Arrival

Today was a big day, one that both started and finished at four am. Willy, Josh, Luke and myself all arose early in order to get to the airport for Willy's bucks weekend away in New Zealand. A quick cab ride over found us at the airport with most of us beginning to wake up. We were met there by Nick Boothman and Nick Fleming and after a bite to eat spirits were high.

It wasn’t long before we were on a plane thundering through the sky between Melbourne and Queenstown. For those of you who know me I’m not a great flyer but I’m happy to report this flight was quick, easy and smooth…just how I like them. As you may have guessed today’s blip is of some of the many snow capped mountains I saw on the way into Queenstown, which has quickly climbed up my list of the most beautiful towns I’ve ever visited. Simply stunning. Also get used to seeing mountains as they will no doubt feature heavily in the next couple of blips to come.

After landing safely, and another taxi ride, we were at our accommodation. The apartments we had booked were great and way more luxurious and spacious than I had imagined, with a view that was hard to look away from (will definitely be blipping it another day). However it was now past lunch and so we quickly left our beautiful apartments to walk up the road for some takeaway and to buy the copious amount of alcohol we needed for the weekend. It was while we were eating our nandos that it started snowing. I was stoked. This town was somehow even more beautiful with softly falling snow. It also made it perfect skiing/snowboarding weather something we would continuously be asked if we had done over the course of the weekend (and no we didn’t do any skiing/snowboarding).

After a few drinks back at the apartments we headed into town to try a famous ferg burger, a local takeaway that won the worlds best burger a few years ago. This fame was well earned as not only was there a half hour wait (the minimum waiting time at any point as told to me by the cashier) but it was also one hell of a delicious burger.

Next was the pub crawl. As you can imagine after a four am start we weren’t really in our prime but thanks to some jager bombs, and Josh and I buying a bright pink pig beanie for Willy to wear, we quickly rallied. It was a impressive (and long) night. The pub crawl was really good and really boozy, but also a lot of fun. As Willy is a soon to be married man rather than try to score with any woman he instead decided to get as many handshakes from as woman as he could. He got a lot, helped in no small part by his pig beanie. What a weird kid.

We eventually made it back to our apartments and after some more chatter all split up to our beds. The time, you guessed it, was four am.

- Damian