How a Stick of Meat Became Royalty on Our New Zealand Trip
07/21/2026
Somewhere around night three, a leftover stick of cured meat got smuggled into someone’s backpack as a joke. By night ten, it had a title, a reputation, and its own small ceremony every evening.
We called it the Meat Queen.
Here’s how it started: on our very first night in Christchurch, before our welcome dinner, one of the guys pulled together an impromptu spread in his room — meat, cheese, a bottle of wine he’d picked up that afternoon. It was supposed to be a one-off. Instead, it became the thing we did every single night for the rest of the trip — a charcuterie hour before dinner, sourced from whatever town we’d landed in that day.
A couple of nights in, someone did something ridiculous enough during the day — nobody quite remembers what — and the group crowned him “Meat Queen.” He got the leftover meat stick, carried it with him for 24 hours, and hosted the next night’s spread. Whoever earned the title the following day inherited the meat, the honor, and the responsibility. It travelled the entire South Island with us. Twelve gay men, a stick of cured meat with more frequent flyer miles than most tourists, and a nightly ritual nobody could have planned if they’d tried.
That’s the kind of thing that happens on a small-group gay travel trip that a mixed group, or a group of strangers who barely know each other, just doesn’t get to. You need the right size group, the right amount of time together, and — apparently — a little bit of ridiculous.
The Landscape Held Up Its End
We rode the TranzAlpine across the Southern Alps — one of the great train journeys in the world that almost nobody outside New Zealand has heard of — snow-capped peaks on one side, braided rivers on the other. We jet-boated the Dart River through Mount Aspiring National Park, the same wilderness used for Middle-earth, then paddled the quiet stretch back down.
Our Franz Josef heli-hike got weathered out early in the trip — a call that morning, no flying. Rather than force a lesser backup into the schedule, we rebuilt around it and moved the heli-hike to the very end, at Mount Cook, onto the Tasman Glacier instead. By the time this group landed on the ice in crampons, we’d had ten days together already. Ending on the glacier instead of starting there turned out to be the better version of the trip.
The Wine Tour Nobody Wanted to Leave
Central Otago wine country outside Queenstown was supposed to be our slow day — four or five wineries, good Pinot Noir, a break from the adrenaline. It was that. It was also the day we met our sommelier at the last stop: a warm, funny Australian who knew exactly who he was pouring wine for and leaned into it. By the end of the tasting we’d taken more photos of him than of the vineyard, and the group would not stop talking about him for the rest of the trip.
It’s a small thing, but it’s also exactly the kind of moment that doesn’t happen the same way on a mixed trip, or a trip where everyone doesn’t already feel completely at ease with each other. Twelve gay men, an afternoon of wine, and zero self-consciousness about who they found charming. That’s part of what this kind of adventure travel for gay men is actually for.
The Moment That Said Everything
Robert, from California, summed it up when we got home: “Most amazing trip I’ve ever been on. Cory has done a phenomenal job. We will be doing another trip in the future.”
He’s right that it was one of the best trips I’ve led. But if you want the real proof, it’s a meat stick with a crown and a sommelier we still bring up in the group chat.
Back in 2027
We’re returning to New Zealand’s South Island in January 2027 — glaciers, fjords, wine country, and whatever this group’s version of the Meat Queen turns out to be. If a trip where the best moments are the ones nobody planned sounds like your kind of adventure, you know where to find the details.
View the 2027 New Zealand Trip →
Not the right trip for you right now? We’re building out incredible adventures — safaris, fjords, deserts, glaciers, and everything in between. Join the Pivot Collective and you’ll be the first to hear when a new trip is released.