The first few times behind the drivers wheel took me back to when I was 15. Except now I'm on the left side of the road and doing the exact opposite of everything I've ever been taught to do. It was a little daunting at first, but once I got the hang of it (i.e. stop hitting the wind shield wipers every time I tried to turn), it was easy.
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| It's time for another, good idea...bad idea |
The most difficult transition I had to make was the "round-a-bouts". There are hardly any stop signs, all they have is these damn round-a-bouts. For those who don't know this is where the cars do exactly what the name of the intersection suggests. The person on the right, has the right-away, so everyone yields and waits for whatever car is awaiting to their right. Everyone except for the silly American driving for the first time in a new country on the "wrong" side of the road that is.
I took a few "forced practice runs" on the round-a-bouts but we did reach Wanaka safely. It is the final destination for the trip. My favorite little town in New Zealand. The scenery here is magnificent. There's a small lake right by the main street in the city, we're overlooking mountains on every side of us. Very majestic, but I'm just as happy to be out of the car.
We stopped off at the first pub we see (naturally), we were awaiting Matt's friend Kenneth. We had a nice set up in Wanaka. Kenneth is a snow board instructor on one of the mountains. For bringing his truck all the way down to him, he let us crash in his cabin with him and a few of his house mates. Plus, we planned on spending at least one of our 4 days on the slopes of Mount Cadrona, at discounted/free rates of course.
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| We made it |
To paraphrase; we made it to Kenneth's cabin, or frat house on the mountain. Really cool place, lots of cool people in it. We get a mattress on the floor, and a mattress in the garage. Guess it's time to put on my "Jim Beam fleece", could be a cold and uncomfortable night...but, I've slept on worse with less, so no complaints here.
Things get messy, quickly. We finish off the largest bottle of Mr. Beam one can purchase before we even leave the house. I remember bits and pieces of the evening. I know we went to a bar with all the house mates. I know that we left all of those house mates at that bar because we were out "with too many dudes". I know after countless encounters with various Kiwi's and other foreigners, it was determined that our loud American accents offended just about everyone.
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| Debauchery it is then |
We're flabbergasted by this. We're also quite intoxicated and let's face it, it's impossible for people not to like YOU when YOU'RE drunk, right? When you're drunk; you're smart, funny, charming, invincible, life of the party, know karate...maybe that's just me...when I'm drunk...but I doubt it.
Last thing I remember from our first night was standing in a peculiar alleyway, talking to a guy with dreads and his girlfriend. It's a common practice when you're looking for something to ask a guy with dreads. They'll know. They always know. They've been around, they've seen some things...they just know what you need to do or where you need to go.
I find what we were in the market for, I also find what we were originally NOT in the market for as well...we make our way back to the house. Little did I know, that was the beginning of the end.
Matt and I wake up the next day to an empty house, everyone is at work. How? I don't know, they're better men than me, I wouldn't have made it. I once quit a job to go see the movie "300". So that should give you some hint of how work can affect my decisions...if work just so happens to be in the way of something important...like sleep...road trips...or outlandishly gore-filled movies.
We're trying to decide what to do for the day. Then it happens, the worst idea anyone's ever had...EVER.
I check my pockets from the previous night and behold what I found. 2 little slips of paper in a plastic baggie...or in other words...acid. Not always a bad thing to find, but in this instance it was.I'd tripped before back in college and had a marvelous time, talking to the trees, watching Yung Joc lip-sync John Mayer songs (don't ask). Seemed like a good idea. Matt had never done it before, but we figured "why not, nothing to do today, in a new country, crazy road trip, let's cap it off with this and go to Puzzle World!"
What we should have considered was, "we're hungover, we're already in a negative state of mind, we're hungover, let's NOT go to a place called "Puzzle World", we're hungover." But we didn't. Idiots.
We take the tabs and walk to "Puzzle World". How would I know that one small place of fun and adventure would ruin my life for the next 24 hours? I didn't but I'll tell you why that happened.
http://www.puzzlingworld.co.nz/attractions.html
Here's the link of the actual place itself including the attractions. I included this so you could see for yourself and then imagine it on a psychedelic drug...not a good combination.
