Down to Queenstown

Our balloon trip finally happened, though a day late. The event began at a painful 4AM, when the little ballooner bus came and picked us up at the hostel. After rendzevous'ing with about 30 other passengers and crewmembers, we headed off to the launch site. The "site" was actually some remote township's cricket field. Being freakishly tall, I was chosen to help with the balloon inflation by holding a very large fan and being the last to jump in the balloon. Things went well and we were off. It was a big balloon though I had seen Cast Away the night before and was thinking that if a 747 can go down, this little canvas balloon could easily do the same. I refrained from
mentioning this to Shandelle until we landed and everyone had had a glass or two of champagne. I'm clearly the ideals travel companion.

On the bus ride back, the chatter from the other passengers was all about the death-defying stunts they'd performed earlier in the week (bungy jumping, jet boating, going down rapids in a wetsuit, etc. etc.). It seems that everyone's idea of fun is to come to New Zealand, one of the safest countries in the world, and jump off a bridge with nothing but a big rubber band tied to your feet.

Shandelle prefers to risk her life a bit more intensely by braving the hostel kitchens on a nightly basis. She's recently dragged me into these food preparation efforts. It's a madhouse. Usually 15 people sharing 4 stoves, three sinks and 30 sq ft of space. Five or six different languages flying across the room. I've learned how to say "you burned my chicken, you idiot" in four different languages already.

The key to kitchen survival is to keep your distance from the Brits, who are usually smoking, grilling some nasty beef thing, waving knives all over the place and
chugging some god-forsaked cheap beer. The Asians present a problem as well, as they are usually steaming something. The Germans, Dutch, etc. are the
best since they're usually just putting jam, butter, and bananas on bread. While their cooking is beneficial because it causes no hazard to fellow
chefs, it's clearly much more dangerous to the coronary arteries than any of the "adventure" sports down here.

Tonight, I plan to give Shandelle some respite by playing video games alone at an Internet cafe here. If she's not going to risk her life jumping from an
airplane, I clearly don't want to shorten it with too much "Michael".