The exotic wildlife of Deer Park Heights.

Looming 600 meters above the city lies Queenstown’s best kept secret, Deer Park Heights. Scratch that. It’s not really a secret at all since they play ads for it on the radio every five minutes, promising spectacular 360 degree panoramic views of the Wakatipu Basin and encounters with “exotic wildlife” such as sheep, horses, pigs, goats, deer, llamas, and alpacas. I suppose calling llamas and alpacas exotic isn’t too much of a stretch, but they’re going to have a hard time convincing me with the sheep. Fun fact: New Zealand has an impressive population of 40 million sheep to its 4 million people.

Still, we thought we’d give it a gander and drove on up. For the cost of $20 per car we were allowed to roam the dusty roads of the 800 hectare working deer farm. I think that’s something I haven’t mentioned yet. Here on the south island, there are numerous deer farms and venison can be bought in the supermarket just like beef, pork, or chicken. There could be deer farms in the US as well, but I’ve certainly never seen any. It would be a bit silly, since we have such an overabundance of deer that they routinely chuck themselves in front of cars speeding down the highway.

For the low price of $1 coin we filled up a large tin with “animal nuts,” which essentially looks just like the pellets you find at any petting zoo and set off to drive around feeding crazy animals. Here I am with a few alpacas:

Alexa, as you may know, holds a special hatred for any non-human animals. Fairly recently she made an exception in the form of her mom’s dog, Shuggy, but otherwise fears/hates animals. Yet she volunteered to feed a baby piglet and, with some persuasion, even an alpaca.

Cost of admission to Deer Park Heights: $20
Bucket of animal nuts: $1
The look on Alexa’s face after having alpaca eat from her hand:

Priceless.

Apart from its animals, Deer Park Heights’ main appeal is the stunning views of Queenstown and its rugged terrain. The latter made it an ideal filming location for several scenes from LOTR: The Two Towers. Most of them were spots that only super nerdy film-buffs would recognize, but we found one that looked familiar. Remember the scene where Aragorn is fighting an orc on the edge of a cliff and then he falls off into the river below? Here’s the spot:

And that’s me hanging on for dear life! Oh no. Actually there isn’t a river far, far below, but just another ledge and then a gradually-sloping hill. For the movie they superimposed the Kawarau River (the one we traversed on a jet boat) into the shot. It isn’t too much of a stretch, since the Kawarau River is visible from parts of Deer Park Heights. Deer Park Heights also served as the filming location for a 1986 Disney movie called The Rescue, and a movie set (a Korean Prison) still remains. The farm is also being used for the upcoming movie, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, so maybe we'll recognize some of the scenery when that comes out.

For those of you coming to visit us in the coming months, you’ll be thrilled to know that you’re flying into the largest, most state-of-the-art airport in the world. Behold, Queenstown Frankton Airport:

On the bright side you won’t have to worry about it being a terribly busy airport.

As we left Deer Park Heights, we passed by this fellow:

Hugest deer I’ve ever seen in my life. For perspective, check out how big his head is when he decided to come closer to our car to investigate. Fortunately Alexa closed the window just in time.

So that's about it for Deer Park Heights, and about all there is to say for this entry. Until next time... go see a dentist if you have teeth like that deer. Gross!

This is a very long entry

Happy Thanksgiving! Well, not so much for you, my readers, since you are not fortunate enough to live in the future like Alexa and I do.

They don't actually celebrate Thanksgiving here, though. I suppose the Kiwis are an ungrateful bunch, huh? Kind of like you guys. Yeah, that's right. I spend hours meticuously slaving over each post on this beautiful blog, and yet weeks and weeks go by without any appreciative comments from my readers. It kills me.

So, what am I thankful for this Thanksgiving, you ask? I'm thankful to be sitting in our new room. Yep. We moved! ...about three buildings over, to another unit in the same lodge. Ha ha. It may seem like a pointless move since we're leaving Wellington in eight days anyway, but it had to be done. An already bad situation boiled over and reached crisis point, and we realized we needed out of the building we'd been in.

For some background information, allow me to introduce Ornery (all names have been changed to protect the innocent… or something). Ornery, along with his wife Silly, was one of the other inhabitants of our building. Ornery and Silly are pretty much the most worthless people on earth--including dead people interred in the earth, because at least they're fertilizing grass in cemeteries.