We walk into "Puzzle World", pay our money and sit down at a nearby table of what? Why puzzles of course! Nothing is happening. Matt keeps asking me for a play-by-play of what he should be feeling, I don't know what to tell him or how to describe it, I'm just waiting for it all to begin.
15 minutes go by, or an hour, I have no idea because it did kick in. Matt knows it and I know it. We're not talking any more, I can't talk because I'm inside the puzzle on the table in front of me. Matt's getting bad vibes already, so he said he was going to the bathroom. After I climb my way out of the puzzle on the table...I walk outside and find him laying on a picnic table, he doesn't want to be inside.
I try to get him to come into the maze with me. I'm still thinking this place is awesome, we paid money to be here, we might as well do it. I should've left while I was ahead. Matt doesn't want to come with me, I tie his shoelaces together as a stiff penalty.
I walk into the maze. I walk right back out of the maze.
Too much. Couldn't do it.
I walk back into the maze. I can't let a standing structure of wood and screws beat me I think to myself. I take a few turns, I'm lost already. As if on a rope, I claw my way back to the front door where I came in. Everyone else is laughing having a great time wandering around in the maze. This is my hell. I'm in hell.
I leave the maze, defeated. I look up, there are small children entering this maze, alone. Navigating themselves to the flags that the participants are supposed to find before they leave.
My ego kicks in. I WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS! I go back into the maze a third time, determined to defeat these small children for no apparent reason except the fact that I'm acting like a complete blockhead.
I go even further into the maze. I am so lost. I can't even find my way back to the original door. I try every turn and it leads me deeper and deeper into nothing. "I have got to get out of here", my brain reminds me.
I find my way to the outskirts of the maze finally, I drop down to the ground and roll out underneath.
I hope people were watching this, I must have looked like a lunatic.
There wasn't even a Minotaur in there. Why was I so afraid? No danger whatsoever, and yet, here I am terrified, trembling, rolling to "safety". I go to find Matt to tell him, he's lost in the clouds still laying on the picnic table.
Obviously Matt is being no help in the battling of Minotaurs department, so I again leave him to his own devices and venture into the room of holograms. This calms me down immensely, it's full of cool colors and funny images that change depending on your angle in accordance to the picture. Things like, cupcakes that turn into full cakes, fish that swim, nice images that are in 3D so everything is intensified.
I run back to get Matt because I think he'd feel better and such a room would put him in a better mood. We walk back in, I show him all the cool ones that I found exciting. Apparently I didn't check out ALL of the photos in the room because towards the end we find a happy clown at a birthday party that turns into a scary clown coming at you! Then we come to the final picture, it's a door...then you move....and it turns into a gun! In your face! In 3D!
What is this? Keep in mind, that all these occurrences could have easily been self induced...so they may or may not be real I have no idea...in my defense...Matt saw them too, so they count as real to me!
We go into the next room full of famous faces. Giant model faces all over the room, everyone from Ghandi, to Mother Teresa, to Albert Einstein. They all just watch you. That's it. Everywhere you go in this room, every face follows you.
This room was designed to creep people out. Matt has had enough of Puzzle World at this point. He tells me he doesn't care about the rest of the place and goes back to his picnic table "where it's safe". I wish I would have went with him.
I venture onto the "Ames Room" where there is a video camera set up to film you as soon as you walk in. You walk in at one end and the room seems tiny and you look huge, you even have to bend down, then you walk to the other end and the room is now huge and you appear tiny.
I spend a preposterous amount of time trying to figure out this illusion. Inside the room, it didn't look like it was built any different. I probably walked in and out of the room 5 times, just to watch myself on the video again. It was probably the only fun I had at Puzzle World.
The next room, ruined...my...life.
The tilted room, which I didn't know was tilted, absolutely warped my brain for the rest of the day.
I walked in quite happy and unsuspecting of what this new room had to share. I turn right and suddenly I'm laying on the wall...which now appears to be the new "floor". I say this because I'm looking over at a billiards table appearing on it's side, people are struggling to stand, no one, I repeat..NO ONE in this room looks happy....I don't know which way is up in this room!!!
I only know 2 things at this point...
