Day 242 (Friday 13th) - P Party At The Poo Pub
I feel I'm forgetting stuff as I write these - never mind, most of the stops we make seem to be to look at views, all of which are lovely and all, but not really worth naming here. We stopped at Greymouth for two reasons - firstly to pick up a few more people who had done the trans-alpine train, which included Scottish John from Christchurch (who I mentioned before) and a really hot Brazilian girl, whose name escapes me. She has fallen in with the trend I had noticed - every Brazilian girl I have met on this trip has been really sexy. Incredible. Anyway, the second reason was to get our costumes for the 'P' party tonight. The first stop was a charity shop, filled with awesome clothes, where I picked up a penguin outfit for $4. This consisted of a dinner jacket, black trousers, white shorts that I could wear under the trousers when they were really low, giving me penguin legs, and a white shirt. Also I got a 1 year old's yellow jumper, cut it in half down the middle, and put each sleeve over a foot as flippers. I picked up a yellow visor which I coloured in to look like the beak & eyes. The Poo Pub itself was awesome - run by Les, who is 84 with a huge beard, it is a tiny little place with polaroids all over the walls of the various big nights that have been hosted there in the 15 or so years that the Kiwi bus has been passing through. They looked pretty epic, and I was a little apprehensive that we wouldn't be able to live up to the precedents set by the previous guests. I needn't have been worried - there wasn't so much nudity as other nights, mainly due to the weather, but otherwise we did pretty well. We had a wicked dinner of rump steak and venison stew, then we went to get ready. Among the 50 or so costumes we had were Mario & Luigi (plumbers), 2 paedophile priests (amazingly well done by Adam and Rich), pre-menstrual (terrifying drag costume from Hans), Pac-man, a prostitute (also worrying cross-dressing 0nly worrying because he actually looked really good) and a few punks, pirates and popstars. Mainly due to happy hour, everyone got blasted and had an awesome night. I may have kissed someone I didn't mean to (which noone knows about yet) and managed to discard most of my costume outside the room, as well as losing my hat. Bugger. Anyway, it was all awesome, we looked pretty great, and we all got to know each other pretty well.
Day 243 (Saturday 14th) - Possum Pie & Rugby
Eugh, I felt awful all day, terrible in fact. I made the decision that a red satin scarf and dinner jacket were the perfect items to wear over my jumper. In fact, loads of people rocked up on the bus still in costume at least a bit, and still drunk at least a bit as well. On the bus I just dozed for ages, trying to concentrate on anything other than my headache. We stopped at a little place along the way which had a little museum about how Kiwis used to catch deer to supply farms - by flying over them in helicopters, leaping off the skids and tackling them to the ground - mental. Also they had some possums, a massive wild pig, and some other cool stuff. My hangover breakfast consisted of a pancake and a possum pie - the cajun possum legs looked incredibly unappetising, so I steered well clear. I can't really remember what other stops we made, but safe to say they weren't too remarkable. We got into Franz Josef, drove out to the glacier for a quick look, then went back and checked in, had a nap and went to watch the England vs. New Zealand game in the bar. Remarkably, I felt good for the first time all day after my first pint. The game was really good, some friendly rivalry between the England supporters (all the English people) and the All Blacks supporters (absolutely everyone who wasn't English). Unfortunately England lost, but not by such a large margin as to be embarrassing.
Day 244 (Sunday 15th) - Franz Josef
Today was our Glacier walk! The day started off really grey and rainy, and we were all rather apprehensive that it might all be cancelled. Kitted up, we hopped onto the damp and somewhat smelly bus to the rainy and grey glacier. There was, however, blue sky on the horizon. It was a really cool day, we donned our crampons and climbed up the glacier for hours, going through crevasses, and at one point a tunnel through the iced. It wasn't quite as pristine and blue as I had hoped, but once I realised that the dirt was all just transported rocks and that it only extended a little way up I got over it. We were split into 5 groups depending on our perceived confidence and ability - I chose to be in group 3, which travelled at a slightly more sedate pace than the first two. The only thing about today was that it's rather hard to describe in words - suffice to say it was awesome, worth the money ($130 I think) and was pleasantly exhausting (the whole day lasted 8 hours).
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