Queens in Queenstown

This is a backdated entry about June 1-6, 2009.

The Whiffenpoofs hit Queenstown like a girl hits a tennis ball. It seemed athletic, but the clothes were still pretty cute and there were likely some high pitched grunts. It was in Queenstown that each whiff spent approximately a third of their entire budget for tour and about half of their adrenaline.

We stayed at the St. Moritz hotel, a place designed like a ski lodge, we think. It had the fittings of a US luxury hotel, but the floor plan of a third world maze. The hotel was able to make fantastic pizza and to make you sort of unsure that you should be where you were walking. The lobby had this funny, too homey feeling that made every walk through it feel like an intrusion.

Looking outside the window of any of the rooms, or to the right when you walked out of the hotel was one of the most pastoral, small town scenes one could imagine. Mountains encircled the lake, which led into the frigid shotover river. On one side, a ski village, Queenstown, was built in levels into the mountainside.

Even our flight into Queenstown was scenic, as the group snapped photos out the windows of the snowcapped mountains and verdant lakes below them. I imagined crashing into those beautiful mountains with our plane. I would first go get some shoes out of the cargo hold and then make the heroic trek into town to summon help. This somehow would be a novel idea that only I had. Especially the shoes part. Footwear is an essential part of heroism.

We sang for our hotel in Queenstown, and for an elementary school of children that answered all questions with a resounding “yeees”, which is how they say “yes” in New Zealand. Every child at this school also got an award for some academic accomplishment or another, in a ceremony that we all got to be physically present for. At this point, a cappella has granted me the privilege of seeing many schoolchildren make many important rites of passage. And many unimportant rites of passage, like getting an award for, basically, breathing. It appears the foundationless self-esteem building bug has transferred more successfully across the Atlantic than the swine flu has.

Aside from the delicious chicken, bacon (MITCH MORGAN), sour cream pizza and bottomless breakfast of the St. Moritz, the whiffs gravitated towards Fergburger, a local burger joint slowly putting all others out of business. But there were hungers that restaurants could not satisfy. A hunger for ADVENTURE. Or advintcha, as the kiwis would say it.

Our first morning, Trevor, Joel, Jay Kim and I took a jet boat up the shotover river. None of us had made the calculation: 80 mph plus + open air + inverse seasons = wind chill. It was one of the most terrible things that I have ever subjected my ears to. It was the Bjork of cold wind. Jet boats sit 2 feet deep in the water until they get up on a plane. While planing, they can travel in water that is barely 2 inches deep. And--either our driver really liked this trick or its the fastest way to stop the boat--with a quick lull in the throttle, a spin on the wheel, and a punch on the gas the boat skids around in a tight 180 on the surface of the water, coming to a stop. Once I stopped thinking that we were going to smash into the sides of the river, or the poles that we were going past (our driver was my age), I pulled out the camera and tried to get a few shots of the scenery.

With our body temperatures low (always good for holding your breath for a long time) we were ready to go rafting. Heli-rafting to be exact. Rememher, it's winter. The roads to the top of the river are so icy that they have to ferry you up in a series of helicopter rides. We rode in the chopper with a guy named Chief who didn't talk much and had a very American Indian look about him.

We asked Chief if the pilot wouldn't mind giving us a bit of a wild ride. This is not accepted practice, apparently, as my parents chastised me for it later. But Chief seemed to think it was a great idea. We donned our headphones after successfully entering the chopper without being decapitated. This is the first time in a non-winged flying craft for any of us. The thick headphones mask some of the thumping drone and mic everyone enough that they can talk. The mics pick you up when you are talking and only broadcast that. Otherwise, you would be hearing everyone's ambient noise.

Airborne, the pilot took us toward our destination, the top of a mountain. He banked hard right. Helicopters don't turn like planes, where the g's press primarily down through your spine, perpendicular to the floor. The chopper just turned on its side and the ground fell away and we fell over into our harnesses. The front of the chopper is a bulbous glass window, the better to see the ground as it alternately rushed to meet us and disappeared below us. Combined with the weightless feeling of sudden altitude change, this proved to be quite an exhilarating view. Like riding on Mr. Toad's glass bottomed air-boat.

We had already donned our wetsuits and we sweat in them during our ride up to the top of the mountain. We got a guide, again about my age, who had flipped the last few times he went down this river. His name was Skip or Chip or something else that old people are never called. Maybe its different for Kiwis. Maybe there are bundles of old Skips and Billies and Juniors running around. They would likely be more disconcerting guides than the young ones.

The river was lined with ice and decorated with the rusted pieces of failed mining equipment from the New Zealand gold rush. Yes, they had a gold rush. I sat at the front with Joel, who is frequently intrepid. We set the pace for the rowers behind us. Before going off waterfalls, we tucked in, drawing the oars into our chests and sitting on our knees in the middle of the raft. Otherwise, we sat out on the sides, in order to dig our paddles as deep into the water as possible.

We went through a cave too narrow to paddle in that let out onto 10 foot fall. The cold was scary at first, like we would get frozen through. I never was scared whitewater rafting before, and my newfound fear made me stick in close to the middle of the raft. But falling in is not the worst thing that can happen. By the end, either the ice had disappeared or I found a small reservoir of courage. I paddled like the best tourist in a tight wetsuit who hasn't exercised in months you could imagine.

The next day was our final day of adventure before departing for Auckland. Some tried to skydive, but the clouds were too thick. I went to canyon swing, which is like bungee jumping, but you don't bungee you...swing at the bottom. It is in a canyon, which follows the shotover. We rafted under it the day before, and jetboated to a location somewhat before it on the river. With a swing—contrasted with a bungee—you can jump off the edge in many different ways as there are no constraints on the angles placed by needing to bounce and not break necks. Trevor went off in tails that I packed in my backpack. Joel went off strapped to a chair. I jumped sideways off the cliff, like a pencil dive from 1st grade. I was naked.

They called down a girl, who usually works a cash register, to put on my harness. The men down at the jump were afraid or something. They were very smalltown heteronormative, or macho, or whatever, --some thing I haven't been around in four years--about it. From my second jump, I know that the girl put the harness on a little loose compared to the way the guys did it. I found myself very concerned about whether they were comfortable with my nudity. I shouted a six letter acronym as I jumped off the cliff.

If you want to look flattering naked, wearing a harness that segments the portions of your body on a cold day while doing something terrifying isn't a great place to start. When I came up after my jump they cattle prodded me in the butt. I screamed. Apparently, the cattle prods are a tool of the trade up there. They make people jump off the edge, or help in the jump master's black humor terrorization of them.

Second jump, white tie and tails and gloves. And black BDSM mask. They suspended me over the chasm and I lifted my feet over my head, extended my arms towards the river, and they released me. I rocketed to the ground on my back, looking with a tilted head at the approaching ground. Additional jumps were only 10 NZ, about 7 dollars, but we had a concert in the evening, so we had to get back. We sang them “Time After Time” while they burned DVDs of us.

The next morning, our wallets lighter and our bags heavier with DVDs and picture books of the Queenstown scenery, we boarded a plane to Auckland. International destination 1: complete.