1. There's a baby stroller...in the room...on it's side. Who the hell brought a baby into this madness!? Why!?
2. I have got to get the hell out of here!
I crawl my way out, terrified. My brain has been altered. More so than when I arrived. I can't get it out of my head. From that point on, EVERY new room I walked into, I received an extreme case of vertigo.
I would literally have to touch walls and the floor, sometimes sitting down just to get it to stop, it was awful. I didn't know how to handle it. Every single time I walked in somewhere new, bathrooms were atrociously difficult to navigate...they were too small and I had too much responsibility to perform in there, couldn't manage them. Too much going on with my penis in my hand...bad combination.
We leave Puzzle World new men, warped, busted, terrified men...but new men all the same. The sense of relief to be out of that place is the only thing that kept us going I assume. We found a nice sunny hill to lay on and watched the clouds for awhile.
I say awhile, because I have no idea how long we were there but when I came to, Matt is convulsively shaking because he's so cold and the sun had went down. He's a weird shade of purple, match that with his blonde dreads and red beard and he could have passed for an inverse oompa-loompa.
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| Not taken while tripping, but I imagine this as "world watching" |
I remember watching the shrubs on the nearby mountains seemingly crawl up the mountain, like they were giant ant hills and the trees were the ants. It was funny at first...but then I couldn't get it to stop, so I went into the house to lie down. I too have had enough of this day.
Going indoors made no difference everything was moving inside the house. Including the design patterns on the mattress I tried to lay on. I talk to one of the roommates, about nothing I currently remember. He must have thought I was out of my mind...probably because I was. They were all good sports and had been there before, once they found out what Matt and I had been up to that day, they helped with the transition.
I remember laying there that night, trying to go to sleep. I'm not really sure if I actually slept or was just in a state of conciousness where you're awake but the body is resting. All I do know is that the boys came and "woke me up" at 7am to go to the mountain to snowboard.
Perfect. Exactly what I need to get over an acid hangover. I'm still not sure things are what they seem at this point. I made it a practice to touch anything in my path to check my dexterity, as well as the subjects actuality. We make it to the mountain, all the guys snowboard and were gracious enough to let Matt and I borrow their gear. Also, we only had to pay for 1 day pass because we were with an instructor so the total of this snowboarding day was $100 total.
I used to go on ski trips with my father when I was younger, so I have been on the slopes before. I never really grasped the concept of "pizza and fries" to slow down in skiing, so on these week long trips generally I would be injured or out of the commission (in the hot tub) by Wednesday. I knew this was going to be a rough day on my body.
They put me on the bunny slopes and watched me fall for about 30 minutes before the general consensus was that I'd never learn on the bunny slope, so we need to go to the top of the mountain so I can get "more practice". Oh, so you mean, so I'll go faster, have more chances to fall and generally endanger myself and others along the way??? Exactly. Sweet.
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| My first trip snowboarding |
We reach the top and I get off the chairlift without falling or tripping anyone, this day is already more successful than yesterday. Now we're at the top and there's no lift going back so here I am slowly careening down, trying not hit anyone. I fall almost every turn I make, while I lay there I watch as our host the instructor, goes down the other path where the hills and rails are. Jerk. He does a few tricks and then waits for me so he can give me a few pointers, so that was nice. I felt bad because he spent a lot of time trying to get me to understand the dynamics of snowboarding when he probably just wanted to "shred some powder". He told me that was his job and he has no problem with it, plus he loves to teach and really enjoys the moment when "someone finally gets it".
It wasn't as bad as I let on. Well, the first time was. However, after countless falls, bruises and general soreness, they told me something that actually clicked. When you turn to face the mountain, the more you lean toward the mountain the less room there is to fall and the impact is also less. So they asked me, "Would you rather fall up the mountain, or down it?". Fall up please; my butt, back and head thank you kind sir.
After that it was great. I had such a blast on the mountain, we spent a few hours out there and I didn't die, so that's always a plus. I'm no expert by any means but at least the next time someone wants to go snowboarding, I'll have an idea of what to do.
We leave the mountain tired but in a much better mood. Our flight back to Auckland was the next morning and we were leaving pretty early. I guess you could say that Wanaka was literally the best and worst part of the "trip".
