When we walked in fields of gold...

Well, I have certainly had my fill of the central Otago goldfields over the past week. As you may recall from a previous post, I was drifting between the old mining settlements of Alexandra, Clyde, and others, leading up to a weekend sojourn in Queenstown.

In all honesty, Queenstown itself was not as intense as I expected it to be. I think it comes down to this: in Q-Town, you only have to deal with as much hype and "extreme-ness" as you subject yourself to. Since I wasn't really interested in doing any bungee jumping or skydiving or canyoning or extreme pancake flipping or anything like that, I was largely able to avoid most of that nonsense.

Times were good, overall. On Friday I met a group of English and Scottish folks who were working in New Zealand through the BUNAC organization. They were all planning on spending at least 8 weeks working in Queenstown. I wondered about their choice of location, but hey, whatever floats your boat, right? Anyways, I went to see the movie Closer with Andy (see previous post), and afterwards we met everyone else at a bar called Brazz for happy hour.

The concept of "happy hour" in Queenstown deserves special explanation. If you know what you're doing, happy hour basically means anytime in between 5 PM and 2 AM the next day. Bars will often have an early happy hour after people leave work, and then a later one to get people back in the bars at night. Since no two happy hours between bars are the same, you can essentially bounce from bar to bar in a state of perpetual happiness. Apparently, someone actually publishes a guide to explain all this.

Anyways, after a hearty (and cheap) dinner of sausages and beans, I embarked with an Irish group to The World Bar, which serves half-price "teapots" from 10 to 11. A teapot is just a traditional teapot filled with a boozy drink of your choice, conveniently served with little shot glasses to share with friends. We were able to tear through several teapots in that hour, each of a different flavor. After a few subsequent beers and gin and tonics, I was sure that I would be in for a rough night, and definitely hurting the next day. Luckily, I was improbably saved by a gift from the gods called...

...The Fergburger.

When we left the bars at around 3 AM, someone suggested that we grab a few Fergburgers for late night sustenance. What is a Fergburger, you ask? Why, only the BEST DAMN HAMBURGER I have had since I arrived in New Zealand, thank you! They are administered from a seedy-looking little hole in the wall, nestled deep in a dark, unassuming alley. They are thick and juicy and served with interesting ingredients like aioli and coleslaw and Brie cheese. They are, indeed, damn tasty.

But are they worth waiting 45 minutes for?

That was the question we were asking ourselves when we saw the impressive queue of famished partyers waiting for their Fergburgers. Unfortunately, the Fergburger shack is not a model of Western industrialized efficiency. We really did end up waiting 45 minutes for our burgers. Luckily, we were entertained by a super-drunk English pool shark for most of that time. He spent a good fifteen minutes ranting about the rule variations he found in New Zealand pool halls, which apparently made it difficult for him to hustle people for free beers. When he found out I was from Minnesota, he was actually able to talk about the Vikings and Twins! I was shocked that he even cared about baseball and American football. And once his number was finally called, he struck a pose and did a little dance of joy that looked strangely like Ryu's "shoryuken" uppercut from the Street Fighter 2 arcade game. What a guy.

Anyways, as I was saying earlier, I had subjected myself to an unholy alliance of alcohols that would surely spell disaster for the coming hours. But that's where the magic of the Fergburger comes in. Somehow its careful selection of fresh ingredients and robust, juicy flavor were able to purge all those nasty toxins from my body, and when I woke up the next morning I felt like a million damn dollars. Because I had not consumed even a single glass of water before bed, I could only attribute my unexpectedly pleasant condition to the wonderful, magical, mystical Fergburger.

Wow, I just realized that I've written damn near an entire treatise on a slab of ground beef placed between two halves of a bun. That must mean it's time for me to sign off. I plan on heading to Te Anau in the Fiordlands sometime tomorrow, where I will gear up for my upcoming Doubtful Sound kayak trip! I'll keep you all posted as I "get back to nature."