The World According to Fitzy – New Zealand Adventures
A warm welcome to our first guest blogger, Andrew ‘Fitzy’ Fitzpatrick, who reports on a week of New Zealand misadventures.
Heading to NZ before the zonal was going to mean a heavy schedule of touristing and socialising before settling down and playing a serious chess tournament….In reality the two are probably the wrong way around, but such is life and we aimed to make the best of it. The tour group consisted of Dave, Tritty, Casper and myself. Here is a brief outline of our intrepid exploration of the wonderful New Zealand north island.
Auckland:
A 21st, a few lazy days, an afternoon at Murray Chandler’s mansion overlooking the Auckland harbour in his pool/spa, and a series of excursions into the more renowned of Aucklandian watering holes. We had a trip down to a local bay with restaurants and some cyclonic weather, and managed to catch up with Laura Spiller [Ed: New Zealand chess president Paul Spiller’s daughter] and her friends a few times.
We entered a backpacking trivia contest and Dave managed to win a jug of beer within 10 seconds of walking in the door. We were then introduced to a new sport, ‘quarters’, by a couple of crazy Canadian girls who seemed to have a far better handle of the techniques (and rules) than us – fortunately, it’s not such a bad game to lose.
Highlights of Auckland would be the quarters game, losing our luggage straight out of the airport by putting it in the back of the wrong car, the Onion striking again and hanging out at Palazzo Chandler overlooking the bay and musing about the philosophical evolution of the species.
Contiki:
First stop on our tour, run by the infamous Contiki organisation, was the spectacular Bay of Islands. Part of this involved heading up to Cape Reinga and watching the Tasman Sea collide with the Pacific Ocean (which is also a very spiritual place for the Maori people). There was also sandboarding on the sand dunes of 90 mile beach. For those who have never done sandboarding and like doing fun but stupid stuff……do it!!
Back in Paihia, we had a joint contiki tour party with another tour group, which got predictably exciting and led to a table dance-off, face paint, Swedish-style Jager bombs and other shenanigans – including the “mine” game. [Ed: A rather juvenile yet oddly hilarious game whereby anyone saying ‘mine’ out loud has to do ten push-ups – regardless of where they are.]
Good times all around. The other night we had there was a little quieter; we called a night after it looked as though half of Paihia (and not the good half) was descending on the bar we were at.
After Paihia, we headed to Waitomo where we undertook Black Water Rafting which was incredible. There was another crazy night out at the local pub, with boat race challenges (where both Tritty and Dave successfully anchored Contiki to victory against all other tour groups), more crazy dancing, and the tallest of our travelling party even finding a little romance along the way.
From Waitomo it was to Rotorua and the Zorb…the idea of being in a large plastic ball rolled down a hill seems silly, however is fantastic fun…watching people trying to stand up proving to be the main spectator sport! Other Rotorua activites including White Water Rafting, or simply relaxing in the hot pools at the hotel. That night included a Maori dance show with all the boys getting up to do the Haka and some of the girls doing a Pao dance. Following all this, it was goodbye from our group to some, however we did manage a room party with about 20 people crowded in playing a good old favourite game, “I never”.
The next morning we said goodbye to everyone and waved the bus off, before we picked up our hire cars and headed down to Taupo. A sweet house awaited us, and a good nap before another night of serious touristing – joining the Contiki people yet again on the party cruise….theme: Black and White with a touch of fluoro. Good thing we found a store that sold glow sticks.
Itwas a great night, from the boat we headed to a local club and stayed till about 2am before a few headed back to our house and played scrabble.
Highlights of contiki……Meeting all the people, heading up to Cape Reinga, black water rafting, boat races in Waitomo, Liberation Run in Waitomo, Room party in Rotorua, Cruise and night in general in Taupo.
What else did we get out of it? Well better arms and chests from the “mine” game, plenty of new friendships, and never being able to think of scrabble in the same way – especially after Taupo.