Current mood:

nostalgic

The Poo Pub party or my night to wear plastic...
So part of the Kiwi Experience in the south island is that a Kiwi bus goes to this little town called Mahinapua every evening. There are about 30 full time residents who live there and they have one pub with an attached hostel run by this really old lecherous old man named Les. On the way to Mahinapua the bus stops for lunch and supplies in a town named Greymouth for supplies.

So here you are, every night with a Kiwi bus pulling into Mahinapua and Les having this huge steak dinner (or veggie quiches) and then folks getting ready for this huge Poo Pub Party. The party has a theme for each bus, or maybe each driver, like cross dressing or in our case dressing in costumes made of bin bags [aka rubbish sacks, trash bags - pick your brand of english :-)]

So we stop in Greymouth on the way to pick up costume supplies - bin bags and other assorted goodies. You can tell this is routine for this town because the grocery store has prepackaged 5 bin bags for $.99 NZD. They're used to a bunch of insane backpackers running around town, exchanging money (the last significant town til we hit Queenstown), buying food supplies and other crazy costume items.

Then we drive about 40 minutes to Mahinapua and Les climbs onto the bus to give us the rundown about the hostel, not to bring alcohol onto the property because it's licensed for the pub, the deal with dinner, and makes a few random verbal passes at the women sitting near where he's standing.

The thing about Les is that the whole day on the way to Mahinapua the bus driver has been making out how this guy Les is a real catch - he throws this huge party every evening, he owns a pub etc etc. It was pretty obvious there was something about him - but even so one of the girls on the bus was really excited about meeting this 'catch' who ended up being this 80 year old man who looked like a cross between Yoda and Bilbo Baggins but very lecherous. It was pretty amusing.

Anyway, Les also runs the attached hostel which is essentially prefab/trailers made into rooms with 2 bunk beds per room. Plus 2 bathroom trailers, a corrugated metal garage type space where there are tables and an inside grill where dinner is cooked and served and then the pub itself which is a stand alone building that is a normal pub inside with a pool table, bar, lots of tables and stools and even an internet terminal in the backroom. The town has 30 residents and you still have an internet kiosk! That's one of the amazing things about NZ, internet connectivity is so easy to find there. Even Boston it's not that easy.

At any rate, my theory is that the party, aka drunken stupor is so that you don't really realize what a dumpy (albeit clean) hostel you're staying at - what with the prefab and corrugated metal. Happy hour begins when we get there - around 4:30pm and lasts til after dinner. I think it was like $4NZD a jug (small pitcher) - really pretty cheap. Folks get settled, start to drink maybe hit the beach or the lake for a swim (the hostel is right near the seashore and a fresh water lake) and put together their costumes.



Sebs had decided to be Samwise Gamgee so I decided to be an elf. So we worked on our costumes, me putting together a full length black bin bag dress, accessories of carved bone (forehead band and necklace) and a ring of power which was essentially a little container of SPF 30 lip/ear/nose gloss which normally straps to a watch band but I was wearing as a ring. As I told everyone - SPF 30 is VERY powerful stuff! I helped Sebs design her waist coat (creating the accents such as the neckline, bottom points and the buttons) and she was my seamstress to my design plans for my dress. We spared no cello tape! She even created little plastic elvin ears for me.


Another image of the elf maiden in the pub itself - yes I did go out in public and yes that was after a few handles of beer.


We had some British lads on our bus who dressed up from some movie - I don't know what the movie was but they looked great together:


Here we've got a woman from Denmark who's name I don't think I ever knew, and our friends Elin and Darren from the UK. Perhaps Darrin's costume is less amusing now then it was at the time but I thought it was pretty amusing!


Captain, O Captain! This amusing man was our bus driver known to us by the name of Captain. His devlish female friend is our friend Fiona from Ireland:


This last photo shows Maria from Denmark as a Hawaiian Goddess, Fiona, Captain and our friend Rebecca as Batgirl.


The upshot of the plastic bags is they served to keep the torrential rain off our packs the next day when loading up to head out of dodge. We were a rag tag bus of hung over travellers and the rain was just an added example of how rotten we felt. But the night was fun nevertheless!