Can I interest you in the double?

K-town and E-town arrived from A-town on December 30th and it's been a whirlwind of activity ever since. Okay, maybe 'whirlwind' is a strong word. We spent New Year's in Christchurch and hung out at the flat for a few days before embarking on our Double Island Dual Week adventure. We made another trip out to Akaroa (my home away from home away from home) in an attempt to swim with the dolphins, but the weather would have none of it. Steve taught the ladies to play cricket, and we spent an inordinate amount of time taking dorky-- sorry, artsy-- pictures.

But you can't see any of them because I'm in an internet cafe in Queenstown and don't have uploading capabilities! Ha ha! You have to wait. They're really artsy. Queenstown is just as full of bars, tourists, and opportunities to throw yourself off of precipices whilst strapped to expensive equipment and possibly a trained stranger as I had been lead to believe it would be. Our hostel is a funky old hotel with farside cartoons and amusing quotes all over the walls, and a hot tub that we took advantage of yesterday after our hike. In our matching swimsuits. We're big dorks.

We walked the Mt Crichton loop walk along 12-mile creek and it was really cool. Particularly the part where we slipped between two sheer rock faces covered in moss and came out at the edge of the creek where we could climb along a felled tree to get to the other side and work our way up to the most tremendous waterfall. It was like a giant fire hydrant thundering into his tiny pool. The other highlight was probably that we made it in 3 hours and the guide said it would take 2-4, so we might be able to complete the Tongariro Crossing after all. We'll see in about 10 days time.

When we got to Q-town it was "Wasted Wednesday" so we figured we should head out to the bars and see what was up, but as far as we could tell it was nothing, so we came in just after the witching hour. But yesterday after our hike we found that our paragliding booking was cancelled due to poor wind conditions, so we rescheduled for this morning and decided to head to the first Sports Bar we saw and try to watch the Rosebowl ("I think it's on today. Oh well, we'll see what happens") They had it on a giant projection screen! Absolutely amazing, nail-biting game right down to the last seconds. But more exciting (well, as exciting anyway) was the guy sitting next to us who was from LA but had been living in Queenstown for 10 years. Bill gave us a tour of all the bars in town after the game was over. We had missed them all the night before! They were behind dumpsters and up staircases and between restaurants and just generally tucked away. It was so wacky! So we tried a few out last night with the Australians in our room but abandoned the Thursday nightlife as we had Wednesday's, this time in favour of actually getting up and out the door in time for paragliding.

But alas! It was not to be. The weather gods are not pleased with us. We drove all the way to the top of the peak only to discover that the wind take-off conditions were "marginal." So here we sit, refunded and a little crestfallen in an internet cafe. We'll be departing for the Fox Glacier shortly, and tomorrow we drive on to Punakaiki to see pancake rocks and beaches. Maybe we'll bust out my giant kite and pretend to be paragliding.