strobe light, and bid our new friends farewell. We made it back to the hotel, and were ready for a full day of wine tasting, Birmy’s first experience driving on the opposite side of the road, and a beautiful morning run around the lake.
Queenstown has been incredible! We will update the details shortly, however last night’s remains far too vivid to ignore.
MUCH LOVE! BC
Sunday, February 6, 2011
G'DAY!
First things first we were getting very sad that our time in Melbourne was dwindling down, we had really acclimated ourselves with the area, made some friends at our hostel, and figured out the areas of the city we liked best. One thing about Australia though, there is a very bad 4 letter word here that many young backpack travelers need to learn the hard way. Similar to a frat, you don’t truly understand the meaning of the word until you reaaally do, and this word is GOON. Goon is the Australia version of Franzia, just cheaper, more plentiful, and filled ingredients to give you the worst possible hangover. Things were great in the world, free Goon was flowing at our hostels wine and cheese party, we were meeting more people, some awesome some not so awesome. We started picking up our Goon intake when Birmy picked up our own personal box, and the drinking progressed as our fellow Patriot decided to discuss Obama’s Health Care. No thanks. Goon plus healthcare was the worst scenario you can get yourself into in a foreign city filled with liberal hippies. We went out and celebrated the birthday of a fellow traveler at a club, made a long trek home to the Mansion and fell fast asleep.
6 am were up feeling fly, looking forward to our 2 day excursion of the Great Ocean Road. Obviously Birmy is running late and realized half way into a walk to meet the group that he had left every important charger he owned in the room. He ran back, and now we were hopelessly running though the streets of Melbourne passing attractive young professionals on their way to work. We also were passed by a couple on the move in a similar situation, equipped with hiking boots, floppy hats, bug nets, and fanny packs. Then all of a sudden, there it was. The extra long double wide peace van that was probably used to follow the Beatles tour in the 60s. This lovely piece of machinery would be our home for the next 2 days. Clearly we were the last 2 people on the bus, and there were only 2 seats left out of 21, in the very back row in a sea of Asians and what we thought was a full 10 person from Shanghi. Then another thing happened, the Goon struck again, and we were both instantly turned into the 2 biggest Goons in the back of the bus. This toxin left us green, shaking, ill, sweaty, nauseous and very uncomfortable for the upcoming 3 hour adventure in Happy Wok.
We were so caught up in Melbourne that we literally forgot to eat for the last 28 hours. Luckily, breakfast was included with our tour. After the first three hours of driving 300 miles an hour through the deserted fields of Australia, on roads similar to Lombard St., with speed bumps the size of the grand canyon with no slowing down, we occasionally (or frequently) would hit speed bumps going 200 km/hr just so that our rally car of a van could catch some air. This was also a bad combination with Goon, but really provided a unique opportunity to meet our neighbors in the back of the bus. Back to breakfast, which at this point Birmy was ready to eat his shoe, and Carley was already chewing on the Le- Le’s green tea leaves. Le-Le had enough green tea leaves to start a garden. The van pulled into the first sign of civilization, where there was an outhouse and picnic table to accommodate our tour. Fortunately, our tour guide provided a healthy and hearty breakfast. This consisted of one chocolate chip cookie “biscuit”, and tea that was poured from a Birmy’s third grade Clifford the Red Dog thermos, into Little Tikes cups. Le-Le did not appreciate having to drink someone elses tea, instead she just pulled out another handful of leaves to make her own.
After our “breakfast”, we boarded the bus we got to know our neighbors with a friendly bus quiz. There were some awesome British girls, a terrible Canadian guy, some soft spoken lads, and one interesting man from Canada named Pascal. Pascal was a combination of Mr. Bean and the guy from Men and Black who turns into an alien. We also forgot to mention that we had the combination of Dennis the Menace and Mr. Myagi, Peter a little tot from China, in the back row with Birmy. The bus continued to fly down small roads, until we hit the Bay of Islands. This was our first great look of what was in store for the next 30 hours. If you look at our pictures, a lot of the scenery looks the same, but it was all breathtakingly beautiful and different when you were actually there. There was then a pit stop to see some wild life, where we then learned Koala’s are the most bazaar animals of all time, as they sleep 20 hours a day, and are born after 35 days the size of a nickel. So we saw some Koalas, emus, kangaroos, and wallabies. Our next stop was Bay of Martyrs; the most gorgeous and isolated beach that either of us had ever seen. We were the only people on this beach in an alcove surrounded by gorgeous cliffs, greens and miles of beaches. We spent the night in the small town of Port Cambpell, right past the 12 Apostles. It was great to have a 2 day tour because we really got a feel for this part of Australia, life in Port Cambpell, was simple, in a gorgeous setting, and really fun. After our group cooked and had amazing Australia BBQ fresh from the Barbie, we headed to the 12 Apostles for sunset. Our group had grabbed some wine, and we were ready to take in this unbelievable site for 2 hours around sunset, and were able to get a glimpse of penguins strolling onto the beach after nightfall after their day of fishing.
Day 2 began with a 7 am wake up call and we were off for a day of beach hopping along the coast. This was another day filled with incredible sites, great pictures, and awesome beaches- we hit Apollo Bay, watched surfers at Bells Beach, and went to Loch Ard Gorge. The day ended with the only bad part of the trip. A walk through a rainforest. The Great Ocean Road is a windy, but gorgeous road, which while in a peace van will leave you feeling like you just got off the local carnival cruise line that was rocked by 40 ft swells. Nauseous and farly tired a rainforest was not what we needed. Pascal, however was ready to go, leading the group with a fanny pack, floppy hat, high socks, zipper off cargo cut offs, and a smile that went from here to Canada. I wish we could actually explain this computer science professor in his all time glory. Neither of us could stop laughing as he admired trees, and ever tried to eat a couple plants. When the group was quietly admiring the silent beauty of the rain forest, we were uncontrollably, yet unnoticeably laughing in the back of the group. We finally made it back to our hostel after a 4 hour car ride through flashfloods. Went to sleep at midnight, and had to get up at 4 am for a 7 o’clock flight to New Zealand!
