You killed my cat/possum/sheep/goat/dignity

Ok so this is literally a month behind but fuck it. Much has happened. I haven't uoploaded partly cause the computer sucks where I was living, but I'm out iof there now. Also I was really busy, and also I was afraid to give boring updates, not that things have been boring. Instead anecdotes will do. I am back on the south island, just landed today and passing through Queenstown on my way to the fiords. I like Kiwis. I like how their schools are lax with the rules. I had a teacher from Namibia on one of my trips who told the kids to call one of the south african boys a Trassi. That's Afrikaans for "Transvestite". Also the fact that the teachers just giggled when the kids would say Maori words as an excuse to swear. For example "what the WHAKapapa where you thinking?" or "How the WHAKAhoro are going to do that?" See in Te Reo Maori (the Maori language) wh is pronounced 'f'. So that was funny. I also like when they went "SHITtake mushrooms!". After that point I figured it was okay to tell the story about how I told Evan DeBoekhorst not to be such a dickfor on one of my trips. We had Evan so confused that after a few minutes he was yelling "WHAT THE FUCK IS A DICK FOR!?" at the sky. That's when it clicked. Instead of being embarassed he thought it was the funniest joke ever and kept reporting back to me and Mike Pope every time he'd nailed another one of the kids with it. Well the Kiwi boys loved it, including old Earl, the salmon-coloured tight wearing old man teacher who looked like the sargeant from full metal jacket. The boys and the teacher thought it was gold. Kiwis like to tackle or shoot land dwelling mammals, because all of them were introduced here. There is a national obsession with hating things that are introduced, plant and animal alike, even if it's beautiful or not that harmful. Every time you mention a mammal they say "Yeah, the last one was shot in" [insert date and story here] or, "yeah, you can shoot those." I saw a plaque for a bird the other day that was explained as having introduced itself from Australia. Introduced itself? Is there any other way to show up somewhere other than straight up evolving there?

Well since there are SO many ferrell goats around the banks of the Whanganui river, it's a natural kiwi instinct to try to tackle them. You don't have to tell them (kids or adults, guides or clients) to do it. They'll naturally chase them up the river bank and tackle them. It's universally understood that mammals not fenced in (or sometimes even fenced in) are to be tackled. The kids on my last trip caught a baby goat, and the most priceless moment was when they were trying to decide on a name. Earl piped up from the stern of his canoe and proffered: "How about Dickfor?" So there's a goat in some kid's backyard ('garden' in NZ) named Dickfor, at the reccommendation of his high school teacher, who is in his 60's.

Another story. A good friend of mine here, named Dazza is full of stories. a coupleI loved:

From the point of view of Dazza, who's a real back country Kiwi cowboy type.

So a mate of mine had a neighbour with this pet rabbit. One day he comes home from work and finds the cat playing with the neighbour's dead rabbit in his yard. The rabbit is covered in blood and mud and is for all intents and purposes mangled. My mate thinks "Ah fuck" and tries to work out how he's going to break it to him. He decides he'd rather not so he grabs the rabbit from the cat and takes it to the sink. He washes it and shampoos it untill it's clean and fluffy and not covered in blood anymore. My mate hops the fence and puts the rabbit back in it's cage and thinks "Job's a good 'un". Next day the neighbour's like "Dude! You're not going to believe this! It's a fuckin miracle ay! The other day Lily's rabbit died and we buried it in the garden, this morning I found the thing dead in its cage!"

One more

A mate of mine is a builder, ay. One day as he's driving home from work a cat leaps out in front of his car, and he just canes it. He gets out to see the damage. He sees this cat lying in the gutter, still alive. Being a builder he gets a spade from the trunk and decides to put it out of its misery. He goes up to this cat in the gutter and starts beating the tar out of it, and the lady that owns it comes running out of her house. "Stop! you're killing my cat! Stop it!" She will not listen to reason, she's totally hysterical, and he can't get a word in edgewise. Eventually the cops show up, and when the lady finally calms down my mate explains. "Lady, I'm sorry but I hit it with the car before you came out I was just putting it out of it's misery. The lady goes "No, my cat was sunning itself, the cat you hit is still under the fucking car."

This is why I love New Zealand. More to come.

The other day I went off a 7m waterfall in a raft. That is another reason I love New Zealand. The owner of our guiding company (we raft as well) knows the owner of another company near Rotorua, so we got to raft for free there. Since we were all guides of some description they gave us our own raft and we ran it blind. Needless to say a class V waterfally blind is somewhat terrifying but resulted in more laughter than anything else. Pictures to come, video on facebook.