"He just smiled and handed me a vegemite sandwich"

Sorry about the subject, but I am literally listening to "Land Down Under" by Men at Work right now. It's on random. Well almost random. See my ipod broke and I lost 5000 songs, so I salvaged about 500 of them. The odds of Land Down Under coming on are not. . . low. When did my iPod break? Like 3 months ago. My camera did too. Water damage, thank you pelican cases. Over 700 NZ dollars to fix, so that got sent home in the mail today. What else broke? Well a couple of days ago one of the buttons on my watch stopped working. So it doesn't do a lot of important things any more. I think there's a Maori curse on me. Has been since my arrival, pretty much everything's broken. I've sewed literally over 10 separate things since I got here. My car has broken several times, gaskets, door locks, windscreen wipers. . . but let's not dwell on the negative. I'm leaving momentarily anyway, so how much more shit could break - I'm not going to finish that sentence.

This picture is what life is like around where I live. Sheep make traffic jams, dogs outnumber humans in cars. Although this is not a car, it's not even a truck. This is referred to as a 'ute'. And if you don't know that around here, well then you ain't from around here.

Man I barely kn0w how to use blogger anymore. I'm aware of my hypocritical nature, making everyone blog when they leave and then falling off the face of the earth, I won't apologize because that's getting old, I'll just say it's stupid and I know it. Bob, remember when I made you start your bobventure blog? Well I'll do my best now, is all I can say. It's taken awhile for me to find the right kind of internet around these parts really. The library is free but until they took one of the computers away from the tourists and gave the power to the locals I never had the time. Also I was working, so I never had time anyway. Nowadays there's more days off then on, as winter is creeping into NZ and that scares the tourists away. I apologize for posting pics already on facebook, but I can only upload to facebook and link from the blog, I can't upload to the blog, who knows why.

So what have I been doing? Well sea kayaking, duh! I'm working in a place called doubtful sound. Remember when I didn't thnk I'd get that job? Well I got the job. They called me when I was on the north island working with douchebags and asked if I was still available, so I came down. Doubtful sound is inaccurately named a sound. There's 14 of them in fiordland, which is in the southwest corner of the south island of new zealand. They're all Fiords really, cause glaciers, big ANGRY glaciers, carved them out, not rivers.

Little factoid for ya there. The black and white shot is from a spot on the day tours we run. Anyway I have to get off this thing momentarily so I gotta go.

Okay continuing. I've got a story for you: Deb you already know this, I'm sorry, but really everyone who cares should know it. Here they have a legend, it's like our sasquatch, but (get ready for this) it's a Moose. A Canadian Moose. There were some moose released here in the 50's, and there is one advocate that swears they didn't die out. He claims there is one left, wandering the hills of fiordland. He found some hoofprints, and he sent some dung back to Canada for analysis, but it was inconclusive. I was telling this girl from Newfoundland all this on one of our tours. I was saying I wanted to make a lifesize silhouette cutout of the moose and set it up amongst the grasses at a river mouth in the fiord, and that prompted a story from my boss; Reg, the old hearty kiwi that runs our little operation. His southland drawl makes every story hilarious. See every morning we cross a lake on the way to an isolated road we have to drive over to get to the fiord. This lake has lots of islands on it. Another piece of the puzzle is that back in the day (probably the 20's) there were some red deer released from the UK here, just for sport hunting. Like all mammals introduced to NZ, they did way too well. They immediately took over the hills of fiordland, outcompeting rare (and now endangered) native birds for food. People started shooting them, then skinning them, and then eventually exporting them for 1000's of dollars and making quite a living from it. This 'shoot everything that's not a bird' mentality extends to possums, rats, mice, goats, cows, horses, sheep, stoats (like weasels) you name it. Well a few years ago, some joker decided it would be funny to set up a stuffed deer on one of the islands. The radio banter went on for days, people would motor out quietly on tours to show customers the silent and still deer on the little island in the middle of one of new zealand's largest lakes. It was only a matter of days before it had the first bullet hole in it. A few days after that it had about ten. Everyone had to learn for themselves that it was a stuffed deer I guess, but what terrifies me is how many passing kiwi boats had rifles on them.

Cowboys.

I just giggle when I picture the stuffing flying out the exit holes and the deer stiffly tipping over from a strong gust of wind.