Ornery is twenty six, Silly's a little younger, and they have three kids, no jobs, and a passionate affection for drugs and alcohol. The kids live with their grandparents during the week and only visit on the weekends. This is actually a good thing, though, since Ornery and Silly aren't fit to raise a bowl of sea monkeys, let alone three young children. But because they aren't burdened by the daily tasks most often associated with child rearing, a typical day in the life of this magnificent couple involves: waking up in the afternoon, getting high and/or drunk multiple times, playing loud music, making the kitchen filthy, and having at least one (but probably more) dramatic shouting matches. But Eoin, you ask, how do these lovely fellows afford rent, food, drugs, and alcohol if they don't have jobs? The answer is simple: welfare! Every week a neat little slice of the taxpayers' money gets sectioned off and sent to the dynamic duo.

Being the terrible people we are, Alexa and I would often call the landlord to complain about, well... take your pick: loud screaming, loud music at absurd hours, pot smoke, living in filth. Now, our landlord is a good guy. He tends to get things done. He just recently acquired these buildings, and he's been doing a number of renovations to improve their condition. He works quickly, too. One day the TV in our unit stopped working, and it was replaced in a matter of hours. Yet, for some reason, we have heard the phrase "This is Ornery's last chance" at least seven point three million times. That's an awful lot of "last" chances.

Recently we found out the happy couple enjoy reduced rent in exchange for cleaning the common areas in the unit: lounge, kitchen, and bathroom. This would be fine, except--wait for it--they don't clean anything! Shocker, right? Two weeks ago we heard another "This is Ornery's last chance," in the form of the landlord telling us he was going to have a friend who runs a professional cleaning business come in to handle the common areas from now on. If you're a smart reader, as I'm sure you are, I don't think I need to tell you what happened next. But just in case Chad's reading this, I'll go ahead and tell you anyway: nothing happened. Ornery was still in charge of cleaning and nothing got cleaned.

Occasionally, and I mean occasionally, they vacuumed and took out the rubbish. Ornery would piss and moan about people leaving empty toilet paper rolls in the bathroom because he had to pick them up. At some point he left a passive-aggressive note saying "Throw out toilet paper rolls when finished using!" Later on, in his renewed frustration (Alexa and I complained again and he had to pick up more toilet paper rolls, gasp!), he added, "stop being lazy!" to the note.

This was too much. Perhaps he was being ironic, but it's more likely that Ornery was just unaware of his own laziness. So I thought I'd help him out. After coming home from the bar where I'd had my first drop of beer in two months(saving money is a bitch), I peed, saw the sign, thought "ha ha I am going to write on this," and wrote: You stop being lazy and start cleaning the toilets properly since you get reduced rent to do so.

Whoops!

The next morning a shit storm rolled through the unit. Shortly after I'd gotten out of the shower and was preparing for work--so this was around seven in the morning mind you--Ornery was out of bed and raging around the building. The first thing I heard him say was "fucking Americans," after coming out of the bathroom, and then he started pounding on doors and demanding to know who wrote the note. At first he seemed set on the idea that Happy (another inhabitant, who, quickly summed up is a mildly-retarded-due-to-braincell-loss, but otherwise perfectly nice, alcoholic woman who got me the hotel job) had written it and proceeded to call her virtually every obscenity imaginable and threatened to smash her face in. He pounded on our door too, but I didn't answer. When I left for work he was off sulking somewhere else.

As I headed for the bus stop, however, Alexa called me and said that Ornery had just tried to break into our room. Apparently he knocked. When that didn't work, he tried the door knob. Quite rudely I had locked the door since Alexa was still sleeping and he found that it wouldn't open. So, like any reasonable person would do, Ornery slammed his massive 250+ pounds of lard into the door--twice!--in an attempt to break in.

Alexa called the landlord and by the time I was home from work, a new room was ready for us to move into. I suppose our landlord must've felt this particular outburst demanded an explanation about all the supposed "last chances," because he told us the following: he can't just kick Ornery out because of the kids, and because Ornery is losing his welfare. Apparently WINZ (welfare people) check into who actually needs welfare so it doesn't get abused, and unfortunately "being a fat, lazy fuckwit" isn't on the list of qualifiers. This still doesn't make sense to me, since the kids live with the grandparents and are much better off for it--when the kids are around, Ornery constantly screams obscenities at them. I've heard him call the one-year-old a mother fucker several times. Lovely, that. Rumor has it he's been in jail for beating Silly. He does, at least, have a parole officer. All I know is that if I was in our landlord's shoes, Ornery would've been on the curb a long, long time ago.

