Hi, Brutos here,
The Master is asleep and so is Eusebius so I have decided to write this blog. Why should he be the one that gets to write everything?
We are in Queenstown now. And the master’s brother is here, Joseph. We’ve all been feeding on extremely rich hunting grounds. I’d be hard pushed to recall a time when so many kills have been made in such a short amount of time. Preys are everywhere and are easy to, pin, wrestle and bite your mental morals into!
Queenstown is Kerry on steroids. It’s green, really green, one hundred greens, with massive multi coloured, multi-sculptured, mountains, clear, blue, round, oval, egg-like, splatted paint-shaped pristine lakes and forever skies with mesmerising cloud formations and memorable multi-coloured horizons that seem to whisper at you some kind of secret song that only mother nature knows how to sing. The song is everywhere down here. Dogs can here it sometimes but humans can’t. In this part of the world the euphony is all around the land. I have heard it on more than one occasion. Eusebius told me that he did too. It is unique and special.
Something Queenstown has that Kerry doesn’t have is glaciers and massive ranges of snow peaked mountains, long, wide, deep gorges and ravines with acres of ripe, fertile, rich soil speckled in carefully manicured lush vineyards of Pinot Noir. Eusebius is more of a Melbec dog and the Master is into Merlot. But no sweat, each dog to his own tail, each dog makes his own whale. We dogs only can register three tastes unlike a human tongue, but, I’m happy with my lot. You can only imagine the smells we can get with our big wet sensitive noses that you humans can’t. Let’s say we’re even.
In the adventure capital of the world there is too many activities to choose from. If you were here for two months you could do a different activity every day. And have loads left over for a return visit. On offer is: the famous AJ Hackett bungy jump, the biggest being the mighty Nevis leap which is 143meters high, there are 3 jumps in total; sky-diving, heli-hijking, heli-rides with drop off mountain bike descents, parachuting, hang gliding, speed boats, glow worm cave explorations, plane flights to the nearby famous Milford Sound fiord lands, world class fishing, rally driving, 6x6 and 4x4 mountain tours, clay pigeon shooting, a variety of horse riding extravaganzas, white water rafting grade 5 rapids, awesome body board sledging and oodles more. The place is made for adventure. And doesn’t fail on delivery. It is the first city in the world that I have ever been to that seems to be dominated by sports. It’s great… I love it here.
Let me give you an example why. Today was sledging with the aptly called Serious Fun Company. A crowd of lu-la, crazy, cool, thrill seekers. This is white water rafting without the rafts. Instead you use a body board… sound strange, it is… The way it works is you lash on a helmet, kind of like one of the ones that you’d see in an inter- county hurling match. Next, is a thick 5mm wet suit, flippers, shoes and gloves. After that comes the shiny board. The trip I went on was in total about 12km, a two run, one and a half hour riot down grade 3 rapids. Grade 3 mightn’t sound like much when you are in a raft but let me tell you, first hand, that when you are in the water without the protection of a raft, when you are at the mercy of dangerous whirl pools, jagged rocks, rips, curls, waves, rushing foam, branches, other boarders, sharp flippers and strong currents, travelling at up to 40km an hour it’s a big fat, crusty based adrenalin pizza your taking a few slices from. For me one of the highlights of this brilliant trip was getting a chance to take on some whirl pools. When you a hit a whirl pool its very easy to go into one, and if not to strong to catch an eddie (a nearby current, usually in the centre of the river) and kick your way out. However, if you lift your board vertical, instead of horizontal, place both hands on the top of the seam and hold it close, parallel to your body in a standing position you catch the whirlpool and spin around super quick and then eventually get spitted out. I caught two really good ones with three full spins inside. I also caught a good wave, paddling against the current and also threw a few mouth filling 360 pipes.
At one point in the second run, it started to rain. It was a beautiful site. 12 people rushing down a roaring river, multi coloured helmets bobbing in the water, boards tossing and turning, legs kicking hard, teeth clenched in wonderful smiles, shouts for joy filling the air, high-fives and index fingers pointing for the heavens and a thousands exploding drops smacking the river’s surface forming thousands of miniature bouncing hollows followed by a thousand more .
A serious work out, serious sport, serious fun, serious hunting.
