Sweet As, Out In The Wop Wops

Tastes Like Peanut Butter Huh?

Well not to have my life ruined by one bad decision. I took off on a five or longer day tour on the bike. You see I got my case adjourned for three weeks so as to consult a lawyer and stay free for three precious weeks of summer. First off was the Hokitika Wildfoods Festival March 11th,(http://www.wildfoods.co.nz/wildfoods/) where 18000 or so brave souls decend on a modest west coast town to get a little rowdy and eat things that you might see in the roadkill cookbook or a bad episode of Fear Factor.

I rode about 9 and 1/2 hours from Queenstown up through Wanaka and Haast up to the famous Fox and Frans Joseph Glaciers and then into Hokitika for Friday night, the festival kicking off that night but primarilly running Saturday into the night. I didn't see a damn thing on the way.

The west coast is lush and green for a reason, and every inch of that reason filled my boots that day, fogged my visor and chilled me from the inside out as water exploited every gap in my defenses. My ominous rugged indestructable motocross boots giving way first, I guess there's no easy way to water proof the seams between leather and plastic.

Not long after I was ammusing my self by sending tidal waves from heel to toe and back with each sequence of gear shifts, I was flanked by water infiltrating the fly of my riding pants. One solitary droplet led the way as I felt it roll over my unmentionable bits. Drop after drop and eventually a steady trickle developed. I figured that If I stood up every once and I while I could get a better view of the impromptu waterfalls bursting through gaps in the moss and fern covered bedrock of the steep canyon walls. This would also allow me to keep water from pooling in my lap. Unfortunatley this little manuver also dumped the water which had pooled in the interior of my pants down both legs and into my boots. The trasfer water now warmed by my crotch to the rest of my legs actually causes momentary glee.

I had to make several long stops to warm up (drying out no longer an option) which made my 6 hour planned trip far longer. I will admit to having some nice moments when the sunset broke through the clouds for fleeting glimpses of color through fingers of rain and fog.

To get a picture of the scene at Wildfoods immagine a football field with an inner and outer ring of tents. One corner has a stage and contstant music or dancing or poetry or some such nonsense spewing from an M.C.. Seething arround you are groups of people of all ages, half of which are in costumes of some sort, beer in one hand grotesque snack in the other. A dozen people in O.R. scrubs, a dozen in commando uniforms which occasionally make mock raids on another group of commandos, school girls, thirty men matching hawain shirts, roman gladiators, bumble bees, cowboys in pink button down dress shirts tied in front labeled "Brokeback Hokitika", a lot of mullets...but not in costume...and the one commonallity between everyone are Gum Boots. No mater the costume the veterans ward off a soggy muddy field and rain with big black rubber goloshes. Luckily there isn't a cloud in the sky and a rawkus buzz permiated by gasps, oohhs, ahhs, cheers, and wretching dry heaves surrounds us. Game on.

I was with a group of folks I know from town and first we went straight for a Gin Trap to lubricate our inhibitions. Your choice of an Appricot, slice of Pineapple, or slice of Peach is drowned in Gin for days or weeks and finnally deliverd straight to your gullet and proceeding to your head at a warp speed.

Whitebait patties. Whitebait are ittybitty fish, white in color and about a sixteenth of an inch in diameter, perhaps an inch long and go quite well in a pancake of sorts until you look down at this pancake/hashbrown delight and notice a dozen black pinhead eyes starring back from your first bite. Here is my frist lesson that it's not what you can taste it's what you can see and what you picture you're eating that determines if you'll vommit or not, but nausea gives way to laughter seeing an eye ball caught in someone's teeth.

That inittal wave of nausea passes and I power through the thing to give the fleeting appearnce that I am in fact a man.

To pass time we head to the Montieths Beer Tent, and then eat some "Wild Beef" steak sandwiches. I'll dispense with the borring edibles as I can hear dear freind Catherine's voice "Hightlights Dusty, Hightlights."
- Fresh Scallops
- Ostrich Pie
- Chocolate Frog/Spicy Choclate Frog
- Kaluha and Milk (straight from Bessie the Cow - but no you don't suck on the teat John)
- Venison (They farm deer here - lots of them)

Mountain Oysters do not taste like chicken unless the chicken has been seasoned like fajitas and has the consistency of shirmp.

A HuHu Grub is roomered to tase like Peanut Butter. This comming from a country that has peanut butter, but rarely uses it should be a sign that it won't. The grubs come in various sizes but for $5 the man with the axe standing in a pile of choped wood will split timber untill he finds a live grub the size of your pinky and indistinquishable from a wavy, thick cut french fry, with a tinny black beak. First they wriggle in your fingers, then if you get it in your mouth and don't dispatch of it quickly it's gonna nip you with it's wee black beak. I waste no time and pop the thing like a minerature water balloon. There is no taste untill you crunch on the beak. There must be a peanut butter flavor in their some where, but I'm not going for a second one to find it.

Moving up in bravery scale we go straight for a fish eye. Not a small eye that might pretend to be caviar but a large eye from a Jim Fish. Colors of a Mushroom, water filled, and the size of a hockey puck before they're fried. After cooking they are about like a golf ball. I watch one of our group start to chew on one and his mouth shoots open spilling indistinquishable bits into the grass. One thing catches my eye. It is identicall in size, color and shape to a hard boiled egg yoke. I have concerns. Not to be outdone I mosey up with a buddy and we order.
My tounge instantly recognizes the flavor of well used grill, but evertything else is indistinquishible. Soggy, slimmy plastic covered mushroom bits crunch but don't break appart for some time and that egg yoke has the resilancy of a rubber ball (I'm guessing it's the optic nerve). The process takes minutes, it seems like ten, but I finish it and henceforth mushrooms and boiled eggs will make me gag.

I follow that up with an Eel's spine. This is easily described. Battered, fried, fish bones with a delightful honeymustard sauce and lemon. Best used for toothpicks.

Between tasty treats most of the time is spent in line for the john, buying beers, and listening to people account what they've eaten, while live bands play satelite stages. One of the better events I've ever been to.

posted by Dusty Calfee @ 3:52 PM