The funniest thing about Ornery and Silly is something Silly said to me a couple days after we first met. We were discussing our backgrounds, and Ornery mentioned that they were half-Maori. Silly said, "It's embarrassing to be Maori, though, because other Maori are on welfare and don't have jobs and get arrested all the time." Come on, Silly. That just had to be tongue-in-cheek. If anything, the other Maori are embarrassed of those two.

Disclaimer: this has nothing to do with them being Maori, and I'm making no racial assertions. In writing this, I don't mean offense to anyone--except Ornery and Silly, and I'd be surprised if even they knew how to use a computer. Also, they can get bent.

So that's that. It's for the best, I suppose. This unit is much, much nicer. It's a bit more crowded as its a two-story building, but the people are all nice, polite, tidy, and--best of all--quiet. It's a shame we didn't move sooner. About four weeks ago we were offered this room, but we said no because we thought it'd be silly to move to a new room so close to leaving Wellington. And yet here we are only eight days away from leaving the city. Ha ha, oh well. It didn't take much time to move our meager possessions.

Whew!

In other news, I recently reconnected with my cousin (on my dad's side) Megan. She lives here in Wellington with boyfriend Jeremy, and we met up with them at a bar for quiz night. It was fun, despite us coming in 4th place out of 5. They were also gracious enough to invite us for Thanksgiving dinner at their place this Sunday, and we'll be heading over for that as well. Even a kajillion miles from home, I'll still be having Thanksgiving dinner with family, so that ought to be nice.

And you might want to congratulate me... because I finished my NaNoWriMo novel today! But Still We Carry On is 51,976 words (or 186 pages) long, written by yours truly, and those are all the details you're getting because it's a huge, steaming literary turd. I'm actually embarrassed to publicly display even the title. Yuck. Maybe someday I'll try to edit it, or maybe not. But either way it's there, and I managed to write over 50,000 semi-coherent words in a month.

As you know from Alexa's last blog, or the one before it maybe, we went and checked out the Weta studios, home to all of Peter Jackson's special effects/make up/costumer/everything gurus. The studios aren't open for touring, but they did have a little room with a few props and other odds and ends, as well as a brief behind-the-scenes film to watch. It was little more than a glorified gift shop, but worth a visit nonetheless. We managed to take these pictures to satiate my mom's constant demand for more pictures of us. Check it:

UGH! Just kidding, the internet is being really slow right now. I'll upload the pictures when I get a chance.


This past weekend we finally made it to the Embassy Theater, the cinema where Return of the Kind premiered. It was my first time in a premiere-worthy theater, and it was insane. Basically it was a huge, fancy opera-house type theater, complete with curtains! But instead of actors on a stage when the curtains opened, it was an enormous screen. The chairs were also quite plushy (although this seems to be a standard in New Zealand), and the chairs had the names of different actors on them. Some old guy in front of us had Liv Tyler's seats! The names on our seats weren't any that we recognized, unfortunately. In New Zealand seats are assigned in a movie theater, like when you go to a play or a sporting event. Your minds are blown, I know.

That's all for now, as I'm off to one of my last nights at Domino's. Seven more to go! I'll try to update again before we hit the road, and I'm not sure about roving updates. I may be out of touch until we arrive in Queenstown.

Mission Accomplished!

On my third attempt, I finally did it! Did I get a job that will give me more than 20 hours a week? Nope! Did I find a flat where the other tenants aren't pigs? Nope! Did I cure AIDS? Certainly not!

But I did, after somewhere over an hour of not-quite-aimless but not-quite-purposeful wanderings through the forests of Mt. Victoria, manage to find one of the Lord of the Rings filming locations!

After getting a rough idea of where I was heading from good old Google Earth (including a few pictures of what the area was supposed to look like), I set off on my journey. After about fifteen minutes of walking, I came to this map and used it to figure out which way I should walk:

Keep that image in mind. There's something incredibly ironic about it, but we'll get to that later. I spent the next three quarters of an hour wandering through the forest. Eventually I came to an area Alexa and I had been to earlier, on the day we hiked up to the Mt. Vic overlook. I decided to head in the opposite direction from our last hike, and it eventually lead me to a little signpost that said "Lord of the Rings Filming Location" and had an arrow pointing in a vague direction. Sure enough, it lead to the right spot.

Are you guys ready for this little piece of Hollywood history? It's pretty exciting and intense. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Here it is:

Ooooh. Ahhhh. ....yeah, I know. It's not all it's cracked up to be. Elijah Wood didn't even spraypaint "Frodo wuz heer!" or anything. What a jerk.

