Friday night headed across to Hokitika with Joe and Dave and Miriam.. for the wild foods festival. More traffic than I’ve ever seen going through Arthurs Pass. After stopping for the mandatory spicy wedges in the Bealey Pub it was on to our campsite at hokitika. We had to endure 2 hours of Burt Bacharach before we got there though, *thanks* Joe ;)

Hokitika has a population of about 3,500. For the wildfoods weekend it grows to about 23,000. So there’s a bit of an atmosphere!! I’d say the average age there (amongst the more splendidly drunk!) was about 16… Quite a large police presence… but no real trouble to speak of.

So – yes – the festival itself started at 11am. We started fairly tamely – trying ostrich (quite tough), snails (taste of garlic sauce), Mutton Bird – a sea bird which tastes of anchovies (or at least our one did), Whitebait (fairly bland but quite nice fish).

This pic is of Miriam eating punga (a fern root – it was – well.. not too bad, but covered in a white goo which was slimy and seemed quite like.. nasal mucus..!

Then it was onto more adventurous foods, not always with happy tasting consequences.. we sampled from the ‘tasty titties’ stand… sounds good I’ll admit.. but it was cows udder… which was really fatty – quite like eating pork fat..

Joe bought a plate of ‘mountain oysters’ (sheep’s testicles) and bulls penis… This was definitely the worst plate!! I steered clear of the oysters.. (unlike Dave in this pic)

But I did try the bulls appendage… and it really was awful. The taste was not good, the meat? or whatever it was – is extremely chewy.. and it’s difficult not to think about what you’re actually chewing on while you’re chewing.

not my favourite.

Then it was onto the hu hu grubs. They were actually quite tasty.. had one dead one and one live one…

They taste quite like peanut butter to be honest.. found in rotting wood mainly. There’s a short video of Joe eating his here (800kb)

Now, the reason – or one of the main reasons that Dave came, was so that he could get a flight up around Punakiki area where he and Joe have been prospecting for (and finding) new caves… Dave’s friend Leo has a pilots license and flew over for the day… so we had a short flight – (an hour) up and down the coast – in a 4 person plane!!! It was super fun.

That’s a pic of the wildfoods site from the air.. then we turned North and headed up the coast.

We also flew over Greymouth, which had just been hit a couple of days earlier by a tornado I *think* this pic shows some of the damage.. but it might just be an abandoned building too…

But mostly the flight was about getting to see a large area of potential caving sites easily and quickly. Mind you, how you’re supposed to match from the pictures you take to what’s on the ground.. tricksy I’d say when it all looks like this…

There’s a short video from the flight here (2.5 megs) I recoded it with divx.. so you may need to download a divx player from here

That was fun though.. then we had a bbq (and more alcamahol) at a friend of Miriams friend :) A guy called Tom. And he has a great little house down on the beach. He works for DOC – and you can see it in the way the house is set up and decorated… I dunno – just wooden surfaces everywhere, a huge veggy garden, an outdoor bath.. etc. etc.

I did go for a wee walk along the beach at night – hundreds of driftwood fires all up and down the beach with lots of friendly people to chat to! – twas a great evening.

The next morning wasn’t so much fun ;) but 2 ice-creams (Boysenberry and Hokey Pokey, and Passion Fuit + Boysenberry) saw me safely home. Unfortunatly, John Loane still holds the record for the biggest servings of ice-cream. Something I intend to work on!

Busy week, salsa on Monday (next week apparently we’ll be going out to one of the clubs and going on the dancefloor… that’s scarier than any paragliding!!) Maeve also left to go back to Ireland.. shame shame :(

Went paragliding again on Wednesday, which was fun. Got 4 fillings this week, which wasn’t so (teach me to enjoy so many smoothies…) But today – I submitted my Online Expression of Interest.. (so I formally said ‘please NZ, can I stay.. go on do let me’) So hopefully that’ll go ok. I had 215 points and needed 100.. so I’m thinking I should be ok for the first part anyway ;)

It is a bit of a dilemma though what to do – I definitely want to stay for a while, but when to travel? At the moment I’m thinking July ish.. and go through Asia and Africa.. there are a couple of friends who are going to be in the Nepal/Tibet area – Liam and Declan.., so who knows, could meet up there.. but then 1/2 of me wants to do a proper ski-season here and do a shorter trip home.. ahhh I dunno! will all work out anyway I’m sure.

And in a weeks time Glynn and my friend Mick McKenny arrives, so taking off a week to head around the S.Island, hopefully taking in either the Kepler or the Routeburn – Great Walks both of them (I think).. Can’t wait really.

The plan for the weekend was to head to Mt. Cook with Jana and Julian and get some climbing done. Unfortunately there was a Big Swirly Orange thing heading up from the South West.. which are, of course, to be avoided at all costs.