Queenstown is amazing! Doug is here and weather has been great! Another update to come soon! Hope all is well in the US!
CHEERS MATES!
6 am were up feeling fly, looking forward to our 2 day excursion of the Great Ocean Road. Obviously Birmy is running late and realized half way into a walk to meet the group that he had left every important charger he owned in the room. He ran back, and now we were hopelessly running though the streets of Melbourne passing attractive young professionals on their way to work. We also were passed by a couple on the move in a similar situation, equipped with hiking boots, floppy hats, bug nets, and fanny packs. Then all of a sudden, there it was. The extra long double wide peace van that was probably used to follow the Beatles tour in the 60s. This lovely piece of machinery would be our home for the next 2 days. Clearly we were the last 2 people on the bus, and there were only 2 seats left out of 21, in the very back row in a sea of Asians and what we thought was a full 10 person from Shanghi. Then another thing happened, the Goon struck again, and we were both instantly turned into the 2 biggest Goons in the back of the bus. This toxin left us green, shaking, ill, sweaty, nauseous and very uncomfortable for the upcoming 3 hour adventure in Happy Wok.
We were so caught up in Melbourne that we literally forgot to eat for the last 28 hours. Luckily, breakfast was included with our tour. After the first three hours of driving 300 miles an hour through the deserted fields of Australia, on roads similar to Lombard St., with speed bumps the size of the grand canyon with no slowing down, we occasionally (or frequently) would hit speed bumps going 200 km/hr just so that our rally car of a van could catch some air. This was also a bad combination with Goon, but really provided a unique opportunity to meet our neighbors in the back of the bus. Back to breakfast, which at this point Birmy was ready to eat his shoe, and Carley was already chewing on the Le- Le’s green tea leaves. Le-Le had enough green tea leaves to start a garden. The van pulled into the first sign of civilization, where there was an outhouse and picnic table to accommodate our tour. Fortunately, our tour guide provided a healthy and hearty breakfast. This consisted of one chocolate chip cookie “biscuit”, and tea that was poured from a Birmy’s third grade Clifford the Red Dog thermos, into Little Tikes cups. Le-Le did not appreciate having to drink someone elses tea, instead she just pulled out another handful of leaves to make her own.
After our “breakfast”, we boarded the bus we got to know our neighbors with a friendly bus quiz. There were some awesome British girls, a terrible Canadian guy, some soft spoken lads, and one interesting man from Canada named Pascal. Pascal was a combination of Mr. Bean and the guy from Men and Black who turns into an alien. We also forgot to mention that we had the combination of Dennis the Menace and Mr. Myagi, Peter a little tot from China, in the back row with Birmy. The bus continued to fly down small roads, until we hit the Bay of Islands. This was our first great look of what was in store for the next 30 hours. If you look at our pictures, a lot of the scenery looks the same, but it was all breathtakingly beautiful and different when you were actually there. There was then a pit stop to see some wild life, where we then learned Koala’s are the most bazaar animals of all time, as they sleep 20 hours a day, and are born after 35 days the size of a nickel. So we saw some Koalas, emus, kangaroos, and wallabies. Our next stop was Bay of Martyrs; the most gorgeous and isolated beach that either of us had ever seen. We were the only people on this beach in an alcove surrounded by gorgeous cliffs, greens and miles of beaches. We spent the night in the small town of Port Cambpell, right past the 12 Apostles. It was great to have a 2 day tour because we really got a feel for this part of Australia, life in Port Cambpell, was simple, in a gorgeous setting, and really fun. After our group cooked and had amazing Australia BBQ fresh from the Barbie, we headed to the 12 Apostles for sunset. Our group had grabbed some wine, and we were ready to take in this unbelievable site for 2 hours around sunset, and were able to get a glimpse of penguins strolling onto the beach after nightfall after their day of fishing.
Day 2 began with a 7 am wake up call and we were off for a day of beach hopping along the coast. This was another day filled with incredible sites, great pictures, and awesome beaches- we hit Apollo Bay, watched surfers at Bells Beach, and went to Loch Ard Gorge. The day ended with the only bad part of the trip. A walk through a rainforest. The Great Ocean Road is a windy, but gorgeous road, which while in a peace van will leave you feeling like you just got off the local carnival cruise line that was rocked by 40 ft swells. Nauseous and farly tired a rainforest was not what we needed. Pascal, however was ready to go, leading the group with a fanny pack, floppy hat, high socks, zipper off cargo cut offs, and a smile that went from here to Canada. I wish we could actually explain this computer science professor in his all time glory. Neither of us could stop laughing as he admired trees, and ever tried to eat a couple plants. When the group was quietly admiring the silent beauty of the rain forest, we were uncontrollably, yet unnoticeably laughing in the back of the group. We finally made it back to our hostel after a 4 hour car ride through flashfloods. Went to sleep at midnight, and had to get up at 4 am for a 7 o’clock flight to New Zealand!
Queenstown is amazing! Doug is here and weather has been great! Another update to come soon! Hope all is well in the US!
CHEERS MATES!
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
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