Costs:

I rubbed my eyes and squinted at the opposite bed hoping to see the Belgian girl packing. She hadn't changed her plans. I drew the curtains and saw the sun rising with not a cloud in sight. Damn sun, why didn't she appear yesterday instead! I tried to straighten the wrinkles from the tracksuit pants that doubled as a pajama for the night, loaded the 75litre backpack on one strap, and dragged myself to the orange bus. It was 8.00am.

The Belgian girl was replaced by a Kiwi who was making some research for his website. Unfortunately the English one was still with us. I kept two seats away from either moron, enough to make it blatantly obvious that I was in a sour mood. I tilted my head on the cold glass, and slept. In about 45 minutes the music stopped and Mixxo parked the bus somewhere in Fox Glacier Village where we were stopped for breakfast. I left the rest of the troupe to fatten themselves on pies and tea and went for a walk in a side street lined with flowered front gardens. On the right side of the street there were some fields covered with a low fog that reminded me of Stephen King's eerie descriptions.

We continued towards Queenstown passing through Haast and Wanaka. When planning the trip I was undecided whether to stop in Queenstown or in Wanaka. I asked Mixxo his opinion and he said "yeah yeah, the two are very similar you know." As the bus was going to Queenstown I decided to choose the easy option and go to the more popular village. I read my book for most of the trip, only lifting my head when Mixxo shared some of his tourguide wisdom. The only thing I remember him saying was "this area was featured 3 times in that famous porno movie called The Lord of the Rings."

We arrived in Queenstown at 3.00pm, and the three of us checked in the Discovery Lodge hostel. The hostel was disgusting. First of all it was huge, everything was well kept, cleaners were wearing uniforms, and rooms were perfectly symmetrical, full of impersonality. This was a hotel with bunk beds. No character, no homely feeling and not a spec of dust. The only missing thing was a detachable shower so you could rinse your ass comfortably.

After having a cup of coffee in the disproportionately small kitchen I went downstairs in the hostel's own travel arrangement desk to book the activities for the next day. Tired with the boyfriend game I thought I'd cheer myself up and start a new game. There's nothing better than inventing a silly game to amuse myself on a day like this, so I invented the 'where do you think I am from game?' The first candidate for the game was Lem, the gorgeous chick at the booking desk. [You crafty bastard, you played this game because you knew it was going to take her forever to guess.]

The game played much better than expected because she paid attention not to mention any country that she thought I'd find insulting. (I hadn't yet paid for the bookings). I read her thoughts and knew that she was dying to mention some Arabic places, but she avoided mentioning them by asking me my religion. When I told her "I'm not a Muslim if that's what you want to know", she just went, "oh no, now you've left me clueless." She then asked me to speak in my mother tongue, so I took this opportunity to verbally molest her in the dottian language. Now she was even more confused yet she still didn't want to give up, so she attempted another fuzzy reply which I found hilarious. She said, "are you from one of those tiny places that keep getting bombarded all the time?" I couldn't stop laughing. At last she gave up and I told here that I live in the dot. She couldn't recognise the name so I wrote it down for her to look it up on the internet. As soon as she read the paper she said "oohhhhh I know that, when I was a kid my friend went there and all she got me was an ugly pen." I understood that she wasn't amused and anti-climaxed by the result of the game.

After booking my activities I went for a walk near Queenstown Lake. There were two Crested Grebes and some gulls which kept me company while I was drinking whiskey and smoking the last Brazilian cigar I received in April. With a little less hair and shrinking to the size of a midget I might have been a replica of my father in his better days.

Feeling repelled by humanity I decided to go to bed early and avoid any contact with squalid humans. This tends to happens after I've had an overdose of socialisation. It's probably one of the ways which help me restore my internal balance.

View the complete Franz Josef to Queenstown Gallery here

Coming next: Queenstown