So instead I went paragliding with Dave. Thems the breaks I guess.. Friday night headed out for beers to the Dux.. while I was slagged half way through the night for moving off beer and onto Lemon Lime and bitters (really is a nice drink)… I was quite thankful for it the next day as I wasn’t flying with a hangover :)

Spent about an hour in a field – possibly less – learning how to run forward with the glider, bring it up over your head, and control it a little. Then it was straight off to Taylors Mistake to fly. No tandem intro.. oh no.. straight into it. So the first two flights you start off 80m above the ground..

It’s definitely odd running off a mountain. Something I’ve never done without having a rope attached before! But it’s so much fun. So much. At the time, I will admit, I was – just a tiny bit apprehensive (in a Manly Way of course ;) however, we had perfect learning conditions so it was ok.

We then decided to do 3 extra flights – to work towards PG 1. Once you have this cert (standard around the world) you can fly solo at any site – under radio supervision. If you continue on to PG2 you can fly solo anywhere. It costs $550 to get PG1.. that means you get your training and 10 solo flights.. quite cheap I believe… anyway, that’s what we’re going to do.

So yes, 3 extra flights.. only this time it was from 280m up (end up having about 2 mins in the air). Here’s a pic of dave at the top.. we fly down to sea level..

It was fun, (I can say that now ;) Dave was a much more natural flyer than me, though I think that’s prob ‘cos he was still hungover and didn’t have any fear ;) hehehe (joking joking). I must admit though, I’ve found it a little hard to stop thinking about the next flight. Which I think has to be a good sign. This next pic of me coming in to land..

The rest of the weekend – well quite lazy really. I’ve been slightly geeky of late, and been playing (just finished) Half Life 2. It’s such an excellent game – mainly because it incorporates realistic physics into the play. There’s an excellent weapon – called the Gravity gun.. and with it you can pull objects towards you and fire them around (or stack them up to climb over obstacles – or smash through windows (and have the glass shatter the way it should..) really – it’s simply fantastic. The physics engine was mostly designed by a company called Havok. I did apply to work there after college.. Unfortunately at the time they weren’t hiring.. otherwise obviously I’d have been employed.. (not). It’s a great company though – based in Dublin.. my friend Graham works for them. As a part of working there you get free extreme sports insurance.. how cool is that?!

And then on Sunday it was Glynns bday. Ancient now he is. Then climbing in the avo – just a few short routes.

I also started my application process for residency..

Has been a fairly hectic week – work has been fairly busy with projects to tidy up, and there have been friends coming and going too. Maeve has moved in for the next couple of weeks (unless she goes to Australia early!) Had my friend Susans’ leaving dinner on Tues, Jana’s leaving & birthday bbq on Wed, and Rozs’ (who I bought my car from) yesterday (as well as extra salsa practice!)

Also played my first squash game in aaaaaaages with Thor. It was great fun, was completely stiff the next day! but do want to play more.

Supposed to be climbing at Mt. Cook this weekend, but not quite sure what the weather is going to be doing. There’s also a trip to the West Coast for a person in the tramping club (Emily) bday. But then I just got it sorted yesterday that I’ll be heading to the Wild Foods Festival in Hokitika. There you can eat grasshoppers, pigs ears, grubs… and hopefully drink enough to make it palatable.

AND! there’s a chance I might get a short flight in a Cessna – the guys I’m going with are cavers (who I did Harwoods Hole with a while ago (and other trips)). They want to take a plane up and have a look at an area they’re hoping to find new caves in.. so all going according to plan I’ll get a trip in a Cessna too :)

Then on Sunday checked out of my quite excellent backpackers… It was called Beethoven’s.. it’s quite definitely not everyones cup of tea.. It’s run by a guy called Alan. He’ll quiz everyone who goes to live there, our conversation went something like this:

Alan : “So why you choose this hotel?”
Me: “Well, it looked like the most interesting one in the guide book, with curious signs all over the place, and an eccentric owner” (knowing he was the eccentric owner, and kinda wondering what would happen)
Alan: “Oh, they use such big nasty words… do you know what eccentric means?”
Me: “I suppose it means off-centre – ex-centric – imbalanced”
Alan: “Oh.. very clever.. yes, I prefer the word interesting“

So that was Alan. There were lots of gimmicky signs up all over the place. I’ll not put them all up (some are kinda crude) but here’s an example:

There are others here and here and here and here and here and here and here and finally here

After checking out went to the Te Papa museum – the National Museum. (free rucksack storage for the day too ;) The part on the treaty of waitangi was quite sad really.. explains the dealings between the British crown and the Maori.. ‘not fair’ springs to mind.

The plane trip back was… different… our pilot kindly informed us that if we didn’t stow our baggage correctly then we’ll throw it out the door and at the end bid us goodbye with live long and prosper

Finally headed over to watch Billy Connollys world tour of NZ (part 3) at Johns.. it’s kinda sad, he left ChCh today (Monday) to head back to Ireland.. it’s been absolutely fantastic having him around – just an excellent guy to climb with and hang out with – unbelievably energetic (even by some of the standards I’ve seen this year ;) and can eat huge quantities of food (and everyone elses) and not put it anywhere – but that’s prob ‘cos he just climbs and bikes and surfs all day. Yes, he will be missed.