Sydney Reflections on Queenstown

Well I’m in the Sydney airport right now, waiting for my flight to Singapore to board. For some reason they put me on a flight that goes to Singapore, then London, rather than on the flight that goes from Singapore, then Frankfurt. Instead I have to transfer to the flight I could have been on the whole time after I land in Singapore.

There is a couple behind me bickering about “going to the loo.” They smell like mothballs.

I haven’t written anything since before Queenstown—it’s difficult using Trevor’s computer. Mostly because it’s a PC and I don’t like the click option for it.

Queenstown was a fun trip. It’s a rather enjoyable place, just a ski town nestled between two mountains and it abuts a beautiful lake. It has a walkway that runs alongside it, similar to the Lakewalk.

The first night we were there, we went to a comedy club and watched a couple people perform. They were okay, though the most exciting part of the night was when Trevor and I discovered that one of the guys in the drunk group sitting behind us grew up in Maple Grove. The two of them talked for a while (his name was Joe and he was a photographer/ski bum) and I tried to listen in, but the drunk girl sitting next to Joe decided that I’d have to listen to her instead.

It was rather difficult understanding what she was trying to tell me, though it was obvious she thought it was important (really she was just trying to tell me why she’d left Auckland), but her accent was so thick that I had to ask her to repeat everything she said about three times. Each time she’d happily oblige, giving me a sloppy smile and closing her eyes so long for each blink that I was convinced she was about to pass out. She never did, though. Props to her.

The day after that, we headed over to “Nevis,” a bungy jumping place not far from Queenstown. For those of you who don’t know, the first bunjy jumping site was in Queenstown. We didn’t go on the original one, but went on a bigger one a bit farther away.

We jumped 134 m, which is about 440 ft.

Just going to let that sink in.

For a video/pictures of this event, please refer to my facebook account, where you can see both and get a good idea of how it went for me.

I was pretty confident and excited about it the whole time up until the girl who was three in front of me. She had a minor meltdown on the platform, though the bunjy team was able to talk her off the ledge (and into the valley). After her was a guy who also had a meltdown, though this one was not so minor. Instead of being talked off the ledge, he talked himself down from it and refused to go.

Trevor looked pretty nervous when he went. Though he took it like a pro and jumped off when he was supposed to. Yay for him! I did a terrible job filming his jump on the flipcam, and for that, I apologize to him. But he did an excellent job with mine, so at least I’m happy about that.

I was the last to go (they had us go in order of weight). As they sat me in the chair and got me ready to jump, the man came over and said, “Last but not least, ey? Show them how it’s done.” So I laughed because I really wasn’t sure I’d be able to. But then I did and all was well.

One of the best finds in Queenstown was a little burger joint called “Fergburger.” We saw it our first night in town, and we commented on how it reminded us of Mesa because it was late at night and the line was out the door and the people hardly seemed completely sober. Thursday night, though, was the night when we got to experience it for ourselves.

The night began like any other. Trevor and I, after spending a relaxing afternoon hanging out and reading after the adrenaline rush of bungy jumping from that morning, decided that we wanted to go out to eat at a “nice” restaurant. And by “nice” we meant a place where you could sit down and pronounce the names of the dishes. Preferably not expensive. Unfortunately, Queenstown had no Perkins or Denny’s, so it was impossible to find a “nice” and “cheap” restaurant. Instead we followed the somewhat jumbled directions that we had received from the man who drives the shuttle between the town and the jumping center. What we could really only remember was that it was supposed to be an Australian restaurant, you get there by taking a right and then a left, and that it had a fireplace.

We followed our own instructions, melded together with the instructions from this gentleman, and found ourselves at a restaurant on the left side of the street at the very end after having taken a right to get there. Looking inside, we could see a fireplace at the back.

Unfortunately, after sitting down and being handing glasses of water at candlelit tables, we glanced at the menu and realized that we were in a French restaurant with sky-high prices, un-pronounceable dishes, and sky-high prices (they were very high, at least for us).

So we gathered our things and made a run for it, creating some fake excuse about having to meet someone. As we ran out, the waitress laughed. She’d known we were out of our league.

This is how we came across Fergburger for the second time.

The next morning, before we left Q, we returned again.

Fergburger is quite possibly one of the greatest finds of that trip, and I am seriously considering returning to Queenstown to be a Fergburger bum and spend the rest of my life making Fergburgers for the masses and bungy jumping every Friday (to start the weekend off right).

My last day in New Zealand was one of the most beautiful days of the trip. It had been cool, but beautiful when we were in Christchurch for the first few days, and then it was absolutely freezing—cold and wet, wet, wet—in Queenstown, but my last day in Christchurch was crisp and sunny—the perfect spring day that feels like fall.

So we went for a hike in Banks Peninsula. Trevor had been there before, but it had been foggy then. He said he was shocked by the how different it looks when there aren’t any clouds.

Because we had gotten such an early start for the day, by the time we were done with the hike and back in Christchurch, it was only one o’clock, so we spent the afternoon slacklining and reading in Hagley Park, where I made even greater improvements and managed to stay on for nearly a minute. Yay for me!



Trevor even said that of all the people who can’t slackline, I am the best at it. This is a compliment.

After a few hours of this, we walked into downtown, going into some shops, and eventually found ourselves in a Mexican restaurant for an early dinner. I had a Margarita. He had some Happy Hour Chardonnay. We also ate food.

The next day I left for the next portion of my adventure, the portion that would take me 11,500 miles (in 35 hours) from the location of my final week of summer.

Next up: airports, airplanes, and airline food


**This was posted (mostly written) a few days after I was actually in the Sydney airport