Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Queenstown Day - 2

I woke up on friday morning having had a nightmare about getting diabetes. This was after Tania, Andrew and Lance hassled me on thursday evening about having a sweet tooth - they discussed cases where a person went blind because of diabetes. The whole thing no doubt had a massive impact on my small mind - enough to have nightmares about it. Lance's mission was to shoot a time lapse of sunrise over the mountains and with that in mind we went to the spot from where you got a great view of the horizon. This was 7.00 in the morning and needless to say it was pretty cold. The point we picked was not sheltered by anything from any side, so we were basically freezing our balls.

Lance with a time lapse setup

I am skeptical about the sunrise because of the overcast sky

Lance is worried as well

The sun almost came up and I got a couple of beautiful shots but within 10 minutes the clouds came over and enveloped the horizon and the sun was hidden from view for the rest of the time that we were there.

Sunrise shot

Another second sunrise shot

Because Lance had changed an existing time lapse shot to capture the beautiful sunrise in time lapse but ended up loosing that shot because the sun didn't come out, he decided to setup a different time lapse shot to make up for it. The thing with time lapses are that they take ages to film and require a lot of patience - on a 3 second setting you end up recording 20 frames every minute, so to get a decent length time lapse we are taking atleast a 30 minute shot. Well the wind was blowing so hard and it was biting cold wind that my patience flew away with it - I only hung around because the scenery was so beautiful that there was no where else I would have wanted to be {besides my warm bed}. Lance made an important discovery - if you lie on the ground you don't feel the wind at all. We lay there for a few minutes to regain circulation but had to stand back up once joggers and walkers started doing their morning rounds. It not only looked weird but it looked like we were homeless tramps.

Lance makes a discovery about keeping an ear to the ground

Well funny enough - after standing in the freezing wind for almost an hour and a half the brain started going cuckoo and the only way we could entertain ourselves was to make silly faces. Here are a few of them.

I understand you perfectly

Mushroom head

Freaks and Geeks

So after almost 2 hours in the freezing wind we called it a day for shooting time lapses and went and got some hot coffee. It was so nice getting something warm going into the body but I didn't really feel alive till the point I took a nice hot shower.

After the body came back to life we went about sorting out our bus tickets for the trip to Alexandra and then onwards to Dunedin. I also decided to exorcise my 'sugar demons' and went to 'Remarkables Sweet Shop' - it is definitely a kids dream come true. Racks and racks of different kind of sweets and lollies and what not - how cool is that. Spent a good half an hour browsing through the various kinds of sweets before I bought a bag of them.

Lance ordering some lollies

Yummmmmmm... Choclates - lots of them...

There is this pizza place called 'SLICE' in central city and you've got to try out their pizza if you are there - it was really really delicious. After the late lunch, both of us roamed about the city doing window shopping and also did some actual shopping for gifts. The thing I loved most about Queenstown was the girls - there are so many of them and all of them are beautiful, coming from different parts of the world. The eyes never got tired looking at the beauty all around. It almost makes me want to settle down in Queenstown but the only problem is that there is not much film or TV work there to make a living. Yeah 'Wolverine' is shooting there at the moment but an occasional movie once every few years can't justify the move.

Tania and Andrew let us borrow their car, so that we could drive around the different locations, which you can't get to by walking. After the shopping Tania suggested that we give disc golf a go at the local course - I was intrigued and Lance was keen, so we managed to track down a map of the course and went about giving it a go. The game is really simple but it was so much fun. It is like golf but instead of the clubs and the ball you have a Frisbee disc and instead of a hole you either have to aim at the tree or pass between the trees or get your disc into the metal basket. The course at Queenstown gardens was a 18 hole course and I was almost certainly loosing the game before I managed to recover and draw the game on the last hole.

Lance about to have a throw

Lance pulled his right arm during the first game and said that he would only be up for playing 8 holes the second time round before calling it a day. As we got to the 2nd hole we heard a guy yelling at us asking us if he could join us - we happily agreed and as we finished the first hole with him he told us that he was one of the guys who designed this disc golf course. Chris Davies is his name and through the duration of the course he told us lots of tips on how to attack the course. What are the chances of something like that happening? What was also surprising playing with a pro was that he had this bag full of discs and each of them was of a different weight for different kinds of situations. It would take us 4-5 shots to get to the same place that Chris would do in one or two throws. We felt really lucky and Lance did finish the whole 18 holes and he won.

Chris Davies aiming for the hole.

After disc golf Lance drove us to a look out point on the Remarkables mountain range. The mountains are pretty awesome and it just takes your breath away. The only people we met through the drive up the mountain was a bull and once we got to the look out point - which is probably about half way up the mountain, I felt one with myself. It is amazing when you get that feeling.

Lance driving - that's how he drives. :-)

I am looking at the road while Lance looks at the camera

The road going up towards the Remarkables

The bull didn't seem too happy on seeing us there

Lance walking up to the lookout point

The beauty in moments

Lance having a rest and taking in the views

I feel at one with myself and the universe

Lance taking photographs

Does paradise look like this?

A moment of reflection

The vistas

Soaking it all in

The Remarkables

Queenstown Airport

After the long stay up there it was a tough decision coming back down but we got a ring from Tania saying that the dinner was almost ready, so we drove back home. We feasted on yet another great homemade dinner and then spent 2 hours watching some dance competition program on TV. One of the judges sounded just like that girl on the aeroplane and it was so annoying watching that program because of that. By the time the program was finished I was so tired that I decided to skip the drinks in return for some extra sleep, especially since we had an early morning start the next day. It was kind of sad and I am pretty sure that Lance was really disappointed as it was a friday night and the town was buzzing, unlike thursday evening. But yeah I promptly went to bed and I had a great sleep bringing to close an eventful second day.

Stay tuned for more.
Amit

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posted by Amit @ 6:59 PM

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