Elphie Blackburn: 2015 Travels: New Zealand

I visited a few small islands around Australia throughout this year, but I didn’t actually take too many photos. If you’d like to see them, they’re on my Instagram here. However, one of the major trips was New Zealand!

Let’s go back. It was January, and I wanted to go somewhere relaxing for my birthday, because 2015 already had the promise of stress and anxiety. Susan and I quickly decided on New Zealand, wrote up a list of what we wanted to do there, handed it over to my trusty travel agent, and she organized the rest.

Because of the extensive list of places we wanted to visit, it was only logical to hire a car while we were there. This was the first road bump (get it?!). Apparently you need to be over 25 to hire a car, of which I’m a few years off... But don’t let age defy you, kids! Date an

‘older’ woman. All your car hire problems will be solved! Bless Susan and her late 20s.

It’s while we were driving around New Zealand that I learnt all the words to Beyoncé’s Rocket before realising exactly what I was singing. Which in itself is a testimony to how much attention I pay to music whilst I’m driving. Seriously. Go listen to it.

I won’t bore you with how amazing and breathtaking the country was. Instead, I’ll share with you two of the more memorable moments.

Starting with Zorbing. Susan dislikes anything, in her words: “fast, scary, and with heights.” We’d been to Dreamworld back in Australia (a theme park), where I quickly discovered roller coasters were not her thing. The only way to get her on said rollercoaster was the threat of me dying and leaving her widowed. Ah, good times.

I don’t know why we thought Zorbing, the act of getting in a massive plastic ball and rolling down a steep hill, would be any different. We decided that we’d do the first round together. Now to get into the massive plastic ball, you’ve got to contort your body to fit through a tiny hole. Think the reverse of giving birth. As a woman with very womanly body parts, let me tell you it was one of my most graceful moments. I’m so glad there was a line of people behind me, watching as I took a run-up (“It will help!” the lady said) and got stuck at my hips. The only thing that made it better was a complete stranger pushing on my butt to ‘help’ me in.

So we’re inside, both Susan and I. There’s a little bit of water to help us stay upright. The water was warm, which gave this false sense of safety, like we’re having a bath, a bath in a massive plastic ball with six people watching us. Susan looked across at me, her deep brown eyes laced with fear.

“I’m only doing this because I know you want to,” she said, reaching across and holding my hand. I nodded excitably as the woman asks if we’re ready to go. The second we started rolling Susan moaned, knowing that her fate was now sealed. I looked across at her, hoping my wide eyes would give her some reassurance that we were going to be okay.

Bless her soul; her eyes were already pinned shut, her mouth turned into a grimace, and eyebrows dangerously close together. The ‘oh my god I’m going to die’ face. I’d seen it before, at Dreamworld, as we were upside down on a roller coaster. For whatever reason, this face, Susan’s look of absolute terror, makes me fall into hysterics. So I start laughing, hard. I’m laughing so hard it hurts. Tears escape my eyes as I look across at Susan who is still clutching my hand so tightly her knuckles are white.

We are rolling, tumbling, at quite an impressive pace now. The water is splashing our faces, as we most certainly do not remain upright. “Why are you laughing?! What’s going on?!” Susan screamed over my fits of glee. Her desperate pleas only make me laugh harder. She was so afraid of nothing. I couldn’t answer her. I was too busy trying to breathe.

We eventually bounced to a stop at the bottom of this mammoth mountain. I am weak from laughter, clutching at my stomach. Susan looked as if she literally almost died. When her eyes opened, there was a flicker of anger as she realised what or rather who I was laughing at. Oh, I am a terrible girlfriend. My poor dove.

She sat in the hot tub for the remainder of the day, while I rolled down the hill.

On my actual birthday, we decided to go to a volcanic valley hike. I asked the woman at the gift shop whether or not we should keep an eye out of any dangerous animals, because ya’ know, we’re from Australia, where everything tries to kill you. She said no, and we were on our way.

We got to the top of the volcano, and I was completely spent. There was a bench that I wobbled over to while Susan went to take some photos at the lookout. The second I sat down I heard buzzing. I thought maybe it was some flies, or maybe an insect or two. At this stage I start to panic a little. I yelled out to Susan to see if she could hear it to. She could. We decide it’s best if we just start to head back down to the next part of the track. Hovering in the middle of the path was a bee. Not just any bee, a bumblebee. They are like a normal bee, except demon sized. For the record, it takes a lot to scare me, which I think is why Susan knew something was wrong when I hid behind her.

She tried to laugh it off, “oh it’s just a bee, don’t worry. The worst thing that can happen is that it will string you”.

I didn’t move.

“What? You’re not allergic, are you?”

I nodded slowly. I’m allergic to bees. Like anaphylactic shock allergic to bees.

Susan lost all colour from her face as she realised the implications. “If you get stung, we are too far away for me to carry you,” she whispered.

It’s true. We were. We had been hiking for maybe two hours at this point. The hiking path was designed so you couldn’t go back the way you came. Now I know one bee doesn’t sound that threatening, but we managed to walk a few meters back into the thick of the forest, and they were everywhere. We had made it a few steps down, using our tote bag as a shield to shoo them off the path, with me clinging to Susan’s back.

Another fun fact about me is that I can get very impatient if I believe a situation is taking longer than it should. This usually happens in situations that involve insects. For example, when an unworldly bug flies into our window at home I automatically put Susan in charge of killing it. However, if she does not do it immediately (as in, gets too freaked out to hit it with a shoe on the first go) I get agitated and do it. This is one of my many flaws. In this particular situation, it could be considered a fatal flaw (haha, it’s only funny because ~spoiler alert~ I live). I started to get agitated that these demonic bumblebees were interrupting our hike.

“Stuff it,” I said, (keeping it family friendly, guys). “Let’s run.”

Now I don’t think Susan very much cared for this idea, knowing full well that if anything happened, nobody knew we were here and that she’d have to watch me die. I grabbed the tote bag off her, still using it as a shield and sprinted off into the swarm of bees. Again, I must bring to everyone’s attention that we were running full speed down stairs built on a volcano. I’ve included here some footage of what it felt like (just imagine some demon-sized bees floating around). Points if you know the movie -- one of my personal favourites.

When we got back to the car, I was 110% ready to spend the rest of my birthday at the spa.