Saturday was going to be a day to remember: it was Bernard's Stag Day. Craig had spent literally months preparing this pub crawl of Dunedin's oldest pubs, most of which first opened their doors during the Otago Gold Rush of the 1860s. He had done maps, potted histories and a detailed guide to each of the establishments to be visited. The first pub is actually on the site of Dunedin's oldest public house, opened in 1848. But, like any good pub crawl, this one started in a greasy spoon for a lardy breakfast. I won't go into too much detail on each pub, because there will be a website dedicated to the crawl. Suffice it to say that the nine of us (Bernard's old Physics drinking circle, plus me & Craig's dad) had a bloody good time! Photos soon to be put up on my site will attest this.

In all, we visited fifteen pubs, including the bonus pub which we allowed ourselves for keeping so well to the schedule. At each pub we had a pint of beer, and at every third pub we had a double shot as well. Craig had been good enough to plan in some food time at the Asian restaurant too, where some extra-curricular wine drinking went on. We ended the night in a cheesy student disco pub, where (apparently - I don't actually remember this bit at all, but there are photos) we held a minute's silence for the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York exactly three years ago to the second. Well, we did anyway; all the students were busy getting on with being sweaty and happy.

The Stag Night pub crawl is generally recognised as having been a huge success. It was bloody good fun!

Needless to say, I had a bit of a sore head the day after the Stag Do. I finally emerged from my dorm bed around lunchtime and headed down the road to Craig's, where I met an equally bedraggled Craig & Bernard. Lunch was required as never before, and based on extensive past experience Craig determined that Yum Char was the way forward. So we ambled into town and to a favourite Chinese restaurant (Dunedin's large Chinese community is centred around it) to drink tea and eat dainties such as barbecue pork dumplings, chilli sausage rice or stir-fry beef stomach.

The highlight of the lunchtime experience for me was undoubtedly Bubble Tea: this is a vegetable-based beverage served in a huge plastic cup, with cute Japanese cartoon sea creatures on the film lid and an enormous straw to pierce the lid with. In fact, the main reason for the outsize straw is to allow you to suck up the Bubbles in the Tea, which are gelatinous globules of gunge that resemble the kind of soggy black bogeys you get up your nose if you spend time in a polluted city (I remember a particularly severe infestation after a weekend spent in Manchester). My tea was taro flavour. This root vegetable, I was assured by Bernard, tastes shit, but I really liked it. It reminded me of drinking horchata in Spain, both in the taste and in the slightly vegetable texture of the drink.

After a bit of wandering around in town enjoying the bracing fresh air and the bright early spring sunshine we made our way to the Octagon and back to the Flying Scotsman. There was very little custom this afternoon (well what do you expect for a pub on a Sunday afternoon) so after a while the barmaid came and joined us at our table in the sunny spot by the porch doors. She was an entertaining type, with lots of stories to tell about her youth in Dunedin and her recent travels around Europe. The Emersons pilsner lager that I developed a taste for in the Travel Bar were working wonders in us, and it was all good.

We left and were going to head back to Craig's house when fate intervened and caused us to pop in for a quick one at Brimstone, the bar and pizza restaurant on Princes Street. O sweet Fate, thou art a wondrous thing! There was next to nobody in the place, so when we went up to the bar the barmaid was only too pleased to spend some time chatting with us. Things started to hot up when she found out that today was Stag Plus One, because she promptly plonked three shot glasses before us and obliged us to down a Three Kings each (this consisted of a shot of Jack Daniels, a shot of Jim Beam and a shot of that other J whisky). And just for good measure she flashed us her tits as we recovered from the whisky!

Jodie (for that was her name) and the bar manager Richard turned out to be a really good laugh. We sat laughing and joking for the rest of the afternoon, and afternoon became evening once we had done the dare put to us, completion of which assured us free beer for the rest of the night. I was at first loathe to take up the challenge - the three of us had to drink the contents of the drip tray, which was about a pint each - but after Craig had tasted his pint and said it compared favourably to warm, flat English ale I found the courage I needed. I proceeded to down my pint in one, to much general acclaim.

And the beer kept flowing: past official closing at seven o'clock; past the original lock-in time of ten o'clock; in fact we were supping ale until twelve thirty! At which point the six of us (me, Craig, Bernard, Richard the bar manager, Jodie and an Iraqi friend of hers who had joined us earlier) headed off to Dunedin's cheesiest nightclub, called KCs but known as K Sleaze. We had the dubious honour of being the only customers, but that was cool because it meant we could ask the DJ to play whatever we wanted. This helped balance out the suffering inflicted on our taste buds by the only wine in the house.

All good things must come to an end, and at about two o'clock the three of us decided to head on home. But not before visiting the 24 hour shop and literally buying everything that was left under the heat lamps of the frier! Our kind taxi driver waited for us outside when we suddenly got the munchies as we drove the short but very uphill distance to Craig's house. He was even good enough to wish Bernard well for his wedding, despite having just told us about the divorce he was going through ("twenty years of marriage, fifteen years of shit")!

When we got in, we opened a nightcap bottle of red and stuck on a DVD. I had the sense to avoid the fried foods like the plague (I didn't even dare look at the two-litre cup of sour cream we had been given to accompany the wedges), but sadly the same can't be said for Bernard or Craig, who both felt like shit the next day as a result. The film was Natural Born Killers, which I thought was absolutely fantastic. I remember all the hoo-hah when it first came out but, like for Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "Relax", sensibilities have moved on to the extent that what was once demonised has come to be looked upon as timid. Don't get me wrong, it's still a bloody violent movie, but the violence is all there for good artistic reasons; and in a world where Kill Bill didn't raise too many eyebrows you can appreciate NBK for what it is: a study of the dark side of modern US trailer trash culture.