Anyway, hard to tell from this picture, but the area in the center (where the sunlight is most concentrated) is a shallow alcove. It's the place where the four hobbits jumped off the road and crouched in the shelter of a massive tree's roots to hide from the Nazghul in Fellowship of the Ring. Apparently the tree was an artificial set piece/computer generated, so it's not there.

Once I was sure that was the right spot, I continued along the trail and shortly came upon the very first map (from the picture above) where I'd started. This time I noticed something I hadn't the first time. Scroll up to the picture. See the little, two-foot-tall signpost in the foreground? Guess what it says. Yep. "Lord of the Rings Filming Location." So I probably could've saved myself a good deal of wandering if I'd noticed the sign. Maybe that's where Alexa would've come in handy?

Now that I've wasted all that time talking about an over-rated patch of dirt, I'll give you a few general updates:

The weather has been uncannily fantastic for the past week. It only rained once! Alexa and I took advantage of this and checked out the Botanic Gardens. Yes, for a third time. I'm pretty sure we've seen just about everything there, though, so we probably won't go back for a while. We also took one of the free tours of the parliament buildings. I know that doesn't sound like a very exciting thing to do, but it was actually pretty interesting. We learned a bit about how New Zealand's government works. Unlike the corrupt, broken-beyond-a-grain-of-hope pile of shit we have in the US, the New Zealand government still cares enough to take their citizens' opinions into account (what a novel idea). Whenever a new bill is being discussed, the bill is advertised in the newspaper. The general public are allowed to write in a request to attend a council meeting about the proposed bill. Each and every Kiwi that sends in a request is allowed to attend, and they're all given a turn to voice their opinion to the government officials involved (house members, cabinet ministers, the prime minister; so it'd be like the average US citizen being able to talk to Bush, his cabinet, and the senators) without fear of intimidation, or being interrupted, or any other sort of rudeness. The only requirement is that they return the courtesy shown to them--anyone who interrupts or speaks out of turn will be removed from the premises and banned for six months. Of course, New Zealand's small population (four million) gives them an advantage, but I still think it's pretty cool.

In other news, I'm in the process of finding a way to quit my job at the hotel. I signed a contract saying I wouldn't write about my job at the hotel, so we're going to play a game. The game is called Pretend Eoin Works At an Imaginary Hotel. Here's how you play. I'm going to talk about imaginary, hypothetical things that might take place at an imaginary, hypothetical hotel. Your part of the game is simple: just think about how horribly gross it would be if these imaginary things were true (because, who knows, somewhere in the world they might be. Wink wink.)

At this imaginary hotel, which is not by any means a dump--they have nice rooms, nice beds, and charge a good deal--they may or may not lack standards when it comes to cleaning the rooms. Most of the imaginary rooms come with an electric kettle, tea, coffee, and mugs. Some more expensive rooms also have imaginary plates, knives, and glasses. Most people would think it makes sense to properly clean these dishes after they've been used--you know, with water and soap and all that--but not in imaginary land! In imaginary land, the dishes are "cleaned" by running them under water for a few minutes until there's no longer any visible dirt, and then put back for the next guests to use. Hopefully there's no bacteria in this imaginary world.

In the imaginary hotel, sheets are washed after each guest. You might think it would make sense to wash the comforter, or at the very least the smaller blanket, but you'd be wrong. In the imaginary hotel, the blankets and comforters are never laundered. I could go on, but I'm sure you can imagine it for yourselves.

At any rate, I have an interview tomorrow morning at Cafe Maranui. It's a popular cafe right on the beach in Lyall Bay (another suburb of Wellington, where cast members of Lord of the Rings surfed/learned how to surf during their down time--what the hell is with this entry and Lord of the Rings?). I also put in an application at a New World (grocery chain in New Zealand), plus I received a phone call from The Warehouse, another New Zealand chain I applied to back in September. One way or another I should be able to quit the job at the hotel in the immediate future, two weeks' notice be damned.

I think that's about everything for now. You may have already noticed, but I added links to my online photo albums to the right. Right above the link to Alexa's blog. The first album contains Auckland, Rotorua, and a little bit of Wellington, including the Zoo. The second album is all new, though. It includes the Botanic Gardens, parliament, and many pictures of the city in general. Go check it out!

I'll leave you with this parting advice from an old friend of mine: Confucious say, "Man who stay in imaginary hotel wake up with real herpes."

Amen.