Christian Perez's Travel Journal

Port Ligar... That's right, the magical lion/tiger, Sat Jul 1, 2006

So I'm told that it actually rhymes with "cigar", but its still funny. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, you need to rent Napoleon Dynamite--right now. Don't worry. I'll wait...

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Got it? Yes, now laugh with me. Good. Moving on!

I finally quit the vineyard on Thursday. I don't know how much I made, but I have over $1200 in the bank and a few hundred in my pocket. I really should have made more, but my hands are big balls of cramped muscle, so I couldn't work as fast as I could for 8 hours straight.

But the real news is that I'm leaving for Port Ligar. It's way out in the sounds, on the northern tip of the South Island. I'm staying on a farm/bed and beakfrast about 2 hours on a windy one-lane road (check out the pics). It's a big family that runs the place and there is also a japanese and kiwi girl working there.

I'm really looking forward to getting back to the quiet life out in the country. Living in a backpacker is NOT what travel should be all about, but so many backpackers think thats all there is. Especially British travellers--many of them just pay Kiwi Experience to bus them around the country and see the sights, then go get pissed in the pubs at night. They don't meet anyone else that's not on their bus or that's not English. And they're everywhere. I joke all the time that I came to a foreign country to see the land, meet the people, and learn about English culture, because that's who dominates the backpackers and travel circuit around here. But why am I complaining about them?

Yesterday, Scott and I were on a mission: to build a bonfire on the beach. Scott is a 17-year-old New Zealander from Upper Hutt, north of Wellington. He came down to the South Island to work on the vineyards and stay out of trouble. I guess he's the all-too typical Kiwi youngster. He and some friends stole some cop cars that were sitting in front of the police station, crashed them into each other, and pulled over random drivers around town. When they heard they'd been found out over the police radio, the drove the cars off cliffs north of the city. He said this "wasn't too bad." Hahaha... That's the best story, and only one of many.

But while he was here, I kept an eye out for him and we kept busy doing mostly harmless juvenile projects, like the bonfire. White's Bay is a nice beach 20 minutes from here, on the east coast. You aren't supposed to have fires there (wouldn't be fun it were legal), but we saw a lot of evidence for other fires, and we were on the beach anyway (no fire danger.) We spent a good part of the afternoon gathering drift wood and kindling and chopping it up. Scott, like all Kiwis, knows how to catch every tasty sea creature you can find on the NZ coast. He gathered some mussels off the rocks along the shore, but promptly fell into the sea and dropped everything he had. If you haven't gathered by now, Scott hurts himself or otherwise gets himself into trouble on a regular basis. It makes for pretty entertaining viewing.

We waited around for everyone to get back from work (he quit the week before because he sprained a muscle in his shoulder) and advertised a big bonfire night with a complementary tour of the glowworm cave nearby. Glowworms spin little webs to catch insects and use little lights on their heads to attract them to their traps. On the cave walls, they look like green stars. Basically, we were envisioning a great evening on the beach with a huge fire to keep us warm. Lots of people expressed interest...

and predictable backed out when it was time to go. I don't know if they thought it was too cold out, or too wet, or they were just lazy, but its really annoying to have a bunch of so-called independent travellers which lack any sense of adventure. They would rather do what they always do on a Friday: sit around and drink. And we also were told the road to the beach is gated off at 7 pm, so all the planning was for nothing.

But I'm not one to roll over and die, so I packed my car full of firewood from the hostel and recruited a fun French couple to come down to a different beach. We still saw glowworms, and we still built a fire, though I wouldn't call it a "bon" fire--just big enough to keep us warm if we were close. I had the prescience to buy marshmallows and Scott and I spent two hours roasting them. We ate an entire bag. Still not as good as US marshmallows though.

And scott hurt himself. Several times.

I took him to Picton today so he could catch the ferry home. He has to go to court on Monday. The law (and outstanding warrants) finally caught up with him and he's hoping he'll get only a home detention. Prison is still a possibility. We went into town early, had some coffee, played a round of putt-putt golf (which I won by 2 strokes... I had the score card :), got some fish and chips, and played a bit of pool before we checked in at the ferry terminal. It was late, as usual, and we played Daytona 500 racing at the terminal with some other friends from the backpackers that drove up to see him off.

I won those games, too.

I haven't even talked about the 9 holes of golf I played on Wednesday (I lost a few balls, and successfully used a 5 wood for the first time) or the wine touring I did just before (maybe the reason I lost those golf balls). But I'll keep those memories for later and remember them fondly as part of the 5 weeks I spent in the southern most wine country in the world.