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Sam and Stu's Kiwi Travels
We had a day in Queenstown today as it was the Snickers day on the bay, part of the winter festival. We wandered down to Lake Wakatipu in time to watch the More FM Birdman competition at 12. All the entrants have to design their own contraption and then take a running jump off of a specially designed pier which they erect in the middle of the lake. There are prizes for the most original design, the person that jumps the furthest, etc, etc. They're all pretty crazy as the temperature outside the water is about 3 degrees so the water must be absolutely freezing!!!! Once they've jumped off the pier, both the people and their contraptions are rescued and taken back to shore by the life boat teams - only one team's contraption (funnily enough a polystyrene boat!!!!) made it back to shore without any help!!
There were loads of different entries, a Canadian Moose, a man on a flying machine (i.e a bike with a big flag pole thing stuck on the back), a lady dressed as Marilyn Munroe who did a bit of a striptease, and then jumped into a polystyrene bath tub and wheeled it off the edge, a polystyrene boat, a man with a cape, a group of monks, a man with a ball and chain, an airplane (which didn't fly at all!!!), a rugby team who kicked a rugby ball off the pier and then dived after it, and finally one of the radio presenters who jumped off in just his underpants (really wasn't a pretty sight!!!). The overall winner was Marilyn Munroe and she won return flight tickets to Australia so i guess it was kinda worth it!!
After we had a bit of a wander round town while the Splash for Cash was going on (all the entrants are taken out on a boat to the middle of the lake and they have to swim to shore and then do a bit of a run, the first one across the finish line wins. Apparently there was one guy who was miles ahead after the swim but when he got to shore his legs were so cold and tired they couldn't take his weight when he tried to run and he kinda collapsed in the gravel and lost :0(. Aaaah!) Then we headed back for the finale which was a load of professional paragliders strutting their stuff. It was soooo good - I took a whole film of pictures. They had paragliders which appeared over one of the mountains surrounding Queenstown and when they were above the lake each paraglider would release another paraglider who would drop through the air until they released their parachute, and then they glided down to the lake and landed either in the water or on one of the life boats (depending on how accurate their landing was!!!). A couple of them also landed on the beach. There was one guy who literally waited until he was about 200 metres above the ground before he released his chute, he just plumetted towards the ground, opened his chute and made a perfect landing on the beach!! Was pretty cool!!!! Really want to give paragliding a go now!!
We'd heard about a place in town that does really cheap Apres Ski dinners, called Dux de Lux, so we thought we'd give that a go. The dinners were actually really yummy and we managed to get a table right next to the big open fireplace so we had a realy nice evening. We got chatting to another English couple called Ali and Will while we there. They've been travelling for the past 6 months and have got another 6 months to go (b*****s!!). They've already been to South America and the Cook Islands and are headed to Australia next. They're only in Queenstown for a couple of days but we got on really well - was really weird, they've been living in Clifton for the past 3 years and we had to come across the other side of the world to meet them!!
Anyway, after several glasses of wine and more than a couple of games of pool (Stu won pretty much every game :0( ), we decided to head to World Bar for a couple of tea pots. In World Bar they serve all their cocktails in actual Tea Pots for some reason!! Stu hit the Brain Erasers while I tried out a Chocoholic - mmmmmmmm!!! After a couple of Tea Pots and a few more thrashings at pool we decided to call it a night and stumbled back up the hill to the Copthorne.
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