Craig & Bernard woke up as the film came to an end, so I could wish them a goodnight before heading off to my hostel at 5am.

Six flights, back to back. Now, I was expecting that to be a bit of a shitty experience. I had visions of arriving in Dunedin a physical & emotional wreck, requiring immediate hospitalisation or at the very least two days' sleep. But in actual fact it was much more bearable than I could have hoped. On only two of the planes was the seat next to mine occupied - and one of them was the last flight, when it was my mate Bernard and that was fine.

From Montreal to Detroit I was mostly asleep, it having been an early start. I woke up in time to enjoy the final descent across the Great Lakes into the US. The sunlight gleamed across turquoise waters, and rivers continued their snakelike currents even underwater, as I could see from the squiggles of green and brown that crept from the lakeshore into the blue.

Detroit to Chicago was a bit of a bore. Commuter flight, totally full, thankfully short. That was the one where I was wedged in, with an annoying guy right next to me.

Chicago to Los Angeles, when it finally happened (I had a five hour wait in Chicago, but it's quite a big scary airport and let's face it with NorthWorst there was never a guarantee I would arrived on time), was okay. The food on the flight was minimal: at the gate we were given a bag provided by American Airlines containing a turkey sandwich that consisted of bread and turkey and absolutely nothing else. But that was okay, because when I got to LAX I allowed myself a plate of nachos from the nearest I'll be getting to Mexico for a while.

Los Angeles to Auckland was surprisingly comfy. There was the regulation issue screaming baby, but it was quite well-behaved really and more importantly was at least seven rows away from me. And the best thing was that I had a row of three seats all to myself! This meant I had a choice of uncomfortable sleeping positions to cycle through during the 12 hour flight. And Qantas' service was fine too.

At Auckland, I got off the plane and had one of those moments of elation, like I had at Nice. A feeling of happiness flowed into me with each gulp of that crisp, fresh New Zealand air as I walked between terminals. The night was drawing to a close and, like the new day, a new phase of my travels had begun.

A quick flight to Wellington was all that separated me from seeing Bernard & Amanda. Flying over Wellington, it's impossible not to see how much more citylike Auckland is and how much more hicksvillelike the national capital is. The way the suburban sprawl climbs out of the bowl of hills around town and dots them higgledy-piggledy with patches of untidy architecture contrasts strongly with the gridiron extension of Auckland's commuter belt into its environs.

I met my dear friends at the check-in for my sixth and final flight of the day, to Dunedin. By use of Air New Zealand's fab ticketless check-in machines, I managed to get a seat next to them in Row 1, even though I didn't have my booking reference number. Also I didn't have to show ID at any point. Hm, great post-9/11 security measures, guys! This was only the second flight where I hadn't had an empty seat next to me, but this I didn't mind because it was occupied by a friend - and I therefore didn't have to worry about religiously keeping every part of my body this side of the armrest at all times.

Dunedin is New Zealand's answer to Edinburgh. I think I may have written a bit about this in the blog entry for when I was here in May of this year, so I won't go on about it again, except to say that it is chilly and hilly like Edinburgh, but that's about where the resemblance ends in my view. The countryside around the town is very green and lush, but in a Celtic Fringe way rather than a tropical paradise way. Indeed, flying in to
In Dunedin, the three of us took a cab to Craig's house. Then I found myself a nearby guesthouse, checked in, got showered, put on some fresh clothes and chilled out a bit. Bizarrely, considering how long I'd been travelling by this time, I didn't feel the need to sleep, so after a bit I walked into town to meet Bernard & Craig. When I rang to ask whereabouts they were, Bernard said "Look for the two guys sitting drinking beer in the sun". And amazingly enough, there they were, basking in the hot afternoon sun on comfy chairs just inside the patio doors of the Flying Scotsman bar on the Octagon, Dunedin's central square (only it's got eight sides). I pulled up a seat, and later three became four when Doug turned up.

After a few jars there, we walked through town to the Staff Bar (so called so as to keep out scuzzy students and dodgy tourists, but it's actually open to all comers) on Otago University campus, where we were met by and by by (yee ha! three "by"s in a row!) Amanda and a group of Bernard's Physics department mates. A few beers later we headed back across town to the Asian restaurant (which ought to have the slogan "Asian by name, Asian by nature") and stuffed our faces with excellent Chinese food for almost no money. We were met there by some more friends. It's a BYO, so we did. Tasty Aussie wines followed the tasty duck, pork and beef dishes into our ever-more-contented stomachs.

At this point, some of the group - clearly the less hardy ones - left to go home, while the rest of us (you might say the Core Four from the afternoon's drinking), somewhat the worse for wear, moved on to the next bar (I'm sure Jim Morrison would have approved, although we weren't on the whiskies - oh, don't ask why...) on Princes Street. This was called the Travel Bar, and is another regular haunt for Bernard & Craig, although it has recently changed hands. The tipple of choice is imported UK real ales. And it was by commenting in his own inimitable irritable way on the recent price increase of said beverages that Bernard got to know the new publican, who was of a mind to throw this man of voluble complaints out of his bar. Well, how were we to know that the guy next to us at the bar was the one responsible for this way-beyond-CPI price hike? Thankfully, we managed to calm the situation down and in fact ended up getting on quite well with the new owner, a Scotsman who has retired to New Zealand after some years working in Australia.

Bernard, Craig, Doug & I spent some hours in the Travel Bar, which apart from dozens of quality beers has good music too, but in the end my jetlag caught up with me. I had been awake basically since reaching Auckland some 20 hours previous, and my body clock thought it was now nine in the morning, so I think on balance I acquitted myself rather well that day!